Hi Readers,
I have always been a feminist, although not always by choice. My life made me become self sufficient. My parents divorced when I was 12 and my mother received a skimpy settlement so her and I were forced to move in a house with no indoor plumbing and a cook stove that used wood as fuel. This turned me into a frontier girl. This all happened in Hayward Wisconsin where I grew up.
My mom was always rather fragile after her historectomy so I had to do most of the "mans" work. I had to chop wood for the wood stove with a regular long handled ax. I lugged a 5 gallon jug of fuel oil about 1/2 a block and emptied it into our space heater in the living room. I emptied the slop jar into the out house and cleaned it. I also shoveled out the snow from the mail box and the driveway. I also cleared the path to our out house. It got better for us when my mother sold some Indian land but that's not part of this story.
In 1968 I had my first child, Mary Ann, so I had to wash her diapers. I did this in a metal wash tub and with a wash board. I hang her diapers and other dirty clothes on a wash line that was strung between our house and a small out building. It froze sometimes in the winter so I had to continue the drying indoors.
In Hayward, especially among the well to do, my family seemed weird. I always felt like an outsider. But then a movement called feminism came and provided me with a reason for being and made me seem not so much a pariah! I bought an issue of Ms. Magazine and read it from cover to cover! I felt the chains fall from my arms and felt a rush of freedom! I subscribed to it immediately and eagerly awaited each months issue to arrive in my mailbox! It gave me hope even in the right leaning mostly Republican town that was Hayward Wisconsin.
This was back in the sixties when few women worried about their rights.They were brainwashed into thinking that the only role women could play was wife, mother, and homemaker. Women were raised to think that they were the possession of their husbands and had no choice about the control of their own bodies. Birth control was seldom discussed because large families were encouraged, that is if you were married.
Feminism changed these antiquated ideas. Women began to think for themselves. and new systems of birth control were produced in medical laboratories. Planned Parenthood came into being. Women could now multitask and have a career and motherhood too! We began to take charge of our bodies and learn to fully enjoy all the enjoyment making love could be!
The ignorant Republicans want o go back to the future! They and their Evangelical pals lust for the backward fifties or even earlier. They want women to be bare foot and pregnant and go to college to get the Mrs. degree. First came the Komen bruhaha, and then The attempt to kill Roe V Wade in various states with draconian steps before an abortion is granted. Female(if you can call them that) Republicans should be outraged about how their colleagues are treating women, after all they are career women too! Feminism helped them get where they are but they are too ignorant to see the forest for the trees!
We must vote for Progressive Liberal Democrats in all public offices so us women's rights are protected. The fifties were a time of limited rights for women,minorities,and free thinkers. It wasn't all "Happy Days" and "Donna Reed", it was a tough time for the less enfranchised, don't wish for it to return!