The enterprising, fearless ladies over at MotherTalk have invited me, along with hundreds of other women, to blog today about a fearless moment in my life, or a moment when I started becoming fearless. So here we go.

My father taught me if not to be fearless, then to die trying. He taught our golden retriever how to swim by throwing her off the pier, and he taught me how not to fear sailing by taking me out in a storm. I learned to love rain after my father dragged me outside to watch the lightning roll in over Lake Michigan and straight into our backyard. Together, we learned not to fear skiing by staying out during a mountain blizzard in Wyoming, yodeling fearlessly at the top of our lungs all the way down.

But none of this prepared me for the courage it took to leave a marriage at age thirty-five. I wanted kids of my own, and I knew that leaving the marriage — corrupted as it was — would postpone that dream, if not vanquish it. Up to that point, I had led a comfortable life. Leaving would leave me financially insecure. But I did it. I left. And I didn’t die.

With that leave-taking began a new life — one more thrilling than a sail in a storm, more charged than lightning, more exhilarating than a Wyoming blizzard. Leaving put me in touch with my truest instinct for self-preservation. And life will never be the same again.

The National Book Critics Circle has started an online petition to protest the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s decision to eliminate its book editor job (and with it Teresa Weaver). Oy. We NEED book reviews. This is BAD. But hopeful – forward the link! More commentary can be found here. (Thanks to Daph for sending it around.)

The seminar on blogging last night was FANTASTIC and I learned a ton of shiny new tricks. But man it’s hard to focus when you’ve got your laptop in front of you and you’re online. (How do students do it these days? Oh wait…) So, during the two moments when I wasn’t RIVETED by Sree’s presentation, I checked out who else on the web is a “Girl with Pen” out there….

Imagine my surprise at finding Ladies of the Pen.

Ahem. But back to girls with pens and brains – and not just bods. Check out coverage of the new book on Sassy on NPR yesterday. I love that this kind of feminist material history is seeing the light of day — and in popular book form, too. Those girls had some serious pens, I tell you.

Ooh nooo! I’m cat blogging!

Actually, I’m sitting in a blogging seminar (sitting next to Helaine Olen) at Columbia School of Journalism with Sree Sreenivasan (the tech guy on WNBC-TV) testing some new stuff out…Bear with me. And in the meantime, enjoy this shot of Amelia Bedelia, my semi-perma-foster cat.

Though I more often ponder the through-lines and continuities, the differences between feminisms of different generations sometimes just kinda hit you over the head. Note the difference in these titles:

There’s feministing.com founder Jessica Valenti’s Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters. (Be sure to check out Rebecca Traister’s interview in Salon this week.)

And there’s former 9-5 director Ellen Bravo’s new book, Taking on the Big Boys: Why Feminism Is Good for Families, Business, and the Nation.

‘Nuf said.

On other fronts, throwing a bone to those of us (ok, us writers) who are obsessed with the question of how other books actually sell, the New York Times reports today on sales figures for a number of recent “mommy books,” including Leslie Bennetts’. (thank you, Laura!) Word on the street on how they sell? They don’t.

A new study from the American Association of University Women finds that just a year after graduating from college, women earn just 80 percent of what men make. Ten years down the line, women make 69 percent of what men earn.

The finding comes at an interesting moment, given the popular argument that women earn less simply because of their lifestyle choices. Check out Broadsheet’s trademark savvy reporting on the study for more.

And while we’re on it, a few excerpts from a “pop quiz” I’m developing in conjunction with my book – because I’m always surprised at how often women ourselves overestimate how we, as a sex, are doing. Go on, take the little test. No one’s looking. I’ll post answers tomorrow.

In 2007, for every dollar a man earns, a woman earns:

A. the same
B. 84 cents
C. 77 cents
D. 56 cents

In 2007, women make up what percent of the U.S. Senate?

A. 3%
B. 14%
C. 33%
D. 50%

In 2007, what percent of women are tenured professors?

A. 7%
B. 16%
C. 20%
D. 50%

In 2007, what percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women?

A. 8%
B. 15%
C. 26%
D. 50%

(Answers posted tomorrow!)

It’s a hot week for feminism here in NYC, and particularly for two of my favorite under-30 feminist mentors:

Courtney Martin hits the road with Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body, while personal hero and a founder of feministing.com Jessica Valenti goes offline this week with her first book, Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters – a book she says she wished she had read as a teenager. Damn. Me too.

Excerpts of each are here:
Courtney on AlterNet
Jessica in The Guardian

For those of you not yet addicted to feministing.com, some classic, vintage words from Jess — who gets an undue amount of public flack from conservative detractors and misogynist wackos — may sway you to check it out:

Where criticisms about my loud, opinionated ways might bother me if I wasn’t a feminist, the fact that I am means that I know that there’s nothing wrong with me, but only with a world that doesn’t want women to speak their minds.

Such words have got to sound familiar to “second-wave” veterans. I’ll be eager to see what the response is from an older generation to these new, important voices. Jessica wrote her book because, among other things, she believes that “All women, especially younger women, deserve feminism in their lives – and most don’t have access to the university courses or feminist mentors who might introduce them to it.”

A third book out this week by another next-generation writer I have yet to meet but already admire: Kara Jesella’s How Sassy Changed My Life. Publisher’s Weekly calls it “a behind-the-scenes, warts-and-all look at the magazine’s office culture, including sections on the glossy’s coverage of feminism, celebrity and girl culture….[T]he book—written in a style reminiscent of the magazine itself—is a testament to a publication that changed the face of teen media.” Sounds like a fun romp through the recent past at the very least.

And as if these three offerings weren’t enough for one week, check out this tidbit from Bjork on feminism (courtesy of feministing.com)

Feminism dead my a**.

The fabulous journalist James Ridgeway has a really important piece in Mother Jones: “Mass Murderers and Women: What We’re Still Not Getting About Virginia Tech.”

And to counter all this week’s horrible awfulness, the Spring issue of Ms. magazine (on newsstands April 24) has an article by Nikki Ayanna Stewart in their new Women’s Studies Department on the uses of a women’s studies degree. It’s called “Transform the World.” Nikki, you bring us hope.

It may be cliche, but it’s true. Gen Xers of a progressive bent are known to wax nostalgic. Born too late, we feel we somehow “missed out” on the good ole days of badass activism — anti-war teach ins, Civil Rights sit-ins, feminist girlcotts, and the like. But today, when I read about a campus-wide Global Warming Teach In in the Boston Globe, my heart skipped a beat. Check it out – it’s taking place at Framingham University, next week.

As the Globe tells it, students in a ceramics course will be developing concept pieces based on their reactions to a global warming film. Government students will discuss the ongoing political debate and ramifications for public policy. Philosophy students will consider the moral and ethical considerations of how humans treat the Earth. Mathematics students will study the statistical rationale supporting global warming. In sociology professor Virginia Rutter’s class, students will analyze a recent report by the UN panel showing that impoverished nations, which have contributed the least to global warming, would potentially suffer the most from its consequences. Rutter will be asking students to answer the question, “What are reasonable burdens for people to take on?”

Rutter, one of the Teach In’s organizers, tells the Globe:

“We’re always looking for opportunities to connect the concepts and theories to things that are happening in the world, things that help people feel the vitality of things we’re engaged in….[When it comes to global warming, we] don’t have a horse in the race about what policies make sense…But we have an interest in putting it on the table so that as a community we can think about it.”

Sorry, Pam, but Virginia Rutter just became my new favorite sociologist.

As a postscript, maybe yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling upholding the ban on so-called partial birth abortion — an UTTER assault on women’s reproductive health rights — will finally be the prompt that wakes us all up? Sit-ins, teach-ins, girlcotts — bring ’em on. We’re in deep shit here. Be sure to check out Lynn Harris’ coverage on the ruling Salon.

Two quick updates from the reading/s front:

Courtney Martin’s Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters goes on sale today! Check out Courtney’s report from the front, on her blog. Great review by Holly Brubach in Sunday’s Style magazine. Courtney’s is one you don’t want to miss.

Second, mea culpa – and to my relief. In spite of an effectively provocative but somewhat misleading title (The Feminine Mistake) that SAHMs have taken offense too, perhaps missing the Friedan reference, Leslie Bennetts is very GOOD on structure in numerous places. Check out, for starters, the chapters titled “Opting Out” and “Opting Back In,” where she cites my new favorite sociologist, Pamela Stone, among others, extensively. And she incorporates some great structural zingers, like this one, from Sylvia Law: “This line about how women have to pick between having a family and having real work is sexist…When you say to women, and only women, ‘You have to pick,’ it’s a way of keeping women in their place by saying, ‘This is the way it is.’ The Times likes to tell the story as if the structures are immovable and you have to accept them.” Yeah, well, so do a lot of these books claiming to assuage women’s angst. But I digress.

The question remains: In an era (and in a blogosphere) in which savvy authors KNOW people have no qualms voicing an opinion without reading the book, is it fair — or disingenuous — for us to rail against those who judge our books by their covers when our titles are, for better or worse, intended to provoke?