I love my partner and my children with passion. This neither defines nor detracts from my femininity or my femininism. My femininity and feminism are a result and refelction of my thoughts and actions.
I feel the need to put this out there in the blogger-sphere. I am getting really sick and tired of the expectation that as a feminist I will have a butch persona, hate men and withdraw from the care, love and support of my family. I am sure that some feminists are butch whether this is a result of their feminism or their personal style. The idea that ones personal style is intrinsically linked to ones feminism irritates me to the core. Feminists are people who have to deal with normal everyday situations. As a feminist I continue to learn about the suppression of women's rights and the political backfoot that women are placed in and need to address. While feminism is the lens I envoke to view most issues with, I am not conciously a feminist most of the time. I have absorbed the ideology and continue to quesiton much of it. Feminism should not be dogma or stereotypical. It should be dynamic and evolutionary. It should be questioned and refined. Feminism is not static.
The quote I placed above is a reminder to those out there who believe that their encounter with a feminist will follow some script or that the feminist they encounter will be stereotypical. BEWARE: we may be mothers, lovers, artisits, professionals. We may wear make-up and designer clothes or we may wear op-shop or bargain basket attire. We may be black, white, asian. We are wealthy, poor, middleclass. We may be beautiful or plain. We come from many cultural and religious backgrounds. We are income earning or supported. We can even be male or female. The one thing we will be is vocal about equality. I am woman who loves her partner and children. This does not define my femininity or my feminism. My defininition of myself is a totality of my thoughts and actions.
