Young Feminists
Growing up with a brother only ten months younger than I, was very stressful. The way we were treated was very different from the activities or games we were allowed to play to the chores we got to do. While I was forced to wear dresses preventing me from playing anything that would get me dirty, my brother would disappear with his friends for hours a day with no questions asked. The way we were raised was divided into what a girl needs to know to do and what a boy needs to learn to do (not much). I always noticed the difference and it filled me with rage. Fast forward to now and things have not changed for my younger brother and sister. My sister and I are always told by our parents that if we didn’t learn to cook or clean no man would want to marry us, and if for some reason we did end up married without knowing how to do either, our husbands would end up beating us for our incompetence.
Although my parents’ way of thinking hasn’t changed much (something I’m working on), it seems as this younger culture is starting to get it. With social media taking over the way we communicate, videos of injustices and encouragement are reaching more people, where they understand the difference people around the world face. Growing up I liked being a hands on girl that got her hands dirty with yard work, pulling apart machines and then putting them back together, and building shelves or small furniture for my dolls, all things that my dad would discourage because he believed I wouldn’t know how to but the machine back together, the yard work needed strength (at a time I was beating up my brother) or I would get hurt using a hammer and nails.
Reading Luisa Muraro’s, The Passion of Feminine Difference beyond Equality, I was stuck on a thought she had she wanted to look past. She writes, “If some female students have higher enrollment in certain disciplines rather than others, the supporters of sexual equality speak of formative discrimination ipso facto and they try to direct girls toward disciplines that the students obviously do not care for.” I personally don’t believe it is something we should ignore. Recently on Facebook I came across a story of a male science student http://aplus.com/a/letter-to-the-editor-mechanical-engineering-student?c=3096&utm_campaign=i102&utm_source=a88491 to his female peers for the inequality he is aware of. What impressed me the most was his understanding of how the discouragement starts at a very young age when a girls is learning how the world around her works. She might want to do her best to fit in and then conditioned into what that world expects from a female. I once saw a https://youtu.be/XP3cyRRAfX0 that captured this discouragement of girls and it hit close to home. So maybe it’s not that the girls don’t care, maybe they just don’t know. If girls are expected to choose home economics or apparel construction over a technology or graphic design elective, and their friends are doing the same, then they don’t know what they claim not to care for.
I do believe there is still a lot to improve in the world in regards to gender differences (or anything else) but I also believe there has been a significant turn in peoples understanding to date. We need to look at where we stand today to set up a new approach to the war because things have changed in twenty years. With new shows like https://youtu.be/4DwhIZRn75k, https://youtu.be/4RbVMcYreuQ, and https://youtu.be/KrYauK95C7c?list=PLD7nPL1U-R5pl1nh9s1dQFy6zpTYlI0r- challenging the heavily structured binary gendered mentality, reaching the younger audiences and educating them is making a difference, which they can pass on to their children like this guy who http://bzfd.it/1jdoyE4 his son who wants to be Queen Elsa for Halloween. I believe it should all be analyzed because we might be entering a fourth wave of feminism with leaders like https://www.malala.org/malalas-story.
