activism

I didn’t start out wanting to be a gun violence expert, and, arguably, I am not one. But violent events keep repeating and hitting closer and closer to home. My neighborhood grocery store, King Soopers, made headlines 2 years ago when 10 neighbors were killed there. Right now, we are focused on the devastating events in Buffalo and Uvalde and a shooting that killed 4 in Tulsa just yesterday. I can think of little else. I am also increasingly aware of the arguments about gun violence being caused by mental health issues. As a clinical psychologist and recently retired Teaching Professor at CU Boulder, my strategy for dealing with topics that make me uncertain is to look at the science. Today I’ve asked myself to do what I ask my students to do: Look at the science and beware the b.s.  

What are the facts about the supposed correlation between mental health and gun violence? Here’s what I found:

Over and over again, scientific studies have demonstrated that people with mental illness are more frequently victims of violence, rather than perpetrators of violence. Mental illness is not a reliable predictor of violence towards others, but is a predictor of suicide. People with serious mental illness are somewhat more likely than people without such disorders to commit violence, but that rate was only 2.9% in one large scale study. The risk increases to 10% if substance abuse is added. That means 90% to 97% of folks with serious mental health disorders do not commit violence. And some mental health symptoms, including particular symptoms of depression, are associated with lower rates of violence.

Mass murderers are a small but clearly very concerning group. A 2018 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) study of 63 active-shooter incidents between 2000 and 2013 found that 25% of shooters were known to have been diagnosed with a mental illness of some kind, ranging from minor to more serious disorders. But, and this is important, the FBI study concluded that diagnosed mental illness is not a very specific predictor of violence of any type, let alone targeted violence.

In a country that already stigmatizes mental illnesses, blaming gun violence on mental illness further stigmatizes a population that is already struggling. The research demonstrates that it just not helpful from a predictive or explanatory standpoint. But there are other factors, including social, economic, and life history that are contributing factors to violence, including: 

• violent/angry thoughts; history of violence (not a mental health disorder)
• being in an unstable life situation (not a mental health disorder)
• being under stress, such as being bullied, going through divorce, job loss, and unable to cope (also not a mental health disorders)
• history of physical or sexual abuse (not a mental health disorder)
• disinhibition (that could be related to substance abuse, or even neurological immaturity) (not a mental health disorder)

Another factor is domestic violence – also not mental illness. We need to address the fact that 3 out of 5 mass shootings have been DV related and 68% either killed at least one partner or family member or had a history of DV.

A recent study reported that tremendous stressors (fear of death, social isolation, economic hardship, general uncertainty) from COVID-19 seem to have led to an uptick in mass shootings.

But here’s where the mental health and gun violence argument really falls apart: When we look at rates of mental health disorders around the globe about 1 in 7 people have one or more mental or substance abuse disorders. The US is no different – the rates of mental illness in US are comparable to rates in many parts of Europe, and a little lower than Australia, actually, but the rate of gun violence in our society is much higher: 25 times higher than in countries with similar economic development and similar social conditions.    

What’s the difference? Access to guns. This access makes our rates of violence so much more alarming and lethal.

This is not to say that mental health professionals can’t be helpful in this important and tragic problem in our society. How could mental health professionals help? 

• Advocate for increased access to mental health intervention for people who ARE in distress before violence or suicidality emerges. Ideally, these services could be available in schools, and require a significant increase in funding for school counselors and psychologists.
• Move towards models to accurately evaluate risk of violence. This tricky topic has been a focus of many scientific studies recently, because earlier efforts in this line of research were hampered by lack of funding for many years.
• Help individuals cope with after-effects of violence. Seventy-one percent of adults experienced fear of mass shootings as “a significant source of stress in their lives,”, according to a recent survey by the American Psychological Association.
• Help direct survivors of gun violence who exhibit posttraumatic symptoms and may need support for years to come.
• Help shape policy that can alleviate stressors on a broader scale.
• Voice, publicly and repeatedly, that mental health disorders are not THE culprit. They may sometimes be involved, but not in a reliable or predictable way. Instead, social, economic, cultural and psychological variables are in play here. The one thing that all of these instances of gun violence have in common is the availability of guns. Public policy and local ordinances must address this fundamental issue. 

So, that’s my summary of the mental illness argument.  It is a red herring that some folks hope will distract us from the real issue, which is ridiculous production of, access to and support for guns in the public square. I’ll keep studying. But my time—and yours I hope—is dedicated to action.

Dr. Tina Pittman Wagers is a clinical psychologist and Teaching Professor Emerita from CU Boulder. She taught classes in abnormal psychology, women’s mental health, and evidence-based psychological treatment for many years, and has also published in the area of psychosocial ramifications of Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (SCAD).

I’ve long been a fan of Lyn Mikel Brown’s, professor of education and human development, author of six books about gender and girlhood, and cofounder of multiple grassroots organizations and projects, including Powered by Girl, an online media activism campaign for girls by girls. I’ve more recently become a fan of a sophomore in high school named Lilly Bond, whose middle-school activism you may have read about in Time, The Nation, Cosmo, and on feministing. (If not, I urge you to watch this video and learn about it! Lilly rocks.) I put the two of them together to discuss Lyn’s newest book, Powered by Girl: A Field Guide to Supporting Youth Activists. Here’s how their exchange went down. – Deborah

LILLY: My mother used to be a women’s studies professor at Columbia Chicago, as well as Northeastern, so I was raised in a very “girl power” household. I’ve got an older and a younger brother, and my dad’s a high school teacher. In middle school I went through a whole ordeal where the school banned leggings because they were “distracting” to male students. My mother and I did interviews with the news and were written about by several different news outlets including The Chicago Tribune, and Huffington Post. I loved your book. So as I continue my own activism, I’m interested to know: what got you interested in writing it, or even more broadly, what got you into feminism?

LYN: I remember reading about your activism! My interest in feminism developed in high school. Like so many girls, I was frustrated at the way I was treated because of my gender, both at home (I had two brothers who lived much less protected lives) and at school (I was an athlete and the differences between the support and resources available to boys’ and girls’ teams at that time were startling). As I look back, I see I was also naming injustices that arose at the intersection of gender and social class–the ways my experiences were dismissed relative to other girls or times when I was not seen, heard, or taken seriously because I was a working-class girl.

I read a lot. I asked for a gift subscription to Ms. Magazine in high school. I read Gloria Steinem’s Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions in college. I took Women’s Studies classes, and was introduced to In a Different Voice, This Bridge Called My Back, and Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Reading Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice was an epiphany, an “a-ha” moment. I saw how the field of psychology was not all that different from my high school in the ways it privileged the experiences of boys and men. I applied to Harvard’s Graduate School of Education to work with Carol and could not believe my luck when I was accepted and later asked to join her research team of graduate students and post docs. We became, collectively, the Harvard Project on Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development. For years we interviewed girls and young women in schools and community organizations–our goal was to learn about girls by listening to girls. We saw girls as experts on their own diverse experiences. Our goal was to insist that psychology as a discipline do the same.

Powered By Girl has its roots in this early work at the Harvard Project. We were developing a way of listening, a way of being in relationship that centered girls. As I moved into my career, I explored more deeply girls’ lives at the intersections of gender, race, and class.

The book also has its roots in community and online activism. For me, it’s never been enough to write about these issues. I really wanted to work with girls to make the world a better, more just place. In 2000, I joined with community activists to create a local feminist nonprofit, Hardy Girls Healthy Women, and then later with colleagues to create SPARK Movement. SPARK, especially, has become a platform for girl-fueled activism. The SPARKteam taught me so much about what girls need to effectively engage in youth organizing and develop social change campaigns.

So I wrote the book as a way to share what I have learned with more people, including my undergraduate students, and in celebration of girls and the power of intergenerational activism.

LILLY: I can definitely relate to the being-treated-differently-than-brothers thing; it’s frustrating to say the least. Your experience sounds a lot like mine. I’ll have to look up some of those books 🙂
I was also wondering, how would you suggest youth activists get involved and active, and be taken seriously? It can sometimes be hard for young girls to be listened to, as I’m sure you know.

LYN: I think it’s so important for youth activists to seek out allies, to find people and groups who share their passion about issues. I also think it’s important to read about the issues they most care about–to move beyond the surface and better understand the root causes of problems. Youth who have researched and explored issues and who can talk with some authority about why a cause matters are much more likely to be taken seriously. They’re also more likely to attract others who share their concerns. And because they see things more complexly, they are more likely to understand how their concerns intersect with others’, which means they recognize opportunities for coalition building.

I also think it’s important to seek out adults who respect youth as change-makers. They can offer perspective, as well as connections with others who have resources and connections. I know this is tricky–it’s an unusual adult who really listens and supports and doesn’t try to take over. So when you find such a person, take full advantage of what they can offer.

LILLY: I agree totally. Lastly, what do you think will change about feminism in the next few years? What new or old issues do you think will come up?

LYN: Given the presidential election and the rise in racism, homophobia, sexual harassment, toxic masculinity, and the assault on reproductive rights and the environment, I think we will experience a new era of feminist activism. In recent years we’ve made progress on these fronts, but there’s clear indication that these gains can be taken away if we are not vigilant and prepared to fight.

We are facing wicked problems—problems that are widespread, complex, and interconnected—and finding solutions will require us to work across our differences and in coalition. It will require organization and participation on all fronts. In a recent op-ed for The Guardian, activist Jamia Wilson writes, “history has shown us that power is taken, never given, so resistance is critical if we don’t want our freedom eroded.”

I think we are facing a real challenge to our basic rights as human beings and we will be tested.

Hanukkah, then Christmas next week, followed by the start of a new year—a time of hope and beginnings. Why doesn’t it feel that way? For the past several days I’ve been searching for the bright spots. The ones that can provide the energy we need in the midst of so much darkness. Not an easy task. Each day new horrors erupt: the second anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre and still no reasonable national gun control legislation; free passes for racial biases and deadly police brutality; the sickening slaughter of school children in Pakistan; ongoing revelations of rape in the US military and on university campuses. Negative news can so easily obliterate positive signs in the struggles for equal rights.

But all around us there is tangible evidence of the many ways feminist work contributes to positive progress for everyone. The 2014 successes range from long overdue firsts ( the Fields Medal in Mathematics went to Maryam Mirzakhani) to innovative group actions led and powered by women (the National Coalition of Nuns support for women’s right to contraceptives; the creation of the hash tag #YesAllWomen and the responses of millions of women following the deadly rampage in Santa Barbara by a man angered when women turned down his advances). These examples are familiar to many, but countless other stories of women’s efforts are less well known:

• Women around the globe rose up in protest against those who blame the victim in cases of rape. Young US activists like Wagatwe Wanjuki worked with Congressional leaders to address how colleges handle sexual assault cases. Nana Queiroz in Brazil initiated a photo campaign on Facebook in response to a survey where sixty–five percent of the respondents agreed “…that if dressed provocatively, women deserve to be attacked and raped.” And in Kenya women took to the streets wearing mini skirts to protest the rape of a woman who was stripped and raped in public because she was wearing a short skirt. Conversations about rape are no longer hidden, ignored or silenced; they are public, viral and loud.

• President Obama selected Vanita Gupta to head of Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. She will be at the forefront of the Department’s investigation in Ferguson, Missouri and as well as the federal lawsuits in North Carolina and Texas on voter ID legislation. Women with law degrees were few and far between forty years ago. Today Gupta’s gender is a non-issue.

• Olive Bowers, a thirteen-year old surfing enthusiast in Australia took on Tracks magazine for their treatment of women.  Her letter read in part:  “I clicked on your web page titled “Girls” hoping I might find some women surfers and what they were up to, but it entered into pages and pages of semi-naked, non-surfing girls. These images create a culture in which boys, men and even girls reading your magazine will think that all girls are valued for is their appearance.” Her words may still illicit backlash, but they’re more common sense than radical in today’s world.

• And as an example of an innovative effort to ensure that women’s work is not lost, women across the US and Canada took part in the Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a thon. The Edit-a thon addressed gender bias by bringing together volunteers to add more, and more accurate, information to Wikipedia. In 1980 women in California noted that only 3 percent of history textbook content included women. They founded the National Women’s History Project. Much has been accomplished, but the Edit-a thon is evidence of work still needed.

Each of these stories is about things only dreamed of by feminists who entered the US struggle for equality under the banner of women’s liberation back in the 1970’s. Most reasonable people now take for granted that women belong in schools of law, medicine and business; in every field of academic inquiry and artistic endeavor; and in every type of occupation and employment. There’s a long way to go but women understand persistence, know how to organize and innovate, and have no intention of withdrawing from the struggle for a better, safer, more just world.

Yes, there will be set backs. Some are frightened by expanding equality, challenging patriarchy and questioning traditional concepts of gender. But I am certain that a year from now old binaries will have loosened a bit more. There will be feminist progress to celebrate. That is, I am certain of this if we each take a deep breath and dig into the work ahead.

If you care about smart toys or if you don’t live under a media rock, then by now you’ve heard about GoldieBlox, the girls engineering toy. Maybe you read about it here at Girl w/Pen. Maybe you saw the viral video about the toy that parodied the Beastie Boys song, “Girls.” In the video, three girls set off a Rube Goldberg machine and aim to take over the world. The only problem was that the Beastie Boys said thank you by suing GoldieBlox. Then the toy got critiqued left and right—too pink, too princessy, too wrong for “stealing” a Beastie Boys song. Well now, no matter how you felt about the toy, you likely saw their new ad while inhaling nachos during the Super Bowl. GoldieBlox won Intuit’s small business Super Bowl commercial competition which means they essentially won 4 million dollars, the amount equivalent to make and then screen a commercial during the Super Bowl.

And that means that GoldieBlox really just became a household name.

This commercial puts GoldieBlox, a small start-up toy company that wants to, as they say, “disrupt the pink aisle,” at your local toy store, back on top. And to make matters even better, days ago GoldieBlox’s “Spinning Machine” won the People’s Choice and Educational Toy award of the year at the 14^th annual Toy Industry Association (TIA) Awards. Debbie Sterling, GoldieBlox CEO, invented one of the first engineering toys for girls. She shares her challenges in her TEDX talk: her path as a female minority in a Stanford engineering program, a woman inventor in the big business androcentric toy industry, and as a female entrepreneur in booming Silicon Valley. Sterling’s vision as an entrepreneur, and the ideological work of the toy, are the reasons we wanted her to help us open a new gender center, the Cassandra Voss Center, on our campus. So this Fall, we became the “Midwest launch” of GoldieBlox.

What did that mean? Debbie Sterling and VP, Lindsey Shepard, spoke on our campus and taught us how to engage hundreds of kids with GoldieBlox when we created a toy zone in our Center. St. Norbert College was also among the first colleges to include the toy in their curriculum. As Assistant Professor of Education, Chris Meidl, said when he introduced the toy in his class on “Play,” “No matter any other criticisms about the toy itself, the clear message delivered is that girls can build too. And that is a message worth being heard, for girls and boys, for women and most importantly for men.”

So I’m loyal-it’s true. I know the founders personally and heard them speak passionately about their dream of the toy and for girls globally. The toy, though, has come under a lot of critique. When Slate’s holiday gift guide tagline read “Forget GoldieBlox. Buy a Birdfeeder Instead,” I wanted to throw a birdfeeder at my computer screen. The holiday season is, of course, the biggest commercial moment in the toy company year. Slate just kept going with, “First Everyone Loved GoldieBlox. Now Everyone Hates GoldieBlox.” Hate is a strong word and I guess Slate figured that out since at this writing, they removed the above title and have given GoldieBlox a second look under the article, “GoldieBlox: Great for Girls? Terrible for Girls? Or Just Selling Toys?” Well good for you Slate for modifying your backlash after the fact. Sigh. Then when Jezebel recently wrote, “GoldieBlox Means Well But Doesn’t Live Up to the Hype,” I had to weigh in.

I’ve been in Women’s and Gender Studies since I was 19 years old. On the one hand, I welcome and get the onslaught of feminist critique of GoldieBlox that is now coming to a blog near you. On the other hand, I am no ideological purist and I wonder the degree to which critics grasp what it takes to break gender barriers in all these fields—STEM, toy industry, start-up/Silicon Valley culture—and make a toy that has mass appeal. I repeat—mass appeal.

My supportive response really comes from watching the toy work on the ground. I saw hundreds of girls play with GoldieBlox for an entire day. I watched as girl after girl mastered a “basic belt drive,” the first engineering challenge of the game and saw how they interacted with the “bill of materials” that is designed to be especially welcoming to girls—girls who rarely play with construction toys. Debbie made the wheels look like thread spools, the axles resemble crayons, and the belt mimic a thick hair ribbon. A hair ribbon is stereotypically feminine, but it’s likely a girl has seen one, unlike other construction toy parts that can appear off limits in gender-segregated toy aisles. Debbie conducted research for her start-up toy and discovered that girls would frequently turn her prototypes into non-competitive games. In other words, girls needed all the adorable animal characters to spin on the spinning machine or ride the float. Everyone needed to win. So Debbie redesigned the game.

Now as a gender critic, I know that girls are socialized into these sensibilities rather than born into them, but that fact does not make their gender socialization any less real. When my three year old picked up the toy, she gravitated first to the character animals just as GoldieBlox VP Lindsey Shepard had predicted. “The character animals are the way for girls to feel invited into engineering,” said Lindsey who urged us to reach out a hand with, say, Katinka the dolphin, and welcome a girl into play. The GoldieBlox mission is to make engineering as appealing a job for a girl as the pink-collar work that so many girls are still ushered into. Debbie’s basic gender critique in her Kickstarter video asserts a claim in Gender Studies about inequity and representation—engineering is still 89% male, women make up half the population, women and girls need to be building for a better, more inclusive future. Few toys offer such a gender critique which is why GoldieBlox had an initial feminist appeal.

Critics say about the toy: it has pink on it. And the second game is called “GoldieBlox and the Parade Float” where girls partake in dreaded “princess culture” and help build a parade float. It’s all true. The toy has pink on it, but is mostly yellow. Debbie talked about how using some pink was intentional. She aimed for girls to “want to pick the toy up,” in the first place. Debbie said recently to the New York Times, “It’s OK to be a princess. We just think girls can build their own castles too.” The deeper story of the princess float—and I loathe princess culture…I avoid saying the word out loud in my house—is that Goldie’s best friend, Ruby, who is African-American, is actually the winner of the pageant. This fact prizes afro-centric beauty in a racist culture that makes beauty synonymous with whiteness. Now it is certainly more troubling that Ruby is the best friend of Goldie and not Goldie herself. Goldie of the Blox is a white protagonist, a central critique that is rarely mentioned in the feminist response. Though I wonder if Goldie is “Golda,” an homage to Debbie’s Jewish foremothers. The Jewish cultural allowance for smart girls is something Debbie mentions in her TEDX talk. On the ground, watching girls play with the toy, they actually play with the animals in the set which are not necessarily racialized. The question remains: can a toy ever be designed (add books, movies, etc.) with a girl of color at the center? Girls and women are barely represented authentically in mass culture at all, let alone women of color. We know something will have shifted with a girl-of-color is at the center of a story.

So the answers to the GoldieBlox critiques are a bit more complicated. I appreciate critic Deborah Siegel’s more balanced provocatively titled piece, “Is GoldieBlox Trojan Princess, or Trojan Feminism?” I think it’s both. Which brings me back to my point about ideological purity. Why do we keep asking this binary question of “is it or isn’t it” feminist? Let’s step back and take the long view. The truth is I want GoldieBlox to have the same appeal as Bob the Builder or Lego dudes because girls still get nada in girl toy world. Like I teach my students—you can hold conflicting ideas simultaneously and still make a commitment. GoldieBlox is listening. Let’s commit to help them navigate the hyper-stereotyped toy world many of us are resisting by giving them some advice as The Brave Girls Alliance is doing with Lego when asking them to make smart girl Minifigs. I appreciate that GoldieBlox is trying to meet girls where they are. We can find the common ground between these worlds intellectually and maybe we can even find it around play. And even if we can’t, GoldieBlox is about to change play nationally regardless.

Recent Girl w/Pen posts—Stop the War on Pink—Let’s Take a Look at Toys for Boys by Tristan Bridges and CJ Pascoe, Who’s Afraid of the War on Pink from Girl w/Pen founder Deborah Siegel, and Girls, Boys, Feminism, Toys, a dialogue between Deborah and feminist author Rebecca Hains—all focus on how  ‘gender coding’ toys via color and sex specific illustrations harms kids of both sexes.  The discussion underlines how long feminist change can take. It also illustrates the popular influence of those who claim to be pro-child, but thread old, unfounded gender stereotypes throughout their public pronouncements and publications, promoting the notion that from birth girls and boys learn, play and relate in vastly different ways.

This makes it difficult to avoid letting discussions related to gender fall into a binary frame. As so many of us have pointed out for more years than I care to recall, these issues are not either/or, zero sum ones.  Much of the content and comments on the posts mentioned above have reiterated these points.  Yet hanging around in the public mind are ideas reflecting beliefs such as ‘helping girls equals hurting boys’ or ‘progress for boys is a set back for girls’ or ‘working on behalf of girls means ignoring boys’. Nonsense.  A gender equitable environment is one where assumptions of differences based primarily on one’s sex and/or gender affiliation are not part of the picture.  No serious feminist has ever argued otherwise.

In their post Deborah and Rebecca refer to Christina Hoff Sommers’ 2001 book, The War Against Boys . Sommers’ claimed that efforts on behalf of girls were a direct cause of much that was not working for boys in our nations schools.  I was one of the feminists who responded that actually, what was good for girls was also good for boys and vice versa.  Those of us, women and men, who shared this perspective, offered numerous examples: new methods of teaching science, better sex education, more physical activities for both boys and girls, a de-emphasis on traditional, option-limiting gender roles.

Of course, the hitch here is and always has been what is considered “good’.  If you want to continue the status quo, then you want to do all sorts of things that involve emphasizing gender differences— different toys, different teaching methods, different schools, different opportunities in sports and yes, even different signature colors.  This is a deeply conservative agenda.  It is an agenda that says,’ well, the roles of women and men have changed enough, we certainly don’t want anymore.’

It seems that the more  progress we make  toward less rigid gender roles, the more extreme the gender coding of toys becomes. Back in my December, 2012 post, Pink is for Girls, Black is for Boys, I noted that 2012 marked the fortieth anniversary of the best selling children’s record, Free To Be You and Me. Yet the Free To Be message—  everyone in our society needed a wider, less gender-specific range of choices and these choices should begin in childhood—was missing in the toy stores I visited.  The toys were far more color coded than four decades ago. Back then bikes, trucks, airplanes and even dolls sported a wide range of bright colors—red, green, yellow as well as shades of blue and rose.  The pink/lavender vs. black/ dark navy dichotomy is a division that, among other things, probably helps sales. Teach children and parents the color-code and you double your market.  What little brother will want to settle for his big sister’s pink tricycle?

But what may be good for sales is very bad for kids and ultimately for all of us. Rigid gender roles inhibit equality, limit individual flexibility, and rob us of our fullest selves.  Thank goodness for the Let Toys Be Toys Project and other similar efforts.

And lets not forget that whether the news media noticed or not, working for changes in gendered assumptions about male roles has been part of the feminist agenda for decades.  Change for women without change for men isn’t the change we hoped for fifty years ago and it isn’t the change feminist men and women, whether in the fields of women’s studies, girls’ studies, gender studies or masculinity studies are working for now.

In fact one of the great things about Girl w/Pen bloggers is that we span all these fields and more and we do so across traditional academic disciplines as well as generational lines.  When I directed the Wellesley Centers for Women, the sign on my desk read, “None of us is as smart as all of us.”   Girl w/Pen feels like my old office these days!

Thanksgiving is a week away.  The holiday is uniquely American, grounded in our history rather than our various religions, in a sense of family and community rather than military victories. Increasingly, commercial aspects have intruded on family priorities, but it remains a time when we gather to give thanks for what we have, and hopefully, to recognize and support those less fortunate. I wish it could also be a time for many of us to do more than feel good about spending a few hours serving turkey dinners at a shelter for battered women or homeless families. I wish it could be a time to consider the steps needed to eliminate the poverty, violence and hopelessness that create the need for such places.

But as the holiday approaches our nation confronts the largest levels of income inequality in close to a century. A college education remains a key to economic success but is less affordable every year. These realities are coupled with unrelenting, well-funded efforts that disproportionately effect the poorest among us: women and children; the elderly; those with disabilities.

Attacks against health care reform and the supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP), fierce opposition to an increase in the minimum wage, measures to cut off access to safe abortion, are all in the news and on the political playing field. And for some it appears that is exactly what these critical issues are—political play things. Play it right; insure your privileged position.  The idea that actual individuals—mothers, grandparents, children, war veterans, caregivers—will suffer and that those most affected are powerless to change the dynamics of the political game seem lost in allegiance to one’s group or one’s ambition, or both.

Political differences are important ingredients in any democracy, but robust measures of compassion and compromise are required as well.  Empathy for those living in less fortunate circumstances appears missing from the calculations of some of the most powerful players–those inside as well as outside political office.

How can this be?

Two recent studies offer clues. Research conducted at the University of California, Berkeley revealed that the economically advantaged are less likely to express compassion for others than are people with lower incomes. Jennifer Stellar, the lead author of the study said, “It’s not that the upper classes are cold hearted. They may just not be as adept at recognizing the cues and signals of the suffering because they haven’t had to deal with as many obstacles in their lives.”

A second study by Canadian researchers found that a sense of power can influence how people respond to others by changing the way the brain functions. Feeling powerful tends to diminish brain signals that foster empathy.

Yet obviously many powerful, affluent people are deeply compassionate and emphatic. These research studies are not about inevitable outcomes, they simply point to danger signals.

We live in a country where economic disparities foster experiences that enhance a sense of power among the affluent. These same economic divisions result in communities segregated by income, communities where few personal encounters of any depth take place across socio-economic lines. Understanding the circumstances of others becomes more difficult for everyone.

My wish this Thanksgiving is for time to consider the dangers extreme income inequality, an absence of empathy and failures of compassion pose for our country.  Feminists have long pointed out that there are no individual solutions to society-wide problems. Every one of us, politicians included, must find ways to work together if democracy is to flourish.

The past few weeks have been particularly discouraging for anyone who follows politics and believes in reasoned discourse. Hoping the local news here in town might be more to my liking, I sat down to read The Wellesley Townsman for the first time in months.  The International Day of the Girl was coming up on the 11^th of October; maybe there’d be interesting coverage of girls in the area. There was.  But whether the front-page story on the girls’ softball team was encouraging or not remains a dilemma.

The headline read, “A Level Playing Field”, followed by the subhead, “Sixth grader’s frustrated letter lands her in influential company.”  The story went on to recount how, as a fifth grader, Emily Willrich had written to the Townsman about her frustrations with the differences between town sports’ opportunities for girls and boys. There were excellent facilities available to the boys’ baseball team–a well maintained field complete with brick dugouts, night-lights, a scoreboard, and even an announcer. The girls’ softball team was relegated to a scruffy field where the lights didn’t work and at times umpires never showed up.  Emily’s letter reached the President of nearby Simmons College, who invited her to be a special guest at a college=sponsored event, “How Women Become Political”. Emily, now in sixth grade, had a chance to meet and talk with Gloria Steinem and several prominent female politicians, including Massachusetts’ gubernatorial candidate, Martha Coakley.

My first reaction was, “Wow, what a great example of  feminist progress and ‘girl power!”   Forty years ago girls weren’t allowed to play Little League, and there certainly weren’t  any town wide girls’ softball teams when I was growing up in Mystic, Connecticut.  The closest I managed to get to a town playing field was as the semi-official score keeper for the boys’ baseball team my father coached.  I learned to be a baseball watcher, not a baseball player. ‘Everyone knew’ sports were more important for boys.

Reading the article a second time, I questioned my initial response. A 5^th grader had to raise the issue?  In the second decade of the 21^st century?  Where were the adults?  What about Title IX and the guarantee of equality?  But Title IX covers only programs sponsored by educational institutions receiving federal funds. It doesn’t address town teams.  Maybe my delight was misplaced, maybe being appalled was more on target.  A young girl challenging unfairness with confidence is wonderful; it might not have happened in the years before feminism’s empowering messages took hold. But old gendered assumptions remaining so deeply embedded that no one in this upscale  town seemed concerned about the inequitable sports facilities  is, indeed, appalling.  The news story presented the proverbial half-full/half-empty glass: ‘how far we’ve come; but how far we have to go’.

The Townsmen article concluded by reporting that Emily’s mother didn’t know if her daughter’s passion for fairness might lead to a career in politics. “We’re excited to find out. Nothing she does would surprise us.”

I, for one, hope Emily will pour at least some of her passion into politics. We need her. These discouraging weeks of Congressional malfunction have highlighted the critical importance of women in political office, not simply for women, but for the entire nation.  Women in the U.S. Senate have authored most of the major bills passed this session.  Female Senators are credited with the initial steps resulting in the compromise that has finally reopened the government.  Women are consistently more bipartisan than their male counterparts in their approach to legislation.  And studies repeatedly indicate that women—regardless of their political affiliation–tend to sponsor and vote for laws that support families in larger percentages than do their male colleagues.

So, we come to another half-full/ half-empty dilemma. Currently only 20 of the 100 members of the U.S. Senate are women–an all time high. As far as progress for women and girls goes, it will be a long  time before we can discard the metaphor of  the half-full/ half-empty glass . Personally, I prefer the energizing half-full perspective; but I never forget the empty half of the glass. It’s a constant reminder of  work unfinished.

Live, from the land of Betty Friedan’s homestate and the birthplace of radical feminist cells like Chicago Women’s Liberation Union and the West Side Group, it’s ChiFems!

Earlier this month, I spoke on a ChiFems panel moderated by Christine Gallagher Kearney along with my fellow Girl w/Penner Veronica Arreola, my fellow OpEd Project maven Claudia Garcia-Rojas, and fabulous feminist (and OpEd Project alum) Ashley Lauren Samsa about feminism in the Midwest, past, present, future.  ChiFems is a part-social, part-activist group that aims to bring Chicago feminists together to build relationships and work together to create change.  I adore them.

Here’s the video. Note: we didn’t all plan to wear jean jackets. Perhaps it’s a Midwestern thing?

The National Women’s Studies Association 2011 conference will take place in Atlanta, Georgia this year, where Governor Nathan Deal recently signed into law HB 87, an anti-immigrant bill.

NWSA leaders and conference organizers believe that the new legislation will undoubtedly limit immigrants’ rights to social justice as well as basic human rights; we view this law as one that conflicts with our feminist values and commitments.  We also believe that oppressive measures like HB 87 can be addressed through education and action, and we plan to address the issues driving HB 87 and the struggle against it at our conference.

Our conference theme, “Feminist Transformations,” speaks directly to the potential of feminist organizing to challenge anti-immigrant and xenophobic legislation reflected in HB 87 and similar measures nationally.

NWSA has planned special conference events, activities, and collaborations with local organizers to highlight our opposition to HB 87.  Stay tuned for more updates!