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Feminism in a Text Message Culture

Sitting in a cafe drinking a cup of dark roast with a fresh oxblood Moleskine notebook, I am a journal junkie, and a retractable pencil.  Creation for me, is an extension of myself, it's  personal, I must bleed on to the page and once I achieve that emotive place only then can I place it in the impersonal computer for the function of edit, grammar, and fact checking.  I delve into the depths of Feminism in today's culture.  Immediately I am distracted, what I thought had gone by the wayside... the spoken of, but rarely seen, phenomena of two young women, sitting together.  Tables peppered through the coffee shop,  topped with double non-fat soy mocha lattes manicured finger nails, and boutique clothes.  Bringing to mind an episode of “Sex and the City”, a bit cliché, yet hopeful for this cynical thirty eight year old woman.  A cockeyed picture of my youth... manicures, boutique couture, and $5.oo coffees replaced jump boots, purple patent vinyl pants with matching hair, 75 cent dark roast, cigarettes, and not a stick of deodorant between us.  Although, I notice rather than chatter and impassioned raised voices, I hear clicking, tapping, tweeting, beeping, and giggling.  But not a word spoken between these young women.  As their lattes became cold and curdled, they were enraptured in their phones.  Sitting across from one another texting on their Blackberrys, iPhones, Androids, etc. to anonymous parties, young men undoubtedly from the blushing, giggling, and squealing on the other end of their endless clicking, tapping, tweeting, and beeping apparati. 

Us at that age, were  unwashed, hyper-involved, hopelessly dressed, and poor.  Gathered at grungy couched, smoke filled, independently owned coffee shops(before the behemoths ate most of the local failed musician turned coffee house proprietor)to argue over politics, to organize a protest to protest a protest and the like.  Them, the clean, sanitized, mindless technological automatons, safely texting their “best friend” to inform her that;  "she acted like drunken dirty slut, who had embarrassed her at the “cute guy's”.  Oh, and by the way, do everyone a favor and get a fucking wax if she's going to show it all over someone's apartment".  That tirade and infraction will be forgiven by ten o'clock that night because nobody cared, not even the young woman being text messaged such hateful and abusive language, from a "sister", a person called "friend".

Thus the fundamental “element” of our culture of today, NO ONE TALKS!  No one writes, no one reads books-the paper kind, and most importantly no one relates, no one bonds.  Women sit across from each other as props, (god forbid you go someplace alone) not as a catalyst for political change with the free and frank exchanges of views spoken with other like minded women, hell, even unlike minded women.  Communication of this age, this culture, has been reduced to: wt r u doing later:-), @ Stbuks w KT <3, Hook up @ 6;-)... and on and on.

I have a twenty year old son who hasn't spoken to me on the phone, freely,  since he got one.  You can call him thirteen times in a row and no answer, text him and you get and instantaneous reply in some kind of mutant short hand that takes Cherokee code breakers to decipher.  This immanently brought me to my opinion of the reason for the state of disconnect with feminism and the younger generation. 

These young women, teenagers, and girls all with cell phones and computers have no essential relation to not only the world around them, but to the other women around them.  There is nothing elemental in this Text Message Culture.  The elemental I refer to, is the experience of natural human relation, the free flowing deeply primal essence of physically and emotionally bonding with other people.  Missing this essential and vital piece of emotive social growth is creating a society of young people without the desire to make a change, endeavor to relate, and a obvious detachment to humanity.

That being said, this technological progress has also managed to course into the vein of society as a whole.  All age groups are being infected with this “technology torpor”.  To my shock and dismay, I have found my mother has been “communicating” with friends via email for at least three years now.  She told me that that ninety percent of the women she fought side by side with in the early years have succumbed to the apathetic allure of email over emoting.  I was flabbergasted, my mother has always been my hero.  My mother was, is, and always will be a feminist activist.  As a second wave feminist, my mother was involved in the lawsuits that became the “Pregnancy Discrimination Act” of 1978, I happened to be involved(I claim feminism via in utero).  A call to arms in forming the Michigan Teachers Union, in which my grandfather a chief Union steward for the UAW supported and cajoled the UAW to become involved in it's development.  People calling our home with death threats against my mother.  I remember being small walking or should I say riding(stroller) picket lines with signs.  My mother fought, and it all started with groups of women talking and relating to their feelings of being left behind, demoralized by objectification in the workplace, and so much more.  So imagine my surprise when my mother compliantly went into the good night without so much as a picket or a poster, but what choice did she have when all of her friends were lost in cyberspace.

If this is happening to our predecessors, imagine how lost the majority of us are.  I was raised the way of the warrior spirit, taught the value of community, and thus fought the computer, at home, until 2007.  I have a television set connected to a receiver that is accessorized with a DVD player, a VCR, a dual cassette player, and a record player, however not a cable box or satellite dish to be found.  Growing up, it was reading, playing games, playing music, listening to music, create, write, daydream... and daydream big, but most of all DO!!  Most of the people I know think I'm stuck in the land before time, I prefer to think of it as the land of real time.  Not fast forward, instant gratification, take life for granted time.  Which brings us to the Fundamentals of Our Survival in a Text Message Culture.

Women were once the most revered and powerful entities on the planet.  We were worshiped as Venus', the goddess of fertility.  Our ability to create life and our ability to come together as a communal tribal counsel and “run” villages, create marketable goods that bartered with other tribes to keep everything stocked and orderly.  We were not only goddesses, but counsel and community.  We, as women, also revered one another as sacred sisters.  We raised each others children, taught each each other weaving, pottery, and other skills and passed them down to our younger generations.  The advent of organized religion were scared of the power women had over “government” and the reverence that was had for our abilities to not just create life , but to see the grays in a world that men saw only as black and white.  Hunt, fuck, and fight, then off into the good night for months at a time. 

Something had to be done to render us powerless and harmless to men in government.  They could not wage wars when we didn't meet with the minds of men.  Thus, organized religion put us in our place.  We were to cover our faces, look down when walking, not talk to men, unless of course our husband permitted it, as we were now property that was to submit not without question, the end of our counsels and community.  We began the downward spiral into “evil” and “dirty” creatures.  Cast off to exile during menstruation because what was the essence of creation became the “vile sin” we were to suffer for our role as temptress leading man into temptation.  When women dared to gather together, for in our core we were from the beginning meant to commune, and would inevitably succumb to our elemental desire to experience the kindred spirit only another woman can offer, we were covens.  Witches, that were unholy and casting spells upon people creating illness and strife.  To end with torture and death by burning.  Or branded as whores and made to live the life of a scarlet woman.
During those primitive times, the violence was a show for all to see.  Today it is hidden by the media, dumbed down by government language, sanitized for mass consumption and fed to us like baby food through our computers, iPhones, and television sets.

However, the only reason WE as women can own iPhones of our own, computers, televisions, and apartments to live in complacency, is our predecessors.  The 1st wave feminists and a big war started the ongoing fight for our true and solid places as heads of government and community leaders and the idea that one day the ignorance and fear that branded us as “less than” will wash away with the return of the hurricane of free and frank exchanges of ideas in government and at coffee shops.