I spent 4 years working for Planned Parenthood, and 3 years working at a private abortion clinic. Pretty much all of the staff were women in their 20s and early 30s.

ENOUGH with the generational sniping. I got enough of that merde during the Democratic primaries.

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I'm close to forty and the young women I work with seem blissfully unaware that their right to work while pregnant is a right my mother's generation fought long and hard for. They can't comprehend a world where it was legal to fire a woman once she started to show or where a married woman had to get permission from her husband to take birth control or where a woman could be barred from public places for wearing pants.

They don't seem to get all that worked up when their reproductive rights are threatened by laws restricting abortion access. I know it sounds like I'm all "When I was young we had to walk uphill in the snow both ways" but the complacency is scary to me.

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In a way Dickerson complaining about young feminists today blogging about equality would be like my grandmother's generation complaining that we 70s feminists needed to get out and march for Women's Right to Vote while wearing dresses with bustles. Because that's the kind of feminism that they knew so it must be the right kind.

Silly. Why dissipate everyone's energy by creating intergenerational conflicts over irrelevant details?

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Well, let's see. I spent Monday night trashed, because it was Purim, which is a Jewish holiday in which you are asked to get so drunk you can't distinguish between the names of the hero and the villain of the story. And I reprised my Halloween costume as Slutty Hermione. So I was a drunk girl in high heels and a short skirt dancing in the coed section at the Hillel party. There are pictures of me in costume, and I am definitely drunk in those pictures. They just haven't been posted to Facebook yet.

Meanwhile, last Friday and Saturday I was performing in The Vagina Monologues, helping to raise a shit ton of money that will go towards charities that work to end gender based violence, and this week I'm helping out at our Vagina Week of events. Oh, and I've sent out a resume and cover letter to six or seven feminist organizations in the past few weeks, looking for a summer internship within "the struggle."

And how are these things mutually exclusive? Remind me why I can't get drunk with my friends and fight the good fight?

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Then I'll blow some guys in the VIP lounge for $500 each. And then I'll go to the club and grind on everybody, guys and girls alike.

Wait, what?

I'm actually going to go home and play with the dog and then decide what I want to make for dinner. Then I'll make the dish of my choice and then I'll watch TV or read my book. Then I'll bathe and go to bed. For now, though, I'm gonna sit right here on my Jeze-perch and talk about how I want everyone to be able to access decent healthcare and how women should be able to obtain abortions safely and should not be made to feel like shit if they decide to obtain one. And how I think it's bullshit to be "put in my place" because I'm not out yelling into a bullhorn or anything. I'm offended, can you tell? I am sick to death of being told every day that I'm not good enough for this or that. Christ.

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I'm forced to wonder, as someone who is hardly a "New Jane" feminist, but (I don't think) a contemporary of Dickerson's, why, oh why, so many feminists take on Younger Feminist Bashing as their recreational pastime as they age. It's not helpful, it's not healthy, and, as an exercise, it doesn't even count as cardio or muscle-building activity. All it causes is a buildup and calcification of resentment in the older feminists' veins, and an over-development of muscle in the middle finger of the younger, criticized feminists who say, "F-off. Where the hell have you been, lady?"

to the rebuke.

I don't think "What have you done for me (or "US") lately" is an appropriate critique of a social movement, especially one based on volunteerism and DIY activism. People do what they can, in the way that they can, with the time and resources that they have.

Not everyone gets paid to blog or write. Not everyone gets their bills paid to work in a field that aligns with, or is born of, the movement they support. And not everyone who marches under your banner shapes their cause in the same way. But shut-down/shout-down style antagonism is not useful when faced with these realities. Critique and dialog would be better. Like, "What's up with you?" rather than, "Here's why you suck, little miss!"

In short, DICKERSON: NOT HELPFUL. FEMINIST FAIL.

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But I thought feminists were all butch, man-hating, hairy. lesbian mechanics? I'm so confused!

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The examples she gave, "pole-dancing" etc. while seeming to be slut shaming on some level, I can also see how they're examples of self-centric feminism. Worrying more about the right of your vagina to rub on a pole, versus the rights of millions to have choice. I don't think she realizes you can have both at the same time. But I see where she's coming from, in a way.

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Is there a young chicks fund we can access? Because I must have missed that memo.

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Kinda judgey if you ask me.

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I'll give you a "huh?" and raise you a "wha?"

What does this type of behavior have to do with anything? What does "taking it to the streets" even mean? Does it mean a dance fight? Cause I am ALL for that.

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