What stands between me and understanding.

I've never been raped. (Statutory raped like a hundred times! But it was mostly my idea.) I've never been seriously assaulted, sexually or physically. I've never been in an abusive relationship. As I said before, I've never been groped by a stranger.

I've never even really been treated badly. Well, of course I have, but it was always a situation of Dickhead vs. Holly, not of Man vs. Woman; I've never felt that a system was maltreating me because I was female. The problems I've had with institutions--getting sent to collections without ever seeing a bill, endless waits and expenses for professional licenses, getting drop-kicked out of schools and jobs--all would have happened the same way to a man, I'm fairly sure. Maybe it's just my own interpretation of events, but when I get fired or flunked or fined, I tend to think "I'm a moron" and/or "they're morons." I've never had a serious situation in my life where I felt that "this is because I'm a woman" was a good explanation.

Right now I'm working a traditionally male job in an 80%-male company and my coworkers and bosses are entirely respectful. I'm making the same pay as the men in my position and haven't experienced any hazing or harassment or any kind of hostile environment. Nobody treats me like a girl; they treat me like Holly.

These are the things that feminism won for me.

But they're also the things that make it difficult for me to identify with a lot of feminists. When people talk about how hard it is to be a woman I just don't know how to respond because I'm a woman and my life is... not easy, but I think it's no harder than it would've been if I were male. I don't know that; maybe there's some subtle favoritism that would've set Male Holly on the road to fame and fortune by now. And I haven't had kids yet, I understand that can really bugger things up. Still, the bottom line is, as far as I can tell, nothing bad has happened to me because I'm female.

This is just me. I know that other than gender I've got my privilege ducks in a row--white, straight, wealthy family, nice neighborhood, college education, good health--and so on, to my great fortune in real life and great disadvantage in Internet arguments. So when I'm bearing only one major oppressed status, I guess it's no big surprise that I haven't experienced much oppression.

I'm not quite dumb enough to say that sexism doesn't exist. But I think it's losing. It's retreating from politics to pop culture, from institutions to individuals. It's working in concert with other forms of discrimination not because it's all-pervasive, but because it no longer has the strength or legitimacy to exist alone. Is feminism done? FUCK NO. Sexism's influence in the things that really matter is waning but still present (in the field of pro-life, anti-gay, abstinence-only "family values" law particularly), and even in the things that don't matter as much (Cosmo) it's still wrong. Because life for women has become livable doesn't mean it's time yet to declare "we're all equal now!" and go play foosball.

It is, however, time to get some perspective. It's time to realize that you win nothing by exaggerating your own victimhood or claiming that all individual problems are systemic. Above all, it's time to stop saying "It sucks to be a woman," because really (I've been one for like a whole bunch of years now), it doesn't. Being a woman is not yet like being a man, but it does not suck. Part of honoring the women who got us votes and equal-opportunity laws and reproductive rights is continuing their fight; part of it is acknowledging and enjoying the strides we've already made.

I'm a woman, and I'm happy.