Teenage girls’ narratives of becoming activists

Abstract

In March of 2003, hundreds of thousands of high school students all over the world took to the streets to protest the impending U.S.-led war in Iraq. Emily, from the San Francisco Bay Area, was 13 at the time. When I interviewed her several years later, a senior in high school, she told me that the main thing she remembers about 8 th grade was all the anti-war protests. She went to every possible rally, student walkout, and march. But these anti-war protests were not the end of her teenage activism; over the next five years she coordinated an organization for women's rights at her high school, worked to oppose California ballot measures that would restrict the reproductive rights of teenage girls, and continued to go to protests and rallies on a variety of national issues. Similarly, Celia, an Italian exchange student who I met while she was living in Venezuela described the lead-up to war as the spark that led her and many of her peers to become activists. She was fourteen at the time. 'I began to educate myself more about this issue because I wanted to oppose what was being done. And many other youth were also doing this, like me, so a lot of spontaneous protests were born almost without organization at the beginning.And afterward we began to discuss and decide how to organize ourselves in order to continue with other activities and other projects.' Like Emily, Celia didn't stop there. In fact, she was so interested in social movements that she convinced her parents to let her spend a year living in Venezuela where she'd be able to see the unfolding political changes.What leads girls like Emily and Celia to become involved in social movements? How do they understand this involvement? And how do they narrate their developing identities as teenage activists? This article analyses girls' stories about their entry into activism, examining how they talk about the process of 'becoming an activist.' In particular, I show how girl activists' constructions of their activist identities replicate many of the narrative conventions of coming of age tales as well as popular discourses of adolescence as a time of self-development. After describing some of the narrative themes found in these activist coming of age tales, I argue that girl activists' emphasis on themselves as still 'becoming' rather than 'being' activists enables a valuable political flexibility, openness, and the mobilization of their peers but also has the unintended consequence of contributing to their own invisibility and to the widespread dismissal of young people's politics as merely practice for the future.

“One Size Doesn't Fit All”: Connecting Views of Activism With Youth Activist Identification*

“…Several other respondents echoed this sense that a true activist makes activism their primary focus, and their willingness to do so is most evident through their participation in offline activism. This finding fits with prior work on activist identities (Blackstone 2004, Horowitz 2017, Taft 2017. For example, one study concludes that even though many of their respondents embraced an inclusive vision of activism, "being an activist seems in these students' minds to require a singularity of focus, purpose, and time" (Chalhoub et al 2016:304).…”

“…It is not surprising that this is pronounced among youth given the false assumption that they are politically apathetic, naïve, and need to be "brought up to speed" to participate in politics (this is referred to as the "deficit" model, Gordon 2008, Henn et al 2002. Like prior studies (Gordon 2007, Taft 2017, perhaps part of being an activist for some youth in our study requires demonstrating an understanding of issues that "makes up for" their age.…”

“…Respondents' emphasis on fluency fits with the existing literature's descriptions of what it takes to be an activist. Eliasoph found that the "standards for technical knowledge required for citizenship were impossibly high" just to talk about politics for the respondents in her study (1998:140), and activists in related studies have expressed similar sentiments (Cortese 2015, Taft 2017). It is not surprising that this is pronounced among youth given the false assumption that they are politically apathetic, naïve, and need to be "brought up to speed" to participate in politics (this is referred to as the "deficit" model, Gordon 2008, Henn et al 2002.…”

“…Chris Bobel argues that "the conception of activist is anchored in key values of humility and rigor expressed as a 'perfect standard,'" and this standard "places the esteemed identity activist out of reach for many social movement actors who deem themselves unworthy," leading few of Bobel's respondents to identify as activists (2007:150). More recent work contends that young people find a middle ground between "being" and "doing" activism by emphasizing becoming activist, but this work still treats an activist identity as aspirational (Taft 2017). Put another way, activist identities may be driven by how an individuals' behavior holds up against broader cultural and historical expectations of what an activist should be than a grounded assessment of their behavior.…”

“…Existing work suggests that girls handle the distinction between "doing activism" and "being an activist" by thinking about themselves as "becoming an activist" (Taft 2017). This was not common in our study.…”