Note: The blog Fair and Feminist held a “This is What a Young Feminist Looks Like Blog Carnival” last Friday. The carnival was in response to a recent

As I wrote in my first guest post for Girl-Drive, I am very grateful for the concept of feminism because it has allowed me to not have my life path dictated by my gender. I self identify as a feminist and at this moment, I’m still fairly young.  So I am what a young feminist looks like.

There are thousands of us who self identify as feminist and not only take on the title, but take on the mission. As a women’s studies major, employee at a women’s equity nonprofit organization, and an online feminist activist on issues like street harassment, I am surrounded by strong women and men who are fighting for the rights of women. And many of them are young. It is a shame when the work we do every day is negated or made invisible because people with power and a voice (such as New York Times writers) wonder why we don’t exist.

In addition to the negation of the work of young feminists, I am frustrated by the obsession with rumination about whether or not people use the term feminist. Does it really matter if someone calls themselves a feminist if they support and actively work for women’s rights? Why waste time squabbling about titles when we have the same goals?To expand on that, let me share my experiences from the National Conference for College Women Student Leaders, a conference cosponsored by my employer AAUW each June. Five hundred college women from around the country (as well as a handful of international students) come together to network and learn how to be better leaders on their campus (photo to the right).

In the opening session, all attendees can stand up or sit down if they agree with various statements. Microphone-spotters help a few of the women share their reason why they have that stance. I’ve attended this session for the last three years and one of the questions always is, “Do you identify as a feminist?”

Each year only about half or a little over half of the room stands up. I learn the most from those who say they do not identify that way. While one year, one common theme seemed to be an inability to coincide religious teachings with feminist goals (e.g. women made comments like, “As the Bible says, I believe that men are the heads of the household, so no, I’m not a feminist”), the other two years I found myself sympathizing with the women’s reasons.

One common reason for not identifying as a feminist was racism and exclusion. Young women of color were the primary speakers. They felt that the racist history of feminism excluded them and made them uncomfortable taking on the title. Totally understandable; in the overall feminist movement there has been racism (and in some ways it continues) and too much focus on the issues that solely impact white women.

Another common reason for not identifying as a feminist was a dislike of labels. Women would say, “I don’t want to be tied to a label,” or wonder, “What does a title like ‘feminist’ really mean?” Others felt that taking on that label alienated them from people who otherwise support feminist goals and so it was better not to identify as a feminist in order to have more allies in achieving those goals. Again, I support and get that perspective.

Then, throughout the conference, all of the women who identified and did not identify as feminists worked together to discuss their common goals: helping more women run for student government, addressing body image issues, sexual assault, and a better inclusion of LGBQT students on campus, advocating for more reproductive rights and fair pay, strengthening self empowerment, and figuring out their life goals and career aspirations. The energy at the conference is intense and by the last day, many young women feel their life has been changed and they are more committed than ever to helping improve the rights of women and to make the most of their life.

It never matters that some of them called themselves feminists and others didn’t.

So while I write this post to say, “hey, young feminists are everywhere and we do exist,” I also write it to say, “I’ve never met a young woman who wasn’t interested and engaged in some women’s rights issue and improving the opportunities and happiness of women.” So if the question, “Where are all the young feminists?” was expanded to ask, “Where are all the young people who care about women’s issues, women’s rights?” the answer would be much more obvious, because they are everywhere you look.

My older sister was born with severe disabilities and because of her, my parents raised me to be sensitive to the needs of those who are discriminated against and treated unfairly and to not be afraid to stand up for human rights.

It took me a while to realize that I was part of a group that faces discrimination, too: sex discrimination.

I was raised in a Mormon household. When I was growing up, a high-ranking church leader declared feminists to be one of the three biggest threats to the church (and to families). While my parents were in many ways open-minded for Mormons, the anti-feminist beliefs of our religion were still part of the context for my upbringing. For example, I was not given a middle name because I was supposed to marry, take my husband’s last name, and turn my birth last name into a middle one. I was expected to have children, probably not work outside the home unless circumstances required it, and obey my husband.

Fortunately, I was raised in various states outside the Mormon stronghold of Utah, so I saw other ways to live. By my early teenage years, I was questioning the gender roles and restrictions I was increasingly being forced into. I did not delve into feminism, however, until I chose to leave the religion at age 17.

For me, feminism has come to mean that women can and should have the same opportunities to live and thrive that men have (though of course both women and men can face other forms of oppression that prevent this). Feminism means people should not have their life stifled or dictated by their gender or sex.  Women and men are equally intelligent, capable, and worthy of respect and so the laws, societal attitudes and customs, and division of labor should reflect this.

For several years I thought my life’s mission would focus on helping persons with disabilities, but my older sister’s death has left me emotionally incapable of this; I miss her too much. In high school I thought I would become an architect and in college, an historian. But then during college, volunteer work with domestic violence centers, summer internships with women’s nonprofits, and women’s studies classes led me to another path.

Today I work as a program manager for AAUW, one of the oldest and largest women’s organizations in the country. I volunteer with RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. And I spend a lot of my free time addressing women’s unequal access to public spaces through my website and blog Stop Street Harassment (you can share your story for inclusion on the blog). This month my first book Stop Street Harassment: Making Public Places Safe and Welcoming for Women, is available.

I’m 27 and I have most of my career ahead of me. I don’t know if I always will devote my full time to feminist causes. But I do know that feminism helped save my life by opening up the number of paths I could take and ensuring that my sex would not determine my destiny. And for that I am grateful.

The moment I read about this project, I thought of Girldrive. It’s a way to let people speak for themselves, and to treat geography as a character all its own. It’s meant to really get the stories of the local people and activists on the ground–as Farai puts it, it’s not “your typical horserace reporting.” And by including voices that people don’t normally hear on public radio, the project seeks to expand radio to a younger, more diverse audience.

I’ll post updates as I go along…more soon!

This past Saturday, I participated in Chicago’s Bughouse Square Debates, an annual event where authors, thinkers, and activists stand on literal soapboxes and, amid heckling crowds, argue a point in 15 minutes. My topic was, “Is there such a thing as a conservative feminist?” tied to Sarah Palin’s heartsinking claiming of the F word in recent months.* I went into the event pretty sure of my nuanced point of view–that people can be personally anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage, anti-premarital sex, etc. but there’s no reason they can’t be feminists if they don’t actively impose their personal views on anyone else through legislation or policy.**

At one point, though, my “nuanced view” went to shit.

I came prepared to tell the story of Lauren, whom we met on Girldrive, a midwife who was determined to give power back to the woman in the birthing process, but who was vehemently anti-abortion and, at 23, was saving herself for marriage. Or the story of Katharine, who was a nun-to-be, and who called nuns the “ultimate feminists” because they shunned trivial materialism and devoted their lives to altruism.

I was all set to say that feminism is a negotiation, a constant struggle between the personal and the political, between convention and the future, and between universal human rights and partisan positions. That it was fucked up to leave conservative women out of the conversation, especially if they felt torn between their family’s traditions and their own reality. And then I was going to add a simple caveat: that capitalism needs to be humanized, that business needed to be regulated, in order to break down structural sexism.

I was a few minutes into the debate when a heckler cried, “But what if Lauren votes? What if Katharine gives money to a pro-business Republican’s campaign? What then?”

Fuck.

The heckler was right. Was I saying that a conservative woman could be a feminist, as long as she wasn’t politically active? It sounded bad–the feminist equivalent of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

I struggled to explain. “Perhaps these women will push Republicans, and conservative politicians, to adopt more moderate positions. Perhaps their social values would help in some way, despite their fiscal views.”

But that didn’t sound right either, especially since I was about to explain how it’s nearly impossible to be completely, 100% pro-capitalism and also being a feminist. While some Feministe readers might be nodding their heads in agreement, this claim is far from obvious in the national conversation about feminism. For years, women’s rights activists have argued for more inclusion in the corporate world. There’s the iconic image of the 1980s business woman in shoulder pads and a power suit. Women entrepreneurs like Oprah are held up as feminist victories. Self-made female millionaires encourage other women to be economically independent, and blaze their own trail and not depend on men. Hanna Rosin described a typical Tea Party mama as an “übercompetent CEO, monitoring with vigilance her own family bank account, the local school bank account, and, as a natural extension, the nation’s.”

But there’s a difference between arguing for equality in capitalism, and trying to change our economic system as we know it. Feminism isn’t only about equality; it’s about believing that you can alter the status quo, and feminism has deep historical connections with socialism/Marxism/anarchism.

In a (very small) nutshell: the two opposing forces here are big government and the free market. A pro-business stance is pretty much always part of a Republican platform, undisputed. The Tea Party’s bread and butter is appealing to people who have lower-taxes, less-government, let-the-poor-fend-for-themselves mentalities. And so if you push for more corporate power, and less government spending, you’ll inevitably be cutting social programs and widening the pay gap. And the people who will be hurting the most is women and their families, and poor people and minorities and the disabled and pretty much everyone who’s not white, male and rich.

This connection isn’t news for readers of Feministe. This isn’t even news to mainstream feminists: they publicly endorse the lesser of two evils in this sense–the Democrats–although given the fiscal history of the Dems in the last 30 years, it’s pretty hard to even make that argument. But it dawned on me, as I stood on that soapbox: In 2010, feminists are afraid to talk about capitalism–specifically capitalism as it stands now–as anything less than a given. To them, it’s as futile a fight as trying to paint the sky green. Consider the recent back-and-forth about whether Sarah Palin is a feminist. Sure, she’s actively anti-abortion and cut funding for teenage moms and made women pay for their own rape kits. But she’s also the Tea Party’s patron saint–and given what they stand for economically, that alone should be a dealbreaker. Shouldn’t it?

Why haven’t mainstream progressives come out and said it? At some point, one’s views on social issues are not enough–that it’s simply not feminist to ignore or scorn the poor. It’s simply not feminist to put business in charge of running our country, or prevent people (women) from organizing so they can provide a living wage for their families. Seems simple, but it’s not really being said.

And how many Republicans are in favor of regulating businesses, of strengthening unions, of raising the minimum wage, of pouring money into social programs? Virtually none. As Ann Friedman pointed out yesterday, the new rush of women-headed conservatism involves all this mommy rhetoric, but in terms of policies helping working families, we hear either radio silence or opposition to spending. As she points out:

Where do these candidates stand on children’s health insurance? On family-leave policies? On consumer product safety? On early childhood education? We can make some inferences based on their anti-government talking points, but their campaigns don’t even touch on these issues. When they do weigh in, they offer opposition, not solutions. They’re against “Obamacare.” Against cap-and-trade. Against spending. The campaign website of Sharron Angle, the extreme right-wing challenger to Harry Reid in Nevada, was recently scrubbed of calls to completely abolish the Department of Education.

Let’s call these positions for what they are: a blind, religious devotion to corporations. An unwillingness to re-imagine capitalism.

I’m not an economist. This isn’t meant to be an entire structural analysis of how class and gender intersect. It just disturbs me how capitalism has become untouchable in our political environment, that the only thing getting debated feminist-wise by mainstream pundits is whether or not someone supports abortion, gay rights or other social issues. It pisses me of that socially moderate, fiscally conservative politicians like Olympia Snowe or Jean Schodorf get a (mainstream) feminist pass just because they don’t want to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Republicans often complain that liberals are tolerant of everyone except conservatives. The same complaint goes for feminists—that they’re constantly critiquing who can be in the club and who can’t. I’ve always been opposed to framing feminism as some sort of club, with a laundry list of rules and regulations. Not only does that ignore the fact that traditionally marginalized women feel excluded from the movement (as we learned last week on this blog), it also creates a dynamic of “You’re either with us or against us.” It blocks discussion. It leaves no room for complexity.

But after Sunday, I realized voting for a socially moderate Republican does no good–ever. It may protect some civil and reproductive rights we have now from being bludgeoned, but it does nothing to break down more structural inequities. No matter what, it turns a blind eye to economic policies that, as Ann puts it, “have, for far too long, been lost in the woods.”

At the end of my debate, an angry heckler shouted out triumphantly, “So you’re a socialist!”

I replied, “Well, kinda. And what?”

*I’m about to use the word “feminist” a lot in this piece…but that’s not without acknowledging that many progressives have long since given up on the term as a privileged-women thing, as a movement that is at least complicitly if not consciously participating in the oppression of others. I’m going to use the word, because I still think it has power and that’s the word that Palin and her ilk have been using. But generally I mean pro-woman, pro-social-justice in general, gender activist, etc.

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’ll be speaking at around 2:45 p.m. on whether or not a conservative woman can be a feminist. I’ve thought a lot about this topic since Emma and I went on Girldrive–what used to be a kneejerk reaction (no!!!) has become a very complex answer for me, especially after meeting an activist midwife who worked at a Crisis Pregnancy Center, or a nun-to-be who claimed the word feminism, or a 19-year-old entrepreneur and bible college student. I’ll get more into it at the debate (as much as you can get into something in 15 minutes), but the bottom line is this: Feminism leaves room for lots of personal struggles, contradictions, and negotiations–that’s to be expected, and to me, feminism needn’t have a laundry list of requirements. But actively working on policy and legislation that roll back women’s rights, and putting forth distortions and lies about contemporary feminism, is IMO fundamentally unfeminist. Here we have a very important distinction between the personal and the political, between tradition and the future, and between universal human rights and partisan positions. That’s all I’m giving away for now…but I’ll be sure to post a transcript after the event. Details are below:

When: Saturday, July 31

Time: Debates start at 2:30 p.m.; mine goes on at 2:45 on Soapbox 1

Where: Washington Square Park, across the street from the Newberry Library, Walton between Dearborn and Clark, Chicago

Cross-posted at Women’s Glib

You might have heard about the Reproductive Health Act. In fact, I hope you have, because I’ve been writing about it incessantly since the creation of my blog. It’s an awesome and necessary bill that I, personally, me, this person right here who is in high school and not a paid lobbyist, have been invested in for the past two years.

The bill will update New York State’s abortion law for the first time since Roe. It will remove abortion from the criminal code, where the right to choose is stated as an exception to homicide, and put it into the public health code where it belongs. Perhaps most importantly, the bill will permit late-term abortions not only if a woman’s life is in danger, but also in cases where her health is threatened. When the RHA is passed, New York’s women will no longer have to rely on federal legislation to protect our fundamental right to choose; no matter what happens on the national level, our rights will be covered.

People have been talking about the RHA a lot recently because the state legislative session is likely to end soon, as soon as the state budget is passed. (Once the session ends, the senators won’t come back to work until January.) Though the budget is top priority, the senators have been discussing and passing other legislation in the meantime, so it’s not unfeasible that the RHA might be introduced before the end of the session.

There’s another layer of complexity with this bill: different advocacy groups have different ideas about the most effective lobbying methods. Some groups, like NARAL Pro-Choice New York (which — full disclosure — I volunteer with and love), are calling for the bill to be introduced as soon as possible, even if it doesn’t get passed during this session. The idea behind this is that pro-choice organizations and voters will know where their representatives stand on choice issues, and hold accountable those who say they are pro-choice but vote otherwise. This is especially important because this fall is election season. Other groups, most notably Family Planning Advocates of New York State, would rather wait to introduce the bill until it is very likely to pass.

Interesting, yes! Very political, slightly exhausting, undeniably nuanced.

Nuance! It is great. Here is something that is not nuanced: the title of Nicholas Confessore’s New York Times City Room blog post on this issue.

Abortion Rights Supporters Squabble Over Bill.

Squabble.

Squabble.

Here, if you are wondering, is a reliable dictionary definition of that heinous word, squabble: “to engage in a disagreeable argument, usually over a trivial matter.” Fascinating! Because do you know what is not, in fact, a “trivial matter”? WOMEN’S AUTONOMY AND CONTROL OVER OUR OWN BODIES. And do you know who, in fact, might agree with me? MORE THAN HALF THE POPULATION OF THIS FINE STATE.

Fuck this shit.

The media loves to focus on “squabbling” women because it is so easy! It is so fucking easy to get a reader’s attention by writing “Hey! Look at these silly catfighting ladies!” instead of delving into complex political issues. That’s lazy journalism, and entrenched sexism. It’s part of a larger social pattern of framing conflicts between women as desperate and catty, while positioning male conflicts as stoic and totes serious. It’s part of a widespread attempt to delegitimize women’s extremely legitimate political frustrations.

I find this article absolutely hilarious. Because do you know who is actually squabbling? The fucking State Senate! You know, the people who we pay to get important shit done, like, you know, the budget for the entire state of New York. And who we rely on to keep their shit together, not, you know, act like “feuding junior high schoolers.” Have people forgotten about that outrageous, embarrassing, and illegal COUP that happened last June? I remember. I can’t forget.

New York’s women have waited long enough for the Reproductive Health Act. We’re not squabbling. We’re demanding what we deserve.