Behind Every Powerful Man...There Is an Even Powerful Wo-Man

Since writing my term paper that had a 2500 word requirement, but was handed in with almost 5000 words surveying women's involvement in translation starting from the Middle Ages up to today, I've really become interested in what it means to actually be a woman. The title of my paper was Sex and Translation: Debunking the Myth. The question I sought out to answer was should female authors only be translated by women and males by men. I could answer that question in one sentence. No, one word. No. But there was no way I was going to get away with a one-word final essay. How do you begin to research a question that has a one-word answer?

Well, I figured I might as well find out what women have been doing in translation all this time and the answer to that is not too much. Mostly because men have been too busy trying to run the world by themselves (because they think they can do it alone) and dominate everything on it. I happened to stumble across this book called Gender and Translation. I'm fully aware that men and women are clearly from different planets, but translators too? Come on. Then I saw the words feminist translators. The 'F' word was being used in the same sentence as translator. Translators already put up with enough crap, now the feminists have taken it over? Are we in some sort of war I was unaware of? Feminists v.s. the world [of men]? I decided to go ahead and look up the word. Feminist: a believer in the advocacy of women's rights. That doesn't sound so bad. I like women's rights. I need rights. I like rights. I also like right angles. After readng a bit about feminist translators and the relation they have with women's history in translation it sounded like a pretty good deal. I could be a feminist. Do I have to sign up somewhere? Or join a club?

My new 'thing' now is feminism. Over winter break I plan to learn more about these women's movements and such. In the process I found out that there are different types of feminists. White feminists. Black feminists. Latina feminists. Chicana feminists. Male 'feminists' are considered 'good' men, while female 'feminists' are considered agressive. What? Aren't all women part of the same club? Can we all just believe in the advocacy of women's rights as a global idea? According to this book I'm reading, Women Writing Resistance:Essays on Latin America and the Carribean, white feminists have a 'bad rap'. Why does everthing always have to be about colour? Now I have to choose a type of feminism that I can relate to? So black feminists can't aspire to white feminist ideas because they aren't black. Hispanic feminists don't aspire to white feminist ideas because the 'experience' of a hispanic women and non-hispanic women is 'different'. But what about the fact that we're all women?

What's wrong with us? I don't believe that God is watching over us and he has a plan for each one of us and knows every single thing that we've done and will do before we even do. But...if God did put us here to live our lives of 'free' will, I'm sure he's eating popcorn right now watching us destory ourselves out of our 'free' will. The more I learn about history and just how civilized we're 'suppsed' to be be, the more I think that if we're a prime example of the highest type of life form out there, other life must be A-grade idiots. Sheesh.