In the early 1980s I was a suburban girl growing up outside Miami and I knew few mothers who worked. My own mother had quit the nursing job she loved to become a stay-at-home mom, though she still sought hospital news from my doctor dad. The closest I had come to seeing her at work […]
Month: March 2011
Click! Teaching Feminism to Boys
There is nothing in the world more infuriating and yet more life-affirming than attempting to teach a room full of 15- and 16-year-old boys why feminism matters. Yet, as an 11th grader in high school, this is what I’d set out to do. My sophomore-year history teacher had given me the opportunity to teach two […]
A Teen Analyzes Today’s Derogatory Teen Slang
There are lots of dirty words reserved for females, particularly those of high-school age. But there are three words that, arguably, epitomize them all. As has been shouted down many a junior high hallway: “You are just a fat, slutty, lesbian.” This is enough to make some girls cry, others defiant. They have a notable […]
Women’s History Month: One Woman’s Story
During Women’s History Month, we are reminded of the accomplishments, disappointments, struggles and hardships endured by women like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Margaret Sanger, Victoria Woodhull, Lucy Stone, Harriet Tubman–all well-known pioneers in the fight for women’s rights. We also read about the leaders of the Second Wave of the women’s […]
Witness to Rape: The Resistance of Eman al-Obeidi
I saw outrage. I saw courage. I saw effrontery. Most of all, I saw resistance. By now, millions have seen the video footage of a woman in Libya–identified as Eman (or Iman) al-Obeidi–storming into a hotel in Tripoli, where foreign journalists had gathered, to tell the world that she had been gang-raped by Gaddhafi’s militia […]
Don’t Ms.: Fake Clinics, Lilly Ledbetter, Women’s History Month and More!
Everywhere: This is the last week of Women’s History Month! If you haven’t already, take a look at David Dismore’s fascinating day-by-day women’s history coverage on the Ms. Blog. And there are still lots of ways to celebrate Women’s History Month before it ends. For one thing, this week is the Feminist Majority Foundation’s National […]
Click! Not a Knight in Shining Armor
As a teenager coming of age in the 1970s in mainstream culture in the upper midwest, I missed the United States’ radicalizing movements by a decade and several hundred miles. I developed conventional liberal politics in reaction to the conventional conservative politics of my father and his generation. But in a more basic sense, I […]
Live-Blogging Women’s History: March 28, 1931
March 28, 1931: The effort by the National Woman’s Party to fight increased discrimination against women in the workforce as the Depression deepens has gotten some help from a few of the nation’s governors. Today’s development came in response to a recent salvo in the war on women workers: It was fired by the Cotton-Textile […]
Click! A College Grad Strips on Bourbon Street
I was dancing in a G-string and pasties when I first realized I was a feminist. Backtrack: I was a young woman experimenting with the boundaries of freedom. It was the sexual revolution, the time after Roe v. Wade and before AIDS, and there was enormous confusion about what it meant to be free. I […]
Click! My Catholic School Report Card
At St. Charles School in the mid 1960s, Father Foley, our parish pastor, came into our classroom to hand out the report cards. He said the same thing every year: You know, children, I look at these report cards Sister prepared so carefully for you, and the very first thing I look at is what? […]