On A Pale Horse

Friday, November 10, 2006

Ellen Willis, 65

I took a personal economics course in high school. The main objective was to teach a person how to balance their check book, invest money and plan for retirement. I kinda blew off that class because my one and only plan for life was that I was going to write the Great American Novel by the time I was 25. Following the publication I was going to travel the world promoting the book and just being a eccentric tourist. But unfortunately on my way back from Great Britain while sitting in first class on the Concorde the plane would suddenly develop engine problems and would crash in the ocean. I along with the other passengers would be lost at sea for eternity. Well by the time I was 23 I hadn't even started the novel. I had changed my major to Accounting with a minor in English in hopes that after I spent the day toiling over debits and credits that I could still work on the great Great American Novel and perhaps some minor short stories, as a start to get in good with a reputable publisher. By the time I was 25 I changed my major again to Finance, no minor. I started working full time, learned how to balance a checkbook and started my own retirement account.
I guess if my life hadn't taken the direction it did I would've still liked to do some writing for a living (and blogging during work doesn't really count). I envy the career that Ellen Willis had. She was a political essayist, journalist, pop music critic and the Director of Cultural Reporting and Criticism graduate program at NYU. I think I liked the most was what I read on Wikipedia...

She is also known for her feminist politics and was a founding member of Redstockings. She was one of the few women working in music criticism during its inaugural years, when it was by and large a male-dominated field. Starting in 1979, Willis wrote a number of essays that were highly critical of anti-pornography feminism, criticizing it for what she saw as its sexual puritanism and moral authoritarianism, as well as its threat to free speech. These essays were among the earliest expressions of feminist opposition to the anti-pornography movement. Her 1981 essay, "Lust Horizons: Is the Women's Movement Pro-Sex?" is the origin of the term, "pro-sex feminism".[1] She was also a strong supporter of women's abortion rights, and in the early 1980s was a founding member of the pro-choice street theater/protest group No More Nice Girls.