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Also worth reading, if you missed it: Shelby Knox talks about “My Roommate, Gloria Steinem“:
IF young feminists believed in fairy tales, then moving to New York City and winding up with Gloria Steinem as your roommate would definitely count as one.
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That is what happened to Shelby Knox when she came here in 2007 from Lubbock, Tex., to work at a summer program dedicated to empowering teenage girls. Then 20, Ms. Knox was already somewhat known in the feminist world: In high school she was the subject of a documentary, “The Education of Shelby Knox,” about her fight to change Lubbock’s sex education curriculum, which taught abstinence-only, and how the battle gradually distanced her from the Baptist church in which she had been raised….
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At first, “I was incredibly intimidated,” said Ms. Knox, now 25. “As a 20-year-old would, I was like, ‘I’m not smart enough to talk to her.’ ”
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But then Ms. Steinem watched the documentary, and they started talking about Ms. Knox’s experience promoting it, when she traveled around the country talking to young people about her experience coming of age as a feminist in an evangelical community.
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“She said, ‘You’re an itinerant feminist organizer,’ ” Ms. Knox said. “And I was like: ‘What? This has a name? This isn’t just me avoiding getting a job?’ ” …
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“There’s all these stories about ‘someone will give you your chance,’ and she did,” Ms. Knox said. “It’s not like she did anything magical. It’s not like she anointed me ‘feminist whatever.’ She just said, ‘I’ll give you a roof over your head while you try to learn to make it in New York.’”