femme-in-ism

I've been thinking more about the 'roles' I was talking about for men and women, and arguing with myself about all that. Maybe it's all the stories I've been reading, set in olden times, when women were just child-bearers and slaves. It's jarring to realize how recent this whole gender-equality issue is. In all the thousands of years of our existence, only a few dozen of those years have given women much freedom. Weird, eh? Makes me think of my late Grandmother, shaking her finger at me, her eyes sharp and her chin set strong, proclaiming, "I'm a feminist!" and ranting about 'useless men'. She saw some tough times for women, that's for sure. So let me be pretty clear about one thing: I say that it would be nice if we could relax into our 'natural roles', but with the stipulation that all roles be viewed with equal repect, given equal value. And fully realizing that there are men and women who would, quite naturally, feel natural doing the opposite of ' natural'. (?) In my Pearl S. Buck book, O-lan gives birth to a baby girl (alone in her room and crouched over a basin) and when her husband shouts at her through the door to ask what it is, she says, "It's not worth mentioning. Just a worthless slave." Whoa.
Yeah - I'm bloody grateful to live in a time and place where I have total freedom as a woman, and I also know I've got pressures and burdens that men don't have to face. But my generation of men are feeling pretty mucked up about this stuff too - and they also carry burdens unique to their sex. Guys don't know whether it's cool to offer a lady a hand anymore with her heavy groceries, or let them walk through the door first. They know they're not supposed to look for a wife to cook and clean for them, let alone bear them sons, and that they're also supposed to be less macho and more sensitive, but still dashing and buff. And women know they're supposed to have fulfilling careers and be able to handle their own financial affairs and mechanical issues, and defiantly look good for 'themselves' and not for men, and have children casually but perfectly, and maintain eternal youth and slimness.
So I don't know what I'm saying - it's all crazy and confusing. Where o where will we be in 50 years? I guess I'll just stick to my original thesis that we would all be better off, somehow, with more time alone, and more time spent in creativity. Oh, and more time outside too.
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