equality (not sameness)
The photographs above are part of the project Transindividualism (ongoing).
This post is based on a response to a question posed by a BA Television Production student of mine on a facebook multi-recipient message, in connection to her dissertation:
"DO YOU FEEL THAT FEMINISM IS STILL RELEVANT TO TODAY'S SOCIETY?"
Response criteria: 'yes'/'no' format; followed by a single sentence explanation
_________________________________________________________________
MY RESPONSE
YES
Major feminist revolutions happen occasionally, minor feminist revolutions happen continuously, in various sites. Simultaneously, I'm reminded every day in, some times explicit, some times implicit, ways that patriarchy continues rife.
Yet, the question itself is problematic for me: I think the emphasis should be on equality (read equal, not same), irrespective of gender/ sexuality/ age/ race/ nationality/ class/ etc. At this point, I can think of three groupings that make this more complex:
1. religion - from my perspective, opting to be part of an organised (if not personal) religion is a grasp for rooting/routing in a complex world
2. (dis)ability - there are individuals that are able to cope with the world we've manufactured better than others (physically/psychologically/other-ALLYs i can't think of speedily)
3. economic - itself a category of capitalist inequality
Individuals in these groupings may have unequal needs to others. Tend to think some need extra empathy/sympathy. But I'm just being patronising and acting out guilt, I know. Note also that these inequalities may not be as clear-cut as first imagined: we could argue (though perhaps not very convincingly) that it's the economically affluent who need sympathy, for instance, for we may make assumptions that they can't perceive the value of the free things in life. Alternatively, we may want to commiserate ourselves as inhabitants of technologically-developed parts of the world, for as global meltdown progresses, our too substandard pharmaceutically-aided GM-ed immune systems will be less able to cope than, say, a child miner in The Congo or a child litter picker in Nairobi, toughned accumulatively by her everyday contact with the pollution we've generated (see a Comic Relief '09 clip of Simon Cowell's visit to Nairobi's litter-picking children).
Relating this back to gender, there are instances when/where some men get a raw deal in comparison to women. Think, for instance, about current inequalities in maternal/paternal leave. Other individuals in (seemingly dominant) groups may experience similar inequalities.
And there are times when I relish being treated like a princess, though by an equal prince/ss. Just because I ask my partner to fix the leaking kitchen sink tap because it saves me the bother of grappling with unknown handy-(wo)man tips, doesn't make me unequal to him, or he my dog.
Long live the little revolutions in (re)thinking and (re)doing.
This is longer than a sentence.
_________________________________________________________________
The 'Bono Effect'? Simon Cowell with children in Nairobi, taking an educational break from their daily litter-picking (Comic Relief 2009).
_________________________________________________________________
For a more in-depth exploration of issues of identity, as discursively constructed through media representations, take a look at the Media and Identity lecture series I developed for second year undergraduate students on BA Interactive Media, BA Television Production and BA Scriptwriting at The Media School, Bournemouth University.
