Ladies I Love: Caitlin Doughty

The feminist revolution can be daunting sometimes.  The sexism seems too systemic, the misogyny too frightening, and the infighting too viscous.  We start feeling like our contributions couldn't possibly make a difference.  To beat back this gloom, I'd like to highlight a few ladies who rock their feminism simply by finding their thing and being fantastic at it, social conventions be damned.

I start my series with Caitlin Doughty, author, educator, advocate, and professional.

Source: Order of the Good Death

Her Things

• Reintroducing healthy death awareness into our culture.
• Promoting family participation in the death-care process.

Being Damned Good At It

• She authored a great book about her experience in the death care industry: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory. Part memoir, part history, and part social commentary, this is one of the best books I've read in a long time.
• She produces an entertaining educational YouTube series, Ask a Mortician, answering our questions about death and the death-care industry.
• She founded an organization focused on transforming how our society handles death: The Order of the Good Death. (Follow on social media!)
• She is a licensed mortician (in a traditionally male-dominated field) who just opened her own funeral home in Los Angeles (Undertaking LA) offering home funerals and other services supporting family participation in the death-care process.

Why I Love Her

While I was thinking about writing this post a few months back, Ms. Doughty came out with a Death & Feminism video as part of her Ask a Mortician series.  In short, she eloquently argues that women in the death-care industry deserve to be paid fairly for providing a challenging professional service. Female funeral professionals aren't "the naturally caring sex" or "maternal vessels for your grief."  Well said madame, well said.