Stalling Out, Restarting

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I recently came across a post at one of my favorite sites referencing a list that, at one point, would have been right up my alley: a top 100 list for nonfiction, voted by Ms. magazine readers.

I was pleased to see that I’ve read seven of the top 10– I have not read The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, or A Room of One’s Own (Annotated) (that last one actually does kind of shock me).  I’ve also read 5.5 of 11-20 (only read the first Persepolis), have not read Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape, Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters, or Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity.

As I read further down the list, I saw many old friends, books that still sit on my shelves and had major impacts on my consciousness and development. These include Women, Race, & Class, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape and Sisterhood is Powerful. I also saw some great newer books that I’m glad to have found, books like Fun Home, Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son, and The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls (which I’m thinking I may need to reread).

But I also knew that most, if not all, of the explicitly feminist reading I had done all occurred years ago, when I was a student or a new mother. Do I still think of myself as a feminist? Yes, and I think the clearest evidence for that is that I immediately started qualifying the question in my head, thinking of ways in which it was problematic and wanting to acknowledge how many women don’t feel comfortable with that particular term. But I don’t often pick up feminist nonfiction anymore, and the number of explicitly feminist blogs I read has shrunk to one (though I’d say Shakesville is pretty wonderfully comprehensive).

Somewhere along the line, I think I subconsciously felt like I didn’t “need” to educate myself any further as far as feminism went, like my mindset had sufficiently shifted, my consciousness had been raised, and that I could spend that time instead on more “fun” reading, not heavy tomes on rape and oppression. I think it’s no coincidence also that my community has shifted during these same years, and of my current friends, I have no idea what they’re reading, in the scant free time we all have. Also, a lot of the feminist books that got a lot of press in the past few years (like many of the titles I mention above) seemed aimed at a younger audience, not a woman with a career and mortgage and children, etc.  I still think of myself as feminist, but my feminist self-education stalled along the way.

But as a mother of increasingly more adolescent girls, and as a teacher of teenage girls, I’m seeing that, suddenly, as a loss.  If a student of mine asked me about feminism, what book would I be ready to hand her? If my own daughters ask me in a few years, what will I say?  When my students mention “bikini season” as they throw away half-eaten lunches, why doesn’t an explicitly feminist response form in my own mind?  And while I think I’m still fairly young, I have no idea what truly young feminists are thinking, writing, or blogging these days.

So I think I’ll take this list of an opportunity to kickstart the next phase of my feminist self-education, with an eye towards young women especially.  Now would also be a great time for recommendations, if you have any!

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