carrying member of the National Organization for Women when I met him, and I refused to join. We used to joke about it. And you remember that recent article about the history of Ms. Magazine you emailed me? In the article, Gloria Steinem says that anyone could have walked into the Ms. office in the 1970s and gotten a job. But I certainly never felt like I could do that. I was actually living in New York when Ms. started, and I was even working in publishing... but I grew up on a farm in the midwest, and I wasn't like the women who ran Ms. They felt like a club.” My upbringing has not been like my mother's. I grew up with a lot more privilege; my mother used to call me a spoiled "princess" when she was angry, and one of my ex- boyfriends used to tease me by calling me "East Coast Intellectual." Yet in a lot of ways, it took me a while to get into feminism, too. Gender issues have always been a strand of my thinking, but plenty of feminist discourse never impressed me. In university, I felt like everything I heard from feminism was a tortured conspiracy theory. And although I identified as "feminist" from the very beginning of blogging, it was out of a sense of resistance rather than feeling included. I felt like: Goddamnit, I will show you that I can be an independent and rational woman who values voting and abortion rights and equal opportunity and consent -- and be into S&M at the same damn time. As I kept writing, I was looking at other blogs about gender and sexuality, too. The ones whose analysis really spoke to me were usually feminist blogs. And those were also, often, the bloggers who noticed me in return. My work was highlighted by a number of feminist writers who wanted to raise my profile. Talking to them, I began to understand some sophisticated critiques that I'd previously labeled "conspiracy theories.” I expanded my understanding of topics like rape culture, as well as "tangential" social justice issues like race and class. My mother said to me, long a