AJCalhoun is the first OS guy to answer my questions. 

 

I wish I had spent more time more formulating my questions. Then I would not have assumed my  subject was a woman. 

 

Tell me something about you--age, sex, where you live, where you grew up, any siblings,  any children?

 

   Male, 64, live just outside Wasington, DC, grew up in DC and its Maryland suburbs but with deep roots in VA also. I have three grown children

 What jobs have you had? Please include all caregiving.

 

While my first job (from age 15-49) was running a family business (paint and wallpaper sales) started by my father and me, I was during almost that whole time a volunteer firefighter/EMT, which led to my second career in allied health, where I've worked as an ER tech, critical care tech, diagnostic cardiology tech, cardiac rehab tech, and back to the ER again, before being forced by a medical problem to retire; I then joined the editorial staff of an international medical advice website, where I cover the cardiology questions, working from home. So caregiving has been a huge part of my life since age 17.

 What was happening with women when you were a girl and teen?  (I apologized for that, and later reworded the question--RSG)

 

Nothing much happened when I was a girl, probably because that was only an early in utero experience before that other chromosome turned up. But as a teen the Women's Movement was an almost underground thing, and most of the women I knew were either working until marriage or were married stay-at-home wives and mothers. I was raised largely by women as I was an only child and my father was, back then, a traveling salesman. I did know some girls and young women who were going to become a new kind of woman in the future, and not necessarily consciously feminists but definitely on a different track than their mothers.

What did  you first notice sexism, whether directed at you or anyone else. Men can experience sexism just as much as woman.

 

My first awareness of sexism was early on, as my father was, early in my life, a staunch traditionalist and patriarchal figure. He wasn't a misogynist, but he did harbor certain very strange (to me) attitudes about what women should be doing (role assignment) and it simply didn't make sense to me. Of course, some of the women in my life were feminist subversives, my mother being paramount among those. She  caused me to question everything, and that made me more aware of things that seemed wrong or didn't make sense. Arbitrary gender assignment was a big part of that.

If you identify yourself a feminist, when did realize that you were?

 

While  I am extremely sympathetic to women and feminist causes, a great admirer and appreciator of women, I don't consider myself a feminist so much as a factualist, a term coined by William S. Burroughs. "Egalitarian" has been used some in regard to this project as an alternative to feminist, but no, for me it would be factualist: Does this make sense or does it not?

What does feminism mean to you?

 

To me feminism means championing the cause of femenine equality, but often at the expense of understanding that "equal" is not synonymous with "same." There are essential differences, those things which make the having of genders make sense, and to try and erase these, as some early feminists did and some still do, simply would make men and women interchangeable. Doesn't work for me.

Would your mother consider herself a feminist? Have you ever discussed the question with her

 

My mother was not a femenist but perhaps an egalitarian. She was also very much a factualist. She was a mystic spiritual humanist, someone who simply enjoyed her own femininity but who would do what she damn well pleased. A very difficult woman to put into a box, but that's why she was not a feminist. She didn't want to be tagged with any sort of label. And she wasn't.

Did you ever take a woman studies course in high school or college

 

No.

What books shaped your ideas on women?

 

Tobacco Road, The Diary of Anne Frank, the collected works of Emily St. VIncent Milay, Erich Fromm's The Sane Society and The Art of Loving, The Holy Bible (this latter not in the obvious way).

Who is your favorite woman novelist?  Do you think she is a feminist (I fervently believe Jane Austen was.)

 

Carson McCullers, and yes, I would consider her a feminist