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carrying member of the National Organization for Women when I met him, and I refused
to join. We used to joke about it. And you remember that recent article about the history
of Ms. Magazine you emailed me? In the article, Gloria Steinem says that anyone could
have walked into the Ms. office in the 1970s and gotten a job. But I certainly never felt
like I could do that. I was actually living in New York when Ms. started, and I was even
working in publishing... but I grew up on a farm in the midwest, and I wasn't like the
women who ran Ms. They felt like a club."

My upbringing has not been like my mother's. I grew up with a lot more privilege; my
mother used to call me a spoiled "princess" when she was angry, and one of my ex-
boyfriends used to tease me by calling me "East Coast Intellectual." Yet in a lot of ways,
it took me a while to get into feminism, too. Gender issues have always been a strand of
my thinking, but plenty of feminist discourse never impressed me. In university, I felt
like everything I heard from feminism was a tortured conspiracy theory. And although I
identified as "feminist" from the very beginning of blogging, it was out of a sense of
resistance rather than feeling included. I felt like: Goddamnit, I will show you that I can
be an independent and rational woman who values voting and abortion rights and equal
opportunity and consent -- and be into S&M at the same damn time.

As I kept writing, I was looking at other blogs about gender and sexuality, too. The ones
whose analysis really spoke to me were usually feminist blogs. And those were also,
often, the bloggers who noticed me in return. My work was highlighted by a number of
feminist writers who wanted to raise my profile. Talking to them, I began to understand
some sophisticated critiques that I'd previously labeled "conspiracy theories." I expanded
my understanding of topics like rape culture, as well as "tangential" social justice issues
like race and class. My mother said to me, long afterwards: "Feminism really reached out
and grabbed you, didn't it."

In 2011, I heard from a feminist friend about organizations that train volunteer advocates
for rape survivors. In Chicago and many other cities, when people who have been raped
go to the emergency room, the hospital will ask if they want an advocate. The advocate's
role is to provide immediate crisis counseling and to help the survivor deal with
complexities of the medical and legal system. The minute I heard about advocacy, I knew
I wanted to do it.

In 1970, my mother didn't have an advocate, for the simple reason that advocates did not
yet exist. Rape Trauma Syndrome was first recognized by feminists in the 1970s, and
assault advocacy was developed by feminists during that time as well.

I told Mom all about the advocacy curriculum while I was completing it, and she drank
up every detail. "I never got support like that," she said. "My boyfriend insisted that we
go to the emergency room, and I guess he tried to advocate for me, but the doctors and
nurses ignored me for 20 hours and then sent me home. It was worse that the nurses did.
If sisterhood was powerful, then couldn't they reach out to me somehow?" (Rape
survivors -- at least in Illinois -- are now prioritized in emergency rooms, second only to
life-and-death situations.)

Mom often regales me with tales about how things used to be. For example, when she
became editor of her college newspaper in the 1960s, all the dudes on staff quit because

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