Feminism: All People Being Equal
Thursday, May 2nd, 2002I’m a feminist. This is not news to folks who know me! But for those of you reading this who don’t know me, I grew up with Free To Be, You And Me and all of the associated equality and freedom and empowerment movements of the 1970s and 1980s. Mom read Ms. Magazine back when it was really amazing, and I found science fiction and fantasy genres for heroes, and studied the few women in NASA’s astronaut program at the time for role models.
My parents are so cool.
They raised me the same as they would have raised a son, to know for certain from the very start that girls and boys have just as much potential and skills to offer the world, and are just as deserving of equal treatment from society in general…
Not so deep down inside me is the little girl who adoringly put up an 8×10 photo of Sally Ride up on her bedroom wall; the preschooler who told off a three-year-old boy who’d tried to tell her that girls couldn’t do everything boys could; the first grader who didn’t scream and run away when a boy waggled a live worm right in front of her face during recess; the one girl in the 4th grade class who drank Freckle Juice on the equivalent of a dare (”None of the girls would ever drink this nasty stuff, only us boys are brave enough…”); the middle schooler that got bumped up a year in math, thus having to deal with social ostracism and mistreatment from peers in exchange for knowledge; the high school science club president who made sure cool stuff got included from local men and women scientists on career day.
I’ve since realized, of course, that the world hasn’t come as far as Mom and Dad thought it would have by now. But I’m coping with the fact that we still have a long way to go…
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