Revisiting Peggy Orenstein’s Flux at 25, leaving Twitter and Meta, micro-dosing hope
Dear Friend,
Today’s 3 Fluxlandish Things is sponsored by Feminism, a cause that continues to inform much of my writing.
I seem to have a thing about f-words.
Back in the early days of blogging, I blogged about feminist research and women’s lives at Girl w/Pen with a beloved posse that included Elline Lipkin, Research Scholar with UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women, past poet laureate of Altadena, and mama of a dear little boy. Her family’s home was destroyed in the Eaton fire.
This is her Go Fund Me.
My heart aches for those devastated by the LA fires, those who are living in a state of flux so total, it’s difficult to comprehend. I do recommend listening to Meghan Daum’s Letter from the Los Angeles Fires. A resident of Altadena, Meghan offers an account of her experience, her city, the fires, and how to even begin to think about this.
3 Fluxlandish Things
Twenty-five years ago, author Peggy Orenstein published Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids and Life in a Half-Changed World, a book that strengthened my resolve to chronicle change and backlash in women’s lives back when I was writing Sisterhood, Interrupted. Revisiting Flux in January 2025, I’m struck that we optimistically thought the world was indeed “half” changed. Backlash—a term coined in Susan Faludi’s 1991 book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women to refer to the conservative reaction to the progress made by feminists in the 1970s—once again rears its hydra-head, emboldened by the soon-to-be Backlasher in Chief. And journalist is among the first responders offering us new language to chronicle and counteract our times. Join me in following her new Substack, Unmanned, for “rage, resilience, and refusal.”
I’m leaving Twitter and Meta. With Zuckerberg’s kiss-the-ring announcement that Facebook will no longer fact check, Musk’s continued misogynistic absurdity, and five more days til the convicted felon moves into the Oval Office, I’m done. I’m having a harder time separating from Facebook—
—but as soon as I figure out how to download photos, I will! Leaving these platforms is hardly activism. Yet it feels like one nano-micro-step for women+kind that is available for me to take and so I’m taking it.
Image cred1
3. Who among us doesn’t need to micro-dose hope this year. In that spirit, I leave you with words from Rilke, which remind us that there’s a long view to be had:
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”2
Just keep going.
No feeling is final.
The only constant is change.
with love from fluxlandia,
Deborah
Teddy, macro-dose of joy.
Today in lake, brrr edition.
Photo by Lorenz Hoffmann on Unsplash.
See item #10 in Austin Kleon’s post, “Without hope and without despair.”