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Super Secret Agent Spy

I am a writer. First and foremost, I am a writer. I have my MFA/BFA in Writing the CK School of Authors Program. Right? He he he. After struggling for weeks to come up with something funny and witty, all I can say is that I'm a 34 year old, happliy married, unmedicated bi-polar II, living in Char...

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Alice, We Hardly Knew Ye

A Real Feminist?

Skirt! National BloggerWriteous Babe had a wonderful blog this morning on whether or not to have children. In her blog, she notes an article written by the daughter of the famous feminist, Alice Walker.

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1021293/How-mothers-fanatical-feminist-views-tore-apart-daughter-The-Color-Purple-author.html)

It wasn’t what I expected and it’s pretty damn tragic, if you ask me. . .which you didn’t. . .but when has that ever stopped me?

Rebbecca Walker was born to one of the most celebrated women of that generation. Alice Walker’s strong, “feminist” views have long been revered. But I was devastated to read that her real life version of Feminism and MY version of Feminism are two totally different things.

According to Rebbecca, Alice Walker’s feminist doctrine includes: –

* denying a female child the right to play with dolls, because it encourages “enslaving, maternal feelings.”

* considering her offspring an “affliction” rather than a gift.

* that allowing her 13 year old child to become sexually active was forward, feminist thinking because it allowed her control over her body

*Alice Walker believed that “children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale.”

Interesting, thoughts, Alice. My thoughts are that. . .well. . .you’re an asshole.

There. I said it. ALICE WALKER IS AN ASSHOLE. She’s just as big of an asshole as any man ever was.

It appears, if you take everything Rebbecca Walker says as gospel, that Alice Walker’s belief system is a doctrine of Fanaticism, rather than Feminism. 

See, the Feminism *I* grew up learning has nothing to do with Ms. Walker’s version.

The feminists in my family are all about FREEDOM and CHOICE for the direction of one’s own life.

The feminists in my family are all about living YOUR LIFE the way YOU choose to live whether your mother, grandmother or maiden aunt approves.

My grandmother, a mother of four children, choose to leave her James Island home every day to go work in the city of Charleston for Sears Roebuck and Co. She didn’t necessarily *need* to go to work. No one *made* her. It just happened that her mother-in-law came to live with them and was hanging out, so why not go work? Why not get out of the house? Because of her, I inherited an obsession with shoes that would rival any HBO character-who-shall-remain-nameless at this time. Because of her, I knew that women could work. . .not that they SHOULD/HAD TO/MUST work. . .but that they could if they wanted.

My mother was a stay-at-home mother of four children who managed to raise us all on one man’s income, at least until my parent’s divorce. And then she went to work. When she remarried and had another child, she didn’t see that child as an impediment or burden – she saw that child for what she was – which is a blessing in our lives. She worked and then choose to be home for her last, little caboose of a child. My mother has NOW chosen to go back to work, operating an antique business. She is a “slave” to no one and nothing, except maybe the love for us that is in her heart.  Because of her, *I* am a “slave” to no one and nothing, except myself and what is in MY heart.

Being FREE to choose to be a mother, to work, to be a mother again? THAT is Feminism.

Then there is. . .me. Unlike my mother and grandmother, I have no children of my own. I like it this way. It doesn’t make me more or less of  a woman than any in a long line of strong women in my family. It just makes me . . . me. I’m not “FREE” because I don’t have children. I’d be FREE whether I had children or not. I’m FREE because I’m happy. I’m happy, because I’m FREE to make the choices I feel are best for me in my life. I am beholden to no one except for those I CHOOSE to be beholden to.

Get it?

Sadly, I think Alice Walker, in her frantic bucking to toss off the reins of the “slavery” of being a parent, made herself a slave to something else – her own doctrine.

How happy or FREE can she be, having been a slave to thoughts so rigid and militant that she can’t even look upon the face of her grandchild?

How “FREE” is Alice Walker, when she can’t admit that her belief system *may* have needed some adjustments here and there?

So enslaved is Alice Walker to her doctrine, that she can’t be proud of her daughter for graduating from Yale! So twisted is her view of what a woman is supposed to be, she told her daughter that their “relationship had been inconsequential for years” and that “she was no longer interested in being [Rebbecca’s] mother.”

It was a sad  realization to me that there are a group of women out there who want to take the FREEDOM TO CHOOSE away from other women by demanding that they follow a doctrine that doesn’t ring true in every woman’s heart. Some women long to be a mother, cradling her precious child for as long as the child will allow. Some choose to live a life filling it with things other than children. Neither group of women should do anything but support the others in these decisions. After all, isn't’that what the SISTERHOOD is ABOUT?? ISN’T THAT WHAT FEMINISM IS ABOUT?

I’ll scream it at the top of my  lungs, just like William Wallace (a/k/a Mel Gibson inBraveheart” : FREEEEEEEEDOMMMMMMMFREEEEEEEEDOMMMMMMM!!!  I’m yelling this for YOU, for ME, for REBECCA WALKER and her MOTHER, if she can hear me:

THE TRUE DEFINITION OF FEMINISM IS FREEEEEEEEEEDOMMMMMMMFREEEEEEEEEEDOMMMMMMM!!!!

The way I see it, Alice Walker’s behavior towards her daughter has either made Alice’s greatest fear come to life or is her greatest achievement. Because in my eyes, Rebbecca Walker’s bravery  in exercising her right to CHOOSE to be a mother makes her a better and truer Feminist than Alice Walker will ever be.

 Sending all True Feminists my love and adoration,

A