an ever-present struggle

in this post-modern time, i look at the countless women who have gone before me and who have risked it all so that i could enjoy the rights and privileges that i do now. today is election tuesday, and women all over this country have the right to vote because lucretia mott and susan b. anthony laid aside all facets of social respectability to make the cause for gender equality one which could no longer be ignored.

and as i look around, increasingly frustrated by the blatant inequalities which still lurk in the dark corners of corporate america and the shadows of the public mentality, i feel driven to espouse an extremism which often leads to my own separation and isolation from the mainstream. feminism - just the very word evokes images of staunch (and really quite ugly) women, unsmiling in sepia-toned photographs; bra-burners whose long hair hangs severely parted and held away from their faces by thin leather cords; and extremists who nit-pick over word choice and scan media images with a fine-toothed comb.

my experience abroad in morocco opened my eyes to the subtle shades of grey encompassed within that word, "feminist." having previously considered myself part of the complacent middle-ground - caught somewhere between the far left and right, i suddenly found myself on the outskirts of social thought. my basic assumption that a woman can do and should be able to do anything that a man traditionally has done, my fundamental inheritance from all those staunch women and bra-burners, placed me in the camp of feminist extremism.

coming back to my own culture, my eyes are even more sensitive to those inequalities present here, and i have begun to feel more and more comfortable carrying that title: feminist. i believe in women. i believe in their rights. i believe in their beauty. and i affirm the divine and splendid within women, just as i affirm the divine and splendid in any human being.

but here's the struggle for me: how do i reconcile this burgeoning affiliation to the feminist movement with my deep desire for the "traditional" domesticity. how can i deny the pleasure that rose within me as i fixed the dress of one roommate, did the hair of another before they went out this evening, and then turned to set bread to rise for the dinner i am cooking tomorrow?

perhaps more pertinent is this question: why do i feel like the two are mutually exclusive...