Saturday's Child
“—WILLIAM BLAKE In the late 1960s, at the beginning of this wave of feminism in the United States, a standard question asked of movement spokeswomen was “What childhood trauma did you suffer that made you become a feminist?” Patiently, we would explain that no specific trauma had been necessary, reciting until we were hoarse statistics on rape, battery, butchered illegal abortions, and gross inequalities in education and employment as well as in virtually every other area. Such moronic psycholog...ical reductionism drove me nuts, so sometimes, when in a mischievous mood, I’d “confess” in a low voice that something had in fact happened to me around age three. With my interrogator salivating in anticipation, I’d spring the scandalous revelation: my trauma lay in having discovered I’d been born female in an androcentric society, the same trauma every girlchild endures.
It’s taken thirty years for contemporary feminist politics to enter the socalled mainstream, and now this sort of trivializing dismissal by psychobabble is attempted less often.MoreLess
It’s taken thirty years for contemporary feminist politics to enter the socalled mainstream, and now this sort of trivializing dismissal by psychobabble is attempted less often.MoreLess
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