February: the birthday month. Always spurs on some self-reflection and, especially recently, makes me think that I should consolidate what it is that I want to “stand” for prior to putting on my big girl pants. For most of my adult life, I’ve counted feminism among my core values, however, compared to several other convictions, I can’t say I’m looking back on a rich history of having to defend my belief that men and women are equal. Feminism wasn’t the type of hot-button issue that spawned passionate or enlightening discussions either. That said, in recent years, I’ve increasingly felt increasingly alienated by popular discourse about what everyone seems to agree feminism is in the 2020’s. While the vibrant landscape of efforts to promote inclusion of women in certain professional fields would suggest the issue is more integral to the Zeitgeist, it certainly seems that the way women treat each-other remains static in its pettiness. Committees, professional associations, and celebrity politicians—if we use the amount of “women in X,Y,Z” lectures, symposia and conferences one encounters as a reflection of their dedication—have elevated the plight of the female to significant salience, yet, on an individual basis, it appears that shockingly little has been done in the way of critical analysis of our own ongoing contributions to the differential treatment of women in society. At least for me, this process has always been the most intuitive and important aspect of a “lived feminism”, and I’m equal parts bored, annoyed and concerned that almost nobody seems to share this perspective. Perhaps my initiation into the domain of feminist thought can explain some of these differences, so I want to briefly recount it here. I would trace it back to the time my mother handed me my first French existentialist work, le Deuxième Sexe by Simone de Beauvoir -- right around the height of my peripubertal acne. In her usual fashion, my mother impressed that the opus was required reading without prescribing what effect it should have on me. No lamentations or parental pageantry – just a summer carrying the thick paperback around Southern Germany; by August, Simone and I had become fast friends. Nobody lived online in those days, so my aunt with a background in philosophy would have to explain the meaning of words like “transcendence”, “immanence” and “sublimation”. That summer, I likely discussed some aspect of the Second Sex with every member of my well-read family—male and female. In each discussion, I learned a little more about the vast landscape of philosophy. Various other lessons were also imparted; among my most memorable realizations (in no particular order) were: 1) I’m not all that smart; 2) my experience isn’t all that unique; 3) other people have deep thoughts too. Viewed through the lens of an American Adolescent Aesthetic, this probably paints a grim picture of my precious summer break; however, when they’re the products of your own, honest self-appraisal, such insights become the tetrapharmakos of your Sturm und Drang. *Relevant side note: Nobody dies having won every comparison with their peers; training yourself to mobilize your best efforts in the face of these losses and confront a sobering reality with dignity is a foolproof investment in your future. Mastering yourself in this regard will prevent unchecked emotional reactivity from wreaking havoc on you and those around you.
Engaging with Beauvoir’s work had made me a better, more formidable person by the end of that summer. I’d concede that my family would have expressed a marginal preference for the Second Sex over, let’s say, David Hasselhoff’s autobiography from that same year Don’t Hassel the Hoff; however, I had been spared the morally bankrupt invocations of virtue signaling that are obligatory today any time the subject of feminism is touched. In my case, the intellectual rigor of feminist philosophy was given a chance to impress by its own merit. In the absence of normative analyses and triggered defense mechanisms, an individual is far more likely to recognize that which is true and good about a novel or opposing position. Only when we retain a mindset of good faith will rationality prevail and guide us to the adoption of that which the new perspective has to offer, and I am tired of sitting in lectures about women in X,Y,Z medical specialty while breathing the same stale atmosphere of mutual intolerance that’s already ubiquitous in medicine.
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