When It’s Not Just Entertainment …

Very insightful piece by a writer friend of mine…

There’s much in life that I’ve learned to shrug off, if only to preserve my sanity – or, at the very least, my blood pressure (being a humorless feminist is, after all, hard on the arteries). When I was a teenager, I had more stamina, more fight: I’d argue openly (and not civilly) with the high school English teacher who said that Richardson’s Pamela was “a great love story;” I’d tell the jocks who bullied the gay boy in gym class that if they wanted to beat someone up for being effeminate, they could take me outside and “go to town on an actual woman, since that’s what y’all hate so fucking much.”

I’ve gotten older, and I’m tired. I watch elected officials oh-so-sagely define “legitimate rape” (as opposed to, say, “cheap imitation rape”) and my anger becomes an atomic blast detonated under the ocean: a thunderous swell swallowed by the current. Every time I check my bank balance before getting groceries, I get a gut punch of a reminder that a man in my position still earns more on the dollar. But I can’t afford to take a leave of absence so I can storm Capitol Hill. So I tell myself that quick gestures like promoting a post about rape in the military, or signing a petition demanding that Congress reinstate the Violence Against Women Act aren’t inconsequentially tiny; they’re examples of “everyday activism.”

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