I am 36 and I live in the UK. I write a blog that would get me killed in some parts of the world for being sexually explicit.
Soon I am going to see my lover, a man I am not married to and that also would get me killed.
I am educated and in some parts of the world going to school would get me attacked and maybe imprisoned.
Because I am a woman.
I have no idea how some women can see romance with being at odds with the feminist movement and I am very frustrated with this perception. Look hard for the romance in countries with appalling women’s rights and tell me when you find it. Look at the videos of seventeen-year-old girls who are murdered for being suspected of having boyfriends; look at the poverty and the violence they suffer and show me the romance. Iran, for example, had excellent women’s rights until the revolution. I suspect if you asked the women there how cosy and protected they feel now that they cannot vote and now that they can be killed for having sex outside marriage, I suspect they would laugh at you.
My mum is no feminist that you would recognise unless you are like me and see feminism in all its forms.
She is a loving and very hard woman, with not a shred of nurture in her. She went off after she qualified in the career she almost chose (she wanted to be a doctor but that was very hard for a woman then and so she became a nurse) and travelled around the world working in Australia, Palestine, Singapore and lots of other places. She married the man she chose; there were lots of suitors and I think she had quite a lot of fun. As I grew up she worked very hard alongside my father to send me to an excellent school.
She was and is imperfect but she loves me and always does her best by me. She sometimes does the wrong thing but I forgive her because she taught me to forgive by forgiving me.
Her reasons about the dismissal of romance were, I suspect, totally different to some mothers’ reasons. She does not do self care in any way and she thinks self awareness is the worst kind of self indulgence. She is what she is and I know she adores me. She has never had a facial, she spends nothing on her hair, and views most make up with the same suspicion and mistrust I reserve for snakes. Interestingly enough, I have a picture of her laughing away with a huge snake wrapped around her shoulders. She shudders if I try to introduce her to hair conditioner though.
She is from her era and I am from mine. I quite like her approach to much of life. She has no qualms about letting my Dad make decisions (and he makes every big decision in their lives) and she has mowed the lawn twice in her adult life, both times Dad was in hospital. But she chose him after she had done what she wished with her single life. She has no qualms about beating any man at bridge. She would not show them the disrespect of going easy on them. She showed me the best way she could about being a woman and making your own choice about what kind of woman to be.
She is an excellent cook and my father only recently at the age of 76 learned to peel a potato. My mother had broken her wrist.
I have always been brought up to decide for myself. I was encouraged to be as adventurous as I wished and to take on whatever challenges interested me. There was no belief that I could not mow the lawn, just that the boys around might find it easier. I did mow the lawn a few times when I was growing up. It was my choice. But I set the table and peeled the veggies about one million times. There was lots about my childhood that was rubbish but at home I never felt less because I was a girl and I never felt obliged to be something that I wasn’t. You would have seen a very, very traditional upbringing but I know that it contained a form a feminist awareness because I was treated with love and respect and that is what feminism is.
I understand that some women have felt let down by the women’s movement but that feeling has never been part of my life. I adore the women’s lib movement for giving me all this freedom which is how I am able to meet the man I adore, to earn the money to go and see him, to do a job that makes me happy.
They fought so hard to give us what we wanted and now it is up to us to take it forward. It is our women’s movement now. We can set the line. We can express ourselves and our thoughts about the world, and even though we are women we can disagree with one another.
Never, never, never was the women’s movement about hating men. There will be some women who hate men, just as in the civil rights era in America there would have been some black people who hated whites. But we do not dismiss the civil rights movement because of some hatred that was no doubt born of suffering. We should not dismiss the women’s rights movement either.
I choose to have a relationship where I am spanked, and I have that choice because of feminism. I can leave a man who beats me up because of feminism. I won’t be stoned to death or imprisoned for seeing a man I am not married to. Thank goodness for feminism. I am free to be this happy and at peace.
The equal pay act and the sex discrimination act are wonderful things. They have an impact on my life every day, and if you are a woman at work or who engages with the outside world then they have an impact on your life too.
You and I are confident enough to express ourselves and educated enough to do it. You may have picked a man to marry whom you love because you had that right. This is all thanks to feminism.
You may live with the one you love. You may love women or have two lovers; you may do any one of fifty-three things. You are free.
Your mother raised an intelligent daughter who could question the world around her and find her own answers even if they seem in opposition to the zeitgeist, to social and sexual norms.
You have all these things because women before you fought for them and were often treated very poorly because they did. I think we should see through the negative hype about these women and thank them for what they did.
Some people say that women should rely on men, since in our earliest human moments we would have starved without men and been eaten by mammoths or other beasties.
Oddly enough a favourite topic of mine is that there are countless studies to show that if tribes relied only on hunters for food they would have starved to death. (If you want sources do ask, but I don’t want to type them out now. I have them though!) Tribes relied on women for 75 % of food, medicine, and communication development.
But the men and women worked together – they needed each other. No one gender could have done it, and they were and are both vital to the development of the human race.
To me that is feminism, that acknowledgement of worth. We are both worth a lot, every human being is. The whole fish/bicycle thing was a brief quote and a window of time, and I suspect there were women who were frustrated and angry with how they had been treated. Their anger led to social change and thank goodness it did.
Men need us and we need them. We can choose how to live together, though, and how to be within ourselves. We can encourage men to feel happy, confident and loved, just as they do to us.
I love feminism, because I am so grateful for what these mothers of ours did for us. Look how free we are. Isn’t it hard sometimes working out what we want and how to live? And then isn’t it wonderful to strike out from the norm and achieve it? I love this journey I am on. I am loving discovering who I am. And I know that every step of my freedom has been paid for by someone who went before me.
My mother taught me I could marry if I wanted, and certainly that is the example she set me, but the choice is mine. I did marry and my first husband was cruel and unkind, and due to my career and my parent’s money (including my mother’s as she had invested very cleverly) I was able to escape and to start again.
With no feminism I would be stuck there still, beaten and afraid. Feminism has enabled me to find the chivalrous man. There are stacks of evidence to suggest that the age of chivalry, which is deeply connected to the idea of courtly love, was an early sister of feminism (Eleanor of Aquitaine, Biatriz de Diaz) since it brought about a shift in the perception of women from lowly vessals of shame to something higher with a spiritual dimension. Alas, it was only true for the richest women, the rest were still seen as nothing, less than nothing.
The longing for the fifties with the spanking in films and more traditional marriage would be no haven for girls like us. We could be raped by our husbands, or beaten. We could be ignored. We could never understand our sexual desires. We could be judged for our sexuality, expected to shut up and put up, we could be left in terrible poverty if our husbands chose to go. It was no ideal time, unless you were lucky enough to be born into a Doris Day movie and if you were co-starring with Rock Hudson – but then you would have had some surprises in store later on.
I know there will be women who disagree with me on many of these points. We may disagree beautifully and happily because we have the wisdom to do so. I know that just because we are women, we do not have to be one entity. The women’s movement is not one homogeneous mass; it is what we make it now; it is up to us.
I am a feminist. I get spanked and I have a ridiculously unfair bedtime. My lover won’t let me swear. I do what he tells me to because I trust him to the ends of the earth and because he spanks me until my bum turns a hot pink. All this fits in perfectly with my feminism and no one has any right to tell me otherwise.
Thank you to my mother. I will make the feminist movement into what I need it to be now. I will take it from here.
I won’t give up on the feminist movement. I will not turn my back on it for a moment.
I am posting this over my post about romance because I cannot for one moment be seen as presuming that feminism ousted romance; I will not be seen as suggesting that romance is gone because there are laws protecting women now.
I will not patronise people by posting lots of pictures of women who have suffered because they have no rights, burned, hanged, whipped, raped, stoned women, or rejected girls left to rot in some orphanage if they were lucky, but I could scatter this post with them. And I do not find any of those blasts from the past or the present day for millions of unfortunate women in the least bloody romantic.
I understand some women will disagree with every word I have written and I respect their right to do so, but I cannot have my name on the blog and not write this. I could not live with myself.
And I still, still love romance.
Poppy, you are amazing, and I loved every word of this. I love how smart you are. I'm so glad I met you. I know I'll come back and read this again. xo
Thank you very much, Scarlet. I was worried about posting such a tirade, I just felt quite strongly about it which I suppose (blush) might be obvious.
Thank you very much for saying something so nice, I think I needed it.
Poppy, this was very well said and I think very important to say. You inspired my own tirade
and I ended up writing an entire post in response, so please go check it out.
Poppy, can I share one of my favorite quotes with you? Do you know Anais Nin?
"I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic–in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself."
When I showed that to my husband, he said, "that is exactly you." I think maybe it is exactly a lot of us. Thanks to our mothers, and our freedom to be ourselves.
Never hesitate to say what is true for you. You will always be speaking for someone else as well, who perhaps can't find her own voice, but can listen to yours.
That made me cry a little bit. But I am English so I will merely offer you a cup of tea and use the moment of putting the kettle on to compose myself.
I do know Anais Nin but I had not heard that quotation, it is beautiful.
Well said, Poppy
I´m still afraid of judgment. I would never dare tell anyone about this lifestyle, even if I know there´s nothing bad or shameful in it…
X
Maria
Gosh no, me neither. Let us never tell outside of here.
I would not say a word to anyone, none of their business.
Yes!
Phiuffff! I thought I was the only chicken shit here
X
Maria
Poppy,
Wonderfully stated! I too come from a family with a mother who was a stay at home mom and unbeknownst to me until I was an adult, parents who were very much a DD/Taken in Hand couple. Feminism was a struggle for me, my parents both pushed for me to be "independent." So needless to say it was confusing but your blog post states it far better than I could. Thank you so much for the great insight.
Banana
Hi, Banana!
This is so much the opposite to what I thought would happen and I am amazed. I thought people would disagree with me – all of them. Thank you for your thoughts and expiriences, it is very supportive of you to comment.
Well considered and well stated points, Poppy.
I'm not being flippant when I say that I always have been a feminist. I grew up in a household full of females of all ages who loved and cared for me, and the thought of any of them being mistreated, maligned, or given less than her due respect as a human being appalled me. True chivalry is not condescension but consideration.
Hi Maria, just a quick note to say it is one thing to live your own truth, in your own way, and something else entirely to let anyone inside that very private world that you and Egres share.
Like in Poppy's life, what happens between me and my husband is for us alone. That makes our friendships here so special, and our intimacy even more intimate, in that it is private.
Dev, the very thing that makes you so effective as a Top and as a writer is that it is always clear to me (and I know to others) that you love women. That has to be how you know us, as a gender, so well. And why we are so comfortable sharing our little stories and our laughs with you.
Scarlet, those are such wise words!
I love Internet for these kind of things. You can share the things you want to share with the people you CAN pick
X
Maria
Thanks, Scarlet. Very kind of you to say.
Poppy sometimes speaking of what might be unpopular but none the less true has it's own rewards (sometimes…other times you might get trashed
). Perhaps you have given a few other's the courage to say what they think too.
Poppy, this is brilliant. Feminism is precisely what gives those of us who wish it us the ability now to choose to be safely feminine.
One too many "us"s, sorry.
Poppy,
I strongly agree with everything that you said in your post, and I especially liked these two lines;
"I know that just because we are women, we do not have to be one entity. The women's movement is not one homogeneous mass; it is what we make it now; it is up to us."
Feminism and romance are all together compatible in my book too.
Poppy, I loved it. Thanks.
Poppy is tucked up now but wants me to say thanks again for all the lovely comments, and wishes you all a good night.
Wonderful post Poppy. Three books I'd like to share if you've not read The Alphabet and the Goddess (which may provide insight into the shift from pre to post lowly vessels of shame, The Ascent of Woman (which is in retort to many of the Darwinist who clung to underestimating our gender, and The Price of Honor (an older book but very relevant about each of the middle east countries' attitudes on women, written by an American who lived there. In turn I am going to look up Biatriz de Diaz & reread the Suffragate Movement participants treatment when jailed – exceedingly sobering. We stand tall on shoulders and create choices for the ones to come next. So happy you live your freedom & choices. Safe Travels, KayLynn
I would really love to comment to do the comments justice but it is 7:05 am here and my brain is not there yet. I am blown away by these reactions. I wish everyone in the world was like you people. I really do.
Now that's true feminism. Excellently delivered Poppy.
Bravo Poppy, wonderfully put, excellent. You certainly have a knack for writing.
Thank you for sharing this with us.
Love,
Ronnie
xx
I honestly don't know what to say. I wrote this post and turned off my lap top and scuttled off to tidy something. I thought that people would react in exactly the opposite way to the way they have acted and it has made such an impact on me.
Thank you Ronnie, BabyMan, EMW, Elysia, Lorraine, Sara and as always, Dev.
Your comments are very much appreciated.
EMW, I have read the Price of Honor, what a horrific tale. I will order the other two books, they sound fascinating. I love to read and I read a lot.
I love Lorraine's expression of being safely feminine.
I love that so many men understand all of this, these men who love in this funny old world with us and who understand us so well.
You have all made me feel that life is better. I never knew I could get so much from this blit.
xxx
That was a wonderful post, Poppy, and a strong reminder of how lucky we are to live in countries where we have the ability to make our choices.
Some women, though, do not have that ability, even though they live in a free country like Canada. There have been several instances of "honour killings" very, very close to home. Young women who came to Canada to start a new life are murdered by their fathers and brothers for not upholding the old ways; for wearing Western dress; for going to sleepovers; for uncovering their heads in public. All these things are seen as dishonouring the family, and they pay with their lives.
Frightening.
Hugs,
Hermione
I believe and support many of feminism ideals,even though my previous comment might make that seem contradictory. My paternal grandmother(who I never got to meet but greatly admire)was a Yeomanette during World War I. She was stationed in San Francisco I believe,not entirely sure. Anyway she saw my grandfather across a crowded dance floor pointed him out to her sister and said Oh there's the man I am going to marry. She hadn't even MET him yet! Ok nuff said,sorry.
I think you are a little naive to be giving so much credit to feminism. N.O.W. was not a grass roots organization. Research the Rockefeller Foundation, the C.I.A. and Gloria Steinem.Think increase the labor pool causing a decrease in wages while simultaneously increasing the tax base.
We have always had colleges for women. Granted, not many went, but then again not many men went to college either. Women could always have a career, but she had to choose between a career or a family, i.e. daycare centers and latch key kids were unacceptable.
Remember the first accomplishment women had after getting the universal vote (w/o having to enlist)in the U.S. was prohibition. Gee, I wonder how we ended up with big gov and the nanny state.
We can credit feminism for no-fault divorce that deprives men of their children.
A domestic violence industry and their propaganda that has successfully pegged men as violent when evidence proves women are more violent in the home than men. Yup, all a woman has to do is pick up the phone and he's out of there in hand-cuffs. Check out Erin Pizzey, founder of the first shelter.
We have false rape accusations destroying men's lives particularly if he can't afford a good lawyer. However, as Catherine Comin from Vassar college said, "Men who are unjustly accused of rape can sometimes gain from the experience."
In the U.S. we now have the new gov Office of Minority & Women Inclusion Act while we are hemorrhaging men's construction and manufacturing jobs. I guess 40 years of quotas wasn't enough.
Lets not forget sexual harassment mandated laws that permit her word as the only evidence needed to destroy a mans career.
I could go on and on, but what I really want to say is; take the dom/sub and dd lifestyle over to feministing.com and jasabel.com and see how friendly your fellow feminists are.
Hi!
I appreciate you taking the time to let me know your views and I wanted to let you know that I am not ignoring you. I am going out for dinner though (on a work night!) and will respond properly tomorrow. I do want to point out though that I did say other women would disagree with my lifestyle. I accept that if I went and said, "My lover spanks me." lots of women (and men) would cry abuse. One of my main points is that just because we are woman does not mean we agree with one another. No one expects all men to agree, it is expected that men will have a range of political and civil rights views- women are the same. My point is that feminism gave me the choice, even if that choice irks some other girls.
Thank you again- now I must do my hair.
"I accept that if I went and said, "My lover spanks me." lots of women (and men) would cry abuse."
Oh, they'd do more than cry abuse. They would say, "How dare you allow yourself to be subjugated to a man. Such betrayal to the sisterhood!"
Feminism gave you the choice? The choice to be spanked…am I reading that right? LOL! Feminism is what flipped it to abuse!
Haven't you every seen an advertisement from the 1940's where the man has his wife over his knee?
Yes, anonymous, that's what Poppy said. Feminism gave her the choice, not feminists with whom she does not agree. She has said repeatedly that there are many interpretations of feminism, and has explained her interpretation only.
But you choose not to listen to what she is saying, but to keep shouting that all feminists are wrong and evil. That sort of rancor will convince no one around here of anything, except that you are bitter and angry.
Why that is I have no idea, but I wish you would go away and be bitter and angry somewhere else.
Very sincerely,
Devlin O'Neill
Lovely post Poppy
Not overly nuanced but well-thought out and reasoned. Idk, maybe one needs a brain and a sense of self-respect to understand.
Professional? check. Educated? check. Self-respecting? check. Spanked submissive partner? check, check, check.
Thank you, CD. I do think maybe it was all a little much for Mr Angry.
Dev, thank you for saying that.
Dear Mr Angry,
You don't get it at all. And I had written a massive comment that went into lots of detail explaining how silly your comment was but when I tried to post it last night I found out that one cannot post more than 4096 characters in a comment.
You seem to be saying
1) Women should not work (it leads to latch key kids, day care, decrease in wages, increase in the tax base) – unsure why you blame women working on feminism seeing as women have worked for thousands of years. The idea of women not working was very recent and only for the well off.
2) Women should not vote – it leads to prohibition and goodness knows what other silly ideas women will come up with
3) Women are to blame for no fault divorces and thus men losing access to their children. Hmmm- so all no fault divorces are 100% women’s fault divorces.
4) Domestic violence against women does not exist, women just lie and say it does.
5) Domestic violence against men is far more common than against women -although you don’t explain why that is a bad thing seeing as you suggest if it happens to women at all it is ok or just made up.
6) False rape accusations ruin men’s lives – I agree completely and there are plans to make rape suspects anonymous in the UK until and unless they are found guilty. You did not mention anything about the non-false accusations of rape, just pointing that out
7) Construction and manufacturing jobs are down – yep, world over.
8) There is an Office of Minority & Women Inclusion Act. Evil people I assume
9) Sexual harassment just takes words from a woman to destroy a man’s career. You live somewhere funny because where I live in takes months and months deal with a case. You again forget to mention about cases where – and I know this is a tough concept to grasp- a woman does not lie.
You are angry and bitter. I may naïve and I know which one I would rather be.
I am sorry that my grasp of feminism is too much for you. It is because I am one of those nasty women things I expect. This would all stop if only they would take away our right to vote, work and access any legal protection as you wish.
Beautiful post Poppy. I think you said it beautifully. And I am a feminist, and while your choices don't line up perfectly with some of the official feminists, they are no less legit. I think it's about awareness, self identification, and choices. I wish I had written this on my blog. (Maybe envy is the most sincere form of flattery?)
Poppy, you got Chrossed!
Hi, Sin, and thanks for the kind words.
Sin, what a wonderfully kind thing to say. Thank you.
I don't think there should be official feminists. I think there should be lots and lots of unofficial ones.
I got Chrossed! How cool is Chross! Chross rocks!
This touched me like no other article I've ever read on modern feminism.
I recently got my dream job in a field in which, only 20 years ago, you hardly saw any women at all, because of a perception that women were too weak to fulfill the physical requirements. Now most people realize that any healthy woman who exercises can do this job – but it took a lot of brave women complaining and being made fun of (and then shutting everyone up by doing the job well) before it became easier for those of us who came after them. And I don't see any disparity between the idea that I work all day in what used to be a man's job and come home at night wanting to don an apron and bake cookies and be spanked and sent to bed by my boyfriend. It's just who I am.
I think the whole point of feminism, as you say, is about having choices. Once we have that right, no one should judge us for what we choose. Anyway – thank you, Poppy.
- Flora
Welcome here as well, Flora, and wow!
As mentioned elsewhere, Poppy is tucked in bed now but I know she will be delighted when she wakes tomorrow, Greenwich time, and will thank you, as I do now, for the lovely comment.
I love this post so much and all of the points you hit on are great. One of my favorite courses in college was cultural anthropology and I totally agree that people back then relied on hunter/gatherer lifestyle and on fruits and gathered food just as much as meat.
This is a wonderful post and I totally agree with you. Do what makes you happy and to hell with what other people think, and mother’s definitely set the tone for who you are and what you accept in life/don’t accept.
Sarah, thank you so, so much. I love cultural anthropolgy too (how funny how we can read about spanking and find links such as those in the same place).
I am grateful that you read it and humbled that you were so kind.
Flora, please forgive me for not commenting and saying thank you before now. I am a total dullard not to acknowledge such a kind and thoughtful comment. I did see it and could not comment (was packed off to bed – hurumph) and then , clearly, was distracted by a bauble and did not return. A thousand apologies.
Poppy, what you just wrote is beautiful . You are beautiful. I could kiss you, and hug you. But most of all I wish to cane you on that voluptous bare bottom of yours. I’m in heaven just thinking about it. You are also a beautiful philospher. Never, ever, change Poppy, you are a good and beautiful lady, Thank you for allowing me to visit your wonderful blog.
SOTB, thank you so much.