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On Being a Young Feminist
Apr. 19th, 2010 10:50 amThis weekend, I went to a conference held in honor of Susan Gubar, who wrote The Madwoman in the Attic and is pretty amazing for sure. It was an interesting space to be in: the room was filled with successful female academics who had negotiated their own feminisms in multiple ways. I more than enjoyed getting to sit in the back and eavesdrop.
But the one trend in discourse that actually got me to put up my hand and talk back was an overwhelmingly negative perception of young women as not getting it, as blind to their own privilege, as failures of feminism. This morning, Jezebel posted The Graying of the Abortion Rights Crusade, which contains much of the same rhetoric.
The weird thing is that since coming to University, I've felt completely and upsettingly unsupported in my feminism - which doesn't seem right to me. I keep hearing feminist teachers looking for ways to ease young women into feminism, to give the bitter pill a sugar coating as it were, and I keep wondering why feminist pedagogy doesn't ever seem to involve supporting the young feminists we do have instead of recruiting more. As I said in that conference room, we've got to deal with the same "I'm not a feminist but" stuff, but for us it comes from our peer groups. I'm sure that my University cohort all believe in women's rights, but I do feel like The Feminist most of the time, which can be lonely and destabilizing.
It's hard to be a voice for revolution in an academic space where revolution is not the stated objective. You come out of class shaky and angry and upset, you feel like your grip on your own beliefs is more tenuous than you'd like. You wonder if your feminism makes you too oldfashioned to be a good academic. You wonder if your profs are irritated by you, if you're overdoing it, if you should just be quiet and not get so angry, not drag the class to gender when they don't seem to want to talk about it. I've felt much happier this semester than I did last, in part because at least one of my professors has made it clear that she groks and respects my politics. But one of my others clearly thinks straight-up feminist literary criticism is passe, just so nineties - and it's hard for me to know how to deal with that, because hell, if it wasn't for nineties crit I wouldn't be in academia at all.
I'm glad for fandom; we seem to be better than most at forming cross-generational alliances. But in physical space, in academic and activistic feminist spaces, yeah we're not having a good time bridging that gap. We've got narratives going that older feminists are out of touch and don't get it, that younger feminists are frivolous and don't get it, and we're missing connections.
But the one trend in discourse that actually got me to put up my hand and talk back was an overwhelmingly negative perception of young women as not getting it, as blind to their own privilege, as failures of feminism. This morning, Jezebel posted The Graying of the Abortion Rights Crusade, which contains much of the same rhetoric.
The weird thing is that since coming to University, I've felt completely and upsettingly unsupported in my feminism - which doesn't seem right to me. I keep hearing feminist teachers looking for ways to ease young women into feminism, to give the bitter pill a sugar coating as it were, and I keep wondering why feminist pedagogy doesn't ever seem to involve supporting the young feminists we do have instead of recruiting more. As I said in that conference room, we've got to deal with the same "I'm not a feminist but" stuff, but for us it comes from our peer groups. I'm sure that my University cohort all believe in women's rights, but I do feel like The Feminist most of the time, which can be lonely and destabilizing.
It's hard to be a voice for revolution in an academic space where revolution is not the stated objective. You come out of class shaky and angry and upset, you feel like your grip on your own beliefs is more tenuous than you'd like. You wonder if your feminism makes you too oldfashioned to be a good academic. You wonder if your profs are irritated by you, if you're overdoing it, if you should just be quiet and not get so angry, not drag the class to gender when they don't seem to want to talk about it. I've felt much happier this semester than I did last, in part because at least one of my professors has made it clear that she groks and respects my politics. But one of my others clearly thinks straight-up feminist literary criticism is passe, just so nineties - and it's hard for me to know how to deal with that, because hell, if it wasn't for nineties crit I wouldn't be in academia at all.
I'm glad for fandom; we seem to be better than most at forming cross-generational alliances. But in physical space, in academic and activistic feminist spaces, yeah we're not having a good time bridging that gap. We've got narratives going that older feminists are out of touch and don't get it, that younger feminists are frivolous and don't get it, and we're missing connections.