Women don’t play enough. Just blame it on feminism? Perhaps not, but certainly the tenuous relationship between women and play, which I have previously described, is inextricably linked to the past three hundred years of Western feminisms. Lets take a short ride down the lane of historical feminist rhetoric.

The subtext of many of the early feminists (such as Mary Wollstonecraft) through the American First Wave of feminism (the suffrage movement) all the way through Simone de Beauvoir was trying to make women appear less frivolous: their social reputation was entirely linked to frivolity. For example, in her Vindication on the Rights of Women, Wollstonecraft writes that men view women as “a swarm of ephemeron triflers” and that they are “reckoned a frivolous sex.” This sentiment (and resentment) continues through early feminisms with detrimental repercussions: feminists eschewed frivolity and often pushed an equally biological deterministic position of seriousness and morality. In order to show their equality to men, women overcompensated for frivolous reputations.

More recent feminisms—the second wave and beyond—similarly focused on serious causes: birth control, pro-choice, and getting women into the workplace. And while these topics are all vital and necessary to furthering feminisms, they left little time for leisure: getting women into the workplace didn’t disintegrate their responsibilities at home, and this killed any possible hope for playtime. Feminist texts don’t generally discuss women and leisure: they are too busy trying to get the serious stuff down.

And still, many feminisms maintain this serious stance. While the term “feminazis” is abhorrent, one might wonder if a “nazi” surname could possibly be attributed to a more playful feminism. The immovable strictness of feminisms and the inability to embrace the necessity of frivolity has ultimately limited feminist causes. If women can’t play with equality then there is no hope for being taken seriously.

A quote commonly attributed to anarchist feminist Emma Goldman is, “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution!”* This is a sentiment that many feminists still desperately need to embrace: stamping and stomping will only get a cause so far and at a certain point it is necessary to embrace the cause—frivolity and all—and turn stomping into dancing. While women of the past have been accused of being purely frivolous, it is this very frivolity which is missing from feminism today.

Playful does not mean dismissive. Frivolous does not mean ignorant. Embracing one of these things does not automatically mean being associated with the other. Instead, it means that along with gravity and importance, we must embrace the ridiculousness and lightness of a cause. Along with work we must make time for play. Play is not just for children: men have long known how to integrate play into their everyday lives and until women learn to play as men do (not through emulation but through experimentation) we will not understand the freedom that so many feminisms have sought to bring to femininity.

We cannot possibly know, yet, what a playful feminism might look like. While the women from Bust magazine have been pushing the “fiber arts” of knitting, crocheting, and sewing, the “frag dolls”, the “riot grrls”, and women in sports all have different ideas. And none of these are necessarily playful feminisms: they are all, to a large extent, imbued with old ideals and rhetoric. While the women of Bust have embraced the social play of Stitch ‘n’ Bitch groups, some might suggest that knitting is simply a leftover form of play that is potentially problematic on several counts. While members of all-girl online gaming groups such as the Frag Dolls or the PMS Clan have certainly pushed their way into the masculine video game space, they are not necessarily involved in inherently feminine forms of play. While my mother and her friends might find their play in shopping and beauty spas, one might question if this consumer-driven activity can ever actually be play. My point is not that any of these acts of play are wrong: but rather that feminists need to start examining how women play, how often they play, how they play differently from men, and how to use play to subvert patriarchal norms.

We live in a time of fractured feminisms: women young and old, liberal and conservative no longer necessarily stand behind the zealous beliefs of First or Second Wave feminisms. Feminist rhetoric argues, fights, and no longer knows what it is fighting for or with.

Play is unifying.

Through finding more feminine forms of play women can finally grow comfortable in their feminist skin. Through agonistic play, community play, and role-play, women can come to know and understand one another and cut across the divisions: we are entitled to leisure, we are entitled to play, we are entitled to move beyond the drudgery of working the double-shift in order to understand the playful freedom that men have always had. Play is unifying, powerful and strong, and although frivolous, play can have a purpose. It is time to toss a Feminist Frisbee in the air, and see where it lands.

Because the playful can be political, too.

Shira Chess is a PhD student in Communication and Rhetoric at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and her home page online is shiraland.com where papers are available that explore these topics more thoroughly. This was the blog version of the much longer paper How to Play a Feminist (PDF|DOC).

Related Links:

Frag Dolls

PMS Clan

* This quote was a paraphrase of other things Goldman said, but the pithiness of the line and sentiment is what has survived (and what is still quoted today), so it is what I am quoting here.