So, Gloria Steinem. Sad day for feminists.
I was trying to explain to Hector who Gloria Steinem is.
I was telling him about A Bunny’s Tale, where she went undercover at the Playboy Club in New York to expose what it was actually like to work there. I was trying to get him to remember Mrs. America, the show we watched during COVID about the fight over the Equal Rights Amendment and the women’s movement in the 1970s.
And somehow, in true Hector-and-Eryn fashion, that conversation completely derailed.
Because apparently trying to explain Gloria Steinem to a Honduran man at the end of a long day is how you accidentally end up having a philosophical argument about feminism, motherhood, gender, money, safety, and what the fuck women are actually supposed to want.
And here’s where I’m going to piss some people off:
I don’t care how much of a feminist a man says he is.
He will never fully understand what it is like to be a woman.
He can’t.
And that’s not an insult to men. It’s just reality.
Hector has two sisters, and whenever we talk about women’s experiences, he brings them up.
“But I have sisters.”
Yes.
You do.
But having sisters doesn’t magically download the female experience into your brain.
Because Hector can get off work at 3 a.m. and decide he wants to go sit in a diner.
He can decide he wants to go to the gym at 3 in the morning.
He can decide he’s going to go for a morning run before work when he has to be there at 5.
And he doesn’t have to think about it nearly as much as I do.
Could I technically do all of those things?
Of course.
I have legs. I have a gym membership. I can go outside. I can go wherever the hell I want.
But freedom to physically do something and feeling safe enough to do it are two completely different things.
When he goes running at 4 a.m., he’s probably thinking about his run.
If I go running at 4 a.m., I’m thinking about my surroundings.
Who’s behind me?
Who’s driving past?
Is that car slowing down?
Is someone following me?
Is my phone charged?
Did I tell someone where I’m going?
Should I have headphones in?
Should I not have headphones in?
Do I look like an easy target?
And yes, men can get attacked.
I’m not denying that.
A man can absolutely get robbed, beaten, assaulted, or killed.
But there is a different calculation that women are taught to make.
A man might be thinking, “Someone could beat the shit out of me.”
A woman is thinking, “Someone could beat the shit out of me, rape me, and kill me.”
And we’ve been taught to think that way for a reason.
That fear doesn’t disappear because your boyfriend is a feminist.
It doesn’t disappear because your dad raised you to be independent.
It doesn’t disappear because you know self-defense.
It doesn’t disappear because you can technically do whatever you want.
And that’s what I mean when I say a man can support feminism and still never completely understand it.
Because you can sympathize with something you’ve never had to live through.
You just can’t experience it the same way.
And then somehow we got onto motherhood.
Which is where things got even more complicated for me.
Because I consider myself a feminist.
I really do.
But I also wanted to stay home with my baby.
And apparently those two things are still treated like they’re contradictory.
I don’t want to be barefoot and pregnant in somebody’s kitchen.
I don’t want to be financially trapped in a marriage.
I don’t want to have to ask my husband for money.
I don’t want to give up every part of myself and become nothing but “Mom.”
But I also don’t want to have a baby and then immediately hand that baby to somebody else because our society decided that six weeks is enough time for a woman to physically recover, emotionally recover, figure out breastfeeding or formula, sleep deprivation, diapers, hormones, and the fact that her entire fucking life just changed.
I wanted time.
Not forever.
Time.
I wanted to stay home with my baby until they were closer to two.
I wanted to see the first steps.
The first words.
The tantrums.
The ridiculous little phases.
I wanted to be the person who was there for the boring Tuesday afternoons that nobody takes pictures of.
I wanted my baby to know me as more than the person who leaves for work every morning.
And yes, I know that’s a privilege.
I know most people can’t afford that.
That’s actually the fucking problem.
Because feminism was supposed to give women choices.
Not just different obligations.
Hector grew up in a one-income household. His mom stayed home, and his dad worked.
And he doesn’t like the idea of me being financially dependent on him.
He’ll tell you that’s not what he’s saying.
And maybe, technically, it isn’t.
But sometimes you don’t have to say something directly for your actions and your conversations to make it obvious.
His biggest issue is that he doesn’t like how dependent his mom is on his dad.
And I actually understand that.
I really do.
If you watched your mother become completely financially dependent on your father, maybe you grow up terrified of recreating that dynamic.
But here’s the thing:
That’s his experience.
It’s not mine.
I’ve only ever known two working parents.
My mom worked my entire childhood.
The only time she didn’t work was when she was sick.
And she and my dad made it work.
Their schedules were opposite, so someone was always home.
And I had a huge family.
There were people around.
Grandparents. Aunts. Uncles. People who could help. People who knew me. People who could step in.
My baby will have Hector’s parents.
We’ll have friends, and people who love us.
But let’s be honest about what that actually means.
Do I really want to leave my infant with a woman I can’t communicate with?
A woman who doesn’t drive?
What happens if something goes wrong?
What happens if my baby gets sick?
How am I supposed to get updates?
How am I supposed to check in?
How am I supposed to sit at work and not lose my fucking mind wondering how my newborn is doing?
And then there’s the fact that I don’t even know if I can survive living in somebody else’s house for an extended period of time.
I can’t cook for myself.
I don’t speak the language.
I don’t have my own space.
I don’t have my own routine.
And I’m supposed to bring a newborn into that environment and somehow just be fine?
Maybe I’m being selfish.
Maybe.
But here’s the thing:
I don’t think wanting to be with my baby in my own space makes me selfish.
I think wanting to be with my baby makes me a mother.
And I’m angry that wanting that is something I have to defend.
Because I know I’m going back to work.
At this point, I’m basically preparing myself for maybe 30 days to recover from giving birth before I have to start figuring out work again.
And if that’s what I have to do, then I’ll fucking do it.
Because if Hector hasn’t found us an apartment, I’m going to make sure I have the money to help us get one.
Because I know myself.
I will go insane living with other people forever.
So I’ll work.
I’ll make money.
I’ll contribute.
I’ll do what needs to be done.
But I’m still allowed to be fucking sad about it.
I’m allowed to wish I had more time.
I’m allowed to wish I could have stayed home until my baby was six months old.
Or a year.
Or three years.
I’m allowed to want that.
And here’s where I think we’ve completely fucked up the conversation about feminism.
Somehow, we’ve taken “women should have choices” and turned it into “women should choose independence in the exact way we think is acceptable.”
A woman wants a career?
Good.
A woman wants to be a CEO?
Good.
A woman wants to work part-time?
Good.
A woman wants to own a business?
Good.
A woman doesn’t want children?
Good.
A woman wants children and wants to work?
Good.
A woman wants children and wants to stay home with them for a few years?
Suddenly everyone has an opinion.
“Don’t become financially dependent.”
“Don’t lose yourself.”
“Don’t let a man control you.”
“Don’t give up your career.”
“Don’t set women back.”
But what if she fucking wants to?
What if she isn’t being forced?
What if she knows exactly what she’s giving up?
What if she wants to spend three years raising her child and then go back to work?
Why is that automatically considered anti-feminist?
I don’t think women should be forced into the home.
I think women should be able to choose the home if that’s where they want to be.
That’s the difference.
The women fighting these battles in the 1970s weren’t fighting so that every woman would eventually have to work full-time.
They were fighting so women could have options.
And that’s the part I keep coming back to.
Choice.
Actual choice.
Not “you can choose, provided you choose the option that doesn’t make anyone uncomfortable.”
Because I want to work.
I want my own money.
I want my own career.
I want independence.
But I also wanted to be a mom who got to stay home with her baby for a while.
And I don’t think those things should be mutually exclusive.
Maybe I’m greedy.
Maybe I am.
Because I want more than six weeks.
I want more than a few months.
I wanted until my kid was old enough to mostly use the fucking toilet before I had to hand them off.
I wanted the messy years.
I wanted the exhausting years.
I wanted the years where they need me constantly.
And maybe that’s not realistic.
But wanting something unrealistic doesn’t make me anti-feminist.
It makes me a woman who wishes she had more choices.
So, yeah.
I started this conversation trying to explain Gloria Steinem to Hector.
And somehow I ended up realizing that maybe the thing I needed to explain wasn’t Gloria Steinem at all.
Maybe it was that feminism isn’t supposed to tell women what kind of life they should want.
It’s supposed to make sure women are actually allowed to choose.
And right now?
I’m realizing that I don’t have as many choices as I thought I did.
And maybe that’s a conversation Gloria Steinem would have appreciated.
