by Heather
Recently, as I was procrastinating something important or another, I came across a picture on somebody’s Tumblr. It was a silly graphic of a woman shaving her legs, and it said, “To me, feminism means choice. I can choose to shave my legs, and I can choose not to. There is no right answer, one option does not make me any more or less of a feminist than the other. I can shave or not shave. Whatever the hell I want to because it’s my choice!” This was reblogged hundreds of times and posted on Reddit and various other places online. It received quite a lot of support.
I find this disturbing. It’s as though somebody took the entire lexicon of feminist theory, feminist literature, history of feminism, and women’s studies, and then crossed out billions and billions of words and circled the one that justified literally anything they wanted. Feminism is not about choice. Feminism is about equality of the sexes.
Does the word “choice” sometimes occur in arguments and discussion about women’s equality? Absolutely. We want choices. We want our choices to be sexy, be parents, or be feminine to necessitate sacrifice no greater or lesser than those of our male counterparts. We want to be attractive and have sex without being reduced to a sex class, where every inch of skin, pound of fat, and follicle of hair on our bodies are monitored for youthfulness and open to all for comment. We want to choose to be parents without having to choose between putting brand new babies in expensive daycare ten hours a day, or lose our careers entirely. Those are the choices we want. Those are the choices we don’t have.
When a woman chooses to shave her legs, she is making a choice that has absolutely no negative consequences, real or imagined. For feminism was never about not shaving legs. It was never about being sexually unappealing, not having children, or not sleeping with men. In fact, when a woman “chooses” to shave her legs, she is choosing a course of action that will earn her approval from men and women alike. When a woman chooses not to shave her legs or underarms, she is making a choice that will earn her almost universal disapproval. Her femininity and heterosexuality (if she is heterosexual) will both be called into question. Her politics will be assumed radical and man-hating. Her decision will be considered an aggressive rejection of men, sex, and femininity. She will have broken the barriers of her class, assigned by her sex, and for that she will be rejected and punished. The choices to wear makeup to work and parties, or not, follow the same lines of consequences, as do the choices to battle wrinkles and gray hair or not, eat daintily or not.
Nonetheless, a choice either way on any of those questions does not determine whether a person is feminist or not. The defining choice that determines whether or not a person is feminist is whether they’re going to be satisfied with the unequal set of choices they have. It is the choice between being complacent with a society that teaches us that we must put financial independence and ourselves second to men and babies, or wanting a better reality that gives us the options to have both, as men have had since the beginning of time. The future of feminism is in breaking the glass ceiling, unraveling the sex classing of women, and equalizing the sacrifices of parenting and careers between the sexes. It has nothing to do with the state of your legs.
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Stacy
June 19, 2012 at 2:47 AM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yes! Brava.
I’ve tried to explain this to people myself. It’s fucking offensive to have feminism reduced to that vapid buzzword, “choice.”
lee
August 6, 2012 at 7:31 PM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
it might be offensive but you dont have the right to deny women their choice. IN ANYTHING NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU STAMP YOUR FEET AND/OR THROW A TANTRUM. when you all get that into your ugly hairy heads you might just find more women choosing to call themselfs femnists again
Gen, Uppity Ingrate.
June 19, 2012 at 3:36 AM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Excellent post, thanks for making it!
hall-of-rage
June 19, 2012 at 3:59 AM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hmm, I started this post with “arrgh I’ve thought about this subject WAY too many times” and ended with “wow, that’s a really clear way of talking about what a loaded/socialized choice means.”
Thank you.
Alethea H. "Crocoduck" Dundee
June 19, 2012 at 4:46 AM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Love it. Well said.
Nepenthe
June 19, 2012 at 9:05 AM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
However, awareness of the implications of choices is a prerequisite of feminism. It seems like the same women who bandy about “choice” as a panacea tend to deny or at least pointedly overlook the consequence of not “choosing”.
(Example! I have a medical condition [trichotillamania] that makes shaving a profoundly bad idea for me, because I have better things to do with 5 hours a day than pluck stubble and get infected wounds from that. After “choosing” not to shave for almost a decade my family, especially my mother, still mock me mercilessly for my body hair.)
The Nerd
June 19, 2012 at 9:21 AM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
My “choice” to not shave my legs lead to the “choice” to never let anyone at work see my legs, not after I caught them snickering at me.
Chrissa
June 19, 2012 at 9:21 AM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Great post and thanks for clarifying my own fuzzy thinking re:choice.
brianpansky
June 19, 2012 at 2:10 PM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I saw that picture on tumblr. It was being used as a response to other people’s ideas. Other people were saying ridiculous things like “if you shave you are a slave of the patriarchy!” and things like that.
Perhaps you saw this “choice” picture as trying to simplify the entirety of feminism. However when I saw it, it was a discrete correction [about what actions could be considered feminist] in regards to only one situation: shaving.
The Nerd
June 19, 2012 at 2:15 PM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s not isolated to specific matters of shaving, though perhaps that particular image was. A couple years ago “Blag Hag” Jen gave a talk for the Skeptical Society of St Louis in which she just as plainly said “feminism is about choice”. Now I’m not about to revoke Jen’s feminist card, but in that particular talk to our particular crowd, that was the message which came across: feminism is about choice.
Happiestsadist
June 19, 2012 at 3:27 PM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Love this post.
kagerato
June 19, 2012 at 4:04 PM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
There’s a serious problem in any important discussion with trying to distill all the meaning and context down to a single word or phrase. Although “equality” seems to be a better match than “choice”, there would still be issues with declaring that one word the final governor of feminism. Feminism doesn’t actually require (or expect) men and women to be exactly identical in any sense. In fact, that’s one of the most common tropes used by opponents against it.
In our society, it’s become basically the new normal to reduce any complex topic down to a few sound bites. The media played a huge role in establishing this, but everyone sometimes makes this mistake by oversimplifying a deep topic. We should fight the tendency to simplify and isolate, and instead promote analysis and comprehension because it’s the only effective way to actually solve problems.
Perhaps the motivating factor behind these oversimplified statements is the desire to be immune from criticism. That’s natural, but it has to be fought because it can close off the discussion entirely.
Sassafras
June 20, 2012 at 12:15 AM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The graphic didn’t say feminism is about choice, it said feminism means choice, as in feminism leads to choices women otherwise wouldn’t have the freedom to make. Of course it didn’t detail the entirety of feminist thought, it’s a single drawing making a very specific point about how personal grooming doesn’t have a “correct” answer decreed by Feminism. If you expect an in-depth analysis of feminist theory in comic format, you’re going to at least need a series of graphic novels, not a one-panel cartoon.
Which is exactly what the graphic said, that neither choice regarding the shaving of one’s legs is what makes someone a feminist. Nothing in your post contradicted the drawing and even supported it (despite your claiming it was disturbing), so I’m afraid your message is just not clear.
Everest
December 3, 2012 at 11:40 AM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The point the author was trying to make was that, sure, it’s a choice but it’s a choice you’re making with a gun to your head. If you make one choice (shaving) you are rewarded by society. If you make the other (not shaving), you are punished by society. It hardly seems admirable to congratulate women for making the societally-approved choice. I’m not saying everyone necessarily needs to do the opposite of that but don’t make it that you’re so brave for doing exactly what society says you should.
KT
June 20, 2012 at 4:33 AM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think the difference is that making the choice is not in and of itself feminist. The choice to do something or not is made regardless of your stance on feminism. Feminism requires a further step, which is to understand the implications of your choices and actively work to change the implications that are caused by negative stereotypes and gender inequality.
Feminism is about choice, but it’s in trying to ensure that the choices are two equal choices, not just stating that you make a choice without addressing the fact that one option is much easier to choose than the other, particularly if you are making the easy choice.
Joy-Mari Cloete
July 9, 2012 at 4:49 PM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
How do I mail you? I’d like to rebut your argument in a guest post.
Ben
July 22, 2012 at 8:17 AM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I spend a lot of time explaining to people that sexism is about women having to be a certain way, and feminism isn’t just the opposite and about women having to be the opposite way, so feminism is superior because it’s about women being whatever they want. It’s not about being just as oppressing as sexism, just in a different way. And then Heather comes along to fuck that all up.
Yellow dog
October 24, 2012 at 4:30 PM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It should not be a question of choice. It should be a question of having your choices respected
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June 19, 2012 at 10:46 AM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
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June 29, 2012 at 9:49 AM (UTC -4) Link to this comment
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