Enjoy this fascinating interview with Sgt. Mom
Sgt. Mom, 1978
Do you mind telling me some basics things about yourself--age, sex, where you live, where you grew up, any siblings, any children, nieces and nephews, where you attended school. ? Feel free to say as little or as much as you like.
I am 55, hetero female, living in Texas, but grew up in Southern California and lived all over, courtesy of the Air Force. I have two younger brothers, and a younger sister, and one daughter.
I am just old enough to remember a lot of things about the 50s... but not old enough to have participated very much in the (ugh) late 60s. I felt like I have gone through my life cleaning up after some of the excesses committed by those who fully participated in the whole youthquake thing.
How much are you involved with kids right now? Do you enjoy being with them?
Not much, alas - but I do enjoy very much being with them, and being the dashing and eccentric auntie.
What were your parents like? How much equality existed in their marriage?
My parents were very level-headed, and quite traditional - but I have always thought their marriage was a well-adjusted partnership. The nice thing about them, was that they did not play favorites between my sisters and brothers, when it came to household chores. We all of us had to help with dishwashing, with laundry, and looking after the younger ones. I have often heard of women in my generation being stuck with it all, while their brothers were free to loaf about. My parents would never have permitted that.
Would your mother consider herself a feminist? Have you ever discussed the question with her?
Hell, no, and yes, I have. I’ve often had the feeling that she is terribly ambivalent about feminism, as she finished college early in the 50’s. She was very bright, and wanted to be a veterinarian, but there was just so much against her doing that. She flunked a key chemistry course, as she used to tell us, but I’ve often thought that for her, it was just too easy to give up under all the social pressure to get married and do the suburban housewife thing. Her maternal instincts and interest- and she really poured a lot of energy into it – kind of faded out halfway through us. My sister and younger brother in a lot of ways looked to me for mothering; and I’ve always thought Mom was a little bitter about my sister and I having wider opportunities for a career, and a career which could be combined with having a family
Family, 1966
Dad with Younger Siblings
What jobs have you had? Please remember to include all caregiving jobs--e.g, babysitting, parenting, elder care.
Oh my - aside from the military, and then the corporate admin/office manager; I was a summer camp counselor, a Sunday School teacher, a volunteer social worker helping to resettle Vietnamese refugees, I routinely looked after my youngest brother, who had the rare good fortune to have been born the year that I turned 12, I am the media rep for a local political action organization, I helped organize an on-line writers' support group, the Independent Author's Guild, and I am the editor for the historical section of an on-line literary magazine, TheDeepening.com. Is that enough?
What was happening with women when you were a girl?
We were just getting our heads around the possibility that we could do something more than be a teacher, a nurse, a secretary or a saleslady, and that we didn’t necessary have to get married. It was kind of heady, exciting, exhilarating, even. The women's movement was Practically non-existent when I was a child, but flickering up and growing stronger as I became a young teen - when a lot of women keep asking, in tones of rising agitation, "Well, why can't I....(insert action, lifestyle, etc, here.)
If you identify yourself a feminist, when did you accept that?
A small-f feminist is how I describe myself: I believe that a woman or a girl ought to have the same opportunities in education, in her professional life, and as a citizen; nothing more and nothing less. Anything more than that is whining for special treatment, and anything beyond that is quibbling over someone else’s dogma. The personal is not political, and not particularly interesting to the rest of us.
What does feminism mean to you?
Equality of opportunity.
What did you first notice sexism, whether directed at you or anyone else.
Nothing particularly overt seems to stick in my mind; but there was this sort of assumption that there were things that it just wasn’t proper for a woman to do, or that it would be terribly daring and non-conformist for her to attempt.
Has anyone else accused you of sexism?
Oh, yes - while in the military, I was accused of being an awful man-hater; I was actually attempting to explain to some of my fellow NCO's why some women did have reason to fear men - and those guys took it all the wrong way. It is quite comic, to think of being a woman in the military - and yet hating men (Gee, men are EVERYWHERE in the military - what a shock, eh?) but those particular guys were not much on logic.
Are you an egalitarian rather than a feminist or masculist?
I'd prefer to think of us all as human beings, actually. Some of us are just equipped to bear children, and some other of us are very good at fixing mechanical stuff, and sometimes those qualities overlap. And sometimes they don't.
Do we live in a postfeminist era?
Yes for American and western women, definitly, especially rembering what I recall from my childhood, and then looking at the scene today.
How much sexism did you perceive in the 2008 primaries and elections?
Oh, by the bucketful - it was quite nauseating, to watch the slime being splashed all over Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin - and the worst of it seemed to come from other women.
Are OS men too nervous to post on sexism and feminism? How could we help?
Yes and I don't blame them much. For about the last thirty years, the doctrinaire large-F feminists have been pretty much demonizing men! . Did anyone read Naomi Wolfe's Fire with Fire when it first came out? Basically she advised us that we have what we want, let's act like responsible grownups, make political alliances, stop denigrating women who do not agree with us in every particular - and stop with the male-bashing.
I don't know how much we could help the OS men at this late date, other than maybe refraining from screeching at them any more.
What books shaped your ideas on women?
In my formative years? I suppose various books by Andre Norton and other science fiction writers like Marian Zimmer Bradley, who wrote about strong and decisive women who were equal to men – not superior or inferior to – but equal.
Who is your favorite woman novelist? Do you think she is a feminist (I fervently believe Jane Austen was.)
Light novels – nothing literary: Rosemary Sutcliff, and don’t know about the feminism. She wrote very sympathetically about men and women characters both. I also used to like Mary Stewart, who did the same. These days – Lois McMaster Bujold, who definitely is, and Barbara Hambly, ditto.
Oddly enough, in my own books, I write about men and women both – but about three quarters of my fans are men! I was trading emails with the senior editor of the on-line magazine, who is a fan also – about this curious element and she said that I have that tough, and gritty element in my stories; nothing soft and fluffy-sentimental. Must have come from all those years of hanging out almost exclusively with guys!
Daughter, 1992
Posted By Sgt. Mom
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Comments
Mom didn't work outside the home - for money. But she volunteered a lot, and usually wound in the leadership position of whatever it was: the PTA chapter, she was on the Church council, was the Girl Scout area chairman ... as teenagers, we used to be rather exasperated by all this, since she put so many hours into volunteering, it was just as if she was working. Later on, she took classes, and became quite good at doing stained glass; she taught at the YMCA, and had private pupils for that. The maternal instinct thing is kind of hard to explain; to my next youngest brother and myself, she was the complete typical 1950s traditional mother, very domestic, baking bread and making home-made birthday cakes, giving us lessons in sketching, reading to us at bedtime ... but it just seemed like she was taking all that effort because it was expected, not what she really, really wanted to be doing. And she only had energy enough to do it for the first two of us, and something close enough to it for my sister. By the time my little brother came along, I took over all that stuff. Someone once asked my little brother who his parents were, and he answered "Mom and Dad and Sissie."
She should have had a career, she really should have. But it was just too easy for her to give up on that.
Great interview. Thanks! (btw, you kind of remind me of my sister)
Mary, thanks for asking all the right questions; Sarge, thanks for answering them so well.