Welcome to the waves, Slate's podcast about gender, feminism and contemplating the F word altogether.

It's our final episode.

And every episode for the last few years,

you've gotten a pair of what we've called feminists

to talk about a thing they couldn't get off their minds.

But today I'm not going to call myself a feminist.

By the way, I'm Shaina Roth, senior producer at Slate and longtime producer of The Waves. And I'll be joined later in the show by

former waves host June Thomas she's been a part of the waves since it was known as

Double X Gabfest. She's not going to call herself a feminist either, because really, what even is a feminist?

This is our final episode of the waves, and let me say up top that it has been an absolute privilege

to produce this show and to frequently host this show those that have listened consistently

enough to these episodes know that I have more than once used them as an opportunity to try to sort out my own complex feelings about something. And this last episode is going to be no

different. You see I've been trying to sort out what it means to be a feminist since

college. I did this thing for my senior seminar called the Jane Doe Project.

I had wanted to put on a production of the Vagina Monologues at my small Christian college,

but that got shot down. So I interviewed women from

campus who had experienced violence and created this mixed genre play.

While the play was mostly focused on violence against women I brought some levity to the whole thing with

sketches about just being a woman. There was a poem about getting hit on using the worst

pickup lines I could find. Are you from Tennessee? Because you're the only

10 I see still haunts me. And smack dab in the middle of the play was a monologue

I wrote for myself called The New Feminist. It was my early 20s

...