I have always felt my sisters missed a perfect opportunity for a little civil disobedience. I would have jumped at it, but my sisters and I are separated by a generation and what a big gap that was. They went to college in the late 1950s and early '60s while I went in the early '70s.

When they were at college, they could only wear “slacks” on Saturdays and underneath these slacks, they had to wear stockings. Mind you, this predates panty hose. The upper class residence hall advisors were empowered to ask if you were wearing stockings and you were honor bound to tell them. If you were found not wearing your stockings, you were not allowed to go out.

This might have made a textbook example of civil disobedience as defined by some particular parameters. First, civil disobedience is a justifiable reaction to an unjust law. Second, civil disobedience has agreed upon characteristics: it is backed by a rational explanation that is based on some recognized value; it is non-violent; the protestors are willing to suffer the consequences of their actions; it has a specific purpose or goal in mind.

In the case of my sisters’ stockings, the rule was oppressive, with no purpose. Instead of going to prison, they would likely have been grounded for the weekend, but they would have tried to achieve the goal of reclaiming some of their rightful privacy. The only potential for violence was if one of the garters snapped. I am not sure anyone in my generation would have put up with that, but things had changed a great deal in that decade. I went to college in the south. No one wore slacks. We wore blue jeans everywhere, everyday, and no one wore stockings of any kind except the few belles whose families were still fighting the Civil War.

Lately, civil disobedience has been on my mind. There was the release of the film "Selma," about the civil rights movement. I have been reading a book which spends a lot of time on the suffragette movement demanding a woman’s right to vote. “Black Lives Matter” has become a rallying cry in the wake of unjustified shootings of black men. Then there was the man in the ultra-light.

When we look to the past, we think we can easily recognize acts of patriotism as opposed to acts of terrorism. But it is much more difficult to do that in the present. One person will see civil disobedience and another will see treason and there is a wide range of activities between the two. We have acts of legal protest and rule departure; conscientious objectors and radical protesters; revolutionary action versus revolutionary terror. Thrown in is sedition or writings that have the specific intention of provoking violent protest. Eventually you get to terrorism and those dark acts of violence that try to hide their criminality in false ideology.

Looking at it today, the suffragette movement is a perfect example of civil disobedience. When otherwise intelligent men thought that it was impractical for women to vote because they would be too busy at home to take the time, women protested. They named the injustice, found it perfectly rational that women should vote, said so in a non-violent way and ended up in jail. The only violence was on the part of the policemen who beat the women and assaulted them in prison.

In viewing things in the present, not everything is so clear. Some people consider Edward Snowden a traitor and others think he performed a legitimate act of civil disobedience by exposing abuses in the NSA. Part of this dissonance is because he did not stick around to face the consequences but fled. Many people were sympathetic to the Occupy Wall Street protesters, but no one had any idea what they wanted.

To me it comes down to the protest song of the labor movement, “Which Side Are You On” and that about sums it up. When I consider a protest, I ask myself: Is the civil disobedience morally justified and does the desired goal improve the human condition? If I can’t answer that in the positive, I look harder to see what I might be missing.

Kate Murray of New Castle serves on civic, arts and governmental boards at the state and local level. She can be reached at dynportsmouth@gmail.com.