So I’m a feminist – and a misogynist?

(For my 3rd blogaversary I’m publishing select previously private blog entries. Originally drafted in January 2008 after hearing one too many women say “I’m not like most girls” with obvious contempt…)

I’m starting to think that we self-identified “vixens” are terribly misogynistic.

We start out feeling different from the other gals. Maybe we have a hard time relating to them. Most of our friends are guys, often from an early age.

We tend to be very independent (some might say selfish). We don’t want to live our lives by anyone else’s rulebook, least of all the gender-pink lace trimmed one people have tried to hand us. We decide this at an early age. Simultaneously we find the power that comes from flirtation and are intoxicated with it.

We don’t want white dresses or babies or hearts and flowers. We don’t want anything that will weigh us down and try to come first.

We don’t need love. We’re not weak, emotional women.

We’re not afraid to get our hands dirty. To get dirty. We’re accepted into societies of men, but in our own place, as they are very aware of what we are. And we use this.

When we’re around other women, it’s not the same. The dynamic is not the same. We forget how to relate, or we never learn.

They don’t trust us because to us flirting is friendship.

Our boyfriends will have a hard time understanding. They’ll want more than we can give. They’ll want a heart.

We’ll have a hard time opening up, or be too open, or both.

We define ourselves as not being like the other girls – perhaps defensively – and because of this we mirror the gender stereotypes we were taught, hard.

Lately for every gal I hear or read who says she doesn’t enjoy the company of other women because they’re always so much cattier than men, I hear contempt for their gender and its perceived weakness. (And a woman who hasn’t been around her male friends when they gossip and fight. Of course, since they’re men, they would use the word argue – which is an angry word but a word of strength. It’s not often used strictly to demean. Gossip is a powerless word for ineffectual people and we only apply it to women. We castrate our own gender.)

It’s one thing to rebel against being spoonfed a stereotype as an ideal. It’s another thing to have obvious disgust for your gender (and most of these offending women are primarily gendered female, even if they do sometimes feel male inside; or at least, they express their gender as female).

I caught myself at it when I realized I was emotionally neutered. I fixed that. Mostly.

But even then, I thought the problem was a fear of vulnerability, not a fear of all the mockable quirks we define as female.

I’m not saying this was any less my actual personality. I was on this path because my own inclinations led me there; it wasn’t simple rebellion. But humans need both traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine qualities within themselves to be whole people. I thought wearing lace and high heels and being into emotional honesty was expressing my feminine side.

There’s more to being a woman than dressing the part (although that’s a reward I savor).

A fear of committment commitment – I can’t even spell the word – is unanticipated when a woman wears it but that doesn’t make it any less a weakness of character than it is in a man.

Not all traditionally masculine qualities are positive. We weave them into ourselves because they represent power and we love power any way we can get it. Taken from us (ooh!), wielded by us (mmm…), exchanged and rearranged in the kinkiest permutations… We use our bodies, our voices, our feminine wiles, just as we use our masculine traits. To disarm men and confuse them when they trail after us like lost puppies.

It’s one thing to be independent, and favor few attachments, and not be very interested in relationships but that is sometimes a stage, not a permanent trait, and even when it is a permanent trait, it’s neither a positive nor a negative. It’s just a way of being.

We don’t need to throw poison darts at women who didn’t spit on their gender-pink, lace trimmed role book.