My interview with SuzAnn Worley

Feminism is an issue that we have been dealing with for over a century, and it is an issue that over time continually changes. My mom, SuzAnn Worley, was born in 1963. When I asked her about her experience with gender she informed me that she feels that she has been treated differently because she is a woman. She stated that she was treated poorly in her workplace, and it was common for her to be talked down to. In her work and also in her life, she would be confronted with men treating her flirtatiously and acting perverted towards her. An issue that she doesn’t understand about men is why they think that they can treat women provocatively, just for the sole fact that she is a woman. Her history with feminism is that while growing up, feminism always had a negative connotation. She claimed that women that stood up for feminism were called “dikes.” Her definition of feminism is “believing is fair and equal rights because of qualification, not gender.” An experience that she had that made her conscious of being a woman was that she once had a stalker that would contact her through the mail. It made her feel vulnerable, and she feels that if she was not a woman that she would never have to go through that.

In today’s society, sex is everywhere. It’s in art, music, advertisements, television, etc. Because of this it is shocking to me to imagine a time when birth control and sexual education wasn’t around. Reading about the fight for those things really made me proud of the waves before us. I couldn’t imagine what our lives would be like without sex ed and contraceptives.
I personally am pro-life. I understand that some situations women should have the right to choose, but being a young woman that has faced similar situations I feel that choosing to terminate a life is not a positive choice.
I agree with the text in that the third wave isn’t nonexistent, they just don’t choose to be labeled. The things occurring in the third wave are exciting and the thing that sticks out to me to most would be keeping an open mind to all equality for all people, not discriminating against sex, race, sexual preference, etc.