Do you remember some formative moment in your feminist development? A book you read? A challenge you encountered? A declaration you made?

When and how did you first start calling yourselves feminists?

For me, arguing with my Dad was a big influence, Inga Muscio and others straightened out a bunch of stuff for me, and of course, my undergrad degree in English deserves some credit, as do the fabulous women in my life, all of whom deserve as much respect and power as any stinky boy...

and you?

[ October 16, 2002: Message edited by: Lima Bean ]

I didn't attach the sentiments of Growing Up Free to the word "feminist" until I was about twelve and growing interested in abortion rights. At ten and eleven I'd had nightmares about finding myself pregnant with sickly, demonic babies (I know, weird), and I was horrified at the thought that anyone would want to force me to stay pregnant and have a child.

[ October 16, 2002: Message edited by: Smith ]

Like when my mom used to work at the airport as a contract janitor and had to walk three miles (three miles one way so six total) because it was against Transport Canada's regulations for her to get a ride with the regular workers in the Transport Canada vehicle.

In the summer it wasn't so bad but in the winter between blizzards and minus 40 degree weather it made it a little hard. She eventually made enough money to buy an all terrain vehicle and snowmobile but they break down or run out of gas...during those days she had to walk. Some workers were nice enough to sneak her a ride but they were few and far between.

The first time I ever heard the word 'feminist' was when I was about 18 and living in Winnipeg. The person I was working with, opened the door for a woman but she wouldn't go through so he mumbled something about 'feminists'.

My natural instincts were reinforced after I read Maude Barlow's book, "The Fight of My Life- Confessions of an Unrepentant Canadian". I was just blown away by her. I had the chance to see her talk recently and she signed the book- now it's in circulation with some of my friends

[ October 16, 2002: Message edited by: Anuri ]

Edited to say: Oh, because she was contract? Wow, that's dumb.

[ October 16, 2002: Message edited by: Smith ]

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Oh, because she was contract? Wow, that's dumb.

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Exactly. It wasn't as though there were a lot of janitors to give a lift to- she was the only one.

My heart just breaks when I think of her walking as that dumb transport truck drove by with empty seats in it. Would they make eye contact? Stop and say, 'hi'? The days I walked with her the truck went by too fast that we couldn't make eye contact...

And then when she made it there, people would go about their business as if there was nothing wrong. I know this because I walked with her some days (not many grant you but enough to notice what was happening but not able to put it into words because I was about 10 years old at the time).

Something just didn't seem right- my thoughts told me that we were inferior for some reason and it hurt.

It still hurts when I think of it but I have matured since then (with a lot of help from my husband) and I understand that people are just people and it is the systems we implement, beginning with education (real education not just skill teaching) that we as a society need to improve on.

Then working within my class of women and working with feminists in the larger community, I started to realise the strength women have and the reason why we have this strength (apart from spiritual) is because we have to, we are oppressed, and it sickens me to know that so many women are suffering because they are women. I also saw that feminists came in every shape colour and size. While, there is still a large number of white middle class women, just being able to see powerful women of colour stand up and say that they were a feminist was very validating for me. At that point I decided to bear the label feminist and all the beauty and stife that comes with it.

Gloria had a huge impact on me personally, especially "Revolution from Within" (it was just the right point in my life), and led to a lot of other white, mostly middle/upper class, mostly American feminists until late high school/early university, where I started exploring other voices in the feminist movements, which really challenged me (oh, I was sooo defensive for a while against ideas that challenged my very priviledged, white, able bodied, heterosexual idea of feminism...thankfully I'm growing and have managed to leave a good portion of that behind, and am working on the rest), and ultimately changed me.

I don't like labels - they're too easily made negative epithets that dehumanize and villify, that are made exclusionary, even elitist. I think this elitism is something bell hooks addressed in her "womanism" essay, and in reading it I was immediately attracted to how she prefers the inclusivity of that term to the perceived educated white middle class exclusivity of the term "feminism". Truly, how we receive information is as important as how it is intended at its source.

I do not want to be seen as a preconceived notion of feminism, but rather as a human being who struggles to understand what and who we all are, and to discover the best way for us to proceed with addressing those things that hinder our mutual growth toward and understanding of equity and fairness. That's a core value in the creed of feminism that I subscribe to, a value that all to often gets lost in the politics of gender and identity.

When I was growing up, I understood quite well that girls were considered inferior to boys - this was the case in our household - and that speaking out about it would earn you a reputation as a troublemaker. That Partridge Family episode confirmed that nice girls didn't want to be feminists, nice girls just wanted to sleep with Keith Partridge.

The first time somebody referred to me as a feminist, I was very surprised. I was raised in a very patriarchal family, one in which the women were as staunchly patriarchal as the men. I was treated differently from the other female children in the family, though. Eldest child, no brothers, and bright enough academically that I was a shoe-in to go to university, the first one in the family to do so.

So from the time I was very small, I was pushed to succeed academically by my father and grandfather, and was taught to take no crap from anyone on the basis of my gender or class. I was encouraged to behave and interact more like the men in the family, but it was difficult because there were also the expectations of the women in the family that I felt I had to meet.

It wasn't until my first marriage was on the rocks that I realized I didn't fit the patriarchal female mold. I'd tried to for about 5 years, and it just wasn't working for me, it wasn't working for my spouse (who spent a great deal of time and energy pushing me into the mold and castigating me when I rebelled) and it wasn't who I was.

So in the end, I left and did some reinventing of myself, including accepting that I was feminist instead of just an anomaly/exception to the "rules".

I read a book when I was about thirteen called "The Oval Amulet" by Lucy Cullyford Babbit. I recently found and purchased the book off of the internet (sadly it's OOP) and rereading it I realized how greatly it affected me.

It's a teen pagan/fantasy novel about a young women in a strict religously patriarchical world. She decides to dress up as a boy and goes exploring with a pair of brothers from her community. They stumble upon a community of all women and learn that Paragrin (the young woman) is the natural ruler. Of coarse by this point we've had lots of romance and adventure. Paragrin then goes on to wage a war against the male leadership represented by a sqare amulet. Her man however, is a pacifist and stays at home to cook and clean.

In our grade nine class, one of the curriculum books we had to read was "The Diary of Ann Frank". However, only the girls had to read it and the boys read something else (can you remember what it was, skadie?). "Old Shep" or some other equally young boy coming of age story.

Even then I realized that the division was not one of education - it was one of ignorance. The idea of expecting a boy to read a story about a girl was simply unheard of. This was probably the first (and virtually only) book we read in school that was from a female perspective. And the boys were excused.

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In our grade nine class, one of the curriculum books we had to read was "The Diary of Ann Frank". However, only the girls had to read it and the boys read something else (can you remember what it was, skadie?). "Old Shep" or some other equally young boy coming of age story.

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The boys read "Shane." Grrrrrr. Heaven forbid they should read about MENSTRUATION.

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I was raised in a very patriarchal family, one in which the women were as staunchly patriarchal as the men. I was treated differently from the other female children in the family, though. Eldest child, no brothers, and bright enough academically that I was a shoe-in to go to university, the first one in the family to do so.

So from the time I was very small, I was pushed to succeed academically by my father and grandfather, and was taught to take no crap from anyone on the basis of my gender or class. I was encouraged to behave and interact more like the men in the family, but it was difficult because there were also the expectations of the women in the family that I felt I had to meet.

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The boys read "Shane." Grrrrrr.

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Then, i created a job for myself, which was promptly given to the only male tech in the laboratory - who started a year later than i did, and was about half as good. He also got the promotion and pay raise. Guess who was sent to the annual convention.
Not fair.

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I've noticed Zoot that many of the "strong" women I know come from families that have no boy children.

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I've sometimes wondered how my life would have been different if I'd had brothers. I don't know.

Part of the encouragement I got from the men in my family had more to do with ability than gender. I had a male cousin, but he just didn't have the personality or the intellect for academics, and my grandfather put his hopes on me to go to university. (Post-secondary education for at least one of us was a long-cherished goal of his. He was a working-class charity child with a grade 3 education -- Having me go to school meant he'd truly arrived at middle class.)

My dad and I once had a conversation when he was dying... He said he never regretted not having a son, that I was as much like him (at least in personality) as any son could have been. Gender didn't matter much in the end.