I've been thinking about elder feminists today, who would have been adults in the late 1960s and early 1970s and fought for women's reproductive rights. I know things are bad for women right now, but if you ever wonder whether or not you made a difference, I want you to know that your fight made it possible for me to get an abortion at a time when not getting one would have been disastrous for my whole life. You liberated me. So thank you.
As an elder second wave feminist, radical and lesbian, you all have moved me with your appreciation, but more, the knowledge of what we accomplished then, through sisterhood. It took community. Women finding each other and working together: in numbers there is strength. Could not have been such a wave of creative action, anger, determination, outrageousness and laughter without our grouping together and fighting for our rights. After consciousness raising, small groups meeting in homes, discovering our commonality and oppression as female, we began to strategize and act and take to the streets. Organize, organize organize. We need all of this again.
The thing is, with patriarchy, you can NEVER stop fighting women's oppression. And the "trans/gender i.d" shit found a vacuum and they filled it. Women got too complacent. They didn't study our herstory.
So thank you, because we elders are often made invisible and disappeared from ageism and, of course, misogyny.