Being the Son of A Feminist

A Story by Sharon Kinsella

I'm a mom of three kids - son, daughter, son.

This story happens when my oldest boy was playing high school football. He was well known at his school, he was funny and smart and kind. He was also the shortest nose tackle in the region, measuring in at 5'5" (which is my fault he'll tell you). He has a neck like a barrel and shoulders like a brick wall and he was a steamroller on first string baby.

The situation -

I was well known in union, political, non-profit and feminists circles for my expertise with women's employment issues, garnered through different endeavors with helping women get non- traditional jobs, which I started doing over 30 years ago.

My current job was running a National Job Problem Hotline for 9to5, National Association of Working Women. The organization had quite a bit of recognition on a national level and was considered, by many, to be the go to organization on women's employment issues such as sex discrimination, sexual harassment etc.

The job problem hotline was a national 1-800 number that women could call to get advice on their problems on the job. I was the person most of them talked to. To explain the magnitude of this project, in a 4 1/2 year period the hotline processed about 65,000 calls and at least 3/4 of them were handled by me.

This all takes place during the Hill-Thomas debacle in 1990 (89?) I've got a brain fart. Clarence Thomas had just been nominated for the Supreme Court and Anita Hill, who had worked for him at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission accused him, in the media, of Sexual Harassment..

The whole thing exploded, my hotline number was everywhere, the media was lined up outside my office door to interview me like it was a bakery with fresh bread.

My younger children were in 1st and 2nd grade and thought that everybody's mommy was on the news and in magazines.

But remember, I had a football player in high school.

Down to it -

I was fried. I was burned out and was becoming damaged from the pain I heard in these women's stories when they called me, some just to share, the abuse they had suffered just to earn money to take of their families.

The local newspaper, The Cleveland Plain Dealer sent over a reporter to interview me and hear some of the stories I had. A photographer was sent for an accompanying picture, happened all the time. I didn't think much of it, didn't have the time and was pretty much too numb to this stuff.

Long story short -

The next morning I'm riding the bus to work and look at the newspaper boxes lining the streets, there's my picture, it's huge, it's on the front page above the fold. Oh hell, I thought.

It was a nightmare day for me dealing with all the local media, national media (the Today show was stringing lights through the offices for the next morning) and the hotline.

When I got home my oldest boy was standing at the door and his face was red. "You were on the front page of the paper" he said. I said "I know, weird huh?" He said "It's not funny, everybody at school knows what you do and who you are and they were all coming up and calling me Gloria Steinhem's boy and snickering". All I could tell him was "At least you're not Clarence Thomas's son". His answer "You have no idea how hard it is to be the son of a feminist".