White House Council on Women

You can watch the video of President Obama speaking about the newly established White House Council on Women and Girls posted on Feministing.com. The president spoke on March 8, International Women’s Day, a day I find to be both silly (one day for women?) and incredibly important. If we don’t set aside days and times to talk about inequality, then when will we?

In the speech, President Obama points out we are honoring our democracy and adhering to the purpose of our government when we ensure women and girls have all the chances we can give them to pursue happiness. So much of the speech makes so much sense, is so important, and makes me glow with happiness we are taking these steps to ensure equality. I hope you agree.

I want to discuss one point President Obama made during the speech because I think it is one place where many of us, including myself, get foggy on what feminism is. President Obama said he wants “Malia and Sasha [to] have the same opportunities as anyone’s sons do.” It’s something any rational person would want — all children to be able to reach their dreams. Though there was understandably no time to do so in this speech, feminism teaches us we have to be careful to outline exactly what those opportunities are. We don’t want, for example, our daughters, as our sons do now, to have the opportunity to beat their partners while society looks the other way.

Practicing feminism does force us to give up certain things. We must give up the fear and violence which maintain a patriarchal society. We must give up the idea that a woman who wears a short skirt is somehow to blame for being raped. We must give up the idea that low-income women of color will do the cleaning and the child rearing for cheap while the rich white women go to the office. A college professor of mine used to say feminism isn’t about letting women destroy themselves at the same rate as men. Rights aren’t going to be equal if the rights we’re fighting for are ones which destroy ourselves or others. In the tradition of Peggy McIntosh’s Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, can you think of specific privileges certain groups are able to partake in because of institutionalized sexism?

FemVeg note: This post speaks directly to the fem-veg link. Destruction is not a part of feminist politics and right now, we are destroying our environment at an alrming rate. All humans are suffering because of it, in the form of diabetes and mal-nutrition and pollution from factory farms. Poor people are most subjected to negative environmental effects, and the majority of poor people are women.