Fearing Feminism: A Disappointment to my Mother

I am a woman, though I probably wouldn't classify myself as a feminist. Feminism is a dirty word, on that means that I hate me and want saggy tits (yes, I said tits) because bras are men's invention to confine a woman, put her in her place, coerce her into sex and threaten her life and the lives of the children.

Before you're panties get too bunched up, the ugly stuff is no joke. I have a problem with women who have been afforded every opportunity in life and come up believing that because they posess a vagina/uterus combo the world owes them more. Their plight is disgusting. Their entitlement is considerably more disgusting.

I grew up in an upper-middle class type situation, I went to one of the better public schools out there, I went to an excellent public university, I have never been for want of food, I have never had an illness go untreated and I wear a bra because in day to day activities the support is more comfortable plus, my clothes look better.

Lately my mother, who I live with and is a labor and delivery nurse, has been reading about the atrocities that occur around the world to women. She's up on all the stoning, the use of rape as a weapon, female circumcision and the sex trade. I'm not sure when it started, this need to read about the horrors and then spew them on the world, sharing the stories in the books she's reading before passing the books off as must reads. It's killing me slowly. I don't want to read about the 10 year-old who has been raped by every man in the village because her father owes another man money, I don't want to read about women paying with their lives with sexual affairs when their male counterparts see no consequences. I don't care to know how many people need to witness a rape for it to be an actual rape.

Again, I sound insensitive. These people she's reading about are in need of help, awareness is the only way to stop this time of thing and the ranting college educated white woman from the burbs is doing the rest of femininity, or humanity for that matter.

My reasoning for not wanting to delve deeper into these things is complicated, selfish, as well I suppose, and I have yet to make her understand. So I'll try you. I know of the horrors and I avoid them. I spent my breaks during college working for a local group of midwives. Most of the phone calls I answered were about setting up yearly gynecological exams and women trilled with positive pregnancy tests. A few calls a week would be women seeking abortions, most of them were not "I'm a stupid irresponsible human being and I think its easier to get rid of this than to face it" calls, they were desperate women who begged me not to judge them.

Some days the 15 year-olds with their more or less brain dead boyfriends were too much, their mothers made me sick. The day a woman signed at me and asked me if I had kids, all I could do was smile and tell her not yet, her kid wouldn't even fill out her own paperwork. I don't think the pregnant girls decided to kill their mothers slowly, but they do it every day. But what killed me was the one call I didn't take, a teen girl's neighbor called. Not her mother or father, not herself but her neighbor. The girl needed prenatal care but she was already past the point in which the practice I worked for would take her, she had been to the free clinic once and had been treated poorly, which is one of those things that sadly is to be expected and the neighbor didn't want to make the girl return to the clinic. As the neighbor pleaded explaining that the girl's family had kicked her out and she had been homeless for the majority of her pregnancy until the neighbor found out and took her in, that the girl couldn't get decent care, that she didn't have a job, couldn't get a job and was more or less a child herself all the secretary said to her was that she was sorry but there was nothing that she could do.

She was wrong. I made a Rolodex that had all the names of public agencies and safe houses for women in this girl's situation but the secretary spent nearly a half  hour explaining that she couldn't help instead of giving out the names and numbers of people who could. Hell, Child Protective Services would have been an option but "I'm sorry we can't help you" was all she could say.

It is not that I don't see the bad, its that after having my heart broken by all the bad in my own community I don't have faith in people. They don't care enough about each other unless there is something in it for them. If people with money and time can't fix the bad in their backyards why would they care about people halfway around the world. They're busy fighting about who should and should pay for the public schools and roads and bitching about "wasteful" social services.

So I apologize that at 23 I've given up and choose not to know the horrific details.