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A Brief History of the Elusive Card Carrying Feminist
Rumors of the Feminist Card began circulating in the late 1800s and early 1900s during the rise of the women’s suffrage movement. Women who identified with the sociopolitically unpopular notion that women were equal to men would mysteriously receive a small card, by post, with the word FEMINIST, printed on one side in black ink, the other side blank. These cards were considered dangerous, and the consequences, should a woman be found with her FEMINIST card, were grave, so many women hid their feminist cards in the hems of their skirts or near their G-spots where they knew their husbands would never find them. When questioned about their cards, these women denied such existence vehemently, a practice that continues until today.
The FEMINIST cards were useful for allowing feminists to find like-minded women in a time when few women could publicly share their seemingly heretical ideas about equality. In church or other such male-approved gatherings, women would surreptitiously hold their FEMINIST card in a gloved left hand, and look around to see if other women were presenting their cards as such. After, these women would congregate in each other’s parlors to discuss freedom, voting, getting rid of corsets, and the latest skin treatments under the guise of sewing circles and “charity” work.
Once women received the right to vote, rather than become part of the mainstream, card carrying feminists became even more secretive. Women in the public eye would openly declare, to anyone who would listen, “I am not a card carrying feminist,” even though such was rarely the case. The more vehement the disavowals, it was often discovered, the more ardent the feminist.
In the 1970s, FEMINIST cards began appearing at women’s homes with much more frequency and before long, nearly one in three women had a FEMINIST card hidden somewhere in her home or on her person. Today, women holding these cards still congregate wherever and whenever, exchanging bold ideas about the future of women. When they are together, they proudly admit they are card carrying feminists.
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John Crawford
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“Old Friend” - Sea Wolf
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I thought I understood it, that I could grasp it, but I didn’t, not really. Only the smudgeness of it; the pink-slippered, all-containered, semi-precious eagerness of it. I didn’t realize it would sometimes be more than whole, that the wholeness was a rather luxurious idea. Because it’s the halves that halve you in half. I didn’t know, don’t know, about the in-between bits; the gory bits of you, and the gory bits of me.
– Like Crazy -
Here’s some morning sweetness for you: the poet Eileen Myles and her girlfriend, writer Leopoldine Core, express the feeling of being in love so perfectly, you just want to roll around in their love all day. Watch them read together over at Jupiter 88.
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Cat Power by Jenni Li
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“Ruin” - Cat Power
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What I would like is to ban men from speaking about women’s bodies for a period of time sufficient enough for men, and mostly politicians, to stop being afraid of the word vagina, stop spouting bizarre pseudoscience about magical uteri, stop legislating abortion and being particularly cavalier about the lives of women while sacrificing those lives for fetuses out of some misguided political or religious fervor concerning the sanctity of life, stop trying to categorize rape as illegitimate or legitimate as if such a bullshit distinction were possible, stop encouraging a lax attitude toward rape reporting and prosecution, stop concerning themselves with the sex lives of women and antiquated notions about promiscuity, stop trying to frame birth control as necessarily expensive whore medicine, stop trying to undermine the one organization dedicated to providing women from all walks of life with affordable healthcare and also to stop with all the breast staring unless the mood is right.
– Roxane Gay -
Don Usner
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“1904” - The Tallest Man On Earth
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As a feminist, I cannot simultaneously believe that “the personal is political” and that a white American terrorist murderer has “no political motive”. Everything we are and do is informed by our politics, while would mass murder be any different? the disdain for human life necessary to execute the crime IS political. The insistance that a white man acted in a vacuum causes me severe cognitive dissonance. How can he be devoid of politics when he is the by product of a system that upholds heteronormative, patriarchal, white supremacist values? That those values have become so ingrained and pervasive doesn’t mean that the killer has “no political motive”, it just means that those politics are so normalized to the point of being invisible.
– Flavia Dzodan (Red Light Politics) -
