A feminist is a person who answers "yes" to the question, "Are women human?" Feminism is not about whether women are better than, worse than or identical with men. And it's certainly not about trading personal liberty - abortion, divorce, sexual self-expression - for social protection as wives and mothers, as pro-life feminists propose. It's about justice, fairness, and access to the broad range of human experience. It's about women consulting their own well-being and being judged as individuals rather than as members of a class with one personality, one social function, one road to happiness. It's about women having intrinsic value as persons rather than contingent value as a means to an end for others: fetuses, children, the "family," men. "
From Katha Pollitt, from the Nation.
following poem describes womens life
Irigaray wrote that as women
we are always plural:
two lips touching each other,
secretly, constantly.
as women we are always two,
and more than two,
and more than we can count.
i feel this daily.
Which woman will I be today?
the poetthe priestess
the prostitute.
slip them on and off like panties;
when one gets dirty just change.
i think the greatest damage the patriarchy has done to our
psyches is
to tell us we can only be one thing. the virgin or the whore.
but
mary magdalene was prostitue and priestess. the virgin mary
wasn't a
virgin forever.
these are the things they don't want to tell us.
i want to honor
that ability in women
to be plural
to be not pin-down-able
to be the one, the more than one,
the more than we can count.
the mother
the lover
the warrior
the goddess
the plain jane
the ruckus
the refuse
the refused
the not-refusable.
the knower
the known
the unknowable.
the many and more.
i want to honor it in myself by seeking to cultivate my women.
the ones inside me.
the ones only i know.
the ones only i might be able
to see.
i want to be able to be any woman.
everywoman.
(alex edwards)