In February at Tufts, the Right and the Left bring out their claws and strut their stuff on one of the most personal and yet political issues of modern college life: relationships. February is the month of Valentine's Day, Vulvapalooza, Sex on the Hill, the Vagina Monologues and the inevitable self-righteous reprimand from the Republicans and the Primary Source. This February has been no different, and, as always, I have felt that in the public debate over gender roles, rights, and relationships, any sense of reality has been completely forgotten.
So this year I'm making my Valentine's Day views known, in the hopes of representing the students in middle who do not see a gender battle on the horizon, but have no desire to go back in time either.
In the most recent issue of the Primary Source, the letter from the Editor addressed the issue of gender roles in relationships, specifically with respect to raising children. It also mentioned how the feminist movement has taught men that their natural characteristics are chauvinistic, and that "housewife" is a dirty word.
I think this analysis of feminism and gender roles in relationships is too narrow and short-sighted to encompass the reality of what many college men and women experience today. I consider myself to be a feminist, but I often get the feeling that what that means to me, and what it means to the Primary Source are entirely different things.
Perhaps I am not a feminist in the traditional sense of the word, as the truth is I have never read Betty Friedan or Gloria Steinem. However, if I am not a "feminist" as the Source so strictly defines it, then I think the meaning of feminism is necessarily changing.
To me, feminism is defending the economic, social, or political right of a woman to have the opportunity to be whatever "woman" she wants to be. If she wants to stay home and raise a family then she should. If she does not want to have kids, then she probably should not.
Personally, I really want to have children. I love watching home decorating shows and I really cannot wait to try to create as strong a family as the one I grew up in. But I also have friends that do not see that in their future, and I can understand where they are coming from as well.
The letter makes the point that feminists try to deny and change the natural differences between the genders. I believe that women and men are inherently different in some ways, but not as much as each person is different from another. What works for one person will not work for another, and different options should be allowed.
When anyone in a relationship, male or female, is constrained to certain gender roles, the relationship is less than what it could be if both people were allowed and encouraged to emphasize their strengths. I have thought a lot about my relationship with my boyfriend and how, as we grow older, we may handle different problems. The picture I imagine is not one of us dominating and directing the other, but rather a meeting and matching of needs and strengths.
I think there is too strong a focus on what characteristics "belong" to certain genders. Maybe they should just be characteristics that happen to be common to a gender. My boyfriend thinks being a stay-at-home dad will be fine with him, and since he wants to be a history teacher, I will probably make more money than him.
To the Primary Source, our relationship may seem like the perfect example of screwed up gender roles, but that is only on the material level. I do not think our differing levels of ambition will hurt our relationship. The reason we have worked so well for the last three years is that we both know what is really important in life, and that is not money. Of course we want to be financially secure, but it is not as important where the money comes from as long as it is there so we can both focus on raising our children and making our lives as rich and as full as possible.
Even if I do end up "bringing home the bacon," I don't think the exchange in roles of monetary support is at all relevant to the quality of a real relationship. I honestly do not know what I would do without his moral and emotional strength to depend on, and I think he would say the same. I am well aware that we are not a normal college couple, because we are so comfortable talking about our long term future, but I do not think there are many couples that fit into the two options that the Primary Source puts forward.
No matter what your political persuasion, a relationship is, and should always be, a dance of compromise and balancing that never ends because both people are continually growing and discovering new aspects of themselves. To say that feminists believe all commonly feminine qualities should be avoided in order to help women succeed in the world, or that all commonly male qualities should be suppressed, is a misunderstanding of how feminism is changing.
The issue is not who bakes the cookies and who buys the groceries, but that it gets done by whomever is more able to, as both are equally important to creating a happy and satisfied life.
