power

Today’s guest post from Christine Gallagher Kearney was originally published here. Christine Gallagher Kearney is a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project, member of the YWCA Metropolitan Chicago Board of Ambassador Council, co-founder of ChiFems Action Network and past president of DePaul University’s Women’s Network. She has published in places like ForbesWoman, Women’s eNews and Girl w/Pen! (now a part of The Society Pages).

Sheryl Sandberg and her Lean In organization are still trending, and while I’m not excited about everything she and her organization are doing for women — see bell hooks’ critique — the new Lean In Collection with Getty Images, “a library of images devoted to the powerful depiction of women, girls and the people who support them,” is heartening, especially in the face of recent female disembodiment in the news media.

TIME didn’t start the disembodiment, but they did name it. In a rundown of recent visual advertisements depicting “headless women,” writer Laura Stampler describes and calls the occurrence of headless women a “trend,” reducing women’s bodies to objects for consumption.

To be sure, “headless women” in advertising is not new. Take for example a 1990s ad for BodySlimmers that depicts a woman standing provocatively in what looks like a black swimming suit. Her head is not visible in the image. Or think back to an advertisement by Axe for shower gel that depicts a woman’s body covered in mud, with “wash me” written with a finger across her stomach, her head is not visible in the image.

However, announcing a “headless woman” trend in 2014 is as absurd as it is dangerous. Picture all the female contestants on “The Bachelor” without heads. Imagine female models on catwalks without heads. Now picture your female coworker without a head, or prominent female leaders — Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton or Janet Yellen — without heads.

“By cutting out the head you are immediately saying her personality and brains aren’t important in the slightest. We are just interested in her body. It doesn’t matter who she is,” said Lauren Rosewarne a professor at The University of Melbourne who writes, researches and comments on sexuality, gender, feminism, the media, pop culture, public policy and politics.

In effect, choosing to describe this disconcerting development as a “trend” belies the seriousness of the injustices being perpetrated and further demeans the individuals or groups who are being treated with contempt. Women are reduced to objects for consumption, to be used and thrown away. more...

With the buzz about Michele Bachmann running for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, many journalists are wondering about the Tea Party’s power.  So, I’m taking a break from blogging about healthy bodies to focus on healthy politics and share a recent email exchange with Tufts sociologist Sarah Sobieraj, Ph.D. whose new book Soundbitten: The Perils of Media-Centered Political Activism (NYU Press) takes readers inside activist groups’ struggles to get their issues and perspectives covered in the news.

 Adina Nack: What is media-centered political activism, and how perilous is it?

Sarah Sobieraj: I studied 50 U.S. activist groups from across the political spectrum, expecting to find engagement in a range of political strategies, but nearly every organization had the same strategy – attracting attention from the mainstream news media. They invested astounding amounts of time, money, and energy into media preparation and training, but were largely unsuccessful. This exclusion from mainstream news diminishes the richness of our political discourse, and consequently weakens democratic processes, but I found that the activists’ relentless pursuit of media inclusion also threatens activism.

With news coverage as the raison d’etre, organizers often approached their own members as potential liabilities in need of discipline.  As a result, open communication among fellow activists was often replaced by rigorous attempts to control their speech and behavior. Activists were meticulously schooled on talking points, warned about “entrapment,” and reminded repeatedly to “stay on message” at all costs. In some cases, members were given practice interviews, recorded, and critiqued by their group. This happened in the organizations that allowed participants to speak to reporters; many groups had designated spokespeople and prohibited other members from answering journalists’ questions altogether.  This member management stemmed from desires to control whatever fleeting coverage the group might attract.  This approach was practical but could also be toxic. One activist described feeling like a prop, invited only to show journalists that their group had numbers, but told to keep quiet and stay out of the way.

In addition to creating internal problems, media-centrism also interferes with external communication. Most groups were determined to reach the “general public” and assumed that the news would serve as intermediary, instead of working to reach those in the vicinity of their protests, rallies, and other public events directly. As a result, the organizations perseverated on media strategy – creating photo ops and sound bites, writing press releases and designating spokespeople – but these extensive media trainings inadvertently undermined their abilities to communicate with bystanders. On several occasions, I watched pedestrians approach activists to ask questions only to have an activist respond with a rehearsed one-liner.  Activists were ready with talking points but unable to actually talk. Sometimes media trainings left activists so anxious that they directed bystanders to their website to avoid answering questions.  

AN: Given the slim chances for media attention — why has the Tea Party fared so well?

SS: The Tea Party is not among the groups I studied, but my research offers some clues to their success. Soundbitten shows that journalists have an appetite for activism and a clear idea about what makes activism newsworthy: authenticity.  Authenticity can be communicated to news workers in a variety of ways: including emotionality, spontaneity, and originality – all of which the Tea Party had in excess in their early months. For example, during the Town Hall meetings on health care, their disruptions violated social norms and created tense standoffs between elected leaders and emotion-fueled audience members that didn’t feel staged.  Plus, the activists themselves were unexpected: flag-waving, silver-haired conservatives in orthopedic shoes and athletic socks are not what come to mind when most people think “protester.” The events were perfect fodder for the 24-hour news cycle.  

In contrast, the groups I worked with were passionate about their issues, but many of their events felt formulaic and professionalized – hyper-managed by rational-tongued spokespeople wielding talking points (designed to get journalists to focus on the issues) – or playful and cartoonish, which sometimes captured reporters’ interest but rarely resulted in a serious examination of key issues.

AN: So, did the activists you studied just take the wrong approach to mainstream news media?

SS: Yes and no. In terms of capturing media attention, activists face a daunting catch-22 because of the professional routines and standards of reporting that have emerged in mainstream news organizations. The odds are stacked against them.  Most of the groups I studied failed to see that showcasing their professionalism – striving to appear legitimate by creating press releases on letterhead and answering journalists’ questions with the latest data – was not an effective tactic. Yet, if they cater to journalists’ appetites – for raw emotion rather than research, personal stories rather than publicly minded-speech, etc. – the coverage they receive tends to depoliticize public issues by portraying them as personal troubles.  

So, the activists didn’t approach reporters in the “wrong” way, but there may not be a reliable way to do it “right” in the current journalistic climate. This is a problem, and media reform is critical, but until those reforms take hold, activist groups might consider realigning their strategic emphases.  It might make sense to stop investing the lion’s share of their organizational resources in trying to win this battle. It is easy to forget that the quest for media coverage is a tactic for political change, not simply an end in itself.

I started talking with my 8-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter about sexuality as soon as they started to ask questions like, “How are babies made?”  From my point of view, books have all the answers, and I turned to It’s So Amazing: A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families by Robie H. Harris and Michael Emberley as a starting point.

But recent news has me wondering how and when to initiate other, more difficult conversations about sexuality and power.

For example, my neighbor and I were talking over our 10-year-old daughters’ heads at the bus stop on Monday morning about Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund who has been arrested and charged with sexually attacking a maid.

Our conversation went like this:

Neighbor: “Did you see the news about Dominique Strauss-Kahn?”

Me: “Yes, it really does show that incidents like that are about power.”

Neighbor: “That’s for sure.”

My daughter Maya hovered nearby, sensing that we were discussing something juicy, but not entirely understanding.  She interrupted us with a question about school, and we changed the subject.

And then yesterday the news broke that Arnold Schwarzenegger fathered a child with one of his household employees.

I admit to turning the paper facedown on the kitchen table.  I would have found a way to talk about the Schwarzenegger story, of course, but I wasn’t eager to have the conversation.

As someone who jumped in early with the “sex talk,” I wonder why I’m shying away from talking about sexuality and power.  Maybe I want to protect my children from linking sexuality and violence when they still want to believe the best about people’s intentions.  After reading Veronica Arreola’s great post, “Can We Whistle Stereotypes Away?” I think I might be doing a better service to my kids if I’m honest in acknowledging that some men abuse power over women.

GWP readers, what do you think?  Is there a right time for the other sex talk?  Do you have advice about how to navigate this topic?

This post is crossposted at She Writes.

This month I was a nominee in Babble’s Moms with Clout contest.  In the end, Sausage Mama won, not me.  But the whole enchilada got me thinking: What is “clout”?  And why do so many women have trouble owning theirs?

My dictionary defines clout as “power and influence.”  Synonyms include “pull,” “authority,” “sway,” and “weight.”  In the public sphere, traditionally, clout has been gendered male.  To an overwhelming degree, it still is.  (See the depressing stats here.) Women, however, are mixing it up.  At social networks like She Writes, where authors promote one another and not just ourselves, at game-changing initiatives like The OpEd Project, where established thought leaders help fellow female experts embrace their expertise and get heard, “clout” is being redefined as something more communally achieved.  But even in the push for collaborative clout, and particularly among women, the tension between the one and the many remains.

I know this tension personally.  I experienced it this past month as I emailed my friends to ask for their vote, then opted against posting the request at She Writes or at my group blog,Girl w/Pen.  It just didn’t seem Girl w/Pen-y (or She Writes-y) to promote myself just for the sake of winning an iPad 2 (the prize).  I meticulously checked to see if any other of the 30+ nominees were She Writes members, so that I could shout us out collectively, as my colleagues in leadership at She Writes and I agreed that that would be the right way to do it.  But since they weren’t, I let it go.

In the end, I mildly regretted not saying something about it in the forums available to me—forums, heck, I’ve helped create.  I admit: I wanted that iPad!  I would have put it to good use, downloading e-books and apps and learning about the new forms all our books might take as I work toward my new project (The Pink and Blue Diaries).  But as early as day 2 or 3 of the contest, I quickly learned that I didn’t want it that bad.  Just as I couldn’t bring myself to harass my non-She Writes friends and followers more than once (ok, twice), I felt that promoting myself here for commercial gain would compromise the spirit of the community.  It felt like a conflict of interest, you know?

And that, exactly, is the problem.  Not just my problem, but women’s more generally I fear.  Are women collaborative, at times, to a fault?  In putting the community above ourselves, are we losing out on opportunities to enhance not merely our pocketbooks but our careers?  After all, winning a contest like this one is not just about winning an iPad.  To say you’ve won a contest breeds…clout.

And why should we care about clout?  Love it or hate it, fact is if you want to be a successful writer these days, clout matters.  It’s no longer the merit of our work but the reach of our platform that gets us the goodies.  Clout has been a social media buzzword for “influencer” or “community leader” for a while, but interestingly, now it’s also a website, complete with metrics and scores.  Klout.com measures “overall online influence” through an algorithm that determines exactly how much influence someone has over their social networks.  In a Klout score, numbers mean nothing; “true” influence means more.  (Come on, you know you want to, so go for it: check your Klout score here.) Will publishers start looking up our clout scores, like they look up our previous book’s sales in Book Scan?  Who knows.

In the meantime, I am not alone in my hesitation.  But nor do I necessarily think that’s a good thing.  In an article for a Canadian parenting site, top blogger Ann Douglas explores the dark–or rather, the ambivalent side–of making the top “mommyblogger” lists, while Catherine Connors of Her Bad Mother notes in a post at her own blog that top blogger and clout lists can be a source of bad feeling in the mom community, leaving those not listed feeling badly.  “I think, to that extent, they’re a little problematic,” Connors says, then adds: “I think it’s interesting that we worry about…whether feelings get hurt and the community spirit gets undermined—when this kind of discussion would be pretty much unthinkable in almost any other sphere.  Does anyone talk about Forbes business rankings making men feel bad?”

Um, no.

And that brings me back to my main concern: I was flattered to be nominated in Babble’s “Moms with Clout” contest.  In the end, I couldn’t do what it takes.  I find it interesting—and problematic—that I am so comfortable writing this post after the contest is over, revealing my ambivalence, but wasn’t comfortable asking for your vote.  Either I am being too ladylike, or simply not woman enough.

Attention GWPenners in the NYC Area: Join me, She Writes, and The OpEd Project for a joint Happy Hour in Manhattan on Sat. April 16! And for a break from all that clout-making and clout-sharing, come recharge at the mini-retreat I’m leading for writing mamas with Christina Baker Kline on May 21 in Brooklyn.

I recently blogged about hooking up at the newly launched Ms. Magazine Blog. I end the piece by saying that when it comes to sex:

Reducing sexual harms like assault, coercion, and slut shaming means maximizing sexual pleasure. Let’s kick forced power disparities and nonconsensual objectification out of our everyday lives in the bed and beyond. That’s when the girls will really go wild. On our own terms.

Writer-artist Karen Henninger wrote me to say she’d love to share some insights, experiences, and history about hooking up. It seems Karen and I don’t quite see eye to eye on the issue of casual sex among consenting adults. So, in keeping with the theme, I thought it would be cool to — yes — hook-up across blogs to keep the conversation lively. With that, I introduce our Girl W/Pen guest blogger who writes the following:

Are you aware that the Women’s Movement at the turn of the 20th century started with the idea of Free Love?

Free Love goes beyond “sex without commitment.” In the late-1800s the issue included marriage, women’s lives, and freedom from government control. Since the 1950s, especially, there has been success moving toward free love rather than forced love. But we won’t even know what is possible until we are given political freedom to live as we choose when it comes to sexuality and love.

I am for Free Love and Free Sexuality but this requires treating people without harm. I watch others go down the same old patriarchal road in their relationships over and over while I scratch my head thinking, Wow, there’s another way that is so much better for everyone.

No only is love free, but it is abundant. Love can’t really exist if it isn’t free. What makes hooking up harmful is the way it is done. The same goes for marriage and everything in between. Harm comes from the abuse of power and control. Love is simply freedom from harm. Yet harm is so entrenched in our everyday lives that we see it as normal. And then activism becomes necessary to experience something different.

Karen Henninger is a visionary visual artist, writer, and independent scholar. She holds a degree in Letters, Arts and Sciences from Penn State University and a Related Arts degree with concentrations in English and Women’s Studies from Kutztown University.

Last Monday, I closed on the first apartment I have ever owned. It took a year to sell. We had to move to a rental to make room for the twins before it sold. It drained my savings. It is a huge relief.

Closing was, quite frankly, exhilarating. But equally exhilarating was the odd thrill of having now four-month old twins, and especially my four-month old daughter, in that fancy mahogany boardroom with me, where the signing took place. Gave a whole new meaning to that cliched car window sticker “Baby on Board,” if you know what I mean.

Closings themselves are surreal, with multiple strangers in the room–bank representatives, lawyers, agents, plus the parties involved in the sale–and reams of papers passing back and forth. In my case, there were also two babies and one grandmother. Talk about crazy soup.

Humor me for a moment while I recap.

The transaction begins with the buyers’ lawyer asking them about their wills, and how, since they are not married, they would like to transfer the property should one of them meet with an untimely end. I sit across from them and try to render myself invisible during what seems like it should be a highly private exchange. My daughter sits perched on the dark wood table, staring into the middle distance. My mother paces the hallway with my son. My lawyer arrives, late.

The payoff woman arrives and sits with her parka still on, reading Something Borrowed, a chick lit staple. I find it amusing that the mortgage lady is reading a book with this title. I reflect, for a moment, on what’s really happening here. My life has changed drastically since the day I sat across a similar table as a first-time buyer. I have a new husband, two kids. I am 41 and at the beginning of what already feels like the very best chapter. Something old(ish) and something new. I inhale deeply. Baby Girl burps, then falls asleep.

Everything seems to be going swimmingly. Then, suddenly, mass panic over a missing lien search. Everyone’s on his and her cell phone, trying to track it down. I’m instructed to call the attorney who represented me during the purchase to see if he has it, only I can’t remember his name. At just this moment, my mother wanders in asking for help opening a formula bottle, holding Baby Boy, who looks nonplussed. Foreign words like “contin” and “endeminity” fly overhead. Someone says something about needing five thousand in escrow. All of a sudden, a fax comes in. Problem solved. And then, the furious writing of checks.

Baby Girl wakes up just as I sign the final documents. And it’s corny, maybe, but I flash forward and think about her in 40 years and wonder if she might be sitting at the head of a table like this one again one day. According to the latest report from Catalyst, women held 15.2 percent of board seats at Fortune 500 companies in 2009, the same as 2008. At this pace, it’s not looking good for Baby Girl if she decides she’d like to try her hand at corporate power, but still, a mama can dream.

And then, just like that, the closing is over. I awake. My broker pulls out a bottle of champagne, along with two Baby Gap bags with gifts for the babies. I kiss Baby Girl, I hug my broker, and my own mama and I pack up the babies and head back out into the Manhattan wind.

It’s a day of closure and a fresh start. Snuggled down in the Double Snap N Go, Baby Boy gurgles and gives me his broad, toothless grin. Baby Girl is sleeping again, and I can’t wait to tell her one day when she’s old enough to understand about the day she sat at the boardroom table, her hands in tight little fists, taking it all in.