Feminism?

I'm quite pleased to live in an area that has regularly scheduled homeschooling programs in the local library as well as the usual preschool and toddler storytimes. Mind you, my children can't go yet; they get too overwhelmed. But it's nice that we have these regularly scheduled homeschooling programs, even if I can't make it there.

I asked the homeschool coordinator of our local library if I could do a presentation of some of the artwork I received from Picturing America. And she said yes! I was asked to do a presentation on the only two women whose works made it into the Picturing America portfolio, Mary Cassatt and Dorothea Lange, because March is Women's History Month.

Well, ok...

So I did some research. And naturally, I found that these were women who went against the cultural mores of the time. They were described as independent, stubborn... that sort of thing. More than one source I cited claimed that their works were instruments for social change, feminism, government intervention, blah blah blah.

So I presented that. Apparently reporting the facts that one finds... after being asked to do a presentation about these particular works... well, one reviewer stated that I was overly "politically correct" and had an agenda.

You heard it here first, folks. I am a radical feminist, and I was out to indoctrinate the little kiddies by telling them that sometimes ladies don't want to grow up, get married, and have lotsa babies and stay home. I'm almost sorry that I left out some of the more... interesting... facts, but sort of glossed over them in such a way that only the adults would understand if they were listening carefully during my presentations. I mean, I mentioned that Cassatt couldn't be trained in painting with men in art school because people didn't think it proper for ladies to see the "live models." Doggone it, but I *purposefully* neglected to specifically mention that the "live models" were butt-nekkid strumpets out to destroy the traditional family values we hold dear by allowing men to doodle their boobies, and I didn't mention that Cassatt must have been inherently evil for having any ambition whatsoever.

I was kinda miffed. The library lady who coordinated the presentation (did introductions, made sure tables were set up, that sort of thing) said to me later that as Christians, we would like the world to be a certain way, but sometimes we just have to go with where the facts lead us.

The facts (unfortunately, I guess) also led me to mention that there was this guy named Roosevelt, and this thing-o called the Resettlement Administration during the Great Depression, and that people were really starving and needed help. The background behind the picture I presented was really heartbreaking: a mom with seven children, and they've run out of food, and just sold the tires of their vehicle so the kids could eat, and now they're stuck. You would think if I were just a little more brazen, I'd have advocated for Obama personally popping into the ol' black and white photo to begin handing out unicorns and free pony rides and running up the national debt for these lowly moochers. The nerve of that hussy, photographing hungry people in the hopes that they could be helped.

Snippy little me thinks that when you get *too* extreme, you start to worry about whether the mom in the picture were picking frozen peas in a skirt and debating about whether it's proper for her to "work outside the home" at all, and ignore the fact that these people were hungry and desperate and likely didn't care where help came from if their children ate that night.

I told D about the bad review I got and he thought it was hilarious that I was called out for being a feminist. He's been calling me "Femmie" all afternoon. I'm not conservative enough to pass muster in homeschooling circles, I guess...

:P