intergenerational

Gloria Feldt is a sanity-inducing voice in the midst of the generational snarkfest that’s currently going on. I’m sharing her comment on my last post here, as a post, because I wonder if I ever shy away from the flames of controversy just a wee bit too much. (Hmm…paging Dr. Freud!)

I truly believe in engaging debate and viciously hate the anger-filled tone that debate seems to have taken on of late. Doth Girl with Pen protest too much? I’d be curious to hear what others think about tactics for airing differences. How do we clear a space for argument, as Gloria urges below, in a way that genuinely moves debate forward? (And doesn’t this image of Gloria on an IPOD just make your day?)

In any event, one of the many things I value about Gloria is her ability to engage–meaning debate and differ–with younger generations while maintaining a deep sense of respect. And here she is:

Deborah-
I couldn’t agree more with your suggested course of action to defeat McCain together. That’s the job #1 of all feminists for sure.

At the same time, I want to put in a good word for engaging the debate even when it is with gloves off. I suggest that what women need most is to learn how to engage vigorously and constructively without being turned off or frightened off.

Like you, I believe we shouldn’t trash each other, but (probably because I’ve had lots of experience with hardknuckle conflict and know that one lives to tell the tale–and even learns and grows stronger from it), I think we need to clear a space for arguing about the issues together with the goal of not just understanding but making concrete plans to go forward on matters like winning the general election.

Every generation has to speak in its own tongue. We don’t have to be angry with one another to air our differences.
Gloria Feldt

Just read a post over at the Mother Jones blog called “Throwing Clinton Under the Bus To Spite Mom.” Really? I mean, really? This conversation is going nowhere fast. In the post, Debra Dickerson trashes (to dredge up a dread practice from the 1970s) Courtney Martin and Amy Tiemann, then concludes:

We’ll stop saying aloud that you don’t know what you’re talking about if you’ll stop believing that you know everything already. Deal?

Here’s what I posted in comments to Dickerson’s post, and here’s how I feel:

Deal.

Deborah Siegel here – a young(ish) Hillary supporter who feels pained at the way some young female Obama supporters are getting flamed. I don’t care how it started, or who said what about whom. Time to start focusing on beating McCain. I hope this is the last post of this tone that we’ll be seeing for a while. Goodbye to all THAT, I say.

Quick sidenote: Feminist history is full of intergenerational division, as I write about in my book. Important to remember that young Alice Paul and older Carrie Chapman Catt shared a goal (suffrage) but disagreed on tactics. “Libbers” and the older Betty Friedan disagreed on whether politics meant what you do in the bedroom or what happens at city hall. Together albeit in different ways they made the momentous change that became the 1st and 2nd+ waves.

Difference today is that we have blogs and online media, where it’s easier, it seems, to write snarkily and quote each other out of context. If I’ve been guilty of it too, mea culpa. Let’s move on. A Democrat in 2008. Deal?

Two quick hits:

Amy Tiemann interviewed me for the MojoMom Podcast this morning. Here’s the link.

Courtney just published a response to Linda Hirshman’s critique of her in The American Prospect today.

And ok ok, I take back “brouhaha.” Totally just playing into the sentiment that it’s a mini-war. In all honesty, I wish we could see MORE media stories about the kinds of conversations we WomenGirlsLadies have been seeing take place from Ypsilanti to Cambridge. And in our own backyards. Or the kind Amy and I–who are on opposite sides of the Clinton/Obama divide–had this morning.

Empathy, people, empathy. Eyes on the prize. I know our politics are intensely personal, but can we please start cutting the noise and get ready to get behind the notion that we’ll need to unify in order to successfully do battle with McCain??? I’m getting nervous. Though I KNOW we can win.

I’m back from a WomenGirlsLadies event at Harvard, orchestrated by the Harvard Women’s Center–a center which didn’t exist, we learned, until just 2 years ago. Not that Harvard hasn’t been in need of this center or anything before then (ahem). Shout outs to Susan Marine, Sandra Ullman, Natasha, Annemarie, Andreas, and the rest of the crew over there for bringing us to town (we had a blast!), but mostly for the important work you do on campus all year long.

We always try very hard to turn the panel (subtitle: A FRESH Conversation about Feminism across Generations) into audience conversations, and after our presentation this time a very interesting Q&A ensued. Courtney is writing about it in her column today over at The American Prospect, so stay tuned.

And ohhh but it’s been an interesting week in the land of intergenerational feminist convo around the election! In case you missed it, here’s a quick recap:

Amy Tiemann in Women’s eNews (with a follow-up on her blog)
Amanda Fortini in New York Magazine
Rebecca Traister in Salon
Linda Hirshman in Slate

Commentary to follow–I’ll be doing a podcast this morning over at MojoMom.com with my 2cents on it all and promise to post the link.

Blogger Amy Tiemann (aka Mojo Mom) has an excellent piece up over at Women’s eNews this week, titled “Obama v. Clinton Puts Stretch Marks on Sisterhood”, which beings:

“Sisterhood” bound women together during the second wave of feminism in the 1970s.

Fast-forward three decades, and it is time to start asking ourselves what happens when you try to stretch sisterhood across a generational divide and then push and pull it between the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Answer: serious stretch marks.

I couldn’t agree more (and kinda wish she had cited my book or Courtney and my WaPo oped somewhere–oops–down ego, down) when Amy writes:

Ten years from now we could look back on the arguments about Clinton v. Obama as the wedge that emphasized a generational divide, to the detriment of all women.

The Mother-Daughter dynamic illuminates a power differential. In many ways the Mothers have the upper hand. They control the largest established organizations, the purse strings of foundation grants. By excluding younger women’s definitions of feminism, however, the Mothers are short-circuiting their power.

The Mothers need to remember that they need the Daughters as well.

Gen-Xers such as myself are no longer children; we’re reaching our 40s now. Not only do we represent the future, we are the bridge to the millennial generation who will clean up after all of us.

And speaking of intergenerational, the WomenGirlsLadies crew can’t wait til tomorrow, when we’ll be conversing on this very topic and more over at Harvard, on the heels of that interesting conference on feminism over there the other week with Camille Paglia, Katie Roiphe, Christina Hoff Sommers and others. Perhaps we might all be together on a stage sometime cause that sure would be an interesting conversation.

(Thanks to Joanne over at PunditMom for the heads up on Amy’s piece!)

The Guardian has a great piece up today by Polly Toynbee, “Girlification is Destroying All the Hope We Felt in 1968.” By “girlification,” Toynbee means pink princessification. I love neologisms on a Tuesday morning.

The article comes on the heels of an announcement from the UK’s Office for National Statistics yesterday, which reported that UK women in their 40s earn 20% less per hour than their male counterparts. Explains Toynbee, “This is the motherhood penalty – and the more children a woman has, the wider the gap. Young women start out earning almost the same, deluded by beating boys at exams. Motherhood knocks most out of the running.”

The piece goes on to ask, “so, what’s new?,” noting that 2008 is a year for reflection for her generation of women (aka second wave): “What happened in 1968? What really changed? The year of riots saw feminism ignite too, a year hazed in an illusory miasma that nothing would be the same again – but of course it was.”

Depressing. But just in case you aren’t depressed enough, Toynbee reminds us too that only 24% of parliamentary seats in the EU are occupied by women, 20% in the UK; and that 90% of top EU company boards are men. Women dominate primary school teaching, men run universities. The UK has the largest pay gap.

On the upside, Spain’s new cabinet is 50% female. GO SPAIN! And for more on the connection between pinkification and the mommy gap, read the rest here.

I just wanted to send a shout out to all the commenters on Samantha’s guest post on Friday, “Feminist Awakening at 14, and to those who cross-posted! I’m hoping to coax a few more posts from Sam, because, as I think ya’ll agree, she’s dynamite (as are the other writers of Writopia Lab). Sam’s post was picked up around the blogosphere, and I wanted to share tidbits from the commentary:

Nancy Gruver, at orb28 blog: “Samantha’s post reminded me that, even if teenagers can’t vote yet, they can still have a big impact on politics by speaking up.”

Gloria Feldt, at HeartFeldt Politics Blog: “It’s always intriguing to learn how political opinions are formed, and this young women clearly has a mind of her own–and better yet, she talks publicly about what she believes.”

Patti Binder, of What’s Good for Girls blog: “Stand up and shout it from the roof tops– your message, your voice needs to be out there!”

El Profe of Political Observations: “An extraordinarily well thought-out piece filled with sensitivity, nuance, intelligence and hopefulness for the recovery of our browbeaten nation. Samantha is a person of insight. New voices such as hers are what will be needed in the world that she is inheriting. Bravo Samantha.”

So Sam…when can we at GWP expect your next piece?! Your readership awaits 🙂

Oh my gosh–my mother has learned how to post comments at the New York Times! Mom, you make me proud! Renee (aka Mom, pictured left) posted in response to my online convo with Courtney over at Marci’s blog last week, Shifting Careers. Since I’m bursting with pride at Renee’s willingness to learn, and since I also loved what she wrote, I’m reposting her comment here:

“I really enjoyed this discussion between Deborah and Courtney– it touches on so many of the issues that I faced when I entered the work force. It is interesting to me, although a bit disappointing that younger feminists are still trying to achieve things like good child care, flexible hours, and that they ‘appear’ to be asking too much. Sense of entitlement? To me, if it is for valid reasons and causes, it’s fine. Entitlement only for oneself, without working for authentic and reasonable goals to be shared with other women, is not acceptable. Keep up the dialogue!” -Renee

And while I’m at it, I can’t resist posting this comment from some dude who thinks I’m a liar:

“Uh, I’m sorry but Ms. Siegal should not lie about here age. Clearly, she is no older than 29. If you wanna add some legitimacy to this debate a ‘boomer’ would have really been interesting.”
— Posted by Steven Cayce

Well, I AM 39 (as I’m IDed in the post) and for a wider range of generational perspective Steven, I invite you to come hear the panel Courtney and I doing at Harvard with Gloria Feldt and Kristal Brent Zook on April 18. For more on “WomenGirlsLadies: A FRESH Conversation Across Generations,” I invite folks to check out our group blog!

Two quick links to share this morning:

A guest post I wrote with Courtney for Marci Alboher’s New York Times blog, Shifting Careers, titled “Notes from an Intergenerational Conversation.” Court and I chew over how generational issues are affecting women at work. We hit on topics from fashion to mentoring and “entitlement.” Comments over there most welcome!

And a recap of the intergenerational feminist panel I spoke on last week at The New School, organized by Ann Snitow. (Thank you, Kristen, for that incredibly thoughtful write-up.)

Continuing where the post below left off: I asked the panel on media coverage of Hillary here at WAM! to comment on the age divide among women around the election–and how it’s being framed in the MSM–and it seems to have sparked some rather heated (YAY!) conversation. Here are snippets:

-An African American woman declares herself undecided, but poignantly voices her desire to hear more about Obama’s policy positions. “Inspiration, words, great. But what do you stand for?” she says.

-A young white woman speaks from the heart about her feelings about Obama, then asks, “As a feminist who is supporting Obama, what can I do to continue to combat sexism?”

-Betsy Reed (from the panel) notes, “There’s a sense among older women that younger women are abandoning the cause. And younger women are saying to older women, ‘You know, we have more complex political identities.’ The difference in voting may be portrayed as a catfight, but it’s bringing a lot to the fore. “

-Carol Hardy-Fanta brings up the troubling news of that new report about the high percentage of Obama supporters who say they will vote for McCain if Obama doesn’t get the nomination.

-My Woodhull colleague Elizabeth Curtis “outs” herself as a young woman who is supporting Hillary and questions the assumption that younger women are voting for Obama and older women for Hillary without backing these statements with any research. [Note from GWP: The stats from SuperTuesday and Junior SuperTuesday do show it…] She notes the lack of coalition on the side of the Dems. And she asks the question that I think is THE question: “What we can start to do–right now-to work together to ensure that the Democrat will make it to the White House?”

-Carol Hardy-Fanta notes that there have been more Democrats coming out to vote than Republicans–twice as many, it seems. If that continues, the Dem has a chance. She calls upon us to respond to friends who make those inane “I’m going to vote for McCain” comments by calling them on it.

YESSS. And my own thoughts on this are expressed in the Washington Post oped I coauthored the other week with Courtney. If I weren’t working like hell on my book proposal, I’d be tempted to write another one. But for the moment, instead, I’ll just have to be satisfied with calling defectors losers.