A few months ago, I went to a book reading. I admit, I only went because a friend and colleague had a chapter in the book. I admit, I tried to come up with a thousand excuses but stopped just short of making up something suitably lame — alas that saying, "sorry, but I have to wash my hair that night," doesn't really hold up any more. I admit, I didn't want to leave my happy living room for the evening. No, I wasn't trying to emulate Emily Dickinson and her self-inflicted isolation in hopes of becoming a great poet whose moving words also work quite well as alternate lyrics to "The Yellow Rose of Texas." I was scared of the locale, a former women's bookstore that failed to sell books enough books to be profitable but remains as a bastion of feminism in the already liberal heart of Cambridge, and I was afraid of what the locale implied about the book, the reading, and my fellow attendees.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for equal rights. I'm proud to be a woman and fully convinced of my ability to compete — at least intellectually, socially, and emotionally — with any man out there. And don't you forget it, bub.
But, c'mon. Feminism? It went out with the '90s, when glass ceilings were leaving shards all over corporate boardroom floors and sitcoms could no longer be aired unless they starred a female professional with a minority boss. Burning bras is passé. Wear the damn bra — and then go do something useful while you wear it. We're on the "advance ground" that Susan B. Anthony talked about; the "hard-fought battles of other women" were won and it's up to us to act on them. Not to bemoan them.
And then I entered that room. At first glance, perhaps I should have been discouraged. Most of the women were between the ages of 40 and 60...and maybe half fit a middle-aged lesbian stereotype, even. There were only two other women in their twenties, maybe three more in their thirties. (And more power to that one male in the back. You go, boy!) But the room was standing room only. And there was energy.
An hour and a half later, the contributors finished with the many readings from the book. I wouldn't have minded another two hours. These women didn't bemoan. They celebrated, globalized, and strategized. They looked beyond that which is easily in reach. They opened my mind to issues I hadn't known existed, as well as reminding me of struggles that, while I knew continued, I didn't realized raged on with such force and consequence.
I had misguidedly double-booked the night, expecting to need the escape. Already late, I rushed out without staying for the stimulating after-chat or even buying a copy of the book. But I did take something with me beyond the (by now obvious) mind-widening. A new definition of myself as a lapsed feminist.
Thanks to liberal parents (and despite a conservative environment), I grew up learning the basic precepts of feminism. But I made the assumption that these precepts were nationwide at minimum; that global women's rights issues were handled just as equitably as all human rights issues; that by tilting my hat in the direction of the feminists before me, I was living up to what they'd done for all of us. I wasn't.
I left with a renewed idealism about contributing to the women of the world. It's more than the right to vote, to own property, to have control over our reproductive systems. It's more than writing angry letters about the Taliban, sending money to global education funds, and voting for qualified female candidates. It's about acknowledging how far we've come, how much we've changed the world. And about how much we can continue to change the world.
But, I admit, I'm going to remain a lapsed feminist. I'm still wearing a bra (it just hurts too much to play ice hockey without one). I'm still a happy heterosexual with a fiance who belonged to — gasp! — an all-male fraternity. I'll still revel in the literature of Shakespeare, Helprin, and Emerson, just as much as I do in that of Dickinson, Morrison, and Alcott. I'll still vote for a white male candidate if I think he's the best on the ballot.
Believe me when I say, however, that I won't ignore the pleas of women across the globe. At the same time, I am going to fight to make the world a better place for humankind, not womankind. I care just as deeply about the poor women undergoing female genital mutilation in Africa as I do about the welfare teenagers in our country who — male or female — have labored under the assumption (their own and of those around them) that they can't succeed.
So here's a rallying cry for lapsed feminists everywhere: Acknowledge our past and look the future! There's no reason we can't change the world. Too many people (women and men) have come before us and changed it. Now's our chance. Let's seize the power that we were given, find something positive to do, and make something of ourselves.