Margaret Atwood admitted she likes science fiction at a Barnes & Noble reading, according to Bookish Love. Asked whether she considers herself a feminist writer, though, she got “subtly indignant.”

…not towards the woman who asked the question, but towards the need for the question in the first place. She said terms like that were “filing mechanisms.” Then, she addressed the audience as a whole, saying, first we have to talk about what you mean by feminism. Are we talking about driving all the men off a cliff, wearing overalls, or equal rights under the law? She said if she held a tally right now, she would guess we all were feminists. First, she said, the question would be do we think women are human beings or animals? She guessed we’d all say human beings. Then, she continued with a list of several questions in her hypothetical survey, do we think women should be able to learn to read and write, to vote, and then to the “more sticky” question of should women earn and equal amount as men for the same work, in the same position. Her final point being, implicitly, we should all be considering ourselves feminists if we understand our definitions correctly.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 2nd, 2006 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Beautiful geekery, Inspiring women, Progress and politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.