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By Root 354 0

didn’t go to college, but my mom is the person who really got me into feminism. (Though grudgingly at first.) I remember really wanting to go to a pro-choice march in D.C. when I was in junior high, but the idea of having to hang out with my mom for the weekend was too dorky to stand. I went anyway, and despite my crankiness at having to do all the tourist stuff and my teenage nastiness whenever my mom wanted to take a picture of us in front of some monument, I had a fantastic—and lifechanging—time. Seeing so many women mixing it up and not taking shit from the horrible anti-choicers on the sidelines of the march was all I needed to see to know that feminism was for me. When I started coming home from grad school with ideas and theories that I couldn’t talk to her about, academic feminism ceased to be truly useful for me. I think feminism should be accessible to everybody, no matter what your education level. And while high theory is pretty fucking cool, it’s not something everyone is going to relate to.

What Now (NOW)?

The state of feminism right now is debatable. Some folks are still saying it’s dead, while we feminists keep on trucking. Like I’ve said before (and I’ll say again), young women are rocking shit when it comes to the feminist movement. It kills me when people say young American women aren’t interested in feminism or politics, because most of the feminists I know are women under thirty, and they’re pretty seriously into reproductive rights, poverty alleviation, the war, and plenty of other social justice issues. But when it comes to the media, the public face of feminism isn’t a young one. Neither is the face at the head of the table.

I’ve worked for a bunch of feminist organizations, some national, one international. And in the last couple of years, I’ve gotten more and more involved in popular U.S. feminism. And as much as I love it (to death), it still has its fair share of problems. The one that comes up the most for me—because of the work I do on Feministing—is the young-woman problem.

Young women are involved in every aspect of the feminist world I live in—running blogs, printing zines and magazines, and even founding small grassroots organizations.

Young women are at the helm of a ton of feminist projects. But when it comes to more well-known organizations (and places that get the big money), younger women are pretty scarce, at least in decision-making positions.

I love anecdotes, so here’s a good one on this very subject: The year 2006 marked NOW’s fortieth anniversary; it was also the first time I ever attended one of its conferences. Shameful for a lifelong feminist, I know. NOW is a power-house organization. It’s the go-to place for feminist quotes in the media, it has chapters all over the place, and it claims five hundred thousand dues-paying members. That’s huge.

Mary Stelley, who wrote Frankenstein, was the daughter of one of the first feminists—Mary Wolstonecraft.

So I attended as a speaker and sat on a panel about feminism and blogging. Still—I’ll admit it—I was a bit skeptical going in. I had heard rumors about previous conferences and was halfway expecting to walk into some sort of retro hand-mirror /vagina workshop. (Don’t worry, I didn’t.)

A twenty-four-year-old feminist I know—who doesn’t want me to use her name because she works with an organization affiliated with NOW—had painted a less-than-flattering picture of the 2005 conference. My friend was all set to be on a panel, but when she checked in, NOW officials told her that her “title” wasn’t prestigious enough for her to speak. Harping on her title was just another way to say she was too young. “There was concern from NOW that I wasn’t a serious enough speaker, partly because of my age and partly because my job title wasn’t on par with the credentialed speakers I was scheduled to sit with.” She was only allowed to remain on the panel after her superior called to complain. Ouch, right?

Thankfully, when I attended the conference, NOW was holding a Young Feminist Summit to ensure that younger women had a space to discuss