Can a Feminist Bake?

I've been interested in learning to bake. Pies, mostly. And not just fruit pies! I have an abiding interest in the whole range of that pie-wide spectrum of the possible. I love the phrase "the pie in the sky"! Who baked that first pie in the sky? These days it seems mainly applied to grandiose rewards for unrealizable schemes, held out to motivate people, to keep them striving for a goal that will never materialize. It's been made all materialistic and sordid. But surely the first pie in the sky was heaven! And man, I can't wait for my slice of that pie in the sky*. People wonder what flavor it's going to be, but I have a suspicion: mince. That'd be quite a curve-ball, huh?

Anyway, pies - that's my bake-ological area of interest. Cookies, too, I guess. That's what you do with extra crust dough right? Cookies! You can even bake 'em in the same oven - just sneak 'em out early though, because they finish quicker.

But anyway, I've been reading a bit into the whole idea of baking, aspects sociocultural as well as bakeological, and I've come across a bit of a dilemma, because some people seem to see baking as no fit activity for a feminist to engage in.

I think that's a positively rotten attitude!

I feel like I've been a feminist my whole life, only I never embraced the term until about a decade ago - because I had fallen for the way foes of feminism would distort what feminism truly means. About 10 years ago I guess, I realized that all that bluster and anti-feminist propaganda was just the patriarchy's way of dividing and conquering. Take the divisive, loud-mouthed theories of a few assholes on the far fringe of feminism, trumpet those worst excesses and paint the whole cause in that same bad light: "See what this high-profile feminist fringe asshole just said...? Well...that's what they all believe. That's what feminism is about."

But that's bullshit, though. The real true cause of feminism is something any thinking human should be strongly on board with - in a nutshell: belief in and advocacy on behalf of women's social, political, and economic equality to men.

That's the real deal, that's the real fight. This morbid obsession over picking out this or that wispy thread of "oppressive patriarchy" and holding it up to the light, hollering "Here's another invisible thing that keeps women down! But I spotted it!" - that sort of himsterical overreaction does nothing to help the real fight. In fact it undermines it, by obscuring the important, hard-to-deal-with issues, with a grand parade of facile trivialities. Petulant tantrums over what women ought or oughtn't wear, or how women ought or oughtn't comport themselves, are oppressive neo-victorian pruderies no matter what their origin - whether they spring from small-town down-home Baptist pulpits, or the slick journals of ostensibly-feminist academics.

Real feminism isn't about placing restrictions on what women can do - or on what a feminist can do.

So anyway, where was I? Baking! And the question is: Can a Feminist Bake?

Hell no.

At least, not this feminist. But I plan to take a crack at it. I plan to learn the deep dark secrets of the art. I need to explore the curious exhortations of my destiny.