Irish Feminists: Rebels Without a Cause

Feminism, in the first wave of the early 20th century, was a radical idea.

Not exactly a new one – after all one could argue that powerful female figures throughout history have brought to the fore female empowerment- but it was certainly one that was challenging the ideals set down by a regimented patriarchal society. Women marched, fought and were imprisoned in their quest to achieve basic rights: marriage rights, property rights, and of course the vote. Huge strides were taken by these “sisters”,  impassioned suffragettes who were in a very real and dirty way, challenging the boundaries restricting them.

They lay in the street, they endured public humiliation, they ostracised themselves from prim and proper surroundings to demand what was due to them, something which to them meant more than mere freedom or respectability.

How they would weep today.

The second wave of feminism, which took place in the late fifties, and carried on through the sixties and seventies, was again a group of like-minded women, this time taking on more intricate and volatile issues, such as sexuality, reproductive rights, rights in the workplace, and within the family. Women began to move out of the home, began to throw away their aprons and began to reject the traditional values expected of a mother and wife – they blew up the nuclear family concept.

This, much like the first-wave, was radical and potent. It fed into other rights struggles topical at that time, like the civil rights movement and anti-war protests. Women in Europe and the UK, like Germaine Greer, Toni Cade, Kate Millett and Adrienne Rich began to speak of things that no “civilised woman” would ever dream of addressing. Marital rape laws were introduced in the mid 70′s. These were not visionaries, messiahs or communists, as some would suggest. These were women who demanded what was due to them.

How they would weep today.

In a contemporary Western society, the feminist is a rebel without a cause. Of course, in disadvantaged or impoverished regions of the globe, there are constant abuses taking place, but that is in no way exclusively a female problem.

And that pisses them off.

To what banner can feminists now nail their allegiance? For what cause can they march and burn their bras? Who will call them loons and try to throw them into jail? No one, because they have no cause – their world is no longer one of oppression, of martyrdom.

The modern woman would never dream of burning her bra because she worked for the money that bought it. She can work. She can vote. She has the choice about absolutely everything in her universe. Wake up, and be the smart woman that you aspire to be.

The biggest struggle that these modern Irish feminists face is a man looking sideways at them in an office. Germaine Greer has been forced to appear on endless tirades of rubbish panel-shows to sustain her place in the limelight. Activists must travel to other countries in Africa, the Middle East and others to find discrimination and tackle it. Good for them, I applaud them, but when they arrive back in Ireland, their forms of aggressive feminist thinking should be declared at customs and left there.

“I see my body as an instrument, rather than an ornament.”  ~Alanis Morissette, quoted in Reader’s Digest, March 2000. Feminism as a concept was once too an instrument – an instrument of change, of new thinking, of revolution. Now it has reverted to being an ornament again. An ornament carried around by waning feminists who polish it constantly, and recall fondly it’s history, while new budding feminists admire it and desire one of their own -  and then buy one. A new wave of feminism is born, and common sense and critical thinking is drowning in it.

I admire feminists. I admire women. I admire those who tackle sexism where they see it. But please, when the biggest grievance a woman has is a Facebook group telling women to get back to the kitchen, I think we can safely say that the steam has run out of the argument.

Irish feminists – lay off.

Image Source: u.arizona.edu & nospeakespanol.blogspot.com