I highly recommend DeliaBlack's blog.

 

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

 

I am 31 now---32 this September.  Of course, I'm a girl (woman really).  I live on the MS gulf coast, which is where I grew up.  I have lived in England for a year, in the Bronx for a summer, in Maryland for 4 years.  I have no children, though I call my five pets my children.  I have a brother who is 19 months younger than I.

 

 

I have been a cashier and a waitress during summers in my high school/college education.  I was a writing consultant at my college's writing center for two years.  I was a secretary the year after I completed my BA in the same English department where I got my BA.  I have tried teaching two times.  Each time it was the inner city--once Baltimore, once Jackson, MS.  I was overwhelmed both times.  The first time (Baltimore) was worse, but Jackson had AWFUL administrators.  I left early both times, which means you are basically banned from teaching unless you lie about that. 

 

Anyhow, in between the teaching gigs, I was a special education instructional assistant for four years in the suburbs in MD.  I worked one summer as a customer service rep for Comcast (ehhh!).  I did student teaching, before my teaching job in Baltimore, in the Bronx.  Then, after I'd left my job in Jackson as a teacher, I worked at two different Sylvans for about two years, total.  I became an "Assistant Director of Education" at both,  but that is a glorified title for someone who teaches, tests, and monitors student progress. I also occasionally trained new teachers.

 

 I am now unemployed, except I have begun to tutor on my own and am trying to be a published writer.  At times, I have had to take care of my mom who has bipolar and dementia, but that is not constant.  Now it is more taking her to appointments and errands, occasionally cooking for her, and helping keep her meds straight a little bit. She is doing better than she has been in the last couple of years.  I once didn't know if I could take it. 

 

If you wanted the order of my jobs, it would be cashier one summer after high school graduation, waitress next summer before spending sophomore year of college in England, writing center consultant for last two years of college, 'Senior Secretary' of English Department after college, student teaching in Bronx one summer, started school year teaching 3rd grade in Baltimore, MD, but left, went to work as special education instructional asst in suburbs in MD, spent one of those summers as customer service rep, but spent other summers working in summer school as assistant, came back to MS when mother became really ill and tried teaching in Jackson, MS, --8th grade English-- but Katrina in my hometown and mother's continued illness and AWFUL bosses made me go back home, worked at Sylvan #1, quit after father was killed, took time off work (OK--I went batshit crazy, but, you know..I did somehow have sense enough to quit a few weeks after my dad died), was out of work for months, very confused and depressed, thought of applying for disability, tried living with a friend in TX, but came back as mother kept getting ill again, then got a job at Sylvan #2, then  (I forgot this one) processed files for a company, now am unemployed, except tutoring on my own and writing and some volunteer stuff.

 

 

I was a girl in the '80s and a teen in the '90s.  I remember hearing about AIDS in 2nd or third grade, but it was mostly seen as a homosexual problem in this country back then, I guess.  If memory serves,  I wrote President Reagan a letter about AIDS when I was in elementary school--third grade, maybe.  I wondered why people just didn't abstain from sex.  I think I also wrote to Dear Abby. Ha! 

 

When I was entering my teens, I noticed the Baptists were doing True Love Waits, trying to get teens to pledge that they would be pure until marriage.  I wrote in the Bristol Palin piece that I wouldn't sign.  I swear that, though I can't remember one specific incident, I remember that many times my mom and grandma tried to tell me that if I didn't wait, then I would be taken back home on my wedding night.  I knew better and knew that they weren't pressuring my brother to wait to the same extent.  If I asked my mom about it, she just said that she did want my brother to wait, but if he didn't, he wouldn't get stuck with a baby.

 

I remember in 6th grade that the whole class was supposed to have a teacher--who would be a volunteer--teach us a curriculum about our bodies or drugs or self esteem, I don't know.  But, there was always a shortage of volunteers, so several schools per year were put on a rotating waiting list.  We were put on a waiting list the year I was in 6th grade, so we got no such curriculum. I remember in 8th grade a science teacher from New York encouraged women scientists from the area to set up stations in the library for the girls to come by and learn about careers in science.  I remember in 9th grade a popular (Republican) biology teacher, who taught us about sex in the course of biology but didn't really mention diseases other than AIDS and who didn't mention contraception, said something like, "If you're like Arthur Ashe and you get AIDS from a blood transfusion, I feel sorry for you. But, I'm sorry, if you're homosexual and you get AIDS from sex, then you deserve to die!"  Some kids clapped.  Our tenth grade teacher, though also an ardent Republican, was better.  I remember in 9th grade girls in Art class were talking as they worked and said that if women had abortion they deserved to die.

 

I don't remember a lot about specific women's issues.  There was talk about date rape when I was a teen and in college.  I remember once that my uncles belittled the issue. They were talking to my brother, who was telling a story about a boy he'd heard of who was accused of rape, and one said, "Was it one of these date rapes?" in a whimpering voice, and the other joined in, chuckling.  I promise that they are not gargoyles or anything.  They did believe that I was smart, but you wouldn't call them feminists.  In college, there were rapes--and I mean stranger rapes-- that were covered up or not pursued by police.  There was also a scare that was supposedly due to a date rape drug being put in drinks at a frat house where I went to college (Ole Miss).  The paper said that 11 girls had to be rushed to the emergency room from a frat party, but the paper couldn't get ANYONE to comment on why.  I had heard it was the date rape drug, and I don't know what was done to the girls.  I never heard that anything happened to any boys, so I wonder.

 

 

I don't remember first noticing it, but it was not, as some have accused women, something I first noticed in college.  To me, it was always here, though I think that in this country, racism is more pervasive and hurtful.

We have had occasional discussions in my family about the fact that my grandmother's brothers inherited the land in the family.  There is some talk that one of her brothers pressured their father to make his will this way when the father was senile, but the father always favored the boys in other ways anyway.  The girls were supposed to have the 'timber money' (money from the sale of timber on the land) split between them and the brothers, but the brothers kept it all, except when one girl was going to die in her sixties, two out of four brothers gave the girls a couple hundred dollars each.  This would not have covered the part of the timber money each one was owed.

 

My grandma, she of the lost timber money,  always seemed to favor boys.  My mother and aunt noticed, too.  There was a sexual double standard, too. My mother told me that the first time she had a breakdown, she ranted about this. Again, I don't remember not being aware of sexism.  My aunt's husband seriously thinks women shouldn't vote.  I could go on and on. There is possibly more chivalry in the South than other places, but the flipside is that, honestly, from what I can tell, they want to treat you like a child more than men in other places.  (And I have traveled and met men from other places.)  My brother says men in other places are just as bad, but that here in the South they admit it more.  I dunno. 

 

 

I probably accepted this at about 14 or 15.  I guess even before I believed in equal rights for women, but I probably wasn't aware of the term so much until 14 or 15.  (maybe 13) You don't hear much about it in schools around here, or you didn't when I was growing up.

 

To me, it means that I think women should have equal rights to men.  Now, does this mean that I have to agree with every woman who has called herself a feminist and hold all her political views and like only the books and movies she likes, etc.? Of course not.  Also, someone else brought up an interesting idea.  If there is a job like a firefighter, and, I will add, if they have requirements for what you must be able to lift to haul someone to safety, if most women can't lift that, then most women shouldn't get that job.  In jobs where saving lives isn't paramount and accommodations can be made for women to use machinery to lift, then let them.  In short, there are many nuanced issues that I may not agree with all feminists on, but I believe that women are as intelligent, capable, emotionally strong, etc., as men.  We are not victims and don't need to be protected from ourselves more than men do. 

 

I have heard the term, but I would have to look it up again. From wikipedia, "Redstockings, also known as Redstockings of the Women's Liberation Movement, is a radical feminist group that was most active during the 1970s. The word is a neologism, combining the term bluestocking, a pejorative term for intellectual women, with "red", for its association with the revolutionary left."

 

 

 When I read this, I asked her--

 Me (calling into living room): Mama---

Her: Huh?

Me: ..would you call yourself a feminist?

Her: Oh, I don't guess, Sissy..

Me: Why not?

Her: Well, aren't they..women that have a preference for other women?

Me: (chuckles) A feminist? A feminist is a...do you know what a feminist is?

Her: Well, there, there was some woman in politics, I forget her name, and supposedly she (trails off from living room)

Me:

Are you talking about Gloria Steinem?

Her: Uh-huh.

(My uncle told her Gloria Steinem was a lesbian, though I told her a while back that Gloria married a man--and I wouldn't care if she was a lesbian anyway).

Me:  Mama!

Her: What?

Me: (Muttering) hold on a second (I'm typing, and at some point she comes back here.) There's a difference between a feminist and a lesbian.

Her: Well.

Me: you understand that, don't you?

Her: Well.

Me:Do you believe in equal rights for women? 

Her: (She smiles) Well, I don't know Sissy, women aren't..as strong as men.

(a little later) Her:  Sissy come see about the TV for me.

Me: Did they ever talk about feminists when you went to college?

Her: No.

Sissy, come see if you can get anything to come on the TV.

(a few minutes later still)

Me:  But, obviously you believe that women should be able to vote?

Her:Yeah.

Me: Do you believe in a double standard sexually?
Her: No.

 

 

No.  I took a class in Canadian Women's Literature.  That is the only class I took that had a specifically feminine focus.  The idea of feminism and politics came into the class, but it was literature first, feminist philosophy 2nd or 3rd.

 

 

Hmm.....That is a hard one.  I read Nancy Drew in elementary school.  I also read Sweet Valley High.  When I was older, I read Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro.  I wish I could give an example of a novelist who made me aware of myself as a woman and taught me about the struggles of women in our society, but I can't single one out.  Margaret Atwood's poem "Siren Song" taught me more about relations between men and women than anything else I have read.

 

 

  Atwood probably is my favorite novelist.  I have heard that officially in the 70s, she hedged on calling herself a feminist.  I know that in one book (Lady Oracle) one character who is an avowed feminist tells another who is hesitant to join the cause that she just hasn't suffered enough.  It is as if feminism is a trend for some women and a contest at martyrdom, but doesn't really help all women.  I can't help but notice that some women who achieve high posts in government or academics like to have low-paid foreign nannies and housekeepers. 

 

But...Atwood has bitched about how, for example, the press will ask women novelists questions on women's issues only, and ask male novelists questions on the economy, politics, and a wide range of issues.  I think that if you simply say, Does Atwood believe in women's rights and notice inequality?  The answer is 'yes.'  I remember how she wrote about a girls' group that was a renamed version of the Brownies.  They were supposed to always smile and even had poems that encouraged them to be sunny and happy.  She drew conclusions from this about how women are supposed to stuff emotions or be labeled a bitch.