To the younger women of DU:

[renate]

96. my mom was a HUGE feminist, for which I adore, admire, and respect her

My dad too. When they got married more than 50 years ago, there were VERY different expectations of husbands' and wives' roles, and I admire him beyond words for going along with the changes in their relationship that her developing feminism created. He is absolutely awesome. I take his awesomeness as a given sometimes, but I appreciate the opportunity to remind myself that men who adjusted gracefully to the women's movement are phenomenal, so thank you.

I think the feminists of the '60s and '70s did such a fantastic job that young women today can't imagine the world as being any different. Of course women are full-fledged human beings--duh. Right? But not duh back then. It was basically unthinkable that women could ROUTINELY be on the Supreme Court or in the boardroom or in the doctor's office or any other place not in the secretarial pool. Now nobody blinks.

So I think it's like any other case in which, if a person isn't directly affected, a grievance is easy to dismiss. Like the millionaires in Congress blithely destroying millions of lives by cutting off unemployment benefits... they can't imagine a real-life situation in which $50 or $10 or $2 really, truly, literally means the difference between feeding one's children or having to let them go to bed hungry. They literally cannot imagine $100 being the difference between being able to pay the rent and allowed to stay in one's home another month or being evicted. It sounds like an exaggeration to them, and apparently until they intimately know somebody for whom it is not, it will just seem unreal.

It's probably nothing more than a failure of imagination. My kids can't imagine a world in which children had to read or entertain themselves without a screen. They just cannot imagine being plopped into the '70s with no VCRs, no DVDs, no DVRs, no computers or smart phones. I'm still of an age at which the use of a cell phone in an emergency on TV seems like a plot twist... look how lucky this person was that they could call 911 from their car... but it's reality now. The limitations of the past are kind of a pretend story to people born without them. It's not because they're evil, it's because of the society in which they grew up. It's as if we had to imagine being back in a world when a long-distance phone call (or a telegram, or a letter sent across the ocean months earlier) meant something horrible had happened instead of a friend calling or texting just to say hi.

So I think that in a way, feminists of the late 20th century should pride themselves on the way that 21st century feminism doesn't have the same sense of urgency. It's a sign of a job well done and a sign that what they have done is firmly inculcated into modern Western society. (Which isn't to say "oh well" but just to say that it's a real accomplishment for which later generations either are, or should be, profoundly grateful... I know I am.)