More various fragmented thoughts that I don't really have the patience to polish, this time brought about by the passing of Geraldine Ferraro: 

It took me until grad school to fully realize that the first feminists I knew were my parents. My semi-conservative, blue-collar, rural parents.

And sometimes when I feel like I'm betraying my gender ed learnings by being a teacher, by not trying to run for office or be some ball-busting businesswoman or at least go for my Ph.D (which I guess MAY happen someday, but is so very unappealing at the moment), I remember what it actually means to advocate egalitarianism. Feminism doesn't just belong to the women who go to the best schools and hold the fanciest job titles. Maybe I am in a “woman's” line of work, but how many do I influence every day? Children need to know feminist teachers, feminist mothers (and fathers!), feminist doctors, feminist plumbers. They need to understand what it means to be an equal on every level of society. Girls still need to know that they are valued  regardless of whether they are bringing home six figures or no figures. And the women who are making the real difference need not be those inaccessible (to many of us) lawyers and politicians and CEOs. Yes, we need them out there, OBVIOUSLY, but we also need them here at home, and in the classroom, and the grocery store, and the dentist's office, every bit as much as in the courtroom. Don't women move the world wherever they are? You're not giving up your F-card by not becoming the first female president, not if that isn't where your passion happens to be. What about my mother, who worked two jobs at various junctures of her life and taught herself how to use the Internet at 45 so that she could help her daughters apply for financial aid? Didn't she inject me with as much “you go, girl!” as Hillary Clinton? YES! People like my mother, and most of our mothers, move our world far more than the Hillary Clintons out there, God love her. My mother wasn't out there waving signs and lobbying officials. I'm not trying to downplay the importance of those who did, by the way, but my mother taught me to earn my own way simply by doing what she had to do. It wasn't a political thing. It was a survival thing, and it was my reality that women were responsible for paying the bills as much as men. She was working nine to five and then often from eleven to seven, and she had a husband who was a partner and whom she had to support as much as he supported her. And the movement belongs to her every bit as much if not more.