Lauren is one of my favorite bloggers. She is by far one of the most intelligent and thought provoking people out there, so I always want to know more about her. If you do too, now is your chance. She has a great interview on her blog today:

I signed up for another five question interview, but probably shouldn't have. This one took me over two weeks to answer. Terrance asks some tough questions.

1. What, or who, inspired your feminism?
Lots of influences inspired my feminism. My older sister was a big one, talking about marriage and the politics of changing one's name upon marriage. She also told me I should play a sport instead of being a spectator, pointing out the fetishization of cheerleaders. Those were my first exposures to feminist thought. My other older sister gave me a copy of Susan Faludi's Backlash long before I was old enough to understand it, and though I don't know whether she would call herself a feminist, she certainly qualifies in many ways. Playing sports, softball specifically, was another factor, especially as a young teen noticing that my male peers had a far better field than we did. Ours doubled as a soccer field and had divots in it the size of dinner plates - not conducive to softball playing. My mom and dad raised us girls to be independent thinkers, sometimes by example and sometimes by negative example. I often think that I turn out to be their worst nightmare: a liberal hippie (in Dad's words) more concerned with art and social systems than commerce. Then again, they inspired me to love the arts like I do. Dad, in particular, reads upwards of five books a week and is highly politicized. I certainly take after him. Furthermore, education was of the utmost priority in our house. As we know, in certain areas of the world demanding quality education for your daughters is a feminist act. My young pregnancy was the final factor. Staying in Michigan with my sister for almost a month near the end of the pregnancy, I perused the bookstore and found a copy of a Germaine Greer book that literally changed my life. Like I said in the feminist influences post, "Giving birth as a teenager will do two things to a girl: send her into a neverending spiral of destruction or turn her into a politicized machine." I took the latter path.

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Posted by: Lauren at May 10, 2005 01:11 PM