I am 24, married, childless, Catholic, & unemployed in Greenland Mississippi. At this point the only thing that I really do is job-hunt, but my hope is to eventually get back to school for a BSN & then become a midwife. I would love to study theology on a graduate level, but have no interest in teaching.
I was raised in a hyper-conservative family. Whenever I hear "normal" women talk about embracing things like submission, head coverings, or homeschooling, I freak out a little internally. Even though I know that they do not usually mean the extremes to which I have been exposed, I still have a hard time accepting that whatever it is they do mean could be good & healthy for them. I hope that you can forgive me for sounding unnecessarily emphatic.
In college I was almost always the conservative one in the classroom, and I often got through discussions by being confident that I was at least as much of a feminist as anyone else. These days I don't find the term as useful, but I am not ready to abandon it. After all, it is no more confused and problematic than "conservative" or "liberal." I do not know how I should be classified as a feminist, but I suspect that is because the "fourth wave" will not be recognized until it is over. I think that I would really like to be a womanist, if only I weren't so white.
I am most looking forward to reading this book in particular because of a review by Mary Ann Glendon, and I am really excited about reading it with all of you!
Hi Rae, I am intrigued by what you consider "hyper-conservative" and I agree with you that words take on so many problematic meanings and I think it depends on who is using the term! Looking forward to reading the book with you, as well.
ReplyDeleteI too am intrigued by "hyper-conservative". I saw on your "about me" at your blog that you weren't allowed to wear pants as a child. I have to ask, were you raised Catholic?
ReplyDeleteGreat link Rae!
ReplyDeleteI, personally, love the idea of being part of the "fourth wave" of feminism - shaping it into something real, attainable and moderate (for lack of a better word)!
The "fourth wave"? I don't think I'm familiar with that.
ReplyDeleteMy family wasn't "hyper-conservative", but got pretty close at times. It actually makes me kind of glad that my higher educational institutions were on the liberal side. Not that I agreed with a lot of that, either, but it got me out of my bubble and hopefully on to a little more balanced view of life.
Midwifery - wow!
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to hearing your (former) "hyper-conservative" perspective as we go through this!
I was trying to keep my post short, but now I feel the need to post a crazy-long comment explaining. :-)
ReplyDeleteI actually started to write that I was raised in a "patriarchal" family, but replaced it with "hyper-conservative" because I thought that "patriarchal" would sound feminist in a bad way.
In my mind "conservative" would be thinking that a woman should vote the same way as her husband. Hyper-conservative would be thinking that a woman should only vote because we still need women's votes to win the culture war, but that once it is won women should not be allowed to vote because it is the head of the house's job to choose political leaders. "Conservative" would be sending your daughter off to college with the idea in mind that she will be a stay-at-home mom. "Hyper-conservative" would be trying to stop your daughter from going to college, even when it is what she really wants to do. "Conservative" would be thinking that a woman should talk with her husband about plans & not make a firm decision without his approval, "hyper-conservative" would be believing that a woman cannot make a promise to God or anyone else without her husband or father's consent. Opus Dei would be conservative and SSPX hyper-conservative.
I was raised as a Protestant, lost my faith in my mid-teens, and when I came back to it around the start of college it was with the Catechism in hand. The fact that I was not raised as a Catholic probably makes me more aware of negative ways that Protestant conservatism influences Catholics, but I don't think that it was a decisive factor since there were many Catholic families who were quite similar to mine. My understanding is that in the 1970s-early '90s in New England good Catholics were expected to send their children to Catholic school. Those who chose to homeschool found few Catholic resources and were thus strongly influenced by the Evangelical Protestants who formed the base of the homeschool movement. There is a lot of positive synergy, but obviously some of it is problematic and simply being Catholic did not protect many families from allowing conservative ideals to take precedence over Church teaching. I don't know anyone who went off as far as, say, the community that Christopher West came out of, but there were/are many Catholic families as hyper-conservative as my own was.
And my use of "fourth wave" was a reference to the "waves" of feminism: the first being the liberal (in the classical sense) feminists fighting for basic rights, the second being the ERA era, and the third wave the self-conflicted feminism which is both post-structural and trying to be authentically global & less elitist. I haven't heard of a "fourth wave" but I don't think that people ever figure out what it is we're living until after the fact. I was making a slight joke about my confusion being caused by being a part of the fourth wave.
Thanks for the explaination. Also, yikes!
ReplyDeleteAs for the waves, I think we need a 4th one as well! They seem to have gone progressively down-hill since the first one. Especially with current feminism, there is this simultaneous desire to be sexually aggressive, but to also discount and use men (much the way that men have discounted and used women). It doesn't seem like telling women to act like bad men has made it better for anyone!
How perfect!!! As in...
ReplyDelete"My hope is to eventually get back to school for a BSN & then become a midwife. I would love to study theology on a graduate level, but have no interest in teaching."
I am a teacher who has no interest in seeing blood ever!!!
We are many parts, but all one body. Ha!
Great to have you here! I know what you mean about being the most conservative one in the classroom. :)
Rae,
ReplyDeleteAhh, I see what you mean. Sounds a bit scary to most women, I think! I can understand why you'd have a negative knee-jerk reaction to anything that hints at anti-feminism. Definitely looking forward to hearing your perspective on things!