Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Interview With Gloria Feldt
Today I interviewed Gloria Feldt, who was the former President and CEO of Planned Parenthood. She's the oldest woman I'm interviewing during this project and it was really amazing to hear her stories of the feminist movement in the 1970's. I asked her a lot of the same questions that I asked the other feminists I've spoken to, but we also spent a lot of time talking about the generational differences between the movement she led and what the movement has become today. I'm probably aware more than most people our age how new the relative gender equality we currently experience is, but hearing her stories was still eye-opening. She told me how when she was in her 20's, she wasn't able to buy a car without her husband co-signing, even though she was the primary earner in their household and basically supported him - as a woman, she couldn't make a purchase like that on her own (which really speaks to how marrying young - and thus, doing little else with your life - back then was almost a necessity). She also told me how when she was first getting involved with Planned Parenthood, the policy on birth control was that girls couldn't have access to the pill unless they were married or until they had their "first illegitimate child" which is so absolutely ridiculous to think about now when birth control is so completely accessible to anybody who wants it. The crazy thing to think about was that all of her stories included attitudes that sounded so completely archaic and like they belonged in the 19th century, but in reality, were the norm only 35-40 years ago.
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That is so interesting about the generational differences! It's so true that we never realize how different the social climate was just a few decades ago, since we didn't live through it. It reminds me of something I was talking to somebody about regarding some of the Heartbeat bills (which I'm sure you already know about) and other movements to effectively outlaw abortion while skirting other constitutional problems. This person explained how things could really change if we went back to pre-roe v. wade days, how the people these days don't understand what it was like with people resorting to back-alley coat-hanger abortions and all the other huge issues that we don't even remember because those times seem so long ago(or because some of us weren't even fetuses yet). It would be a scary thing to see. The weird thing, though, is that it would mobilize otherwise-apathetic populations, especially young people who never lived without something like the right to choose and thus can't even begin to imagine life without it, to organize and become much more involved, mostly out of sheer anger over the radical decisions being made by inexperienced and polarizing political figures today. If it were to happen, it might change the political and social climate for a very long time.
ReplyDeleteSorry, that comment was pretty long... I got a bit carried away there! Your project sounds awesome. I want to read your final piece that you put together at the end of all this, for sure.