March 8th

Happy Women's day!

I asked my students to participate in #CNNwomen tweetchat last Friday.  For every tweet they made, I pledged to donate $0.50 to CENIT, a center that helps street girls and their families in Quito, Ecuador.  So far we've only made $5, but I'll keep up the project.
The idea is to join an international conversation in English...which is the magic of twitter!

That said, I felt the tweetchat seemed to lack depth.  Sure, we all spent the hour affirming that we're all sisters and we have to stand together. 

Then I thought, why do we have to stand together?  Men disagree all the time.  You think Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. agreed on everything?  Isn't part of the definition of feminism that women have the right to their own opinion?  That's why we fought for the right to vote!

Of course, we never heard from the real casualties of sexism: the child brides, the sex slaves, the harrassment victims etc.  I'm sure they spend every minute of every day asking "where are MY sisters?"

Nor did we hear from the pioneers of feminism, those without whom the female success stories that tweeted on Friday wouldn't even exist: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Victoria Woodhull, Betty Friedan who are no longer with us; Gloria Steinem, even Malala who weren't able to join us.

Feminism, if it is to work, must be temporal, global, and include both genders and all ages. 
Am I a feminist?  YES.  Because the alternative is unthinkable.