Of course, not only are the girls in NYC going public and making noise this week. Check out my friend and colleague Alison Piepmeier, Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the College of Charleston, in an ABC news interview about the anti-abortion legislation passed this week in her state.
Read more about the scary legislation here.
What a generative few weeks it’s been for the girls here in NYC! Just bursting to share news of my friend Rebecca Segall’s new venture here on the Upper West Side:
Writopia is a new afterschool writing center offering community and creative writing workshops for young writers, ages 12-18. Rebecca (left) — who is herself a brilliant writer and from whom I’ve learned a great deal about writing nonacademically — launched the site last week, and if you know people with kids who are into writing, please please pass it on. My Marco designed the cool logo.
And attention women writing books about women’s lives: I may be a bit late in the discovery, but because I just learned about this, I just have to pass it on:
MotherTalk is a place where readers and writers connect through literary salons, blog tours, podcasts, radio, writer’s community, and more. What an ingenuous idea. I already adore these people and hope to learn more later today.
Previous post aside, I find that I can’t help but somehow join the fray–though I offer these thoughts in the hope of increasing understanding on both sides. In response to the TMC thread, where commentors ask why do young feminists want to be included by established organizations / movements to begin with:
Of COURSE rejection is disappointing to younger women who want in to older women’s clubhouse—and why wouldn’t they want in? These are good jobs, with good benefits, for the most part, in organizations that younger feminists believe in. Something missing from the TMC convo is the fact that what goes on in some feminist organizations goes on in the workplace more generally; lack of mentoring among women is not a problem among feminists alone. Men have been pulling each other up the ladder for centuries; women are newer at it, and perhaps, in an economy of scarcity where there’s still the perception that only so many women can hold top positions in corporations or have their own break-even nonprofit, women have not yet mastered the art of sharing power. I absolutely salute the younger women who are forming clubhouses of their own, but I agree with Patti Binder, who comments:
But is that really the best and most effective message larger organizations have to give younger women? Don’t feel welcome here so go elsewhere and do your own thing?
Again, the feeling of rejection is mutual. WomansSpace, a self-identifed second-waver, comments:
It never occurred to me that your generation wouldn’t even bother to read second wave literature. That is a painful rejection when I can so clearly remember, in a zen sense, thinking about your face, long before it existed….I do not own feminism. I was but a tiny cog and was part of its creation and Ms. Valenti’s understanding and mine are so different and they are different in places where I hurt. I want to see continuity in what I helped start and instead of continuity…. well I see naked, anorexic, long haired women on trapezes.
Ouch. But there IS continuity. It’s just hard to see it amidst all the emotion and commotion–as I write about in my book. I look forward to the day when we stop fighting each other and see our way through to the larger issues that threaten all women’s integrity and well-being.
Time to turn my attention from only-childhood to sisterhood.
I’ve been following the thread on TPC in response to Jessica Valenti’s “Feminist Sorority†and am struck once again by the way feminists are repeating the personal, political, ideological infighting of the past—only this time, with a generational veneer.
I salute Jessica for raising these issues, and I can’t wait for the release of her book (I’m with those who think the cover is savvy, though I understand the critique). It’s the response to her article that concerns me more than the article itself. So much pain, accusation, and hurt—on both sides. Where is this taking us?
Coming back from a talk I gave at Rowan University last week to kick off Women’s History Month, where the audience was part NOW founders, part undergraduates, and part faculty/staff, I’ve been thinking a lot about how young(er) women and veteran feminists can speak to each other in tones that enable their message to be heard. And the need for media-savvy feminists to forge bridges that steer the conversation away from intergenerational catfight and back to the issues we care about in common. I sincerely believe we have more in common than contradiction. And that the ever-widening age gap has the potential to diminish us all.
On Friday, Daphne, contributor Amy Richards, and I were guests on “The Judith Warner Show” (XM radio). I’m a fan of Judith’s book, Perfect Madness, and many of her feminist inklings dovetail with mine. Things I wished I had said but did not have a chance to on the air:
In the 1970s, the mother who chose to have ‘only one’ was sometimes stigmatized for selfishly privileging her desire to have a career over her desire to raise a brood. I wonder how the stigma Boomer women may have felt different from that experienced by today’s mother-of-one. *Is* there a strong stigma today, and if so, is it perhaps differently inflected? Parent friends who ask us about our experience as onlies often seem so anxious – is this related, I wonder, to the intensive parenting Judith writes about so eloquently in her book? That is, the imperative to do-what’s-best-for-your-kid at the expense of personal fulfillment, and the return of a new kind of feminine mystique.
I’d be curious to hear what others think.
PS. Check out Daphne’s new website!
When Daphne (my coeditor on Only Child) and I are asked in interviews why there’s been such an increase in onlies in recent decades, the answer is that women are marrying later, having children later (and therefore generally having fewer), the divorce rate, and economics (it’s never been more expensive to raise a child – and not just here in NYC). We’re asked about the stigma that still seems to exist in spite of the fact that single-child families are increasingly common. Feminism has allowed women to feel more comfortable having only one, but women who have “just one” kid still often seem pressed to defend their choice.
This quandary is interesting in light of Linda Hirshman’s recent advice to women who want to stay in the labor force: Have a child, just don’t have two, she tells women in her book *Get to Work.* While I’m not so sure that the single-child family is the ultimate solution to the work/life crunch (it’s companies, not American family size, that clearly need to change in my opinion), there’s no doubt that life is easier for the working woman who just has one. I can’t speak (yet) from personal experience, but I’m pretty sure that my friends who have more than one would agree. Is it possible that, after all these years, women who choose to have an only because they want to continue with their careers are still seen as somehow “selfish”? Is this what the stigma is still partly about?
Last week’s Boxer-Rice exchange makes me realize all the more the furor around those who chose to have none. Boxer’s comments about how Rice is not paying the direct price for the Iraq war (as measured in lost children) was quickly spun as unsisterly speculation about Rice’s childless, unmarried life. Since I’m generally a fan of Boxer’s, I’m loathe to believe she was going for the jugular in the way all the spin suggested. And having just turned in a book on feminist in-fighting, the rush to turn this into a catfight made me, well, tired. But I did perk up when I read that Condi (regardless of how I feel about her) was also an only. As Broadsheet reminds us today,
in December, First Lady Laura Bush told People magazine that Rice probably wouldn’t run for president, in part because she is single and has no immediate family. “Dr. Rice, who I think would be a really good candidate [for president], is not interested. Probably because she is single, her parents are no longer living, she’s an only child. You need a very supportive family and supportive friends to have this job.”
So, wait, an only child can never be President? Hmm… Not so sure about that.
