I object to women who preface comments with, "I'm not a feminist but...". I always want to shout at them, "Why aren't you a feminist? Why isn't everyone a feminist? How many people in the world would willingly publicly state that they think women don't deserve equal rights to men?" Because that's all feminism is. It's believing that men and women deserve equality.
Drawing evidence from legislation alone, you'd think we were pretty much there as a society. There are laws insisting that women and men are paid equally for the same work. There are laws making it illegal to hire or fire based on gender alone. And there are even laws to protect pregnant women from being fired or chosen for redundancy because of their pregnancy.
And yet... three days ago marked the day in the year where - because of the gender pay gap - women are effectively working for free for the rest of the year.
"Well, it's a complicated issue," you might argue. "Biology isn't on women's side; so long as they continue to step off the career ladder to have babies, there's not much anyone can do."
I agree. It is complicated. And there are arguments to be made about why it's so valuable to have mothers in the workplace. But discarding that entirely for a moment, even when you take mothers out of the equation (not that we should have to), women still earn significantly less than men.
Mysterious market forces. Perhaps. But here is an incident that genuinely happened to me on Thursday.
TheBloke (TM) often accuses me of "Plogging" in my storytelling - exaggerating for comic effect. It's an accusation not entirely without truth. But this - word for word - did actually happen.
After a lovely afternoon at the Breastfeeding Cafe (no, I'm not breastfeeding anymore, but they have cake), the baby and I poddled off to the Post Office to send a parcel.
If I ever take the baby shopping, I have to build extra time into my schedule for SBOLs (Stopping By Old Ladies). The baby is like catnip to pensioners. This was no exception.
As I was dealing with the person behind the counter, the baby was making friends with the well-dressed elderly lady behind me.
Old lady: Oooh, he's lovely. He's just turned round and given me the biggest smile.
Me: Thank you. It's a girl actually, but thank you.
Old lady: Oh, I'm sorry, sorry!
Me: Don't worry; it's very hard to know at this age, and I don't tend to dress her in pink. I'd rather people got her gender wrong occasionally than have to dress her like a princess every morning.
Old lady: I bet your husband would rather have had a boy anyway.
Me: (practically speechless) Absolutely not.
Her: No?
Me: Not at all. And if he did, I'd have given him a swift kick in the scrotum.
I left. And I was genuinely angry. Because this complete stranger had just stated that the baby's father would love her more if his baby had a penis. And I suppose - all things being genuinely equal - the pensioner's gender shouldn't matter. But somehow it does. The fact that she's a woman holding this opinion made me feel genuinely queasy. Was her life so terrible that she thought being female a curse?
Could you imagine the same scenario but with the woman saying about a black child, "I bet your husband would love your baby more if she was white", or about a child in a wheelchair "if she wasn't disabled"? Horrendously offensive.
But this sort of everyday sexism is commonplace and kind of acceptable. And it makes me sick.
So today - male or female - brand yourself a feminist. Celebrate your daughters (and your sons too). And if you see that old lady at Manford Way Post Office, give her a swift kick in the cunt for me. In the name of feminism, of course.
No comments:
Post a Comment