Answering the “Undomestic 10″

Feminism is the radical notion that women are people. – Rebecca West

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For several months now, I’ve been reading a blog called The Undomestic Goddess, written by Amanda ReCupido. One of her regular features is to ask ordinary people — male and female, self-identified as feminist or not — to answer a set of ten questions about “everyday feminism.” The answers are usually thought-provoking and occasionally cage-rattling, and I always come away from an “Undomestic 10″ post saying, “Huh. That was really interesting.”

A couple of weeks ago, I realized a couple of people I know had answered the “Undomestic 10,” so I emailed Amanda to ask how she chose participants. Easy, she replied: they volunteered. So I responded, “Let me at ‘em!” And a few days later, I was sending her my own answers to the “Undomestic 10.”

Now, it’s no huge secret that I consider myself a feminist. I don’t even see how that’s controversial. Women have come a long way, but… just witness the uproar over whether Roman Polanski should finally pay the piper for a crime he committed 32 years ago. Why is this even a question? As Salon’s Kate Harding elegantly put it, “Roman Polanski may be a great director, an old man, a husband, a father, a friend to many powerful people, and even the target of some questionable legal shenanigans. He may very well be no threat to society at this point. He may even be a good person on balance, whatever that means. But none of that changes the basic, undisputed fact: Roman Polanski raped a child.” Until we live in a world where even making that argument is unnecessary, we still have a long way to go.

So, yes, I am a feminist. And I’m willing to say so, in public, with my photo and my name on it. And it’s a little scary to put myself out there like that, because there are crazy people out there who hate women, especially women who call themselves feminists. But I’m not going to treat it like it’s a dirty word.

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