Hello out there?

I work with kids. Primarily, teenagers. I don't work with a "normal" population- I don't LIKE working in a typical setting, with typical kids. I adore my job, but I have noticed a new trend, which kind of irks me. Okay, it really freaking pisses me off. It would be one thing if I was just seeing this in my students, but I am seeing it across the board in the 15-20 year old set of women. When I was a senior in high school my favorite book was Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation. Senior year in college, I used Girl Power liberally in my research and it figured prominently in my thesis.I still use excerpts from them both in class. They were published almost twenty and fifteen years ago. That generation is MY generation, and we're a feisty bunch. My contemporary sisters get it done- we aren't letting other people, men or women, dictate the choices we make for ourselves and our families. We may get bogged down, but eventually, we find our way. However, where is the next generation of feminists? These women are smart, talented, athletic- they are reaping the benefits from the women that came before them- but they don't know who they are. Ask a typical 18 year old girl if she knows who Margaret Sanger, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Nellie McClung, Gloria Steinem, Belle Hooks, Naomi Wolf are? Blank stares. It's sad, really. True, it's a generation quick to stand up to human rights- to them, gay people are just regular parts of the world. Gay marriage is a given- and I am glad. However, they seem to have lost sight of the struggles that still face them as women. I see this as a primary failure of the education system as a whole- they have to wait to take American Women's History or Women's Studies courses in college before they are introduced to the concept that they too are empowered. Instead, they have self-doubt, a lack of confidence, and a bare-bones understanding of how to be a strong woman.

"Never apologize, never retract, never explain- get things done and let them howl!"- Nellie McClung, 1915