thoughts

woke myself up last night screaming, "get away bear!" Lay in bed remembering my camp nick name, Mary Bear, because I would scare away the black bears banging on a cooking pot on hikes in the Smokies. I loved hiking and spent most of camp (at age 13) on hikes in the mountains of North Carolina; the bears there are larger than the bears around here. In retrospect I would have loved to go back to camp the next summer but for some reason we were not allowed; i doubt it was financial, I suspect my mother's horror when she heard that i'd been on a 5 day hike and had not changed clothes in that time! I was drifting hopelessly away from southern ladyhood!
My camp experience was a seed of my later feminism which was no doubt fertilized and nourished at Sarah Lawrence. I still have a hard time understanding what's not to like about feminism. But I realize my father could easily set me straight on this if i would stop to listen; but my ears clog up the minute he suggests i need to go to a beauty parlor (" I've never know a woman who doesn't like to go to the beauty parlor," he actually said to me).
At a basic level, feminism means to me that I have dominion over my body - hence, I am strongly PRO CHOICE. It means that women have equal rights to men; but this is still far from true. Still not equal pay! I associate feminism with a sensibility that abhors injustice.
This is a subject to which I will return!