Beth Behland’s column in the April 18 issue of The Northern Star is the best evidence I’ve seen for the necessity of a Women’s Studies program at NIU.

That a young woman could be so totally ignorant of her own heritage as a woman is really sad.

To hear a woman call feminism a dirty word is like hearing a black person attack the civil rights movement or a Jewish individual defend anti-semitism. It makes you wonder what kind of self-hatred underlies her hostility.

Doesn’t she realize where she’d be today without the efforts of feminists? Does she think that women always had the basic rights she takes so completely for granted that she doesn’t even mention them?

Without feminism Beth Behland would be leading an unrecognizably different life. Without the efforts of feminists she would not have the right to vote.

She would not have the right to drive a car. She would not have the right to control her own fertility through the use of birth control.

She would not have any choice about whether or not to be married. She would not have any choice about whether or not to bear a child. None of these rights were simply “given” to women; feminists had to fight for every one of them.

Without the efforts of feminists over the course of several centuries, she and all other women would still be treated as women were treated for thousands of years—which is as the powerless property of men.

Without feminism Beth Behland today might well be illiterate, married to a man she had no say in choosing, already the mother of a brood of children, and totally dependent on her husband.

She would most certainly not be what she is today: an independent, educated—or maybe I should say she’s “semi-educated,” since she is so obviously lacking any information about the history of women in the western world—woman.

Beth, take a course on women’s history. Find out how you got where you are today. I can guarantee one thing: you won’t come out of that class thinking feminism is a dirty word.

Judith Testa

Associate professor

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