My colleague Bridgette Sheridan has been complaining about The Atlantic coverage of gender for the past few years. So she forwarded with delight a spot-on column “The Intellectual Situation” in n+1 , a literary magazine that publishes social criticism, political commentary, and essays. The editors at n+1 begin:

Listen up, Ladies

Every time a plane flies over New York, we think, “Oh my God — is it another Atlantic think piece?” We mean, “an Atlantic think piece about women.” The two have become synonymous, and they descend upon their target audience with the regularity and severe abdominal cramping of Seasonale. “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” “The End of Men,” “Marry Him!”

Read their piece all the way to its logical conclusion:

So far, this strategy seems to be working. The Atlantic had its first profitable year in decades in 2010, and in 2011 made more than half its ad revenue from digital sales, while print ad sales were the highest they’d been in years. In fact, since we married our deadbeat boyfriend, quit our job, and accidentally had quadruplets through in vitro fertilization (all boys, thank God!), we’ve realized we could use some of that cash, so we’re thinking of pitching an article: “Why You’re Failing the Daughters You’ve Never Had and Probably Never Will.”

Will definitely read more from n+1.

–Virginia Rutter

It’s been almost two weeks since the elections. I am sleeping normally for the first time in months.  The money pouring into the campaigns of the some of the most extreme anti-woman, out of touch candidates astounded and scared me.  Could it make a difference? Would those who seem unable to accept the realities of a multicultural society, one where women have made substantial progress toward equality, carry the day?  I was pretty sure the answer would be ‘no’. But ‘pretty sure’ and ‘sure’ can be far apart in the middle of sleepless nights.

Twenty years ago as the elections of 1992 approached, only two women held seats in the Senate. Three additional female Senators were elected that year and 1992 was quickly dubbed ‘the year of the woman’.  Senator Barbara Mikulski responded, “Calling 1992 the Year of the Woman makes it sound like the Year of the Caribou or the Year of the Asparagus.  We’re not a fad, a fancy, or a year.”

Her words should echo in our minds now. Yes, Todd ‘legitimate rape’ Akin and Richard  ‘pregnancies from rape are God’s will’ Mourdock were soundly defeated. Yes, there are now 20 women in the Senate, an all-time high. But 20 is 30 seats shy of equal representation. And if anyone thinks the war on women has ended, watch some Fox News. Upholders of the white male patriarchy are out in full force. Woman hating is still  ‘just fine’ and  racism is every bit as woven into the irrational ‘reasoning‘ put forward to ‘explain’ the ‘surprising‘ election losses as it was prior to November 6th.  Among the prominent villains identified are single women, homosexuals and urban voters.

Throughout  this election cycle the kinds of right wing nonsense presented as rational political discourse insulted the majority of Americans. And the majority rejected it.  But the possibilities inherent in the much discussed ‘new electorate‘ are far from guaranteed. The anti-woman, anti-diversity crowd will not give up easily. They remain committed to rolling back change whenever and wherever they can. The past decade offers ample proof of this harsh reality.

The 2012 election has been the year of everyone, everyone that is except white male voters and their wives. A sizable segment of the male conservative electorate is angry.  For many of them women are a convenient target of abuse and contempt. Feminists are ‘bad women’, the major threat to a 1950‘s fantasy world where men were in charge and women were adoring ‘help mates’.  The patriarchy is cracking but it is far from finished.

A few days ago a friend sent a group email asking, “How can we hold–and use–the power of women without the crisis of an election?” For me the answer is clear, if not exactly welcome.  I am tired of this battle. I want to work on new projects, to reflect and write and move at a more leisurely pace. I don’t want to keep getting into unpleasant discussions with people who say ridiculous things. But I can’t, none of us can.

Active engagement in the political process requires a long term commitment in a democracy. The ‘new electorate’ must increase–not step back from–passionate engagement  in politics. Maintaining this new coalition–a coalition that also includes a significant number, if not the majority, of white male voters–and negotiating the differences that exist among the members is crucial as we move forward. We all have a role to play, even without, in the words of my friend, the ‘crisis of an election’.

Whether we run for office or work on the campaigns of those who do—or simply speak up and challenge the misogynist, homophobic, racist ignorance and fantasy some are still peddling, we cannot go back to business as usual. Power and influence are rarely given up, they  must be claimed, fought for and won.   The old cliche, ‘there’s no rest for the weary’ may be hackneyed, but it expresses the reality confronting us. So, deep breaths everyone, there’s momentum to build on and work to be done.

Just about the most mundane thing to populate media lately has been the claims of the end of men. Even so, two weeks ago, I attended a useful conference at Boston University Law School on “investigating the claims of the end of men.”  The subject of the conference was taken from the title given an article that led to a book by journalist Hanna Rosin. Rosin’s upshot is that women are gaining in the work place and in leadership; from this claim Rosin has helped to fuel a perception among some men and some commentators that men are losing ground. (The image above is JFK signing the Equal Pay Act, June 10, 1963.)

Why am I so down on these claims? Stephanie Coontz skillfully analyzes many of the reasons in “The Myth of Male Decline.”  Check out Nancy Folbre’s quick summary at the Economix blog today, and she explains: “The men-in-decline issue can’t be reduced to numbers, but in a comprehensive critique in The New York Times, Stephanie Coontz highlights misleading inferences drawn from a marketing-firm study of several metropolitan areas showing that never-married childless women in their 20s out-earn men in the same category.” (After you read Coontz, then read Folbre, and follow up on her fun review of Philip Cohen’s debunking of the end of men!)

Let me add another piece of evidence released after Stephanie’s piece appeared in The New York Times. The American Association of University Women’s October 2012 study, “Graduating to a Pay Gap” (.pdf) found that one year after college graduation, women earn 82 percent of what men earn. As Nancy Folbre noted, “While young women are more likely than young men to graduate from college, their diplomas don’t generate equally rich rewards.”

The AAUW study found a few factors could account for part of the gap, but about one-third of the difference could not be accounted for. Some of that 18 percent gender gap is explained by choice of major. Men major in fields that lead to higher pay. This isn’t a signal that the difference is fair, or natural, or justified. It just tells us that there is a system of what would otherwise by arbitrary differences between men and women that makes it easier for some people to maintain a sense that gender difference in pay “just happens.”

Think about this: The proportion of women in computer science went up to 37 percent in 1985. Then it went down to 22 by 2005. That kind of swing isn’t nature (as in the conversation-ending claim that it is just natural that boys and girls have different preferences). That is something else….

Some of the gap is explained by occupation. Men are in higher paying occupations. Keep in mind: the reasoning here is a bit circular: are men in higher paying occupations? Or is it that occupations with a high share of men are better paying? A little bit of the gender gap is explained by differences in hours worked. Women averaged 43 hours per week, men 45 hours per week in the study.

None of these factors are signals that men and women are different, but that the world is different for them. So that leaves the “unexplained” part of the gap.  The executive summary of the study offers this description:

Consider a hypothetical pair of graduates—one man and one woman—from the same university who majored in the same field. One year later, both were working full time, the same number of hours each week, in the same occupation and sector. Our analysis shows that despite these similarities, the woman would earn about 7 percent less than the man would earn. Why do women still earn less than men do after we control for education and employment differences?

The authors suggest that discrimination, including bias against women in negotiations (employers appear to respond to women’s negotiating attempts less favorably and to men’s negotiating attempts more favorably), might explain some of it. Tell me about it. I keep saying it: inequality is sneaky. But it isn’t subtle.

-Virginia Rutter

On Sunday, I was enjoying a nice dinner with my family at a new local restaurant that actually features produce from local farmers’ markets.  All was good, until my 8-year-old daughter decided to ask our waitress, “Who are you going to vote for to be President of the United States?”  Too young to know that it’s not ‘polite’ to ask strangers about politics, she was surprised to hear the waitress reply, “I’m not going to vote.  I’m 28 years old, and I’ve never voted because I don’t know enough about the issues to vote.”  That answer stunned my daughter into confused silence because she’d watched the debates and had her own clear ideas about at least a few of the issues.  In the awkward silence, my 70 year-old dad (a pro-choice feminist) gently suggested to our waitress, “Well, you don’t have to know a lot about every issue to know who to vote for — even if you just know about where the candidates stand on one issue….”  At that point, I knew he was hinting strongly at Obama’s and Romney’s clear differences on the topic of women’s reproductive rights, and I did not want to go there — not with our waitress, in the middle of a family-friendly restaurant.

As uncomfortable as that conversation was, I almost wish my dad would have made his point…almost.  While it’s not the best voting strategy to be a single-issue voter, the facts about the differences between the two candidates (and their two parties) on this one issue are fairly astounding and have long-reaching consequences for the health of girls and women throughout the U.S.  Today, I had a chance to catch up on my twitter feed and came across the perfect illustration for this post — impressed by the clarity and distressed by the facts presented, I give you The Republican Party Rape Advisory Chart:

It’s an interesting political moment for women and girls as we enter the countdown to the election.  Outrage around the shooting of 11-year-old Malala Yousafzai is still going strong and I want to be hopeful the outpouring of reaction will serve as an impetus for change. The story of the imprisonment of the band Pussy Riot is still unfolding and just a week ago was the International Day of the Girl.  It was deeply heartening to see how widely this was celebrated although each rallying cry highlighted the gross injustices and discrepancies girls still suffer.

Awhile ago I had the chance to interview Sara Marcus whose book Girls to the Front chronicles the Riot Grrrl movement.  It was a different sort of revolution, but one whose effects are still rippling forward.  Here is my review and conversation with her.

Sara Marcus’s history of the Riot Grrrl movement, Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution, was published in 2010 by Harper Perennial. Since then, the book has been widely praised, and Marcus’s nerve in taking on the famously controversial 1990s punk-feminist movement has been noted as well.  A Los Angeles Times critic prefaced an admiring review by stating, “I wouldn’t go near that hot mess of brilliant idealism and tragic dysfunctions with a 10-foot publishing contract.” As reviewers note, Marcus does go into this cauldron – with meticulous research, engaging narrative retellings of what it was like to participate directly in the Riot Grrrl movement, and reflections on her own experience of stepping into the fire as a teenager and realizing she had found her people.

Her portrayal of the tumult, excitement, breakdowns, and revolutionary zeal that rollercoastered through the movement in the early to mid-90s also includes, as she writes in the epilogue, “the unfortunate parts of the Riot Grrrl story — the parts I didn’t expect to find, the parts I would have preferred never to write.”  But, she concludes, “I had to tell the truth as I saw it.”  The result is that Marcus wraps her head (and arms) around the complicated, messy, yet passion-filled highs and lows of a span of years that left a lasting mark on the history of feminism.  Girls to the Front offers an admirably complex, nuanced view of a movement both from inside a writer’s lived experience of it, and from outside, through a researcher’s honest view.

As more writing comes forward about the Riot Grrrl years, it’s exciting to think back on a movement that is both recent and still revealing its legacy.  New York University’s Fales Library & Special Collections now houses a Riot Grrrl Collection, and Kathleen Hanna has endorsed Girls to the Front on her blog, writing that since she was on tour through much of the movement, she learned a lot from reading the book. At the book’s New York release party, Hanna also gave a first-person tribute back to Marcus, (which can be viewed on YouTube), in which she mentions the way Marcus captured the split responses to the movement. In an eloquent review published last fall in Bookforum, Hanna’s Le Tigre bandmate Johanna Fateman offered her own acknowledgment that Marcus addressed the thornier sides of Riot Grrrl’s legacy: “Any stab at defining Riot Grrrl still feels dangerous,” Fateman wrote. Riot Grrrl’s distrust of mainstream media’s representation of the movement, along with the splinters that unsmoothed its potent rage for change, make writing about any of it a tricky feat.  In a phone interview Marcus addressed some of these challenges, discussing her process and Riot Grrrl’s legacy.

Here is my conversation with her:

EL: What was the most radical thing about this movement?  What do you think is its legacy?

SM: One of the most radical things was that it was really fully youth-led, and not created along the model of services or programs designed by adults.  It was not without its shortcomings and drawbacks, but we were crafting a movement that exactly conformed to our needs, our passions, and our strengths.

The legacy [it left] is partly a recognition of the need for communication and critique as activist activities.  New feminists place blogging at the foundation of their activism and move outward from there, creating communities with each other.

EL: How is this different from creating zines?

SM: There are ways it’s better and ways in which it’s worse. The loss of the handmade thing and that intimacy is different.

Blogging is not a detriment to political organization, but when it comes to personal relationships, it pales in comparison with zines — it’s not as intense.  Within the Riot Grrrl movement there was an utter entwinement of politics with really intimate community building.  There’s this aspect that you see running through Riot Grrrl literature, of people needing to take care of each other, and these things can’t be disentwined: political action, self-actualization, and taking care of each other.

EL: In your introduction, you mention the parts you wish you hadn’t had to write. What were these difficulties?

SM: Not everybody had the blissful experience with Riot Grrrl that I had. The mainstream media attention really wrecked it for some people, even as it drew new people in, and so some new people felt judged—“What, I’m not cool enough for you?” This dynamic played into some people’s preexisting insecurities about fitting in, even as for other people the movement absolutely allayed these anxieties and was tremendously healing and empowering and led to lifelong friendships. Later on, some girls used radical politics as a pretext to treat each other pretty terribly. Radical one-ups(wo)manship is not unique to Riot Grrrl; any time you have people assiduously staking their identities on elaborating a political philosophy, there are going to be competitions about having the correct line, or about occupying the optimum subject position from which to claim authority on an issue. Even the nastiest behavior here, though, came out of a truly sincere desire to move feminist thinking forward, to incorporate thinking about multiple differences (race, class, ability, sexuality, and so forth, in addition to gender)—which as any student of feminist history and theory knows is no easy job. We were very young women with little to no training in political organizing, some of whom were recovering from significant childhood trauma, all of us just making everything up as we went along: It’s no wonder that we didn’t get everything right. I still think it’s to everybody’s great credit that we tried so hard to change our lives and change the world and build communities that would support us in these endeavors.

EL:  How do you see the Riot Grrrl movement tying in to issues that were raised around girls in the 1990s, such as the prevalence of the Reviving Ophelia “girls in crisis” story?  Did Riot Grrrl serve to counter this or to work with it?

SM: What was going on in the mid-’90s [when Reviving Ophelia was published] was the result of a renewed attention to adolescent girls’ lives, an attention that had already borne fruit in terms of media hunger about Riot Grrrl. But we were living these things — they were our lives. We were putting things into our zines about it, but it wasn’t as if the books and articles were waking us up to this crisis.

EL: Why do you think Riot Grrrl arose when it did?

SM: Riot Grrrl emerged in tandem with—and, I suggest in the book, rather as a cultural vanguard to—a renewed passion for feminism in the US that was coming about in response to some serious attacks on women, attacks that are looking pretty familiar right about now. When Riot Grrrl was getting started, Susan Faludi was just finishing up work on Backlash; that book was published in October 1991, two months after the first Riot Grrrl meeting, and it became a massive best seller. The Anita Hill hearings took place that same month, sparking a new wave of feminist rage. By the following spring the Supreme Court had agreed to hear Planned Parenthood v. Casey and the feminist movement as a whole was bracing for the end of Roe v. Wade. Although of course Roe was spared, restrictions on reproductive freedom for girls under 18 were widespread. Then in the summer of 1992, you had three conventions: the Democratic National Convention, nominating Bill Clinton and gearing everybody up for the so-called Year of the Woman in Congress; the Republican National Convention, declaring a culture war and labeling Bill and Hillary’s politics “radical feminism”; and the first Riot Grrrl convention. It was an intense time.

And in the midst of all of this, you had the aggravating fact that girls of my generation were growing up with the promises of the women’s liberation movement—promises that we could do anything we wanted, be anything we dreamed of—while sexist stereotypes and double standards, objectification of women in the media, and rigid gender roles were all still as powerful as ever.

EL: What was the most surprising thing you learned about Riot Grrrl during the process of researching and writing this book?

SM: The most surprising thing to me was, as I mentioned, how young we all were.  When you’re 17 and tapped into this revolutionary movement psyching people up so that you can change the world, you don’t feel young, but we were. It’s amazing how much we did with so little. We just gathered up whatever we could within reach and we made something beautiful of it. It had its flaws and shortcomings, but it also had its accomplishments.

EL: What do you think was responsible for the end of the Riot Grrrl movement?

SM: People just grew up. It was pegged to a certain point in development and the creation of the self.  We took what we had gotten and we moved forward.

I just finished watching Half the Sky, the two-part PBS documentary “inspired” by the nonfiction book written by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. It aired on Monday and Tuesday nights, though you can view it online through October 9. It’s well worth your time, though for reasons that may vary individually. Watch it for what’s going on if you don’t know a lot about global issues such as gender-based violence or sex trafficking or maternal mortality, but watch it for how it’s filmed and put together if you know a fair amount about the what.

First, a few thoughts about the what. Feminists have levied plenty of critiques against the book, and many of these apply to the documentary. On these issues, I’m in agreement with Courtney Martin, who reviewed the book a few years ago on feministing.com. She aptly sums up its shortcomings in this way:

What Half the Sky is not: a feminist analysis of the systemic injustices that intersect in these women’s and girls’ lives. It is neither psychologically complex, nor steeped in moral investigation. It seems that Kristof, who is the author most often mentioned, still hasn’t explored or isn’t interested in exploring his own privilege and the way it interacts with his “subjects.” It’s a book that prizes pragmatism over an analysis of power, simple stories over complex narratives, and motivating an “everywoman” reader over pointing out hypocrisies, inconsistencies, and challenges of Western-based activism for global uplift.

But Martin also observes what the book does right:

It is a fantastic primer […] for folks who are new to learning about global health and economic challenges disproportionately affecting women and girls. Kristof and WuDunn are masters are using a very unique story to illustrate a vast issue, incorporating statistics, and making non-partisan, no-nonsense arguments. They also did a notable job of finding plenty of grassroots activism, born and continued by those being directly affected, as model examples.

Ditto for the documentary, with its sleek design and high production value. I found the film powerful and, at times, emotionally difficult to watch. I suppose the inclusion of six female “celebrity activists” (America Ferrera, Diane Lane, Eva Mendes, Meg Ryan, Gabrielle Union, and Olivia Wilde) is partly intended to help first-world viewers process the heartbreaking realities of poverty, violence, and oppression facing women and girls in the countries where the documentary was filmed (Cambodia, Sierra Leone, India, Vietnam, Kenya, and Somaliland). In other words, celebrities play the part of the “everywoman.” And of course, they also help provide “visibility” to the issues explored in Half the Sky—all of which is explained to us at the beginning of the film by George Clooney, who’s sitting back in a comfortable armchair and looking awfully, well, comfortable.

Masterpiece Theatre, anyone?

It’s easy to feel a little cynical about this part of the film, but to their credit, the “celebrity activists” aren’t sitting in armchairs. They travel to remote locations with Nick Kristof and listen to the stories of girls and women who have suffered human rights violations and, with their different styles and personalities, do their best to connect with the people they meet. And let’s face it—they do bring visibility to issues that many different feminists have been working on for decades.

Documentary as a form can bring us into individual lives and allow others to tell their stories. It’s an edited version of these stories, of course, but still compelling if, like me, you like documentaries. (Though it is a little odd to see Eva Mendes consoling a young girl who has been raped while Nicholas Kristof asks questions and jots down responses on his reporter’s notepad. However, in one of the most interesting moments in the film, Kristof abandons his journalistic persona and actively pushes the Freetown police force to arrest the alleged perpetrator.) Following Kristof’s and WuDunn’s lead, the filmmakers have wisely chosen to focus on people, notably nine activists who are fighting different battles for women’s rights. Many of these activists are local women whose lives exemplify the leadership and vision that it will take to end global scourges such as gender-based violence. Women like Edna Adan, Somaly Mam, Amie Kandeh, and Rebecca Lolosoli provide the heart and soul of the film—as do several younger girls who are struggling to overcome barriers and achieve their full potential as human beings.

The next time I teach my class on transnational feminism, I’ll consider using part of this documentary. I currently use an excerpt from the book Half the Sky when we discuss global sex trafficking. Kristof and WuDunn take a firm abolitionist stand against prostitution, which they view as connected to sex trafficking. Their position contrasts starkly with the other readings in the class (usually by feminist sociologists), and the ensuing classroom debate is always animated. Here’s what else: the students always love Half the Sky, even when they don’t agree with all of its positions. They always tell me that they wish more of our class readings were as accessible and interesting as this book.

There’s a lesson here for those of us who want to build bridges between research and reality.

In high school my father, an electrical engineer, tried hard to persuade me to think about studying engineering. It was the late 1950’s and his argument went something like this: “You do well in your science classes; you like them; there are very few women in engineering and the country needs more. It will be a profession where you can stand out. ‘Standing out’ in a field because I was different and doing something women didn’t do, was not especially appealing to my teenage self.

Classroom experiences reinforced my hesitations. Teachers said things like, ‘Well, how did this happen? Susan and Mary received the highest marks on the  physic’s  quiz. You guys better get focused, girls aren’t supposed to outrank you.” Or, “Good work, girls, sure you didn’t have the math book under your desks? Ha, ha, just joking…”  The message was clear; boys do well in science and math; girls don’t.

Many are convinced that these gendered assumptions are the stuff of history.  Decades of work by feminists and  educators has resulted in major progress.  Gender gaps in K-12 math and science achievement tests have narrowed dramatically and enrollment differences in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) courses at the  high school level have all but disappeared. Some similar enrollment disparities at post secondary institutions have narrowed.

But large, troubling gaps in STEM fields remain. At the graduate level only 22% of students in engineering, 29% in mathematics and computer science, and 37% in physical and earth sciences are women. Among faculty in STEM fields, the percentages of women holding tenure track positions is even smaller.

These discrepancies are often attributed to individual choice.  The list of ‘personal choice’ explanations is long—and loaded with stereotypical assumptions about women: Women don’t want to spend long hours in the lab; women prefer dealing with people not test tubes; science doesn’t fit with family responsibilities.

Not so fast. Research recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and reported in major news papers reveals continuing bias against female students among both male and female science faculty members.   Researchers at Yale University drew a national sample of professors in STEM fields and asked them to evaluate the qualifications of an undergraduate student applying for a laboratory manager position.  Each faculty member reviewed the same resume, the only difference being  that a female or male name was randomly assigned to the materials.  Male students received higher evaluations from professors of both sexes. Males  were ranked as more competent, more likely to be hired and more worthy of mentoring.

The authors of the study suggest ”that  subtle gender bias is important to address because it could translate into large real-world disadvantages….{and that this bias} is likely unintentional, generated from widespread cultural stereotypes rather than a conscious intention to harm women.”

If scientists trained in careful analysis and attention to detail continue to reflect gender stereotypes in their student evaluations, is it any wonder that women have not achieved parity in STEM fields?  Teachers may not be as blatant or as public in their sexist comments as they were in the classes of my youth, but subtle, insidious biases remain.

Decades of feminist work has laid a strong foundation; but foundations weaken and crumble if neglected.  In today’s world with many feminist accomplishments  under attack, the work of activists focused on increasing the participation of women in STEM fields deserves our full attention. My father’s words still ring true; our country needs more engineers and scientists. A continued focus on women in STEM  benefits not only women, it benefits  the nation.

Mary Wollstonecraft, a founding grandmother of liberal feminism who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), focused on how to improve the status of women (middle-class, white British women, that is) by revising education and transforming marriage. She writes of love,

Love, the common passion, in which chance and sensation take place of choice and reason, is, in some degree, felt by the mass of mankind; for it is not necessary to speak, at present, of the emotions that rise above or sink below love. This passion, naturally increased by suspense and difficulties, draws the mind out of its accustomed state, and exalts the affections; but the security of marriage, allowing the fever of love to subside, a healthy temperature is thought insipid, only by those who have not sufficient intellect to substitute the calm tenderness of friendship, the confidence of respect, instead of blind admiration, and the sensual emotions of fondness.

Down with romance, says Wollstonecraft. To liberate women and men, marriage should be stripped of passion. She argued, in effect, that doing so would offset the way that marriage starts as a cartoon of manly men adoring delicate women of great beauty and not much more (because of the limits of women’s education that Wollstonecraft deplored). To wit, the hero of her unfinished novel, Maria; or the Wrongs of Woman, is remembered above all for her line, “marriage has bastilled me for life.” (Bastille being the 1790s equivalent of Occupy today.)

Now to my story: Today in the New York Times, Matt Richtel develops his thought experiment for how to liberate marriage from that bastille experience. He proposes to a set of family researchers the notion of a 20-year marriage contract in “Till Death, or 20 Years, Do Us Part.”

Seems like everyone he interviewed thought marriage—and ideas about marriage—could use some revision. Pepper Schwartz ripely noted, “We’re remarkably not innovative about marriage even though almost all the environmental conditions, writ large, have changed…We haven’t scrutinized it. We’ve been picking at it like a scab, and it’s not going to heal that way.” The upshot was that marriage still is Occupied, and in important ways a prison for our imaginations.

My own proposal focused on getting rid of a lot of marriage fantasies that are represented in the commercial hype around marriage—very Wollstonecraft-ish, right? There might be something to that: wedding hype seems to bring out a lot of the gender cartoons that Wollstonecraft railed against. But is that anti romantic? Not in the way that I mean it.

I don’t think that getting rid of old-school marriage fantasies means not being romantic, not being hopeful, not being tender, committed, loyal, tolerant of bad days, exuberant about good days. What interests me are ways to cultivate romance and commitment in a context where partners recognize that the choice to participate in marriage, to remain, day in and day out, is something that makes it more fantastic, not less. Marriage, in this view, becomes mindful. And the reality is that marriage is a choice day in and day out, for a lot of reasons cogently reviewed in Matt Richtel’s column.

Same-sex partners, who until recently haven’t had access to marriage, have often been forced to forge more imaginative, more mindful unions. Now, as we edge towards marriage equality, everyone gets to see unions that take the sweet traditions of marriage, the fun, the legitimacy, and the somber commitment of it, but perhaps less often encumbered with the baggage of the bastille Wollstonecraft spoke of in heterosexual marriage.

As for me: I’m not married. When I was married, my vows included none of that “till death do you part” stuff; instead we pledged to remain interesting to each other. And we did. Till the day my husband died. And then some.

-Virginia Rutter

As many in the U.S. anticipate October “going pink” for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I’m honored to feature a guest post by Gayle A. Sulik MA, PhD, Research Associate at the University at Albany (SUNY) and founder of the Breast Cancer Consortium, an international partnership committed to energizing the scientific and public discourse about breast cancer and to promoting collaborative initiatives.  She was a 2008 Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities and recently won the 2013 Sociologists for Women in Society Feminist Lecturer Award for her book, Pink Ribbon Blues: How Breast Cancer Culture Undermines Women’s Health (Oxford University Press).*

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I too used to secretly look forward to October, when I would drape myself in pride with all manner of garish pink, survivor-emblemed merchandise and take my place in the Survivors circle whilst bopping out to “We Are Family” or whatever the cheesy designated anthem was for that year, at one of the many breast cancer fundraising walks.

But I’m not doing it this year or ever again. It’s just a load of bollocks and a great excuse for companies to market their products to the well-meaning consumer in the guise of “Breast Cancer Awareness” when all it really boils down to is profiteering at the expense of real people really suffering and really dying from this insidious disease.

— Rachel Cheetham Moro,
The Cancer Culture Chronicles, Sep. 19, 2009

Rachel Cheetham Moro used to write a lot about the bollocks of breast cancer on her blog, The Cancer Culture Chronicles, which she published from June 2009 until her death, from metastatic breast cancer, in February 2012.

Though Rachel’s blog posts covered an array of topics about her experiences with breast cancer and the curiosities of pink ribbon culture, she was particularly savvy in her descriptions of the pink-themed marketplace where strength, hope and courage come in the form of t-shirts, chocolates, figurines, and narratives of idealized survivorship. With snark-filled accuracy, Rachel catalogued how merchandisers blithely use the widespread desire for cure(s) to lull well meaning supporters into a state of consumptive bliss. Shopping for a cure never felt so good. If only “cure” were part of the transaction.

As a woman living with terminal cancer, Rachel knew that a “cure” for breast cancer was a figment of the collective imagination. Not only for her, but for all of those living with metastasis (when cancer spreads to distant organs of the body). Rachel had been diagnosed with breast cancer on three separate occasions. She had the typical array of treatments and brief periods of remission, but the third diagnosis changed  everything. There was no cure. There would be no cure. It was simply (and complicatedly) a matter of living with breast cancer until dying from breast cancer.

There are rare cases of people with metastasis who live twenty years, and no one knows which statistics will apply to them in the end. But the truth of the matter, which Rachel knew to her core, was that she would not survive this disease. What’s more, the treatments that were geared toward keeping her cancer at bay ended up damaging nerves, organs, and limbs until she had difficulty managing routine aspects of life. Walking, eating, cooking, typing, breathing. Activities many of us take for granted became everyday obstacles.

None of this stopped Rachel. She kept doing what she could. At the age of 41, she managed to retrofit her house to accommodate a limited range of motion and the inability to use her dominant arm. She cooked one-handed, henpecked her keyboard and, prepared for a day when she might be able to drive again, had hand controls installed in her vehicle. Rachel learned how to live life within the continually narrowing confines of patient-hood.

And it was patient-hood NOT survivorship that framed Rachel’s life. “I’m a cancer patient, Gayle. It’s what I do now. I spend hours in waiting rooms and chemo-chairs, hours on the phone to manage my health care, hours doing things that used to take me minutes. Being a cancer patient has become a job. It’s become my life. I don’t want it to be, but I don’t have a choice.”

During one of my visits with Rachel, I took her to a chemotherapy session. On the way home she directed me to a steep and narrow road that snaked in and around the Highlands of New Jersey. We ended up at a property nestled in the hills overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Rachel wanted me to see her “dream house.” There it was. She had grown up near the ocean in Perth, Australia. Sand and saltwater were in her blood. Rachel smiled when we drove up to the house. Then she told me the truth. This was a pretend dream house. “The devastation of cancer,” she said, “is that it not only takes your life, it steals your dreams.” Then in a matter-of-fact tone Rachel repeated the statement. “That’s what cancer does, Gayle, it steals your dreams.”

I went silent. A sense of dread was a dead weight around my heart. They were my dreams too. Not the house by the ocean. The dream of having Rachel in my life.

For Rachel and me, our time together had been a full but short 16 months. We didn’t find each other until October 2010 when she emailed me after reading my book, “Pink Ribbon Blues.” We became fast friends and collaborators. Rachel was a rabble-rouser, an activist — a soul sister who got what I was about. She believed as strongly as I did that pink hype was not the answer to the breast cancer problem. It was in fact getting in the way. Profit motives and branding priorities led to a distortion of medical information, the misallocation of funds, and an overall misrepresentation of the disease, especially for those who were dying from it. These truths, which rarely made the headlines, infuriated both of us. We were committed to change. This reality swirled around in my head in that brief moment of silence.

Then I asked Rachel, “What gets you through the day if you no longer have your dreams?” Without pause she said, “You.” “You do, Gayle. And my beloved…and Sarah… my cyber-sisters…Newman [Rachel’s dog]…and screaming about this pink hypocrisy. It’s going to change, Gayle. The walls are going to tumble down. It’s just a matter of time.”

I left New Jersey after a few days and returned to Texas. We continued our work via email, phone, Skype, and other social media. Ten weeks later Rachel was in the hospital. Cancer had made its way to her spine, and her brain. It was the same week Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced its now infamous decision to stop giving grants to Planned Parenthood. The same week I was in Florida for an academic conference. As I learned what was happening to Rachel, the Komen story began to unfold.

Komen’s deceptions, misrepresentations, abuses of the public trust, and failures of corporate governance surrounding the Planned Parenthood scandal opened a proverbial can of worms. New investigations surfaced about Komen’s revenues and budget allocations, branding initiatives, questionable corporate partnerships, legal actions against other smaller nonprofits, distortions of scientific data, and long-standing partisan bias. None of this was surprising to those of us who had been working to reveal Komen’s shenanigans long before the Planned Parenthood debacle stirred the public interest. But it was news to many others. Normally Rachel and I would have been sending rapid-fire messages about each new public reveal, in constant communication with the “cancer rebels” to spur social commentary. Not this time.

There was a startling silence as Rachel went in and out of consciousness, her voice missing from one of the most crucial and catalytic public debates to date about Komen’s role in the breast cancer industry. I sent her messages. Reported updates. Did Rachel know that Komen’s true colors were finally coming to light? That her personal efforts to reveal the truth about breast cancer were having an impact? Her beloved Anthony assured me that she did.

My partner in activism died on February 6^th, 2012. I hope that Rachel was right, that it’s only a matter of time until those pink walls come tumbling down. Maybe then, there will be a chance of getting closer to that elusive cure.

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*The 2012 edition includes a new Introduction about the Komen for the Cure/Planned Parenthood controversy and a color insert of images of, and reactions to, the pinking of breast cancer. For more information please visit Gayle Sulik’s website at gaylesulik.com and her blog at pinkribbonblues.org.

** Rachel Cheetham Moro’s blog, The Cancer Culture Chronicles, has been compiled and edited by her mother Mandy Cheetham and her friend Sarah Horton. The book contains all of Rachel’s blog posts in their entirety, with notes, resources and tributes. Available in October 2012, this is a 5×8 hardback book, 384 pages and available at cost from Blurb.com, price $30.95 (£21.50) plus shipping.

Today’s extra edition of the monthly “Bedside Manners” column features a follow-up post from one of our past guest authors: Chloe E. Bird is a senior sociologist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and co-author of Gender and Health: The Effects of Constrained Choices and Social Policies (Cambridge University Press).

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In light of the current debate over women’s reproductive rights and care, it is increasingly clear that the benefits of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) for access to comprehensive health care will not accrue equally to women across the country. Simply put: There is more agreement on what must be included in comprehensive health care for men than on whether and to what extent contraceptive and reproductive services must be included in comprehensive health care for women.

While it has long been recognized that comprehensive care for men includes sexual and reproductive health, the same has not been true for women. For example, women’s health insurance plans have typically allowed exclusions in this area even for pregnancy, and even when it is not a “preexisting condition”; indeed, there are no comparable accepted options for excluding entire aspects of health care for men while providing them for women.

Yet although the ACA assures women access to primary care and many reproductive services without copays, the debate over reproductive services continues. Recent political discussions on access have typically not included discussion of increases in women’s education, employment and career continuity attributable to contraception.

In the context of this debate, the Timely Access to Birth Control bill (AB 2348), which has been approved by the state legislature and is now awaiting Governor Brown’s signature, may appear to some to be a luxury that California can ill afford. But the reality is that over the mid to long run, AB 2348 would very likely save the state a significant amount of money. The bill allows registered nurses to dispense highly reliable hormonal contraceptives, including the pill. If enacted, doctors and nurse practitioners would be freed up to focus on more complex patient visits. If passed, the bill would increase women’s access to reliable contraceptives and reduce the costs of delivering that care.

In a Mother’s Day piece for Ms. Magazine Online, I pointed to the savings contraception generates for employers, insurers, and taxpayers. A public dollar invested in contraception saves roughly four dollars in Medicaid expenditures—or $5.1 billion in 2008—not to mention the broader health, social and economic benefits. Moreover, a 2010 study in California of a Medicaid family planning program found that every dollar spent saved the public sector over nine dollars (PDF) in averted costs for public health and welfare over five years. Rather than getting caught up in the national political debate over reproductive health coverage, California legislators should consider the significant cost savings as well as the social and economic benefits of improving timely access to reliable contraception.

On the national front, the goal of the ACA is to expand access to healthcare for Americans, especially those who currently lack health insurance; but the law also prioritizes improvements in the quality of care and reductions in costs. As we look for ways to provide efficient, high-quality, and cost-effective health care to more Americans, we can’t afford to ignore women’s health issues, including reproductive health care and the cost savings that contraceptive access provides.

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Cross-posted with the author’s permission from RAND’s blog