My mom was a housewife, and wasn't somebody that people would think of as a feminist, and when Ms. Magazine came out we were incredibly inspired by it. I used to cut pictures out of it and make posters that said, "Girls can do anything", and stuff like that, and my mom was inspired to work at a basement of a church doing anti-domestic violence work. Then she took me to the Soidarity Day thing, and it was the first time I had ever been in a big crowd of women yelling, and it really made me want to do it forever.
My mom wasn't, like, she was reading all these historical romance novels the majority of the time. She read a feminist book and then my dad would sit down and explain it to her like she was an idiot.
I always knew she was being funny, but when I tell my therapist that my mom played the trust game with me and let me fall on the ground, my therapist does not find that funny. She's like, "That's the reason for everything! That's why you have such a hard time with trust!" And I'm like, "I don't really have a hard time with trust. I thought it was funny."
My mom and I had secret from my dad that we didn't think we were stupid, that we didn't think we needed feminism to be explained to us.
