When I came home to St. Louis for Thanksgiving break last fall, I found my sister’s copy of GirlDrive sitting on the coffee table in the living room.  I flipped through a few pages and quickly got hooked on the idea of traveling, woman-focused journalism —marauding through the country in search of women’s stories.

I was living in Arkansas at the time, in a house with eight fellow students – all young women.  One of them, Ashley, was in my Gender and Sexuality in American Politics class.  We’d spent all our free time that semester sitting around the house, discussing our readings and asking our roommates all sorts of brazen questions about womanhood, femininity, sexuality, love, faith, self-esteem, and sex.  Inspired by the book and by our roommates’ openness, Ashley and I decided to take on our own GirlDrive: Southern Edition for two weeks in January.

I sent out a flurry of Facebook messages to friends from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee, asking for connections.  Although Ashley and I called our plan the “Southern Feminist Road Trip,” we didn’t seek out feminists.  In fact, our only qualification was that the person be a woman raised in the South who was willing to talk with us.  And with little more than the promise of a free hot beverage and a thoughtful conversation, more than a dozen women in ten cities and towns across the South agreed to meet with us.  We started in New Orleans’ famous Café du Monde and ended in a series of Starbucks, with a few local coffee shops in between.

My classmates had warned me that Southern women are famously prudish and private; they’d make my Missouri upbringing seem like a beacon of liberalism.  In a way, the friends were right.  I was blown away by the sexual and social conservatism of many of the women we met with.  But the interviewees were generally receptive to the broad range of personal questions we posed.  The women were also strong, independent, thoughtful, open, and likeable.  Most were deeply, deeply religious, and although their faith unsettled me, I felt connected to each of them by the time our conversations ended.Here’s a snapshot: A gorgeous, quirky journalist made us turn off the tape recorder before she admitted, hushedly, that she supported abortion – although not divorce.  Two tennis teammates from a community college discussed their marriage prospects.  A 29-year-old virgin told us how her family’s harsh religious views led her to believe, until age 16, that having a boyfriend was a sin.  A misfit at Ole Miss explained that her gay male friends served as her chastity belt.  A sorority sister from Mississippi told us that the best thing about Southern men was that they were expected to “take care of” their wives and daughters – by paying for frequent manicures and hair colorings for them.

Our conversations were like speed dating in a way, or CouchSurfing: moving past the BS of everyday chit-chat to discuss deep issues with people from vastly different backgrounds.  As the trip wore on, Ashley and I found ourselves in lengthy, personal conversations with practically everyone we met, male of every gender.  At a dinner stop in Starkville, Mississippi, our Mexican-American waiter told us his life story, by way of explaining his unexpected Minnesota accent.  It was like Ashley and I flicked on an internal empathy switch and started emitting high-frequency “tell me everything” signals.

Our interviewees’ candor was an honor to us, even when they told us things we didn’t like to hear.  (The classic, from one of the tennis teammates: A woman can’t be president because she would get PMS and be unstable.)  We relished the conversations, even when we they said things that didn’t make sense at first, like the Mississippi woman’s definition of “care”.  It took three full minutes of explanations, with Ashley’s cultural translation services, before I understood that the kind of “care” in question was primarily financial and aesthetic.  But having the opportunity to discuss grooming rituals with a true Southern Belle – and to discuss abstinence with a 29-year-old virgin, and to discuss liberal politics with a closeted Democrat – let me get a peek behind the wall of stereotypes that guided my understanding of the South.

Our trip was funded as an experiential learning project by Hendrix College, so our lodging and food – not to mention all the cups of coffee we bought during interviews – were paid for.  But I would have waited tables and scrounged pennies (as it sounds like Nona and Emma did) for months in exchange for those conversations.

I’ve posted before about how I regret rushing through the South on our original road trip–especially since it was one of the most fascinating stretches of the whole Girldrive experience. I’ve been doing an off-and-on Southern series to fill in the gaps, and it looks like two ladies from Hendrix College in Arkansas have helped me out. Katie had a feminist awakening in a Gender, Sexuality & American Politics class and started talking about feminism with her friend Ashley. Then they got a frickin grant from their college to travel across the South and interview young women! YES. From Katie’s blog:

…I started reading outside of class — Reviving Ophelia, Full Frontal Feminism, Cunt, etc. — and talking almost non-stop about what it means to be a young woman in the 21st century.  Living in a house with seven other women, we had plenty of discussion material and lots of other voices to involve in our conversation.

The road trip plan crystallized when I went home for Thanksgiving break and read a book my sister had bought, Girldrive: Criss-Crossing America, Redefining Feminism.  After reading about what Nona Aronowitz and Emma Bernstein did, driving across the U.S. and speaking to more than 100 women, I told myself, I could do that. And moreover — I should do that. I was inspired by their search to understand the female American experience … The book was a great consolation to me, because that very week my plans to go to India had gotten cancelled…

The nitty-gritty planning is just now taking place.  One of the piles on my roommate’s bed is all the travel gear I expect to need – GPS, inflatable travel pillow, suitcase, etc.  The past three days has been a flurry of phone calls and Facebook messages, talking with Hendrix friends across the South about whether I could stay with them, speak to them, and meet their friends … We’ve got two weeks to cover all that ground and speak to as many people as possible to try to answer the question, What is it like to be a young woman in the South?

The girls went to Lafayette and New Orleans, La.; Hattiesburg, Jackson, Columbus and Starkville, Miss.; Sulligent and Birmingham, Al.; Peachtree City and maybe Decatur, Ga.; and Nashville and Memphis, Tenn. Read more here and here.

I’m SO sad I didn’t know about this before!! (They did the trip in January.) But I’m determined to get these two ladies to guest-blog for Girldrive. Who’s with me?

Note: I frequently feature readers’ answers to one or more of the questions Emma and I asked on our road trip. Find out how to submit

Gabrielle, 19: Born and raised in Atlanta, GA, to her former fashion-designer mother, currently an artist, student, and founder of The Stripped Project, a subversive art project about reality, body image, and beauty.

What’s your number one women-related issue that really gets under your skin?

I’m sick of unhealthily thin women being idolized. I get so angry when my friends complain about their belly fat or I see an article on some new expensive fad diet, because I’ve been there and I know what it’s like to hate your body. I used to obsess over my thighs, my stomach, and especially my breasts. I desperately wanted to look like a little boy — flat-chested, no hips, all bones and angles — because I thought that would make me happy. I thought looking a certain prescribed way would make me loveable. Eventually I realized that I wasn’t missing anything. Being thinner didn’t make me happy. All those women who live on lettuce and lime jello are not enjoying themselves. They’re dying.

Anyway, since clearly I have a one-track mind, we started shootin the shit about feminism, and damn did these ladies have something to say:

Nona: Do you guys claim the word “feminism”?

Kelley: Yes. I hate when people say “I’m not a feminist but I enjoy using birth control, not having to be married, being able to have a career.” The word needs to be more celebrated than it is.

Jessi: I’m a feminist but I don’t like forceful, overbearing feminism. It seems like some feminists have this set of rules, and you’re wrong for everything you do. So I’m a feminist, but in a positive way. I’d rather show it by example rather than preach.

Nikki: I don’t feel the need to label things. We’re fuckin’ livin’ hard, out of a van, doin’ things that dudes complain about.

Jessi: Oh also! None of us care to shave our armpit hair, but people make a really big deal out of it!

[hysterical laughing all around]

Jessi: See, and I think that’s cool for people to see. We don’t even mention it or make a big deal out of it. So I think a lot of people all of a sudden are like, Oh ok.

Kelley: Yeah, “like they’re wearing makeup, doing girly shit.” It’s all about what you’re comfortable doing. I can’t believe people are grossed out about something so natural. Remember when that girl went on MTV and talked about her armpit hair? People freaked out!

[we all remember. obviously.]

Jessi: It’s like saying, “We’re feminists, and we’re normal just like you.” You don’t have to be a freak of nature to be a feminist.

Nikki: Sometimes, people ask me if our song, “The Whole Damn Thing,” is a feminist song about body image. And I’m like, “Um…sure! Why not?”

Kelley: There are a lot of feminist musicians who don’t call themselves feminists, like Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton…

Nona: Oh god, I love Dolly. My religion on Facebook is “Dollywood.”

Kelley: Haha, yeah, she’s awesome. But she doesn’t come out and say she’s a feminist.

Nona: What do you guys think about the term “girl band”?

Kelley: It can get really annoying. One time I saw us referred to as a “girl-only band” as our only descriptor in this listings magazine. Every other band was “electronica” or “rock” or something. Come on, “girl-only band”? That tells you nothing at all. You would never call a band a “boy-only band.” But for some reason, it’s still okay for women. Hopefully just the sheer number of women in bands will change that.”

Damn straight. Listen to a clip of the “The Whole Damn Thing” here. Is it a feminist anthem? You decide:

There are some amazing events coming up in February, like an Audre Lorde birthday celebration and poetry performance and a discussion with Mai’a Williams on Black feminist solidarity in the Middle East. Email here to find out more.

Javacia: 28, writer and educator, lives in Birmingham, Alabama, blogs at GeorgiaMae.com, where she writes about feminism, race issues, media, pop culture and more.

Do you consider yourself a feminist; why or why not?

I am a black feminist, though I’ve been told that phrase is an oxymoron. People have told me my feminist beliefs emasculate black men and have asked why I choose to associate myself with a movement started by “rich, racist white women with nothing better to do.”

But when it comes to the issue of feminism and race, my favorite poet June Jordan said it best: “I am feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.”

So while people ask how I can be black and feminist, I ask, “How could I not?”

I am also a Christian feminist, though men standing in pulpits have said my feminism is a sin. Yet, over two millennia ago Jesus was protesting the stoning of women and dispelling the notion that a woman’s place is in the kitchen. So I tell them Jesus was a feminist–this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

How is your experience of being a woman affected by where you live or where you come from?

I recently returned to my hometown, Birmingham, Alabama after living in the Midwest and on the West Coast for several years. I am very proud of my Southern roots, but I come from a family that bucked many conventions. My mom, who loves watching Spike TV and wears a skirt about twice a year, doesn’t exactly conform to old-fashioned ideas of what it means to be “lady-like.” My dad, who does all the cooking and loves watching soap operas, always encouraged me to be ambitious and independent. He once said he wanted me to be America’s first female president.

I became a writer instead. I write to tell my stories and those of other young women, which I believe can be as political as running for office because as poet Aracelis Girmay once said, “As long as we are living in a society or culture that says that it’s okay for some people to have voices and others to not have voices, then speaking is a political act.”

Kerrie: 30, born and raised in Atlanta, interim executive director for Charis Circle, the non-profit sister organization of Charis Books & More (Atlanta’s 35-year-old feminist bookstore). Considers herself a feminist.

So you were born and raised in Atlanta–how is your feminism wrapped up in being Southern?

My feminist awakening, as you might call it, was all about recognizing the oppression of women and girls. My experience of growing up as a girl in the South was very distinct, and as I started to unpack that experience, I couldn’t really separate the two at all…they are inextricably linked in my mind, because of both culture and experience.

[But] since that moment of “awakening,” my feminism has definitely expanded. I now think of it as a framework for all anti-oppression activism as well as a guideline for how to build communities and lives that are positive alternatives to the patriarchal models many of us grew up with. So while at first, I wanted to reject my southern identity with all the sexism I was learning to identify, I am now learning to reclaim and really hold up some vital parts of my Southern heritage.

Such as?

I think of storytelling as a big part of Southern culture, and a cornerstone of feminism at the same time. And I have all these amazing Southern women I can look up to and learn from, who have taken stands against racism, sexism, homophobia, able-ism, and classism.

Who are some of these role models?

My maternal grandmother, who I’m very close to, is an amazing storyteller, and also, without identifying that way, she has her feminist moments. For example, most recently, she took a very open stand against racism in her nursing home! She also fiercely loves all of her many grandchildren and great grandchildren, and would defend us no matter what. She’s sort of a hero of mine.

And working at Charis, I’ve had the opportunity to see storytelling really unite people around feminist issues. I’ve seen it be the catalyst for change, and also the common thread that united people in a room across all kinds of differences.

What kind of sexism did you experience growing up in the South that led to this “feminist” awakening?

I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about how sexist or how “insert-oppression-here” the South is, because I really want to take this opportunity to talk about what tremendous potential there is for activism in this region. I think we are often overlooked as irrelevant, when we might be the most relevant part of the country when it comes to real change. This is a region of the country where huge changes are happening and have happened and still need to happen–and will happen. This is the home of the Civil Rights movement and many other important movements. This is a place where people rise up from unimaginable oppression and take on the system.

This is not to say that other parts of the country don’t see oppression or that folks in other parts of this nation aren’t doing great work–this is just to say that the history, culture, and conditions of the South blend together to create tremendous organizing potential and great energy for creating change.

Do you think the feminist label is more deliberate in the South?

Hm…I don’t know if it’s more deliberate here than in other places. I’ve lived here most of my life, and I’ve met many bad-ass feminists in this region who did not call themselves such a word, but also many who did.

Do you think the word itself is important, or just the work that one does?

The work will always be more important than the word, but the word is a banner under which we can come together, a name we can call this work. The word is a piece of the work.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, of BrokenBeautiful Press, is a 27-year-old activist, educator, and “queer black troublemaker.” She is one of the many passionate, take-no-shit Southern women doing feminist work and making an impact in her community. She is also plotting her very own social activist multimedia road trip, along with partner Julia Wallace—The MobileHomecoming, an intergenerational community documentation and education project focusing on black queer women (check out the trailer after the jump). Born in New Jersey, and a former resident of Florida and Atlanta, Alexis now lives and loves in Durham, NC, where she is a PhD student in English, Africana Studies and Women’s Studies.

How did you first become involved in feminist/activist work? Has it always kinda been part of your life, or was there a moment or impetus?

My grandparents were part of a popular revolution in Anguilla…the Caribbean island that my dad’s side of the family is from. Some of my first books were Pan-Africanism for Beginners, Malcolm X for Beginners. I think my first direct organizing work was when I was part of a community action program in Atlanta, called VOX, a newspaper created by and for teens here. We started doing crosscutting youth organizing work: kids in private and public schools, homeless teens, folks in group homes, at refugee centers in youth detention centers. So I think of that as the beginning for me.

Oh, and we created Epiphany when I was 15, a young women’s writing group that is still in existence.

Is the concept of feminism useful to you as a “movement,” or more as a lens? Is it necessary to label yourself “feminist”–or does just the work matter?

That is a big one. I definitely identify proudly as a black feminist—I think of that as my primary political and intellectual identity. I think identifying as black feminist, as opposed to feminist unmodified, has to do with realizing some of the serious co-optation of the term feminism by the mainstream, along with some really racist and transphobic and classist reproductions of some of the narrow definitions of middle class white feminists.

It has actually only been within the last couple of years that i realized that there were people who identified as feminist who weren’t anti-racist. Up until that point all the white feminists i had worked with understood anti-racism, queer liberation as an integral part of feminism, so i thought that was the norm. But it turns out….unfortunately it’s not.

True, but I think our generation is much more likely to think of feminism in an intersectional way.

I hope so. But actually I’m not sure about that. I think there is definitely a diverse set of feminists who practice intersectionality and invoke the lesbian feminists/feminists of color/trans feminists before us, but I also get very sad when I hear young women say when they hear the word “feminist” they think of Hillary Clinton. And I have only realized recently that the term feminist is being deployed without a critique of capitalism by a pretty large set of folks.

What’s the feminism like in Durham?

Durham is my favorite city in the US! It’s a beautiful place—a majority people of color city with tons of creative people, really great food, beautiful trees, a great dance community, great intergenerational connections, and just an amazing space of movement and community building. I wrote a chapter about it in the AK Press book Abolition Now called “Freedom Seeds: Growing Abolition in Durham NC.

There’s a longstanding feminist history here. Southerners on New Ground was founded by an interracial group of lesbians in Durham. So was Feminary, this cool quirky feminist publication that used to come out of Durham in the 70′s. Even the YMCA is an explicitly anti-racist feminist place in Durham and I think the major space for feminism (by which i always mean anti-racist intersectional feminism), came out of UBUNTU, a women of color survivor-led coalition to end gendered violence. I’m one of the co-founders.

So you live in this dynamic city, and you’re doing most of your educational and activist work in the South. How is Southern feminism distinctive?

I think that the South has movements right now that are sustainable visionary and transformative in ways that are cutting edge. This is true for many reasons, including having deep movement histories and the way that foundation funding disproportionately does not reach communities in the South. I think that Durham is the furthest along city I’ve seen in terms of creating sustainable holistic systems that not only critique oppressive systems of power but also present viable livable and sometimes quite luscious alternatives. I’ve also seen similarities in New Orleans and Detroit.

Funny you say that–New Orleans and Detroit were the two cities that made the most impact on me on Girldrive. Both claim feminist concepts and activism very deliberately because of their political and economic situations. Do you think the future of gender-based activism lies in red states, and cities who have reached crossroads economically/socially?

Well, I do think that the South has built stronger community networks that have impacted cities elsewhere. For example, folks in DC and NYC have used the model of healing as direct action that we developed during the Day of Truthtelling in Durham to respond to violence against trans women of color. But I think that gendered violence, the prison industrial complex, economic oppression, racism, etc. are huge problems in all kinds of cities.

So I’d say yes—I do think folks are paying attention to the South with good reason. But I also think that community looks different in different places and so folks still have to directly engage their own conditions and create what they need. I think grassroots activism and bigger policy change have to be connected, and I think that demonstrating alternatives–for example that survivors of sexual violence can create safety without depending on prisons and police–definitely changes how people feel about prison funding and sentencing policies.

I really want to hear more about your road trip project. Tell me how it got started.

Basically my partner and I LOVE older women—intergenerational relationships, especially mentoring relationships with queer elders, have been a huge contribution to both of our lives. This past April, while we were creating a documentary for the We Are One Women’s Conference, we had this idea. We really want to document the resilience of the visionaries in our communities and to create family in intentional ways.

We have been noticing the costs on both ends of intergenrational disconnection—i.e. queer kids of color get kicked out of their houses and don’t have anywhere to go and plus have the burden of thinking they are making themselves from scratch. Or queer elders of color who often don’t have the same familial, religious or state support systems that other elders sometimes have access to. These people are somewhat abandoned and those of us who could benefit from the lessons they learned are seeking them!

So the idea is to use media to amplify the stories of the visionaries and also to do REPLAY EVENTS of specific practices of resilience, whether it was group poetry, drum circles, softball games, shared childcare at events, women’s dances– whatever practices of resilience they created–we’ll do them again with intergenerational participation, so that whole communities have the memory of this queer history in their bodies!

Amazing. When is this getting started?

We’re starting the trip in June, and we’re finding women mostly through word-of-mouth and the site. The funding for the project is really collaborative…we have a lot of partners because it’s a film project and a movement-building project and a multi-media educational project. The ecology of the project is very polymorous.

Perfect! the process mimics the goal.

Exactly.

Check out a video for The MobileHomecoming, above!

Kate Shapiro: 26, a “queer, anti-zionist whitey Jew, livin’, workin’ and lovin in her hometown of ATL.” Works with LGBTQ youth of color in out-of-school settings doing political education, leadership development and cultural work, is a farmer/food grower in Douglasville, GA.

Do you consider yourself a feminist? If so, why and if no, why not? What does it mean for you?

Sure. Of course, though I have never self-identified as a feminist. I work for and believe in justice for all people, and that female bodied people face an explicit and particular type of oppression. We live in a culture and society based on gender roles and expectations, where violence against women is everywhere. That is, where rape and sexual assault are normalized, where women’s bodies are expected to always be available for consumption, on the street, in the club, in the news, music, media etc. These are based on prejeduce and stereotypes and based on the power structures where the worldviews of white, rich, Christian, straight men reign supreme.

But it [feminism] is not just about gender. i work at a small Reproductive Justice organization and it was founded by women of color reproductive health activists based on the realities of INTERSECTIONALITY — meaning how peoples/communities experiences are shaped not just around gender, or class, or race but that gender and class and race identities overlap. So overall, in the world, I think feminism is a critical part in how we work for justice. And that it is not just an issue or politic that should be taken up by women. That is like saying only people of color should work to fight racism. Or only queer people should fight against homophobia. We are all impacted (and ‘benefiting’ but really being harmed and exploiting and othering people) by the way this society concieves of and enforces gender, race, class.

How would you describe the work you do?

I work at an organization that comes from a reproductive justice framework. This framework was first developed around 10 years ago when a bunch of women of color reproductive rights activists were like ‘Wait a second, this reproductive rights thing isn’t actually reflecting our experiences or meeting our needs’ because the RR movement was largely led by white, straight middle class women who didn’t want babies.

They thought, ‘Our reproduction has been controlled for so long we continue to fight to keep our babies, parent and to be able to raise them with dignity….While women of color are being blamed for ‘the choice’ framework didn’t work for them because its not really a CHOICE if you want to have a child but can’t because you know you wont be able to feed them (because you haven’t been able to go to school, or have a living wage job etc etc.)

So Reproductive justice is based much more in an organizing framework (versus providing services or lobbying) and we work to centralize the experience of those most affected, those most harmed by dangerous legislation, or lack of access to basic resources and excluded from the power structure. So the leadership of our organization reflects that we honor (and work to cultivate) the leadership and experience of people living and loving at the intersections of multiple oppressions. Planned parenthood, back in the day when Margaret Sanger started it in the early 20th century, was going into poor and black neighborhoods and sterilizing women. That ‘some women’ and people were less desirable than others and shouldn’t be reproducing. That it was white, middle class ladies that should be reproducing the nation and that the fertility of women of color, poor women and women with disabilites was something to be controlled and blamed. There is a huge backdrop and historical context that our work comes out of.

What kind of opposition to you bump up against?

There is plenty of opposition [in Atlanta] to our work. And there is much need for our work! The local and state government is highly conservative. We successfully defeated a proposed bill during the last legislative session which was a Personhood Amendment (saying ‘personhood’ started at birth). Summer of 2008 Operation Save America came to town which is this enormous caravan of extremely hateful, racist, bigoted conservatives that come and protest at all the abortion clinics (blocking the entrances and harassing and heckling women that are attemping to enter the clinics) in different towns across the U.S. People come from all over the region to ATL to utilize the abortion and sexual health services.

I work with queer and trans youth of color and we are doing a lot of work around Sex Ed and Sexuality Education, as Georgia is the second most highly funded abstinence-only until marriage state after Texas. Abstinence Only Curriculum essentially says that the only acceptable adult relationship is a heterosexual marriage. And the only place one should be ‘having sex’ is within a marriage and for reproduction purposes only. In GA teachers are ‘allowed’to talk about condoms but not required to. Its deep. And so so harmful. So with the young people we work with we talk about the reality that we gotta ‘make what we need’ ’cause it doesn’t exist! And it certainly doesn’t exist in schools, basic information about sex, sexuality, relationships (thats not shaming, homophobic, sexist. classist etc.). So we gotta make what we need.

How would you describe a Southern feminist? How is your feminism specific to where you live?

I want to be clear that ATL and the ‘South’ are largely different things. We have a dual history here…of the horrors of the slavery and legacies of voilence and exploitation AND incredible continuous popular resistance and RESILIENCE, i.e. our ability to bounce back after being harmed or traumatized or experienceing violence. Atlanta has a whole lot more money and infrastructure than the rest of the South and relative to other parts of the country our infrastrucutre is minimal. We live and love within generations of institutional and governmental neglect, which makes our lives and work look different than other parts of the country, and which people look down on. But to me it shows how strong and powerful and rooted many of our communities are.

Dont be fooled, feminism runs deep here. And it is called by many names. Matriarchy runs deep here. Women have been holding it down in the public (on the front lines) and private sphere here forever. Most of the grassroots justice work that is happening in ATL is led by women, epecially women of color. We might have food at every meeting. The meetings might happen on the porch or in the home, or over pie and tea. But don’t be fooled. We know what we are doing. I know feminists of all shapes, sizes, ages, genders, abilities and colors here in ATL. You better watch out for some Southern Feminists, boy…cause we gonna tell it like it is. It doesn’t mean we won’t feed you first. With most of the ‘feminists’ I know it is built into our worldview….because feminism is a set of basic priniciples, working for justice, making it sustainable, sharing stories and experiences and taking care of each other in the process….and if there is anything that Southern folks know how to do — ’cause we have been doing it for so damn long–that is to take care of each other.