The Personal Is (Still) Political: Feminist Reflections on a Transformative Journey

Abstract

The feminist slogan “The personal is political” spoke to me from the very first moment I heard it, on International Women’s Day in 1990 in Fairfax, Virginia. As a doctoral student at George Mason University, I chose to attend a special event, organized by the women’s studies program to celebrate March 8, International Women’s Day. The featured speaker was bell hooks, who was just bursting onto the feminist stage at the time. No one in attendance knew that, for me, the event had additional meanings: it was my 29th birthday and a wonderful occasion to celebrate a new beginning. Just a few months earlier I had bought a one-way ticket, using my acceptance into a PhD program as an excuse to leave an abusive relationship and a political context that made me feel helpless and hopeless. Leaving Israel in my late 20s allowed me to find and to use my voice as an anti-racist feminist, committed to peace with justice in Palestine and Israel. After decades of struggle to reconcile my passion and intellect within several academic institutions, the emergence and institutionalization of women’s and gender studies as an academic field of study and practice gave me a home within the university system.