1. Why RADICAL?  Isn’t the National Organization for Women a liberal women’s organization?

You women’s studies majors are awfully hard to please.  Okayokayokay, groups like NOW are concerned with social, legal, and political reform of existing institutions, unlike radical feminists, who seek to dismantle patriarchy completely and start over.  NOW isn’t perfect, but it’s where I’ve chosen to put my money, energy, and time since 2002.

While we’re on the subject, please don’t tell me that NOW is a tool of the Democratic Party.  We endorse candidates on the basis of principles, not parties. If you’re not convinced, ask me what I’d do if I bumped into Collin Peterson during happy hour at the Detroit Lakes Zorbaz.

2. Why HOUSEWIFE? The correct title for a person in your position is “homemaker.”*

Give me a break.

3. What are your identity politics?

 

I’m a white, Gen X, cis-gendered, middle class, heterosexual, atheist, able-bodied, Midwestern American woman.

4. Aren’t you worried that your children’s privacy is being compromised by their presence on your blog?

My kids are the reason I made the leap from armchair feminist to activist mom-on-the-street: any documentation of my feminist adventures would be incomplete without them.  I read other blogs in which parents use clever nicknames or initials to obscure their kids’ identities, but to be honest, I find this too precious by half.  And I’m lazy.

Perhaps the best response to this eternal mommyblogger question might come from Katie Allison Granju of Mamapundit.  When she revealed to her Babble readers in April 2010 that her teenage son Henry was a drug addict, many of the responses expressed horror that she would share such a thing.  Why, he’d never be able to get a job, enroll at Yale, run for Congress, etc. with that info on the interwebz!  Shame, shame on her!  Just weeks after that column was written, Henry died, and blog fallout was the last thing on her family’s mind.

Maybe my kids will be proud to be represented here, maybe they’ll be humiliated.  I don’t know.  All I can do is hope that I get to find out.  In the  meantime, I plan to live in the present, doing the best I can with the tools I have right now.

5. Does this blog make you money?

The million dollar (pun intended) question!  No, I don’t make money through this blog. I have been given free books for review, but that’s it.  I have ad space up via BlogHer, Google Ads, and Amazon.com, but I have made a commitment to give any ad revenue to one or more of my favorite nonprofits, which I have listed in my Causes page.  All are groups that serve my community in the areas that I care about: educational equality, reproductive rights, LGBT equality, and women’s political engagement.  Many of these groups are run by people I know personally and trust with my dough.  I urge you to check them out.

6. What’s the best thing about being married to a computer geek?

Easy access to the very latest in stalker-tracking software.

 

*I have actually been told this