What is a suburban feminist?

I’ve decided to start calling myself a suburban feminist, but what does that mean? How is that any different to any other types of feminism that are already being discussed?

I’ve never fit comfortably into a particular box of feminism and to be honest I don’t think it’s particularly useful to try to squeeze people into any kind of box, but I do want to have a go at describing both who I am and what I care about.

I am the product of the suburbs - particularly the 1950’s post-war capitalist suburbs built specifically for manufacturing the Australian dream, cars and technology. I grew up in a brand new city built for the purpose of capitalism, designed for the 1950’s male factory worker, his housewife and kids.

My mum was born the same year as the City of Elizabeth, the first city in Australia to have underground power cables and master planned down to the choices for the housewife to shop. It was a post-war economic and social experiment that created women like my grandmother, my mum, my aunties, cousins and me. A world where capitalism rules and families flocked to the suburbs for a life of economic prosperity. Well, that was the plan.

The reality is far different and instead of the lower middle class dream life of refrigerators and ladies lunching I grew up in a city full of single parents, teen pregnancy and intergenerational poverty due to the failure of capitalism to hold up its end of the bargain. If I stopped there, it would only be telling half the story. That’s where many people stop the story, those who don’t know us that well.

What it also created was a fierce but specific feminism, one born out of life experience and the unique mixing of culture created within a purpose-built migrant town that mixed people up with those they might not otherwise get to know.

Suburban feminism is deeply intersectional and critiques both capitalism and socialism. Both were invented by men, who invited migrants to come from all over the world and settle in the suburbs to make cars for them to drive to their business, public service and NFP offices.

Suburban feminism is rooted in the experience of urban planning, understanding how the built form creates people and people create problems and opportunities that aren’t always planned for. The problems that spring up when you plan playgrounds for kids but nothing for teenagers to do. No university to keep people in the city. No nightclubs to go and visit.

Suburban feminism can value and appreciate the colour of the capitalist dream while also critiquing that it was a diet we were fed that was really difficult to avoid. The bus routes took you there whether you liked it or not and sometimes you did like it. Sometimes you wanted more choice. Sometimes you really wanted what they were selling on the ad.

To describe myself as a suburban feminist means that I acknowledge that I am a creation of policies and systems that were intentional government policy. It is also to acknowledge that I have agency and choice and that sometimes the policies and systems that were designed for my benefit with good intentions actually created some outcomes that aren’t excellent, including some within feminism. Mainstream feminism sometimes looks down upon the suburban feminist to critique her choices, without always understanding the cultural context in which they sit. For example, a suburban feminist may make choices that puts her desire to spend time with family over her desire to have a career, or her community needs over her own individual progress. These are choices being made within a cultural context where family and community is the measure of a happy life for both men and women - not the ability to accumulate wealth or personal status. The suburban life has a different set of rules. Happiness isn’t how many dollars you have to feed the capitalist beast, it is how much time you get to spend with your grandmother or your kids.

Suburban feminism looks at the policies, plans and operations of the suburbs to understand the impact on women. It critiques the footpath and the ease in which you can go and get milk as well as the inability to stay at home with family as you get an education or high powered job. It looks at how the city design holds people in place not just in terms of gender, but in terms of class and proximity to the CBD. It looks at the judgement that those who have easier access to these things bestows upon the suburban woman, judging everything from her clothes to her family to her master-planned house and limited career options close to home. It critiques the pressure for her to conform to an inner-city version of herself, presuming that inner-city is somehow better when perhaps it’s actually not.

Most of all, it looks at all of these things as the products of policy and planning decisions of men, embedded into the landscape, the houses and almost every choice women can make- even the shops where we can buy our underwear. The built form and the human relate to each other not for the benefit of themselves or the community they serve, but for the benefit of the men who designed us and profit from our lives.

I am a proud suburban feminist.

My grandmother and biggest political influence Laurel, living her 50's suburban dream in Elizabeth. She had 7 kids, couldn't cook and I don't recall her ever washing a dish in her life. She was a nurse, could talk global politics and had a picture of Keating in the kitchen.