I want kids really bad. Ask any of my friends and they will be quick to tell you about my maternal nature and that if the circumstances were right, I would have kids right now. From a lifestyle standpoint having children is my biggest and most important necessity. I want a big family and have already chosen out names for my first three kids. It’s just what I have always wanted. But there is one thing that worries me about my future family… what if I have a daughter?
Yeah, I am aware that if I am trying to have a lot of kids one of them is bound to be a girl. But I have come to a point of hopelessness when it comes to being the female sex. Gender somehow still dictates the beat of our society, when it is something that can as easily as it was constructed be destructed. We as a human race still have this acute idea of what gender should be when in reality it’s a spectrum of ideas and interpretation that each human gets to define on their own. And feminism can only be accomplished once those gendered walls are broken down. Renowned social justice advocate Sister Corita Kent once said, “Women’s liberation is the liberation of the feminine in the man and the masculine in the woman.” We can only ever be an equal population when we stop defining and pigeon-holing terms such as masculinity and femininity, and when disintegrate the rigid binaries of female and male genders along with their associations.
But this discussion and exhausting debate have been going on for so long. I have finally realized that in my lifetime I don’t think that things will move towards the better for women or for the mindset of a gender as a whole- so why would I want to bring a girl into this life knowing just that?
Women have been fighting this fight for what seems like ever. Read Mary Wollstonecraft’s complaining of the inequality of the sexes in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. How about Emulation by Sarah Fyge? (I could rattle off dozens of more female academics of my preference but I will save you the time) It all sounds too similar to the fight that is STILL going on. Why can humans not see that just because I have a vagina does not make me less of a person nor does it restrict me to stereotypes that I should fulfill? And I can not imagine seeing my daughter face that. What will I say the first time she asks me why she is supposed to wear a skirt while the boys wear shorts for her school uniform? What will I do when she comes crying to me the first time she is inappropriately catcalled in public? What will I do when she is grown and still makes less than her male cohorts. The scale as to how, when are where sexism and gender prejudice affects us all is incredibly extreme.
I am not saying that I am going to give up this fight. A daily battle for pure true equality is all we have left. We have to, we have no choice. But for those who are feeling pessimistic like me, if you feel hopeless fighting for your own equality at least fight for your future daughters, nieces and all the other women who are not even been born yet. We owe that to them, because where would we be without the women before us?
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