Women Don’t Have To Support Other Women (Just Because They Are Women)

When we were watching Mitt Romney and Barack Obama debate each other, did you ever hear the pundits talk about how they should be more supportive of each other, because they’re both men?

Maybe when Mitt put down Barack’s ideas on healthcare he was setting society’s view of men back 30 years. He must be doing masculism wrong.

People keep telling women that they need to support one another just because they are both women. Here’s the thing: feminism is not such a delicate flower that dissention is going to reverse its momentum. Is the democratic party dwindling because not every democrat supports the opinions and actions or every other democrat? If dissention among women makes you think less of women, maybe it isn’t about women, it’s about you.

We don’t tell men they need to accept the choices of other men because they share a Y chromosome. It’s infantilizing to women to say they aren’t allowed to place a value on someone’s choices based on their own values. It’s ridiculous to have this ideology where we’re supposed to believe you can choose anything and the content of that choice has no value whatsoever, it’s equal with every other choice. Choices matter. They show what your values are–what you think is important and what you don’t.

Should women be allowed to make whatever legal choices they want to about their lives? Yup. Do I have to like it and think it’s cool? Nope.

If you really want to talk about what’s holding the women’s movement back, it’s this notion that women can’t do anything wrong. That there’s no good or bad, there’s just choice.

We are adult humans and we don’t have to all agree and value the same set of qualities or be “supportive” of people we don’t want to. No one requires this of men, we just think it’s a helpful prescription for women because god forbid they think for themselves. Granting people a free pass because of their gender helps no one. It should be about the content of your choices, not chromosomes.