If you're in the New York area on December 9th, you should definitely check out F-WORD: FEMINISM, FUNNY & FEARLESS! It's a fundraiser for Paradigm Shift, one of our favorite organizers of thought provoking, fun, and (yes!) feminist events.
The event is hosted by the Abbie Crutchfield (MTV, NBC Stand-Up For Diversity Finalist) & Jen Dziur (Williamsburg Spelling Bee, McSweeney’s), who are the co-founders of New York’s all-female Ladybits Comedy. There's lots more info here.
The evening features performances by:
Jessica Delfino, Comedian
Publicly denounced by the US Catholic League, A comedy rock star”- Comedy Central
Leah King, Writer-Performer “Hey, you. Can I get a smile?”
Known in the Burlesque world as LadyLUXXX, her one-woman show about street harassment fuses music, dance, and spoken word.
Hadiyah Robinson, Comedian
Finalist NBC Stand-Up For Diversity, Performances on BET’s “Comic View” and “One Mic Stand”
You can RSVP and invite your friends on Facebook. If you can’t make it, please donate to Paradigm Shift anyway. They need your support to keep doing great events! Donations are secure using Pay Pal.
I first discovered this thing called feminism, as a teenager in the mid 1970s, by way of 'Free to Be...You and Me.' The songs and stories taught me, among other things: no one did housework because they liked it, boys could play with dolls, and most shockingly, you didn't have to marry the handsome prince to live happily ever after. That was mind-blowing stuff back in 1974.
It was part of a whole slew of suddenly-mainstreamed feminism that infiltrated our open hearts and minds. I saw the first single and happy women on TV shows: That Girl, starring and produced (!) by Marlo Thomas who would go on to make FTBYAM; and the Mary Tyler Moore Show (featuring my first role model, the looking-for-a-husband-but-still-way-cool Rhoda Morgenstern). Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in a tennis match that was supposed to settle for all time The Battle of the Sexes (ha). And 1975 was declared International Women's Year (see my awesome poster in the photo) and I went around saying "A woman can be anything she wants to be. Why not?" and stuff like that.
Don't for a second assume I was doing anything political. I lived in a middle-class suburb of Toronto and I was spending all my time at the mall. But feminism was in the air and it planted some very powerful seeds about how I could live, what I could want and who I could be. I'm not even sure I used the word 'feminist' but I certainly absorbed every feminist message my 13-year-old brain could process. It was a way to understand and conquer the things that seemed odd or unfair about the world as it was.
The downside, I quickly realized, was that it didn't make me super popular with the guys, what with me parading my smarts all over the place and not taking any shit. And there weren't a whole lot of other people I could talk to about this, no internet or blogs to find my community. All I could do was try to catch any bit of popular culture that validated this new world view.
Although I still believed in everything feminism taught me, over time I lost touch with that empowered teenager. Maybe it was the Backlash, maybe it was my apolitical circle of friends, maybe it was just other distractions. But when I went looking for feminism again in 2001, it was really hard to find, especially for women under the age of 40.
Every time I tried to talk about it, I got shut down. 'Feminism? That's for angry, man-hating hairy-legged dykes' is a pretty good distillation of what I was told by both men and women. Well, who wanted to be that, right?
Then I found a copy of 'Bust,' and the later 'Bitch,' and they were my first gateways into the amazing feminist communities, many run by and full of young women, that inspire and sustain me today. I made a film about my own journey called "I Was A Teenage Feminist," and many young women stumble across it by googling 'feminism' or searching the word on YouTube. But is that enough? How does today's 13-year-old girl (spending all her time at the mall) find her feminist community?
Contrary to some press reports and commentary, there are oh-so-many young feminist out there and I have indisputable video proof! Please see Exhibit A, this video from the March for Women's Lives which took place in DC in 2004.*
It was an amazing, emotional and inspiring day of activism by young and old–including some enterprising toddlers. I'll post more about all of this in a moment...but for now enjoy the video! Part 2 is here.
* This is an edited version of the end of my documentary "I Was A Teenage Feminist"
