Setting Me Straight

One of my goals for this blog was to educate myself about women’s issues so that I can teach my daughter and instill in her a sense of gratitude to the women who have paved her way.

But recently it was my seven-year-old son who set me straight.

“Why would you want to take a women’s class when you are a woman,” he piped up and asked one day as we waited in the car line to pick up his sister.

Shame on me for not including him in my goals.

His question took me back to the Declaration of Sentiments and the Seneca Falls Resolutions. It’s a document written 160 years ago at the Seneca Falls Convention, the first woman’s rights conference. To make it more appealing to the male dominated political world, it was patterned after the Declaration of Independence. It was signed by 68 women and 32 men, including the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. That’s more women than men who signed the original Declaration, and the sentiments expressed were considered equally, if not more, provocative than the rebellious statements in 1776.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

These women and men were appealing to society – to men – to give them equal rights. I hope that, by including my son in my so-called feminist wisdom that I pass along, when he’s an adult that women will no longer be appealing to men for equality. We won’t still be trying to convince society that child care really is one of the most important jobs in the world – and should be compensated as such. Or that domestic violence is a man’s issue too. And that equal pay should just be an unquestioned assumption.

Can I instill in my son the understanding that women are not – as Susan Faludi states – a special interest group?

Do you have a boy who might benefit from knowing about the struggles and successes of women over the past 160 years?