sexism and feminism

I was lucky enough to grow up in a society that is not so racist or sexist or all these things. Women in Iceland are quite independent. Women and men are equal. Unfortunately, they still go to jobs that are low paid - babysitting and all that - but we’ve got the most women in Parliament in the world, the head of Parliament is a woman, the President used to be a woman. The amount of women in high positions is the highest in the world. We’ve had to fight our feminist fights and all that bollocks, but it’s like "mmm...so what ?" It’s no big deal.

You know, feminists really tire me, they really bore me to death. Especially my generation. I can relate to it if you’re talking about my mother’s age or my grandmother’s age and they’re still angry and upset. I don’t agree with everything she says - because we’re human and we’re different - but I have to agree with Courtney Love when she says she can’t understand these feminists now.

You’ve had a very aggressive feminist movement for over 100 years ! So for women to stand up and say [in snotty American whine] ’It’s just not the same, men get all the chances, it’s so hard to be a woman today, rarara’, they’re basically dissing all the women in this century who have fought. They’re saying there haven’t been any fights fought, but there have been. You get women like 20 years older than me - they finally opened that cage. For women our age to say [whine again] ’Oh, I’m in a cage, I wish I was born a man, and men suck, men are so macho-’

Wait, do you feel like women say that ? Because I don’t feel like I hear that so much...

Ffffttt. Oh, God, the arguments I get into at parties.

Really ?

Oh, yeah ! They’re so bitter ! The thing is, the cage has been opened and what you’ve got to do, a woman today, is walk out of it. I find with problems - you’ve got all sorts of different brands of problems - sexism is the kind where the more you talk about it, the bigger it gets, you see. Maybe, say, in America 50 years ago, it was necessary to talk and get the tumor and cut it open with a knife and get all dirty and ugly about it. Say for example being a single parent. A hundred years ago being a single parent in the States, you couldn’t financially.

And you would have been vilified

Yeah, and all this morality blahblahblah. But today, there are no problems like that.

Well...

Well, there are. But you can make anything into a problem. If you’re going to say, "Oh, I’ve got a baby, it’s going to be so difficult", it is. If you work on it, you’ll be fine. And I’m not saying this in an arrogant way - "Oh, that’s alright of you to say because you’ve got money" - because I’ve only had money for, say, three years. I was a working class, hard-working, single mother until then.

Bust, october 1996