San Francisco, Day 3: STARHAWK

Starhawk: feminist, global justice activist and trainer, permaculture designer and teacher, Pagan and Witch.

On becoming Wiccan:

"I began to see the connection between goddess-centered religions and an inherent feminine power, an ethos that society has lost through the dominance of patriarchal religions. The rhetoric and violence of war is directly linked to the phallocentric nature of religion. Religion shapes our cultural consciousness. If god equals male, male is going to equal god. There is an entire history of woman in spirituality that has been suppressed and hidden.”

San Francisco, Day 3: REBECCA AND JANE

Jane (left): founded and runs a porn production agency for men with fetishes called pantymistress, mother of Rebecca, 24.

Rebecca (right): 24, works for a global management consulting firm, wrote her undergrad senior thesis on the feminist economic potential of porn (her blog linked here).

Jane on fantasies:

“I once dated a lingerie fetishist. I thought it was very creative, but the guy felt so much shame and guilt around the whole thing. I figured other guys must feel that way, so I started creating audio fantasies for them. My contribution is to de-shame fantasies because fantasies pick us, we don't pick them."

Rebecca on women in the sex industry:

“The porn industry exists to make money, period. They don’t think about feminism. But the industry has a potentially positive space for women stars and CEOs. I compare Jenna Jameson to Oprah and Martha Stewart all the time. She’s created an empire, and now she doesn’t even have to be in movies.”

Discussion Questions:

Question 1
Question 2
Question 3

San Francisco, second night: HAMPSHIRE ROUNDTABLE

Around 11pm we rally energy for the third and final interview of the day, a bar roundtable in the lower Haight-Ashbury neighborhood with four young women. They are all recent graduates of Hampshire College in western Massachusetts and although none are originally from San Fran, they chose to relocate together for both the fun of moving to a new place with friends and the progressive quality of the city. Articulate, opinionated, and argumentative, these girls have clearly thought about feminism and the issues that are important to them. Here is what they had to say:
Allison (left), from LA. Works as a nanny, a waitress, and volunteers at a free clinic. "Yes I am a feminist, but it is a loaded term which carries a lot of different meanings. There is a tendency to create a hierarchy of whose suffering the most…I identify as a woman, but I am also incredibly privileged, so that changes things. I don't want to fall into identity politics. I have a hard time rallying around identity because of the decisiveness of the very idea. Personal politics don't have to do with activism."

Aryenish (below and left), from Lawrence, Kansas. Animal rights activist, volunteer for San Fran Women Against Rape (SFWAR), part of medical marijuana dispensary club, hopes to work with queer women of color.

"I practice the ideology of feminism, but I do not necessarily identify with the word. Feminist politics are from a very white perspective…the impression of me as a woman comes with seeing me as a woman of color. I am interested in the intersection between class and race. The hierarchy of identity politics doesn't acknowledge the complexity of gender identities...transfolk need to be acknowledged in the conversation. Activism should not be connected to identity politics. I want to look at how gender struggles intersect with preexisting areas of societal contention."

Sarah (below and right), from LA. Has three jobs: baker, photographer and documentary filmmaker assistant, and gallery volunteer. She studied film and video installation in college. "I identify as feminist, based on my academic knowledge, especially of women in the arts. Identity effects art-making…Activism can be very personal, in day to day interactions."

Yana (who declined to be photographed): still in Hampshire, doing thesis work on the Lexington Bar, lesbian bar in San Fran. “I don’t identify as feminist, I haven’t learned enough about feminism. It seems dated. It assumes that women are on the bottom. Also, saying I am a feminist means someone could take that to a place I can’t control.”

When asked if there is the possibility of a movement, everyone agrees there is a lack of collectivity in our generation. Allison notes “Personally, I’m just waiting for the apocalypse.”

--Emma

San Francisco, Day 2: NADIAH

We settle into another night in San Fran at Sean and Nadiah’s house in the lower Haight area. Nadiah, 23, grew up in Bowling Green, Ohio with a Libyan dad and a Mexican mom. She works as a paralegal during the day but wants to do art, and recently had her photography shown at a gallery. Nadiah (left) tells us what many women have told us recently—that she doesn’t consider herself a feminist because she’s not familiar enough with the concepts. “I grew up thinking about issues of race, not gender,” Nadiah says, although she acknowledges that she is engaged in some of the issues that come with it.

The questions turn to Nadiah’s photographs, which are resting on the windowsill across from us. The photos are depicting Nadiah’s version of The Last Supper, with people of color around the table in one shot, white people in another, and a brown-skinned, female Jesus figure in the third (right and below). “As an art history major, I spent a lot of time look at Christian images,” she says, and wanted to revise them. “Does your gender come out in your art?” Emma wonders. Nadiah thinks for a second, then tells us, “Maybe unconciously. I knew I wanted a woman as my Jesus figure. In a way, I identify with the woman in the photo and sort of think of her as me.”

--Nona

San Francisco, Day 2: ROXANNE

After parking on a particularly steep San Francisco hill, we walk across the street from Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s house. Roxanne is a radical leftist and feminist activist who moved from rural Oklahoma to the West coast in the thick of the sixties student movements. Although she is labeled a feminist, she prefers the term “women’s liberation” because “feminism is a state of being rather than a state of becoming.” When we asked her about the future, she told us this:

“I’m more disappointed in my generation than yours. Women my age have stayed stuck. It is the influence of my involvement in the Cuban revolution that you have to have faith in the next revolutionary generations. When I meet with women’s groups now, many of the older women call younger women “slutty” and are very scornful.”

We learn about her upbringing in Oklahoma, and tells us about rural young women she has encountered—women who, because of time and money constraints of this trip, we are meeting less of. She describes how all she wanted to do when she was young was leave her small town, but lately young women can’t afford or don’t want to leave. “That can be a good thing,” she tells us. “If socially progressive women stay put in conservative towns, the right is less purified.”

Discussion Questions:
Question 1

San Francisco, first morning: CAREY

Carey Perloff: Second Wave feminist, mother, runs the American Conservatory Theater.

On stay-at-home moms:

"Society needs to make structural changes [to encourage men to take a role in child-rearing], but educated women shouldn’t just give up. Why are we granting all these scholarships to women if they’re not even going to use it?”It’s an upper middle class thing to decide not to work. The woman at the dry cleaners I see every day can’t choose to stay home. So what are we [middle class white women] complaining about?”

Discussion Questions:
Question 1
Question 2

Our Portland Blind Dates: ULA AND EILEEN

Besides going through friends of friends, we have been taking up the offers of women who reach out to us. Ula (left) is one such lady, who considers herself a feminist. She was born in Warsaw, Poland, and raised in Huntsville, a town in Alabama with many first-generation immigrants. At the tender age of 23, she has already become a lawyer, hoping to get into civil rights, particularly gay marriage.

“The way they taught law at Lewis and Clark is very genderblind,” she told us over a beer. “They spent one day on feminist law. They never talked about how the law treats people differently.” Being a lawyer is Ula’s way to directly confront the issues that are important to her. When we ask how she learned about feminism, she told us that she was very young. “I always felt that way,” she said, “but college gave me the language to talk about things I’ve always believed.”

The next morning, we met with Eileen (right), another woman we only know the name and number of. Eileen is from Connecticut, outdoorsy, and does not consider herself a feminist because she doesn’t like labels—“people get scared away by them.” She is aware that “we live in a patriarchy” but doesn’t identify with the term “if it has a connotation of being superior to men.” Her job is writing an ecoblog (linked here), and environmental issues are very important to her. Do environmental activism and women’s issues ever intertwine? “I think they do in the sense that we are very disconnected to Mother Earth lately.”

--Nona

magical misty mountains, Montana

Portland: SPRINAVASA

Sprina: 22, raised in northeast Portland, works at the front desk at the Hilton, planning to open a jewelry boutique soon.

"I first learned about feminism in school, [but] I never really got a good sense of it. My first impression was that it was an angry white woman thing. After that, the only feminist women of color I met were lesbian, gay or bisexual. So I thought, ‘I’m for women, but I just don’t fit in.’ I think now that you ask me, I consider myself a feminist, but I have created my own definition within it...I thinks it’s possible for women of all colors to work together. Race separates people less than it did back then.”

Discussion Questions:
Question 1
Question 2

Portland: ANDI

Andi Zeisler: 30-ish, founder and editor of Bitch Magazine, grew up in NYC, raised by liberal Jews.

"I understands your generation’s uneasiness with the term feminism. I blame it in part on the conservative noise machine that gets louder every year, people who equate feminism with man-hating and castration. But I think coming up with a new term is silly. It’s the concept of women’s equality that people have a problem with, so whatever word we come up with is going to be turned into a bad one.”

Discussion Questions:
Question 1
Question 2

Seattle, Day 2: COLLEEN

Colleen: 23, graduate of U. of Chicago, sorority sister, art major, the first in her immediate family to move out of the Midwest. Considers herself a "personal feminist," but feels detached from feminist political activism.

"[Being in a sorority] is the most feminist, girl-power thing I've ever done...My sorority sisters knew more about my art than my professors did. I felt like they could understand better."



Discussion Questions:
Question 1
Question 2

Seattle, Day 1: GINA AND BANJI

Gina (left): twentysomething musician, one-half of Team Gina (a queer hip hop duo), originally from DC, old friend of Emma's from her Riot Grrrl days, feminist.

"Seattle is so nice and calm. You don't get bothered and cat-called on the street like you do in New York. That's what made me a feminist in the first place—getting angry that this happened to me every day...the gay scene in Seattle is tamer too...the girls are cute, non-aggressive, fashion-y."

Banji (right and below): one of Gina's friends, Seattle native.

"I consider myself a pyramidist, not a feminist. Feminism is thinking too small, that we should start at the top of the problem rather than being concerned with an isolated part of civilization. I'm not a feminist, I'm a person."



Discussion Questions:
Question 1
Question 2

Seattle, Day 1: CARLA

Carla DeSantis: founder and editor of ROCKRGRL magazine, women-in-rock advocate, longtime feminist, on a first-name basis with many of Emma's Riot Grrrl idols.

Whether the country is ready to embrace a rebellious, punky, feminist musician:

“I am skeptical. Britney doesn’t even write her own music. That’s not a role model, that’s Barbie...But there’s always something new—and I hope that women will have a place in rock that’s not just in a sexy picture licking the neck of a guitar.”

Discussion questions:
Question 1
Question 2

en route, wyoming

Grand Tetons














Drive to Yellowstone













Old Faithful

Jackson Hole, WY: SHELBY

We drive thirteen hours, from the ochre plains of Nebraska to the blue mountains of Wyoming nearing Jackson Hole. We enter a Tim Burton-esque pine-tree winter wonderland, where the sideways snow hitting our windshield reminds us of the screensaver where stars ambush your face. We finally arrive on Shelby’s doorstep at 11 pm stupid-tired and ready for a Swedish massage.

Shelby grew up here, and has been living at her mom’s since she graduated from U. of Chicago in June. Tomorrow she is moving to San Diego without a job or a plan. Her overeducated friends from college are already climbing the ranks in their entry-level jobs, but she has no desire to rush into the rat race. Her relaxed attitude comes from from her slower-paced hometown, and the monetary benefits of living in what she calls “the Beverly Hills of Wyoming.” Shelby notes “I can buy leather furniture later, right now I don’t give a fuck.” We smile at each other knowingly. Having time to explore and not falling victim to post-grad pressures is what motivated us to take this trip in the first place. To us, feminism is hopelessly intertwined with figuring out who you are and what you truly want.

The discussion turns to Wyoming, “the equality state,” the first state to grant women’s suffrage. Meanwhile, Shelby says the macho Wyoming cowboy myth often rings true, men who “drive trucks, shoot guns, and marry women for the cooking,” and who label women “feminazis” simply if they speak their mind.

Nonethless, Shelby has long considered herself a feminist, which to her means being sexually empowered. Her first feminist hero was Veronica Franco, the 16th century Venetian courtesan and poet who used her powers of seduction to do the forbidden--become literate. Shelby acknowledges that while women have always used their sexual power to advance, there is fine line between empowering and degrading. In fact, she cites obsession with appearance, demeaning over-promiscuity, and the general toxicity of girl culture to be her number one concern as a feminist.

--Emma and Nona

Discussion Questions:
Question 1
Question 2
Question 3

en route

nebraska ........................................................................................nona outside of cheyenne

east wyoming

Flint: MELODEE, KRYSTAL, CRYSTAL

The famous Flint arch

The Flint women I met yesterday were BAD-ASS. There was Melodee (in the photo, below and left), a 27-year-old born and bred in Flint, coming from a long line of auto workers (“At Thanksgiving, my family thanks God and the union!”). There was Krystal (below and right), mid-twenties, who had just come back from traveling in Venezuela alone, much to the shock of the other women travelers she met along the way (most of whom had boyfriends in tow). And Crystal, 25, a woman born in Chicago but living in Flint for a while, has a master’s in public admin, working at Umich-Flint, and supporting her partner while he earns his Bachelor degree. Each are living their lives in defiance of rules, embracing the sheer desperation of Flint and wanting to make it different. Melodee is perfectly happy being completely broke in Flint as long as she can change the way people are thinking. Crystal (in the photo, below), coming from Chicago, sees the city as a place she can make an impact in, rather than be an insignificant speck in some bigger city.

All three answered yes to whether they were feminists, no questions asked. And to them, feminism wasn’t an academic concept, it was a political one, an obvious choice. Melodee called herself a “born-again feminist”—a word that turned her off when she was little, because her mom would stand up for herself in public, which was "totally embarrassing...I thought, 'If that's a feminist, I don't want to be one.' " But one day, she claimed the word as her own when she realized in 7th grade science class that girls were just as smart as boys. She's been down with the word "feminist" ever since.



--Nona

Discussion Questions:
Question 1
Question 2

Detroit, Day 2: CARMEN AND SARAH

Carmen outside the General Motors building on the water

“The coolest, strangest women I’ve met have come out of this city,” says Sarah. “They mean what they say—and they look you in the eye.”

They do. Breakfast and the photo shoot down by the river with Carmen, 21, and Sarah, 24, are invigorating. They both go to Wayne State--Carmen (in the photo, left) is in a class about women and social movements; Sarah is going part-time and working a bunch of jobs at once. C and S are so open about everything, definitely self-proclaimed feminists but in a less self-righteous sense than anyone else I’ve met so far. Carmen is this little little girl, with a wavering voice, but murmurs out strong opinions so nonchalantly, like it’s no big deal and she’s been doing it all her life. She’s yet another woman who was raised almost exclusively by her mother, a woman who must have the only immigration law firm on earth that’s run out of her own home.


During breakfast, Sarah (in the photo, left) gets me thinking about something interesting. She’s been working at a bike shop for 5 years, ever since her own bike broke and she had no choice but to ask a man to fix it for her. She decided she would learn how to do it herself so that the next time it happened, she wouldn’t have to go through bullshit. Both C + S agree that the auto industry brings an extra air of macho to the city, that’s it’s just that much harder to be a respected, capable woman. Sarah tells me that men come into the bike shop, and are immediately doubtful, like, “Are you SURE you know what you’re doing, babe?”

So of course I’m sitting there having these horrible fantasies of Emma and I breaking down on the side of the road, totally helpless because neither of us knows a thing about cars. Why do we think this is a good idea? I don’t know, but it’s too late now. We’re gone.

--Nona

Discussion Questions:
Question 1
Question 2
Question 3

Detroit, Day 1: ZOE, VIOLETA

Emma is in New York at her grandpa’s funeral, so I take one for the team and drive to Detroit alone.

Zoe (left): 19 , works at the library, writes and does art "as an outlet." Considers herself a feminist.

“I'm a feminist, but I could only define feminism when I went someplace white [hippie summer camp]…people in my neighborhood and in the Latino community never use the word.”

Violeta (left): 21, undergraduate at Wayne State University.
“I don’t feel well-versed in the subject. I’m going to school at Wayne State, and I know that that’s because women fought for it, but I don’t think the word feminist fits.””


Discussion Questions:
Question 1
Question 2
Question 3

Minneapolis: MARIA

Downtown Minneapolis

Maria (left): originally from Texas, from a matriarchal middle class Mexican family, organized Ladyfest in Denton, Texas (a women’s music festival with many urban incarnations), founded Film Fatale (a festival showcasing exclusively women’s films).

"I appreciate Catholicism because I was raised that way. I'm not about to stop the routine of traditions I was brought up with. I’m going to serve the men drinks when they come over my house. It’s just being gracious; in Mexican culture it’s not seen as being disrespected.”

Discussion Questions:
Question 1
Question 2
Question 3