On Feminism....

Reading about Bill Clinton's 1991 presidential campaign has be reliving my youth...or, well, rethinking it.

Once I asked my mom when/why she thought I became a feminist. The easy answer was when I did a research paper about it my sophomore year. My mom doesn't usually go with the easy answer. She, like so many other women, equated feminism with the desire to work outside of the home. Her answer was that since she and her mother and many of the other women in my life worked I'd grown up around feminism. It's true. My mother has worked outside of the home ever since I can remember. In fact for a while she was my grandmother's boss -- weird, huh. There were, however, other influences in my life. My favorite Aunt and my paternal grandmother both stayed at home. My aunt had 4 daughters to raise...well, 5 if you count me. I guess since my own mother was always working outside of the home (because we were poor and she had to) I internalized that choice. It didn't ever occur to me that working outside of the home was a choice...or a part of a political stance.

After we moved out west and my mother went back to school, she would have her friends over to study. Whether she or I realize it or not that experience instilled in me the value of education. I saw all of those women stuggle, graduate, and get "decent" office jobs. Hey, when your only work experience was cleaning houseboats an office job looks like a big step forward. Once my mom got her job in the office at the college, she'd talk about and bring over her friends from work. One woman in particular made an impression on me. Christine really was a feminist and, next to my own mother, my first influence. She went out with her husband to buy a car (this was in the 80's) and puposefully paid more because she bought the car at the lot where the salesman talked to her instead of her husband. This was going to be HER car afterall. When I was younger I thought that was the coolest story and that was exactly what feminism meant for me.

As I said I did a research report about feminism my sophomore year of high school. All I really remember is that I did an interview, which I'm sure was full of lame questions and that every other person in the class did stuff like gun control and legalizing prostitution. It wasn't until my senior year, when in a moment of procrastination, I used that research paper again. I reworked it to fullfil an assignment. Once I'd turned the paper in, I didn't think about it again...until, the teacher made me read it outloud. Seriously. For the rest of the year he would ask me what I thought of stuff, as if my opinion were somehow different because I'd said in a paper I was a feminist.

Needless to say that experience turned me off for a little while, well that experience and then the Clinton campaign. I remember how hard it was to be young and idealistic when feminists were getting such poor treatment in the press and media. I also had a hard time reconcilling my own love for the men in my life with an understanding about their sexism. It wasn't until I came back to graduate school that I learned to say simply, "I am a feminist" without providing some sort of caveat.

It would have been just as easy for me to absorb the "stay at home" narrative, but I think my mother's independance and respect for learning was much more of an influence on my than I give it credit for. Growing up poor wasn't always easy, but it instilled values that I sometimes forget and take for granted.