Why I No Longer Need to be Told to Be an Empowered Woman

Yesterday morning the president of The White House Project came to talk to my school.  Before I get in to talking about the actual assembly, disclaimers need to be made...

• I am not anti-woman, but I am by no means a feminist.  
• I have seen way too many of these "be an empowered woman" assemblies for them to make me feel anything but cynical.
• I think this project does great work for women who need it.  The girls of Greenwich Academy do not need it.

Disclaimers accepted?  Good.  Let's move on. (profanity exists on occasion below)

I take serious issue with listening to women talk to girls about being empowered when they grow up.  Not only does it presuppose that we need empowering, but I really feel like it also, in a reverse psychology kind of way, tells us that we need to fight.  I believe in equality for everyone (in the modern era, I interpret "All men are created equal" to mean all people), but I am really tired of hearing that I need to be a conniving bitch to get that equality (and that the equality needs getting in the first place).  Additionally, I'm tired of being told that the only way for me to show that I am an empowered woman is for me to run for office or be in a position of leadership in the workplace.  I respect our speaker yesterday for mentioning that we need more women in academia, but I still feel like these speeches force me into visible positions in the world.  There is nothing wrong with being a stay-at-home mom, in fact it's incredibly difficult to be a mother.  I resent the fact that we are told that being a stay-at-home mom isn't good enough.  On the flip side, I remember a few years ago I saw a dance project about mothers.  The thesis of the project was that mothers can be anything but that "anything" was defined as various kinds of home makers.  That I don't agree with.

All in all I respect the message of the assembly: don't just say, do.  The White House Project proposes to bring women out from behind the scenes into the foreground.  I totally respect that.  However, I had a question about Ms. Dufu's anti-lobbying message.  She says that we shouldn't lobby for our rights, we should get ourselves elected so that we can get done what needs to get done on our political agendas.  So I ask her this:

• Have you ever run for anything?

Exactly.