It wasn’t until I became pregnant in 1980 (I was 26) that I became “little lady” and “honey.”
In my doctor’s office in Atlanta.
With little bunnies on the wall.
I had not had bunnies on the wall ever, not even as a girl.
Floral yellow curtains yes, but not bunnies.
In the grocery, grave doubts were expressed about my capacity to carry out my bags.
In my graduate program, the unspoken agreement appeared to be: “well there goes that promising career.”
When it became evident, in other words, that I was participating in a process only women could experience, the general view seemed to be that I was a child, an unserious person, an opportunity lost.
I was no longer pursuing the world and my life as if I were a man, unencumbered.
And then I considered how I had also been punished in my social group as a girl when I acted like a boy: expressing my own desires, choosing to lead rather than follow, letting my ambition show. In other words: doing what boys are rewarded for doing.
These two experiences and awarenesses, dawning simultaneously, made it clear to me that the road I would travel was treacherous, still largely unexplored, and would require a determined will. I found some road maps supplied by feminist writers. I made friendships with women on the same road.
And I signed up on the spot.
Feminism is simply the belief that all human beings are equal and endowed with the same rights by birth.
My son, a new father to a daughter, appears to be evolving his own feminism. His wife’s experience might have something to do with it.
Of course my mother had something to do with my feminism. It took me a while to catch on to that. We think we are blazing the trail but generally someone has passed this way before us.