My generation fought very hard for feminism, and we fought very hard to not be labeled as you had to have a husband or you had to be in a relationship, or you were somehow not a cool chick.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Our mothers' generation fought so hard to change things and we're the first generation to benefit. And now you get girls in their twenties who say they're not feminists.
My generation was not only maligned in book reviews and attacked in graduate school but we lived to see our adored and adorable daughters wonder why feminism had become a dirty word.
I think it was really entering my 30s that I began to embrace feminism and call myself a feminist.
There is a widespread assumption that simply because my generation of women has the good fortune to live in a world touched by the feminist movement, that means everything we do is magically imbued with its agenda, but it doesn't work that way.
Like many traditional feminists, I became one of the boys, only better. For a while it gave me a buzz to win at their game, but ultimately, that kind of power just goes nowhere. Traditional feminism excludes men and so perpetuates conflict. I am not interested in warring about power.
I wasn't an active feminist in the '60s, never have been.
There's a side of me that dislikes feminism. I think we surrendered something and women were unable to reveal any kind of vulnerability.
The fact is, feminism is not what it used to be.
When I was coming of age, I remembered reading and studying the initial ideas within the feminist movement. There was this idea with my parents' generation that in order to find equality, a woman would need to behave like a man.
I adopted the assumption of many of my generation that women were intellectually inferior to men, that we were not capable of governing, leading, managing anything but our homes and our children.