Okay, so this was my first week of interviews, and so far it's going really fantastically. I interviewed Chloe Angyal of Feministing on Monday and the author and blogger Jessica Valenti yesterday. I have the day off today, which is good, because I've been researching feminist theology in order to interview Meggan Watterson tomorrow.
Both of my interviews so far have been really great discussions. I had interview questions ready, and used a lot of them, but I was really pleased in that I was able to just have constructive conversations with both Chloe and Jessica, which is something that I think most interviewers would hope to accomplish, because you definitely get more honest and open answers during a conversation rather than in response to a specific question. I also tried to stick to more general questions/topics than I would have asked if I were merely doing a profile of each of these ladies. Because I'm going to compile all of these interviews, I wanted to ask questions that I thought would lend themselves to answers with commonality between the subjects. I won't post the transcripts of the interviews here, but here's a sampling of the some of the questions I asked / topics we covered:
- How do you define feminism? Do you feel that the movement should define itself by a different word due to the cultural stigma associated with "feminism" or that we should chose a word that's less exclusive (like "humanism")?
-How do you think that feminism can overcome critiques about our past tendencies towards classism and racism? How do we form a movement that is inclusive without hinging on pseudo-diversity and representation without critical mass?
-How can we expand feminism on a global scale without being imperialistic? Is it our place to involve ourselves with issues like FGM without having a comprehensive understanding of what it's like to experience FGM? How do we elevate the voices of women who have experienced these atrocities, and empower them to help themselves?
You get the idea.
So on Monday, I met Chloe Angyal, who I really enjoyed talking to, mostly because I think our perspectives on feminism are very similar because we're pretty close in age (she's in her early 20's). We really bonded over shared experiences with feminist blogging, and the interesting things being involved in the blogosphere can reveal about the movement as a whole. For example, we talked about a recent experience Chloe had, where she was interviewed for a Seattle radio station about the international event Slut Walk (which sounds racy, but is really a response to political officials making statements that boil down to "if a girl is dressed like a slut then she deserves to be raped" - especially one incident where a police officer said this about an ELEVEN YEAR OLD GIRL who was raped). Chloe will be speaking at the NYC event, and I guess there was some controversy over how she portrayed the movement in the interview. Basically, we talked about how feminism can be so divisive and counter-productive when we promote infighting rather than focusing on the larger goal at hand. It was an awesome discussion, and it's clear that she's seriously brilliant.
Yesterday was a particularly special day for me because I got to interview Jessica Valenti, who wrote the book (Full Frontal Feminism) that really initially got me interested in feminism in the first place. The thing I think I enjoyed the most about interviewing her is that so often when you talk to feminists, they'll get really academic or philosophical and - to be totally honest - kind of bullshitty and unrealistic in the way they view the movement and the world in general. But Jessica was so down to earth and realistic about how she looked at the movement, which I really related to. Like, there are some feminists who aren't able to recognize that there are some serious downsides to the movement and some things about it that are really stupid, but I was happy to be able to talk about those things honestly with Jessica. She also gave me a lot of great advice about the book I'm writing (we have the same editor/publisher) and basically offered to mentor me and help me out in any way that I might need, which is just so incredible and kind of her.
So far, my experience with these interviews has made me really happy that I didn't decide to do an internship or volunteer work for my project. I feel like I'm only a few interviews in, but I've already learned so much and made really valuable connections, in life and for my future career. I'm also really excited about how this final document is going to turn out.
That's all for now. I can't believe we're half way through Senior Project already...
CAN I VISIT YOU PLEAAAAASE??????
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