When I was younger, I saw some speaker get up in front of a group of girls my age and say, “one day, women are going to rule the world”. She made some whole speech about it. At the end, she called for questions. I raised my hand and said, “well, honestly, don’t you think saying something like that is setting us back? Because, really, come to think of it, we were pretty angry when men said the same thing a long time ago. I mean, don’t get me wrong, sometimes I get annoyed and wish we just kept the men underground for breeding purposes. But, honestly, if we said we just want women to rule the world, then we’re really no better than chauvinists.” She had no idea how to even respond and just thanked me for giving an opinion.

I tend to catch a lot of heat from some of my friends for wanting to do some, as they define it, things that act in defiance of all of the work that feminists have done. They can’t stand the fact that I’m not a huge fan of jeans or pants. They blanche at the fact that I enjoy cleaning and doing the laundry. They’re shocked to hear that I wouldn’t mind doing all of the cooking in a domestic situation. Stuff like that.

Part of feminism, in my opinion, is the possibility to still make these choices. Anthony, Stanton, and others didn’t just fight for my sex’s right to get equal pay and go into normally male-dominated fields. Don’t get me wrong here, I expect these things and think they’re incredibly important. They fought for women to have the freedom to determine their destinies. And, sorry, if I like the smell of detergent and get a really fun, accomplished feeling from a day of cleaning, and if I really like cooking, I should have the freedom to take on these roles. Maybe they’re considered antiquated domestic roles. But nobody said I couldn’t do those and, I don’t know, have a career and a life and everything else they seem to think I can’t have if I do that.

I think we get so caught up sometimes in the cause for feminism that we forget what we wanted was equality and not female supremacy. I have a friend right now who, although she intends to get a degree and have a job, really wants to be a stay-at-home mom when she has children. The cause of feminism fights for women’s right to choose her destiny to be a high-powered lawyer as much as it does for her to choose to be a stay-at-home mom. And, I’m sorry, but I think that anyone who thinks women don’t have the right to choose to opt-out or to take on some traditional domestic roles out of their own free will is simply anti-feminist.