Feminist Family Christmas: Part Five
A few snapshots of different sorts of feminists, their families and the festive season. I’m fortunate to have lots of lovely people in my circle, many of whom identify as feminists and I was interested in what their Christmases looked like.
So, are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s continue…
TELL ME A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF.
My name is Oli. I’m a man, and I’m self-identified as a thinker, a pluralist and a liberal socialist rather than a feminist per se. I am all about equality for everyone – my feminism, such as it is, is an acknowledgement of a need to redress an imbalance of power and privilege across gender lines and a desire to be aware of the privilege I have by accident of birth and not be insensible to it or frankly abuse it.
I do think that a lot of how I feel about gender and society has sprung from my exposure to feminist ideas and discourse through my family, social and academic life, not to mention an ongoing interest in engaging with the society I live in. I suppose I would characterise where I come from on the spectrum as really a post-feminist or a “sex-positive” feminist. I’m about to get married and shortly thereafter I’m going to be a father. I am happier now, in my mid-thirties and planning a life with someone, than I have ever been. This is in no small part due to that person being as equally broad-minded, open and thinking a woman as I try to be a man.
WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS AT CHRISTMAS?
We’re planning a quiet, family orientated Christmas with my fiancee’s family in rural Sussex – I am looking forward to it immensely! There will be food, drink, boardgames, Christmas telly, and most importantly from my perspective, a sense of togetherness. We will (briefly) celebrate again with my family on the eve of our upcoming wedding when they get back into the country from spending Christmas with my brother and sister-in-law in Belgium.
WHAT HAVE YOU BOUGHT?
A Kindle for my parents, a laptop for my partner, an array of games/DVDs/CDs/books/hats and gloves for various siblings – that kind of thing.
HOW DO YOU BUY GIFTS?
About half and half online and in the shops – we have done most of it together.
AS A FEMINIST DO YOU FEEL ANY PARTICULAR PRESSURES OR RESPONSIBILITY AT THIS TIME OF YEAR?
I suppose more than anything I would want to avoid cliche with regard to roles in the “Family Christmas” – there is no reason for just the women to cook and the men to socialise – but to be frank my lifelong experience of Christmas has been my father cooking Christmas dinner, in fact dealing with all things distaff over the festive period, so to avoid cliche I would have to inhabit my own personal one.
This year in particular I will be a guest in another family’s idea of Christmas, and while I want to be true to how I feel about all kinds of things, like not just defaulting to giving little girls “something pink” to fighting over the washing up instead of just doing it, I am aware of the fact that I need to bend in the wind of another family’s prevailing wind, if you’ll pardon the dreadful imagery.
Tradition has a funny way of entrenching the most trivial gender bias to the most insidious prejudice; I suppose the particular pressure I feel whenever Tradition weighs in, as it does heavily at Christmas, is to not let it force me or allow anyone else to behave in a way that is inappropriate.
AND FINALLY…
There are many groups of people that get a pause for thought, at least, from me at Christmas; the old, the lonely, the homeless, and in amongst that I would have to say women who have to be all things to all people over this period, all the way through to the women spending what should be a happy time filled with love and family, running and hiding from abuse. But as with any other “time of year” or similar, I always find myself chiding myself for not thinking of such things just on any old Tuesday a bit more often. I suppose what I want to say is that Christmas being a time for reflection as well as joy is a bit of a double-edged sword; after all, a social conscience of any stripe should be for life, right?