I know it’s been a brain-popping week here at Feministe, between PETA and Dr. Helen and Purity Kids and slutty cat-ladies. So today I bring you something happy: This Alternet article about why feminism is good for everyone. We’ve written quite a bit in the past about how sexism and patriarchal social structures hurt men, too (even while certain classes of men also benefit). Neil Chethik tells his personal story about how coming of age during the women’s liberation movement helped him to realize his own autonomy and choose his own path:
I noticed this first in college as I contemplated my future work life. Feminism freed me from the expectation that I would be the primary wage-earner in my family. Where I had once considered a career based largely on how much money I would earn, now I could ask myself: What do I really want to do?
Thus, my interest in going to law school vanished; my passion for writing took precedence. I entered a profession that I still enjoy today.
Feminism also benefited me in my relationships with women. The women I dated in college and afterward no longer looked at me as a “success object” — someone who would provide for them. They were strong and motivated enough to take care of themselves. They sought careers and adventure, and a man who would be an equal partner. Thus, I had the luxury of dating, and eventually marrying, a woman whose full potential was not curtailed by society’s limitations.
After I married, my options continued to expand. With my wife sharing the responsibility of earning our family income, I had the opportunity to share in raising our son. In his earliest years, I stayed home with my son every morning before handing him over to my wife in the afternoons.
Later, when he started school, I was the one who met him as he came off the bus at the end of the school day. My wife treated me as a parental equal. Our relationships allowed me the flexibility to coach my son’s baseball teams, attend his band performances and visit his classrooms to meet his friends and teachers.
My own father has lamented to me that he didn’t have as close a relationship with his children as he would have liked. Whatever regrets I have in raising my son, a lack of time with him will not be one of them.
Indeed, I’ll be sitting next to my now 13-year-old son on Tuesday when the president stands to deliver his State of the Union address. I’ll point to Pelosi and remind him that this is a historic day. Her rise to third-in-line to the presidency, I’ll tell him, is an indication not only that girls and women can achieve their dreams, but that boys and men can do the same.
Indeed, feminism and the reproductive freedom movement have brought fantastic benefits to American society. As Neil points out in his article, men have wider career choices now that the burden of being the sole family bread-winner has been alleviated. Parents of both sexes spend more time with their children than they did 25 years ago when far fewer women were in the work force; they spend more time with their children than they did even in those mythical 1950s. Maternal and infant mortality rates have dropped. Poverty has been cut in half. More people have access to education. More people have voice in the public sphere.
Of course, there’s still a lot more to be done. But it’s worth taking stock of the victories that feminism has achieved for men and women and boys and girls.