FEMINIST ETHICS LECTURE: What kind of a story shall a 21st century woman create?

The books I dearly hold at the moment.

What are the words that come to mind when we hear the word, Femininst? Girl, Female, Woman, Womanhood, Feminist, Maternal, Matriarchal, Herstory

These are the words we associate with our being a woman. I wish I have another word to set myself apart from the rest of the pack. But the reality is, I am not an original. I immensely benefitted from the thinking and story weaved by women who fought for what I enjoy right now and men who supported those thoughts and story. We are the fruit of the struggles of the past women, and the men who supported them.
The online poster the Communnications and Technology students came up with.

But why do I have the desire to set myself apart? With the informations we are fed each day just by checking our social media or hitting google search and Wikipedia, we think that the answers to all our questions relating to WOMAN had been there. If a girl wants to show a bit of her butts or boobs in Tiktok or YouTube for profit or show-off or just because and exclaims freedom of expression and right to her own body, let her be, especially if she earns something from it. But the exercise of liberty has responsibility, be it written or unwritten, legal or moral. If someone disrespected that girl, she will cry injustice which can divide opinions. But my question, is this the kind of political freedom our mothers fought for us? I want that girl to examine where she got her right to her own body and the freedom of expression that she is claiming without effort but just because she was born in this century to at least check the back story. And ask her, What kind of story shall a 21st century woman tell?

They were Students who are eager to listen and learn so that 1.5 hrs passed like a breeze.

While I was waiting for the bar exam results and waiting for my appointment in the government service, I got a window of time to read for personal growth…. (Read: Not for a test or exam). I found the small book by Cokie Roberts called We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters. Her first entry in the book stayed with me until now. She grew up in Greece and they went to a beach where a war occurred in the past and she felt great having been in that place which she had read in history books. But that very place also gave her another perspective. She found a local museum in that place and there, she saw objects used in everyday lives of women in the past such as needles, buttons, jewels, frying pans and toys which we have been using until today. What was left of objects from the lives of men, she asked. Objects of war, of worship recognizable only for soldiers and priests. She concluded: THAT LITTLE MUSEUM HAS ALWAYS SYMBOLIZED FOR ME GREAT STRENGTH OF WOMEN. WE ARE CONNECTED THROUGHOUT TIME AND REGARDLESS OF PLACE. WE ARE OUR MOTHER’S DAUGHTERS. This book came out in 1998. To date, I came to get hold of 3 copies which I gave out to my favorite women in their 20s. I have the 2009 revised edition to keep for myself and return to even if it is already the 21st century.

From the Introduction to the revised edition, I love her final paragraph saying:
CARETAKING — THAT’S COMMON THREAD THAT RUNS THROUGH THESE STORIES. NO MATTER WHAT ELSE WOMEN ARE DOING, WE ARE ALSO “MOTHERING” — TAKING CARE OF SOMEBODY OR SOMETHING, AND, FOR THE MOST PART, DOING IT JOYOUSLY. THAT’S WHAT WOMEN HAVE BEEN DOING FROM THE BEGINNING AND, I BELIEVE, WILL CONTINUE TO DO. I THINK WE’VE BEEN DOING IT AWFULLY WELL FOR A VERY LONG TIME. AND I THOUGHT IT WAS TIME TO CELEBRATE THAT. THAT’S WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK.

When I was approached by your teacher to give this little talk, I was thinking of introducing you with Gloria Steinem who was a journalist in 1962. When I first read her collection of essays in Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, I felt she mothered me about rethinking things, the feminist way. But I won’t dwell on her much except to give away some essay titles in the book: IF MEN COULD MENSTRUATE, I WAS A PLAYBOY BUNNY, MARILYN MONROE: THE WOMAN WHO DIED TOO SOON, THE INTERNATIONAL CRIME OF GENITAL MUTILATION, RUTH’S SONG BECAUSE SHE COULD NOT SING IT.

Well, I can consider myself a woman of the 21st century because I spent my 20s to currently 40s in this century. I enjoyed the fruit of the labor of these two women, among countless others. I believe, the 21st century women are now the 21-year-olds like you who are finding some niche in this century of global connectedness where information flooding is a challenge but technology also makes things run better and boundaries obliterated, while our shared beliefs are constantly challenged. As regards this, I would like to share the work of Yuval Noah Harari entitled Sapiens, Home Deus and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, which should be read in that order. Nothing is original in his thoughts but his tremendous contribution is to use the researches all over the place from humanities, politics, history to science and technology and throw another perspective in what we believe right now and challenges us SAPIENS to rethink of our shared beliefs. What I wanted to emphasize in his work is that, he encourages us to reconsider political division because our geographical division nowadays are answered by accessible air travels or global communities in social media or the web. He envisions that the 21st Century SAPIENS should take care of Mother Earth as a global mission because we live in the same planet, stop the threats of nuclear war, and put Humility (Imagine!) as policy because no race is superior as the other as we are actually transforming into one global community.

Familiar with the word of “taking care?” We may be the women who did not struggle on the basis of sex anymore (in other words, we already have our political rights) but we should be the women who should takes charge by taking care (in other words, whatever we do, personally, politically, or professionally, let us continue to be our Mothers’ daughters).

Foot and Fire