The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness

Ultimately the greatest service a woman can do to her community is to be happy; the degree of revolt and irresponsibility which she must manifest to acquire happiness is the only sure indication of the way things must change if there is to be any point in continuing to be a woman at all.

Across the board, women are on a gerbil wheel, running to catch up—to their own expectations, to outside ideals, to men—and never quite making it.

Often, you’ll see this billed as “choice” or as women pursuing personal happiness because the language of feminism has been neatly co-opted by a strain of peculiarly American individualism.

This kind of happiness, of pleasure fulfillment and fulfillment of purpose, is missing for a great number of American women. That’s not because women don’t pleasure-seek or fail to find meaning in their lives; it’s because even though the concept of happiness is written into the founding document of the United States, it wasn’t meant for us.

Of course women can’t flourish in a system that needs us as support pillars for someone else’s building. We’re here to prop it up, not to live in it. This is not a place that was built for us to thrive.

What if, instead, the goal were happiness? Not at an individual level, with more yoga or self-care or Pinterest-perfect hobbies, but a political one: What would the world look like if our laws and policies prioritized feeling good?

I hesitated because a series of unearned racial and social-class privileges makes my experience of American womanhood an overrepresented outlier, but also because I worried any woman who says she does things just because it feels good sounds entitled and not appropriately—and femininely—deferential and self-effacing.

Our political and cultural priorities aren’t about making life more enjoyable but about getting ahead, attaining bigger and better things, “having it all.” But the system is rigged: Men have long been able to “have it all” because of free female labor.

Conservatives saw welfare and poverty alleviation programs as undermining the nuclear family, allowing women—and black women in particular—to be government-dependent heads of households instead of husband-dependent domestic helpmeets.

No one has ever suggested it is her right to be happy. Instead, she hears she should be appreciative, and maybe a little bit sorry for availing herself of help.