sexual freedom

No way!

“Over 40 and Over Men?” reads a headline gracing the cover of this month’s MORE magazine.  I’m intrigued.  I look inside and read: “More and more women are living the ultimate do-over: falling for another female.  Meet the gay and grey generation.”

That’s me.

While not feeling particularly grey, my family and I have been living “the ultimate do-over.” I buy the magazine and bring it home, compelled to devour every word of this narrative – a narrative that my family and I are living out, that is just now beginning to make its way into the cultural conversation.

“A normal part of coming out as an adult is the feeling of being an adolescent on fire, caught in the body of a 40 to 50 year old,” says my friend and colleague Joanne Fleisher, author of Living Two Lives: Married to a Man and In Love with a Woman.  Ah, the memories…I was that adolescent on fire (my friends will attest!) in my mid-40’s.

AND married. Just like the women profiled in MORE.

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Ken Starr (the lovely man who brought us the campaign to impeach President Bill Clinton) filed a legal brief last month — on behalf of the “Yes on 8” campaign — that would forcibly divorce 18,000 same-sex couples that were married in California last year before the passage of Prop 8.

Watch “Fidelity”, a brilliant and moving response brought to us by The Courage Campaign:

“Fidelity”: Don’t Divorce… from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

The Courage Campaign is asking for signatures on a letter to the state Supreme Court. Tell the Supreme Court to invalidate Prop 8, reject Ken Starr’s case, and let loving, committed couples marry. DEADLINE: Valentine’s Day.

55,536 people have signed the letter (as of Sunday, February 8). I just added my name, so make that 55,537. Will you add yours?

(Thank you thank you thank you, Virginia – I’m still weepy from watching this.)

Just saw this over at Feministing and wanted to spread word:

On Monday, Yes Means Yes co-editors Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman will be livechatting on Feministing with contributors Miriam, Samhita and Cara from the Curvature and Feministe about the book.

The chat begins at 3 pm EST, here and, as all things Feministing, promises to be lively!

Buy the book, here.

And if a GWP reader would like to review it, please do email me, here: deborah (at) girlwpen (dot) com .

It’s a question on all of our minds as we wait and watch to see what the Obama Administration will tackle first. And the feminists are getting busy. Do check out the live blogging going on at RHRealityCheck Live Blog @ 3pm eastern tomorrow–on what happens to be the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Sounds like it’ll be a vigorous and provocative conversation.

“C’mon, Love, think about it,” he says in that adorable and sometimes impossible-to-comprehend British accent of his, “You can move in with me! Save loads of money, we’ll see each other every night…”

He looks at me with such certainty, such confidence in his proposition. I close my eyes and bury my face in his chest while I consider my options.

He has asked me this question four and a half times now. The first time, I could not suppress my dismissive laughter, as we had only just agreed to be exclusive, making the offer too impulsive to be taken seriously (the four vodka cocktails I’d consumed that night didn’t help, either).

The second and third time, I began to accept that he was serious and that I therefore needed to devote serious consideration to this prospect. I also separated from the Navy (and therefore gainful employment) around this point in the ongoing conversation. I had never experienced “broke” before, and the dwindling contents of my checking account (and slowly rising credit card debt) made the idea of rent reduction more and more alluring. But still, I had resisted in charming and sardonic ways, which he was clearly not accepting as my final answer.

Now, at the fourth mention, I am cognizant of the fact that I need to respond with seriousness, and that this will be a binding answer.

I imagine coming home, exhausted from a long day at my new job and the two-hours-each-way commute from Annapolis to Rockville, Maryland. I imagine slipping my shoes off at the door (his rule—to protect the white carpets in his spacious, two-bedroom apartment) and trotting over to him, cuddling in front of his flat-screen television in the adorable business casual ensemble I’d be able to afford, since I’d be living virtually rent-free. The amenities of his high-rise apartment building would make the now-daily headaches of finding a parking spot, doing my laundry, and maintaining my fitness regime virtually disappear. Staying with him every night without having to worry about whether I’d packed a comb and a toothbrush. . .

I can’t deny it. It’s a tempting offer.
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Had to peek my head outside the void once more to note that the top-emailed story on the New York Times website is about the “demise of dating”–yet another shocker of an article that misconstrues, simplifies, and wags its finger at the state of teenage sexuality. Read it here if you must.

The great thing about this one is that while it profoundly sums up teenage dating, or the lack thereof, as “sad,” Charles Blow, the author, hasn’t appeared to have spoken with one teenager about this issue–instead relying on the latest research. Of course, he provides no context for this research. And he plays into gender stereotypes, claiming that cons of hooking up “center on the issues of gender inequity. Girls get tired of hooking up because they want it to lead to a relationship (the guys don’t), and, as they get older, they start to realize that it’s not a good way to find a spouse.” Clearly guys aren’t interested in ever finding a spouse themselves. It’s truly amazing the number of strict binaries set up in this article: hooking up vs. dating (and never the twain shall meet); girl perspectives vs. guy perspectives; sad vs. not sad.

I don’t mind research into this “phenomenon,” (scare quotes very much intended), but this research is too often used to bolster scolding lectures, and researchers, or those who use the research for polemics, need tell us where this data is coming from: what age group, geography, socioeconomic status, etc, and acknowledge, even analyze, how this may play into their results.

Ok, back into the void. See you all in a week.

–Kristen

Back from a little Thanksgiving break, we bring you today Family Stories, the monthly column from Jacqueline Hudak.  Still stunned, energized, and moved, I think we’ll all be processing Obama’s victory for a long while. -Deborah

As GWP readers know, I am fascinated by which stories are told in our culture, which remain silenced, and what conditions bring certain ones to the fore. I often say my work as a family therapist entails listening to stories – stories that either cannot be spoken or heard outside of my office.  From the personal to the cultural, it’s often not a great leap.

As so brilliantly documented in a book by a former history prof of mine at BU, (A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present), Howard Zinn presents history through the eyes of those rarely heard in mainstream texts.  I was reminded of this the other week when my friend Trina Scordo, a longtime union organizer, began to tell stories she heard in North Carolina as she knocked on doors for the Obama campaign as the election approached. Trina asked one of her fellow union members why he chose to travel from New York to Charlotte for this election eve.  He told Trina that his father had said there would never be an African-American president in the United States.  He said, “My Father always told me racism was too strong.  My grandparents were slaves and my father faced racism on his job and in the neighborhood in which we lived.  My Dad always tried to avoid the discussion of race because he did not believe it would ever change.  He died believing that.  I had to be here on this day, on this night for him.”  When Barack Obama surpassed 270 electoral votes, Trina told me, this gentleman fell to his knees and wept.  He held in his hand a picture of his father.

Other stories came from those on the other side of the doors.  As Trina said, “African-Americans shared their histories with organizers at their front doors and porches.  It was a collective history of slavery, civil rights and unions.  Some told me it was the first time they had shared this history outside of their families and further, with a white person.”

This election gave a sense of liberation to the marginalized: youth, women, communities of color, the exploited and working class.  Yet it was a bittersweet victory – a victory tinged with sadness about the passage of California’s Prop 8. I asked in my column last month: How do we fill the gap between what we wanted and what we get in this election?

I found an analysis of the breakdown of who voted for Prop 8 at Pam’s House Blend, one that did not engage in racial scapegoating.   Hendrik Hertzberg (New Yorker, Dec 1) points to the tens of thousands of people who took to the streets all over this country in spontaneous protest, and believes “It wasn’t enough this time. But the time is coming.”

In the afterword of the young readers version of A People’s History, Howard Zinn asks youth to “imagine the American people united for the first time in a movement for fundamental change.”

We are on the cusp of such a movement.  May it be so.

—Jacqueline Hudak

This here’s one of my favorite conferences of all, and not just because Stephanie Coontz, Steve Mintz, Virginia Rutter, Lara Riscoll, and Barbara Risman are fun to dance with.  Though that part’s fun too.  I love the Council on Contemporary Families Annual Conference because of the caliber and savvy of its participants.  It’s the cream of the crop, bringing together researchers, practionners, and media types who are interested in the way public discourse sees and understands “family” in our day.  I joined the CCF Board this year, so I’m feeling very fancy and all grown up.

The gathering take place this year on April 17 and 18, 2009 at University of Illinois at Chicago (OBAMALAND!), and the theme is RELATIONSHIPS, SEXUALITY, AND EQUALITY.  What more could a girl want?

Deets:

Changes in American families have radically altered how we define ourselves as men and women. These changes have affected romantic relationships, power dynamics in same and opposite sex couples, and the way we parent. The 2009 CCF conference will examine the latest research and clinical findings about where the lives of boys, girls, men, and women have become more similar in recent years, where they continue to be different, and how these differences affect the prospects for each.  Nationally recognized speakers will address the dramatic ways these changes are affecting work patterns and political life, and in turn, how changing work patterns and social mores are affecting men, women, and diverse families.

Keynote speaker: Andrew Cherlin, author of the new book The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today.

The conference will also include a conversation between historian Stephanie Coontz, Ms. Magazine Editor Kathy Spillar, and Chicago Tribune columnist Dawn Trice, titled “Gender, Race, and Equality: What Has the Election Taught Us?”

A pre-conference workshop features media training for everybody. In sessions with Stephanie Coontz, Virginia Rutter, and Deborah Siegel (that’s me!), hone your skills in op-ed writing, get started turning your good work into a media message that makes an impact, or learn how—and why—to use the blogsophere. This conference workshop is free to conference attendees, but folks who are not attending the conference are invited to attend these practical workshops for a modest fee.

Click here for the full conference schedule.  Hope to see a bunch of you there, as I often do!

It’s hard to know these days whether to see the glass half-full or half-empty: Obama won a historic election powered by the youth vote and women.

On the other hand, it’s hard to know when the economy is really going to hit bottom.

Maybe we should be relieved that we’re heading into this season of gratitude. To be sure it may take us all a little longer to count our blessings this year, or to figure out what counts as a blessing these days, so here are some thoughts from my Girl Talk perspective.

I’m thankful for:

1. Blue Sex—Margaret Talbot has a fascinating analysis of some recent and forthcoming research about teens, sex, and religion in the New Yorker. Talbot takes her title, “Red Sex, Blue Sex,” from sociologist Mark Regnerus’s research. I can’t do justice to the full article here, but I was especially struck by what Regnerus identifies as a new “middle-class morality.” According to Regnerus middle-class, well-educated young women “are interested in remaining free from the burden of teenage pregnancy and the sorrows and embarrassments of sexually transmitted diseases. They perceive a bright future for themselves, one with college, advanced degrees, a career, and a family. Simply put, too much seems at stake. Sexual intercourse is not worth the risks.”

This is great news for middle-class, well educated young women (and their parents).

But I’m even more excited about what it suggests for young women who are not middle-class, and for those of us who do education and advocacy work to support all girls and young women, because we can work together to create the potential for a “bright future.” I know that the Girl Scout Council of New York has just such plans in mind for its career exploration program that will be launching in Bronx middle schools.

2. Sasha and Malia Obama—My eight-year-old daughter was already a passionate follower of the Presidential campaign and the election itself; she and her best friend bet a quarter on the election outcome (my daughter came home with an extra quarter in her pocket on November 5), and she participated in a mock-election at her YMCA camp on election day. Now that she has peers in the White House, I’m willing to bet that national politics will stay on her radar screen, even if our attention is on the possible first pet or how the girls will get to school for now.

3.  The Little House on the Prairie Series—Reading is part of our family routine every evening, and we finished the Little House on the Prairie book series with my daughter about a year ago. I am especially grateful for the hardy, adventurous, strong-willed Laura Ingalls character now that our reading as turned to the offensive My Weird School series, with its sex-stereotyped characters, from the brainy, obnoxious girl to the bored and distracted boys. I’ve used these books as a way to talk about sex-stereotyping, and the ways it hurts girls and boys, but surely we can do better than this!

So GWP readers, do you have any tween books to recommend? Help me out and I’ll add those to my gratitude list too.  And I’m eager to know: What’s on your gratitude list these days?