Reconciling with a Sweat

By Leland Spencer

My advisor in college, Dr. Jamie Capuzza, used the phrase "Feminism with a Sweat" whenever she taught gender classes. It was probably three years ago that I first heard her say that, and I admit that I didn't really get it. She explained that feminism requires more than belief; to be a feminist, one must act (i.e., work up a sweat, hence, "Feminism with a sweat"). On a cognitive level, I understood that, and if you asked me as a sophomore or junior in college to explain what she meant by it, I would say what you just read in the sentence above. Even so, I still didn't get it. I didn't understand it experientially.

Now, a couple years later, I'm glad to say that I think I do get it--or, I am in the process of understanding it experientially. I suppose the point of the statement was lost on me because I connected activism and feminism in my mind, so I had no ground for understanding feminist beliefs and feminist behaviors as distinct. Similarly, it never occurred to me that people would identify as feminists without endorsing feminist beliefs or exhibiting feminist behaviors. In may ways, feminism is still castigated as "the other f word," so why would anyone want to claim that identity without embracing it and living it out?

I'm not sure, but it happens, and I recognize that now in ways that I didn't a couple years ago. Dr. Capuzza also often said, "Let's not be naive." My assumption that feminism and sweat were inherently connected was naive. I've been corrected.

So what's the point of this post? I guess it is to encourage all of us to own the identities we claim, and to choose the optional ones carefully. No one is forced to call her- or himself a feminist, so if you do, do it with a sweat worthy of the label. If I call myself a feminist but do nothing to advance human dignity, advocate for justice, and work for equality, am I really a feminist? I'd say no. I know some people think I'm being patriarchal when I insist that feminism has a definition, but to say that anyone who claims to be a feminist is automatically a a feminist actually waters down the movement, does it not? After all, if I say I am a giraffe, that doesn't make me a giraffe, and just because I stand in a garage does not make me a car.

This applies to our movement, too. What does it mean to say that I am a Christian? a United Methodist Christian? a Reconciling United Methodist Christian? What beliefs and behaviors are connected to those identities?

I want to close with Sonja Foss's wonderful definition of feminism. It includes some good goals for Reconciling with a Sweat:

I am a feminist, and, for me, feminism is the effort to disrupt the ideology of domination that pervades Western culture and the effort to transform it into a culture and relationships characterized by mutuality, respect, self-determination, and equality. Feminism is the effort to disrupt oppression wherever it occurs, whether of women, people of color, old people, gays and lesbians, friends, or family.