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Worlds in CollisionAugust 23, 2006 So I was flipping through my Martha's Vineyard Times on Saturday -- it was sitting on the back of the john so I'd have half a chance of looking at it while sitting down -- and a headline poked me between the eyes: "Panel on New Women's Movement." Women's movement? These are two words I don't see strung together very often on Martha's Vineyard. Listed first among the panelists was Barbara Garson. Instant name recognition: her marvelous play MacBird satirized the Johnson administration and inspired a host of anti-warriors, and since then she's written much on work and economics from a feminist and socialist perspective. Also included were the president and CEO of the Ms. Foundation for Women, a co-founder of the Women of Color Resource Center and -- get this -- the executive director of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. Lesbian: that's another word you don't hear too often on Martha's Vineyard. Whoever put this group together knew what they were doing feminist-wise. Trouble was, no sponsor was identified; there was no number to call for more information. Bigger trouble: neither the time nor the place was mentioned, though the date was up there in the first line: Monday, August 21. I flipped to the calendar listings for August 21. Nothing. I logged on to the M. V. Times website. It wasn't there either. Fuming, I fired off an e-mail: when is this thing happening? Thinking: This sure as hell wouldn't have happened when I was working down there. Damn right. I would have done a feature story on it and splashed it all over the front page of the Calendar section: "Women's Movement" Spoken Out Loud on Martha's Vineyard! Before I could panic or get really, really pissed off, I recalled that the island has another weekly newspaper, so I zipped over to the website of the Vineyard Gazette. ("Zip" -- not quite. On a dial-up connection, waiting for the Gazette's site to load is like watching grass grow, paint dry, and two dozen novices ride training-level dressage tests.) But the critical info was there: Monday, August 21, 8 p.m., Katharine Cornell Theatre. What I still didn't know was who was putting this on. The mystery deepened on Sunday when a member of the local NOW chapter called to ask if I knew about it: I'd guessed that the local NOW chapter was somehow involved, but it turned out they'd heard about it the same way I had, by reading the newspaper. The turnout was very good for an underpublicized event: at least 50, I'd guess. The panel was organized under the aegis of, or at least by supporters of, the Center for the Advancement of Women (CAW). Earlier this decade, CAW (of which I hadn't heard, but that doesn't mean anything: as I've said before, I don't get out much, and when I do it's never in the right circles) commissioned a two-year study of more than 3,300 women, a summary of which was being distributed free at the door: Progress and Perils: New Agenda for Women. Notes CAW president Faye Wattleton in the report's introduction: "We learned that the priorities of women have changed as society has changed. We learned that, despite contemporary conventional wisdom, feminism is not a dirty word; the majority of women say it is a positive part of their identity. We learned that there are opportunities for progressive action on key priorities." This was the jumping-off point for the panel, envisioning a "new women's movement" that could embody these changing priorities of women and embrace these opportunities for action. All the panelists were articulate and interesting. Rather than take notes, I listened through three filters:
Having figured out that all the panelists and most of the audience were summer residents or summer visitors, I got up and introduced myself as a year-round resident of the Seasonally Occupied Territories. (This got a laugh. I was encouraged.) I said, more or less, that I was wary of talk about a "new women's movement" when the old one hadn't made much headway where I lived. I said that it wasn't until I landed on Martha's Vineyard that I realized how very urban the women's movement was. I suggested that a top priority of any feminist women's movement, no matter what it calls itself, should be reaching and listening to women in small towns and rural areas. My impression was that most of the panelists go to a lot of meetings, and spend a lot of time raising money so other women can go to meetings. Another impression was that most of the women (most of whom seemed to be around my age, give or take 10 years) weren't making enough use of cyber-technology, especially the Internet, and also that they didn't realize how much fun feminism can be. I desperately want to introduce them to the Tiptree Juggernaut, aka the Secret Feminist Cabal -- the ever-proliferating gang that keeps the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award going. And to WisCon organizers, who've made great use of e-mail and the World Wide Web to include hundreds of people in planning the con. And to the cyber-savvy women who are developing a feminist-sf wiki. I'm guessing that few, and possibly none, of the panelists had heard of WisCon, or the Tiptree Award. I wouldn't bet that any of them ever saw a copy of Feminist Bookstore News. I'm also thinking that this is my work for the next few years: to connect far-flung parts of the
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