I’m going to get slam dunked for writing this. I was one of those women who burned her bra, shunned frills and lace and made pink a dirty word. I read books about goddesses and heroine journeys, banned words like doll, babe, and gal, and he became s/he. “You can have it all,” I chanted and sang Helen Reddy’s famous “I am woman, hear me roar.”

Women spit out books about their inequitable reality and their unsung history and heroism.  I was pushing out babies and living the love dream of women’s dependency, inferiority and romance. Men lived their lives making women happy, screwing in light bulbs, and seconding the moon to demonstrate love with wine and roses, not understanding women’s feelings and suppressing their own.

The women’s liberation movement raged, and there were outrageous hopes men would demand a liberation of their own. Though there were scattered efforts at male liberation, it didn’t rise to the size of a movement.

 I’m an old lady now squinting into a mirror, dazzled by a replaced light bulb I managed to screw into the socket. The brown spot on my neck is a sticking point, and my nose is the same shape as ever. Popular media says aging is to be avoided at all costs and postings of before and after appearances of celebrities furthers a negativity about aging and puts a burden of looking young onto both genders into old age.

Romantic relationships remain the primary subject of novels, poetry, and songs, and a main theme of film and visual art.  Love continues to be a marketing tool and both genders are objectified. We still seek help from social media posts, gurus, psychologists, and bookshelves about wisdom about love and relationships. 

After the seventies, feminism and patriarchy almost disappeared from our language like naughty children. There has been increased participation by women in the public sphere, and some men feel free to express emotion. My young women friends still do an inordinate amount of emotional and nurturing work, and many men still strive to make women happy and still change the lightbulbs above mirrors. The society I live in is addicted to violence as both entertainment and a solution to world problems. Gender behaviours continue to exaggerate differences between men and women. Women are still objectified as ornaments and squeezed from power positions and men continue to dominate the power of the world. Crises have increased and highlight underlying dysfunction in countries global wide.

It’s sixty years since the women’s liberation movement. I have stayed in touch with a fuller exploration of men’s place in a post-feminist world, and examined what holds men back from expressing emotions, and what seems like an increased reliance on acting out anger with violence, still playing a game of thrones, waging wars and asking the why of a profoundly violent world.

At the same time, I’m startled by men’s faces crossing social media, tossing words of wisdom like pearls at my feet, words about kind action to self and others, and a pontification about women.  I’m puzzled why I resent these male voices.  Isn’t this a hopeful sign? Could men’s recognition of their feelings stop the killing that results from the cruelty of anger, and the striving for power and wealth manifested by wars. 

You will troll out examples of men in your life who have compassion and are emotionally expressive. You will give examples of women in power who rise to enlightened leadership, determined to uncover wrongdoing.  But I’m on the graveyard shift now. I will not see the wholehearted shift to kindness and community I hoped and dreamed about. It’s too late for me to see real gender equity, women balancing the thinking they have been denied, and men balancing the feelings they have suppressed.

Submitted by Wendy Weseen