Born in 1957, raised in the Sixties and Seventies.

I never accepted the premise that men/boys could do some things (or all things) that women/girls couldn't or shouldn't.

I attended a women's college and got leadership skills without any gender discrimination. If anything, I had to fight other women who wanted to be arrested little girls who wanted to get married and taken care of.

If I had to find one arbitrary moment that was my first "aha" moment, it was arguing with my parents about my brother getting cool erector sets and tools and stuff for Christmas while I got blouses and dolls. (Home movie of me at 18 months in an apron and with a carpet sweeper. NOT adorable . . . . )

I received Barbies and Barbie's Townhouse from an aunt when I was little, and I was like, what the heck??? Ewwwww!

I think it was reading Marilyn French's "The Women's Room" at an impressionable age and thinking, "Holy Cow! You mean you DON'T just live happily ever after???"

I think that being told that I couldn't play with certain toys, wear certain clothes, act in certain ways because I was a girl made me question gender roles at a very early age. I didn't go to a women's college but I went to a very progressive college where gender discrimination was minimal.

really never considered anything else. Dad wanted me to study law from VERY early on, and I seemed to have an interest. I recall reading a contract he was drafting, when I was in high school or earlier, questioning something, which he then corrected. 'Small' things?

Born in '45, and went on to attend first, I think, conference for Women in the Law, in Carolina, w law school classmates. We were among the early wave.

Was that at Chapel Hill?

Imagine that?

And Sarah Weddington, counsel for 'Jane Roe,' spoke!

Agency shut down, area of expertise expired, now too old. Thought of teaching little kids, until daughters have their own, but don't think its practical.

Definitely a lawyer's mind here, probably inherited.

I'm signed up to represent indigent parents get their kids back from Child Protection. Last week, I stopped five kids from being adopted.

Not admitted locally, tho.

Last edited Fri Jun 29, 2012, 03:01 PM - Edit history (1)

Even though this was several years after Title IX was passed, the girls' field hockey team had to practice on an uneven patch of gravel on the back side of the school, half the size of a reg field, with no grass, goals, lines, anything. The boys' soccer team got to use both practice fields, because they were the boys and more important. We were actually told this by the principal. This was a public school middle school. The school was breaking Federal law, but we didn't know that. We just excepted it, even though it wasn't fair and it made us angry.

One girl's uncle, however, DID know the principal was breaking Title IX, and raised Holy Hell about it after the principal basically tossed him out of his office. He called the paper, went to the school board, and talked about it to everyone. When we all realized we had a LEGAL AND MORAL RIGHT to have the same rights as the boys, we got our parents involved, too, and we were given one of the practice fields.

The boys' coach, one of our teachers, thought this wasn't fair, and said so to the boys, which caused harassment of us in class and at practice. The teacher was ultimately fired. But not the principal, of course.

I don;t want to give a name for privacy purposes, but one of the girls who was a grade under me was one two US Women's Olympic field hockey teams. The truth.

In my case, it was so long ago I honestly don't remember. It's certainly been for most of my adult life. I proudly bought the first issue of MS magazine, anyway.

But I can tell you the moment my feminism was cemented for all time. I had just got off a bus after work, and was walking in front of two men who'd also got off at the same stop. One man was complaining to the other about working women taking jobs from men, and said, "They can always get a man to support them."

I so much wanted to tell him that I was 20-something years old, and hadn't had a man to support me since my father died when I was 10. I bit my tongue because I was tired and just wanted to get home - but I knew I had to speak up every chance I got after that.

(For the record, I am now 66 years old, and still have never had a man support me since my father died.)

I recall calling it 'THE magazine,' when someone asked what I'd bought!
67 now! Happy Birthdays to us!

I was 11, and the word 'feminist' had never crossed my awareness. Mom had a hysterectomy and was going to be out of commission for a while, so Dad temporarily pulled me out of school and cancelled my after-school activities so that I could do housework, cook meals, and watch my younger siblings. I asked why my older brother got to stay in school and continue with baseball and scouting instead of helping me with my expanded chores, and Dad's instant reply was, "He's a boy."


-

Last edited Fri Jun 29, 2012, 01:56 PM - Edit history (1)

My "best friend" was a girl named Myra. My neighbors (adults) thought it strange that I would choose a girl as my preferred playmate. (Note: we never had sex. )

Later on, (70's?) I got expansive at a family holiday gathering when my cousin gave her son a model space station, and gave her daughter a set of house cleaning tools. I went "berserk." I got very demonstrative before the whole family. They still talk to me, and over the years they agreed with me more.

--imm

First she taught us basic logic then used that to destroy everything we thought we knew about sex roles

I was 3 years old and it was 1947. I never took the doll out of the box.

Everything changed after that Christmas as my Dad became involved in picking out my presents while my Mother continued to buy the traditional gender choices for my siblings. So after that I always got both traditional boy and girl things.

About 15 years ago my parents were down-sizing and they brought me a bunch of stuff, including Betsy. Her face and body had melted. I lifted her out of the box for the very first time. She fell apart. We all laughed until we cried.

My brother was in cub scout on up, and I also started playing soccer against guys when I was six.

I was really mad that I couldn't join boy scouts...

were given even though we paid the same price. The reason...males need more food. When I complained, the policy was changed.

At my elementary school in the mid-1960s girls weren't allowed to wear pants to school. We had to wear skirts or dresses. Skirts were short then, too. It made it difficult to play outside. We wore tights under our skirts, but if we fell down on the blacktop that covered the entire playground we got skinned knees and ruined tights. On really snowy days we were allowed to wear pants to school under our skirts and take them off when we were in the classroom. The boys could wear anything they wanted. It made me mad.

In middle school girls took Home Economics and boys took Shop. I wanted to take Shop. I was interested in carpentry and I wanted to learn how to use all those nifty power tools and machines. I asked the principal if I could take Shop instead but he said no, it was only for boys. I saw the boys take home the spice racks they had made for their moms. Some of them were really badly made. I knew that I could have made a much better spice rack. I did appreciate learning to sew and cook in Home Ec. Everybody should learn all those skills.

A more recent memory. I served on the board of a not-for-profit organization when I was in my early 40s. I noticed that when I made suggestions or comments I was often ignored by the male members of the board, but when a man said the exact same thing minutes later - without acknowledging that I had just said the same thing - everybody would nod and talk about what a good idea it was. Even many of the other women followed this pattern of respecting the men and ignoring the women. I've learned that this is a very common problem.

On the last, the junior staff on one of my projects kept a tote board with the number of time a female staffer's idea was co-opted by one of the men in the same department. This was in an environment where very few of the men acted this way, but it was still grating.
One very subversive woman would respond to this phenomenon by following up a good idea by a totally crackpot one just to see if a certain senior staff man would repeat it -- and very frequently he did and was shot down by the other senior staffers.

The biggest offender was disliked by many of the staff and he got no extra help from anyone in an organization where the usual rule was that we all pitched in when necessary. A lot of people did the happy dance when he moved on.

I have to say that although this happened, the company had a lot of women managers and a somewhat flat hierarchy so it was unusual.

Has always set my blood to boil. For a while, I kind of felt like "why bother?" and then I got really mad and started being assertive with my ideas - at my last job, they all thought I was a "bitch"...code word for "doesn't allow men to co-opt her ideas".

My current job is a lot different. I'm still in Software Development, but my team is actually predominantly female. Everyone works together (well, there's always one or two jerks, but they don't go far) and respects each other. It has actually brought me out of my shell some to have people listen to me and my ideas and not co-opt them. The one man that did try to co-opt my ideas - well no one likes him anyway.

We'd just be getting our "M.R.S." degree. He said that in 1988, wtf?

I have another good story that's kind of complicated. I was dating a painter in college who was hot shit on campus. I painted too, but since my major was in Ceramics, he was sort of paternalistic about it, which should have set off alarm bells early on, but I was in looove. I would do some paintings at his studio while he was painting too, he gave me some pre-treated canvases and I did some little still lives.

He had another hot painter on campus come over to look at his paintings. She was someone I really admired too, but I wasn't invited to be present, since I wasn't a painter. Anyway, long story short, she spent an hour raving over my paintings and really critiqued him negatively. About 48 hours after he told me this story with rather a bemused air, he broke up with me over the phone. He didn't say that was the reason, of course, but since we weren't fighting or any other thing, his "it's not you, it's me" reason rang a little hollow.

He now just paints as a side pursuit and is kind of a wunderkind in the electronic games world for design.

I'm not sure if that's a "feminist moment" or not, but it's always kind of stuck out in my mind.

The break-up I mean.

Where has all the meaningfulness gone?

It was right before Christmas.

Especially if you are in a close relationship. I've come across that A Lot over the years from my observations.

I got over that pretty quick after that. lol

But one friend. I wrote about it on DU 2 and it was mostly, ignored, for my effort. This new group is so much more open and welcoming.

My friend, Diane, was about 10 years older than me and a member of NOW. She gave me books and I would have her play a cassette tape with Sonja Johnsons talk on it about being Mormon and supporting the ERA. This was around 1980. She was always more of an activist. But I did go with her a few times to walk patients into an abortion clinic past protesters.

she was treated as something "other", was sent away to have the baby, forced to give her up for adoption, and then started getting heavily into substance abuse as a result.

And there was a whole of collateral damage all around as well.

She's doing much better now, many years later, and she had a long struggle; of course, this all impacted her life enormously, and it's impossible for her to really get over it.

My other sister was 15, I was 16. We never really got over it, either.

That's how/when I really started to get the big picture.

It was/is sad.

We've spent a good part of lifetime trying to work through it, together and separately, as much as is possible.

Some things are just so wrong, and some damage can never be fully repaired. The important thing for us was/is to not let these things corrupt us with hate, and to take them as a lesson in exactly how not to be. Youngest sis naturally had a most monumental struggle with this. She's only begun to fully come to terms with it all over the past year.

What kind of insane society somehow teaches parents that a pregnant teenage girl is a pariah, causing them unbearable embarrassment and dishonor, and leads them to send their pregnant young teenage daughter someplace far away to some "home for unwed mothers" to have her baby just when she needs as much love and support as she can possibly get from her family?

These sad events during our teen years kind of left all the choice out of embracing practical Feminism for all three of us.

Some things are just so wrong, and some damage can never be repaired, but the future can be made better.

thinking about how unequal it all was. I wanted to be an astronaut and fly to Mars (loved the Martian Chronicles). Everyone acted like that was the craziest thing ever. My father and mother were partially supportive - but I think they didn't want me to get my hopes up because this was 1978 and girls just were not astronauts. So they knew it would be a tough row to hoe. They never said no, just told me it would be virtually impossible as I would have to be a AF pilot and girls were not allowed to be AF pilots.

That really upset me though. My brother said he wanted to be an artist and everyone freaked out because boys aren't artists. I said I wanted to be an astronaut and everyone freaked out because girls aren't astronauts.

And that seemed truly, horribly unfair to me that we couldn't just be whatever the hell we wanted to be. He eventually became a Surveyor and I became a Technical Analyst. I started my career as a Software Developer, where, of the 179 people in IT, there were about 20 women.

and reallllly resented that I had to do the dishes and the house stuff to help mom and my brother got to ride tractors and do all sorts of neat things for pop.

His work seemed so much more fun and interesting - and it was! ;D

I was called on the carpet for wearing a midi skirt. They let me know they liked me in minis, but that the midi length was not a professional look. In a follow up memo, they laid out guidelines for 'you gals' who wanted to wear pantsuits. (Little girls in the 50s and 60s had to wear skirts or dressed to school even when the snow was ass deep to a tall injun) They suggested polyester pantsuits, with flowery prints or plaid on the top with solid bottoms and NEVER the reverse. And I thought to myself, "These guys don't have a clue about how a woman dresses. What are they doing making the rules? Why do they think they can do this?" That's when I began educating myself on the women's movement and began participating in the great Liberation movement. Small things sometimes get the mind to click. This was a small thing that ticked me off enough to change the course of my life.

was so ridiculous for women vs. men. We women had to wear 'pant suits' where the jacket had to be a certain length and the guys could just come into work with their jeans or whatever they liked and that was okay. Really pissed me off.

Reading back over the thread I see that there are many moments in our lives that built up and built up until we really had no choice to revolt. Daddy said, "If you are as smart as you think you are, you'll find a man to take care of you. Your brother will have to support a family, he gets the college education." My boss told me, "You make a GREAT supplementary salary." My salary was not supplemental. My salary was it. The message was always don't rock the boat. We like things fine just the way they are. They also seemed to think it was cute to piss us off. The dress code deal was just the last straw.

They liked mini skirts, but they wanted the curviness of our tushes camoflaged. In my later years, I wore open toed pumps to a temp job that required dress shoes...my chubby little tootsies evidently cause quite the distraction in the workplace. Since it was a temp job, I had nothing to lose and I told them, "When you start buying my clothes you can tell me what to wear." No one messes with a menopausal woman!

Last edited Sat Jun 30, 2012, 04:19 PM - Edit history (1)

When they came up with a reason why you couldn't wear a LONG skirt! "Unprofessional," that's the ticket! Long skirts violated the dress code of my small religious college. I remember days in winter at the bus stop wearing boots and the dreadful "appropriate" length skirt/dress, bundled everywhere except that thin space between boot and hem, which was freezing. And the wind going where it liked, I don't mind telling you. The only dress code the guys had was to wear a tie, which they wore over T-shirts.
ON EDIT: Does anyone think it's strange that dresses come in 2 lengths: up to your nether regions and down to your ankles?

There were other moments. When my Catholic boyfriend said he'd let me die in childbirth rather than use contraceptives. When my brothers got cars for graduation presents while I was hitchhiking to classes in college. Studying the lives of famous women writers, musicians, and artists and seeing the struggle they had. I think I went into music and writing under the impression that those fields were open to women. Music turned out to be a sexual harasser's dream--and although you auditioned behind a screen, eventually the hiring committee had to see you, and jobs you won frequently evaporated for a woman. And as recently as the late 90s, WOMEN in writing critique groups were saying stuff like, "Your story doesn't have any strong male characters." Ever heard of anybody telling Stephen Crane, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, et many cetera, that their stories are flawed because they don't have strong female characters?

And then there's the financial stuff...my ex-husband had excellent credit for awhile because I'd made sure all the bills were paid. I had lousy credit after the divorce because I was, you know...I tried to get the house refinanced to a lower payment after he declared bankruptcy and his share of the debts from the marriage came back on me, but I didn't have good enough credit to do that. Oh, and all the times I held the same job as a man and outperformed him...for a fraction of his salary.

My aunt had the same thing happen to her; it was a bond between us. She was the only working woman I knew when I was growing up. Her mentally ill husband ran up debts and committed suicide, and she almost lost everything because no one would give her credit, though she'd had an excellent job (for a woman) for years. She finally found one banker who did, so that she was able to save her house and farm. She had a master's degree and almost finished her doctorate, but one day when she was working on her final requirements, she heard her boss walk by, talking about her to someone else. "When Agnes finishes her doctorate, I'll get a big raise." She decided she didn't need to put money in his pocket and put her pen down, never to finish the degree.

For all our horror stories, let's not forget to be grateful to the women of previous generations. They had it worse!

and I especially appreciate your reminder to be grateful for the trail laid down by previous generations. This is why it is so disheartening to have to keep fighting battles over choice that we won back in 1972. Your story of your Catholic boyfriend who was so indoctrinated that he felt it would be okay for you to die in childbirth (rather than use birth control) reminds me of my HS boyfriend. We were having sex regularly and I told him I thought we should use birth control. He used the 'feels like a raincoat' argument -- I don't think he'd ever used a condom. I asked him if he'd ever thought what we would do if I became pregnant and he said, "I always thought you'd go live with your aunt and uncle" (in a different state). That really took me by surprise because I'd never thought of what I might do if I became pregnant but he had and he planned to dump me!

You grew up with a great role model in your mother. You've done well for yourself and are a credit to our generation.

I hope YOU dumped the guy who planned to flush you if you got pregnant because HE wouldn't practice birth control. (And wasn't it telling that he didn't feel you'd be upset by the news?)

My favorite protest sign recently was held by a mature, professional-looking woman. It said "I can't believe I'm still protesting this stuff." Amen, sing it, sister!

My aunt truly was an inspiration to me, in many ways. (Mother also had a master's degree, but she was trying so hard to be normal--quite a challenge when the only medication for her bipolar condition in those days was alcolhol, which she took religiously.) When I was designing my house, I looked to the house my aunt built after hers was destroyed by fire--her life sure was Tragedies R Us. Even as a little girl, I thought it was really marvelously layed out, convenient for working and living. I wanted some of the same features. I told her this a few years before she died and asked where she'd found such an intuitive designer. She said she designed it herself and had a small side business designing kitchens and homes for people. Well, of course she could, Mrs.-Almost-A-PhD-In-Home-Economics! I'd like to think that the admiration of us younger women made up somewhat for the scorn of all the men around her.

of our woman tribe. Your aunt sounds like a remarkable woman and you were lucky to have so many educated women in your family to set a good example. I have one friend who is writing her memoirs about the abortion battle and she is fierce. My ex-mom-in-law is 94 and she taught me so much about art and how to appreciate it. My grandmother once told me, "If you can get to where you can cook good enough, you can get just about anyone to come to your table." She was right.

The HS boyfriend was history by prom night. I broke up with him after I discovered his deep feelings for me but my mom knew we were having sex and she wouldn't let me. He also stalked me and cried, so my mom made me take him back. I didn't have sex with him after that, though, which naturally led to him dumping me. Mom said I deserved it.

That must have been a feminist moment too.

she was frightened of everything and susceptible to prescription drug abuse. She started out sweet and funny and ended up a bitterly paranoid gun nut. She was about halfway there when I was in HS (she was 37 when I was a senior). When she passed away at 67, I found 2,000 valium pills in the bottom of her closet that she'd ordered by mail and hoarded. There were many things about her I loved, but sometimes she was just downright vicious. She was not a role model for me.

She sounds a lot like my mother, though her drug of choice to get her to the bitterly paranoid gun nut was alcohol. She wouldn't go near mental health professionals after she had electro-shock in her early 20s. It was misused then, and so were prescription drugs. I've heard many sad stories of mothers in the 60s-70s zoned out on drugs of one kind or another, and it sure is tough on their children. I'd like to think we have a better chance; I'm often grateful that I had more options and lived in a different time.

to have grown up in the time period we did. Also grateful that women have carved a more realistic place for ourselves in the world. Sorry about your mom, too. Mental illness devastates the afflicted and their families. We do have a better chance.

We have over 70 nieces and nephews!

I told my academic adviser that I concerned about getting a good job after I graduated. He told me, "You don't need to worry about that; you'll just get married."

I was aware of and sympathetic toward feminism, but this was my epiphany: The representative of my own college didn't think my education really meant much of anything because I was a woman who would be supported by a man.

veterinary clinic (because I wanted to be a vet and wanted the experience, duh) and the vet politely interviewed me and then announced that it was a BOY'S JOB and not open to girls, and that my career goals didn't matter because girls didn't go to vet school and there was no point because they'd just quit their careers to marry and have a family anyway.

I went home, shed a couple of tears, got buoyed up by my outraged parents, got mad, and got even. And here I am. Fuck that old bastard, wherever he is now.

I got my BS, got into vet school the first time I applied, and graduated from vet school with really decent grades. My profession is now dominated by women 40 years later.

In what? 20-30 years? To being dominated by female DVMs.

We were 33% female. Since the early 90s it's been majority women in all vet schools, sometimes up to 75%. A couple of years ago the entire profession tipped to majority female. But for decades all the obituaries in the AVMA Journal were old white men. Period.

We created quite the stir. It was debated among the school officials and decided that two girls in drafting class would only 'distract' the boys and we were relegated to home ec instead.

My (private, religious) school offered us the day off school and pizza or something similar to go picket an OB/GYN that performed abortions. Most of my class volunteered; I refused.

(small town, early 80s) - I don't even remember what the actual problem was. Something about my schedule - maybe it was that I wanted to take both physics and government but they were offered at the same time (90 kids in my class, not much choice ....). At any rate I recall him telling me that I could fit typing in that hour, and wouldn't that be a better choice? I looked at him and said "but if I learn to type that is all they'll let me do" and I got up and walked out.

When she no longer was a mythical symbol of authority and virtue, but a true human being standing beside me; flawed,... imperfect,... human...

in 1955 to vote to allow girls' basketball in our school. We won and we lost. They agreed to start girls' basketball, but they started it the year after we graduated in 1956. The team went to state many times over the years, so I was proud to be part of the group that got the idea approved.

It was when I heard 'boys will be boys' but realized there was not a 'girls will be girls' to go along with it. We girls had to be nice, sweet, smile, don't rock the boat, behave, and WEAR SOMETHING ON YOUR HEAD TO GO INTO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. Boys attended church bareheaded and only they could serve mass. Us girls were not good enough to serve mass. There's more . . . . .

always telling us girls/women how much lesser we were than men and boys.

How I despised those early years of Catechism and Communion and all that rot. I shiver at the thought.

Dad said it was rude. Pffft, well if they tried being a little less boring...

Well, enjoy might not be the right word. I mean that this is one of the most interesting threads I've read on DU in a while, and I'm really enjoying reading about all these different experiences.

I love all the stories people are sharing.

so I was both immersed in a culture of weird gendered limitations and a family that challenged them.

I can remember thinking that it was unfair and stupid that women couldn't be priests when I was maybe 3 or 4, and thinking that being a nun seemed like a bum deal by comparison.

When I was 4 or 5 I thought all hair bands were all-women bands and was very disappointed when my dad explained that they were guys in spandex with poofy hair. I asked why there weren't more bands with women so he took me to see Heart.

Those are the earliest examples I can think of. They're hardly profound, but at that age That's Unfair! *foot stomp* is about as deep as the criticism gets.