Another Tomboy Becomes A Feminist

As an only child I played with the neighborhood children, who were mostly boys. This worked well for me since I had rejected every doll my family had ever given me. I loved playing baseball, basketball and even tag football in the streets with the boys. And I turned into a tough little girl too. I played as rough as I got, and I had the scrapes and bruises to prove it.

The boys would often play nice with me and then when I would win, they would step up the intensity. I always wanted them to play with me like I was a boy, an equal. Playing like equals was pretty easy between the ages of 4-7. Something happened at age 8 though. I think I become a GIRL, and now the foe.

Ever since I was 8 years old, I have never regained that easy camaraderie with boys or men. My attempts to be an equal whether in school or work have been rebuffed at best. I was now restricted to the company of girls and women. And, so I discovered by age 11 that females were considered by many people to be unequal to males.

But I knew better from my tomboy days...and so since then I have devoted a significant part of my life to ending sexism. I have become a feminist. I have gone to rallies and marches, I have been an editor of a feminist newsmagazine at UCLA, and I have worked at women's organizations in Washington, DC. I guess you could say I've contributed to the women's movement.

But I don't know if this tomboy will ever get to play like an equal with boys and men. But my hope is that future generations of women will have far more opportunities to play ball with the guys. And I hope they win too!

In My Day

What did you do in “your day” way back when? My day was when I was a student at UCLA in the early 80s. Oh, I did the typical pseudo-intellectual stuff---I drank a lot of coffee and smoked cigarettes (we still smoked in those days) while philosophizing about who knows what (I think we were really just exercising our developing minds). Later, after a six-month stint of hanging out in a Santa Monica gay bar, I launched into women’s studies classes, feminism and finally I become an editor of a women’s news magazine.

Meanwhile, there were romances and really just hook-ups, but it was all very lively and entertaining as I recall. Oh, there was heartache and heartbreak too. Let’s just say there was lots of drama, as you would expect from a university in the middle of movie land.

I even wrote a screenplay with a friend. It was a punk vs. mod new wave version of West Side Story titled Masquerade. Gee, I can’t believe I can still remember that pitch line. I must have repeated that pitch line to every agent and producer who would lend us an ear. My friend and I even got some action (interest) from a producer (a woman, of course) at Tristar. But unfortunately, the pressures of the biz contributed to the break-up of the collaboration between my friend and me. Oh well…

We didn’t have many parties in “my day” (because who could afford it? We were students after all). But we had one memorable party. This Halloween costume party stands out in my memory because people really came as themselves but just dressed up in costume. I came as Batwoman, and my collaborator, who we thought might have TB, came as the GERM. We were a motley assortment of characters.

So what about you? Please write me a brief comment about what “your day” was like. Did you come out? Get straight A’s in college, or just cut up a rug dancing your heart out? Come ‘on, tell us a little about “your day way back then…”