Women's Equality Day

Today is Women's Equality Day.

I discovered the women's movement sometime in the late 1960's, when I was about 21 years old. Gloria Steinem came to speak at our campus. I went to hear her, because I recognized her name from articles in one of the magazines I was fond of; Glamour, I think.

Irony is my watchword.

When Steinem began to speak, she warned her audience that if we were happy with our lives as they were, we should leave. Some did.

I stayed, because I wanted to hear what Steinem had to say. And she was quite right to warn us; it changed my life. I sat there, and almost physically experienced my world shift -- that famous click. The veil lifted. It was a conversion experience.

It kept on being a conversion experience through the next decade of my life. Now it's simply part of who I am, part of how I see the world. It brings me both rage and reassurance, as understanding often does. The rage part was very difficult, when it was pervasive. To maintain some peace in my life, I had to learn to walk with blinkers on -- offenses were (and are) so ever-present.

I learned about power, about implicit privilege, about oblivious bigotry. About implicit bias. About my own implicit biases.

Consciousness raising, so subsequently maligned, was a powerful thing -- the recognition that one's experience is not singular, but shared; and in that recognition lies the potential to change. To change our lives, to change ourselves, to change the world.

For me, it is absolutely, deeply true that the personal is political; and the political, personal.

All my feminist friends, including those who married but kept their own (father's) names, gave their own children their husbands' names. One made this decision because her husband was so attached to his family, so the name meant a lot to him; another because her husband was alienated from his family, so this was the only family he had. When most people make the same decision, for conflicting reasons, one must suspect that something impersonal is at work.

I know I make such decisions, too, feeling entirely in control of my own life. Feeling entirely unique. I get to make some of these decisions because of the birth lottery; because I was born the right color, if not the right gender, into this wealthy country where even the moderately poor of my generation had food and school.

There is so much we don't know. So much we are only beginning to know about what it means to be a human animal. So much about biology, genetics, gender, intelligence, sexuality, personality, temperament; the old nature/nurture question; and how all this influences ability.

It's tough to imagine a world where everyone gets an equal shot; where each person's potential has a chance to fulfill itself; and where opportunity is not a reward for race, gender, class, family, money, or power.

It's tough to imagine -- but it would be different from the world we're in today, we know that. It might be a world where more men than women are astronauts, and more women than men are school teachers -- or it might not.

And we don't need to know all this, to work toward what is right.

What magic, discoveries, and genius do we lose to poverty or empty bellies or illiteracy; to old constrictions and barriers of culture or religion; to overt or covert bigotry and discrimination? What solutions do we not have because the people who might think of them never get the chance?

It's so simple, really, and so dangerous -- this idea of equal opportunity.

It turns everything on its head.

[Sunday afternoon: edited for relevance.]

Comments

[Mary Scriver]

Feminist thought found willing tinder with me, but I was already aflame with indignation from an early age because expectations for me were based on birth order (oldest), hair color (red), abilities (it's easier for you), and so on. I never focused on "just" being female and therefore was not a good feminist, where I found that there were still unfair discriminations based on who was more powerful, beautiful, wealthy, well-connected, etc. Then being on a reservation made it clear that no matter how much I was imposed upon, these people struggled with real tragedy. Again, being an animal control officer enlightened me about the predicament of animals. And now, of course, we see the earth itself ripped off. So I consider myself a "one-ist", a mono-ist, or something like that and expect myself to work towards fairness in all dimensions. But isn't being an everything-ist just being wishy-washy and indiscriminate? Isn't it an excuse for not standing up for a group to make change? And how does one set priorities about where to put one's energies?

Prairie Mary

[Judith]

Thank you for this post and helping me to celebrate Women's Equality Day. I had a moment like yours with Steinam when I read Germain Greer's writing. Life changing still. Mary, I believe you can be an authentic one-ist and a radical feminist at the same time. All of the oppressions, all the hopes for liberation are linked and built upon one another. There is no hierarchy, just working together to create the just and level playing field.