Theoretical Chicken Stock

I've been accused of being a "Theoretical Feminist", that is, feminist in all that I say but non-feminist in all that I do. See, I'm a loud (too loud?) militant advocate for gender equality yet I live my life in a completely unreconstructed kind of way: I've never learned to be entirely self-sufficient and I've always had other people carrying me, cutting me too much slack, making excuses for me.

I actually used to feel so crazy-guilty when that Destiny's Child track that implored "All the women, independent" to throw their arms about (I'm paraphrasing here) that I would cower in the corner and pray that nobody noticed that I was the only one of my peers (some of whom I would classify as non-feminists if not actively anti-) to whom those words did not relate.

I once tried to argue that I was living a feminist utopia, having elected to have neither a family nor a career. Suffice to say, that was a difficult thesis to defend.

And now I'm becoming a "wife", a classic "female drag" role. Anyway I'm going with "partner", "married partner", if I must. The inherent gender equality of same-sex rather than opposite-sex (!) couples serves as an excellent guide to us sad, tired heteros. Now if only they were afforded marriage equality ... but that's a Civil Rights story for another time ...

"Bride" is another character for us female impersonators to adopt, but it's easy to avoid. I just stare blankly when anyone asks weddingy questions and say, vacantly, "You'll have to ask the Feyonce. He's doing all the arrangements".

Hmmmm, just realised, he actually is doing all the arrangements. Ha! Not so theoretical now ...