Our Shared Shelf discussion

Thoughts?

Moved to "My Life on the Road" folder

I like the following sentences:
"I'm often asked how many campuses I've visited. The truth is I have no idea. I've gone to several each month of my lifetime on the road, and I've gone back to many more than once. All I know for sure is that university and college campuses, with some high schools and prep schools added, have been the largest slice of my traveling pie - and they stil are." p. 97

"For instance, during early visits to campuses, I saw students painting a big red X on sidewalks wherever a woman had been sexually assaulted - and ending up getting arrested for vandalism instead of being praised."

It's an interesting chapter, and I'm not done with it yet digesting it. A re-read is definitely needed.

I think this chapter is wonderful because it shows us what one can achieve if one believes in it.

I think that student life is the one time in your life where you are free to find yourself, to rebel, and where it doesn't matter if you are lousy with attendance sometimes. It won't have the same effect as when you're working.

I also think that this chapter is very important since it can solve the problem: "I don't know enough to be a feminist." If there is one place in the world where you can solve such a problem, it's campus, I think.

This chapter is also important because it shows us what Ms. Steinem was able to do. Not only could she discuss issues with people on one campus, but she was able to connect the campuses, since she was visiting so many of them, some of them even more than once.

I must also say that it crossed my mind that this book is structured like a parabel of the ring. And this chapter is very important, because it shows that campuses are the most important part of her life, so to say, and that here is where one can really make a change, because it's where so many people are gathering in order to learn, and so they can also achieve so much.

In my opinion, campuses also show us how the society works in which the campus is set. Whether it's fundamentalistic, it's open-minded, feministic or not. It's a mirror of the society, in some ways. It shows not only what is likely to be seen, but also which is not. Presence and absence on a campus show a lot I think.

In this chapter we also learn that every change happens from a social movement, whether it's black studies, women's studies or, in this very case Ms. Steinem is talking about, disability studies.

Btw, I'm going to study sociology and the maybe I'll take a master in gender studies. I couldn't do that if some of the people who lived already before I was born, had fought for that.

As far as I'm concerned I loved this chapter(and still love it) because of all the stories. Campus is one big place to learn, and to be honest, it is not only a place to learn facts, it is also a place to learn stories. Stories like the boy who was raised as a girl and sexually abused. It's one of the chapters I love, among Why I Don't Drive, What Once Was Can Be Again, and My Father's Footsteps.

It's a book I can read a thousand times. It's wonderful.