Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists »

When did you know you were a feminist? Whether it happened at school, at work, while watching TV, or reading a book, many of us can point to a particular moment when we knew we were feminists. In Click, editors Courtney E. Martin and J. Courtney Sullivan bring us a range of women—including Jessica Valenti, Amy Richards, Shelby Knox, Winter Miller, and Jennifer Baumgardner—who share stories about how that moment took shape for them.

Sometimes emotional, sometimes hilarious, this collection gives young women who already identify with the feminist movement the opportunity to be heard—and it welcomes into the fold those new to the still-developing story of feminism.

Publishers Weekly

Compiled by authors Martin (Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters) and Sullivan (Commencement), this volume looks at the catalytic moments when 28 women (and one man) found their way to feminism. Including writers, activists, and educators, contributors provide perspective and personal revelations from all stages of life. Joshunda Sanders, an Austin newspaper reporter, talks about growing up poor and black in "the least desirable place in New York" and how it led to her embrace of "womanist" thought; Indian American writer and educator Mathangi Subramanian describes years of struggle with the feminist "label," navigating the cross-currents of her grandmother's pressure to marry and her mother's enthusiasm for independence (and feminist classics like Susan Estrich's Sex & Power); Martin herself contributes a piece contrasting her own coming-of-age, involving a college visit from Manifesta authors Amy Richards and Jennifer Baumgardner, with her mother's: "This wasn't the swishy skirt feminism that my mom had manifested at her once-a-month women's groups. This was contemporary, witty, brash, even a little sexy." With this enervating collection, Martin and Sullivan help continue that modernizing trend.
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Introduction 13

I'm Gonna Wash that King Right out of my Hair Elisa Albert 19

One is Silver and the other's Gold Jennifer Baumgardner 25

Seventeen Years of Ridicule: A Young Feminist's Polemic Nellie Beckett 31

Cross-Stitch and Soap Operas following Football Gordan Berg Powers 37

Killing in the Name of Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne 43

Empowerment in Soft Focus: Growing up Female with ADHD Li Sydney Cornfeld 51

You are What you Wear Anitra Cottledge 59

Feminism, Warts and all Marni Grossman 67

God, Sex, and Pythagoras Shelby Knox 73

The Right Pitch Colleen Lutz Clemens 77

Born-Again Feminist Jillian Mackenzie 83

Not my Mother's Hose Courtney E. Martin 89

I was not Aborted and Further Miscellanea Winter Miller 95

The Women's Center Olessa Pindak 105

I was a Secret Rich Kid: A Tale of Class Unconsciousness Karen Pittelman 113

Finding and Making the Reasons Sophie Pollitt-Cohen 121

I married a war Correspondent Alissa Quart 129

Righteous Little Beaver Amy Richards 137

The Feminist Evolution of an Artist, Survivor, Conjurer from the Tropics Marta L. Sanchez 145

"What's the Female Version of a Hustler?": Womanist Training for a Bronx Nerd Joshunda Sanders 155

You can't Rape a whore: A Love Story Rachel Shukert 161

Anita and me Deborah Siegel 169

My Number one must-have Amy Spalding 175

The Brown Girl's Guide to Labels Mathangi Subramanian 181

Word and Deed J. Courtney Sullivan 191

On Reading Katie Roiphe Rebecca Traister 199

An Engineering Approach to Feminism Janet Tsai 207

I Was an Obnoxious Teenage Feminist Jessica Valenti 215

Pillow Dancing and Other Failed Hetero Experiments Miriam Zoila Perez 219

Contributors 227