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I've seen some of the arguments that we don't need feminism anymore that have been shared via #IDontNeedFeminism  and #WomenAgainstFeminism on Twitter. They aren't very good arguments, as most of you can imagine, and usually play more into the rhetoric of feminism than the actual body of theory and work that is feminism. It convinced me that I need to be more vocal about the experiences that shape my life as a young white female in academia. My experiences may not reflect all experiences, but I can bet that many women have found themselves in my shoes. Here are just two experiences--there are many more I could have shared-- that tell me why we still need feminism and have nothing to do with "man-hating." Today... I am writing consultant. I like to do online sessions. WCOnline has this great program that enables you to chat with a user in order to help them better their writing. The program allows each user to see what the other user is writing as they type, so it...

image from pixbay.com I have this awesome colleague who I admittedly disagree with often. This is one of the things I enjoy most about our conversations, though. I always leave feeling smarter. Either he has taught me something about the other perspective that I had not considered before, or I am able to better articulate my own stance on something for myself. Most recently, the latter happened in regards to First Year Writing (FYW or First-Year Composition/FYC). My colleague definitely falls into the First-Year Writing abolitionist group. He believes it's useless. After all, outside of the FYW classroom, where would students ever need to write essays like that again? At the university where we work, the FYW course also has a social reform focus, which can sometimes wind up confusing students-- they feel forced to choice a side that they might not buy into based on what they think their teacher feels about the issue. It seemed to me that my colleague had a singular vision of FYW an...