Category: Commentary

Fate Of Feminism Doesn’t Depend On Whether You Get Married Or Change Your Name

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary3 Comments

Girl meets boy, girl falls in love, girl gets married, girl changes her name. This is a feminist perspective on why it’s okay to do the last two things and not be some kind of feminist failure.

Before we get started, let’s acknowledge the boundaries of this discussion: many people can’t get married because the state won’t let them. And research suggests marriage is increasingly becoming reserved for heterosexual couples with money. There’s a hefty dollop of heterosexual and class privilege lurking in this debate, begging a larger question of what the policing of heterosexual women with money is designed to achieve.

Still, if you’re a woman in love with a man and have crossed some class barriers, let’s be clear that the fate of feminism doesn’t depend on whether you get married or change your name.

The primary beef is here: Asking women what they are going to do with their names when they marry is an invasive and sexist double-standard that is not applied to men. Even asking the question of a woman, and not a man, strikes me as prurient and sexist. Applying value or judgement to what one woman does with her name after marriage — whether that’s retaining a current name, applying a hyphenated name, making up a new last name or taking the partner’s name — continues this invasive and sexist practice of assuming that a woman’s name is up for public comment. If you’re going to ask this question or make grand pronouncements about what a name choice means for society, or a family, or a commitment, or a child, or internalized sexism, then focus 100 percent on men and what they are doing in heterosexual marriages. Women have done our time and frankly could use a breather.

Marriage is an institution with historical roots in the property transfer of women (and often girls) from fathers to husbands. There is no denying this inherently sexist lineage. However, my feminist argument is that the institution of marriage has evolved from the property transfer of women to include same-sex marriage in some states (a feminist victory, albeit incomplete), many egalitarian marriages practiced by couples (a feminist victory, albeit incomplete and not entirely supported by jurisprudence) and more. To write off a woman marrying a man as capitulating to the patriarchy is hogwash. Might it be for some women? Maybe, for both the women and men involved, in some marriages. But an automatic assumption focused solely on her is ridiculous.

So too, as feminist thinking about marriage evolves should feminist thinking about last names evolve. A woman who changes her last name upon marriage is not stupid, or an automaton, or subservient to please him, or a symbol of the failure of feminism, or a threat to the future of feminism. Even suggesting that she is — rather than focusing on men or couples — continues to elevate an invasive and sexist double-standard. Women aren’t “too dumb” or “too weak” to be equal. Women are not the cause of our inequality. Women’s choices are not the cause of our inequality. Of course our choices are influenced by our inequality, and interplay with our inequality, but to focus on what women are doing or not doing instead of focusing on how our society systematically discriminates against women and privileges men (often, with the sheer absence of “choices” about names, work and life because they are assumed to be accommodated without comment) — this just doesn’t have the power to fix the problem. In fact it can serve as a distraction from calling for larger changes that do have the power to fix the problem.

So this is my feminist love letter on Valentine’s Day to YOU, women who married or are thinking about marrying men, and happen to have a last name that everyone loves to chat about (while leaving his untouched). Kindly smile and tell everyone to butt out. You are not public property and you don’t deserve this intrusion in your personal life.

P.S. — My husband decided to continue using his name when we married. I am so proud of him.

Quick Update On My Street Harassment Story

On By erintothemaxIn CommentaryLeave a comment

Friday, I was out for a walk when a man exposed himself to me. Immediately after that happened I had a disappointing interaction with the police who didn’t want to take a report when I tried to offer one. With the other options exhausted, I sent an email to their general query address and then immediately posted it on my blog to keep the pressure up. Here is an update:

Due to a great woman I didn’t even know (!) on Twitter reposting the story on a neighborhood police listserv, I was contacted Sunday by the police and was able to file a report. Huge success. I want to take this moment to thank the Twitter feminist community for prodding me into action almost right away. Without your encouragement, I’m not sure I would have moved forward so quickly (and felt the duty to keep going when the police started giving me bad answers).

I also want to acknowledge what posting this story did, because I’m more disturbed than when this whole disgusting subculture first flashed in my face. I heard over, and over, and over from people I know that don’t necessarily get into the feminist work I do. The number of women I know, many of them who were girls at the time, who have experienced a man exposing himself somewhere in a public space is overwhelming. It is far greater than I would have suspected. 

This leads me to put in a plug for a great local group, and a great national group, working to fight street harassment. At the local level here in Washington, D.C., Collective Action for Safe Spaces is just amazing. They have recently succeeded in working with Metro to put policies in place for harassment awareness and reporting on public transit. If you know how long it takes to get an escalator replaced around here, it’s nothing short of amazing they drove this culture change. At the national level, Hollaback! is a non-profit working to end street harassment. It has sprung up groups around the world, one of which is the local group just mentioned. Bonus: Both are largely led by younger feminists (love that stuff). If you are interested in engaging further with this issue I urge you check out these links.

So here are my top three takeaways from the incident:

  • Gratitude for the online feminist community, both as a support system as well as a means to making a needed action occur. Thank you.
  • A preach! If something happens to you that’s not right, speak up. It works.
  • Anger and awareness: The experience of street harassment and exposure is worse than I imagined. I’m ready to keep pushing.

Final Public Service Announcement: If persons expose themselves to you, make sure you’re safe and then call 911 right away.

Street Harassment Email Just Sent To DC Police: Feedback About Exposure Complaints

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary1 Comment

Dear Metro Police,

One hour ago, just after 5 p.m. while it was still daylight, a man exposed himself to me as I was crossing the P Street bridge on foot, heading east from Georgetown into Dupont Circle. He was wearing a blue jacket and masturbating and looking straight at me.
I tried to start crossing the bridge as quickly as I could, in hopes of seeing a police car, and about halfway down saw two women walking in the opposite direction. I stopped them and told them not to walk on that side of the bridge (north side) by the man at the end. I explained he had just exposed himself to me. At that point the man looked back and while I was talking to the women and a man who had been walking close behind them, hopped on a bicycle, and went in the direction of Rose Park. I tried not to look at him, but I do remember he was caucasian, likely in his 40s or early 50s and of medium height.
I did not see a police car, so went to your website to file an online complaint from a nearby coffee shop. The online complaint form does not accommodate situations like this, seeming to focus instead on property violations. Then, I followed the instruction to call the non-emergency line to file a report. When I did they told me I would have to call 911, even though I explained there was no emergency and I was alright. When I called 911 and explained the incident I was told the police couldn’t do anything about it and wouldn’t file a report, I had to call while I was still there (and so was he).
Based on what I have just experienced, I am requesting you consider the following and revisit your processes:
What woman walking alone would stay near a man who has exposed himself to her and is masturbating? Among other issues, it seems like common sense safety to immediately leave.
Why does an exposer need to be onsite for the police to do anything, include file a report? This sends a message that it’s an open season for street harassment. I’m truly surprised the person I spoke with on the phone didn’t want to take the information I listed above.
Why does your online complaint form not accomodate non-emergency harassment complaints? This is a barrier to reporting. Harassment is often shrouded in embarrassment, disgust, shame – I would think the Internet could help you fight this crime.
Why does your non-emergency line tell callers to dial 911 for non-emergency police reports? This is another barrier to reporting. While I’m angry this incident occurred at all, I’m okay and I felt uncertain whether to go through with dialing 911 for a non-emergency situation.
What are you going to do to better address street harassment in the District of Columbia? How are you going to revise your policies and then make sure word gets out so people know them? It is hard to see how the current policy could be considered intuitive to those of us who are just trying to walk from point A to point B.
I am several months pregnant and most upsetting to me is knowing that this same thing could happen to my future daughter while out for a walk or riding her bike, and the person on the other end of the line might tell her the same thing – the police won’t take a report and “we can’t do anything about it.”
If there is any way that I can be of assistance to you in making the streets safer for women in the District of Columbia, I will be happy to assist.
Sincerely,
Erin Matson

Keep Beloved: Banning Books About Rape And Slavery Won’t Help Affluent White Boys

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary6 Comments

Today’s Washington Post brought the headline “Fairfax County parent wants ‘Beloved’ banned from Fairfax County school system” above a photograph of a white woman with her arms crossed inside what appears to be a very tony home.

It seems last year Laura Murphy’s son had nightmares after reading Toni Morrison’s book Beloved, an important yet difficult story about race, rape and slavery. Now she wants the entire school system to ban the book. The article goes on to quote her son, Blake, presumably also white and affluent, on reading Beloved during his senior year at Lake Braddock High School in Virginia:

“It was disgusting and gross. It was hard for me to handle. I gave up on it.”

Quoting straight from the article:

Currently, students can opt out of books assigned in class that they find uncomfortable to read. But the policy should be stricter for books with mature themes, Murphy argues.

Laura Murphy tried and failed to get the book dropped entirely from the AP English curriculum, after bringing the matter to the superintendent, the school board and the taxpayers who subsidize their time. Today she is working to have  the entire state of Virginia change reading policies to mirror “family life” (sex ed) policies in which parents are able to receive notice before certain topics come up, and remove their children — some of whom may be legal adults — from the class.

And with that, it’s all here in this real-life story: Race, class, privilege, elitism, sexism, sexuality taboos, rape culture, male dominance, control, the power of omission, science taboos, ignorance, euphemisms, ‘family values,’ religious right policy frameworks, censorship, fear of ‘the other,’ teaching slavery in a former slave state, public education in the suburbs versus public education everywhere else, the promise of an elite Advanced Placement program most frequently realized by those who don’t have the largest issues paying for four years of college.

It is a perverse twist on a scene from Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird  that made me uncomfortable, and never left me, where the tattered books from the rich white children are sent off to the poor black children. In that I read a juxtaposition of good intentions and/or a ‘desecration is appropriate for certain people in certain contexts’ mentality on one side, and a longing for better conditions on the other. And no difference in essential humanity between the two, just unquestioned customs and the accident of what body you were born in.

What I’m saying is that as a child in an affluent, primarily white suburban public school system, I read To Kill A Mockingbird and began to think about race and racial privilege in a more critical way. It was life-changing. Continuing to push myself into more of that discomfort is a lifelong process. That lifelong process began by reading a difficult book about race in public school.

Rather than use the space of this post to ridicule Laura Murphy and Blake Murphy and those who believe censorship is a good idea, or that the real experiences of oppression should be sanitized, or that whitewashing history will help everyone to sleep better, I’m going to observe instead the power of the written word and specifically fiction to further realize the promise of a democratic society.

It is in reading the immersive stories of others that we learn empathy for those we are segregated from, those with less than us, those with different experiences than us, those with more resources than us. Emotions are important, yes, but this is what democracy and pluralism are all about. Rather than insist everyone be the same, we all need to know how to work together. Further, by learning about injustice, creating a language for injustice, having a framework to talk about injustice, we can help unravel the secrecy it requires to continue.

Toni Morrison is one of the best novelists alive today. For Beloved she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. This bizarre story in Virginia feels almost like something she would write into one of her novels, so that we might embrace a little more fear and learn a little more compassion.

I Read Banned Books Woman Reading Image

Team Peggy: Super Bowl Ads Are So Sexist Because We Need More Women Creative Directors

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary4 Comments

As anyone knows, watching the Super Bowl ads are part of the sport itself. During these spots, it is typical to see the blatant sexism flag fly. Last night viewers on my Twitter feed took particular umbrage with an Audi spot depicting a surprise kiss sexual assault, and a moronic Go Daddy spot divvying up two sides of the business with a “sexy” woman and a “smart” man.

Glorifying male aggression and casting women as idiotic objects is stupid business — women make 85 percent of consumer decisions, and 91 percent say advertisers don’t understand them — Mad Men indeed.

As a former advertising creative myself (I was a copywriter), I can tell you the problem isn’t because agencies don’t have access to sophisticated research or smart people to make ads. The problem is that creative departments are overwhelmingly male. White male, to be exact.

A few numbers:

In 2010, 94 percent of Super Bowl ads created by advertising agencies were done under the supervision of white male creative directors. The remaining six percent were led by white women creative directors.

In 2011, the numbers didn’t get much better. The creative directors of the Super Bowl ads were 94 percent male and 93 percent white.

Less than ten years have passed since legendary creative director Neil French shared his opinion that women don’t make it to the top of creative departments because “they don’t deserve to.” This is quite contrary to what I saw in my experience as an advertising creative. The few women who make it into creative departments tend to work harder and produce better work than everyone else, because they have to to earn their spots.

First, advertising agencies tend to be so segregated by gender that it’s easy to guess that virtually any woman you see in an agency belongs to account or any department but creative. A friend, a woman, is one of the most talented and creative visual artists I have ever seen. Her talent is exploding; she is better than most of the admittedly talented men I have worked with. But instead she is an acclaimed account executive, meaning she works with clients. That is just what women do in advertising. We really haven’t progressed much far from the days when Peggy had to hope to get noticed. There are exceptions, but not enough.

Second, it is all in the hiring and the assignments. People tend to hire, mentor, place and promote people who look like them. In advertising creative departments this tends to play out in a similar fashion. This business relies upon camaraderie, the ability to “hang out and be cool,” and many times beer and games within the team. Not all, but many, creative areas in agencies have the feel of a frat house.

Now I know that some of my friends and other advertisers will read this and say this leaves out the women who are doing great work, and that is not my intention at all. I acknowledge and celebrate their work. But having been in that position, and having also left the industry, I know that I’m also in a space where I have the freedom to say things that maybe some of them can’t.

I will never forget a time when I saw some comps on the table that were going to a client who sold small project paints. The concept on top had a photograph of a glistening, practically naked woman with an arched back. Knowing the creative team (all men, like I said, they almost always are), I walked into one office, slammed it down on the desk and yelled: “What the fuck is this?”

Watching the ads last night it was very easy to tell there remain very few women — much less a critical mass — there to yell “What the fuck is this?” within the advertising industry’s glorified (and very fun, let me tell you it is a great job) creative departments, and even fewer in leadership roles that lend more power than peer pressure. It is reasonable to expect that correcting this problem would help profits go up, not a bad thing in a struggling economy.

New Birth Control Proposed Rule: What Just Happened?

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary1 Comment

Today, the Obama administration issued a new proposed rule regarding the contraceptive mandate under the Affordable Care Act. Many reproductive rights organizations are calling it a victory. Some advocates, not so much.

So what just happened?

1. The new proposed rule spurned lobbying led by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that would have made businesses eligible to opt-out of the contraceptive mandate. 

All along these men have been arguing that the owner of a Taco Bell, a craft store chain or any business should be able to dictate the terms of what private insurance companies will provide to beneficiaries. That didn’t happen today. No ifs, ands or buts. The Obama administration did not cave. This is probably why some reproductive rights organizations are calling the new proposed rule a victory.

2. The new proposed rule did slightly expand the religious exemption, at a minimum creating a new gray area that could cause some women to lose contraceptive coverage.

Prior to today, religious institutions (houses of worship) were exempt and religiously affiliated non-profits were not. In broad brush strokes this wording has not changed, but the details create cause for concern. Breaking this down:

Previous rule: Houses of worship are exempt. Private health insurance plans do not need to cover contraception, period.

New rule: No change.

Previous rule: Religiously affiliated institutions with a primarily secular purpose and population (including, for example, Catholic hospitals, religiously affiliated colleges) will offer a private health insurance plan that covers contraception, but the cost of contraception will be paid for only by the private health insurance company with no funds contributed by the objecting religiously affiliated institutions.

New rule: Religiously affiliated institutions may attempt to claim they are religious institutions just like houses of worship.

If the claim is accepted, private health insurance plans do not need to cover contraception, period.

If no claim is made, or if the claim is rejected, religiously affiliated institutions will offer a private health insurance plan that covers contraception, but the cost of contraception will be paid for only by the private health insurance company with no funds contributed by the objecting religiously affiliated institutions. So in essence it mimics the old rule, except with one new change: The college student or hospital employee or professor or beneficiary will receive a piece of paper informing them that the institution does not cover contraception, but their private health insurance company will.

3. Here are some additional points to consider about even a slight expansion of the exemption.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the greater “hey, you slut” anti-birth control community has proven itself to be extremely determined to continue the pre-Affordable Care Act practice of insurance companies discriminating against women by charging higher rates for contraception. It is reasonable to assume they will do everything they can to ensure as many colleges, hospitals and non-profits as possible are suddenly classified as churches or other houses of worship. It’s unclear in practice how they will do this, but one invitation ripe for strengthening their inevitable arguments could be discriminating in admissions or hiring against those who don’t share the religious beliefs of the university-wannabe-church, so that a larger percentage of the population is “religious.” Think about that for that for a second. And think about the federal dollars those schools and hospitals gleefully accept.

Most of this fight has centered around religiously affiliated hospitals and institutions. They are estimated to affect the private health insurance coverage of up to three million women. So while the likelihood that the “Mommy Wow! Your Hospital Is A Church Now” claims won’t fly in many cases is strong, the potential universe of those who could be affected in a worst-case scenario is huge.

The note to students and employees who keep their contraceptive coverage is weird. It’s weird and stigmatizing. It says to the 18 year-old women and men entering college, there’s something wrong with birth control and there’s something wrong with sexuality. We don’t do this to any other form of basic preventive care. We shouldn’t here, either.

Philosophically, it makes no sense to negotiate with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on the topic of contraception. Practically speaking, they discriminate against women so much they aren’t even allowed to take leadership. Further, 98 percent of Catholic women use contraceptives at some point – hewing to the 99 percent of the overall population. Morally speaking, they have decades of of rape and pedophilia crimes and cover-ups under their supposedly celibate robes. They have no standing to dictate public health and human rights on matters of sexuality.

Bottom line: The new proposed rule could have been worse, and thank goodness it isn’t. But we had made progress. As a country we need to keep moving forward and not backward. Eleven years ago I was a broke Georgetown University student with school-sponsored health insurance coverage, paying $110 out-of-pocket when I went to pick up my birth control prescription. Birth control is basic medical care — that $110 copay was discrimination against me as a woman. This wasn’t a theoretical conversation with Rush Limbaugh on one side and Planned Parenthood on the other. I wasn’t a slut. I just needed prescription contraception. It was me and my life. And today, with this new gray area and the inevitable Supreme Court case about the entire contraceptive mandate, it could once again be tons of other women and their lives.

Three Observations About Women And Today’s Gun Control Hearing

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Struggling to speak, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords looked directly to the Senate Judiciary Committee: “You must act!” she said. Please watch her brief testimony if you have not done so already:

Rather than recapitulate the entire hearing (here’s a Storify of my live tweets throughout the  hearing if you’re interested) or make an argument for common-sense gun control measures, which I support, I’d rather like to use this occasion to make three observations about women and today’s gun control hearing:

No. 1: A refusal to take women’s views and violence against women seriously is **the** subtext of gun proliferation.

Disrespect for women is intimately interwoven with a lack of action on gun violence. The obvious overlap between Senators airing opposition to gun control today and Senators who led the charge to allow the Violence Against Women Act to expire for the first time in 18 years is not a coincidence. As C-SPAN first aired the hearing, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) blamed Attorney General Eric Holder, Operation Fast and Furious, anything he could for Newtown while the camera cut to two younger women in the audience with their arms crossed in disappointment. Remember when Mitt Romney blamed mass shootings on single mothers?

No. 2: Women and people of color have been left out of the gun debate for too long, and this limits our ability for change.

Of four witnesses who gave testimony and answered questions today, one was a woman. Zero were people of color. Watch the news shows and you’ll see the same dynamic. The result is an overabundance of a racially charged white male “self-defense” perspective, while ignoring the perspectives of communities most impacted by gun proliferation: women with abusive partners and people of color getting shot to death in the inner cities (rarely do these equally outrageous deaths make the news the way a massacre of whites at school, at work, or in a movie theater does). The one woman selected to be a witness was a shill for the gun manufacturers placed by Republicans on the committee. We’ll move to her bizarre comments next, but suffice it to say that Senate Democrats screwed up. While the party is clearly more inclusive of women at a policy level and within its ranks, it’s doing a bad job of representational diversity at the head table (not just in the hearing, in Obama’s cabinet nominations) — any job that isn’t 50% is a bad job. Certainly zero percent allows one reactionary woman — the Republicans tend to pick just one — standing on the other side of a group of progressive men to take and twist feminist rhetoric to her heart’s content.

No. 3: Rampant, unchecked gun proliferation is a terrible and lethal solution for a country wracked with violence against women. 

What we heard about women and guns from the “Independent Women’s Forum” witness was bunk and bizarre. Doing nothing about guns, as the gun manufacturers want us to do, will kill more women. Continuing to allow abusers who can’t buy a gun at a dealer to buy a gun from a private seller without the background check that would disqualify them will kill more women. Please take some time to read the facts about women and gun violence from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. In backing everything Wayne LaPierre and the National Rifle Association said, witness Gayle Trotter also managed to twist feminist rhetoric into something unrecognizable. Several times she made reference to “a woman’s second amendment freedom of choice” and even used the abortion rights caselaw buzzword “undue burden.” She also asserted that younger women were speaking up everywhere for AR-15s, and in a desperate attempt for justification reached into the sexism grab-bag and said we like them because of their “style.” I honestly can’t decide what I think: Did she invoke “freedom of choice” multiple times to appropriate feminist rhetoric (since she was the only woman speaking and the opportunity was wide open for her to do so) or was she trying to link massacres with abortion? Elsewhere she asserted that conceal/carry laws benefit women who don’t carry, presumably because men packing heat might protect that “freedom of choice.”

As Mark Kelly noted, a good guy with a gun did come running out of a Walgreens after his wife was shot. In the melee, he nearly shot the man who tackled Jared Loughner, the man who shot his wife, Gabby Giffords, to the ground. It’s shameful that her colleagues didn’t get it together after she was nearly killed, but the chance for progress is before us now. It is time for action on gun proliferation and violence against women.

A Younger Feminist’s Reflection on The Feminine Mystique

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary5 Comments

“The only way for a woman, or a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own. There is no other way.” – Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan photo

It’s been fifty years since Betty Friedan wrote the The Feminine Mystique. How much has changed. How much remains the same.

Sexism is as foundational to society as it was during the Mad Men era that drove Betty Draper and Betty Friedan mad, if you ask me. The major difference is that people don’t smoke inside, and like colors and hemlines and shag carpets, oh the styles of expression are different.

For-men-only employment ads have jumped over to the lifestyle section of the newspaper, where you see presumed for-women-only feature articles about that ever-elusive “work/life balance.”

(Put no paid parenting leave; no childcare support; and no legal guarantee that you won’t get fired for asking what your coworkers are getting paid on a see-saw: Somehow it always seems to be the women dragged to the ground while men sit on top of Fortune 500 companies, law partnerships, and corporate boards almost totally by themselves. Most “work/life balance” experts say a super pink, super non-structural self-help approach will solve it, no government required! What a sexist joke.)

Only yesterday The New York Times published a column about “pro-life feminism,” in which a man sympathetic to the anti-human rights movement bringing you comparisons of pregnant women to farm animals, bills suggesting that women raped who have abortions be prosecuted for “tampering with evidence” and men-only congressional panels comparing the availability of birth control to choosing a place to go for lunch – a man sympathetic to all of that suggested that feminism be reformed. I beg your pardon.

But of course, the world has changed drastically since The Feminine Mystique, just look! Last week they said women would no longer be barred from combat, and daughters expect equality as do sons. Living up to the expectation of equality, and securing justice for those many experiences outside the realm of wealthy white men, has proved to be the continuing problem for the women’s movement to tackle.

Betty Friedan and her book, to say nothing of the first organization she founded, the National Organization for Women, have had outsize impact on my life as a feminist organizer.

I never knew Friedan personally, saw her across a room at a conference when I was an intern, and, you know, by then the women’s movement was so professionalized interns paid money in the form of tuition to get course credit for working free at the registration table.

When she died on a weekend in February 2006, I was in the National Organization for Women office chairing a meeting of the Young Feminist Task Force. I remember leading a moment of silence and thinking to myself what a profound responsibility I was accepting then, right then, to take the leadership required to help move feminism forward in a new way. I have never lost that feeling.

A few months ago, I decided taking meaningful leadership – contributing the most I have to give – meant leaving a big title in the big organization Friedan started. One of the key factors in my decision was realizing how many people, especially young people, were looking to me as an example of what was possible both in society and for their own lives. Believing in you, as I do, ultimately meant demonstrating I believe in myself and our power to create a better world.

I believe it is within our power to end sexism. I also believe getting there requires taking personal, interpersonal and structural risks. It requires acknowledging uncomfortable truths and working to change them. I believe younger people should define feminism for themselves and help lead the way forward. And while I am profoundly grateful for feminism and feminists of the past, I couldn’t be prouder to set this example. This is not an end. I am only getting started.

What would Friedan say about this? Honestly, I have no idea. As for me, I continue to take considerable inspiration from her legacy and The Feminine Mystique.

Gail Collins, a feminist of a different generation than myself, wrote a beautiful piece on ‘The Feminine Mystique’ at 50. In it, she pointed out more often the book is commented on for what it left out (basically anyone who wasn’t an upper middle class heterosexual white woman), rather than what it was (a piercingly accurate description of the waste of women like Betty).

Strangely enough, the waves of reaction in feminist thought went a bit too far in the other direction, in my opinion, when it became imperative for the incarnation of the women’s movement that followed The Feminine Mystique to speak declaratively “for all women” as if that was somehow possible to do really well. In my experience, people can speak profoundly well for themselves, and do both themselves and others a disservice when they try to speak for everyone else at the same time.

You cannot homogenize diversity, nor is it wise to try. It is the diversity that is the strength. It is the diversity that is the beautiful part. In encouraging diverse people to speak and lead for themselves (and having others listen and add their experience, not to change what the speaker said, but to speak and lead for themselves in the pursuit of an equality to be achievable in common by all) we can move the needle closer to justice. Modern feminism is already doing this all over the Internet. This is my experience and I deserve to be heard. That is your experience and you deserve to be heard. I know we can do better. We can be more than this. Let’s take a risk and organize something totally new and spectacular. It is very exciting, and dare I argue, a very inclusive expression of what Betty Friedan could have helped to kick off had her slice of reality, The Feminine Mystique, been published today.

Women In Combat – Now, Keep Pushing for ERA

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary4 Comments

If they’re willing to put their lives on the line, then we’re willing to say they deserve a chance. Leon Panetta, Defense Secretary, on ordering that the ban on women in combat be lifted.

After a period of transition, women will be as eligible to serve as men in military positions, including combat. Assignments will be made on the basis of skill, not the contents of one’s underpants. This is a seismic shift that is much bigger than the military.

In 1948, President Truman issued an executive order for the integration of men of color into the military. In 2011, President Obama certified a congressional bill repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which barred out non-heterosexuals from serving in the military. In both cases, more shifts followed in the broader culture.

So that moment is here for women. Will we take it?

With the removal of the ban on women in combat, one of the primary objections used to halt ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment has been — poof — erased. This is a strategic time to renew and redouble efforts to put these beautiful words into the Constitution:

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

For those not familiar with the ERA, there are two primary ways to get it inserted into the Constitution. First, Congress can reintroduce the Equal Rights Amendment, as is done every year with the help of champions like Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), who joins other allies on Capitol Hill in being consistently awesome on this issue. After Congress adopts it, two-thirds of the states would need to ratify the ERA.

Another way to equality for women in the Constitution would be to have three additional states ratify the Equal Rights Amendment that was ratified by 35 states in the ’70s. Under this strategy, you typically see folks pouring the most energy into the following three unratified states: Florida, Illinois and Virginia. While Congress imposed a 1982 deadline for ratification of this version of the ERA, many constitutional scholars believe that this deadline would not be found valid in the courts — particularly because the Madison Amendment to the Constitution was introduced in 1789 and adopted in 1992.

Both strategies present an opportunity to finally secure a constitutional guarantee against sex discrimination (ironically, the vast majority of people in this country believes such a thing already exists). Under both strategies, state legislatures will be required to act. While support from the president and others would be nice, symbolically important to be sure, know that majority votes within state legislatures is where the decision-making power rests.

So what can we do? Well, I’d argue that women’s rights activists should take a page out of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, playbook. There were mainstream non-profit organizations that made arguments on Capitol Hill, and hosted lobby days, and sent action alerts, and no doubt, those actions helped. But I would also argue that the success of that repeal also had everything to do with activists who did not wait for permission from mainstream organizations, who were willing to take more radical actions, including non-violent civil disobedience as individuals and leveraging smaller, feistier grassroots groups with less investment in Washington culture. While the strategies are not the same, and it’s probably not practical to expect groups like these to work together for a variety of reasons, they are complimentary efforts building toward a common goal on the activist side. What we need now in the push for constitutional equality are more voices, not fewer.

Pressuring decision makers is great, but we should also think bigger. We should not just demand that decision makers do something, we need to be the decision makers ourselves.

Run for office. If you want to see the Equal Rights Amendment ratified, truly, I believe, the best thing you could do is to re-orient your thinking right now to say to yourself and others: “I’m thinking about running for my state legislature.” (This is a great strategy no matter where you live.) We need more women in public office for so many reasons.

For too long the Equal Rights Amendment has been represented as a time way back when, when some really terrific activists almost got us there. History is important. It’s important to teach and important to know. But even more important than the history is the doing, the now, the activists who are on fire (many of whom are part of the history, actually). When we sit around a fire, we look at the flames and not the logs. What we need now in the push for constitutional equality is more urgency, less history. Delightfully, Secretary Panetta has given us a boost we can choose to take now.

This post is dedicated to one of my favorite activists on fire, Zoe Nicholson, who fasted for 37 days in the Illinois statehouse demanding ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1982 — and continues, to this day, to focus relentlessly on what we and you can do now.

Open Letter from A Pregnant Reproductive Justice Advocate to A Pregnant Anti-Abortion Rights Counselor

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary8 Comments

Today is the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the decision that affirmed a woman’s constitutional right to legal abortion. As an activist for reproductive justice, I have celebrated this day for several years.

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But something has changed since this photograph was taken on a previous Roe anniversary: I’m pregnant. To be exact, I’m 21 weeks pregnant. I’m starting to show. And as I’ve written about, pregnancy has made me more committed to realizing the promise of reproductive justice – a world where the human right has been secured to prevent pregnancy, to end pregnancy, to pursue pregnancy, to get prenatal care, to be respected and supported adopting or bearing children regardless of race, sexual orientation or socioeconomic status, to health care and accurate education provided freely on the basis of science and medicine, to celebrate sexuality as a source for joy and humanity rather than shame and restriction in our lives.

Last week, I attended an excellent Roe 2.0: Strategies for the Next Generation of Reproductive Rights Activism panel discussion at the Center for American Progress. One of the things discussed on the panel was how restrictions on abortion rights have come to result in widespread interventions (even arrests) of pregnant women in the United States — even women with wanted pregnancies, like me. At the end of the discussion, I asked a question about engaging more pregnant women in the movement, since we have so much at stake.

After the session, an anti-abortion rights counselor from a ministry I won’t name for the sake of privacy came up to me with a pained look on her face, clutching her abdomen. “I’m pregnant too,” she said. “May I ask you a question?” She truly seemed to be shocked. And she was. Multiple times she asked if I had an ultrasound, and didn’t seeing my baby have an effect on me? Didn’t it change my view?

I believe her question was genuine. My open response, which includes what I said to her in person, is here:

Congratulations on your pregnancy! That’s wonderful. Yes, I saw my ultrasound. Trust me – I am just as excited as you are to have a baby. On a personal level, my support for abortion rights today is about my civil rights and my access to healthcare if something happens and I need it. 

(But didn’t you see your ultrasound? Weren’t you excited? How can you see your baby and support abortion?)

Trust me – I am just as excited as you are to have a baby. Restrictions on abortion rights have resulted in pregnant women who want to be pregnant like you and me getting thrown in jail, pregnant women having cesarean sections forced on them by the state and other legal interventions. I know I can handle my pregnancy and be trusted to do what is right — I don’t need the government getting involved. In fact, I think it’s dangerous. Further I don’t know what might happen. I could get sick. I could be denied medical care I need because of laws restricting abortion rights. I don’t want that to happen to me. And I don’t want that to happen to you, either. Congratulations again.

I strongly support and celebrate the right to abortion without shame, stigma or obstacles designed to make legal abortion practically impossible to obtain. Yet, the conversation needs to be broader to include those of us with wanted pregnancies who are placed in grave danger by outright bans, funding restrictions and other obstacles to abortion. In the past year we lost a happily pregnant, and later dangerously sick, Savita Halappanavar, who asked for an abortion that would have saved her life but couldn’t get one due to “pro-life” rigidity. There is nothing that justifies her death.

It is on this 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade that I wish for more people, especially pregnant women, women of color, and younger people, to move from the margins to the center of the conversation and political leadership that must ensure our human rights to full reproductive justice.