If you’ve been to my parents’ house you know that it’s a 100-year-old farmhouse nestled on the beautiful southwest Iowa farmland that’s been in my family since 1883. You would also know that my childhood home has its fair share of quirks that come with any century-old abode: you have to go through the (only) bathroom in the house to get to the basement, the foundation is from the original 1800’s farmhouse, and the space is broken up into small, choppy rooms.
It’s those small rooms, especially upstairs, that dictated how many toys my sister and I could have out to play with at one time when we were little. You can’t even imagine how jealous we were of kids who had entire rooms or basements dedicated to their toys, their time, and their space- meanwhile, Anna and I had to clean up the entire farmsteads we set up during the day every night so that we could make it to our beds without crushing the cattle herd. Since we didn’t have much space to play, our toys were rotated by season- doll houses in the spring, playing outside in the summer, and farm animals in the fall. Winter, however, was our favorite season of free time.
The two weeks of Christmas break were the only time of year Mom would let us take over the house with our Barbies. I’d like to think that Anna and I weren’t spoiled brats, but the sheer number of Barbies (and cars, and furniture, and pets…) that we had doesn’t help our case. We would spend the entire break building out intricate storylines complete with break-ups and marriages, child birth, car crashes, vacations, and any other dramatic event we could think of. It’s even Barbies that I credit for my love of videography and editing today, as we would also produce at least one original Barbie movie every holiday season… and force our parents to watch it every year.
A quick side funny: One Christmas our John Deere salesman gave us each a John Deere Barbie. It said “Collector’s Edition” so I (oldest child) never took mine out of the box. Meanwhile, Anna (youngest child) lost the sunglasses from hers within days. Some things never change!
Growing up I always admired the Barbie brand’s “Be who you want to be” slogan that was intertwined with traditional femininity, implying that you could shape your life into whatever you wanted while still holding on to (and honoring) traditional female gender roles if that’s what you wanted. From a young age I was very aware that a) I could do anything I put my mind to and b) someday I wanted to be the cooking, cleaning epitome of a farmwife, so Mattel’s “best of both worlds” messaging really resonated with me.
Flash-forward to my college years: I loved nearly every minute of my agriculture and public relations courses at Iowa State. I met new people, learned new skills, and was forced to think outside of my ideological comfort zone. The course where I encountered the greatest number of differing opinions and stuck out like a sore thumb was definitely my journalism class covering media and diversity. And this, my friends, is the course where I learned I was thinking about femininity, masculinity, and gender roles “completely wrong”. The Barbies I grew up adoring? Feeling empowered by? I was instead told to write a paper explaining how Barbie made me feel incompetent and ugly. I can even remember censoring myself on an online discussion post where we were very much expected to bash and beat on traditional gender roles. Sometimes, I wonder what kind of mutiny would have broken out if I had written that I like doing laundry?..
It wasn’t just in my “free-spirited hippie writing” classes where I felt like the gender ideology-outcast. In one of my favorite agronomy courses we had a guest speaker who was from the English department representing some “female farming cohort-something”. She presented her project, then suited up for her mission: to scold the boys in the class for being men in agriculture, and to get the females in the class to help her do so. She pointed fingers with her voice and used terms like “gender inequities” and “stratification” to try to push us over the ideological cliff.
I will never forget how her display made me feel. I don’t think it was her intention, but she almost seemed to hit me with her soapbox rather than stand on it, and I sat in Agronomy Hall that day feeling guilty for enjoying baking bread and liking when men hold doors open for me. It was a little bit like the university’s way of saying “you can be any kind of woman you want… as long as we agree with it.”
When the speaker asked for questions or comments, I decided to speak up. I wasn’t looking to pick a fight but was hoping for some open discussion and needed to politely let her know she wasn’t going to philosophically steamroll me. I told her that I didn’t feel I was at a disadvantage as a female in the industry. I explained to her the ways in which my on-farm parents conformed with traditional gender roles and how they used their individual, inborn strengths to raise a family and manage a business. I even tried to communicate how the circumstances in which I thought gender norms could be a positive thing.
It was a little bit like the university’s way of saying “you can be any kind of woman you want… as long as we agree with it.”
Once I stepped off my shorter, less-aggressive soapbox I expected some friendly communication or a statement of “agree to disagree” at the very least. Instead, I was raked over the coals by this gal, as if every time I scrubbed a toilet a bra-burning woman somewhere died. I was informed that I needed to tell the men in my life to shove it and “expect more of myself”. She even went as far as to imply that my mother was being taken advantage of by the “toxic masculine norms” that men like my father, according to her, used to guide their life. In her eyes my bread pans, laundry baskets, and vacuum were all symbols of the ways in which I had been shortchanging myself, so I decided to just bite my tongue and sit quietly for the remainder of the class.
I tend to be a pretty content girl, but there are three things on this planet that really get my blood boiling: pineapple on pizza, poor grammar, and the gender separatism movement. Gender separatism is the idea that men and women need to be completely and absolutely separated with no reliance on one another. Feminist separatism specifically is one element of radical feminism that theorizes “that feminist opposition to patriarchy can be achieved through women's separation from men.”
Any level-headed person would read that and picture the most extreme of feminists. ‘Emily, you’re talking crazy. That kind of stuff is only the mindset of people who are marching in the streets of the cities!’
But gender separatism manifests itself in everyday life more than you would think. Take agriculture, for example. There’s one female-forward brand in particular I’m going to refer to here; there are many, but this one is the largest. First gaining popularity by creating short videos following females who are in different parts of the industry, they really positioned themselves as a brand for women to identify with by hosting a series of agriculture-focused, women-only conferences. I want to preface what I’m about to say with this: I am not anti-*insert the name of that brand*. Nothing this brand does on its own is all that destructive and I have to give some credit to the individual who started it all because it’s an example of building a business that resonates with an audience. However, to the fans of said brand: You want to express yourself? I’m all for it.
You want to find your identity with other women like you? They’ve got a slew of podcasts and cute clothes on their website.
But if what you really want is to find this “magical unicorn” of equality in the industry and be treated as any other professional, I’m not sure a peach-colored graphic tee with a line drawing of a rooster and “Life is Better on the Farm” in a calligraphy font is the right way to work towards that goal.
Actually, I know it’s not.
I’m not saying that women can’t have cute clothes or need to run around in heather grey unisex Carhartt hoodies all day (though I’m sure I could handle that), but I think this is a perfect example of the double standard that we’ve come to expect as women: We want to be treated as just another person or as “one of the boys”… except for when we don’t.
That’s the thing I really don’t understand about women-only conferences in agriculture or any sector: if the mission is seeking gender equality in the workplace, etc. (which I recognize is a challenge for some women, though I don’t know if it’s as widespread as we’ve been led to believe), shouldn’t we be spending more time learning and networking with both men and women? Of course, there is networking value in a female-exclusive event or club, but when gender equality is at stake isn’t hosting a closed-off sorority of professional events counterproductive to what you are trying to accomplish?
Though I have no evidence to back this up, I think a core nuance of modern feminism (or accidental feminism) is the belief that being female is a novelty- We’re told we are special and above the gender norms that are eons old. But when you strip away all of the womanly, motherly traits that have come to be the enemy of feminism, there’s nothing inherently unique about being female at all. And after doing so you’re left, in many cases, with a whiny, confused girl who is traipsing through life with a victim mindset.
We hear the term “toxic masculinity” thrown around like a basketball on college campuses everywhere but truthfully, I think the real victims of gender separatism are the men. I’m not talking about the sexists and the chauvinists. I’m talking about the other 98% who are good, honest men that have to walk on eggshells for fear of accidentally offending the wrong woman. They can’t take their female coworker out to a working lunch for fear of coming off as “making a move”. They can’t hold a door open for a classmate because it could imply that they don’t think she could open the door herself. And God forbid if they offer to drive! I’ve worked in the agriculture and auto racing industries, two traditionally testosterone-heavy careers, and I can tell you that men being timid for fear of insulting me (because I’m a woman) has gotten in the way of my work countless more times than sexism, discrimination, or harassment ever has. It’s annoying, unproductive, and sad.
Women wanting to build a career or claim their stake in life is a commendable mission, and if you’re a female who hates cooking or never wants to have kids I’m not implying that you’re worthless. But if you want to build equity for yourself that goes beyond being female then do something to earn it. Your gender is not a free pass to act entitled, dramatic, or problematic.
As for gender norms? The bullying needs to stop. My college examples from earlier are just the beginning of the times I’ve been shunned by other women for having life ambitions that are classically feminine; many of my friends have experienced the same. I’m not a bad woman for wanting to be those things, and I’m done feeling guilty for channeling my inner Becky Home-Ecky. Contrary to what popular culture will tell you, women who find satisfaction in filling conventional gender norms are not broken, submissive, or settling; we are not victims of ourselves.
I grew up with a strong, farmwife of a mother who you’ll find splitting her time equally between helping Dad outside and keeping the household running. To the virtue-signaling speaker in my agronomy class my mom is a victim of gender norms, but to me she is the epitome of a high-functioning female. She’s happy to stack hay or help change duals on a tractor (well, “happy” might be a stretch but she does it…), but she also knows how to make a kick-ass pan of cinnamon rolls and taught me everything I know about getting tough stains out of laundry. And my dad? He’s well aware that he can throw more hay bales than my mom is physically capable of, but he also deeply respects all of the things my mom does that he could never hold a candle to. They make a great team that’s worth admiring. Isn’t that the kind of versatile “empowerment” women should be striving for?
Contrary to what popular culture will tell you, women who find satisfaction in filling conventional gender norms are not broken, submissive, or settling; we are not victims of ourselves.
As I was taught by Mattel at an early age, “be who you want to be”, and for some women that means embodying a personality that suits traditional gender roles. Am I anti-feminist? I don’t know. But I do know that radical feminism is a one-sided, extremist movement that does more harm than good, and feminist separatism is a crusade that’s more toxic to women than any masculinity I’ve ever seen.
