Tears alert.  This just came to my Inbox, via GWP’s Virginia Rutter, via Talking Points Memo.  Someone in Maryland wrote in:

My polling place is at the fairgrounds in Southern Maryland, about 40 minutes from Washington, D.C. This used to be tobacco country, but is slowly being developed, or other crops are grown. We waited until 10:00 to vote, to avoid the lines. When we got there a 97-year-old Black man was being wheeled out of the polls in his wheelchair. It was the first time he had ever voted in his life. When he came outside he asked if anyone could give him an Obama button. There were none left at the Democrat’s booth so I gave him mine. He was so proud and I started crying. He looked at me and said, “why are you crying? this is a day for glory.” I am still crying.

Writes Anniegirl, via Canada (and Annie, we at GWP are so very sorry for your loss, and send you comfort and love):

I voted absentee a couple of weeks ago because I live in Canada. Around that same time, my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. He refused to get an absentee ballot, insisting that he would cast his vote in person even though we all knew he would not live that long. When I cast my vote, I thought of him and his desire for change and to “vote out all those incumbents” who he felt were responsible for the troubles of America right now. So, I voted as he would have had he lived to see today. He died a week ago but not before I told him I had voted for us.

Writes Afrogeek Mom and Dad:

The women who helped raise me had such simple, yet profound, dreams for me and for themselves–to vote, to ride in a big boat, to marry someone I love rather than someone who can take care of me–that it seems almost unbelievable that I got to vote for a major party black candidate for president this morning. These women cleaned white people’s houses all their lives and never did get to see that I grew up to be a college professor and the first black women to do a lot of things (a surprising number of things, really, considering that I was born in 1973, not 1903). But I hope they were watching somewhere this morning as I took their great-great-granddaughter into vote.

Writes my Dad, from Chicago:

This morning, as on all election day mornings, I wanted to be at the poll when it opened at 6:00AM. It’s part of the pride I feel in being able to vote. When I go I always think of my father who spent 2 years in Europe, during my childhood, fighting in WWII in order to preserve our way of life. Usually I get to the poll at 5:45 and am first in line. Today I decided there might be a few folks ahead of me so I arrived at 5:30AM. To my surprise 5 people were already there. I was stunned. “What is happening?” I wondered. Shortly after 6:00, when I finished my vote, well over 100 people we waiting in line.

Worries Heather in MI, “I just hope it goes that quickly everywhere, so those that can’t afford to take 3 or 4 hours off from work will all get to vote, too.”

Writes GWP’s Allison Kimmich in NJ, ” I think this election is going to introduce us to democracy’s real potential.”  Kristen and Caroline feel like “kids on Christmas.”

Says Frau Sally, “I don’t think I’ve ever gotten so emotional over this election until today. I’ve been a teary mess all day.”

Says GWP’s Virginia Rutter in MA, “I have this delusion that every single person I see feels as joyful as I do, and in my eyes they are all smiling with the same connection to the day, the moment of having the opportunity to cast an historic vote, and obtain an historic, and game changing result.”

Writes Faith in the NY suburbs, “Husband voted at a different location and the person working the table said he was #135 around 9am. Working guy also said that last election they only had about 200 people show up total.”

Writes GWP’s Jacqueline Hudak, “Contemplating driving into the city to be outside in Times Square – kinda longin’ to be outside, celebrating with kindred spirits…I’ve been waiting for folks to take to the streets – seems like tonight’s the night!.”

And here are some more great voting stories from Gloria Feldt, Courtney and Samhita over at feministing, PunditMom, and about 400 more at Talking Points Memo, including this tearjerker one Marco just sent me.

Thanks to everyone who posted their stories here with us today! And if you got em and haven’t posted em, we still wanna hear!

Happy Election Day, Girl with Penners! On this potentially HISTORIC day, we invite you to share your voting stories with us in comments.

How’d it go? Long lines? Exuberance? Fear? What’s it like to vote this vote in your part of the country? Tell us, tell us! We will collate into a post.

Me, I’m off to vote right now, feelin that audacity to hope….

(Photo is Inez Milholland, at a Suffrage Parade in 1910, ten years before white women got the right to vote)

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

Now this here’s one gap we’re NOT so proud of closing.  According to a NYTimes article last week by Tara Parker-Pope, “Love, Sex and the Changing Landscape of Infidelity”, a handful of new studies suggest that, yes, women–young women included–appear to be closing the adultery gap.

Apparently, younger women are now cheating on their spouses nearly as often as men.  The most consistent data on infidelity come from the General Social Survey, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and based at the University of Chicago.

The stats:

• In any given year, about 10 percent of married people – 12 percent of men and 7 percent of women – say they have had sex outside their marriage.
• While University of Washington researchers have found that the lifetime rate of infidelity for men over 60 increased to 28 percent in 2006, up from 20 percent in 1991, for women over 60, the increase is more striking: to 15 percent, up from 5 percent in 1991.
• Researchers also see big changes in relatively new marriages: About 20 percent of men and 15 percent of women under 35 say they have ever been unfaithful, up from about 15 and 12 percent respectively.

So much for the moral superiority of women, huh.  Ok boys and girls, let’s everyone just try to keep it in our pants.

(Thanks to CCF for the heads up.)

A belated but heartfelt “HUZZAH!” to my ever-savvy co-penner, Kristen. I think she won’t mind my sharing this with you all, but Kristen has now reached that age where she can legitimately have a quarter-life crisis. Happy 25th to a woman of intelligence, passion, and soul, a partner-in-crime who serendipitously found me, a woman wise beyond her years.