Grrowl! E-Zine © 1997, Amelia E. Wilson. All rights reserved. Works copyrighted by their individual authors.
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I was at a coed camp once and we were playing softball. When the
girls were up to bat, we were allowed to step up closer to the pitcher,
and yes-- we got four strikes. My friend, Tiffany, and I
were outraged at these chauvenistic rules. We insisted on being treated
the same as the boys when we batted; and I scored the only run for my team.
We were twelve years old, the girls were taller than the boys, but we were just expected to be weaker. This expectation went through high school as well. I played the snare drum for my marching band and it weighed 35 lbs. and our quad player was a girl also. When we went to games and contests, we would often meet the members of other bands and the male percussionists would make snide jokes and ask "How the hell do you girls carry those drums?" When we met other female percussionists, we instantly became allies sharing our horror stories about those guys. I have always seen myself as a feminist, ready to defend the cause to anyone. When my teachers needed heavy items moved in the classroom, they would ask for "some strong boys" until I informed them that there were strong girls, too. One teacher decided to humor me and said "Okay, boys sit down, I need strong girls to move these books." Well, so many girls volunteered that we didn't all get to move anything, but we showed that we were all strong and fully capable. After graduating I felt like I had made a small contribution to the feminist movement in my own rural high school. Then, this past summer, I was a counselor at the camp I had been to years before. I was refereeing a game of softball and one girl was running around the bases and she didn't touch second base. All the kids were getting upset and they wanted me to count her out and I said "She's a girl, let it count." I was horrified to hear that pop out of my mouth. Hadn't I been working to change that view? I wondered how the girl then on third base felt, was she proud that being female allowed her not to be out, or was she outraged?
My old friend from camp, Tiffany, confided to me that she was letting
guys open doors for her these days-- but only if they did it in a nice way.
Were we getting soft already? Now that we're college students, things really do
seem more equal. But, I know that it is only because of the women who precedeed
us-- and that even though we are reaping the benefits of their work, we still
need to stay aware of how much is left to be done.
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