The silver lining of spending several days in Oklahoma City was the Women’s fucking College World Series being held within miles. On at the bar on every tv, with fans and associated individuals (which consist of two major subgroups: middle aged middle american lesbians and dads n’ daughters. Pretty much everything I ask for in anonymous group dynamics watching) in the midst everywhere.
Baseball to me is boring and outdated, and this is something that alienates me from both medium-sensitive academic dudes and my latin american heritage. But women’s softball is girls getting educations and competing fiercely for something else other than male attention (ie punk) or good girl hoop jumping shit (ie school, working at a nonprofit), and in the end, attracting an audience and cultivating egos. And seriously: satin uniforms, french braids, sequined headbands and eye black.
At that first Homo a Go Go, they screened Times Square. The next night, everyone was wearing eye black, and six months later…
But clearly, while we were spreading scabies and longing for a real reunion of The Need, some of our sisters said “carpe diem” to Title IX and then TOOK IT UP A NOTCH.
Which makes me a little queasy at the thought that some of the most thriving directions of feminism in my own teen/adult years were those that were slightly removed from the most common of experiences in most women’s lives. In my classes, in our circles, we talked a lot about sex workers, and the intersexed, and genderqueer, even though most of us were biologically and socially identified as women, who were not and never were sex workers, who were either taking out student loans or living off parents or living in murkily imposed poverty with not so much thought about the future. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have talked about this stuff so much, even though so few of those in the discussion were actually faced with a practical reality of what we were talking about. Such is youth, I guess.
And I’m not saying that it’s irrelevant to examine your own complicity, however remote, in others’ oppression. Or that the new feminist guarde should have held itself back. But I can’t help but wonder if all this hot button issue talk was at the expense of furthering the real and practical goals that second wavers broke so much ground for us to have. Maybe as young women, going to college, being in bands, going on tour and going to dance parties and generally getting the opportunity to be in charge of our own lives so much more than any other group of women in history, we should have talked more about some commonalities of experience: work, financial indpendence, building community and being able to really make your own decisions. Maybe we should start now and be a little more aware of our own complicity in our adult lives.
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