Archive: Mon Nov 2008

No matter what the outcome of tomorrow night, we are going to have a lot to talk about on Wednesday. The entire outlook for women’s issues in the next four (eight?) years will change drastically either way, and it will be time to start immediately thinking about how we go forward with gender equality, reproductive justice, and a whole host of other issues.

The Center for New Words will be hosting a Feminist Town Forum of national leaders and feminists to discuss what happened on Election Day and where we go from here. We will broadcast the town forum here at Girl with Pen, starting at 7PM on Wednesday. In addition, I (Kristen Loveland), Deborah Siegel, and Glorida Feldt will be teaming up to give live commentary on the town hall, and we invite you to add your voices as well. Basically, we will create a post with the live broadcast and hold a discussion in the comments section. Looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday!

Full Details:

Following their extremely informative column (anybody who hasn’t read it yet should go back and read!) from last week on how McCain and Obama rank on the international women’s issues scale, here’s a follow-up from Tonni and Gwen just a day before the election. Hoping for a fantastic tomorrow. –Kristen

Hi folks. Tonni & I wanted to share a quote from you as a follow-up to our Global Exchange: Election Special.

The amazing Debra Schultz, Acting Director of the Gender Program at the International Center for Transitional Justice (and proud NCRW alumna), shared her insights on the coming election with us:

“McCain and Palin are likely to continue U.S. unilateralism in foreign policy, which can only impact women negatively. Why? Prolonged US involvement in Iraq, possible confrontation with Iran and instability in Pakistan (how easily the assassination of Benazir Bhutto seems forgotten), will disproportionately affect women and children. In an economic downturn, bloated military budgets will siphon funds needed to provide for social welfare priorities at home, such as healthcare reform and education reform.

A US multilateralist approach under Obama would likely benefit gender justice worldwide.

If the US ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the international community could hold states and non-state actors accountable for war rape including the massive epidemic of sexual violence in the eastern Congo.”

Thank you, Debra, and Happy Election Eve to all!

–Gwen and Tonni

Introducing, Tallulah!

I rarely blog about this stuff, but I just HAD to kitten blog today because on Friday, the day after we learned our first attempt at IVF didn’t work, Marco and I brought home the sweetest little cat.

Our loved ones’ reactions to our news ran the gamut.  “Maybe you should have started sooner,” said a loving but disappointed mother-in-law.   Little did she know, bless her expectant heart, we did.  My mother responded with sympathetic tears.  The woman knows a thing or two about fertility woes (cue my book Only Child).  My friends responded with the requisite “oh shit,” “am so sorry,” and “there’s always next time.”  That’s what we Chicagoans used to say about the Cubs.

Marco and I mourned, each in our own way, taking a break from our 24/7 fixation on the election.  I miss those 12 cells, said my sentimental husband, who mourns a little each time he leaves a place he knows he won’t see again soon.  What happens to the embryo? he asked.  It gets reabsorbed into my tissue, goes back to the Mother Ship, I joked.  He found that reassuring.  I want a kitten, I said.

And after two days of sadness, we headed to Kitty Kind adoption center after work.  It was Halloween, and I happened to fall in love with the first black cat I saw.  Cliché, I know, but I felt uplifted by that purring ball of fur.  Its bear-shaped face and kittenish exuberance melt me, make it hard to feel self-pity.  Marco and I passed the adoption test with flying colors (thank you, Davy!) and brought the kitten home.

It’s not exactly a baby, but it’s ours.

I’m sad.  But we’ll keep trying.  I am a Chicagoan after all.  I’m grateful for the deep happiness I’ve found with Marco, for an incredibly satisfying career as a working writer, and for being born at a time in history where technology can sometimes work miracles–even if it can’t turn back the clock.

To all you other mid-to-late-30somethings-pushing-and-just-over-40-women-trying-to-have-a-child: solidarity.  Don’t doubt your choices.  There are good reasons we’ve lived non-linear lives.

Like Tallulah, to whom the world still seems new each day, I have little truck for regret.

And now, back to the election, and MSNBC.

In the past few weeks, a number of conservatives, most prominently Colin Powell, have endorsed Obama’s candidacy for president (talk about reaching across the aisle). Most recently came an endorsement from Jeffrey Hart, who was a Nixon and Regan speechwriter and who worked at the National Review for four decades.

The endorsement seemed unique and particularly significant for offering a strong defense of Roe v. Wade and embryonic stem cell research. Hart’s conservatism is of the Burkean kind, rooted in realistic assessment of social conditions and changes. He inextricably ties woman’s right to choice to the advancement of women’s equality. It makes one realize exactly how much the Republican party has morphed itself under Bush. I think Hart’s rationale deserves repeating in full:

Ever since Roe vs. Wade, abortion has been a salient controversy in our politics. But the availability of abortion is linked to the long advancement of women’s equality. Again, we are dealing with social change, and this requires understanding social change, a Burkean imperative that Obama understands.

On my Dartmouth campus, half the undergraduates are women. They do not want to have their plans derailed by an unwanted pregnancy. In Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, the Court ruled that the availability of abortion “enables women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the country.”

Though there is a tragic aspect to abortion, as Obama recognizes, women’s equality means that women have control of their reproductive capability. Men don’t worry about that. The fact is that 83 percent of elective abortions occur during the first trimester, and decline rapidly after that.

Both Obama and McCain support federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research, Obama more urgently. The conservative movement publications, following Bush, have been fiercely opposed. Such opposition required a belief that a cluster of cells (the embryo) the size of the period at the end of this sentence is as important (more important?) than a seriously ill human being.

I myself cannot fathom such a mentality.

In fact, embryonic stem cell research is being energetically pursued in the following nations: Israel, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, China cooperating with the EU. Privately funded and state funded laboratories are moving ahead vigorously.

Recently, Harvard announced a program that will be part of a multi-billion dollar science center to be established south of the Charles River, and will be able to supply sem cells to other laboratories. I call that Pro-Life.

The following is this month’s installment of Jacqueline Hudak’s column, Family Stories.  For previous installments, click here. Here’s Jacqueline! -Deborah

Amid the festive Halloween decorations I see the “McCain/Palin” signs on my neighbor’s lawn and resist the sudden intense urge to come back after dark and rip them up.

OK, I think, THAT’S not useful.  Maybe I should just knock on their door, and say, “Hello, and by the way, do you understand what their policies will do to me and my family?”

I am aware of how divisive the campaign has been; at times its hard to even imagine moving beyong the rhetoric of us/them to a real conversation in which I could share with my neighbor the impact of rendering my lesbian family unworthy and invisible. How might I convey the sense of grievance when we have been made ‘other?’  And yet, I want to hold a passionate position about the influence of McCain policy on my family without demonizing McCain himself. Or my neighbor.

What we do with these feelings was addressed for me last weekend, when  I attended a workshop on “Forgiveness” with Dr. Fred Luskin, author of Forgive for Good and Director of The Stanford University Forgiveness Project. His premise, that holding onto anger and grudges is bad for physical and emotional well being, is backed by a growing body of research.  Studies conducted at Stanford reveal that people who are more forgiving report feeling less stressed and fewer health problems, and people who blame others for their troubles have higher incidences of illess such as cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Luskin asked the participants to write something we were unable to forgive – our grievance story.  You know, the one  that can play endlessly in your head about the time you were wronged, the one you still get all charged up over. We were then asked to describe our thoughts, feelings and actions in relation to the grievance stories. This simple exercise was powerful in providing clarity about long held, repetitive patterns of thought and behavior that simply are not effective. It also opened up space for the grief and hurt beneath the wound. Using meditation and guided visualizations, Dr. Luskin pushed us to change our  “grievance stories, ” to make peace with what is, to shift attention from what’s wrong to what’s right and good. Suffering is normal, he pointed out, and life can be hurtful enough without inflicting further damage by holding onto grudges.

As a family therapist, I see what a powerful tool forgiveness can be. Family legacies can be built entirely around a grievance story, and the goal of therapy is often to rewrite the story as one of strength and resilience.  I do need to be careful about applying some of these principles without a larger contextual lens; for example, I don’t think women and men approach relationship in the same ways, and women might tend to ‘forgive’ too easily for the sake of maintaining the relationship. And if I, a white woman, can summon an interpersonal grievance with such ease, imagine the experience of women of color who, frankly, have a lot more to forgive in the face of institutional racism. The goal, it seems, would be to exist someplace between forgiveness and compassion while working to eradicate injustice.  A spiritual practice indeed.

One of my favorite lines from Luskin’s worshop was this: “How do we fill the gap between what we wanted and what we have?”

I will think about that, post-November 4th, as I fill the gap between what I hoped for this election season, and what I get. I will be profoundly disappointed if this country elects the McCain/Palin ticket.  I desire a leader who can embrace the complexities of an issue, as Obama has done relative to race.  And whatever happens, I hope we all end the divisive us/them rhetoric and fill the gaps with forgiveness.

–Jacqueline Hudak

Robin Morgan wrote recently about “faux feminists,” namely in the context of those who support Sarah Palin’s candidacy for vice president. While, as I have pointed out, I think a Palin vice presidency would prove detrimental for women’s status in America, particularly because of her fiercely narrow anti-choice position, to bisect women into “true” vs. “fake” feminists (sound familiar?) without any room for contingency is unworkable in a society where women are represented by a variety of identities. In this case, I think Morgan needed to make a distinction between political feminism and personal feminism.

Political feminism needs to promote policies which, at the fount, support the advancement of women from a variety of disparate backgrounds, including different ethnicities, economic situations, regional and religious experiences. It needs to fight for women in those areas of society where they experience distinct disadvantages and discrimination. But it especially needs to support female Choice, particularly in sexuality and reproduction, above and beyond all else: the Choice to marry whomever she wants and the Choice to have or not have a child contingent on her personal circumstances.

A politician who supports women’s economic and political advancement, but not their bodily sovereignty, is incapable of representing feminism on an American political stage. Palin refuses to look beyond a personal, religiously-motivated decision on her part to understand why an urban teenager with a bright college future ahead of her, or a college junior, or a woman with little economic support, or a mid-career woman for whom it’s just not the right time, or a rape victim, must have the Choice to end an unwanted pregnancy. The difference between a personal and political feminism hinges on the question of whom it affects–and while Palin’s views on abortion may be right for her, they are not right for the majority of women in this country. The personal may always be political, but the political should not always be personal.

On the other hand, despite what I would describe as a viscerally negative reaction to Palin’s candidacy, I don’t think we should delineate stringent standards for who is a “feminist.” “I am a feminist.” It’s an expression we don’t hear enough. Based on pure numbers, we should be encouraging as many women as possible to express this sentiment: “I am a feminist.” At base, it means that you are actively working for women’s advancement, independence, and equality, either in your own life or at large. Given how diverse our society is, that can take on any number of meanings.

My grandmother is a devout Catholic, anti-choice, and very pro-Palin (we’ve been studiously avoiding the topic for the past few months). At the same time, she pulled herself out of 1950s housewife-dom to go back to college at age 36 with two kids at home, became a first-time teacher at age 40, and through various family crises has shown herself to be a fiercely independent and modern woman who refused to cede ground to males in the family. Would I want her deciding American policy on women’s issues for the next four years? No way. Would I love it if she called herself a feminist and would I think it true? Absolutely. In fact, sometimes I call her a feminist and while she’ll sigh “Nooo,” you can hear pride in her voice. “Feminist” can be a very empowering term.

“Feminist” also demands context. The first-wave feminists were hardly pro-choicers, but they were extremely effective politically for their time. Radical and middle-class feminists in the second wave had radically different ideas on tactics and outcomes, but both groups were feminists in their own way. Which feminism was more effective for American women at the time is a different conversation. If we stick to a too-narrow version of “feminist” then we leave out a significant number of women who are trying to carve out how to be feminists on their own terms, in their own societies, in their own religious contexts even.

There are Jewish Orthodox feminists, who have made great strides in female education, grassroots religious practices, and tefillah (prayer) groups [You can read about it in: “Women in Orthodoxy: Conventional and Contentions” by Norma Baumel Joseph in Women Remaking American Judaism, ed. Riv-Ellen Prell, 2007: Wayne State University Press). While the headway may seem small to those who don’t adhere to Orthodox beliefs, why would we deny women who have sought to effect changes within the contexts of their religion the right to call themselves Feminist?

It’s a matter of semantics, but to prevent us from wasting time over accusatory, and sometimes riskily exclusive arguments of “Who’s a feminist? Are you a feminist? Am I a feminist? Is she? Is he?” We should take “Feminist” off the grand, binary scale and ask instead about American political feminism. Sarah Palin, through a mixture of savvy and chutzpah, has become a politically powerful woman and within her context, I can understand why she considers herself a feminist. But does she represent feminism in the same way Hillary does? Will she work effectively in political office for the betterment of the diverse body of American women? In short: hell no.

–Kristen Loveland