See also: Eve Ensler, “Drill, Drill, Drill”

Couldn’t not post these. Enjoy!

As the election heats up and women’s role in politics becomes even more important to discuss across the generations, we’re headed to the heart of it all for two exciting panels. The first, unfortunately not open to the public, is an evening talk at George Washington University where we will be speaking to the young women and faculty of their wonderful Elizabeth J Somers Women’s Leadership Program. We’re excited to hear what the community there is thinking and feeling, and to share a bit of our own experiences and passions.

The second stop in DC will be The Association for Women in Communications Annual Conference where we are the lunchtime keynote address. This will be a fun change of pace for us, as we most often speak with college audiences. We can’t wait to hear what professionals of all different ages are thinking about, especially with regard to communication in our complex times. We hope to see you there!

So surprise, surprise: In spite of the Palin-o-mania that seems to have taken this screwy nation of ours by storm, it appears not all women of Alaska all agree. Check out WaPo’s coverage of the Palin Protest held in Anchorage, and the footage posted on YouTube, above. Some memorable slogans from the march:

Bush in a Skirt
Jesus Was a Community Organizer
Palin: Thanks But No Thanks
Smearing Alaska’s Good Name One Scandal @ a Time
Candidate To Nowhere
Rape Kits Should Be Free
Barbies for War
Sarah Palin: So Far Right She’s Wrong
Coat Hangers for McCain
Sarah Palin, Undoing 150 Years of American Feminism
Hockey Mama For Obama
McPalin Out of My Uterus

Some of the protesters–in particular, two organizers of a group named Alaska Women Reject Palin–have received threatening and abusive phone calls, instigated by KBYR talk radio host Eddie Burke, who shared the names and phones numbers of the two contacts on-air. More about all that here.

And meanwhile, Women Against Sarah Palin put up a blog asking women to send in their thoughts about Sarah Palin and have received a whopping 120,000 responses.

Keep an eye out for a post here at GWP soon on what all this “Women Against” business is REALLY about.

Monday greetings!

Ok, so it’s not Nov 4th yet and this current poll is of far less magnitude, but the votes over here at this month’s GWP poll (–>) seem to be favoring keeping the current tagline vs. changing it. Interesting. 5 more days remaining to throw your 2 cents into the pool.

We’re also playing with a title for the group version, which is launching real soon. Girls w/ Pen? Girls w/ Pens? Something else? We’re open to suggestions! If anyone’s got one, please share in comments. Thank you!!

Sex and Sensibility
Sex and Sensibility is a weekly column from Kristen Loveland that seeks to put the reasoned voice of a young woman in her 20’s into the “sex wars” fray. Sometime member of the “hook-up generation” and frequent skeptic of the social, cultural, and sexual messages young women receive from the religious right and national media, Kristen provides a voice for a much-discussed generation that has had little chance to speak up for itself.

Removing the Kid Gloves
by Kristen Loveland

In an article appearing in Wednesday’s New York Times titled “Girl Talk Has Its Limits,” the lives of young girls are once again put under the microscope for inspection by a pack of inquisitive adults. Not content to explore the sexual landscape of Miley Cyrus, cultural scrutiny now delves into female friendships and asks whether girls really should be talking, or “co-ruminating”, with each other so much, because “[s]ome studies have found that excessive talking about problems can contribute to emotional difficulties, including anxiety and depression.”

First of all, this is old news. My roommate’s abnormal psychology textbook from 2004 notes, “It is known that rumination is likely to maintain or exacerbate depression, in part by interfering with instrumental behavior.” Notice the terms “maintain” and “exacerbate”—the depression derives not from the rumination itself but from another source.

Unsurprisingly, one of the not-so-hidden assumptions of this article is that girls have an unhealthy obsession with boys:

“I could see it starting already,” she said, adding that she has made a concerted effort recently not to dwell on her own problems with friends and to try to stop negative thoughts. “From sixth grade, it’s boys are stupid, boys have cooties,” she said. “And then it progresses to boys have cooties but 20-year-old cooties. So you might as well change it when you can.”

Ah yes, the fragile female psyche. I might ask why the author wasted over 1,000 words devoted to a question bound to lead to a dead end. After all, will you ask your daughter to bottle up her worries instead? I might also ask why the author used fictional models from Heathers, Mean Girls, Sex and the City, and Gossip Girl for female friendship. Sure, I’ll admit that I talk to my girl friends—a lot. I get a feeling of distinct pleasure when I look at my cell’s phonebook, considering which of my good friends I should call next to ruminate about “so-and-so who failed to call” or “you’ll never guess who showed up last night” or “is it just me, or does she seem a bit self-centered lately?” But these exchanges have never quite reached the dramatics of a Lindsey Lohan-led cast, though they might be a lot more interesting if they did.

While I’d like to say that the article’s author clearly hasn’t seen enough Woody Allen movies, it’s true that females are more prone to clinical depression than males. Nonetheless, it seems rather facile to place 1,000 words of emphasis on co-rumination as explanation—even irresponsible as I watch the article trek up the New York Times “Most Emailed” list. Because in the end the article (note its placement in the Fashion & Style section) is simply another of those proprietary “What’s wrong with our young women?” pieces that will make the rounds of forwarded email and provide all too simplistic answers for questions that really deserve more complex consideration. What’s wrong with our young women? They talk to each other too much. What’s wrong with our young women? They’re too superficial. What’s wrong with our young women? They give away the milk for free.

While newspapers and magazines are understandably aching to draw readers in, we can’t ignore the implications of such incessant prying into young women’s lives. It’s noteworthy that so many articles focus, or place the blame, on the actions of young women themselves (friendships, sexual relations, drinking habits, college experiences, etc.), instead of on the society in which they are raised. But perhaps we aren’t so much interested in solving “the young women problem” as in lifting back the curtain to sneak a covert glance at that object of intense public fascination: the Miley Cyruses, the Britol Palins, and all the other bright young female things that seem so troubled. As one writer notes, “The modern American female is one of the most discussed, most written-about, sore subjects to come along in ages.”

The funny thing is, that was actually written back in 1957, which means the new ain’t so new. A young Nora Johnson was talking about “Sex and the College Girl” in the 50s, the era of the domesticated and constrained female, who kowtowed to the reasonable, responsible expectations of society. Yet Johnson’s description of her generation struck me as so relevant to today:

We are deadly serious in our pursuits and, I am afraid, non-adventurous in our actions. We have a compulsion to plan our lives, to take into account all possible adversities and to guard against them. We prefer not to consider the fact that human destinies are subject to amazingly ephemeral influences and that often our most rewarding experiences come about by pure chance.

Those are my italics. I emphasize that last line, because I think it is something we often forget as a society, perhaps in an effort fill the news feed, perhaps in an effort to re-corset our daughters. Depression and anxiety are, of course, conditions to be treated seriously. But efforts to analyze each and every aspect of young American women’s lives, (always premised, of course, on a concern for those young American women’s well-being), is a form of the strictest regulation, and ignores the intense wonder of unknowing and chance.

Whenever I read stories implying that we should worry about such-and-such an aspect of young women’s behavior, I picture an invalid who lives to be a hundred by lying on her sofa all day. But does she live? And is she any more psychologically sound for having been removed from experience all these years—or has her mind warped in on itself, obsessively concerned with the minutiae in life because she has never known the larger things? Shouldn’t we… wait, sorry, I had to catch myself there for a second. I’m afraid I was getting rather alarmist.

Anyway people, remove the kid gloves.

Passing along info on an event in NYC this Saturday that I sadly can’t attend — but maybe you can (and can tell me about it!):

Mating in Captivity: Sexuality and Monogamy Roundtable

Participants: Michael Kimmel, Pamela Paul, Esther Perel, Owen Renik (moderator)

September 13, 2008, 2:30 PM

This roundtable will address the ways in which monogamous partnerships affect sexual desire, sexual function, and sexual need. How do secrets and risky behaviors play a role in undermining domestic stability and trust, while potentially enhancing sexual activity? Does domestic partnering imperil our inherent sexual drive? Is it more beneficial to preserve the stability of the family unit than to explore one’s sexuality to the fullest? Is it possible to do both? What are the chemical and structural influences that play a role in this dynamic? The multidisciplinary panel will examine these questions and the way that imagination can play a role in the sexual dynamic of marriages and long-term sexual partnerships.

Sponsored by THE PHILOCTETES CENTER FOR THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF IMAGINATION (how’s that for the name of an institute?!) at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute.

If anyone goes and wants to blog about it here, door’s WIDE open 🙂

I read with interest an article on single dads by choice in this weekend’s NYTimes, titled “The Bachelor Life Includes a Family.” Says a 46-year old doctor from Miami who is interviewed for the piece, “I’ve always felt that I wanted fatherhood to be a part of my life,” he said. “It’s just a core part of who I’ve always been. I absolutely would want a partner, but I couldn’t let my life wait for that random event.” Sound familiar, ladies? Seems men, too, hear the ticking of their biological clock.

Stats on single fathers by choice are few, but according to the article their numbers are growing. Surrogacy agencies say most of these men are gay, agencies say, but there are straight men seeking to become fathers too. Some figures:

-“Gail Taylor, a founder of Growing Generations, one of the largest surrogacy agencies with about 100 births a year, said 24 percent of its clients this year are single men, both gay and straight. That number is double what it was three years ago.”

-“Last month, the National Center for Health Statistics issued the first federal survey of men and women on adoption. It found that men age 18 to 44 are twice as likely as women of the same age group to have adopted a child. That men are more likely than women to adopt their stepchildren accounts for part of the gap. But, the report said, about 73,000 never-married men had also adopted a child, a group that includes those who are single fathers by choice.”

Interesting, and also raises tough questions. Does anyone know a single father by choice? I’d like to interview a bunch for my next book. Please let me know, and many thanks!

Image cred

Last week I gave a blogging workshop at the University of South Carolina Upstate, where I also did a talk. And I’m thrilled to share that the feminist group on campus has now launched their blog! I love their description:

“UPSTARTS IS THE ONLINE VOICE OF UPSTATE FEMINISTS, A STUDENT-DRIVEN ORGANIZATION ON THE CAMPUS OF USC UPSTATE DEDICATED TO COMMUNICATING IN CLEAR AND ENERGETIC TERMS THE RELEVANCE OF FEMINISM TO TODAY’S COLLEGE-AGE WOMEN AND MEN.”

Yesssss! And a hearty welcome to you from all of us here at GWP.

Keep an eye out for these upstarts. They are utterly setting the world on fire down there.

Kudos to Faculty Advisor Dr. Lisa Johnson, President Andrea Miller, Vice President Lindsay Harris, and Secretary Candace Lamb, pictured left. And for those of you who know Lisa (editor of the stellar anthology Jane Sexes It Up), check out her new hair. You can’t tell from the picture, but she’s got a blue streak running through it. Made me want to come back and do something funkier with my hair!

Marco is at it again. Check out his reading of the latest McCain-Palin appeal over at Open Salon, “McCain/Palin Cries Wolf.” An excerpt:

The McCain/Palin spin machine has reached has reached dizzying momentum in these last few days. Palin shape-shifts now at an alarming rate, going from pit bull to pig [they started it], to now, apparently, Little Red Riding Hood. As can be seen in the graphic above, embedded in an email sent out today from the Republican campaign soliciting donations, the Palin narrative has been flipped conveniently on its head. The hunter has become the hunted, and she is cast now as victim, while the purported attackers, Obama and the Democrats, are cast as wolves on the approach.

Make no mistake: this is still the same movie. The snow places the viewer in pristine Alaska, Palin’s home turf, and the wolves, like the moose, are familiar stock characters. They were last seen being taken out by airborne hunters at Governor Palin’s behest, easy targets against the same white snow. Now they make their way towards the imperiled heroine, and through the magic of cinematic perspective, towards you, the target audience….

Read the rest.

It’s over there –>

Yep, you found it. Right there.