NONFICTION - May 28, 1995

LISTEN UP: Voices From the Next Feminist Generation edited by Barbara Findlen. (Seal Press: $12.95; 282 pp.) Findlen was born in 1964. She’s three years older than Rene Denfeld (above), the same generation X, same lack of chromosome y, and she writes: “As we reached adolescence and adulthood, the feminist movement was challenging society’s basic assumptions about gender. “One of the characteristics we’re known for,” she writes, “is our disunity.” The recognition that there are now many kinds of feminists seems a prudent evolution, a wise digestion of the lessons of the past generation, rather than wholesale rejection of a group glibly labeled “New Victorians.” “The spirited voices in this collection,” Findlen writes in her introduction, “are not ‘daughters’ rebelling against the old-style politics of their ‘mothers’ . . . the experiences that lead young women to feminism are often similar to those that have always led women into feminism.” “Our Bodies, Ourselves” may have taught us to love our bodies, “but that didn’t stop you from being raped.” The legacy is burdensome because it raises our expectations about our lives, not because it suffocates and hinders us. The writers collected here inhabit lives that may not have been imaginable without desperate isolation decades ago. They struggle with HIV, being black and lesbian, oddly configured family lives, abortion, harassment, teen-age pregnancies and yes, with weight. They are feminists, whether or not they like the label.