She's Leaving Home- part one: for her

WOOOT! TUUUNE!
Also, DANGER! Allegory heavy post ahead!

She's Leaving Home is one of the most beautiful Beatles songs ever written by anyone ever. But it's a bit mean. It's a 'state of them' song. Scathing, patronising, but still quite caring. State of the parents, being so self-involved and concerned about the daughter leaving home and how it will impact on them, that they can't appreciate how important this will be for their daughter, and ultimately for their relationship with her into the future. Her leaving home is symbolic of a kind of tragic loss for them, in a fucked up, cop on kind of way. Letting go of what is an ultimately dysfunctional bond (come on you 25 year olds living at home, admit it, it's frikkin weird) is still a loss. It's still sad for all parties involved. It's still difficult for the child fleeing the nest.

As I write this I'm beginning to understand why feminism is such a frightening concept for many of us. For women, letting go of those habits and interdependencies we've had with dude-dominated society is actually quite hard. Yet, despite being told over and over that we have come *such* a long way and therefore have everything we need right here, despite being repeatedly warned of the dangers of what lies ahead, and despite being punished when we try to stretch our wings, we still know, we can still feel that there's more to it than this shit. There's more to that constant nagging of 'you're ugly, fix that' 'hurry up and get pregnant' 'buy that' 'do that in bed or you're unadventurous' 'you should have been clearer if you didn't want it'. There is more fucking to it.

Accepting this is kind of annoying. Suddenly I feel compelled to 'do' something about my lot. In fact, discovering feminism and realising the ubiquitousness and omnipotence of dude-power has left me a shell of a woman, who can often be found gazing out the window, far off look in her eyes, mouthing the words of 'under the sea' over and over. It has been difficult for me to digest that things aren't equal, and frankly, that things are pretty fuckin unfair if you're a woman. Just like the daughter in the song who wants out, I've decided that I'm not entirely happy with the status quo in the world that I live in. The nest is not to my liking. Unfortunately for those who financed the nest construction (that's dudes, for those of you who may be feeling a little tardy), I can't just leave and find another nest. This is intimidating, n'est pas? I'm essentially in their world, on their terms and I want to change things. How do I do this when they, like the abandoned parents, are so busy bemoaning their lot (wah wah why are the mean feminists trying to ruin everything) that they can't see how change would be good for women. If that isn't convincing enough, it will benefit them too, and all of our lovely relationships with each other.

It's cool but, like the eager and independent adult child breaking away from the clingy folks, there's bound to be conflict when we're struggling to form our own identity, on our own terms, rather than on the narrow terms of those who have considerable influence on us. Often they don't mean to hurt us by controlling us, 'advising' us, and punishing us, but they do. Unfortunately, often they do mean to hurt us as a way to make us more controllable, but that's for another post.

Just a short disclaimer: I don't mean to infantilize women by any stretch, but simply use the parent/child analogy as a way to illustrate the often benevolent and at times invisible power dynamic between men and women, or any privileged group over another.