So apparently women can do silly and not-so-silly things and still call themselves feminists. News. Flash.
Yes, you can still call youself a feminist while you take your husband’s name, bake chocolate chip cookies for his office party and use your looks and sexuality to your advantage. Yes, you can call youself a feminist while you profess to enjoy the company of men more than women. Yes, you can call yourself a feminist while you… giggle (I must have missed the NOW meeting where they revoked all the gigglers’ membership cards).
I’m not going to tell you that you can’t use the term feminist even while you do things that are not exactly feminist in and of themselves (says the woman in the heels and make-up who will be spending the whole weekend cooking for her family). However, I will tell you that you’re a little dense if you don’t understand that things like heels and make-up and taking your husband’s name and baking cookies for his office party do not operate in a vacuum. I’m all for frippery and frivolity and cooking and baking and flirting and making yourself happy; I am not for the “I Am a FEMINIST Because I Choose My Choice!” line of reasoning. It is silly and, well, meaningless.
Sharing a family name is a fine and good goal; the fact that women are always the ones to change their names (because of social pressure or because it’s just easier or because we aren’t as attached to our names) is a problem. Clothes, shoes and make-up are pretty and fun; the fact that women as a class as expected to be ornamental and are considered failures (or not quite women) if we don’t live up to a certain standard is a problem. Cookies are delicious; the fact that the task of baking them for the office meeting / school bake-sale / after-school snack / someone else’s holiday party always seems to fall on women is a problem. See?
Also: You can be a feminist and still be sexist. For example, if you go around talking about how you really love the company of men more than women? You have some misogyny issues. I don’t mean that as an attack because I too have some misogyny issues (who doesn’t?). But I am constantly frustrated by women and girls trying to assert how cool they are by emphasizing that they just can’t stand women, and they’re so much more comfortable with their “guy-friends” (I also wish the term “guy-friends” would die a speedy death — if they’re really your friends, just call them that; and if you’re really comfortable with them as friends, you don’t need to emphasize the fact that they’re guys all the damned time). Yes, we all have different interests, and some communities are more male-dominated than others; I have heard, for example, that certain gaming communities are heavily male. That may skew your friendships toward the male end of things, regardless of your gender. This isn’t a flame of male-female friendships, or even of women who really do find they have more in common with men than with other women; it is a critique of the “I love men and hate women” narrative. That narrative could not exist in a gender-egalitarian society.
I get that the point of the article is that feminism shouldn’t focus on purity — you can still be a feminist and do things that seem counterintuitive to feminism. I agree! But emphasizing all the stereotypically feminine things that women can do while still calling themselves feminists only seems to lend credence to the idea that the stereoptical feminist — who is “masculine” and queer and mouthy and not conventionally attractive — is not the kind of woman we want to be. And that’s a problem.