I think that I may have always had feminist tendencies....but I remember clearly the day I crossed the line and became one....
I have always been fascinated by what my pa does in the barn...he fixes things, makes things, tinkers....I learned early on that while my family is very egalitarian...there are some things that are in the realm of women and some in the realm of men. My parents shared cooking and yard maintenance duties, while my mom did most of the cleaning (pa helped out a lot) and my pa did all of the fixing and vehicle things.... What my pa did was much more fascinating to me than the cleaning...so I pushed to be his helper while learning (unbeknownst to me) gender roles.
Fast forward to when I was about 13. My brother was trying out for the "Raiders" youth football team. I am, and always have been, a huge football fan! I pushed and pushed to get to try out...if my brother was doing it...why can't I? I learned that they wouldn't let me even try out! There are no girls in football! I was already the only girl in the entire soccer league, let alone my team. But no...they wouldn't let me. I had over heard the coach talking to my father..."...size, probably would have to be center...but with her brother as quarterback..." the next thing was my pa's emphatic "NO"...and that was it. No football for me (my mom was worried I would get hurt anyway). I have to give my pa credit here...he actually considered it... As a side note...it was years before it dawned on me what the issue with the center/quarterback was....oh yeah...remember I missed that class....
Ever closer to the line...at age 15 I argued with my father nearly incessantly about the fact that my fourteen year old brother could start the vehicle and move it around the driveway or drive it at camp...I was the one who was in driver's training....I thought this supremely unfair! I could not figure out for the life of me how have a penis made it easier/better to drive! I still don't! Does the appendage somehow help with steering? I have never seen evidence of it....and yet the stereotype that men are better drivers persists today. I know awful drivers of both genders...and they are awful for different reasons....but should not be driving nonetheless....
The final push to the femi-nazi camp was when I was sixteen years old. I had just received my driver's license and was driving into town all by myself. It was winter and the roads were really icy. I was driving the "green-machine" my father's massive full size work truck that I adored. I was nervous, so I was driving quite slowly. I remember that I had been going 15 in a 45....I am about halfway to town when this car comes around a sharper corner too fast and completely loses control of his vehicle about a quarter mile a head of me. I take my foot off the gas and begin pumping my brakes...he is in MY lane! The truck is sliding a little, but I keep it under control...the vehicle is still careening toward me. At about a hundred feet away, I make a decision...I am going to try to pull off the road into a driveway...I hit the brakes harder...bracing for a head on collision...I begin to swerve and hit a patch of ice and fishtail into the deep ditch at the other side of the road. I wasn't hit! The truck is on it's side and I cannot unbuckle myself from the seat belt from which I am hanging. The neighbors who witnessed the whole thing help me out of my vehicle, call my father and the police. When I get out I expect the other vehicle to be there too. It is not. I am very shaken up....realizing that I probably would have hit the windshield had it not been for the seat belt. The police officer arrives and speaks with the witnesses, my father and then me.
My mother has bundled me into the car and my pa is towing out the truck. Pa comes back and hands me a ticket from the police officer...I read it...it says I was going too fast for road conditions! I am angry! I go to the cop and ask him how fast I should have been going...and how else I should have reacted. He is aware that there was another vehicle and I avoided a head on collision. He just tells me I am too fast...nothing more. My father, knowing how I get when I defend myself against things I find unfair...pulls me off to the side and speaks with the cop. He refuses to talk about it until we get home. I ask him what the cop said. After a few minutes of cajoling he finally tells me. The cop gave me a ticket because: GIRLS SHOULD NOT BE DRIVING TRUCKS. THEY CAN'T HANDLE THEM! He also told my father to get me a little car. I am furious! I did the best I could with my limited driving skills and the MAN that caused the accident got away with it...even though the witnesses explained the whole story! They saw the other driver lose control and me avoid the collision.
That was it...just because my reproductive organs are on the inside instead of the outside does not make me any less of a person....I crossed the line....I became a feminist...or femi-nazi as I have been called. I would do many things over the years to prove a point that in this day and age...women are still treated unfairly. I agree with equality to a point..there are some things we will never be equal in (I can grow life inside of me)...but there should be no reason that I can't try to do something based on my gender!
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