Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions

I'm writing this review in November 2014. At the moment:

- It's illegal for a woman in Saudi Arabia to drive a car.
- Women in the US earn less than men for the same work.
- Only 10% of Wikipedia's editors are women, 11% of open source software contributors are women, and don't even get me started on trying to be an entrepreneur while female.
- This happened last month.

And so on.

Also, as a lady who writes sci-fi and loves science/tech, I sometimes run into some - hmm, what's the technical word? - idiot talk from time to time. Just dudes sometimes implying or outright saying that I can't possibly be in it for the computers! (Let me say it plainly, I'm in it for the computers.) Or what have you. It's in moments like these, when Dude #1 makes a joke about women not knowing how to find CTRL+ALT+DEL, I rage-stroke and die at the lunchtable, and Dude #2 says, “But Angela, many women just don't go into computer science! It's a FACT.”

Or how many dudes - HOW MANY DUDES - appropriate the “fixed-state” model of ally-ness, where they decide, “I am not a sexist!”, as if it's a permanent state of being, and then get SO OFFENDED if I point out that they may have been sexist that one time when they said that one thing. Dude, sexism/feminism/any-ism-ing is a process, a series of behaviors, a SUBROUTINE IF YOU WILL. It is most definitely NOT a fixed state. You don't get a badge. THERE ARE NO BADGES.

I'm yelling. Sorry. As you can tell, I get worked up about this stuff. I get worked up about it because sometimes it feels like you still have to defend feminism, and that's just ridiculous. Feminism = civil rights = freedom and justice. I mean, COME ON.

Anyway. I wasn't always like this. Recently, I dusted off and re-read some of my 2003 fanfic and was APPALLED, I tell you, at how deeply, stupidly sexist it all was. Big beefy dudes rescuing brainless women, and so on and so forth. I'm embarrassed some of these tropes permeated even my early published stories. I'm embarrassed that I once thought writing women was hard or boring. Wow, patriarchal osmosis!

WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE BOOK. This book is by Gloria Steinem, a 1970s “women's lib” icon who recently got the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Mr. Obama (husband of Michelle). It's a collection of essays she wrote throughout the 70s and 80s, with some 90s post-scripts. It covers your Standard Feminist Fare, from the stupid ways women are portrayed in our culture, to legislating women's bodies, to basic rights and freedoms. It's kiiinda mostly second-wave feminism, I guess: i.e. the feminism that's mostly about white middle-class Anglo ladies. Like, her essays on trans stuff were kinda, eh, close-minded? To put it lightly?

BUT! There were many pearls of wisdom here, things which resonated with my experiences very deeply. Stuff like how women tend to get more radical as they get older (hallo, 2014 Angela versus 2003 Angela!), stuff about absorbing/internalizing a lot of your supposed stereotyped characteristics (hallo, stereotype threat!), and stuff like how it's actually kinda hard to find spaces where ladies can just talk and “consciousness raise”, since - until recently - you didn't really have women meetings up in bars after work to chat.

Thankfully, a lot of stuff has improved. BUT! Never forget that shit could go all Handmaid's Tale on us, especially in the medium term. And while I generally subscribe to MLK's optimism (“The arc of history bends towards justice”), I have recently been thinking, “Medieval period/Dark Ages/oooh shiiiit”. I mean, even techno-utopian Star Trek: The Next Generation (which is 99% perfect, cuz sometimes they do fail on race/gender stuff, but their hearts are in the right place) takes place in a world after a crazy Dark Ages-style period of severe techno-regression. So... cautious hope?! Pessimistic optimism?! Maybe things will suck again but then get way better? I dunno. Read the book.