The Happy Feminist: WHY AM I THE HAPPY FEMINIST?

When I first started toying (a full two months ago) with the notion of starting a blog, I knew immediately that my moniker would be "the Happy Feminist." It is only in part a take-off on the notion of "the Happy Homemaker," or "the Happy Hooker" (that old Penthouse column by Xaviera Hollander), both phrases that imply an unquestioning contentedness with one's subservient role. My name is also intended as a counterpoint to the still lingering belief that feminists are unhappy, bitter, angry people, and that feminism is a recipe for a miserable personal life.

I am, in fact, quite literally a very happy person and a feminist, and my happiness is due in large part because of the fruits of feminism. Every morning, my Jewish great grandfather said a prayer to thank God that he was not born a woman. Every morning, I tingle with gratitude that I WAS born a woman in this exciting time and place -- this virtually unprecedented period in which I enjoy all the same rights, privileges, and opportunities as my male peers.

My happiness is tempered, however, by a number of factors. First, as a middle class, graduate school-educated, heterosexual, white American woman, I enjoy all sorts of privileges not available to others. Second, in many parts of the world, women are still virtually chattel, subject to torture and degradation based solely on their sex. Third, even the most advantaged women today are still at times disadvantaged by sexism. Fourth, I don't feel entirely secure in the progress we have made. After all, this golden era is just a blip in the big sweep of history and there does seem to be a backlash. As Thomas Jefferson said, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." We feminists must be eternally vigilant.

FOLLOW UP: And whaddya know. Just after I completed this draft entry, I found an October 9 entry at Feministing critiquing statements by Hillary Clinton that are remarkably similar to what I just said:

"We have made so many advances in the last 40 years that are really unprecedented in the history of the world," said Clinton, one of 10 women inducted Saturday in the National Women's Hall of Fame.

"I don't think there has ever been a better time to be a woman than in the United States of America in the 21st century," she said in an interview. "We have a broad scope of choices ... that really are defined by who we are and what we want as individuals and not constricted by the gender we were born into."

The Happy Feminist

. . . Legal, Liberated and Loving it! (The thoughts of a 30-something, married, Unitarian, dog-loving attorney)

WHY AM I THE HAPPY FEMINIST?

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