Femogyny Pie

Femogyny: The state of militant feminism as to impress upon others a personal view and/or practice.

I’ve not seen many uses of this word, and I’m not sure the few uses I have seen all agree, but this is my definition. It wasn’t so long ago, at Balticon 2009, when a friend — the talented Donna Lynch – and I discussed the state of mass feminism and peer pressure. As a post-feminist, of my own brand, I thank my feminist fore-mothers — love Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and her mother, so on and so forth — and I try to read and educate myself, as best I can, on the contributions and sacrifices made. Still…

I reserve the right to birth children while respecting other women’s individual choices to birth or not to birth. I reserve the privilege to stay home with my children, and I reserve the right and privilege to be my children’s primary caretaker while also finishing a graduate degree and following an individual, self-interested goal.  Key word: individual. I have worked outside the home, liked working outside the home. I like being a stay-at-home mother and writing in my home office more.

Here’s the absurdist, Swiftian gist: If a woman is happy, barefoot and pregnant and chooses on her own terms to skip around a kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, cookin’ up bacon and grabbin’ her man a beer, then by golly, let her be barefoot and pregnant. As long as she knows that she has a choice to wear those shoes or not, cook that bacon or not… it’s nobody else’s business. Really, one person’s choice does not have to be everyone’s debate. I draw a line at cults, though, I’ll admit it, and people who take themselves too seriously. They creep  me out.

So here is my mission: To spread the awareness of the negative effects caused by forced, ultra-militant feminism. (Actually, I’m too distractible and too much of a smart ass to adhere to a mission for more than five minutes, so let’s call this a discussion. Don’t be surprised if I shift views midway. You’ve been warned.)

Here are some other examples . . .   

1. Having PMS, expressing PMS and being aware of PMS, unapologetically. Allowing a discussion of PMS between genders. Or not… Either way, I don’t really care.

2. Buying a Playboy, just for the hell of it, framing the centerfold and hanging it on the wall beside prints of Da Vinci’s Leda and the Swan, and Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. Or not… Either way, I don’t care. (Actually, it would probably make me giggle, and I would probably draw lewd pictures on the centerfold with a Sharpie pen just to be redundantly hypocritical. Yes, I meant to write that.)

3. Refusing to vote for Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin, because neither of them were right for the job at the time. (Okay, Palin wasn’t right, period.)

Yeah, I said it.