sisterhood is…

Because tomorrow is June 1 — the day I always remember as “school’s out hit the beach” day — and because I was that lone geek who got sad when school ended because I missed my teachers, I’m re-posting that pop quiz. For all you other geeks out there. You know who you are. Answers below.

THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT FEMINISM IN 2007? TEST YOUR GENERATIONAL IQ

1. Betty Friedan was:

A. A pin-up model from the 1940s
B. The mother of American cookbooks
C. A columnist for McCall’s
D. The founder of the National Organization for Women
E. Author of The Feminine Mystique

2. In 2007, for every dollar a man earns, a woman earns:

A. the same
B. 84 cents
C. 77 cents
D. 56 cents

3. During the Miss America Protest of 1968, radical feminists did all but which of the following:

A. Crowned a live sheep “Miss America”
B. Burned their bras
C. Threw aprons and high heels into a Freedom Trashcan
D. Sprayed Toni home permanent spray inside the convention hall

4. In 2007, women make up what percent of the U.S. Senate?

A. 3%
B. 14%
C. 33%
D. 50%

5. “Postfeminist” is:

A. A term coined in 1919 by a group of literary radicals in Greenwich Village who rejected the feminism of their mothers one year before women won the right to vote
B. A term used in the 1980s to describe an era in which feminism was deemed unhip and unnecessary
C. A media-hyped label that irritates third-wave feminists more than Adam Corolla
D. All of the above

6. The Real Hot 100 is:

A. A new reality tv show
B. A list of the hottest women according to Maxim magazine
C. A campaign to redefine hotness by refiguring the standards to honor guts and not just glam
D. Hot sauce

7. The Equal Rights Amendment was introduced in:

A. 1923
B. 1942
C. 1969
D. 1971

8. In 2007, what percent of tenured professors at PhD-granting universities are women?

A. 7%
B. 16%
C. 20%
D. 50%

9. Title IX is:

A. The name of Britney’s favorite club in NYC
B. A piece of pro-woman legislation passed in 1972 now under attack
C. The name of a secret feminist cult
D. The sister band of L7

10. In 2007, what percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women?

A. 2.6%
B. 15%
C. 26%
D. 50%

11. BUST is:

A. A girlie magazine for men
B. A grrly magazine “for women with something to get off their chest”
C. A boxing move popularized by Laila Ali
D. A West Coast rapper

ANSWERS:
1 – C, D, and E, 2 – C, 3 – B, 4 – B, 5 – D, 6 – C, 7 – A, 8 – C, 9 – B, 10 – A, 11 – B

SCORE YOURSELF
11-8 = Superstar!
7-4 = Semi-superstar
3-0 = Hit the books, my friend. You got catching up to do.

Based on Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild (available from Palgrave, June 12, 2007)

This is a teaser for a longer post of mine that now appears under the same title over on HuffPo. An excerpt:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you write a feminist book, someone is going to disagree with you. And that that someone is just as likely to be a woman. We are women, hear us roar.

It used to be easy (and satisfying) to blame the media for trivializing feminist debate as a catfight. Today, we sisters do it, unapologetically, to ourselves. It’s retro to think that women—who are as different from each other as they are from men—should agree. But in the struggle for power and parity, feminists have historically been, and continue to be, each other’s easiest target. This is our greatest mistake….

Before I get righteous and start calling for sisters to unite around combating, say, domestic violence or poor work/life policy instead of each other, however, a confession: I’ve become unhealthily obsessed by this latest round of feminist warfare. I’ve become my own filtered Gawker, cataloguing slams and online sightings (Leslie Bennetts spotted defending her book sales against The New York Times! Jessica Valenti bravely accepting a Choice award in DC, looking like a hottie!). It’s addictive and I’m not proud. I track these feminist celebs through Google alerts as if they were, oh I don’t know, presidential candidates or Paris Hilton. And like a campaign manager or god forbid Paris’ publicity rep, I scour alerts and follow lengthy comment threads, scanning for lessons….

Read the rest in the new Living Now section at HuffPo...!

Check out this lovely graphic my marketing director at Palgrave made using the cool little graphics from the cover — I love it!

On HuffPo today (where I’ll soon be posting, too), Erica Jong calls for younger women writers to protest their ghettoization on the chick lit shelves:

Feminism didn’t change deep-seated priorities about what — or who — matters. I see deeply diminished expectations in young women writers. They may grumble about the chick lit ghetto, but they dare not make a fuss for fear they won’t be published at all. Their brashness is real enough, but they accept their packaging as the price of being published. My generation expected more. We did not always get it, but at least categorization outraged us. Where is the outrage now?

Feminists used to say the personal is political. I think we need to consider that message again now. We will never give peace a chance until we start paying as much attention to women as to war. Unless we value the bonds of love as much as male territoriality, we are goners.

I would like to see the talented new breed of American women writers — my daughter’s generation — protest their ghettoization. We need a new wave of feminism to set things right. But we’d better find a new name for it because like all words evoking women, the term feminism has been debased and discarded. Let’s celebrate our femaleness rather than fear it. And let’s mock the old-fashioned critics who dismiss us for thinking love matters. It does.

But younger women ARE protesting, and publishing outside of chick lit too. A notable example of course is Elizabeth Merrick’s anthology, This Is Not Chick Lit. And there are more like these in the works. They’re coming, Erica! Keep faith.

(And check out Elizabeth’s post on HuffPo back in April 2006, on her title.)

Since I use “Grrls Gone Wild” in my subtitle, I keep getting asked what I think about Girls (minus the rr, which has a whole ‘nother meaning) Gone Wild. Here tis: To my mind, slinking around a pole or writing about it is not the pinnacle of real-world empowerment, but nor are the women who do so and feel empowered being duped. I have no doubt that the women who flash their boobs for the camera on GGW feel powerful. In many ways, they epitomize the dilemma of our (Gen X *and* Y) generation: caught between the hope of a world that no longer degrades women and the reality of a culture that is still degrading. It’s confusing to be girl these days–or for that matter, a lady–in a world only half-transformed.

But for much more on the subject, check out this piece by Lisa Jervis on Girls Gone Wild as symptom of our culture’s stunted view of female sexuality. Jervis is responding to Garance Franke-Ruta’s proposal to curb young women’s participation in these televised boob-flashing-fests. With characteristic savvy, Jervis writes:

The trick is to help young women navigate and respond to the barrage without patronizing, faux-feminist posturing; reinforcing outdated virgin-whore ideas about what kinds of girls lift their tops; sighing over the outlandish behavior of kids today; or discounting or denying girls’ behavior as simple false consciousness—all of which is happening way too much, both in feminist circles and elsewhere. If we can’t widen our analytic lens enough to see this, then we’re going to be stuck in Joe Francis’s world forever.

There’s just too much bloggy goodness going on today around the blogosphere and elsewhere for this girl to take in. So here’s my quick round-up of cheers, props, and commentary:

Cheers to Marc over at Feminist Dad for spreading the TRUTH about the opting-out (non)phenomenon. And props to Marco for his beautiful post (yes, I’m biased) over at Hokum today, which is part of MotherTalk’s Dangerous Boy Friday – a blogging bonanza in which bloggers are posting in response to that #6-on-Amazon phenomenon, The Dangerous Book for Boys.

Academia still seems to be dangerous for grown up girls seeking tenure. Caryn McTighue Musil sounds off over at Ms. on the hurdles facing women in academe, including “The Baby Gap”(women with babies are 29 percent less likely than women without to enter a tenure-track position, and married women are 20 percent less likely than single women to do so), and The Today Show this morning actually had a nice little chirpy segment on how working mothers get screwed when returning to work, facing significant salary cuts over time. But finally, there are solid messages out there now about how companies can do better – check out Sylvia Hewlett’s new book, Off Ramps and On Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success, and Lisa Belkin’s piece yesterday in the New York Times on the “opting back in” revolution, where she reports on corporate programs designed to recruit seasoned women with names like The Opt-In Program, as well as the new businesses cropping up to service this population, like HR Opt-In, MomCorps, and Flextime Lawyers.

Moving from work/life to writing/life, since I’m obsessed by the reception of books on feminism (personal interest, yeah, as well as professional and political yadda yadda), I’ve been following the coverage of feministing.com founder Jessica Valenti’s Full Frontal Feminism with baited breath — and pretty much want to throw up. I’m sure I’ll be in for it too. Some publicists say, no such thing as bad publicity. Maybe, but my heart goes out to Jess who I hope KNOWS that she has written a fantabulous book (which is doing well, thank you very much, as far as Amazon rankings are concerned – and I urge you to buy it! buy it!). Anyway, Jill Filipovic over at Feministe has posted a passionate defense of both Jessica and her book, which has spawned over 100 comments. Here’s Jill:

Jessica wrote her book in a very particular way: She wrote it to make feminism accessible to women who might otherwise reject it. That is her purpose. Railing against capitalism and telling women that feminism is a movement which will not make your life any better doesn’t really seem to further that goal, does it? Neither does blathering on about how awesome high heels and pornography are. Jessica does neither….We need feminists like Jessica who do the very tough work of reaching out to women who are otherwise uninterested in feminism — feminists who are patient and generous, and who listen to the concerns and experiences of younger women without branding them stupid or not feminist enough.
What does Jessica get for doing that? She gets branded stupid and not feminist enough. She gets mocked by other feminists.

Amen, sister.

And to end this roundup on an up-note, if you happen to be in the Apple next week, be sure to check out:

A Reading with Girls Write Now
Thursday, May 24, 7pm
at 520 Eighth Avenue (b/w 36th & 37th sts.) on the 20th floor

Come out to hear girl writing mentors Pooja Makhijani, Maggie Pouncey, and Terry Selucky read their own fiction, nonfiction and poetry, plus special mentee emcees Phantasia Johnson, Lindsey Romain, and Briana Wilson.

GWN is a fantastic organization that nurtures and nourishes a future generation of women writers by hooking them up with mentors. The org is run by a group of women in their 20s and 30s who are unstoppable. If you can’t go to the reading, at least stop by their website and check them out. (Congrats GWN, on your new online home!)

But first, a big slurpy THANKS to all you who took the quiz below and sent me feedback (and especially to Marc, who saved me on that tenure bit, and to Dara, always). I truly appreciate it.

Ok, so my generational stripes are coming out, but can I just say how excited I am that Bust reviewed my book! I was hooked when they launched and became one of their early subscribers. It’s been fascinating–and fun–to watch them evolve.

So here’s what the Busties say in their next issue (June/July):

“Betty Friedan versus Gloria Steinem, radical feminists against cultural feminists, even Ms. contra Bust–[Sisterhood, Interrupted] is a history of battles within and between the second and third waves of feminism. Siegel surveys many instances of ‘feminist infighting’ over the last 30-odd years–wherein much energy has been spent debating how to achieve feminist goals as opposed to actively fomenting change–and explores the disconnect between older and younger feminists….The book’s singular focus on feuds presents an opportunity to revisit these happenings within the context of the movement–to see how the bickering often stalled forward progression and to learn from that.” – Bust Magazine

Ok, they said some other things too. But I swear, in light of that nice little piece by Henry Alford about mis-blurbing that appeared at the back of the New York Times Book Review the other week, I promise that what I’ve extracted here is verbatim and nondoctored. No really, I swear!

Think You Know About Feminism in 2007? Test Your IQ

1. Betty Friedan was:

A. A pin-up model from the 1940s
B. The mother of American cookbooks
C. A columnist for McCall’s
D. The founder of the National Organization for Women
E. Author of The Feminine Mystique

2. In 2007, for every dollar a man earns, a woman earns:

A. the same
B. 84 cents
C. 77 cents
D. 56 cents

3. During the Miss America Protest of 1968, radical feminists did all but which of the following:

A. Crowned a live sheep “Miss America”
B. Burned their bras
C. Threw aprons and high heels into a Freedom Trashcan
D. Sprayed Toni home permanent spray inside the convention hall

4. In 2007, women make up what percent of the U.S. Senate?

A. 3%
B. 16%
C. 33%
D. 50%

5. “Postfeminist” is:

A. A term coined in 1919 by a group of literary radicals in Greenwich Village who rejected the feminism of their mothers one year before women won the right to vote
B. A term used in the 1980s to describe an era in which feminism was deemed unhip and unnecessary
C. A media-hyped label that irritates third-wave feminists more than Adam Corolla
D. All of the above

6. The Real Hot 100 is:

A. A new reality tv show
B. A list of the hottest women according to Maxim magazine
C. A campaign to redefine hotness by refiguring the standards to honor guts and not just glam
D. Hot sauce

7. The Equal Rights Amendment was introduced in:

A. 1923
B. 1942
C. 1969
D. 1971

8. In 2007, what percent of tenured professors at PhD-granting universities are women?

A. 7%
B. 16%
C. 20%
D. 50%

9. Title IX is:

A. The name of Britney’s favorite club in NYC
B. A piece of pro-woman legislation passed in 1972 now under attack
C. The name of a secret feminist cult
D. The sister band of L7

10. In 2007, what percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women?

A. 2.6%
B. 15%
C. 26%
D. 50%

11. BUST is:

A. A girlie magazine for men
B. A grrly magazine “for women with something to get off their chest”
C. A boxing move popularized by Laila Ali
D. A West Coast rapper

ANSWERS:
1 – C, D, and E, 2 – C, 3 – B, 4 – B, 5 – D, 6 – C, 7 – A, 8 – C, 9 – B, 10 – A, 11 – B

SCORE YOURSELF
11-8 = Superstar!
7-4 = Semi-superstar
3-0 = Hit the books, my friend. You got catching up to do.

Based on Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild (available from Palgrave, June 12, 2007)

I’m finally catching up with the books on my Feminist Reading Shelf and wanted to belatedly comment on Jennifer Baumgardner’s very thoughtful Look Both Ways.

Part personal, part political, and always poignant, Jennifer writes about coming into her own bisexuality when (oops!) she unexpectedly falls in love with a fellow intern at Ms. shortly after college. With her usual intergenerational flair and contextual savvy, she includes a chapter on “The Woman-Identified Woman” – icon and theory of “second-wave” feminism – and puts her “third-wave” embrace of a more fluid sexuality in the context of feminism’s evolution. It’s interesting to juxtapose this far more nuanced account of girl-on-girl dynamics with the current conversation about GGW (Girls Gone Wild, for those not yet in the know), where girls get it on for the boys. The book goes way beyond the superficiality of the Madonna-Britney kiss (Madonna: what were you thinking?!), past the reductive stereotype of third-wave sexuality (my lipstick is political), and boldly explores the non-PC world of desire in an era of sexual complexity. If you haven’t already, I urge folks to get past the annoyingly snarky review that appeared a while ago in the Times and give Both Ways a fresh look. Go. Go now. Read this book. Well worth the journey. It changed the way I think about bisexuality and Jennifer is a gorgeous writer. (She’s gorgeous, too, but that’s not why you should read the book! Though I must say, those eyes on the cover certainly draw you in.)

(For less battle-axe coverage, see the interview on Feministing.com, a bit in Mother Jones, and a more mixed review in Salon.)

(That’s “shameless” as in “shameless self-promotion.” Please feel warned.)

The first review is in for Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women and Grrls Gone Wild — and it’s a starred one. I’m here in Chicago, at my parents’ house, repressing an urge to jump up and down on their bed.

Composure, Deb, composure.