My Favorite Museum
< div>I’ve been to the Dallas Women’s Museum four times in
the last six months. Here’s why.
wish it weren’t necessary.” Which reflects a lot of people’s conditioning to
think about justice by imagining reversals — and a museum dedicated to the
accomplishments of men is so ludicrous. Kind of. Except for the ones that sort
of are, only you don’t really notice
it.
I think that one of the reasons I
love this museum so much is that it does represent such a diversity in
accomplishment, belief and background, which is what I want feminism to be
about, not some exclusive party line where everyone must dress, think and talk
exactly the same. As a woman there are days when I identify more with some
issues than others, days when I identify more with Mary Kay than with bell hooks
or vice versa.
What I get out of going
to the Women’s Museum, what I hope every child, man, and woman gets out of going
there is that being a woman can be expressed in about as many different ways as
being human allows, and yet, somewhere there is something we share. I love
being a woman. And sometimes it is difficult to express that in a way that
doesn’t sound chauvinistic. But it’s odd to read the statements of women only a
few years older than I am who recall a feeling as a child that to be a girl was
to somehow be less because I don’t identify with
it.
The last two months of my first
pregnancy I spent reading Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex, assigned
reading from a philosophy of feminism class in college that I hadn’t had time to
read as fully as I wanted. I was so prepared for this little girl I was going
to have and to teach to stand up for herself and conquer the world. When
Aodán was born he was Our Baby and his sex was momentarily beyond our
consciousness,. From the moment he was born I have been in love with him and
wouldn’t trade him in for any girl on the planet. We found out Xander would be
a boy early in the pregnancy during an ultrasound that also showed an
abnormality in the blood vessels of his umbilical cord, and a flash of
disappointment was completely replaced by concern for his well-being. Again, so
in love with him, wouldn’t trade him in for any girl ever. Søren had the
possibility of being a girl until he was born, but it was slim hope.
I have flashes of self-pity about the
daughter I may never have, convincing myself that I am not like other pregnant
women I hear expressing hope for a daughter who they can take shopping or coach
in cheerleading, that my dream of mothering a daughter is somehow nobler. But
it’s not. I have concerns for my son, that we live in a culture that right now
seems more limiting in how men can express their masculinity than what is
allowed for women. I fought for Aodán’s freedom to twirl in the sparkly
skirt in a preschool classroom just as I found internet descriptions of Anne Bonney and
Mary Read when I overheard him telling a classmate girls couldn’t be
pirates. Aodán has an amazing ability to entertain his baby brother and
other babies we play with, and has expressed a wish to be a babysitter when he
grows up. And while I tell him I think he’ll be wonderful, it brings me closer
to the thing that makes boys and girls not the same, the experience I’ll never
be able to share with my sons. What I love most about being a woman is having
had the experience of sharing my body with another soul, of providing
nurturance, of being bounteous and sufficient. I am doing all I can to bring up
feminist men, who will be devoted fathers and loving husbands, to whatever
extent that is in my power. I think that is an important job, that it’s a step
towards making the world a better place. But if I were a soul waiting for a
body and got to choose gender, I’d pick the one I’ve got without hesitation, so
maybe it’s natural to wish my little people could have it too.
