The Education of Shelby Knox

I think it’s important for me as a young woman to identify myself both as a feminist and as an organizer – and the term, borrowed from Gloria Steinem, describes exactly what it is that I do. I travel across the country to speak at high schools, colleges and community events about the need for comprehensive sex education and to conduct workshops and trainings with young people on the how-to’s of youth activism.

If I do my job correctly, the people at my events will realize they only needed an outsider to bring them together to begin the conversation or to renew an action that’s slowed. The resources, personalities, and organizing expertise are present organically in every community and it’s about connecting the right people to make change happen.

When I was in high school, I found a quote by Gloria Steinem that I turned to to keep me going whenever it got hard to be a young, female activist of faith. It was, “God may be in the details but the Goddess is in the questions and once you start asking them, there’s no turning back.” I idolized her as a woman whose story of coming from hard circumstances in Toledo to discovering her strengths and becoming a powerful organizer for women’s equality resonated with my own – and it was a favorite daydream to come up with little scenarios of what I would say if I were ever lucky enough to meet her!

The conference in Lubbock was not the first time I got that opportunity. I’ve been privileged to know her as a friend and colleague since I moved to New York City in 2007, living in her house for a time as I got on my feet as a freelance writer and consultant. The thing about Gloria is she is so much more than the most known face of the feminist movement – she’s the real deal. She is an amazing networker, always connecting people who can help one another, and has a super-human ability to remember not only vast amounts of organizing information about a wide range of issues but also the names and faces and stories of the many people she meets. She’s a writer first and foremost – and it was the most valuable lesson I’ve ever learned as a young writer to realize that she too struggles with putting words to paper and that her first drafts can be as nonsensical as anyone else’s.

Gloria is a true friend to young women, one of those Second Wave feminists who never pulled up the ladder behind her but instead sees young women as equal and valuable colleagues and friends. She abhors the term ‘mentor’ because of the inequality of it, for instance. It was an honor to introduce her to my parents and grandparents when we were in Lubbock – and to serve as a visible reminder of how powerful inter-generational working partnerships can be.

I’d say they don’t understand the definition of comprehensive sex education. Comprehensive sex ed includes information about all forms of pregnancy and STI prevention, with a focus on abstinence as an appropriate and viable choice for young people. It also teaches youth how to talk to their peers and partners about that choice, as well as how to talk about and use correctly and consistently condoms and birth control when they do decide to become sexually active – whether that’s over the weekend or on their wedding night.

Sometimes people tell me teaching safer sex practices alongside abstinence is like telling teens to smoke light cigarettes or to use a clean needle while shooting up. The difference is that most parents don’t want their kids to be better smokers or safer drug users but you’d be hard pressed to find parents that don’t want their kids to grow up to be healthy, happy sexual adults – and comprehensive sex ed gives young people the tools to negotiate their sexuality throughout their lifetime by teaching concrete skills like partner-to-partner communication, conflict resolution, and self-care techniques.

I think all issues are women’s issues and we do both men and women a great disservice to use that term to limit our organizing and rhetoric to things that have to do with children, family, and our reproductive organs. We have to be focused on economic equality for all people, like equal and fair pay as well as pay for male and female caretakers that work inside the home. Feminists of all genders have a vested interest in sustainable energy policies, equal rights for GLBT individuals, and fair immigration policies. On that note, young women who apply for a green card are required to get the HPV vaccine despite no similar requirement for American women – a policy that deprives immigrant women of the right to make health decisions with their doctors and absolutely must be repealed.

I will always be a reproductive justice organizer. We have to make sure women have equal access to health care, including abortion, and the right to decide when and if to have children – and create conditions in which women can parent their own children if they choose to do so. I’m especially interested in exposing crisis pregnancy centers as fake clinics that harm women and ending tax breaks and federal funding for such institutions. And as a simple mark of humanity, we all must work to end sex trafficking both internationally and domestically by decriminalizing the women and focusing on criminalizing the demand. I could go on and on and on.

Start with something that’s affecting you and tell your story as often and anywhere you can – your lived experience is all you need to be an organizer. Once you begin to share your story it will free other people to do the same and pretty soon you’ll have a coalition of people with different skills joined together to take action. Also, utilize the power of social networking – it’s activism to set your Facebook status to air an injustice or to use your Twitter to share links that relate to what you care about or to organize an Internet-wide boycott of a bad company. To be an activist is to know your very existence is political and important – and to encourage others to feel the same.