Write An Advance Directive That Considers Religious Discrimination And Refusals

On May 11, 2018 By erintothemaxIn Your Activism Guide1 Comment

An advance directive is a written document that specifies your wishes for medical treatment if you become hurt or sick and are unable to speak for yourself. While it’s not always pleasant to think about these things, it’s important — it can save you and your loved ones additional heartache and second-guessing.

As I previously wrote for Rewire, I refuse to be taken to a Catholic hospital. As I outlined in that piece, I think it’s wise for women and LGBTQ people to consider the same, for the simple reason that it’s not possible to fully trust that one’s health care needs and wishes will drive the care that they are offered.

My advance directive contains language that I do not consent to be taken to a Catholic hospital, and that I wish to be transferred to another provider if I am taken to one. Further it specifies that under no circumstances should an actual or presumed pregnancy be used as an excuse to supersede my instructions for my medical care. In one advance directive draft, I actually wrote, “If someone tries to tell you otherwise, sue until you get a different result.”

My suggestion is for you to write an advance directive if you don’t have one (AARP offers acceptable advance directive forms for the state you live in here), or review yours if you already do. In addition to the replying to prompts in your state’s form, consider the denials of care that are taking place in religiously affiliated hospitals. Is there language like mine, or specific to your own situation that you would like to insert?

While we can’t all collectively self-help our way out of denials of health care — there needs to be policy change that requires a timely way for people to access the care they need if they are interacting with a service provider who refuses their wishes — this is one little step we all can and should take in the meantime.

April 2018 To The Contrary Appearance

On May 7, 2018 By erintothemaxIn CommentaryLeave a comment

I appeared on PBS’ To The Contrary, and discussed sexual harassment and its impact on the upcoming elections, Boy Scouts welcoming girls to their ranks, and how social movements effect change:

Hey, Feminists: If You Went To A Catholic College, Make Yourself A Visible Alum

On April 10, 2018 By erintothemaxIn Your Activism GuideLeave a comment

Recently I learned that a colleague working in reproductive rights had graduated from the University of Notre Dame. My eyes nearly popped out of my head. “Stay active in your campus community,” I said. “You’ve got to do it.”

I am a proud alum of Georgetown University, which provided me an excellent education and foundation for the social justice work I do. I’ve made a point to stay active in the campus community over the years — interviewing prospective undergraduate students, serving on panels and at speed mentoring events facilitated by the career center, mentoring students through the Women’s Center, speaking to the H*yas for Choice unofficial student group, and providing direct financial support. I was very honored one year to serve as a judge for the Merrick Debate for the Philodemic Society. I have weighed in on a debate through the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affiars as to whether you can oppose abortion and be a feminist (spoiler alert: not possible!). Basically, anything they ask me to do, I will do it.

I have also undertaken activism with regard to my campus community. Every time I interact with H*yas for Choice, the group on campus which advocates for abortion rights, I give them a financial donation. Most times when I donate directly to the university, I will add notes about how I would donate more if student activities funds could be allocated to H*yas for Choice as well. Simply put, there are brilliant women at Georgetown who deserve to have their basic humanity respected.

I enjoy following the lead of the brave students of H*yas for Choice who are not officially recognized by the campus community and have had their rights trampled on by the university, as happened a few years ago when campus police removed them from tabling on a public sidewalk that was not university property. When that happened, I organized more than 200 alums to sign an open letter to the university president requesting that the situation be rectified to support free speech on (and in this case off) campus, which was met by an apology to the students and a formal explication of free speech rights on campus (and after which I gave the university the largest donation of my life).

I’m sharing this because if you attended a Catholic university and are a feminist, I’m asking you to remain engaged as an alum within your campus community. Students do not need us to lead their battles on campus — young people are inspiring and so fully capable — but it is helpful when we back them up. Further, it’s critical. There is a well-organized right wing that organizes a small but vocal minority of alums to place pressure on their Catholic universities when, for example, speakers who support birth control are brought to campus. This has led to protests of speaking engagements by presidents, cabinet secretaries, and other major players such as the president of Planned Parenthood as if consideration of all sides of an issue is against the principle of higher learning. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

I love my world-class university and all it has taught me over the years, including a non-profit management executive certificate I recently completed. What I have also seen is that the right-wing is well-organized in trying to pull Catholic colleges further to the right, at times making threats that they will petition the Vatican to revoke their Catholic status. Such efforts are widely out of step with the base of alums who need you, dear feminist alum, to take leadership. Please stay engaged in your alma mater. Even if you partake in other forms of activism, staying engaged with your former Catholic college could be some of the most important work you do in your lifetime for young women.

Finding God

On April 4, 2018 By erintothemaxIn Commentary2 Comments

Twenty years ago, on Easter, I was losing my mind. I was basically dead. The worst picture that exists of me was taken that morning. You would cry if I shared it. I never will, because people with anorexia would use it to justify hurting themselves.

I rose each time we were supposed to in the Catholic Mass, blacking out a little bit each time. I had a real mental breakdown of sorts during the service; some of the ugliest thoughts of my life. And primarily because the calories in Communion freaked me out.

That Monday after Easter was a real come-to-Jesus moment; I had a several-hour medical assessment culminating in a doctor assembling my family together, and informing us that my pulse was 32 and I was probably going to have a heart attack that week.

When I set out to lose weight, I didn’t set out to do that.

My parents gave me the choice whether to go to the hospital or not. God bless them, that helped. They let me go home, they let me cry about it. They let me come to the awful realization on my own that I needed to go. The next morning I went into school early, and told my teachers what was happening. They wouldn’t see me again for awhile. I hoped I could get my work done and be able to graduate on time, but I didn’t know. It was a stressful moment for a straight-A student.

After telling my sad story one more time, I lingered in the door of the room where my math class would soon meet. “Mr. Talbot?” I said. “Yes?” He looked up at me. “I’m sorry I used to come late into class because I was outside smoking.” He smiled with such care. Men with beards can be harder to read, but those eyes communicated an encouragement by example to forgive myself. “I was never really that worried.”

Getting better was a bitch. I was able to graduate. I got better. I got worse. I went on a merry-go-round of recovery. Ultimately, I came out ahead by connecting the dots that my eating disorder was a personal, hellish manifestation of a society that oppresses women and girls. I found a way to fight what happened to me, which prevented me from going back into the darkness. In this way, feminism saved my life.

Over the years I have considered my relationship to God in light of what happened. As I described, I had a private breakdown in the Catholic Church when I was basically a walking corpse and, frankly, I don’t think that’s a total coincidence. As my consciousness grew, I connected the all-male Catholic hierarchy’s treatment of women to what happened to me, and the all-male Catholic hierarchy’s outsized role in the sexist systems that go unquestioned in both religious and secular settings.

It’s not acceptable that just a few years ago Pope Benedict said allowing women to be priests is a sin equivalent to pedophilia, particularly when the Catholic hierarchy was exposed to have suppressed the sexual abuse of children and adults by its own priests. As I grew older, I learned that the opposition to abortion and birth control that I heard through CCD classes is about controlling and shaming women’s sexuality. With more time I came to connect the dots that shame about sexuality and gender roles is about controlling people in order to ensure that white men retain the most power in society, period. At age 22, I saw the sex-abuse cover up stories and I snapped. I told my mother, “The Catholic Church is the embodiment of the patriarchy and I’m never going back.”

So I stopped going to church, which was something I barely did in the first place. I began to identify as an atheist. Of all the stigmatized identities I have occupied in my life, few get people as upset as saying “atheist.” How interesting that we are socially comfortable with people saying there is a God, or there are Gods, or there might be a God, but not saying, there is no God!

Recently, I have started attending an Episcopal Church on occasion. It gives me a certain level of ritual that I appreciate as someone raised in the Catholic Church, and I enjoy the community and find the frankness of explanation in the written materials refreshing. At this point, I am not going up for Communion, but I take the opportunity as it proceeds to get on my knees and pray. I pray for equality. I pray for girls who are struggling. I pray for Black women getting the recognition they deserve. I pray for people who have abortions to know that they are doing nothing wrong, and with gratitude for the safety of the compassionate people who serve them. I pray that the people who oppose women’s equality may gracefully find a way to join the community of people who respect women and our ability to make decisions about our own lives. I pray that I will find the grace to welcome people into my community working toward equality and justice — even people who have espoused views that harm women and girls — and lead by example to encourage welcoming in others.

Religion did not pull me out of the worst crises of my life; I pulled myself out, with love support from people who supported my agency and dignity as a human being. Here I am, twenty years later, improbably alive. Improbably, too, I am going to church. I brought my daughter this Easter Sunday, twenty years later. I am finding grace in song and stories, reclaiming prayer within my own life, and maybe even finding God. I am open to the journey.

Justice For Stormy Daniels Is A Feminist Issue

On March 26, 2018 By erintothemaxIn Commentary1 Comment

Stormy Daniels’ interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes was something electric. In this conversation, Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, detailed her affair with Donald Trump and the intimidation, harassment, and outright threats she has endured at the hands of the president and his attorneys. Let’s get this clear:

Believing Stormy Daniels is a feminist issue.

Supporting Stormy Daniels is a feminist issue.

Justice for Stormy Daniels is a feminist issue.

Stormy Daniels told Anderson Cooper a convincing story, and she deserves to be believed. The most powerful man in the world has repeatedly tried to silence her. The most chilling part of the interview was the revelation that someone came up to Daniels in a parking lot while she was carrying her infant in 2011, shortly after she had nearly sold her story to a tabloid, and said, “Leave Trump alone. Forget the story. That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.” In addition, Daniels repeatedly referenced being intimidated by the legal machinations of Donald Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen.

There is no question that Trump has done, at the very least, versions of this to other women he slept with. Non-disclosure agreements. Payouts. Intimidation through the legal process.

Further, while not every man is as rich or as disgusting as Trump, Stormy Daniels would not be the first person who has been pressured by a man with more power to stay silent about sex. Further, as a sex worker, Daniels is part of a class of women and people who are repeatedly disbelieved for having agency in their sexual lives. It is for all these reasons — much less that she could potentially be sued Trump and his thugs for millions of dollars for speaking out on television — that believing Stormy Daniels without hesitation is a feminist issue.

Supporting Stormy Daniels is a feminist issue. As a feminist, it was difficult for me to watch her say repeatedly that she did not see herself as a victim. I respect her right to self-definition. But it was also sad and hard to hear her describe her revulsion at the prospect of sleeping with Donald Trump, and the fact that she blamed herself for getting into a hotel room with him, and felt she had to follow through.

To be 100 percent clear: You are never obligated to give a man sex. Ever. Even if you went to his hotel room. Even if you are his girlfriend or his wife. Even if you just went on a date. The choice is always yours, and that is what consent is all about. Still, Daniels’ self-definition is to be respected. Supporting Stormy Daniels means that we can be concerned enough to pipe up that you don’t owe anybody sex just because you are in a hotel room, and also respecting her agency to choose to engage in sex with Donald Trump on one occasion, even though she didn’t really want to. The time to pick Stormy Daniels apart is not now. Stormy Daniels needs and deserves support, and that is a feminist issue.

Finally, justice for Stormy Daniels is a feminist issue. By bravely speaking her truth, Stormy Daniels belongs solidly in a line of women who have resisted the horror and thuggery of Donald Trump and the people who support his work.

In the truest sense, Stormy Daniels is a patriot — and an inability to acknowledge that is, for most people, most likely rooted in the sexism of thinking a woman in the pornography industry is too dirty and/or unserious to have something meaningful to contribute to our country. That’s hogwash. There is nothing wrong with sex, and sex workers are people.

Stormy Daniels deserves justice. The ‘hush money’ legal agreement that Donald Trump failed to sign under his pseudonym shortly before the election should be ruled invalid. Her safety should be guaranteed. And we in the feminist community should all be standing with her and making these demands.

The woman is brave, she is a patriot, and she deserves respect from every woman who says they care about women. Justice for Stormy Daniels is a feminist issue.

Raising A Daughter While Feminist

On March 13, 2018 By erintothemaxIn CommentaryLeave a comment

She is starting to catch on. Her mom is a feminist. I work so girls and boys can be equal. And, she is serving it back in my face.

Eyes flashing, indignant. “Why do we only go to sports with boys?”

Well played, kid. We start to go to the neighbor girl’s basketball games.

Parenting while feminist is a thinker. It starts with an awareness of gender roles and how they are modeled by the parents, including resignation that some things in life are separated traditionally along gender lines, others are shared equally, and other points of pride that some gender norms are turned on their head in the way we divide up the labor within the household.

It is, on some level, letting go:

My daughter loves to dress up like a princess. More. Than. Anything. If I fight it, it’s going to turn into a bigger thing. If I teach her that traditional femininity is wrong, I’m giving her another narrow set of roles. She doesn’t need that.

It is, on another level, planting seeds:

If she says no, she doesn’t want to be tickled, it’s stopped right away. How many times has she heard, “It’s your body, and you are in charge”? Never enough. This is a child who gets several choices every day. She thrives on choices. She deserves choices. She does not get a sugar-coated version of reality. We talk about people in political life who make decisions that hurt people. We don’t pretend like there are two sides to hurting people with less power. The word for that is not conservative, because it is not a worldview. The focus is on the impact, and the word for discriminatory or harmful impact is wrong.

To be clear, feminism is not just about how we raise our daughters. It is not all girl power and self-esteem, though it’s great to give our girls that backing. Feminism at its best is at least as much about how we raise our sons. Parenting is political — very political. Our work as parents is part of our activism.

My girl is coming into her own. She starts kindergarten in the fall. To have been a feminist my entire adult life, and now to have this — it is mind-blowing. Someday she will realize at a deeper level what her mom and her mom’s friends are doing all the time. Someday she will remember going to marches and realize that a lot of kids didn’t do that growing up.

I am looking at the guilt I sometimes feel for working my ass off, for being wrapped up in the movement, my work, for not always being there for her. She may or may not be proud of my work someday. But either way, what she will have seen is strong modeling that if she has kids someday, it’s natural to have her own interests and priorities as well. Not even though she is a girl — because she is a girl.

For Young Women Who Feel Awful And Alone

On February 22, 2018 By erintothemaxIn Commentary3 Comments

It’s excruciatingly hard for some young women to breathe. Anxiety, self-doubt, sadness. Comparisons to others. Fear. Depression. Pictures of other people’s superiority. Hurtful words echoing in your head. Cringing at yourself and what you did wrong, if only I had. Thoughts, threats, or actions that you can’t believe are really yours. Fear that you’ll never feel joy again; that it will always be this way.

This is for young women having a hard time, and I will keep this short:

You are unique. You are worthy. You are important.

Your brain is playing tricks on you, and it’s not your fault. You can get better.

There’s nothing shameful about therapy or mental health support. Accessing professional help does not make you a failure or a weirdo; it is a step forward to the triumph you deserve. Please, do the things with your head held high.

You are worth it. Your life is worth it. It can get better. It is a hard road. It is worth it.

I am grateful for people with depression who choose to keep going. I am especially empathetic to young women who feel awful and alone, and I want you to know that your dignity, self-worth, and liberation is at the core of what I am fighting for as a feminist.

I see you. I believe in you. You sticking up for yourself is my favorite thing.

When Democratic Party Institutions Try To Fundraise Off Of You, You Tell Them To Stand Up For Abortion

On February 6, 2018 By erintothemaxIn Your Activism Guide2 Comments

Every fundraising letter, every telephone request for money is an action opportunity. For years I have been taking action with the fundraising letters sent by the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, state Democratic parties, and Democratic-aligned PACs that don’t take abortion rights seriously. The call to action is simple:

Don’t give them money. Tell them to stand up for abortion rights consistently and without hesitation, and then you’ll give them your money.

Many times the letters include a prepaid envelope for your convenience. And with a telemarketer, hey, you can chat. In other words, these actions are free and take just moments of your time.

Now, do it. Do it every time they ask you for money. And give the money that you might have donated to them to Democratic candidates who do unflinchingly stand up for the right to abortion, even as some out-of-touch national leaders suggest a “big tent” for candidates.

I mean, come on! Under the wrongful big tent theory of change I’ve written about extensively for Rewire, Democrats lose more seats because the base does not unite behind candidates (in fact, check out this recent poll that proves recruiting anti-abortion candidates is more of a liability for Democrats than a gain in terms of voters), Republicans have more supporters for anti-abortion policy in legislative bodies, and the poor, sadistic, complicit Vice President Mike Pence gets the additional anti-abortion Democrats he needs so that he doesn’t have to make the trek from the White House to the Capitol to cast tie-breaking votes to kick human rights for women and transgender people who become pregnant in the teeth.

Your instructions to Democratic Party organs to stand firmly for reproductive health, rights, and justice when they come to you looking for money are not symbolic. They matter. They are tallied.

Over the years, I have been pleased to hear that I have inspired many friends and fellow activists who know me to send their letters back with instructions to national party leaders to stop crapping on abortion, which is what is inspiring me to write this down here. Please, start taking this action, pass this message on, and urge your friends to do the same.

Also, please do give generously of your time and money to those Democratic candidates who hold strong for abortion rights. In the past year I’ve been as loud as I’ve ever been about holding Democrats accountable, and I’ve also given as much as I ever have directly to candidates and PACs that share my values — 10 percent of my income in the last year, to be exact. It’s not just money and volunteer time that talks. It’s the absence of giving money and support, too.

Together we do have power.

One of these days national Democrats may get it, and stop repeating the right wing talking points implanted within our midst to undermine our effectiveness. But with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) having the gall to suggest a big tent on abortion inside an event hosted by Planned Parenthood — for cripes sake, the insult! — just a few days ago, I’m not holding my breath. I’m just taking action with every opportunity that presents itself, including in my mailbox and on my telephone. You can do the same, quickly and easily.