Girl w/ Pen

We’ve made the society pages!  No, not those society pages.  These ones.

For those of you know us already, the only thing that’s different, really, is our url.  Our content will remain unchanged. For those who are meeting us for the first time, allow us to introduce ourselves—and what we’re doing here.

Girl w/Pen is a group blog dedicated to bridging feminist research and popular reality. We publicly and passionately dispels modern myths concerning gender, encouraging other feminist scholars, writers, and thinkers to do the same. We’re a collective of feminist academics, crossover writers, and writers who have left the academy to pursue other thought leadership forums and forms.

Like researchers and writers themselves, blogs grow up, evolve, and shift shapes.  Such has been the story of Girl w/Pen, which began in 2007 as a way for me to keep friends and family posted as I hit the road on book tour. The name, Girl w/Pen, came in a flash, an easy way to describe myself at the time—an academic transitioning to an identity as a writer in a different realm.

Girl quickly became girls (I know, I know, women—but it was the youthful blogosphere, right?). When I started giving workshops on translating academic ideas for trade, participants of my seminars contributed guest posts.  Some became regulars.  Other fellow travelers followed suit, coming in and out as interests and workflow allowed.  In 2009, we decided to turn GWP into a full-fledged group blog, with a full roster of columns, and the name stuck.  Though admittedly anachronistic, our name continues to speak to the writerly journey many of us have taken, are on, and aspire to, as we put our thoughts to metaphorical paper, raise our collective voices, experiment, bridge research and reality, rabble rouse, and inform.

GWP has become a true interdisciplinary forum, enriched by its range.  Our current lineup of columns includes:

Bedside Manners (Adina Nack): applying the sociological imagination to medical topics, with a special focus on sexual and reproductive health

Body Language (Alison Piepmeier): Because control of our bodies is central to feminism. (“It is very little to me to have the right to vote, to own property, etc., if I may not keep my body, and its uses, in my absolute right.” –Lucy Stone, 1855)

Body Politic (Kyla Bender-Baird and Avory Faucette): A co-authored column on queer bodies, law, and policy.

Girl Talk (Allison Kimmich): truths and fictions about girl

Mama w/Pen (Deborah Siegel): reflections on motherhood, feminist and otherwise

Nice Work (Virginia Rutter): social science in the real world

Off the Shelf (Elline Lipkin): book reviews and news

Second Look (Susan Bailey): a column on where we’ve been and where we need to go

Science Grrl (Veronica Arreola): the latest research and press on girls and women in science & engineering

Women Across Borders (Heather Hewett): A transnational perspective on women & girls

We’re delighted to be teaming up with The Society Pages, where we join an active and far-reaching multidisciplinary blogging community, supported by publishing partner W.W. Norton.  When we first started looking for a home, TSP was the first that came to mind.  Major props to Adina Nack for suggesting it, Virginia Rutter and Heather Hewett for seeing it, Lisa Wade and Letta Page for brokering it, Jon Smajda and Kyla Bender-Baird for so beautifully executing it, and Doug Hartmann and Chris Uggen for having the vision in the first place—and for welcoming us in.

Here in our new neighborhood, you’ll find long-established and esteemed blog neighbors like Sociological Images, Thick Culture, and Sexuality and Society—blogs that in many ways share our DNA.  You’ll also find here roundtables, white papers, teaching resources, and Contexts magazine. Everyone here is invested in bringing academically-informed ideas to a broad public, to speaking about society with society—just like we’ve always been.

Those of us thinking in public about the way feminist research informs our surroundings and shapes our world look forward to settling into our new digs.  As ever, we invite you to join us.  We welcome your comments and critiques, your follows (@girlwpen) and your shares.  We welcome pitches for guest posts. We’ll keep evolving, enriched by our TSP neighbors, and by you.

We’re honored to be here, and to be a part of your society. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch, and let us know what you think.

Tots in Genderland is a multimedia experiment in thinking aloud, and in community, about the gendering of earliest childhood.  I’d love it if you’d join me.

Here’s how GWP readers can get involved:

1.  Watch my TEDxWindyCity talk Born That Way?, which brings to life key research about the gendering of earliest childhood. Taking us through a personal journey peppered with blunders and epiphanies, I challenge us to move beyond pink and blue and learn something new about gender from society’s smallest experts: our kids. Please leave a comment, post on FB/Twitter, and pass the link on. (It just went live – tonight!)

2.  Take the Born That Way? quiz below and test your Gender + Tots IQ.  (The answers are in the talk.)

3.  Post a photo of a young child breaking, or upholding, gender norms on the Pinterest board Tots in Genderland. Email me to join this board and pin freely – deborah(at)deborahsiegelwrites(d0t)com

4.  Visit The Pink and Blue Diaries for random musings on gender, parenthood, writing, and life — and add random musings of your own.

5.  Suggest a site to add to the Tots in Genderland Community Well by emailing me at deborah(at)deborahsiegelwrites(dot)com

Ok, you’ve read to the bottom.  Huzzah!  Ready for the quiz? I bet you GWP readers will know the answers.  Heck, some of you even wrote the books.  Have at it:

Test Your Gender + Tots IQ

1. Children rarely have a firm sense of what “gender” they are until they are how old?
a) 1 year
b) 2 years
c) 3 years

2. This past holiday season, which country produced a toy catalog featuring a boy cradling a doll and a girl riding a race car?
a) the US
b) Sweden
c) France

3. True or false: In a study of 120 pregnant women conducted shortly after amniocentesis allowed women to learn fetal sex, those knew they were carrying females described their fetuses movements as gentle, quiet, and rolling while those carrying males described kicks, jabs, and a saga of earthquakes.

Answers: in the talk.

Oh – and I launched a new site. Everything’s moved over to here: www.deborahsiegelwrites.com.  Thanks so much for being in this all with me, dear GWP community.  I’ll see you there!

Two years ago, when Stephanie Coontz’s A Strange Stirring–a biography of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique–was released, Girl with Pen posted an online, week-long symposium looking back at Friedan and looking forward to the status of gender equality today, as guided by Coontz. We invite you to these pieces for background and reflections on Coontz and Friedan:

First, I asked two dear friends, one born in 1935, the other born in 1940, to tell me their experiences around the publication of Friedan’s TFM in 1963. The kicker: they’re both men.

Fueled by Coontz’s analysis, GWP cleared up some myths about TFM and encouraged readers to Test Your Feminine Mystique Cliche Quotient. In a Review of ‘Stirring’ Reviews, I summarized a reading of the initial reviews of Coontz’s book appearing in in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, Salon, Ms., Bitch, and feministing.

Natalie Wilson (POP GOES FEMINISM) asked whether “Housewives” today are just as “Desperate” as in the era documented by Friedan and offers up pop-culture infused Thoughts on Coontz’s A Strange Stirring.

Finally, Deborah Siegel (MAMA W/PEN) waxed intergenerational and mused on How the Choices of Our Generation Are Shaped By the Last.

Happy reading!

-Virginia Rutter

Greetings – we are Annie Howell and Lisa Robinson, guest bloggers for Mama w/Pen. We’re here because our film, SMALL, BEAUTIFULLY MOVING PARTS opens Friday, May 11 in New York City, then moves on to over ten cities nationwide. It’s a story about technology and self-expression, love and major life changes. Here’s the synopsis:

When technophile Sarah Sparks (Anna Margaret Hollyman) becomes pregnant, her uncertainties about motherhood trigger an impulsive road trip to the source of her anxiety: her long-estranged mother living far away and off-the-grid.

So, yes, our movie features a female tech-head protagonist, and that choice often has us thinking about gender and technology. The New Yorker this week features an article on youth hacker George Hotz, who at 17 was the first person to decode an iphone in order to use his existing data plan. George describes hacking as such to New Yorker writer David Kushner:

“It’s a testosterone thing,” he told me. “It’s competitiveness, but it isn’t necessarily competitiveness with other people. It’s you versus the system. And I don’t mean the system like the government thing, I mean the system like the computer. ‘I’m going to stick it to the computer. I’m going to make it do this!’ And the computer throws up an error like ‘No, I’m not going to do this.’ It’s really a male thing to say, ‘I’m going to make you do this!’ ” (“George Hotz, Sony, and the Anonymous Hacker Wars” by David Kushner, May 7, 2012.)

Is “I’m going to make you do this!” really, um, exclusively male? Granted this is one statement by one individual, but it’s reflective of an idea that’s clearly permeating our culture: that technology is more or less for the boys.

And on to film directing ….

In 2004 The New York Times ran an article by Nancy Hass that praised the number of women working in Hollywood as producers but included a sidebar about women directors that expressed some surprising assumptions. (“Hollywood’s New Old Girls’ Network” by Nancy Hass, April 24, 2005.)

The Dean of USC Film School, Elizabeth Daley, said this to Nancy Hass:

“There are talented girls who want to do this, but so far they haven’t done what the boys do – band together and sacrifice everything to make a small film,” she said. “It’s those films that eventually find their way into the hands of studio executives looking for the next hot young thing.”

And there’s more:

“Young women are less likely to get support, both financial and emotional, from their parents,” Ms. Daley added. “In my experience, parents of girls aren’t as eager to give them their life savings to make a movie,” she said.

A former studio head, who did not give her name in order to protect relationships, said: “The fact is that to be a director you have to be unbelievably ruthless…. They have a cold streak that most women I know don’t have and don’t want to have. They are both artist and commander, and they have a maniacal vision that precludes them from caring about anything but the film.”

Apologies, but denying all women the right to a natural-born cold streak, a maniacal spirit and the right to be, well, bossy – “I’M GOING TO MAKE YOU DO THIS!” — is only relevant if we allow these ridiculous stereotypes to continue to circulate.

Hack female style! And direct movies. We went to a film school wherein half of the class was female – and those women brought to their craft everything unique about themselves, and certainly got their movies made. Filmmaking is as varied in methodology as are the stories that any one individual wants to tell. Our story is about a woman and her love of machines … and how she comes undone in a transition toward parenthood. Watch the trailer here – and hope to see you opening weekend at Cinema Village!

—Annie Howell and Lisa Robinson, co-directors

SMALL, BEAUTIFULLY MOVING PARTS

I’m SO late to the table on this one (as usual these days) but hey, I’m still a mama with a pen.  And I couldn’t refrain from weighing in.

Every few years, the question—“who’s the next Gloria Steinem?”—seems to recycle itself in the mainstream media.  But it’s media, and not the women’s movement, that abhors a vacuum.

In “Gloria Steinem, a Woman Like No Other” (New York Times, March 18), Sarah Hepola is at it again.  The piece, while thoughtful in many regards, has a logic problem. Feminism is a living, breathing movement, always in evolution.  To name a sole leader now is like trying to push a tree back into a seed.  I’m pretty sure Gloria–a reluctant spokesperson herself, famously anointed by a media hungry for stars–would agree.

Hepola is right to note a lack of a singular voice, or face, today.  But there has never been unity in the women’s movement, and look what feminists have accomplished.  To be sure,  “two feminists, three opinions” might not be the most effective formula for a movement intended, among other things, to effect legislative change.  Still, feminism has since become, for many, as much culture as cause.  That signifies progress, you could say.

Yet progress, more generally, seems to be what’s really at issue.  Perhaps more compelling than the question of the movement’s public face is one more fundamental: Have we come a long way, baby, or just maybe?  It’s a question I find myself pondering daily.

As the Times article rightly points out, the Komen kerfuffle and Limbaugh’s most recent slur are simply the latest in a steady stream of events demonstrating the need for continued vigilance and response on the part of those who care about women’s health and well being, not to mention advancement.  For better or worse, the questions our feminist foremothers asked are ones younger women are asking still.

In my opinion, we need more focus on the unfinished work of feminism–for there is so much left undone–and less on the question of the movement’s brightest star.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post for The Forward titled “Occupy (Working) Motherhood, Anyone?“, which generated a, shall we say, interesting comment.  The post began like this:

Susan B. Anthony was born 192 years ago today; we share a birthday. I am 43. The late great suffragist once said: “Our job is not to make young women grateful. It’s to make them ungrateful so they keep going.” Much of my Jewish practice these days is about gratitude. But in light of our shared birthday this week, I’ve decided to dwell on some serious ingratitude.

I grew up in the 1970s listening to “Free to Be You and Me,” and singing joyfully that “Mommies Are People.” Who would have guessed, now that I’m one of those people, that the dilemmas my own working mother struggled with would become mine? In middle school, when I’d call home sick my mom would try to talk me into returning to class, so that she wouldn’t have to leave work or find a sitter. I’m pretty sure that’s what I’d do, too….

The post ends with the following birthday wishes:

1). Affordable quality childcare, paired with a change in the cultural expectation that women’s careers are expendable. That ingratitude is owed to President Nixon, who vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Bill. That piece of legislation would have provided a multibillion-dollar national daycare system that would have circumvented much of our struggle.

2). Workplace structures and a society transformed to allow for the fact that workers have families, too. Though we’ve made progress, we’ve still got a ways to go. Ingratitude to employers who put paternity on the books but support a culture that makes The Daddy Track anathema to all but the bravest men. And why does it have to be a track, after all? Haven’t we learned that the women who opt out eventually, in various ways, opt back in?

3). A future so bright on the work/life satisfaction front that neither my daughter nor my son will have to write this kind of post.

(You can read the full post here.)

The comment in question was in response to the wish for more affordable (meaning, yes, subsidized) childcare.  It went like this:

“By ‘affordable,’ I assume you mean ‘subsidized by others outside my family.’ Thanks, I’m spending enough on my own kids (and my wife chooses not to work outside the home) without having to subsidize your parenting choices.” -morganfrost

Now, there’s nothing I appreciate more than when, just as I’m considering a response, the perfect retort pops up in my Inbox.  In this case, a number of folks emailed me comments directly, though they experienced technical trouble posting them on The Forward’s site. Here’s what some of them said:

“‘Affordable’ means ‘subsidized by all of us.’  We need to have a society where people can have children AND careers without having to face too many impossible choices.  My career isn’t optional–it’s what pays the bills in my family.  The same is true for my husband’s career.  So we must have childcare, and we’d prefer that it be quality childcare, because our child–like EVERY child–deserves to be well cared for.  This should be a value that our entire country embraces and will help to support.” -Alison Piepmeier

“Susan B. Anthony did her job well. I’m glad you make the point that childcare should be subtracted from parental income, not maternal income, one of my pet peeves.  what matters most in a relationship, I think, is not necessarily that domestic/parental tasks be divided evenly but that each partner respect the other’s contributions, whatever form they take.  That’s harder in a society that, for all its talk of ‘family values,’ makes childcare the responsibility of individual familes.@morganfrost, relax. We’d like fewer predator drones and bank bailouts, not a crack at your piggybank. And keep in mind that your wife has a choice that many do not.” -Ashton Applewhite

YEAH.

And hey, morganfrost’s comment also inspired a wonderful post by Cali Yost over at Forbes, titled “Think You Don’t Benefit Directly from Childcare? ‘WIIFMs’ That Will Change Your Mind”.

So thank you, morganfrost.  You inspired some great stuff.

And thanks Alison, Ashton, and Cali.  I get by with a little help from my friends.

Just off the plane from a fabulous trip to Atlanta for the National Women’s Studies Association Conference.  Thought I’d share my opening remarks from Girl w/Pen’s session, “Gone Virtual: Opportunities and Challenges for Feminist Scholar-Bloggers.”  Thanks to everyone who came and participated in the Roundtable, and to those who weren’t able to be there, I hope these postings help!

It’s an honor to be here in real space with these women with whom I share a platform virtually.  A bit about the history of Girl w/Pen: In 2007, when my first book (Only Child) came out, and then my second (Sisterhood, Interrupted), I started a blog.  It’s mission morphed as I did, becoming eventually a group platform designed to “bridge feminist research and popular reality.”  Today, we are a collaborative blog of 10 scholar-bloggers across disciplines–all of them what I would call “engaged scholars,” women who are not only modeling something important for their students (namely, engagement in a more public form of dialogue) but reinventing what it means to be a feminist scholar along the way.  They’re going to share with you how blogging for a larger audience impacts their research, their writing, and their teaching, and how collaborative blogging can serve broader feminist goals.

But first, a quick comment about why it’s particularly interesting and important to be blogging NOW.  The blogosphere is remaking the media.  It’s part of media, sure, but it’s also proactively shaping, often, what becomes news.  I’ve recently teamed up with The OpEd Project and have been teaching seminars with them.  A big part of what we talk about there is women’s imperative to contribute to public forums and public debate given our woeful underrepresentation in the nation–indeed, the world’s–most public and prominent thought leadership forums.

How many of you blog?  How many of the rest of you would like to blog but feel you have no time to?

My hope, by the end of our session this morning, after hearing what these scholar-bloggers next to me have to say about it all, is that the question becomes not how can I possibly add blogging to my already packed life but how can I not.

Panelist introductions:

Heather Hewett is an Assistant Professor of English and Women’s Studies.  Her work has been published in a range of academic and popular venues, including Women’s Studies Quarterly, Women’s Review of Books, Brain, Child, and in several edited collections, including Chick Lit: The New Woman’s Fiction. She writes and edits the “Global Mama” column for GWP.

Veronica I. Arreola is the assistant director of the Center for Research on Women and Gender and the director of the Women in Science and Engineering program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A veteran blogger, her own blog, Viva la Feminista, is where she discusses the intersection between feminism and motherhood. She holds a bachelors degree in Biological Sciences and a masters in Public Administration, both with concentrations in Gender and Women’s Studies. She began work on her Ph.D. in Public Administration last year.  She writes the Science Grrl column at GWP.

Alison Piepmeier directs the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the College of Charleston, where she’s an associate professor of English.  Her most recent book is Girl Zines:  Making Media, Doing Feminism (NYU Press, 2009).  She’s a member of the NWSA Governing Council.  She writes the Body Language column at GWP.

Allison Kimmich has led the National Women’s Studies Association since 2004.  Most recently she has guided the Association’s Teagle-grant funded research on women’s studies and civic engagement.  She holds a PhD in women’s studies from Emory University.  She writes the Girl Talk column for Girl w/Pen.

Kyla Bender-Baird is a Doctoral Student at the CUNY Graduate Center where she focuses on sociology of gender, embodiment, and the law.  Her book, Transgender Employment Experiences, was released this fall by SUNY Press.  Prior to returning to graduate school, Kyla worked at the National Council for Research on Women where she served as the managing editor of their blog (among other things).

And I’m Deborah Siegel. (Bio and all that stuff at www.deborahsiegel.net)

A quick note about how the blog itself works: We’re each “editors” and welcome guest posts that fall under the broad rubic of our particular columns.  We also welcome guest posts on other topics as well.  (See the guidelines, and use our contact form to get in touch with our fellow blogger and webmaster Avory Faucette!)

FROM THE HANDOUT…

CHECK OUT PANELISTS’ COLUMNS AND SAMPLE POSTS
SCIENCE GRRL / Veronica Arreola Can We Whistle Stereotypes Away?
BODY POLITIC  / Kyla Bender-Baird Love Your (NonNormative) Body – a dialogue with Kyla and Avory
GLOBAL MAMA / Heather Hewett Maternal Health, One Year Later
GIRL TALK  / Allison Kimmich The Other Sex Talk
BODY LANGUAGE / Alison Piepmeier High Expectations
MAMA W/PEN  / Deborah Siegel Midlife Mama Asks Whether We’re All Too Isolated to Fight the Pink-v.-Blue Battle Outside Our Homes

OTHER VENUES WHERE GIRL W/PENNERS BLOG
Baxter Sez
Ms. Magazine Blog
The Pink & Blue Diaries
Viva la Feminista
The Real Deal

A number of folks chided me for not including a link to the opEd when I wrote about process of writing that oped here last month for CNN.com.  Er, whoops.  So here it is!  Bachmann, Palin and a New Season for Sexism.

And while I’m on it, it’s been a quite a week for a number of OpEd Project alums who are also writing opEds:

*Tera Hunter, a historian at Princeton this spring, ran an opEd in the New York Times this week “Putting an Antebellum Myth about Slavery to Rest”

*Meg Urry, an astrophysicist at Yale, published an opEd this week in CNN Opinion, “Heavenly Discoveries, Earthly Interventions”

A ton of GWP readers–and bloggers–are prime candidates for writing opEds.  You can read about the kinds of things The OpEd Project does with universities and nonprofits.  If you’re interested in bringing a seminar (or one of our longer programs) to your campus or organization, please email me at deborah[at]theopedproject[dot]org.  I’d love to work with you.