Feminist Ephiphany in the Middle Stall

Last night was a great one -- the Evil Elf and I put on our monthly literary gathering, known as the Shebeen Club (because our home is the Shebeen Whisk(e)y House, and our hope is to be the next Algonquin Roundtable), but this one was different.

A few weeks before, our scheduled presenter bailed on us, so we had decided to go back to the original format -- a dead celebrity. Hemingway's birthday, James Joyce & Bloomsday, Bukowski's Hangover (our day fell the day after his birthday...seemed apt)...we'd covered the men, but now here was an opportunity: January 17, 2006 was the 176th birthday of Anne Bronte.

Suddenly, the plan was now that I would present a discussion with the group on the evolution of Feminist literature. I planned to focus on Feminist SF as a way of showing the evolution on a smaller scale, and because it used to be a passion of mine.

At first blush, the evening last night looked like a bit of a bust. Start time came and went, and we had no attendees! Not even the regulars. Gads. Is this what almost a month of unending rain will do to a town?

Then, three delightful women showed up, strangers to each other, and only one a repeat to us. We cosied up into a lovely corner with our crustless sandwiches, soup & sherry -- and started to talk.

I led them through my discussion -- it went exactly as I'd hoped. Every example I gave elicited another author, an experience, an opinion. We debated the present state of feminism, discussed steps to continue to inspire both women and men to be whole human beings, and just generally had a lovely time. We came up for air to discover it was 10 p.m., an hour after our scheduled end time.

A great evening.

But the truest moment of the night came to me when I went to the washroom. In the middle stall, some inconsiderate cow had peed all over the seat. Damn seat pee-ers!

Yes, feminism in the 'West' (west of what?) seems redundant now. On the surface, a woman has as much equality as she can grab for herself. Some problems still exist -- don't get me started on fashion trends for women! -- but feminism as a movement seems to be dead.

But as long as women continue to treat each other with so little respect, the need for a feminist movement will not die out.

Lori