An Open Letter To Susan Collins And Lisa Murkowski About My Daughter

On June 28, 2018 By erintothemaxIn Commentary5 Comments

Dear Senators Collins and Murkowski,

I would like to tell you about my daughter, Winnie. She is five, and a mother’s dream come true. She is healthy, strong, compassionate. She loves to watch baseball and dress up like a princess. Frozen is her favorite movie. Against all odds, she thinks dentists are cool and wants to be one when she grows up. She has been active in politics her whole life — from getting out the vote as a baby in a carrier on my chest, to knocking doors in national and statewide elections, to attending inaugurations. I try to let her take this stuff at her own pace; she can’t get enough. She likes to ask questions about politics and I make a point to tell her the truth.

Tonight, I told her: Mommy is sad. Why, she asked. I explained to her that it hasn’t always been that girls were allowed to do all the things that boys do — and generally it’s gotten better and more fair for girls over the years. I explained that I’ve had more opportunities than grandma, and that grandma had more opportunities than her mom, but if some people have their way about who gets to say what the law is in this country, she might have fewer opportunities than me when she grows up. My daughter knows that I’m a feminist and that I’ve devoted my life to working for women and girls. I told her it makes me very sad to think that it could be worse for her than it was for me.

She wanted to know how, specifically, it could be worse, so I told her the truth. There are some people who think they can make girls have babies, instead of being fair and letting girls decide when they get to have babies. My daughter does pretend weddings like every other day, and says she would love to be a mommy. She also understands that pregnancy is hard and babies are a lot of work. She gets mad when she is not given a choice about what to eat for breakfast. I could see it sink in on her face — at five — how not right this is.

There is a chill in this country, and I just know that as women of conscience you feel it. What I feel is what I imagine it felt like in other repressive countries just before women lost considerable amounts of freedoms they had once enjoyed: a sense that it is coming, a sense that it is inevitable and there is nothing we can do, and some people who are concerned and others who are in denial that anything will change.

You are senators. It breaks my heart that, as a parent, writing an open letter about my daughter to the two of you seems so critical to her future. I wish it were not necessary. But I know, in my heart, that if in your capacity as senators you do not put your feet down and say you will not vote for a Supreme Court nominee that would overturn Roe v. Wade — and President Trump has been very clear that he will only nominate justices who would — that terrible things will happen to at least some of the beautiful and innocent girls who today come to my daughter’s birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese and someday will experience the complexity that comes with living in a woman’s body.

As a mother, I am horrified that our little girls could have demonstrably fewer freedoms than we do for generations to come. You have both indicated support for abortion rights and in this current political environment, much less the current Republican Party, I can try to appreciate the contorted, lonely spaces you must find yourselves in. I hope you will try to appreciate the spaces millions of us mothers find ourselves in: Looking at our daughters, trying not to cry, vowing to do our best to ensure they get the freedoms we have now, but knowing that ultimately the matter is not much in our hands. The matter is, practically speaking, very much in your hands.

More than any other senator, it is the two of you who will decide whether President Trump is able to convert the Supreme Court into one that will repeal the federal constitutional right to abortion for generations to come. I hope you will think about my little Winnie, and all the other little girls her age, and how much we as their mothers love them. You are our last resort. Please stand up for our girls.

Sincerely,
Erin Matson

Ready For Change? Try Direct Action

On June 14, 2018 By erintothemaxIn Your Activism GuideLeave a comment

As an activist, advocate, and leader for social change, one of my favorite places in the world to be is on the sidewalk, holding a sign. It is calming. I am focused. I feel closer to the equality and justice I seek.

Direct action is when we put our bodies directly on the line. It is physical demonstration. It is one of my happiest places. I came into the women’s movement twenty years ago as an activist, and while I’ve accumulated a number of experiences and skills that go far beyond activism, I will never stop being an activist in my core.

If you’ve never tried direct action before, I encourage you to give it a whirl.

Unlike online activism, which often devolves into talking with (or worse, at) each other rather than reaching out to new people, the debates are not about who has the right lingo or runs with the right activist crowd. While internal debates are important within the progressive movement, there is no time for them when we are directly confronting power.

Direct action in a group means standing together and reaching new people — people who usually have no idea that the particular injustices we are attempting to reverse are happening. We put unmistakeable pressure on others to make the world a better place, now. Direct action is not a polite whisper, although it needn’t be accompanied by loud chants. Direct action is a moment of clarity – it is an accelerant for change that can’t be ignored.

Vote In Your Primary Election

On June 12, 2018 By erintothemaxIn Your Activism GuideLeave a comment

I want YOU to vote in every election you are eligible to vote. That includes your primary election.

If you care about winning, primary elections are where the magic starts. Where we decide if more women are going to advance. Whether candidates who support our issues will advance. And who is best poised to beat the opponent in the general election.

No election is too small for your vote. This morning we took our daughter along to vote in a primary election for a county board race. We discussed with her, who we were voting for and why. We can not take our right to vote for granted, even when primary candidates seem more or less equal or there is no one who seems “just perfect.”

When our president flirts openly with anti-democratic moves, to vote in 2018 is an act of resistance.

People went to jail so you could vote. In a primary, you often don’t need to even stand in line. Just. Go. Vote.

Let’s Just Be Done With Excuses For Why Women Aren’t Running In Democratic Primaries

On June 4, 2018 By erintothemaxIn CommentaryLeave a comment

Let’s just be done with excuses for why women aren’t running in Democratic primaries, shall we? Let’s be done with excuses for why it is always some other man’s turn.

Yes, we know who gets invited to the golf course.

We got it.

Yes, we know that you find our ambition grating, our knowledge overwhelming, our qualifications a symbol of being “too establishment” or a liability in our “ability to connect.”

We know that you are delving deep into the psychology of why women don’t run, how we have to be asked several times, and how if we just thought more highly of ourselves then maybe it would happen.

We are also uninterested in you blaming us and our inner states, personally, for why centuries of male dominance are continuing today — even though none of the men who are actually holding the power mean it in any sort of oppressive way, lass.

We are up to our ears with Republicans who fundamentally disrespect our humanity and Democratic men who are said to be better for women than, well, the women who are the backbone of the party.

I stopped accepting your excuses for why women aren’t taking the elected seats years ago; you can still tell them to me, and I will listen. I will nod for your reasons, for even if I haven’t heard them before, together they make the most lovely quilt we can present to our daughters with the shrug that maybe their generation can do better.

Well, no. I refuse to teach my daughter that women should wait their turn.

I got angry the first time I took her out in a baby carrier to get out the vote and realized that in the allegedly most progressive corner of the Commonwealth of Virginia we were working to elect nine men and no women. In the Democratic Party. Four years later, in 2017, Arlington Democrats added literally one woman to the picture — out of nine candidates they wanted us to elect. Now, in 2018, we have what The Washington Post calls “two newcomers [battling] for Democratic nomination to Arlington County Board.” No shade to these lovely men, but there is nothing new about having men hold the gavels and women hold the clipboards, and I’m just done.

Those moments in life when we stop accepting our own excuses are the most powerful. I am no longer accepting my own excuses about why I cannot run for office — if you know me personally, you know my No. 1 line is that Arlington is a big pond with political people from D.C. who have a long line of succession, and if I lived somewhere else, I’d do it. I realize now that my excuse sounds a lot like another patch on the quilt of excuses for why Charles is almost always in charge. I am giving up my own excuses now about why I can’t run for office. I can run for office, I’m just not doing it right now. I encourage you to give up your excuses with me.

Ireland No Longer Has An Abortion Ban, And It Makes Me Cry

On May 30, 2018 By erintothemaxIn CommentaryLeave a comment

By large, irrefutable margins, Ireland has voted to legalize abortion. People don’t want total abortion bans. Even in Catholic countries. This means the world to me, as someone who is half Irish by blood, was raised Catholic, and works for abortion rights.

I was born Erin Maureen Boylan. I do not share this name often; it’s a part of my identity that mostly slips under the radar. My biological father, where the Irish in me comes from, died suddenly and unexpectedly when my mom was five months pregnant with me. I have been told we share some things: a “sense of the outrageous,” a love for writing, and political activism.

In large part, it is because of what happened to my mom that I am so strongly pro-choice. Because of the circumstances surrounding my birth, and the hell, chaos, and poverty that created for her, I am well aware of how quickly circumstances can change. Instead of parroting blanket statements from men in robes who say that sex is bad and do not see me as equal, I choose compassion and love.

I was born into my life, specifically, and I do not believe in abortion bans. I am aware that my mom could have chosen to not continue the pregnancy that created me. I love her. I know her. I think the choice to have an abortion would have been fine, and if I could have held her hand had she chosen to make it, I would have.

I love my life, and I know I owe my life to a woman who was excited and in love and over the moon, and then suddenly very sad, traumatized, and alone. She was here and I was not yet; I put her first without question.

As I reflect on Ireland overturning the abortion ban, and the man who put the Irish and the political activism in my blood I know, on some visceral level, that what unites us more than anything is our deep and unconditional love for my mother. We trust her. We believe in her. We know that she is wise. We know that she is strong and can get through anything. We would have supported her together, from our own space in the spiritual ether, if she had made another choice.

There have been only a handful of times in my life when I have felt very close to my biological father, and the Saturday that the Irish abortion ban was to be overturned was one of them. I teared up on a long run, watching the sun rise. I felt him and how he would have reacted to what was about to happen in Ireland. I thought about how proud he would have been of me and my work, specifically my work to expand abortion access. I thought to myself in a loud, proud voice, Erin Maureen Boylan, reporting for duty. I kept running. I cried.

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.