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The Women Meet the Grrrls
Washington Post - April 3, 2000
By Megan Rosenfeld
Washington Post Staff Writer
BALTIMORE –– Oh no. Not that song. The song that induced a thousand winces. "I am woman, hear me roar/ In numbers too
big to ignore . . . "
Whoever dubbed that the "women's national anthem" should be forced to run a marathon in five-inch heels. But at least Helen
Reddy is not here in the Baltimore Convention Center at the Feminist Expo 2000 to sing it herself; that honor has been given to
a bold contralto named Angela Caesar, who is trying woman-fully to get the crowd to sing along.
But this group is dominated by women under 30. They don't know the words. And they don't seem to be much for
sing-alongs--although, being good sports, they are smiling and swaying in time to the music.
This is good news.
From the roughly 7,000 people who gathered here the past three days, the message is that feminism is not dead, but it is
different. The size of this meeting--more than the 4,000 at the first Expo four years ago--is partly the fruit of a new wave of
organizing on campuses, augmented by women's studies programs now cranking out graduates by the bus load, and the
gung-ho athletes produced by Title IX legislation.
Unlike other groups that have fought for enfranchisement, women have always been burdened by issues of style. The message
has been judged--by women as well as men--as much by how it is delivered as by its content. Are they being assertive (good)
or strident (bad)? Is it okay to be a feminist and wear makeup? Have a family? Shave your legs? What if you recoil at the
sappy, chest-beating lyrics of "I Am Woman"?
'Cause I've heard it all before
And I've been down there on the floor
No one's ever gonna keep me down again . . .
"My boss said they're a bunch of man-haters," said the middle-aged woman tending bar at a reception Friday night. "But they
seem real nice to me."
The young women here were perhaps more inclined than their elders toward body-piercing, short spiky hair, tight T-shirts or
slim pantsuits, and those fashionable nerd eyeglasses. Some brought boyfriends (or girlfriends) or their moms. Some were
looking for reinforcement, some for abortion rights organizing tips, some for jobs. They came from campuses like Harvard and
Yale, and also Cape Cod Community College. There were large crowds for writer bell hooks, for renegade professor Mary
Daly, and at a pop culture panel featuring women television scriptwriters.
At one workshop, Taal McLean introduced a new set of ads from the Pro-Choice Education Project she works for. One ad
says, "Pick a boyfriend," and then it shows 14 pictures of the same guy, followed by the words "Not having a choice sucks,
doesn't it?"
"The older women on our steering committee really freaked out when they saw this ad because it has the word 'sucks,' " said
McLean. "But they realized it speaks to our generation."
In general, though, the older women were not freaking. "I kvell," said Betty Friedan in her speech, using the Yiddish expression
for the pride one feels over a family member's accomplishments to refer to the thousands of under-25s attending the conference.
"Am I angry that young women are taking for granted the rights we fought so hard for?" asked Feminist Majority Foundation
President Eleanor Smeal. "No way. No how. I'm so glad they are walking through the doors thinking they own the place!"
There is no question that the movement has had some bumpy times since Friedan wrote "The Feminine Mystique" and the other
foremothers on the stage--including Gloria Steinem, Smeal and Delores Huerta of the United Farm Workers--energized the
early days of Equal Pay for Equal Work and the (unsuccessful) fight for the Equal Rights Amendment.
"When [the ERA] didn't happen, a lot us got tired and lay down," said actress Tyne Daly, revered in this crowd for her roles as
a policewoman/mom on "Cagney and Lacey" in the 1980s (canceled, though after six seasons) and as a social
worker/mom/grandmother on the current "Judging Amy" (a hit).
Some women dropped out of the movement when they tired of being told that feminists were man-haters. Some were lost in the
Mommy Wars, others because working and raising children didn't leave much time for politics. And when lesbians began to
assert themselves, others dropped out, believing that the movement was failing to address the concerns of the tired, working,
heterosexual mom, who decided to settle for 78 cents on the dollar as equal pay enough.
Now the dropouts are coming back, interested in new moves to compensate stay-at-home caretakers with tax credits or an
allowance, or working to protect children. (The harshest rhetoric of the first two days was aimed at welfare reform, with one
speaker linking President Clinton, because of his support of workfare, to Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and likening the
program to slavery.)
Meanwhile, the ranks have swelled with new feminists who haven't had children yet, and to whom lesbians are, like, so who
cares? Their concern is preserving reproductive autonomy, and to do this they have to learn how to organize, make alliances
and be heard.
This is a group for which it is no strain to "think globally"--as movement rhetoric has exhorted for years. They have seen the
explosion of technology break down borders and that everyone's problems are interconnected. They got quite a few earfuls on
those topics here.
"One billion of you are reaching prime reproductive age, with 2 billion more right behind," said Gloria Feldt, president of the
Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "Our future and the future of the whole planet will be determined by the young
women of this generation."
"Young women are creating a feminism deeper and more complex than ever before," said Sarah Boonin, 24, the Feminist
Majority Foundation's director of campus programs. She has helped organize 87 campus chapters since graduating from Duke
University three years ago.
Lagusta Yearwood, 22, came with a delegation from the University of Rochester. She has a tongue ring and short pink hair. She
is asked how it gets that way. "First I bleach it, then I use this hair dye called Fudge. Why? I kind of do it to mark myself out of
the mainstream. It's something I can control. . . . The rest of my life is so work-oriented, this is my artistic expression!"
She is an English and women's studies major who is going on to graduate work in eco-feminism, whatever that is. "We look at
women kind of the way we look at the Earth," she says, adding cryptically: "Take strip mining, for example."
She recommends a book called "The Sexual Politics of Meat." A vegetarian, she would like to open a feminist vegetarian
restaurant. How is that different from an ordinary vegetarian restaurant?
"It's hard to explain . . . "
Heather Marshall, 16, is wearing a blouse she made out of a pillowcase. It is sleeveless and has practically no back. Cool! She
and her friends Sarah Icklan and Kiani Angus-Torres are all from Montclair High School in New Jersey. Heather and Kiani are
in a high school chapter of the National Organization for Women, and Sarah is in Riotgrrl, a sexual identity group. Their trip is
being paid for by the school. "They've never given us any money before," says Kiani. Being a feminist is not considered cool,
she says. But she wanted to come to Expo 2000--partly to feel they were not alone and partly to let the older generation know
"their work was not in vain."
"The girls in our high school don't have high self-esteem," she says. "They don't feel they can be who they really are, they're
always looking for approval. I've never been afraid to speak up, so I try to share my power with them."
Sarah says she is a lesbian and she joined Riotgrrl to find a "safe space."
"I'm bisexual," volunteers Heather.
"I'm still exploring my sexuality," says Kiani.
Suddenly they see a chance to get a picture of Betty, the a cappella group entertaining at the ERA reunion, and dash off.
That event is mostly for the older crowd, recalling bittersweetly the enormous effort that did not produce an Equal Rights
Amendment. Former NOW president Molly Yard gets out of her wheelchair to be recognized onstage, along with former
representative Elizabeth Holtzman and others. They try hard to look forward instead of back, urging the crowd to push the
United States to ratify CEDAW--an international Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. But the
ERA was clearly a failure that still rankles.
The tangerine-colored robes of a group of yogic nuns from India, the matching plaid jackets of the Philippine delegation and the
elaborate headdresses of a large contingent from Ghana signaled an international presence of more than 400 women.
Rose Isah Mahamah of the Family Builders Foundation in Accra, Ghana, was one of them. Her concerns were a bit different
from those of the Americans. "We want to make life more bearable for the rural women," she said. "They must fetch all the
water and cut all the produce while the man walks comfortably."
Mahamah is not even asking that the work be more equitably distributed: She simply is trying to raise money to provide rural
women with a simple aid, a "femocycle"--a large tricycle with cargo space--to take goods to market. The women also go into
the forest, barefoot, to hunt a wild nut they turn into butter to sell. "Vipers like these nuts, too, so they get stung," Mahamah
said. "We want to have more health clinics so they do not have to walk so far for help and die."
In the exhibit hall, Maria-Sol Johannes shows off her newly hennaed hand, painted in an intricate pattern at a nearby booth. She
is 13, in seventh grade, and came here with her father, George, and his partner Sally Burgess. Burgess runs an abortion clinic in
St. Louis and Johannes designed its new building. Maria-Sol says she wanted to come to Expo because "it would help me be
stronger. To learn to defend myself, and learn more about being a woman." She hits her father up for the $25 to pay for the
hand painting.
George Johannes, 52, admits he took some ribbing when he told a business associate about going to this feminist meeting. "I
told him my daughter was a budding feminist, and he said, 'Omigod, sorry about that.' I think 30 years ago feminists were much
more radical and in-your-face, and a lot of men are still reacting to that. But there's been a big shift. What I'm hearing here is
more inclusive, more about values and not just about nickels. There's more humor. Men learn slowly, you know."
Nearby is a booth staffed by the Brighton, Colo., sheriff's department, looking for recruits and handing out refrigerator magnets
inviting applicants to call Sheriff W.T. "Bill" Shearer. It is not the only law enforcement agency on the floor--thanks to a
concurrent conference on women and policing. Nearby are the Arab Women Solidarity Association, the Jewish Women's
Coalition and booths selling everything from "classic writing implements" to books such as "The Technology of Orgasm."
As always, idealism and pragmatism are in awkward but inevitable alliance, even here.
As the ERA reunion empties out, a young woman hands out slips of lime green paper printed with the following message:
"Stop Female Genital Mutilation . . . Join Our Easter Raffle."
Copyright © 2000 The Washington Post Company. All rights reserved.
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