Hey guys! I really liked how Socratic seminar went today, but something was really bothering me as it was going on, and I'm afraid I'm one of those people who's much more confident behind a keyboard than in front of the whole class, so I'm going to use this post to talk about something I think is really important: the concept of being a feminist.
First things first, the definition of a feminist is a person who supports feminism. The definition of feminism is "the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men." EQUALITY. Not special treatment. We're fighting to end double standards, and yet today, I felt that the "feminists" in the class were encouraging them.
I think whenever things got heated today during second period, it was fairly obvious that there were three different groups in the class: the hardcore Edna-sympathizers who thought this whole thing happened because she was a women blamed everything on her husband and society (led by Jessica), the people who disapproved of almost everything Edna did (led by Austin), and the people who were caught in the middle or too afraid to say something (led by Chris and Hannah... I think).
The problem with the first group was that they were willing to let everything Edna did go, simply because she was a woman. The longest question we spent time on today was the one that asked about whether or not Edna was immoral. At first, it seemed everyone was on the same page: yes, she was immoral because she cheated on her husband with two men and left her kids. But soon the discussion got a lot more heated. The first group kept mentioning that it was just the fact that Edna lived in that time period, and if she had lived in more modern times, everything would've been seen as normal. They said it wasn't her fault that she was caught up in this society in a loveless marriage and so in a way, it was ok for her to do what she did. However, when asked if they would sympathise with sympathise with Mr. Pontellier the same way they did with Edna if the roles were switched (if he had cheated on his wife instead), the class went silent. Double standard number one: Just because Edna was a woman in a more patriarchal society, it was ok for her to cheat on her husband in her attempt to find herself.
The main problem with the second group was that they could do only the exact opposite. They saw Edna as a mother, and put that before her feelings and her problems in society. They held strong to their idea that once she had kids, being a mother should be her top priority, even above herself. But when the fact that Mr. Pontellier didn't care much about the kids either (they were mostly taken care of by their nanny) was brought up, they still believed that Edna should still have held out for her kids because she was their mother. Double standard number two: it was totally ok for Mr. Pontellier to leave his kids alone with one parent while he went away, but not ok for Edna to drop them off at her mother-in-law's house and move out to spend time for herself. (I'm not talking about the suicide here.)
I felt that the difference between the two groups (other than their opinions of course), was that the first group was much more reckless in their arguments. They turned it into a debate about how women were treated throughout history and in modern times, and once it was no longer about Edna and the Awakening as a whole, random points started being brought up that made me not want to listen anymore. For example, at one point someone brought up the fact that females in modern day society are acknowledged for being mothers more than for their accomplishments, and while it might've been useful to their argument if they'd said it at a different time, they said it when we'd already moved on to another topic, and the just kept bringing stuff like that up. It made me feel as though they really lost sight of the whole point of the discussion. The second group was more careful with their arguments. They stuck to the book, they used evidence, they were actually answering the question. So while I started out a part of the first group, I left class not wanting to be associated with them in any way, lost in the third group somewhere.
I am a feminist, and usually, I am proud of it. But there are two main lessons I learned today:
1) When people are too extreme in their arguments, they give feminism a bad name, and it makes people think we're this group of man hating people and we're not. The same way we shouldn't make excuses for people based on race or religion, we shouldn't make excuses for others based on gender, male or female. However, we also shouldn't let a person's gender define their role in life.
2) The structure of your argument is just as important as the argument itself. If you're messy about when and how you say things, you're going to lose people really fast.
I'm honestly not trying to call people out, so for those of you who were mentioned by name, I hope you don't mind that, and I did switch from group to group throughout the discussion also, so I was a little messy in my arguments too. I don't want to offend anyone with this, but in any situation, too much of any one extreme is bad. They tend to lose sight of what's really happening, what's really important, and, as Patty said, "That was like Islam and hardcore Republicans all over again."
DFTBA,
Lina <3
<3
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