Feminists Didn’t Invent Tough, Independent Women

Hats off to them, but women have been kicking it since Eve left the Garden of Eden.

For weeks I sat in awe of the writing teacher who had edited every important American writer in the second half of the twentieth century. I’d had to submit a writing sample for entry to his class. At the time, I thought he saw promise when he accepted me into the private course he held in his home.

I’m older and wiser now, and I’m sure it was the number of zeroes on the check I paid him for my entry fee that secured my seat every Monday night.

Money well spent as it turned out. I learned a great deal. But, on reflection, so did he.

My head was in writing short stories at the time, my subject was fiction based on my Irish immigrant family and first-generation neighborhood in the Bronx. It was a write-what-you-know time for me. I didn’t believe I’d ever have an audience because nobody was writing about the Irish. Angela’s Ashes was still a dream in Frank McCourt’s typewriter.

When my teacher sat down with comments on my latest story one evening and suggested I pursue a published collection, I thought I would float right up to heaven.

But his next remark puzzled me.

“Nobody’s writing about strong, Irish women. We think of them as weak and subservient. This is a new take.”

Where have you been, I thought? Certainly, not in my neighborhood in the Bronx where Irish women have been giving men, young and old, what for since they got off the boat.

He seemed to think the old trope of violent Irish drunks told the story of my people. The men in my family, brothers, uncles, and stories of my grandfathers whom I never met, were of mild, sweet, funny men.

Somebody had it wrong, but so encouraged, I kept writing but lost heart when McCourt got there first and stormed the best seller list with his sad tale of growing up on the streets of Ireland. It wasn’t my story, but still, I moved on, to the roots of the Irish famine.

Once again, my protagonist turned out to be a strong female that we follow from age six.

Yet, I was born in 1939 and raised in the 40s and 50s when women on TV catered to men at home and at work.

I certainly carried that ethos into my first marriage and my early life. Most young women I knew did. So, where did my penchant for promoting fierce women come from?

The question came back to trouble my brain after I mentioned my grandmother in a recent article. A few commenters seemed surprised at her sass. Because of my age and the age of my parents when I was born, my grandparents were alive and well in the late 1800s.

I could write novels about both of my grandmothers and the way they rose above adversity, time and time again.

Doesn’t everybody have a grandmother, great aunt, feisty old neighbor story about a female kicking conventional wisdom to the curb? But isn’t that the story of women throughout history?

I’m not here to review the history of women’s rights. We know the drill. I want to make the point that some goddess on high didn’t suddenly come down from the mountain in the 1970s and infuse women with power and strength. She didn’t annoint Gloria Steinem as their feminist leader, to have women then start burning their bras and demanding equality.

I mean, we already had the vote. You want kickass women? Two words. Suffra. Gettes.

You can look this stuff up. Go back to Cleopatra and the first Elizabeth. Catherine the Great. Marie Curie. Your own great grandmother for crying out loud.

So if we know all this, that the universities have finally thrown open their doors to smart women and the professions welcome us in (not paying us equal money for equal work but that’s for another rant), why am I up on my soap box again?

Two things. Surprise by some readers, akin to my teacher twenty-five years ago, that ballsy women existed before Nancy Pelosi and Deborah Brix, and the headline of a recent article: That women are saving us from the pandemic.

It’s not that I don’t think women are stepping up and doing a heroic job on many fronts during this crisis.

But what did you expect? We gave birth to you. Did you think we would let you die without a fight? But that isn’t even my point. Why call out women, as if it’s a surprise we can walk across the room and file our nails at the same time?

Sure, nurses are saving lives left and right. But, as long as we’ve got the google machine open, let’s take a look at history for a moment. When I was in high school planning my life, I had three options. Nursing, teaching, or learning to type so I could get a good job until I got married.

I somehow resented being shunted into teaching and nursing. Neither appealed to me at the time. So I took door number three, for which I had the least aptitude, and took off on my checkered path through life.

When I went to work in a prominent hospital on the San Francisco Peninsula in the 60s, the men were doctors and orderlies, and the women were nurses and clerks, like me. I’d found my way to medicine through my scant typing skills and never saw a female physician or a male nurse during my tenure there.

Women have been funneled into the nursing profession since it started with Florence Nightingale, so it’s not surprising they still hold up the fort. These days, of course, no one blinks at a female doc or male nurse. Yet it seems we still drop our jaws that women are saving our bacon.

Perhaps you’d have to have been raised in the era of patronizing pats on the head from men giving scant praise to women for typing a perfect letter they’d take into the all-male boardroom to raise your hackles at that headline.

Perhaps I would have read the article with some degree of equanimity if it had read, “Once again, women save the day while men fu*k up the pandemic response in typical mansplaining fashion.” And it described the predominantly male GOP and White House.

But it reminded me of the teacher of a quarter-century ago, assuming the worst about Irish women. It could have been Italian women, Chinese women, or the matriarchs of some aboriginal tribe. The story is the same. We birth the babies and make the world as safe as we can for them.

When is that going to be the headline? That it’s no surprise that women step up. It’s what we do. What we’ve always done. Just like men do their part. Unless they’re wedded to the GOP, but that’s a rant for another day.

In this era of divisiveness, where sexism still plays a part, can we focus on the job not the gender? It’s nurses who save the day. Shelf stockers. Delivery people. Pharmacists. Mail men and women. Anyone who sticks their nose out the door to serve those who stay home to save lives.

Two things I’d like to see change before I die. An end to people announcing their sexual orientation. Do I care whether someone is gay, bi, or trans? No. Do I care about their right to be whatever they are? You bet. But if I don’t have to make an announcement that I’m straight, because who the hell cares, why should they?

In a world that is really equal, nobody should have to make such a declaration. Sure, I know the history and reasons, but, please, can’t we move on?

Next, I’d like to see kudos given for achievement regardless of gender. If you’re arguing why shouldn’t we give women a shoutout — they deserve it. When was the last time you saw a headline praising men for their contribution.

I’ll wait.

You don’t see stories about the men of the police department protecting our cities or the male doctors who save our lives or the male members of congress who make our laws. It’s assumed the men do that work. It’s their professions that get the glory and that’s my point.

Give men a patronizing pat on the head for being good little firefighters, and you will see the internet blow up. But when a news headline does the same thing for females, nobody notices. We’re used to the pats on the head.

I’m down with praising women for their accomplishments. But let’s do it the way we do men. By their profession, or their individual achievements. Not like the whole gender has just taken their first poop in the potty and deserve a lollypop for their efforts.

I’m an editor and writer on Medium with Top Writer status. I’m also an editor for the publication, Rogues Gallery. I’ve published 55 titles on Amazon and edit for private clients. If you’d like to hire me as your editor for fiction, non-fiction, or business writing, please contact me here. If you’d like to read more of my work on Medium, click here to sign up for my newsletter. I’ll make sure you don’t miss a word. Thank you for reading.