I am a credentialed feminist. I had a subscription to Ms. Magazine as a teenager in the Midwest. I read all the feminist classics as a twenty-something college student in Chicago. I badly wanted to be in New York City circa 1970, on the vanguard, as so many feminist activists described their cutting edge activism—THE VANGUARD. I was mesmerized.

As a young woman, I spent several summers on Kate Millett’s women’s art colony, meeting BIG TIME feminists such as Phyllis Chesler, Andrea Dworkin, Phyllis Birkby and others. The Farm, as the residents referred to the place, was where I came into my own as a woman, a lesbian and a feminist. I felt at ease with myself for the first time, and with other women. Having been the too-smart, too-shy girl in high school, it was nice to finally have my introversion respected and my intellect challenged. I earned the first of my feminist credentials at The Farm.

I moved from Chicago to Philadelphia and then finally to New York. I got involved with ACT-UP, Queer Nation, WHAM! , and the Lesbian Avengers. I volunteered at the New York City Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center  (before Bisexual and Transgender were in the title!). I got harassed as a woman, as a lesbian. Men cat-called at me, chased me, exposed themselves to me. Because they could. Other men spat on me, called me queer, faggot, dyke. Because they could. 
I thought I understood society’s male-female power dynamic when I read all that feminist analysis years earlier. But I had no idea. I now understood feminism in my body, in my life, in the reality I was experiencing as one of the chased, the harassed, the hunted. And, I was angry! Angry men could do that to me and society let them, even encouraged them. It let men, encouraged men, to abuse their power…

Meanwhile I was in a long-term lesbian relationship with a woman who was also abusing power: emotionally and psychologically manipulating me, and later physically battering me.

I finally saw the real power dynamic: My partner was a not a "he," but still she used her power — financial, sexual, emotional — to terrorize me. And, that’s when it call came together. Feminism was not just about men vs. women or male abuse of power or feminists being called (or actually being) lesbian. It was about abuse of power in society, no matter who was holding it.

I crawled out of my abusive relationship and found what I apparently had lost along the way: myself and my dignity, integrity and ability to communicate. And that, to me, is what feminism is ultimately about: personal and political dignity, integrity and communication.

As I write this, George W. Bush and his cronies have passed a federal law allowing healthcare professionals — doctors, nurses, pharmacists and others — to refuse to prescribe for, dispense to, or even talk about contraception or abortion with women if it conflicts with their “conscience.”

What type of social conscience does a society possess where women have no bodily dignity or integrity? I found out in a very personal way just how harmful abuse of power can be. And now I think of the mantra of second wave feminism, “The personal is the political.” We will not be alone or isolated tomorrow when the so-called “conscience provisions” take effect. To borrow from the gay liberation movement, “We are everywhere, we are everyone.” We are daughters, mothers, sister, aunts, friends, grandmothers. We will be heard, online and off. I also know we will raise our voices in cyberspace to challenge the men — and women — in power who want to strip us of our dignity, integrity and ability to communicate.

Our president-elect harnessed the enormous power of his broad-based constituency through social media and other new means of communication. That is what women will be doing at this conference and in years to come: harnessing the power to make ourselves heard loud and clear in every medium.

Fem2pt0.com is the new vanguard!