I have to admit that I’m still power-tripping a bit after this weekend and more in-depth exploration of my dominant side. I grew up in the era of the ERA. Haven’t heard that one in a while, have you? The Equal Rights Amendment.
As a fledgling feminist in my early teens, I very much wanted to be “equal” to men, especially in the professional world and in fulfillment outside the home (as in, I wanted to be something other than a diaper-changing mommy). I wanted the equal opportunity to fulfill my dreams because I knew that all things being equal, I definitely had the drive to succeed. I needed only for the passageway to be unblocked or have the same number of blocks as any male rival.
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At the same time, there were men who were staunch supporters of ERA, men who had or wanted full custody of their kids when their ex-wives flitting around the country, on drugs, or abandoning their kids. Not that that was always the case, but regarding the men of whom I speak, it certainly was. They weren’t interested in equal pay for a day’s work. They just wanted an equal chance to raise their kids.
There were so many silly arguments that came from that era. I saw men use the ERA against women in many ways-to get out of having to pay alimony to career housewives/moms, whether women went into war zones, who paid for dinner, all the way down to who opened the door for whom.
I saw men slam doors in women’s faces, I saw women berate men for insulting them with an open door, I saw men drop heavy doors on women with their arms loaded with 40-pounds of boxes. Why? Well, if men and women are equal, who opens the door?
That was the stupid one. To me, the answer was always simple: he/she who does not have his/hers arms full opens the door for the other.
Seemed practical to me! Otherwise? The bigger person. And even when I was a 95-pound teenager, five-foot-two-with-eyes-of-blue, there were still smaller people, pregnant women, men with toddlers in their arms, older people, disabled people who saw me open the door for them.
I was never one to expect a door to be opened for me. After all, I saw myself as an equal.
The message from my teen years was that an equal opens her own doors.
And most of the time, I still do. But….
The “dominant female” mindset is bringing up some new thoughts, defying a past based in my teen years and feminist revolution. Like how a man’s opening a door for me doesn’t make me submissive or lesser. It does, now, suddenly, remind me of being unequal, but it’s unequal in a different way.
And not as “less than equal.”
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