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.
Thank you for saying that. I fought hard starting in 1970. I was 20 years old and terrified of getting pregnant so It wasn't all selfless but I'm really proud that I was part of all of that. We also fought for all kinds of financial rights. And we won. There was a time when the next wave made fun of us and wanted nothing to do with us, I'm glad that is changing. I'm so sorry abortion is gone. You will all have to fight to get it back. This is the worst thing that could have happened to women. If you cannot control what happens to your body, you cannot control your own life.
Also....
Dear Elder Feminists,
We're sorry we took our rights for granted and allowed western feminism to go to shit. You fought so hard and risked so much. We should have done more to protect and preserve it. We are so sorry.
Love this.
Dear Elder Feminists,
In addition to what my sisters have said here, thank you too for the DV shelters and the Rape Crisis support centers and hotlines. Thank you to the elder feminist therapists who listened to their patients more than the theories written down by your male teachers and uncovered that incest was excruciatingly common and not a 1 in a million anomaly or female fantasy.
Thank you for helping me see through the lies of beauty industry. And thank you for letting me grow up in the world where it wasn't automatically assumed what I would do with my life, just because I was a woman.
"Thank you to the elder feminist therapists who listened to their patients more than the theories written down by your male teachers and uncovered that incest was excruciatingly common and not a 1 in a million anomaly or female fantasy."
That is so disturbing that the latter was assumed based on the sex of the "great men" and therapists at the time. It brings to mind the fact that there are multiple symptoms of ovarian cancer in the earlier stages, and this was not commonly known until about 20 years ago because when women told their doctors, the doctors would reply that this was impossible because the textbooks said it was impossible, and the textbooks would say its was impossible because doctors would not report it because they assumed it was impossible because the textbooks said... etc...
Thank you for giving me a childhood that taught me that I didn't have to conform to what a girl was.
I'm sorry that my generation didn't fight harder to keep the bullshit from happening.
Yes, I thank you for this as well. AND I’m sorry that as an initial young third-wave feminist I dismissed some of your worries and concerns, nearly all of which have turned out as predicted.
I was thinking the other day how being in a STEM field I've been treated quite well. I haven't faced any overt sexism and everyone is so respectful and kind to me. Then I remember to thank the badass women who came before me paving the way and letting me dedicate my life to something that makes me happy and productive. I love women so much 💕
I'm sorry I didn't help you more. I marched for Morgantaler in Canada, and thought whew, we did it, and then got busy with kids and career. Rust never sleeps, does it. I was totally asleep at the wheel when Bill C-16 was passed.
And I was a clinic escort way back when. I thought it was the least I could do, though women who speak up about trans ideology these days are threatened with violence and murder by TRAs. I'm afraid for my career, my family, and my life if I speak up for women's rights now, but it makes me feel like I'm letting the side down after my elders worked so hard to save me.
As someone born in the mid 60s, I grew up with hope, and believed that the world was continuing to get better for women. I was in middle school when I started reading your writings, old enough to begin to understand the male supremacist culture better, and it took me through the 80s with hope of things improving. Because of you, I knew woman centered coffee shops, bars, and bookstores. Thank you for that. Because of you, I was able to choose woman centered businesses and services. Even as the whole feminist world is going, or gone, (the hope in me still says that the tide will turn again) I remember and cherish those memories.
ETA: As a woman in this society, I've spent too much time having to apologize for everything from just existing forward. I will not do so now, especially not to you. I do regret my lack of bravery on many occasions, but I don't need to explain this to you. We all get tired.
Just thank you.
Yes!! I love this. Thank you to all women who stood up for our rights. To women like my grandma, who marched in support of birth control and left her husband to become a mechanic in the 1960s, and like my highly educated and professional mother who took me to watch Germaine Greer speak when I was 12. I often feel I don’t live up to them but they fought so hard for my rights and thanks to them I have always known my worth.
"women like my grandma, who marched in support of birth control and left her husband to become a mechanic in the 1960s, and like my highly educated and professional mother who took me to watch Germaine Greer speak when I was 12."
That's so fuckin hardcore and rad.
Thank you, I am so proud of them both!
Yes. Amen for the feminists of the 2nd wave. The 60s and 70s and the ones before. We are here because they were there.
Women in the US have been able to own credit cards for ALMOST 50 years because of them. Our husbands have not been allowed to rape us since the 1990s. As I get older I appreciate those who came before more.
Dear Elder Feminists,
Thanks also for your legacy and your compatriots -- to all the feminists out there all over the world who are on the ground still fighting against FGM, femicide, female infanticide.
Thanks to all the mothers out there who taught their sons that girls and women can be, and can do, almost anything we want. My grandpa and dad had their share of toxic masculinity, but never once, once, was I told I couldn't do something because of my sex, except where actual safety or health issues were concerned. I hope to pass on that legacy to a niece one day. Most of the "boy" stuff I never did was because of my health, never because "girls can't play sports/climb trees."
And I'll echo the apologies. We in the West, at least, took our rights for granted and now they're being encroached on.
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.