I highly recommend You Call Yourself a Writer, Sandra Stephen's blog.

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

 I am 45 years old, I live in San Francisco, moved here from a 10 year stint in Texas (Houston, Austin), and before that lived in St. Louis. I was born in south central Illinois which is Midwestern with a touch of southern. Older brother, younger sister (2 years age difference, both). I have no children but in my 2nd marriage find myself with 2 stepdaughters, ages 7 and 17.

What jobs have you had? Please include all caregiving ones.

I have had a corporate career - management and executive marketing positions in Fortune 40 companies.  I started my business career with a salary of $28,000 per year, and ended with a total compensation package of $1,000,0000 per year.

At what stage was the women’s movement when you were a girl and teen?

 No one was saying I could be whatever I wanted to be, though that seems to be the myth.  My mom was very unhappy with staying home, but my dad refused to let her work, on threat of violence.  She was very depressed and most of my memories are very sad: mom sleeping in the afternoons, mom not bathing, mom not getting dressed, just generally very depressed and flat affect.  I know that she wanted me to not end up like her, but she was also jealous of my opportunity, my way of fighting back with. The message I got from mom was: get a job and your own money and your own independence because when you get married, you lose all that. But then she, knowingly or not, sabotaged my efforts to achieve exactly that. Neither of my parents expected me to go to college, thought they accepted as a matter of course that my brother would. They paid for him to go to a top engineering school,which took him 5 years to graduate because he partied so much.

Me, I would never have gotten to college without all my scholarships ---the athletic scholarship was the big one, plus I had two academic scholarships, plus a few loans (NDSL) and grants (Illinois State Scholar) and I had 2 jobs.  My mom and dad were of the opinion that I did not 'need' a college education, and they treated my sister the same way - she too had to pick a school close to home and work while going to school to pay for it all, or she wouldn't have been able to go.

I read "My Mother My Self" and "Free to Be, You and Me" and "Fat is a Feminist Issue" in college, and I liked them, but I didn't really think of myself as a feminist. It seemed like a struggle that was happening somewhere else, and didn't involve me.

Girls WERE playing organized sports regularly when I was a girl, and thatwas a pretty big and recent change.  I got a lot of recognition for being an athlete - recognition and reward.  I was a better athlete than all the boys in my neighborhood and was always in the local and even the regional paper (I was once in People magazine). This gave me quite a bit of status ..and I saw how the boys did NOT like it at all, which gave me a lot of confidence. Title IX was in effect when I was in college, but it was still easy to see how much better the boy's teams were treated than the girls. My softball team didn't even get uniforms - we had to wear the old uniforms of the baseball team. I guess I don't need to tell you how bad those looked - men's uniforms on women's bodies. But at the time we were treated as though we were supposed to feel lucky for that.


When did you first encounter sexism, either directed at you or anyone else?  Men can can experience sexism just as much as woman.

My dad would not let me date until I was 16, but let my brother do whatever he wanted. He said "girls are different," My mom quizzed me about what I did with boys (sexually) but when I asked why she wasn't asking about my brother, she gave the same answer.  I noticed that the made for TV movies about teen pregnancy really demonized the girl, whose life was ruined, but the BOY in the movie got off scot-free, and no harm to his reputation. Even the parents in the movie didn't have anything to say about him - just punished the girl. My parents watched movies like this with me and didn't comment on the unfairness of this but rather supported it. That's my earliest memory - movies and attitudes that supported the notion my parents and Catholic school taught me, that girls bodies were dirty, that girls were responsible for boys' desire, that purity was a female thing, that no boy would respect me if I slept with him.

There was never any discussion of any desire *I* might feel, and of course I didn't realize this was even a thinguntil I read my mom's book "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask". After reading that, I realized the sexism all around me regarding attitudes about sex and girls - because the book treated the sexual desire of women as a given, a natural thing -- but in real life, all I could see was how it was bad and was supposed to be suppressed, and even then you weren't out of danger, b/c you were responsible for what the boy did, do. If you 'went too far' and he told, you'd be branded a slut – I watched this happen to a couple of girls in high school. One had to move
away, finally, the harassment got so bad. It was too terrifying to watch -
no girl had the guts to intervene. It was very much 'better her, than me."

In college I had a professor that continually made horribly sexist remarks.  Once, in talking about persuasive speaking, he said (while looking directly at me) "I always find it very persuasive when a girl takes her underwear off."  This kind of thing went on for a whole semester, until I finally went to the Dean. The Dean told me, while reading his paper, that the professor didn't mean anything by it, had a wife and daughter in fact, so no way was he meaning anything 'personal'.  He told me to forget it and not bother him again unless the teacher really did ask me to take my underwear off. I went back to class and the next day the professor clearly had been told of my visit to the Dean, because this time he told a rape joke to start the class, all the while looking right at me. 

I couldn't drop the class so I just kept my head down for the rest of the year. The teacher, sensing weakness, really came after me. He refused to let me take my tests early or late, so I actually had to miss some games for my sport - recall, I was a scholarship athlete, playing for the school. Despite this, I would have to miss games for a QUIZ because he said "athletes shouldn't get special treatment, you are here to learn." The man truly made my life miserable. At the end of the year, he asked me out for a glass of wine.

My first job, I worked at a famous beer company, and the manager that interviewed me outlined the job at a certain level and salary. But then when he introduced me to HIS boss, Charlie, Charlie said "What are you, 14?  Ha ha. No way is this job for someone like you!" I had to accept the job at a whole pay grade lower.  My boss said to me, "Well, it's not the end of the world, your husband makes good money and that's what matters." This was in1988.

In that job, I continually was called honey and babe. Sometimes after corporate dinners, we'd go entertain clients and wholesalers, and it was common for them to go to strip clubs, with me having no choice but to go along (we'd be in company chauffeured vans, I had no car of my own). They'd laugh at me and say "You should get up there!!!" clearly thinking they were 'complimenting' me. My boss bought me a Hooter's outfit for Christmas one year.  All around me were posters of women in bikinis - that was the corporate wall paper. Sometimes before starting a meeting, a man would get up and pinch the nipple or ass of a woman in a poster; sometimes the men would pretend to screw the woman in the poster, just to be funny.

If you identify yourself a feminist, when did you accept that?

 I met a gorgeous smart woman at my beer company job, and she called herself a feminist and that gave me the guts to do so as well. I was used to people erroneously calling me a lesbian because I was an athlete, and it didn't bother me of course, some of my best friends were lesbians.  

What does feminism mean to you?

 Equal opportunity for career and money.  Equal access to knowledge, equal access to health care, equal responsibility for the consequences of sex.

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

My mom would not, though she has a lot of anger about inequality against women. Unfortunately, she is of the school 'being kept down was good enough for me, so what are you complaining about."  She is all for me getting equal pay - the rest of the world better treat me equally dammit! But when it comes to dad, and her, and attitudes about, say, my divorce, orpregnancy out of wedlock, they might as well be living in the 1800s.  

My mom is pro-life and hates the word feminism.  So there isn't much discussing going on --she always buts in to whatever I am saying to say "I fear for your soul."  Did you ever take a woman studies course in high school or college?

Did you ever take a women's studies' course?

I didn't really know what a feminist was until I went to get my Ph.D.at Indiana University and expressed an interest in Women's Studies, at which point my advisor, a man named Walt, scoffed at me and wrinkled his nose and asked me if I was sure I wanted to associate with 'those people' (I think he meant 'lesbians') and made it clear he did not consider it a legitimate course of study. This is rather remarkable given that Indiana is famous for allowing anyone who has been accepted to create their own field of study, so long as it is approved by a board. This was in 1985.

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

SLM: Iris Murdoch. In my view, she was a feminist. She lived her life as if there were no gender-based expectations or prohibitions.