Monday, October 16, 2006

feminism, liberalism and other dirty words

hello, friends,

this is pledge week in radio land, so if you go ga-ga over glass, tipsy over terry or moon over morning edition, make sure you give to your local public radio station. i'll be sending some cash to WHYY (www.whyy.org) and to YPR (www.wypr.org) .

i would suspect that "public radio" falls into the "dirty word" category.

the question, "are young women today feminists?" has been bandied around my circle for the last couple of weeks and the answer was recently revealed to me: a resounding NO.

out of 19 students in one class (10M, 9W), a grand total of THREE (2W, 1M) identified themselves as "feminists;" that is, they believe in the movement known as "feminism."

does this upset anyone other than me? has that word become so closely associated with the rush limbaugh-created "feminazi" that the advancement of "core" feminist issues -- equal pay, sexual harassment awareness, reproductive rights, victim advocacy -- are sidelined?

we do liberalism on wednesday. i'll keep you posted.

gotohellifyouhatefreedom,
volansky

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have run into the same thing with my friends. It burns me up! I have too many thoughts about this and don't want to take over the comment page. I also don't want to embarass myself with what will no doubt turn into a rant.

Anyway. Miss you Volansky.

Kate said...

Here's an article on being a feminist by my most favorite blogger/intraweb columnist of all time (I've been reading her for nearly 10 years now. Yikes! Bookmark her, she rocks.):

http://www.tomatonation.com/youare.shtml

Anyway, I think most people don't identify themselves as feminist because they don't realize it just means equality. Most people really are, they just don't GET it.

Anonymous said...

checking in late, i agree with kate. many women i know simply want to be supported by other women and get away from the culture of the mommy wars and the like yet they fail to identify as feminist. i recently surveyed the 18 female members of my cohort at marywood and only myself and one other woman called ourselves "feminist", yet when i started asking specifics like, "as a stay at home mom, do you wish that working mom's would give you some profs? and vice versa?" people responded with resounding "feminist" answers. at the end of the day, everything is rush's fault.