Young Feminists Unite!

by Brittany Shoot · 2010-08-30 06:00:00 UTC
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Just because young feminists don't get a lot of attention doesn't mean they don't exist. Take it from someone who was a teenage feminist: we're out there. To honor the voices of young feminists, Shelley at the Fair and Feminist blog hosted a young feminists blog carnival on Friday.

Inspired by the second article in recent memory by older feminists that claimed young feminists are invisible or nonexistent (in this case, Gail Collins and Stacy Schiff of the New York Times; in April, a Newsweek article), Shelley put up a banner and sent the message far and wide: young feminists, speak up! No surprise, maturing, emerging feminist writers and activists from all over the blogosphere participated, sharing their memories of young activism or explaining what they're doing right now to dedicate their lives to women's rights.

I found the carnival by way of Fem2pt0 and Emily's post "The Young Feminist Diaries" on Choices Campus Blog, in which she details her efforts in elementary school to educate her peers and petition against teachers she deemed sexist (which she admits probably didn't make her the most popular pupil).

A post by 25-year-old Shayna at Abortion Gang also gave me pause: I'm under 30. Does that make me a young feminist? I tend to be youngest person in my circle of friends, the only one battling Gen Y identity issues. Maybe I oughta start reclaiming my youthful feminism a bit to make sense of my own strange place between adolescence and full-fledged adulthood.

Over at the NOW blog, NOW Action VP Erin Matson wrote a lengthy entry about how the media should encourage young women to speak for themselves. Citing both the Newsweek and Times opinion blog piece, she chastises reporters who don't even seek out and ask young women where they stand on feminist issues, who instead write off their efforts as inconsequential, if they get mentioned at all. Matson is, of course, completely spot on. Why write an entire article about how young women aren't working on feminist causes without, you know, talking to young women?

The carnival left me energized by the responses from vocal young feminists who are tired of being dismissed and ignored. Were you a teenage feminist? Are you one now? What do you consider to be a "young feminist"? Leave it in the comments and tell us why you are proud to be known as a young feminist.

Photo Credit: außerirdische sind gesund

Brittany Shoot is a freelance writer, editor and critic. She's one of the editors of the Feminist Review blog and a frequent contributor to a variety of progressive publications.
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