Speaking of Women's Rights: Claiming "heroes"

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Claiming "heroes"

Legal Voice has an auction coming up on October 17, and we recently picked a theme for the event: “Heroes.”

Legal Voice Executive Director and blogger Lisa Stone looked up the definition the other day, and as she observed “Why did I not think more carefully before voting for "heroes"? Who knew the damn definition was so gendered?”


If feminists can reclaim a word like “bitch,” can we PUH-LEEZE get to work on claiming “hero” too? (I would say that terms like “heroine” and “sheroes” don’t quite cut it for our purposes.)

As far as kick-ass women in mass media go, I can think of a government official (who put 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling), some funny ladies, a writer and a news anchor that I’d call heroes. Jezebel even came up with 20 feminist TV characters who could qualify as heroes. (They forgot Maude, though. Update: Just kidding! Maude is FIRST ON THE LIST. Duh.)

Who are your heroes?