Feministic
I am about at the end of my rope. I am and always have been a pro-choice feminist. This isn’t really something I “inherited” from my once republican-voting parents. But they were, guess what, pro-choice too. Maybe not completely feminist at the beginning but my moom worked most of her life. Buyer at the downtown Detroit Hudson’s store after college, then a job at the Sault Ste. Siberia Monkey Wards store before I was born.
She took a bit of a break when she had me and Jim but eased back into work as a part-time teacher when I was ten. She was not (yet) trained as a teacher but had a once a week teaching job that year and I guess she decided I was capable of tending my 7-year-old brother and the dog for an hour or so once a week before she got home from work.
Not long after that she got a teaching certificate in order to begin teaching “home-ec” at our high school and after a few years of that. Dun dun dun. She went back to school to obtain her masters degree in teaching. We had the occasional difficulties a spirited teenage girl has with her mother but she was a good, well liked teacher and I was very proud of her. I will never forget when a nurse at Freighter View assisted living pulled me aside to tell me she had my mom as a teacher and how much she loved her.
Mom and I both worked to support ourselves and our families most of our lives. We were both fortunate to be able to take a few years off to take care of our children. It wasn’t easy for either of us but we managed. And we followed similar trajectories. After a few years off, we got antsy, wanting to DO something and hopefully earn some money in the process.
We worked (I still work) both to help support our families and because it was important to us to contribute to something more, not to mention it’s always nice for anyone to have their own money. That’s about as feministic as it gets, I think.
Except. My parents always supported a woman’s right to choose, among other things. They would not recognize The Orange Baboon’s takeover of the GOP, turning it into the mean, xenophobic bunch of MAGAts it seems to have become. Republican voices of reason need to turn up the volume and remove the MAGAts.
February 23rd, 2024 at 11:18 pm
Yes, YES! I’ve always worked (until I retired). I started out in the blueberry fields at 10 and did mostly summer work or babysitting until I got my first teaching job. It provided a secure paycheck and benefits when I married my self-employed husband and then had children. When he died, I was well able to support myself, continuing for five years after his death. Are there still Republican voices of reason? What I’m reading about birth control, IVF and lack of access to reproductive health care is scaring the crap out of me!