Academic Papers

Originally appearing in 2019 in the now closed Social Overload Blog, which was formed by a group of feminist journalists. 

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          This is my first post on here and it took me a while to figure out how I wanted to introduce myself.  I thought about who I was, clearly a fierce woman since I am a contributor, but possibly not. I know I have some strong opinions and I have no problem sharing them.

 

          However, how to start on this blog has left me feeling rather less than fierce as I struggled with the right words. And that is how I stumbled upon this What the Fuck! moment as a way to begin writing. Because, I am positive that all women share this experience…their own What the Fuck! moment that shapes them as a person. This could have happened to you as a child, as a teenager, in your 20s or even as a senior. And here is the thing…it is usually not just one moment…it is many of them.

 

          But what is the WTF! moment? These are moments in our life that makes us question who we are and what it means to be a woman…which I’m actually writing about in a novel right now.

 

          However, out of all those What the Fuck! moments, there is one that really defines the journey to feminism that I undertook. It was the ah-ha moment for me. The exact point in time when I began questioning what the future held for me and who I would become. So this is where I’m going to introduce myself to the blog and I hope you take the time to share your own WTF! moment(s) with me.

 

It Started with a Toilet

 

          Sometimes I think that many of those WTF! moments start with a toilet. At one point in time, or another, we are looking in a toilet and wondering exactly what is happening in our life. Do we really want to be here and what does the future look like to us?

 

          It’s like the toilet is a divining pool showing us futures that we may or may not want. For me, it was definitely a future I didn’t want but I was confused by this What the Fuck! moment when it occurred for the first time.

 

          I like to believe that it wasn’t the first, just the first one I remember, but it is definitely the first that gave me a sense of feminism and how it really is something that women feel intrinsically.

 

          But I digress, it started with the toilet.

 

          As a child, my family believed in kids doing the lion’s share of the housework. We all had set chores along with chores we rotated or shared. My set chore was cleaning the bathrooms…and that probably explains why a toilet features heavily into my first thoughts as a feminist since I was cleaning the bathroom during that moment.

 

          When I was four or five, I was in doing my set chore when this WTF! moment occurred. I didn’t know it then and it wasn’t until much later that I even coined the phrase for this.

 

          On this fortuitous day, I’d finished the tub and sink and was moving on to the toilet. Just as I was squatting in front of it, the toilet brush brandished in front of me like some makeshift sword, designed to fight the shit monster residing in that not so gleaming bowl, my parents came in. I tried to ignore them, my focus on the job at hand. My step-dad was a pretty horrible human being, which I may touch on in later posts, so I wasn’t surprised by his comments, but my mother’s hit me pretty hard.

 

          They glanced around the bathroom, nodding in approval, as my mom said, “Sirena does a great job at cleaning the toilet.”

 

          My step-dad laughed and answered, “Yeah, one day she’ll make some guy a great wife.”

 

          My mother laughed…agreeing with him.

 

          And there it was. Two adults who probably weren’t aware that I was listening…made clear by the fact that they were talking about me like I wasn’t there. My toilet brush hovered over the toilet and it was like a snapshot in my mind.

         

          I stared into that porcelain bowl as if I was trying to figure out the meaning of life in that water. My mind swirling as rapidly as the toilet brush had been seconds before. I was so confused. What did cleaning a toilet have to do with being a great wife? What did being a wife have to do with being a woman? Why did I have to marry some guy?

 

          I stared into the water and I heard, rather than watched, them walk away to check on the other kids and their chores. And I stared even harder as I tried to come to terms with this very real WTF! moment and my own identity.

 

          And then it clicked, that first inkling of feminism, when I realized that if cleaning a toilet well was the whole worth as a “great wife”, I didn’t want to be any type of wife. At 4 or 5 years old, I realized that I didn’t want to conform to what my parents thought a woman should be and I embraced all the parts of me that was less than feminine (and I have a ton of stories in that regard).

 

          If I was going to narrow down the moment that feminism started to take shape in my mind, it was in that instant as I stared into a toilet.

 

          Of course, it was an immature view of feminism, not well formed in my mind at such a young age, but it was there, that first seed that allowed me to disagree with society’s views of who or what I should be. And from that little seed, more ideas grew and yes, many other WTF! moments as a woman, until I’ve reached this stage where I’m writing for this blog.

 

          While that little girl was positive she’d never marry, I did but it was to a man who cleaned the bathroom as much as I did and he has never mentioned how great my toilet cleaning skills are…or equated it to my worth as a wife.

 

          Because, in reality, our worth as wives and mothers and women are not in what we can do but in who we are. And that is one of the reasons why I joined the many wonderful women contributing to this blog. Who I am, happily, is a feminist…a mother…a wife…I am unapologetically me. And, most of all, I am a fierce, and fearless woman!

 

          So I hope you join us all as we talk about a myriad of topics that both excite and infuriate as…and even topics where we all have those WTF! moments.