Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters (24 page)

❂ Get educated. If your school or the school in your local area is teaching abstinence-only education, do something about it. Get involved in the school board. Start handing out condoms in school with information about comprehensive sex ed. Let other students know that you’re getting the shit end of the stick education-wise. Enlist the support of empathetic parents. Don’t let a generation of young people grow up thinking that condoms cause cancer and girls don’t like sex!

❂ Fuck up the double standard. Don’t let people call girls sluts! Engage folks in conversations about why they think it’s cool for guys to hook up, but not girls.

❂ Be proud of yourself; never feel ashamed. Feeling proud of yourself and your sexual decisions in a
world that tries to make you feel ashamed is a revolutionary act.

❂ If you’re going to “go wild,” think about why you want to. If it’s honestly for your own pleasure and enjoyment, cool beans. If it’s not . . . think some more. If your friends are flashing their tits for no better reason than a free shirt and some attention, talk to them about it.

❂ Take control of your sexuality. As I said in Chapter 2: Be safe, be smart, and don’t take shit from anyone about the informed decisions you make.

❂ Have orgasms. By any means necessary. ☺

❂ Don’t believe the hype. Roll your eyes when you see a sexist ad and point out its bullshittery to everyone around you.

❂ Value yourself for what the media doesn’t—your intelligence, your street smarts, your ability to play a kick-ass game of pool, whatever. So long as it’s not just valuing yourself for your ability to look hot in a bikini and be available to men, it’s an improvement.

❂ Call people out on their crap. If you see a shitty ad or a sexist commercial, write a letter to the folks who put out the product; tell your friends to do the same.

❂ Reject
Maxim, Playboy,
and any other form of pop culture that tells you you’re not hot enough.
Start your own magazine that highlights what’s really “hot” about women. Or, if you’re lazy, just snarl in sexist mags’ general direction.

❂ Nominate someone you know to the REAL Hot 100 (
www.therealhot100.org
), a campaign that’s the antithesis of
Maxim’
s Hot 100 list. It features women who are hot for what they do, not how they look. Its tagline is “See how hot smart can be.”

❂ Take birth control. Trust me.

❂ Volunteer at your local clinic—whether as an escort, an intern, or whatever—show them your support! And help them raise money. I’ve been noticing that all the billboards I see that deal with the abortion issue are overwhelmingly anti-choice; that’s because pro-choice orgs don’t have the money to put ads out there—they’re too busy providing women with care.

❂ Find out about your local pharmacies’ policy on giving women their birth control and emergency contraception prescriptions. If they’re trying to keep women from their legal right to birth control, throw a shit fit. Alert the media, write letters; if it’s a chain pharmacy, make sure the pharmacist is adhering to the company standard. Make sure that women in your area won’t have a hard time accessing their prescriptions.

❂ Be on the lookout for “organizations” in your state trying to push long-term birth control and
sterilization on women. Make local media aware of their agenda and how it’s intrinsically anti-woman.

❂ Find out about the parental notification/consent laws in your state and ask your local reproductive rights organization how you can help younger women in your area.

❂ Remember that anti-choicers, at the heart of it, are just folks who are horrified at the idea of premarital sex. They’re not the arbiters of morality, just a bunch of folks who think girls should be forever virgins.

❂ Remember that there is no such thing as a rapeable offense. I don’t care what you were wearing, how drunk you were, or how much hooking up you may have done beforehand. It’s not your fault.

❂ Volunteer, volunteer, volunteer! There are plenty of rape crisis and domestic violence centers that need help—even a little bit. When I was a rape crisis counselor, I volunteered one night a month. Not a lot of time, but it makes a huge difference.

❂ If you talk to your friends about rape, bring up rape culture. Don’t let violence against women be talked about as isolated, nonsystematic incidents.

❂ Don’t stay with a person who hits you, emotionally abuses you, or threatens you in any way.

❂ Be safe, but remember that you shouldn’t have to live your life by a rape schedule.

❂ Be proactive. Start an anti-violence group in your area—whether it’s free rides home for local women or a counseling group or an awareness-raising class for men. Do something that appeals to you and helps women.

❂ Holla back. Like that blog I mentioned that has women take pictures of street harassers,
¹
make men accountable for their public actions. Start your own holla back site!

❂ Do something fun for Equal Pay Day (usually the last Tuesday in April). One idea: Throw a party where men have to pay twenty-five cents more for drinks than women to bring attention to the wage gap.

❂ Call bullshit on opt-out articles—if your local media runs a piece on women “choosing” to stay home, contact them and let them know what you think.

❂ Start fighting for childcare now! Look to organizations like Family Initiative and Child Care Inc. for information and ways to get involved. It may seem early to start worrying about kids, but you don’t want to be stuck with lousy childcare options if you decide to go the mommy route. And if you’re not going to have kids, do it for the other women who will.

❂ Work your ass off. Doing what you love is fulfilling; work is fulfilling. And if staying at home and taking care of kids is something you can do
and want to do, cool. But don’t underestimate the pride and satisfaction that come with working at a job you love.

❂ Pay for yourself. Just suck it up and do it.

❂ If you want to get married, cool. But think about the not-so-cool traditions associated with getting hitched: the ownership, the consumerism, the focus on glitz over love. If you’re going to do it, do it for the marriage, not the ring.

❂ For the love of god, don’t change your last name. At least do me a favor and hyphenate.

❂ Fight for the right for everyone to get married, ’cause it’s hard to have fun when everyone can’t join in. The Human Rights Campaign is a good place to start. So is just talking about same-sex marriage with your friends.

❂ Don’t date guys who scoff at feminism. They will end up being disappointments in life, love, and bed. Trust me.

❂ Go see
The Vagina Monologues
on Valentine’s Day (proceeds go to organizations that aim to end violence against women). Bring a date. Don’t buy cheap chocolates (okay, that one is mine).

❂ If we don’t want to have to live by sexist standards, we can’t expect men to, either. The next time you find yourself judging a guy for not being
“manly” enough, stop and think about what that means.

❂ Talk to the men in your life about feminism; let them know how sexism hurts men and women.

❂ If you meet a man who self-identifies as feminist, become his friend and show him off to other boys. He’s a winner.

❂ Check out organizations like Men Can Stop Rape and the National Organization for Men Against Sexism.

❂ Don’t diet. Fuck them and their bullshit beauty standards. Eating can be a powerful act when the world wants you to disappear.

❂ Wear high heels, mascara, and whatever else you want. I sure do. But let’s not forget that by doing this, we’re adhering to a narrow, male-created vision of hotness. Again, this isn’t to say it’s wrong to want to look “hot,” and to go along with the status quo from time to time, but let’s not call it empowered. Call it what it is—fun and easy.

❂ Don’t wear high heels, mascara, or whatever else
they
want. Fuck them and bullshit beauty standards.

❂ Call out people for using a woman’s appearance to attack or judge her.

❂ If someone tries to use the ugly card (or the pretty one, for that matter) to silence you, keep on talking.

❂ Vote. Please, god, vote. Go to Women’s Voices. Women Vote. (
www.wvwv.org
) and find out how to get involved in getting more young women interested in political participation.

❂ Check out the White House Project (
www.thewhitehouseproject.org
) and find out ways to get involved—you can take action on behalf of women candidates or find out how to become one yourself.

❂ Build a shrine to Ann Richards. (Okay, again, that one is mine. But feel free to steal it.)

❂ Run for office. Seriously, do it.

❂ If there’s poor political representation of women in your hometown (shit, or even in your school), get working.

❂ Now that you know just how fantastic feminism is, go out and spread the word. Let other young women know that the “f-word” is anything but.

❂ If you hear someone say the dreaded phrase, “I’m not a feminist, but . . .” call them out on it. Let them know that if they have feminist opinions and values, then they’re (gasp!) probably a feminist. Tell them to suck it up.

❂ Visit feminist blogs (cough, cough,
www.feministing.com
, cough). Seriously, we have an awesome list of feminist website and blogs on Feministing, so come on by.

❂ Take women’s and gender studies classes and encourage others to do the same.

❂ Call yourself a feminist loud and proud. Wear a shirt. Yeah, I admit it. I love a shirt with a good message.