I DON’T FEEL LIKE IT
When my mother went to Valencia to live with my father’s family, she found herself in a far more conservative environment than what she was used to. One day they were invited to a wedding. My father told her that she had to buy a hat. “I don’t like hats.
“You know what my mother’s like. You’re going to have to wear one. All the women wear them.”
“I told you I’m not going to wear a hat.”
“But…what difference does it make? Why?”
“Because I don’t feel like it.”
One might think- What a stubborn woman your mother was! After all, it was just a question of etiquette. It’s possible. Men wear ties, women wear hats, etc. But human beings have to be careful with the symbolism they attribute to objects and actions in every place and time in history – very careful with the precedents we establish every time we say yes or no, and with the consequences which that affirmation or negation may or may not have.
Men and women all over the world take these steps every day; but especially women. We decide we’re not going to do something that they tell us to just for being women or, otherwise, we decide we are going to do something they want to stop us from doing, just for being women. Even if the one ordering us or impeding us is another woman.
This is nothing different from what Rosa Parks did: she didn't sit in the back of the bus, not because the seats in the back were worse than the seats in front, but because no one could tell her where to sit just for being black. Once places stopped symbolizing power hierarchies, it stopped mattering where you sat.
