receive encouragement and support from some teachers and other

receive encouragement and support from some teachers and other adults for my dreams and ambitions. Nonetheless, it was often very lonely and painful.

Going away to the University of Virginia helped, although at that time it was not the haven of political and intellectual enlightenment I had expected to find. I encountered racism and narrow mindedness there too, and often felt alienated from the culture around me.

This essay is not about how I saw and participated in the changes that transformed a white male, generally conservative campus into something much better, but that too helped shape my consciousness. I encountered the Southern Student Organizing Committee and discovered that there were others like me, white and Southern who felt that Jim Crow, and other injustices were evil.

I encountered professors of Southern History like Paul Gaston, writers like Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, Rita Mae Brown, and of course William Faulkner, all of which played a part. I discovered feminism by the mid-’70s, and found a social and political philosophy that made much sense and that answered a lot of my questions.

Today I am a card carrying member of NOW, have marched in all of Charlottesville’s Take Back the Night marches, have volunteered at the Shelter for Help in Emergency, the Sexual Assault Resource Agency, and the UVA Women’s Center. I have babysat the son of a lesbian mom friend.

Looking at my 1965 annual, I wonder if those girls who wrote “best of luck to a real sweet guy,” or other variations, could have foreseen the radical feminist of the future. And I feel sad, knowing that there were those whom I was not as good a friend to as I should have been. It doesn’t excuse it, but the stress of those years often made me a sullen grouch.'

While on the subject of women’s issues, I would like to refer once more to the 1995 Rappsody. One thing that impressed me as to how much