Thank You Thursdays

As intergenerational tensions started flaring up again around these primaries, it got me thinking about the claim that young feminists aren’t aware of their legacy, that we take all the change that has happened for granted. I don’t think that’s true, but hearing the claim enough times has me wondering if it is one way of older women asking younger women…”Hey, could we get a little credit here?” This column is, in part, my way–feministing’s way–of saying “Hell yeah, you deserve lots of praise and thanks. There are things about the previous waves of feminist thought and action that we disagree with, but there is SO much we are deeply thankful for.”
Further, I think gratitude is just about the most delightful emotion on earth. Give me a thank you note to write and I’m instantly happy. Seriously.
And finally, it is hard to remember how much has changed, in part, because things have changed so dramatically in some spheres. I hope this will be a place for all of us to really take in how amazing and wildly effective feminism was and is (we hear the opposite message so often from mainstream media). Think of it as your weekly dose of proof that daily activism makes monumental social change.
So…
Today I want to express my deepest gratitude for birth control. For a nice little history, look here. I was interviewing Gloria Feldt once and she told me this amazing story about how the legalization of birth control in 1965 changed her life. She was living in Texas, struggling with a car full of kids that she loved but found draining, and then she got access to birth control, and in essence, the rest of her life. Of course she would go on to be the national president of Planned Parenthood (oh man, am I thankful for PP) and help secure so many women’s access to safe and cheap birth control. I can’t even begin to imagine–at 28–how my life would have been different if I didn’t have reproductive control. For starters, I would have had a lot less sex. Just sayin.
Thank you to so many, but especially Margaret Sanger, Dr. C. Lee Buxton and Estelle Griswold, and Gloria.