Today since the snow melted overnight and it's not that mucky, I put on my tennis shoes for the first time in weeks, rather than my boots. They felt very light, since I've been so used to wearing my boots, which are heavy.
Yesterday I went to a free lunch sponsored by the Gender Studies department where the two lesbians who head up the city's most prominent feminist bookstore came in to informally talk about their business. About fourteen people showed up, most of them lesbians. The owners were really sweet and went around the circle and had everyone say their name so it was more like a conversation then a lecture, but I found it disconcerting since the owners seemed to have forgotten everyone's name but mine, since one of them called me by name both times I asked a question, which was rather disconcerting... I got the vibe from her that she felt motherly towards me, which I guess is a good thing, though. Next time I stop through the store, I'm definitely going to say hi to them if they're in working.
Anyhow, my one question was if they had a religion/spirituality section and if so what they stocked and how has it changed over the years (I've been to the bookstore once or twice before but I hadn't spent much time poking around there). The owner, who smiled and was like, "Good question, [my name]" -- the same thing she said to my other question, how the bookstore has adjusted to the changes in interests and changes in generations that the shift from Second to Third Wave feminisim has witnessed! -- said that they have a 'Spirituality' section, not a 'Religion' one, and that they don't stock primary religious texts like the Bible or Koran, but rather a miscellany of stuff, though a lot less goddess-focused books than they used to back in the late 70s.
At another point, they said that they've always been surprised how few straight women buy sex-advice books, compared to other groups (lesbians, gays, straight men). Then one owner said, though, that she was glad since they get teenage girls that come in sometimes after school and browse the sex books, and that makes her glad that the girls have access to positive information about sex and their bodies, since who knows what they're getting at school.
She also said that they keep the sex books a discreet distance away from the children's books, and to their knowledge no pre-pubescent kids have ever just happened into them, which is good too.
Lastly, one or another of the owners said that Barnes & Noble and Borders decimated small feminist presses. Since it's the practice of those businesses to have it built into contracts that they can send back unsold stock, when they were new on the scene, they would order one or two copies of a book from a press for each of their stores, which would amount to over a thousand books, then since no sales clerks would sell them, after a year they'd send the books back, and it would be a major finanical blow to the presses, many of which never recovered before they caught on to how they'd be affected by that contractual requirement, since they were used to selling to stores that actively sold their books to their customers. The one owner said that feminist presses and feminist bookstores are part of a delicate ecosystem that has been endangered for a while.
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3 comments:
Why do you think she only remembered your name? Surely you must have speculated.
Because when the session started, I was the only male student in the room (a couple others joined later). She probably thought I was brave to show up to an event that drew mainly lesbians.
Plus, second wave feminists tend to like me, as long as they're not incredibly militant.
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