Tag: feminism

You Are The Ones You Are Waiting For: Successfully Working With People You Already Have

On By erintothemaxIn Your Activism GuideLeave a comment

We could [do this really cool thing], but we don’t have enough people yet.

Ah, recruiting more activists to come to meetings before moving forward with plans to change the world. Having worked with a lot of activists I can tell you this is one of the most common ways people get derailed.

Truth is, you are the ones you are waiting for. Why would you delegate your readiness to be the change you want to see to a mythical army of people you haven’t met yet? They may not exist. But you, brilliant feminist, certainly do.

When you believe in yourselves and work together, small groups of people can be incredibly successful to seed cultural change, force a bad actor to change course, or create or implement a new policy. Many times I’ve pulled off successful actions with small core organizing groups sized anywhere from three to 10 people.

Using a small core organizing group doesn’t preclude you from having a large event where many people show up — and it means you don’t have to keep calling meetings expecting all those people to show up until you give yourselves permission to act (under those pretenses, that day may never come).

Still don’t believe me? Anthropologist Margaret Mead knew a thing or two about peoples and cultures. She said so, too:

“Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Margaret Mead

So ready to get cracking? Here are some additional tips for successfully working with people you already have:

If you’re a leader, be a feminist. Delegate. Listen. Lead in the shape of a circle (emphasizing interconnections and intersections) rather than a triangle (emphasizing hierarchy). It’s not just the right thing to do — it works better.
Although some people never get this memo over the course of a lifetime, it’s especially common when first thrust into leadership to believe that you need to prove you can do it all by yourself and/or tell others exactly what to do and how to do it. That’s a disaster! Not only will you burn yourself out and drive people away, your activism will suffer as a result. More thoughts and more skills create more opportunities to kick ass.

Leadership is working through other people. Orient your thinking around what your small group can accomplish together to boost your odds of success.

Activity: Have everyone go around the room and say three things they can do really well (in the context of an action or campaign).
I love this activity! You may think you know your friends and colleagues, but chances are you don’t know what skills each other has. Next time you’re together, take the time to each say three things you can do really well, such as negotiating, or writing, or editing video, or dealing with difficult people in crisis situations, or logistical details or … Chances are strong you will learn about skills within your group you weren’t aware of before. This becomes really helpful in divvying up tasks.

Due to socialization, it’s more common for women to announce what we can’t do. Affirming what you and others can do is power.

Make sure everyone gets included in discussions.
Some people like to talk. Some people don’t hesitate to throw out the first idea or reaction when the room is silent. Some people are comfortable speaking up in the middle of a spirited conversation. The people who don’t fit in this category have insights no less valuable, so it’s up to you to be a feminist and make sure everyone is included in the discussion. If someone hasn’t spoken in awhile, ask them directly what they think. Or think back to the skills activity and ask them “so what about this from a, for example, photography perspective? Any additional thoughts?”

Elevating the softer voices in a room is one of the most important aspects of feminist leadership. At a micro-level. At a macro-level. Practice it routinely.

Everyone has a job. Every new person who shows up leaves with a job for next time.
Being part of something larger is what energizes people, but don’t mistake sitting there and soaking in other people’s work as filling that hole. Successfully working with the people you already have means engaging all of them. Make sure everyone has a role. Want people to come back (especially first-timers)? Don’t ever leave a meeting or an action without a new activity for everyone to do. That could include something as simple as an invitation to join a celebration potluck after a demonstration, or agreeing to research a policy before coming to the next gathering.

Both new people and existing people are precious. Don’t just treat them that way, acknowledge their worth by explicitly including their presence and their work at your next gathering.

Use the people you already have to recruit people for your big day(s).
Publicizing is great — do it online, do it through social media, do it through likeminded associations, do it through reporters and public relations, do it through public calendars and bulletin boards — but don’t just do that and expect your big crowd to fall out of the sky and into your event. Leveraging the core organizing group you already have means counting on your people to bring people to show up on your big day. Depending on the scale of what you are doing, you might want to ask everyone to commit to bringing one friend to the delivery of a formal letter to a decision-maker (just promise me you’ll record what you’re doing and post the video online), or you might want to ask everyone to commit to recruiting 50 signatures for your petition.

The people you already have are your most important asset, and that includes not just their skills but their networks. Use them or lose them!

—

A bias toward action is the seed of feminist change. One of the best ways to foster that bias is to believe in, and work with, the people you already have. The likelihood that someone is going to mythically appear and give you permission to move forward is low. The odds are statistically against your favor if you believe that holding meeting after meeting will somehow give you enough people to suddenly believe there are enough people to do something more than meet again and hope for more people. But your ability to kick ass is omnipresent. So grab it and go!

Good Feminists, Let’s Not Try To “Speak For All Women” Anymore

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary3 Comments

No one can “speak for all women.” It’s time to let this verbal contortion go without blame, shame, recrimination — let’s us this feminist community take this rhetorical device and flush it sweetly and swiftly like a live spider, somehow misplaced indoors, that doesn’t need to be throttled to the death by our bare hands.

Not everyone does it, but many do. I have done it myself. See, there! Before you think I’m attacking you and ruffle up your collar, you can just smile and say I’m a hypocrite. Except I’m not attacking you, and I’m not a hypocrite. I’m evolving. If this topic affects you, you are capable of it, too.

Changes within feminism are cause for celebration, proof that the struggle for women’s human rights, is a living, breathing thing. It is honor, not rebuke, to our feminist foremothers and fathers to adapt our calls for justice to the times, to make them more inclusive for more people, to update our tactics, to think freely for ourselves and trust our ability and others’ ability to do so.

Indeed, speaking your own truth with confidence — embracing the confidence to know that you are the foremost authority on yourself — is a feminist act, a radical act in a society that continues to second-guess women and girls and tell them at every corner to jettison their judgement for what they should be doing better, which is usually BE MORE SEXY or BE MORE VIRGINAL or BE LESS BITCHY or FORGET ABOUT CHILDCARE AT WORK AND EQUITABLE PARTNERSHIPS AT HOME, YOU JUST NEED TO LEARN HOW TO MANAGE YOUR SCHEDULE AND BUY THESE NEAT CLOSET ORGANIZERS or STOP BEING SUCH A FUCKING SLUT (the magazine headlines put most of this a little more nicely, but the substance more or less holds).

To think freely, to take up space, to believe you have a right to your own truths in a world still so toxic toward women is a compliment to Alice Paul and every feminist who came before you.

Having spent a lot of time in feminist spaces and perusing feminist media dominated by the “speaking for all women” bug, I can attest to having seen first-hand how, as I said in another post reflecting on Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique, people can speak profoundly well for themselves, and do themselves and others a disservice when they try to speak for others at the same time. I have seen how, through probably no intent of the speakers, “speaking for all women” smashes what should be kaleidoscopic perspectives of women’s lives. Specifically, I’ve seen how the self-imposed and unproductive pressure to “speak for all women” tends to:

  • Discount or stand in opposition to the actual lived experiences of non-dominant groups within the in-group (if they’re even there), especially women of color, women of faith, women in other countries and cultures, younger women, younger parents — working within a religion means you are “oppressed,” teen motherhood is a “tragedy,” the classic lie that “young women take feminism for granted”
  • Redirect diversity efforts from expanding perspectives/strategies/work to focus only on representational diversity (important, but not sufficient in itself) — “we need a [black woman/young woman/immigrant woman] to sit on this panel or sign this letter we’ve already put together”
  • Trash women who do their part to move feminism forward within their realm of expertise — last night I went to a networking and mentoring event for undergraduate college women, many not so sure of themselves, and the first introduction to Sheryl Sandberg from the panel was an apology: “I know she gets criticism, but …”
  • Shift focus to “choices,” an insistence upon picking at and policing women’s personal lives rather than acknowledging we’re blamed for our second-class status no matter what we do, a dos and don’ts feminism if you will — suggestions that the fate of feminism (or at least your enlightenment) rests on whether you get married or change your name 
  • Lead some speakers to apologize for who they are and taking up space — “I’m not a younger woman, but I’m really supportive of younger feminists … am I still allowed to help?,” and other concerns that not being exactly like others around you means you “can’t be a feminist”
  • Shame feminists who are trying to get by as much as all the other women on the planet — whether that means wearing revealing clothing, not caring about your clothing, or enduring life events that are no fault of your own, including having low self-esteem, dealing with abusive relationships, being underpaid
  • Discourage the evolution of ideas and leadership within the women’s movement — if you can’t speak for everyone, well then you should just sit down and listen to someone who does it anyway (see concerns above, this is exactly why we need more voices, not fewer!)

So okay, what can we do next? Speak for ourselves. Speak for women. Acknowledge that speaking for women means also helping to lift up the voices of women with different races, sexualities, abilities, different perspectives, different views. It’s all feminist fair game if the discussion rests on revealing our own individual truths and moving forward societal actions that expand justice for other women — under this definition, we can quickly discard the few on the fray who suggest that taking away reproductive rights from women and awarding them to church and state is feminist, or that what we need isn’t the Violence Against Women Act, but more gun proliferation.

Change is good. Believing in yourself and your right to be present is awesome. So is listening to others without judgement or pressure to be more like you. Diversity is strength. Honesty is revolutionary. Good feminists, let’s not try to “speak for all women” anymore.

Podcast On Pregnancy, Eating Disorders, Body Image And Feminism

On By erintothemaxIn CommentaryLeave a comment

I did a new podcast with Fully Engaged Feminism on pregnancy, eating disorders, body image and feminism.

I first spoke out about my experience with Pregnancy After An Eating Disorder on this blog late last year, and in response the lovely feminist writer Amy Choi interviewed me for Feministing and added her insights.

I’m not done speaking out. I’m not going to shut up. When I first started researching resources for pregnant women who have struggled with eating disorders or body image issues, I found very little. There is a bit of medical management information for those who are pregnant or trying to get pregnant, and actively have an eating disorder today. But little about pregnancy after an eating disorder, or even negative self-image struggles.

I’m not shutting up because I know there are tons of women out there like me — women who are in recovery, who don’t need medical support to manage the pregnancy, who don’t see much out there on the Internets acknowledging our existence. Some of us want to know how to stop the old Body Image Beelzebubs from coming back. Some of us want to know how to tell them to be quiet. Some of us don’t need a “how-to,” necessarily, but simply want an acknowledgement that body shame is a) real and b) sure becomes a focal point during pregnancy.

Given the lack of information out there, I intend to keep speaking up and sharing my experiences, and encourage others who feel comfortable to do the same. Sometimes we need to create the thing we wish already existed.

Anyway, check out the new podcast. We had a terrific time and I’m so grateful to Laura for having me on. She also made a sick good pan of vegan brownies and taught me how to make a podcast. Gratitude.

Getting To Sorry: Why Apologies Matter When Someone Says Something Bigoted

On By erintothemaxIn Your Activism Guide2 Comments

Last night, while you were either watching the Oscars or sleeping, The Onion tweeted the following about a nine year-old girl up for Best Actress:

“Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a cunt, right? #Oscars2013”

Later that night, the tweet was deleted without comment. Today Steve Hannah, CEO of  The Onion, apologized.

I was one of many of using all the social media channels to tell The Onion that comment was unacceptable. Cunt is a hate speech word, and to use it against a child — it is too much. It is almost unimaginable to believe so many hours would have crawled by without an apology for a little white girl. The comment revealed as much about racism as it did sexism. What happened last night was public, technological sexual harassment: The message of calling Quvenzhané a cunt was that she should know her role, and not get too big for her britches after being the youngest-ever nominee for Best Actress. It was also a glaring example of promoting and condoning rape culture by forcibly and denigratingly sexualizing others and declaring them dirty — child rape culture, at that.

Outcry was the correct response. Why? Because apologies matter when someone says or does something bigoted. Apologies validate the humanity and human rights of the targeted individual(s), and those who by the same accident of birth belong to the same systematically under-privileged groups. Further, they set a standard for what will not happen again. Finally, they offer a chance for rupture – a change in how things are done by the offending individual or institution, and a change in how greater society approaches the problem.

So briefly, let’s cover how to get to an apology, what to ask for in return and how to move forward constructively.

First, if you see something that sucks, say something sucks. Right away. You don’t need to write a thesis paper about why a given practice is offensive. Simply acknowledge the offensiveness of the comment and immediately let the offender know. And don’t just do it in a vacuum – let others know you’re letting the offender know. Social media is genius for this. But if you take the time to, for example, write an email to an offending company or individual, be sure to then post it on your blog and/or Facebook, and encourage others to write their own comments. Or give everyone a synopsis of the voicemail you left, and encourage them to do the same. (Make it easy for others to take action by providing the contact information in your open letter or notes.)

While you’re going at this first step, don’t feed the trolls. You know who I’m talking about. The people who tell you you’re an overreacting whiner, etc. “Language police” or “political correctness” is a frequent charge leveled by a number of sloppy right-wingers who don’t want to do the work to grapple with a counter-argument of why a practice judged dehumanizing or offensive should be considered alright, or not such a big deal, or part of tradition. Don’t feed these intellectually lazy trolls. They aren’t your target anyway. Your target is the actual offender.

Second, be reasonable. Asking for an apology in response to bigotry is a good step and one you should be proud of. Do so with your shoulders held high.  But I also urge you to think one step ahead — ask for something that will guarantee this won’t happen again. For example, in the case of The Onion’s horrific slur about Quvenzhané, you’ll notice I asked for a two-part solution in an accessible way:

(Ultimately this is close to what The Onion did, although they not only apologized, they said they would implement new social media procedures and discipline the writer.) When I say be reasonable, however, what I mean is to be approachable. Don’t make it impossible for your target to agree with you by acting like a total jerk yourself. And also use your faculties of reason: Offer a step beyond sorry that could sidestep the problem in the future. Once you have made sure to cover this ground, you should feel free to explain all the ways a bigoted comment is offensive. Just remember that persuasion/education by itself does not spell out an action. Make it possible, practical and productive for your target to say “sorry, plus …” in such a way that you should feel confident they are taking steps to eliminate a bigoted practice from their future repertoire.

Don’t stop until you get your apology and a commitment to taking a productive step forward to help address whatever caused the problem. Persistence is your friend. For that matter, rope in your friends for additional backup.

But when you do get your apology and a commitment to taking a productive step forward to help address whatever caused the problem, be respectful. Don’t start hating on your target in a whole new way, saying they are “insincere” or “it doesn’t matter.” By honoring a meaningful apology you are sending a message as an activist to others that you are in this to win this for the cause — not to be a jerk and target an individual because you’re so needy/clingy/stuck on a being a pain. It makes it more likely you will help contribute to other successful reversals in the wake of bigoted comments and actions. And that’s what we want, right? A better world.

Feminism, as a practice, is not about gotcha and declaring some people good and other people bad. It is about eliminating bigotry from our lives — something all of us will have to work at — and moving forward in new ways that honor the full potential and human rights of everyone. So getting to sorry is a big deal, because it is that first step toward honoring people and making change.

How have you gotten to sorry after someone’s bigotry was showing? What changes were you able to bring about? Share your stories and tips in the comments below.

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.

Time Management: Activism Without Losing Your Mind

On By erintothemaxIn Your Activism Guide7 Comments

Want to save the world, and get promoted at work, and feel like you have enough time for friends and family, and exercise, and reading, and hobbies? Lots of people do, and many of them feel like crap. Most of the activists I know feel like they’re auditioning for the part of Frankenstein’s wife — just the wig, mind you — from time to time.

stop me before i volunteer again image

The simple fact is that much activist work is volunteer, unpaid and something you will have to learn how to build time an appropriate amount of time for in your life. Time management is, honestly, one of the more difficult challenges of an activist life. So how is this ever-elusive feat possible? Let’s dive in to some tips. Pick and choose the ones that are applicable to your interests and your reality.

Repeat out loud: Taking care of myself and my needs is my first priority.

Martyring yourself for any cause, even a good one, is gross. This post’s title started with time management rather than stop treating yourself like shit, because it doesn’t help anyone to fool you into reading it. Reality is, many people, especially people who really care about other people, think of “time” as a way to frame “feeling in control.” You are not in control and you are unable to help advance any cause if you run yourself into the ground. No non-profit, no campaign, no activist event should stop you from having a job, nurturing your relationships, getting your laundry done. Affirming that your first priority is taking care of yourself and your needs is the first step to the next important tip, which is to say no.

Say the magic word when you need to: No. And don’t feel bad about saying it.

In sports you can’t win the game, much less play it well, without clear boundary lines. Same goes for activism. Just because someone asks you to do something cool doesn’t mean you have to say yes. For that matter, just because you said yes once doesn’t mean you have to say yes again. Or that you can’t leave behind a volunteer gig that is no longer working for you. Contrary to the way women and girls are commonly socialized, saying no can gain you friends, not lose them. My own mother has a great story of when I was in high school orchestra and she was called up and asked to be on a board that helped to support us. Right away, my mom said, sounds like a great group, but no, I’m too busy. The woman that made that phone call developed a friend crush on my mom based on her “no,” and years later they are best friends.

Seek out volunteer opportunities that are defined-time events.

Feeling frazzled? One of the easiest ways to get a grip on your schedule is to seek out volunteer opportunities that are defined-time events, rather than amorphous projects that will loom over your home life. For example, if you care about abortion rights and feel like you don’t have time to serve on a board or tend a website, seek out those opportunities that are defined calendar events, such as volunteering for a regular phone shift with your local abortion fund, or clinic escorting two Saturdays a month. There are a million ways to make a difference in the field you care about. Don’t get fixated on one option that demands more than you have to give.

Don’t waste your save-the-world time on drama-types.

There’s a certain sub-category of people who join activist and volunteer pursuits to share their pain. They are not difficult to spot, really: They are the difficult ones who will email you at all hours of the night in a rude tone, or call you and demand help with their issue immediately (as if you don’t have a life of your own). When you spot one of these, congratulate yourself on your laser vision and then do everything you can to minimize your involvement with that person. Minimizing your involvement doesn’t just mean minimizing interactions, it means minimizing your emotional engagement (not thinking about them, not talking about them with others). In my experience, the vast majority of people are in activism for the right reasons. Leave the ones who are not to burn out on their own time, without your assistance.

For ongoing leadership posts, come up with your three priority questions.

Many of the above tips may not seem helpful if you are on the hook for a cause, like in a volunteer board or leadership position. The thing to remember is that even when you have a title, you are a volunteer — meaning you and ultimately no one else gets to define your boundaries. When I was the volunteer president of my state NOW chapter (and going to night school full time, and working a full time job during the day) I realized fairly quickly that if I didn’t set my boundaries I couldn’t do it. So I actually got out a marker and put a sheet of paper on the wall where I would see it whenever my phone rang: 1. Does this raise money? 2. Does this get new members? 3. Does this raise the status of women and girls in Minnesota? If I couldn’t answer one of those three questions affirmatively, whatever the incoming request was, I wouldn’t give it more than five minutes. Only you can define your own questions, but they’re a great way to separate the essential work you signed up for from someone else’s urgent.

I want to acknowledge the many wonderful critiques of volunteerism as the basis for feminist work, and say that I agree that activists should be paid for their work. You deserve to be paid for your work. The purpose of this particular post is not to deconstruct that, however. It is to acknowledge the reality that much activist work is unpaid, and there are many activists who are doing this unpaid work and want some help with time management.

So, do you have experience with volunteer activist work? How have you prioritized yourself and managed your time? What worked for setting your own boundaries? Share your tips in the comments below.

Three Observations About Women And Today’s Gun Control Hearing

On By erintothemaxIn CommentaryLeave a comment

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.

Stop Trivializing FLOTUS, Media (And Feminists)

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary23 Comments

Today Michelle Obama announced a new organization, Organizing for Action, that will take hold of the much vaunted list of names built by the Organizing for America Obama presidential campaign, and press the president’s agenda (which pieces and how strongly remains to be seen).

It is, as Joe Biden would say, a Big *#:D*C@ Deal.

In response, The Wall Street Journal is comparing her to Kim Kardashian because she just got a — breaking news — haircut, CBS News is all over the birthday bangs, and FOX News is running a poll about her new bangs: Do you guys like them?

Meanwhile the Washington Post took the opportunity to headline the Style section with a big story: Four years later, feminists split by Michelle Obama’s ‘work’ as first lady.

Does it need to be spelled out that Michelle Obama isn’t taken seriously by the media, to say nothing of the government that doesn’t pay her for her work as an official representative of the state, and that’s a national crime?

But I would like to return to the Post article about some white feminists’ less than enthusiastic appraisal of Michelle Obama. I am familiar with what the article refers to, and it extends beyond outcry when she proclaimed herself “Mom in Chief.” I have seen some criticism of her within white feminist quarters because she is into gardening.

Meanwhile the media is breathlessly covering her bangs and her arms and her clothes.

As I see it, this is not what feminism was supposed to do: Judging women for how they self-define, rather than judging the mainstream culture for devaluing women.

Any woman, any person, any human being, should be respected to self-define. This belief is at the core of my feminism. Michelle Obama wants to call herself “Mom in Chief” – great. Marissa Mayer wants to go right back to work after she has a baby – she alone knows best how to navigate her own work and family life. Oprah Winfrey wants to give Lance Armstrong another opportunity to be a total jerk in front of everyone for two nights in a row – okay, here we can draw the line (public actions are different than private life choices).

Michelle Obama is not respected because she is First Lady. The First Lady position has never been respected, and it has always been constrained. That’s a national crime. But, Michelle Obama is also not respected because she is a black woman, and that is equally a national crime.

Feminism is a social justice movement that is inextricably entwined with the racial justice movement, but the road has not been without hiccups, and there is still a long way to go. One of the spaces where I most see fellow white feminists tripping up is assuming that things frequently rejected along some (but certainly not all!) white feminists’ path to empowerment — motherhood, religion, sexy clothing — must be rejected by every woman, or empowerment is impossible for that woman and all women.

This is one of those areas where I think feminism is changing. The pressure to say an experience must be universal to be valid doesn’t hold as much water in an Internet-enabled era. In fact it is the sea of heterogenous particulars that makes us strong. The concept of feminisms, versus a feminism, is nothing new, and yet now more than ever before we are able to hear from different people, and realize that it’s okay — preferable — to be diverse in our emotions and interests and thoughts just as in our ethnicity and gender expression and sexuality (historically prized by feminists, however imperfectly).

Listening, and not telling, is at the core of where modern feminism is headed. Offering support, rather than requiring approval, is at the core of where modern feminism is headed.

The sub-par way that Michelle Obama is treated, both by the mainstream culture, as well as within some pockets of feminism, presents a major growth opportunity. Let’s take it.

PS – Are you into the broader ‘feminism is changing’ discussion? Mark your calendars to join me, Andrea Plaid, Gloria Feldt, Shelby Knox, Stacey Burns, Steph Herold, Veronica Arreola and tons of other activists and advocates for an #InterGenFem TweetChat on Thursday, Jan. 31 from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. EST. Save the date and tell your friends.