How remarkably things have changed. Perhaps most strikingly underscored by the opening paragraph - "Anyway, at a women’s college, the old beaux would only be there if they had married one’s classmates."

(of course, at Wellesley, "casenova" meant something else entirely)

Judith, thank you for revving my gratitude for one of the most enjoyable times in my life, past and recent - my 50th Reunion. The class had to "find" me, but using a ‘finder’ got their money back! The message greeted me returning from Europe, "Hey, is this you? Do you remember what you were doing on (a date) and who you were with - hint — Harry Belafonte." Great Scott - at that point, the next phone message was from my 90s mother telling me that "some of the kids have called here looking for you…" (KIDS?)

It turned out that no one had thought of contacting my original address until the hunter group reported me ‘found,’ "quite easily. Well, I didn’t remember what I was doing on that date - but was later told that I had gone to meet with Mr. B. about helping me raise funds for a two-high school party (our competing h.s. where the Supremes’ originated) to salve the tensions between the "East Side," and the "West Side," so the "guys" all decided I was nuts and needed one of them to take me - to keep me safe! Sheesh.

I had just returned from an international philanthropy meeting in fact - which prefaced my classmate’s returned call - "OMG, what are you doing now," he asked. Uh, I thought, then said, "The same thing!"

One of my favorite h.s. friends lived in Florida, and really one of few I had stayed in touch with (after college and grad schools), so her offspring arranged to send her, too! What kids they were. We met at the airport and had arranged to drive up to the resort where are enormous "Class" was meeting. This wondrous, hard-working woman who had financially run a great nature and amusement park in Florida for many years, showed up with special T-shirts she had designed for the "two of us," with our graduation photos on the back of each one, and under our lovely photo was, "I’m back!" What a person she is - always has been, and I then realize why I had loved her as a best friend all of these years.

One of my greatest joys was the impressions my male classmates shared with me! I was shocked really - having not been much into dating, etc. and hell-bent on college, future career, and . . . surviving an abusive upbringing - getting out; my focus had not been on fun. But, what those classmates shared with me meant probably more than many things ever had in my entire life - there is nothing like long-term relationship, and coming from those who knew me when, and from whence I came meant everything to me.

That year I was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer  -  so many of those wondrous newly found friends stayed on the Internet with me, and telephone for several years, helping me through some unbelievable days; one designed my breastcancer website for me; another joined a NGO founded to screen large groups nationally for breast cancer.

Today, my high school classmates - the special ones in my life - are still on my heart’s etched surface although many of them are, sadly, over 1200 miles away from me for the most part; however, they are not superficial, they are who I am. And, they know it.

(no we are not in "Classmates" either!)

Thank you, Judith. It’s a lovely morning.

"Everybody" knows that women weren’t encouraged to have careers, that the working woman could only have happened post-Women’s Liberation, and that we’ve been under The Man’s thumb since Eve.  But then how do we explain Madeline Albright? Golda Meier? Lise Meitner? Marie Curie?  And we haven’t even talked about non-white women  (apologies in advance to anyone who doesn’t like the term).

Have we lied to ourselves about our history, and our opportunities, all along?

I, too, am dismayed by the conclusion that the history of women’s work outside of the home began in the 1960s. What about nurses and teachers when we were children? And what about secretaries, clerks, cleaning women,dressmakers, maids, nannies, cooks, file clerks, bookkeepers, file clerks, factory workers, waitresses, telephone operators who worked to support themselves and their families? Why diminish their work? It is tiresome to read and listen to those who suffer from self-congratulations on the great strides made by women post 1960. Did they also invent the  sewing machine on which many women worked to earn a living?  

The word "career" isn’t magical to those of us whose antecedents, like us, worked at whatever it took to earn a living. Betty Friedan did not invent the term. She was a college educated, middle class woman who probably had a woman do her typing at work. I haven’t mentioned field hands, have I, and farmers’ wives who worked alongside their families to provide the necessities.

Is it only semantics or is it "attitude?" 

I’ve never practiced saving the world; I try to bring change with one person at a time, and I have  needed the care of many nurse’s aides, because of fractures and living alone. In each case, I examined their pay checks to make certain that the payroll administrators, who sit on their rumps all day polishing their nails, paid the workers adequately, and it is never adequate—no benefits, and if they work ‘round the clock they don’t get paid for the night, because they get food. So, I help each woman, and I’ve done it many times, to explore possibilities of going to college or a training school, and I keep in touch with them, and one calls me every Xmas to tell me of her progress. We tease each other, because she has joined the middle class, and as a single mother from Nigeria she can support herself and daughter well.

 Frankly, and, of course, you don’t know me, I am a professional who earned 3 degrees by working at awful, often mindless jobs, and attended collegesl at night, as my mother an immigrant garment worker did to acquire English long ago, and I have been self-supporting from the age of 18, and even when married, which means I didn’t hang out only with middle class women whose parents paid for their daughters’ college educatioon to prepare them to work in professions. I don’t trust the doctors, lawyers and CEOs to represent  working class women because they don’t know any unless they are their maids. Of course, there are the trickle down results, as you mentioned, and more opportunities for women in professions now, but I was distinguishing or trying to distinguish our use of the words "career" and "work," the former implying that women employed out of the home is a recent phenomenon, and we do know better! And these 2 words reveal a class bias.

For some time,  rigid feminists insisted we never use "ladies," because it reminded them of old fashioned views of women at lunch or as dependent on men or as perfectly behaved social creatures; now the word "women" has connotations. Women is used to distinguish from "Girls," a term my generation and later ones rejected. When a man uses "girls, I want to throw "Boy" at him and make certain he understands why—it is demeaning. And, it is insulting to grown men in racial terms.

  Also, in office and factories manager/bosses referred to male employees as men and female employees as girls. As an adult female, I do not want to be called "girl," do you?

 Since language is not only historical & social, it is also highly political, and de Beauvoir, it is a semantic problem  in translation, and has other connotations.

We’ve moved far from the question on class, but these terms also indicate the speaker’s class, as well as the listener’s. 

S, who is to say?????? 

I think our host, in an ongoing attempt to inject some class, has this time inadvertantly injected some *class*. But my class (‘84) was still taught to respect its elders (‘59), so I wont’ call her on it.

WRT to semantics, it was simpler in the first blush of the feminist (and all the other) movements. Now, folks are taking back their terminology. Sometimes with charming results (as a friend of mine says, "that’s mister faggot to you"), and sometimes with shocking (I’m not even going to repeat it, since some filter will probably catch it).

The good news is that de-construction is also de-destruction, and acclimation plus liberation can only take away a word’s destructive power. The bad news is that the younger generation is already incapable of really comprehending what all the fuss was about.