Hear Me Roar

Posted on | July 19, 2010 | 2 Comments

Pretty much every day, I follow a basic routine: I wake up (by myself, as I live in my own apartment), I get ready for the day, I drive myself to work, I write whatever I feel like writing on my blogs, I might meet friends for dinner or go to a movie, and then I prepare to start all over again the next day.

There’s nothing exceptionally exciting about my life and most days I don’t give it a second thought. But the fact that I can do (more or less) whatever I want is something I often take for granted, when I really should be grateful for all those who went before me.

Today is the anniversary of the first official Women’s Rights Convention (also known as the Seneca Falls Convention), the first major public event openly declaring equal rights for women. It was the beginning of the women’s suffrage movement, led in part by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and what is now referred to as first-wave feminism.

Feminism – we toss that word around a lot, without ever truly considering what it means. It’s been defined and redefined hundreds of times over throughout history that there’s no longer any one coherent meaning. Nowadays, it means so many different things to so many different people; it has acquired the perception and connotation of negativity, when it should stand for strength and positivity.

When Mott, Stanton and the other women gathered together in 1848, they weren’t necessarily thinking about sparking a cultural revolution that would reverberate hundreds of years later. They were fighting for the lives they wanted to live, standing up for what they believed every woman should have. It was intensely personal, free from the social theories and labels that seem to restrict us in the present-day.

So maybe, then, the trick is to recapture that personal feeling and think of feminism as something intricately intertwined with our own thoughts, beliefs and experiences.

If I had to sum up my own approach to feminism in one word, it would be choice. Women everywhere should have the ability to choose what is best for them, for their families and for their lives. Maybe it’s not the choice you would make and that’s okay. Maybe it’s not even a choice you would agree with – that’s okay too. It’s not about right versus wrong or good-better-best. It’s about having the freedom and privilege to choose the life you want, without anyone telling you no simply because you’re a woman.

We may have come a long way since that first convention 160+ years ago, but we still have a long way to go, even here in the U.S. There’s a lot we won’t agree on, but it seems to mean that a good first step would be to figure out what exactly we mean when we say, “I’m a feminist.”

“A new amendment we vote on declaring that I am equal under the law to a man? I am mortified to discover there is reason to believe I wasn’t before. I am a citizen of this country, I am not a special subset in need of your protection. I do not have to have my rights handed down to me by a bunch of old white men. The same article fourteen that protects you protects me and I went to law school just to make sure.” – Ainsley Hayes, The West Wing (2.18)

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

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