Equal Writes

We've moved!

2009-11-09T02:32:00.006-05:00

Greetings, loyal readership! You may have noticed some weird things about the blog (for instance, it's blue now?), and I'm finally ready to give you an explanation: I've been slicing and dicing code in preparation for our move off of Blogger.

That's right; our site is moving to www.equalwrites.org. We'll leave this site up for a little bit to make sure that everyone gets this message, but all future posts will be added to the new site. Eventually, anyone who visits this site will be automatically redirected to www.equalwrites.org.

So update your subscriptions! Direct your comments to posts on the new site! Tell your friends!

The conumdrum of gendered bathrooms

2009-11-08T22:53:00.003-05:00

by Josh Franklin

The week before break, Brown Hall residents received this email from ODUS:

Dear Brown Hall resident,

Our office has received complaints that male students are using the women's bathrooms in Brown Hall. If you have been using the women's bathroom, showers, etc., please stop. Male students may use men's bathrooms only (and female students, the women's bathroom). Violations will result in disciplinary action.

Thank you,
Dean Herbold

Since then, I've talked to a variety of students about gender and bathroom use in general. Something about single-gender bathrooms has always piqued my interest. While I was using the restroom at the Sexual Assault in Our Schools National Conference, a woman walked in, looked around, gave a startled expression, and started to walk out. A fellow conference attendee at the urinal muttered, "it's just binary gender..." and the half dozen people in the bathroom chuckled. And so, like I often want to do, I located the site of conflict with respect to gendered bathrooms in an illegitimate, culturally defined insistence on a particular form binary gender. Learning to share genderless bathrooms was one step towards a wonderful world free of the oppression of gender.

This year, I reconsidered my ideas about bathroom use when a woman started to use the men's bathroom closest to my room. I was at first taken aback, and the awkwardness didn't subside as much as I would have hoped. Being bothered by a woman in my bathroom didn't agree with my self-image as a gender-immune super-progressive. And upon reflection, it didn't agree with my masculinity either. I don't know how this reaction came to be, since it conflicts so strongly with my previous feelings--maybe it was masculine insecurity, maybe it was a hypersentitization that comes with reading enough feminist blogs.

To be honest, I don't know exactly what to think about the situation of gendered bathrooms. I could idealize all day, but in the end, we're stuck with two bathrooms and a culturally defined system of gender. Moreover, I realize that for other people--including survivors of sexual assault and transpeople--the stakes may be a lot higher than they are for me, an individual who, despite some mild insecurities, enjoys the male privilege of not worrying about my security in a place like the Brown Hall bathroom. So I want to hear what you EW readers think about gendered bathrooms--from the forbidden "co-ed showers" (heterosexism anybody?) to the locks on the women's bathrooms around campus. At the end of the day, it's just a bathroom, but I think that if we talk about it a little, we could start a discussion about gender, oppression, and sexual violence in the intimate aspects of our community's life on campus.

Photo courtesy of samirluther's Flickr Photostream.

Sign up for a Vagina Monologues audition now!

2009-11-08T19:50:00.006-05:00

It's my favorite time of the year: the vaginas are coming. Yes, that's right - auditions for The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler's famous play, start a week from today, and you can sign up for a time right now by clicking on this link. Auditions will be on November 15, 16 and 18 in the Wilcox Blackbox. No preparation is necessary (the audition will be a cold reading) - you just need to show up 10 minutes early. This year's production will be co-directed by Lydia Dallett '12 and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux '11 and produced by Zoe Goldman '11.

The Vagina Monologues is produced every year as part of V-Day, a global consciousness-raising movement about violence against women and girls, and all of the proceeds from Princeton's play go to benefit Womanspace, a women's shelter in Trenton. But the play itself isn't just about violence - the monologues deal with almost everything vagina-related, from sex and love to menstruation and masturbation to rape, orgasm and birth. Anyone can audition - there is no previous acting experience required - and the cast is always a fun, eclectic group of people. It's also a fairly low time commitment, so don't let a busy schedule stop you from trying out!

As a two-year veteran of the show, coming back to co-direct, I can say with total certainty that this play is one of the best things I have done at Princeton. Not only is it a great way to meet wonderful people, try something new, and talk about interesting and crucial issues, it's just a lot of fun. I met some of my best friends through The Vagina Monologues, and each year the play challenges me in new ways.

I highly encourage everyone to audition - and if acting really isn't up your alley, you can always get involved by stage managing or helping with lights, costumes or publicity. If you have any questions (or want to get involved in another way besides acting) please email Zoe at vmprinceton@gmail.com. We're looking forward to seeing you there!

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Women at war: America's female veterans

2009-11-04T21:15:00.003-05:00

by Molly Borowitz

If you’re looking for a modern-day complement to the BBC’s exposé on Russia’s female fighter pilots, the NYT has an article this week about American female veterans suffering from PTSD. The author, Damien Cave, emphasizes the specific repercussions the disorder has for women, and the ways in which they experience it differently from men. Vivienne Pacquette, a 52-year-old mom who spent 20 years in the army (including two tours in Iraq), puts it this way: “After all, I’m a soldier, I’m an NCO, I’m a problem solver. What’s it going to look like if I can’t get things straight in my head?”

The number of women veterans who return from active duty with mental disorders is staggering. In June 2008, the number was already over 19,000. In general, Army officers and researchers say, their female soldiers cope with stress just as well as their male soldiers, and the sexes see about the same proportion of mental trauma. Yet Pacquette’s attitude is indicative of a larger trend amongst female veterans suffering from stress disorders; rather than seeking help, they isolate themselves. Aside from the fact that women are more likely to be isolated within their units (since the majority of the deployed population is male), Cave explains that societal pressures and military memories often lead women to view their struggles as invalid—whether because they feel their experiences don’t justify the development of a disorder, or because they worry that the Army won’t recognize mental illness in women, since combat is still nominally an all-male activity. Although Congress has never formally approved changes to the military regulations that bar women from participating in ground combat, commanders of resource-starved units in Iraq and Afghanistan have quietly slipped under the tape and introduced their women soldiers to fighting on the front lines. As such, while female veterans may have performed the same duties as their male counterparts, they are less likely to receive recognition for their services—especially from the public.

As Cave explains, “At home, after completing important jobs in war, women with the disorder often smack up against old-fashioned ignorance: male veterans and friends who do not recognize them as ‘real soldiers’; husbands who have little patience with their avoidance of intimacy; and a society that expects them to be feminine nurturers, not the nurtured.”

Vivienne Pacquette’s story illuminates the extent of the shame women veterans feel at their inability to cope, and the incredible damage it can cause to their mental health. Upon returning from her first tour in Iraq, Mrs. Pacquette woke her twin sister in the middle of the night by leaping out of her bed and crouching on the floor, her arms tensed as if holding a weapon. She was still asleep. A military doctor diagnosed her with PTSD in 2005, but she refused any treatment and in fact returned to Iraq for a second tour six months later, because she “didn’t want anyone to know” about her disorder.

Women suffering from PTSD generally experience all the same symptoms that men do—insomnia, nightmares, fear of crowds, survivor’s guilt, depression, and fits of rage—but often have greater difficulty coping with anger, aggression, and paranoia because they are less socially-acceptable behaviors for women than for men. Dr. Carri-Ann Gibson, head of a veterans’ trauma recovery program in Florida, explains that “the hardest part for women is that they often feel ashamed and guilty because ‘they’re not supposed to punch a wall, they’re not supposed to get aggressive with their spouse.’” In general, she says, people are more forgiving of a man’s struggle to readjust; but they often expect women just to “snap back into domestic routines without any trouble.”

This feeling of guilt is especially pronounced for women with families. After months of isolation on duty (there are rarely multiple women in one unit, and while many female soldiers report that their male colleagues treat them with respect, many others face harassment, ostracization, and a constant pressure to prove themselves), they are conditioned to push other people away, to shut them out. This desire for isolation and the shortened temper it causes make it difficult to interact with loved ones, and especially children. Aimee Sherrod, a 29-year-old mother of two (diagnosed with PTSD but untreated), can’t bring herself to take her children to Chuck E. Cheese or to the park, because open spaces and loud, sudden noises make her too uneasy. She says she is easily frustrated, and often shouts at her children when they’re crying or making too much noise, sometimes threatening to hit her four-year-old.

Unfortunately, the struggle doesn’t end there. The constant emotional battle to maintain one’s calm and interact normally with one’s family is complicated by an incessant barrage of public prejudice and ignorance. Women veterans face questions like, “Did you kill anyone?”, “How was the shopping?”, “In that heat, how did you wear makeup?”, and even “How could you have PTSD when you sat at a desk with a typewriter?” Even women who attempt to combat the stereotypes with bumper stickers or decals identifying them as veterans find themselves passed over—while people thank and by drinks for the men with them, who’ve never put on a uniform. The military and the V.A. are working hard to enlighten the public about women’s roles in Iraq and Afghanistan through advertisements, documentaries, and increased access to medical care, but it’s a slow process. For now, it seems, the women who sacrifice their lives to serve our country are doomed to face prejudice on every front—whether in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan or the First-World jungles of the United States.

Photo via the U.S. Department of Defense website.

Quick hit: Russia's WWII fighter pilots

2009-11-03T11:26:00.002-05:00

by Molly Borowitz

If you're at all interested in feminist history or women in the military, the BBC has an amazing audio exposé on Russia's version of Rosie the Riveter. Did you know that the Soviet Union's Air Force had three all-female regiments during World War II? They were called Stalin's Falcons, and all told these female fighter pilots flew more than 30,000 missions along Russia's Eastern Front during the war, inspiring such terror in their enemies that they acquired the nickname "Night Witches."

The audio, a compilation of interviews with some of the Russian pilots, accompanies photographs of the women at their camps, in their planes, and in the skies. There are also sneak peeks at an upcoming graphic novel by an Irish-American author, telling the story of the prejudice they overcame to become legends. The all-female regiments, originally the brainchild of world-record-setting female pilot Marina Raskova, were recruited exclusively from volunteers eager to assist their country in the war effort. While beset by tragedies (at times the women were not allowed to wear parachutes, and many died in air), their military prowess was such that rumors spread amongst the German troops that Russian scientists had injected these women with powerful chemicals to improve their night vision.

All told, the piece is about 3 minutes long, and well worth your time. Definitely check it out if you get the chance!

Leslie Sanchez on feminism and media sexism - a balanced picture?

2009-11-02T15:24:00.006-05:00

by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux

Last week, Equal Writes received its first review copy of a book: CNN correspondent Leslie Sanchez’s You’ve Come a Long Way, Maybe, an exploration of the media fiasco surrounding Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama during the 2008 election. I was excited, and took the book on vacation with me. It was a good choice for fall break reading – at 194 pages, it goes pretty quickly – but because I don’t know much about Sanchez’s politics (she’s quite conservative – maybe the shout-out from Sean Hannity on the back cover should have tipped me off), I didn’t expect the book to be quite so unbalanced.

Sadly, rather than being a candid exploration of the sexism of the media, the book was a thinly disguised rant about why Clinton did not win (and did not deserve to), and why Palin should have. Michelle Obama, relegated to a chapter titled “Ladies First,” where she was extensively compared to Clinton and Laura Bush and actually criticized by Sanchez for her fashion choices (one hates to say it, but – media sexism…?), was completely hung out to dry. There were moment where Sanchez tried to be balanced, put aside her evident distaste for both Clinton and Obama, and pointed out the nasty realities about the way sexism and gender are perceived in America, as when she compared the “iron my shirt” incident at a New Hampshire town hall to a hypothetical scenario, where a heckler shouted “shine my shoes” at Barack Obama. “My bet is,” Sanchez wrote, “that if ‘shine my shoes’ had been the slogan of the day, it would have galvanized us as a community and fomented protests in a way that just didn’t happen when Clinton was asked to iron shirts. In a way, that couldn’t happen because she is a woman, and as a culture, we don’t yet take sexism nearly to heart the way we do racism.”

Okay. So Sanchez is conservative, and I’m not. She still acknowledged the fact that Clinton, Palin and Obama were subjected to an unfair media circus, and that most of these attacks were sexist. Where the book started to go off the rails, for me, was when Sanchez began to indict “traditional feminists” (a term that she never really defined, but still freely associated with adjectives like “brash” and “shrill” – even “pushy broad”) for refusing to defend Palin. Sanchez seems still to be puzzled by the fact that many women did not immediately jump on to the McCain bandwagon when Palin was added to the ticket, that Palin’s “energy and passion…her incredible story of hard work and independence” did not lead people like me to completely overlook her lack of qualifications and terrible policies. Yes, some of the noise surrounding Palin was sexist – but some of it was genuine concern over the idea that this intensely underqualified woman might actually become vice president. Being a feminist does not require that I immediately support whatever female candidate is thrown on the ticket – and had feminist groups like NOW and the Feminist Majority Foundation, who Sanchez pillories for not leaping to Palin’s side, actually defended Palin, they would immediately have lost my support.

The most interesting part of the book, for me, was Sanchez’s focus on younger women – what they want from a candidate, and why they “abandoned” Clinton and Palin for Barack Obama. She suggests that this is because we (meaning younger women) are in some sense post-feminist, and don’t want a candidate that represents second-wave feminism, like Clinton. As for Palin, she seems to blame the media coverage for not presenting Palin as a serious candidate rather than acknowledging that young women might have preferred to elect Obama, who was much more pro-woman than McCain (and let’s not forget that it was McCain, and not Palin, who was going to be president). The thing is, Obama had the right policies, and the right message of change. Young women didn’t “refuse” Clinton because she had the label of “feminist.” They chose Obama because he was equally a feminist, an idea that Sanchez never airs. Instead, she chooses to indict young women for criticizing Palin’s policies on abortion, guns, taxes and national defense, instead making it a question of Palin’s “femininity and womanhood.” Let me make this clear: I was one of those young women who criticized Palin, and was frightened by the thought that she might be elected. And although I was disgusted by the accusations that she might have been unqualified for office because of her young child, or the constant references to her “beauty queen” past, I was able to separate that disgust from reasonable criticism – because I am a feminist.

I agree with Sanchez that “feminism” is not something that is particularly appealing to young women. But that’s because of books like this that repeat and reify the idea that all feminists are shrill and pushy, and that there is a more appealing (and apparently, conservative) alternative. Was Sarah Palin a good alternative to feminism? Absolutely not. Is the media, often, sexist? Yes. Let’s separate out the two. Sanchez could have written a shorter book defending Palin, and it would have been a more concise version of You’ve Come a Long Way, Maybe – because by the end she degenerated to criticizing Michelle Obama’s “too-tight dresses” and calling Hillary Clinton “whiny.” Media sexism is a complicated issue, and one that deserves to be discussed. But this book only skimmed the surface, and was too interested in defending one woman at the expense of another to add anything new to this conversation. I also can't help noticing that this book's release coincides suspiciously with the release of Sarah Palin's memoir later this month (something I'm sure we'll be covering when it comes out) - but maybe I'm just being another hysterical, paranoid feminist.

Happy fall break!

2009-10-31T09:21:00.004-04:00

Today is the beginning of Princeton's fall break (and not a minute too soon!), so the Equal Writes bloggers will be taking a much-needed hiatus. There will still be posts, but they'll be more sporadic, until we return next Sunday. Enjoy the last of the fall leaves, and here are some things to look forward to after the break:

The Vagina Monologues auditions! Yes, it's that time of the year again - time to start talking about your vagina. All are welcome to audition. Tryouts will be held on Sunday, November 15 from 4-7 pm, Monday, November 16 from 7-11 pm, and Wednesday, November 18 from 7-11 pm. Signups for auditions slots will be available online after the break. If you have questions, contact Lydia (ldallett@princeton.edu), Zoe (zgoldman@princeton.edu) or Amelia (ajthomso@princeton.edu).

Author, columnist, pornographer and self-styled "anal sexpert" Tristan Taormino will be doing two talks at Princeton on November 17 and November 18 (sponsored by Let's Talk Sex and other campus organizations). The first talk will be at 8 pm in McCormick 101, and Tristan will discuss how to create healthy nonmonogamous relationships. The second will be a lunch discussion about queer sexualities at 12 pm in the LGBT Center. Both will be awesome. A fun fact about Tristan that I just learned via Wikipedia? Her uncle is Thomas Pynchon. Just one more reason to come!

Have a great break, everyone - there's lots to look forward to you when you return.

Photo via Joe Shlabotnik's Flickr photostream.

Love; or why I couldn't finish Don Quixote

2009-10-30T15:28:00.000-04:00

by Chris Moses

Eight hundred pages is a significant investment in a book. Hours carved from busy days, bleary-eyed moments before bedtime, the intoxication of a story like no other—over the course of a few weeks this spring I had the great pleasure of reading Cervantes’ monumental contribution to world literature.

You can imagine, then, I was not the least bit consternated when a mere hundred or so pages from the end I lost the will to continue. Not boredom, nor exhaustion or frustration—something much deeper. For days I stared at the crinkled spine. I pondered my bookmark, a mere sliver of pages from the end. But the cover stayed shut.

My own life has been quixotic in its own way for the past few years and so meeting the man eponymous with my experience offered a settling catharsis. As a satire of gallantry and heraldic literature, the book’s absurd escapades and surreal enchantments make less for irony than a convincing portrait of what’s real. Or more exactly, it provides a testament to the abiding energy needed to sustain the normalcy of everyday life—how that energy, free in more fantastic adventures, leads to deep emotional travails, to the extremes of self-doubt and noble confidence, to an exhaustion and exhilaration of feeling. Quixote’s knight errantry requires a devotion and purpose unsustainable within the confines of typical routine.

As is often the case with classical literature that has become popularized through its most notable episodes (like battling with windmills), the full story came with numerous surprises. I still shudder at its casual violence and the serious injury that befalls Don Quixote, Sancho Panza and their combatants.

However humorous, whatever the folly—injury and pain underwrite much of the action and play a defining role in the narrative. Stark physical suffering lends authenticity to emotional upheaval that might otherwise seem mere exaggeration or hyperbole. Like it or not, you’re hit over the head. Over and over again, just like Don Quixote, you’re banged by feeling, surprised by your empathy with the absurd, made protective of his stupidest ambitions. Intertwined feelings of mind and body, the contours of emotive readership—this is Cervantes’ novelty and with it the art of modern fiction.

My paralysis had a great deal to do with this sort of hyper-stimulated compassion. As much as I couldn’t let go, I also realized how much I had already lost in the intervening hundred or so chapters.

More than anything, Don Quixote’s quest is one of love. Love for honesty, love for adventure, love for setting wrongs right and lending strength to the weak—but above all, love for princess Dulcinea who he seeks to woo and honor and immortalize.

With each path taken and each page turned, I had lost myself to Quixote’s love and felt my own only as a mere remainder. Would I ever feel such a depth of commitment? Could I match this dedication beyond sanity?

Love is hard. Bizarrely, we expect it just to happen—at first sight, eyes aflutter, arms lusting to embrace. Yet what about all that energy and effort? All those painful adventures that go awry?

But to be so concentrated and deliberate and reflective—how unQuixote: his purposefulness comes not from rational determination and moderated understanding. He can’t see beyond the delusion at the end of his lance. All or nothing, all or nothing—and all the while we know it’s nothing.

Dulcinea isn’t real, and if she was, Don Quixote wouldn’t be Don Quixote. And where would we be? Eight hundred pages in, and nowhere to go.

I don’t have an answer, and can’t give away the ending. Though I do remain with a lasting sense that love—whether my own, or the sort of love required by feminism—needs expansion, confusion and constant recreation.

For political battles over personal freedoms, the rational, analytical and hard-hitting honesty we espouse offers a secure and necessary defense against intolerant and regressive ideals (like macho men and ever-pregnant married mammas). So too this posture challenges the ‘hysterical woman’ hurdle just as we hope that, if we concentrate enough, if we challenge enough stereotypes and so forth, body-image issues and the insecurities of sexual preference and performance will abate, if not dissolve before us.

Yet what about the mystery, the magic, the pain and peril and intoxication of love? Sometimes I worry I’m not ready (or ever will be). Still I’m confident that doubt can be as productive for my own experience as it can be for feminist thought, without ceding ground or forgoing opportunity, adventure and enjoyment.

Indeed rather than doing away with that doubt, I think it should be nourished as an integral part of feminist practice: not debilitating, but empowering us against strong-headed, self-denying repressive obstinacy so often masked as ‘natural’ or the stuff of ‘traditional values.’

In the end I managed to finish Don Quixote. I closed the back cover with a sense of mournful conclusion—and remnants of joyful hope. Love let me begin, love let me continue, and love leaves Don Quixote, and all of us, ever able to search for Dulcinea.

Quick hit: Princeton is the 61st most sexually healthy campus?

2009-10-29T12:53:00.006-04:00

A friend of mine sent just me a link to this new survey by (of all people) Trojan Condoms. Apparently Princeton ranks 61st among American college campuses in terms of sexual health resources. Their criteria? Student opinion of the health center is important, as is the availability of free or at cost condoms or birth control. But some of the criteria are also pretty vague, like "separate sexual awareness program" (what?) and "lecture/outreach programs," which are apparently different from "student peer groups" and "sexual assault programs."

Although I would definitely not actively criticize the resources that Princeton offers its students, there is a lot more that the university could be doing (starting with providing more forms of subsidized birth control and promoting and subsidizing more forms of contraceptives for women who may not want to go on the pill). There is also a significant silence around sexual assault, one that is incredibly difficult to break, despite the best efforts of the SHARE program.

The schools that are more "sexually healthy" than Princeton include Columbia, Brown and Yale. I have no idea how Trojan collected its data or conducted its research for this report, which inevitably seems more like an ad for Trojan than anything else (did you know that we could hire the Trojan Evolve Bus to come to campus? Let's do that right now!). But it does raise some interesting questions for me about how you measure a campus' sexual health or sexual health resources, and how we at Princeton stack up against other schools.

I don't have an answer (and I'm not satisfied with Trojan's), so I'm throwing it out to you. What do you think of Princeton's sexual health resources? Are there things the university could be doing better? And are there important factors that this survey left out?

Thanks to Natieka for the tip!

The silver lining on Oklahoma and abortion

2009-10-28T13:29:00.004-04:00

by Jordan Kisner

I am happy to pass along the news that the Oklahoma law that would mandate the public sharing of intimate details of abortion procedures will not be taking effect this coming Sunday. The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a restraining order against the law on behalf of two women, and succeeded in getting enforcement delayed until December 4^th.

For those readers who have not yet heard of the controversy in Oklahoma, the law in question would require that doctors post personal information about women who have abortions online, details that include the date of procedure, reason for procedure, county in which the procedure took place, race, age and education level of the mother, and number of previous births or abortions. Opponents of the law contend that name and address would not be posted, the required information would be enough to identify women living in small towns. Doctors would also have to report specific details about the procedure, including whether or not the fetus was given an anesthetic, whether or not it survived and for how long. After this law takes effect, any doctor who fails to post this information online would lose their medical license and face criminal sanctions.

The Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), in conjunction with former state representative Wanda Jo Stapleton (D, Oklahoma City) and Oklahoma resident Lora Joyce Davis, has filed a suit against the law, claiming it violates the Oklahoma Constitution. In the meantime, Judge Twyla Mason Gray ignored the temporary restraining order and granted the state’s request to move the TRO hearing until December 4^th, which would make the law active for over a month before a restraining order could take effect. In response to protests by the CRR, Gray agreed to stay the law until the hearing, thank goodness, but set the bond for the restraining order (which, in Oklahoma, must be posted by the party requesting the order) at a whopping $25,000. That’s right, in order to get the law stayed for the month before the hearing, the nonprofit and two women have to come up with $25,000.

This is an unbelievable travesty, a state-imposed threat to the safety and well being of Oklahoma women. But at least the CRR has bought a month of time. They are accepting donations on their website to help them pay the $25,000, and I urge anyone with the means and inclination to send a few extra dollars their way.

Today is National Comprehensive Sex Education Call-In Day!

2009-10-28T11:06:00.002-04:00

So that means you should call your legislators and let them know how important it is that they slash funds for abstinence-only sex education and fund comprehensive sex ed. Young people deserve honest and accurate sex education - and they need it now.

Here's a script, via Feministing, with talking points for the call (and an awesome video from ChoiceUSA asking you to call your senators). Don't know who your senator is? Look it up on this site. Seriously, this will take about 5 minutes - and these calls actually make a difference to your legislator.

Script for your call, taken from the lovely folks at Feministing (thank you, Feministing!):

Call 1-888-423-5983 to connect to your Senators office. What to say when you call:

Hi. My name is ________________. May I please speak with the Senator's lead aide on health? I am calling to talk about stripping the Hatch Abstinence-only Amendment from the Health Care Reform bill.

(after they transfer you to the right person in the office)

Hi. My name is ___________ and I am calling from ___________. The Senate Finance Committee recently passed the Hatch Abstinence-only Amendment to Healthcare Reform- reinstating $50 million in funding for failed abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. We need to ensure Congress only funds a comprehensive approach to sex education and does not fund ineffective abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that leave young people at risk. As a constituent of Senator _________, I urge the Senator to work to strip the Hatch Abstinence-only Amendment from the final Healthcare Reform bill.

Other Talking Points to Use:
-Healthcare Reform is a critically important task for this Congress and it should not be hijacked by ideologically motivated earmarks.
-The Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage program expired on June 30th and, at that time, had been refused by nearly half of the states both because of the restrictive nature of the program and the fact that overwhelming evidence has proven these programs to be ineffective and a waste of taxpayer dollars.
-The federal government's own study of the Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage program found these programs to be completely ineffective at their stated goals.
-Moreover, study after study has shown that abstinence-only-until-marriage programs have no effect whatsoever.
-It is time for the federal government to stop wasting taxpayer dollars on these failed programs.
-I stand with the millions of Americans who support teaching both abstinence and contraception. Nationwide polls show that eight-in-ten voters want young people to receive a comprehensive approach to sex education that includes teaching about both abstinence and contraception.

Disney characters: not great role models

2009-10-27T11:45:00.007-04:00

It's the middle of midterms here, and everyone is sniffling and stressed out (there's a nasty cold going around - try to get enough sleep!), but I really enjoyed these cartoon. Via Feministing:

Once again, my mother is vindicated in not letting me watch Disney movies as a child. Although this doesn't actually show some of the nastiest stereotypes - Disney is totally unafraid to take on race as well as gender and come out with something incredibly offensive. From Sociological Images, the princesses we are missing (not including Tiana, the latest African-American princess, who I'm sure is a whole mess of problematic):

Pocahontas (1995) – Saves a man’s life with her two assets, her beauty and her animal companions.

Mulan (1998) – Saves a county from a racist caricature with her two assets, her intelligence and her animal companions. Picks up a boyfriend along the way.

Giselle (2007) – Taken care of by strangers because of her only asset, her beauty. Saved by a kiss from a man. Saves a man with help from her animal companions.

And if this just isn't enough for you, you can always watch Sarah Haskins' take on Disney princesses - it's old, but excellent. And for goodness' sake, can somebody tell me why Disney is so obsessed with the animal companions?

But if you thought this was a problem just for female characters, think again - Disney princes are equally vapid. Another great cartoon (thanks to Flora for the tip, via BuzzFeed):

An email discussion about a cartoon in today's Prince

2009-10-26T22:22:00.002-04:00

Two of our bloggers, Brenda Jin and Ayse Gursoy, got into an email discussion about the fact that today's cartoon in the Daily Princetonian might be sexist. It started with a link sent to the list (this is why listservs are amazing!) but ended up being a thoughtful conversation about how to read the cartoon. Feel free to join in the discussion in our comment section!

Brenda Jin (in an email with the subject: “Sexist Prince”):

What is this?

Ayse Gursoy:

I think it's more a personal reflection of the artist talking to her roommate. Presumably. Unless I misunderstood what part you identified as sexist; feel free to clarify. (As in, I don't think it's saying that women have no grasp of current affairs, but rather that students don't.)

Brenda Jin:

Thanks for emailing me. I guess I didn't make it clear.

I guess I had no idea it was her and her roommate. I don't know the artist personally and just thought it was a general depiction of two Princeton women having a conversation with each other. In that case, the cartoon is making fun of the fact - and assuming the fact to be true - that women on this campus are clueless about current events, politics, and world issues.

What really strikes me is that the two Princeton characters are not as gender-neutral as they could be and definitely not male. i guess to a lay student like me, the cartoon had a pretty general message about Princeton women.

Plus, following the conversation at the women's center last week regarding the lack of women's leadership on campus, esp. in the USG, I see this as symptomatic of the additional social hurdles and stereotypes that women on this campus work hard to overcome that men do not encounter as often or as thoroughly.

Ayse Gursoy:

I don't actually know the artist personally, but that was my assumption. Perhaps I should rethink it. And maybe it's easy for me (as a woman) to identify with an image of a woman as a generic student, but it may not be the case for a male student. Also, I feel like most of the cartoons in the prince are drawn by women, or at least feature female characters pretty often. So that might be why I'm used to seeing a female character as the face of a Princeton Student. Not sure. That was a bit of a digression.

My initial reaction was that it was nice to see a female student depicted as playing video games, without going into any detail about the game itself (no barbie pet rescue or whatever).

I'm starting to see your point, however. I think even the fact that you reacted that way means that the problem is more involved than I thought. And what about the non-students who read the paper? The comic could have made it more clear that the cluelessness is attached to the student, not the female, experience.

Brenda Jin:

I guess I was just personally deeply offended. I am also particularly sensitive to the fact that one of the females with the video games seems to be asian. I am an Asian female on this campus and I read the news every day.

Cartoon from the Daily Princetonian's website.

Some thoughts on sex education

2009-10-26T13:29:00.003-04:00

by Jordan Kisner

As the unlucky girl who attended a different school every year for sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth grade, I got to experience some version of sex ed (or “health” or “girls, the nurse is going to speak to you now about your very special bodies”) four different times. Looking back my four encounters with a school’s attempt at sexual education, I am surprised at how different they were—how the information imparted varied so widely from school to school. Why did I learn about menstruation four times, but how to use a condom only once? Why did three schools teach multi-hour units on the undesirability of teenage pregnancy and not one teach us how to talk to our sexual partners about protection, preferences or pleasure?

I think these gaps in middle and high school sexual education can be traced to the philosophy behind the curriculum. By and large, at the four California schools I attended the intention of these classes was not to engage the students in an honest conversation about our questions, fears, or ideas about sex. The gym teachers, science teacher and elderly community service director (seriously) I took class with ran these courses the way a college professor conducts a lecture class: they talked, we took notes. This, studies show, is the wrong way to go about teaching teens about sex and reproductive health. Kaiser did a study that found that teenagers want and need more information than they are getting in their sexual education classes:

“Approximately half of students in grades 7-12 report needing more information about what to do in the event of rape or sexual assault, how to get tested for HIV and other STDs, factual information on HIV/AIDS and other STDs, and how to talk with a partner about birth control and STDs. Two in five also want more factual information on birth control, how to use and where to get birth control, and how to handle pressure to have sex. Yet a significant percentage report that these topics are not covered in their most recent sexuality education course, or that they are not covered in sufficient depth.”

The way to solve this problem is not simply to provide teens with longer lectures, but to create space for conversations about their own perceptions of sex and give them a forum to ask their own questions. A survey of 250 high school students conducted by the D.C. Council’s Committee on Health found that young women in particular need open discussion about personal sexual issues: “Some female participants also want to be able to discuss more personal issues with health educators… such as “What do you do when sometimes when you’re having sex and it hurts, but at the same time, you know what I mean—it feels good?” The study also found that teenage girls reported a higher level of discomfort talking to their parents about sex, which seems a likely explanation for their greater need for information from school sex educators.

The only attempt at personal discussion any teacher ever made happened in ninth grade, when girls and boys were divided into separate rooms and addressed by a “peer adviser.” That’s right—the personal discussion time of the twenty-five girls in my sex ed class was moderated not by a sex educator, but by another high school student, and a male one at that. Apparently, the female peer adviser was out sick that day, so the girls were addressed by a popular junior boy who was as uncomfortable as he was well meaning. I thought that he was going to be fielding our sex-related questions (“Yeah, right,” I thought to myself), but after we settled, sitting Indian-style on the floor, he asked us solemnly, “So, how many of you are planning to wait until you get married to lose your virginity?”

Every hand in the room sailed into the air except mine and one other, which belonged to the only other girl in the room who was new. It was our fourth week at a new school and we managed, in a moment, to single ourselves out as the only two “loose” girls in the room. I only realized the statement I was inadvertently making about myself in retrospect; in the moment I was completely bewildered. The idea of marriage as the sole determinant of whether or not I was ready to have sex was foreign and confusing to me, and as every last one of my classmates sat there with their hands raised, I felt like I had missed a crucial memo. My mother still tells the story of how I charged into our kitchen that afternoon and demanded, “Mom, why didn’t you ever tell me I’m supposed to wait until I’m married to have sex!?” What had followed in the classroom was not a conversation about feeling ready, protection, trust in your partner or emotional maturity, but, rather, a line of questions aimed at me and the other new girl about our “unusual choice.”

Fortunately for me, I had a mother who provided me with the opportunity that none of the four versions of sex ed did—the chance to express my questions, ideas and opinions about sex to someone with the experience and knowledge to guide me toward safe and healthy decisions. But for the many girls unable or unwilling to have that rapport with their parents, being failed by sex education classes (through lecture-style, inaccurate information or an abstinence-only approach) puts them at great risk. Advocating for comprehensive sex education that makes time for personal discussion in the curriculum is a step in the right direction, as is supporting extracurricular programming that gives teens a safe forum to talk about these issues. Still, a greater overhaul of our current method of teaching adolescents about sex and reproductive health is needed if we are really going to curb rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease, and equip young people to mature into healthy, fulfilled sexual beings. Any ideas?

Where the Wild Things Aren't

2009-10-26T09:39:00.004-04:00

by Thomas Dollar

Some of our writers have weighed in on the proposed Center for Abstinence and Chastity (CAC) at Princeton. I had a chance to correspond with one student who is advocating for this Center. I have long believed that the so-called “Hookup Culture” is more a case of pluralistic ignorance than anything real, and I wanted to know firsthand why some students were so concerned. (In a recent survey 43% of students reported having had zero sexual partners in the past year, while only 23.8% reported two or more.) The student argued that:

“Living a life of chastity or abstinence in a campus culture which exerts real pressure on people to have sex is difficult, and these students deserve institutional support in living out what for many is a crucial aspect of their sexual identities. You cite the 43% figure, but careful examination of the wording of that question reveals not that a large proportion of students are chaste or intentionally abstinent but simply that they have not had sex in a year…”

The CAC would not be geared so much towards students who just aren’t having sex, but would provide institutional support to students who choose chastity or abstinence as “a crucial aspect of their sexual identities.” “Chastity” is usually defined a broader category than just celibacy: no sex outside of or before marriage; sex in marriage only as part of a monogamous union. (This student was open to including some monogamous same-sex unions as chaste; the Anscombe Society is not.) Chastity—as opposed to de facto sexual abstinence—is a sexual lifestyle choice, and one that is marginalized by the dominant campus culture.

But is that reason enough to create a Center dedicated to supporting it, which would carry the imprimatur (and funding) of the University? There’s no precedent for it. Where the University has established special Centers, it has been to support students who have faced discrimination or been excluded from campus life based on who they are, not what lifestyle choices they make. The Women’s Center was established to provide support for women on a historically male campus; the Davis Center for international students; the Fields Center for students of racial minorities; and the LGBT Center for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. Gender, national origin, race, and sexual orientation are not lifestyle choices; chastity is.

Vegetarians make a lifestyle choice to abstain from consuming the flesh of dead animals—and they make it in spite of the Meat Culture that dominates the University (and the country). For many vegetarians, their choice is deeply engrained as part of their identity. The University accommodates these students by providing vegetarian and vegan options (alongside meat options) in dining halls. They can join student-run organizations like PAWS, attend sponsored events, hold demonstrations, and meet likeminded faculty. If students’ dietary choices are faith-based, they can find support in the Office of Religious Life. But there is no University-funded Vegetarians’ Center.

Likewise, chaste and abstinent students can count on a variety of institutions for support: the Anscombe Society, ORL organizations, Sexual Health Advisors (who include abstinence as part of a comprehensive sexual health program), and—as President Tilghman pointed out—the Women’s and LGBT Centers. Still, there is the feeling among the CAC’s supporters that the University is currently—implicitly or explicitly—promoting sexual promiscuity. Anscombe President Brandon McGinley was quoted in the Daily Princetonian, saying “[The Center would help] by rectifying the current double standard by which the University implicitly gives its seal of approval to a more libertarian view of sexuality.”

And the student I interviewed wrote: “[A] Center is necessary out of a concern for fairness and true institutional neutrality when it comes to sexual ethics. By establishing the Women’s and LGBT Centers, the University ventured into the realm of sexuality, and especially with the latter center the University established an agency which has both implicit and explicit views of sexual morality…”

(He stressed that neither he nor Anscombe opposed the existence of the LGBT Center; they merely claim that neutrality dictates that a Chastity Center be established alongside it.)

Princeton University is institutionally neutral toward sexual ethics, but it is not indifferent toward matters of public health. Sexual health services are provided on the basis of students’ diverse needs—not the moral philosophies of some people. (And sexually active students will receive more health services than abstinent students because they will require more. This is unfair in the way that it is unfair that divers be provided scuba gear, while people who sit on the beach are not.) This policy acknowledges the chaste or abstinent lifestyle as a valid choice among many—and it recognizes the difference between sexual orientations and sexual choices. It is neutral toward all moral philosophies except one: the philosophy that the University should not be morally neutral at all.

By establishing a Center for Chastity and Abstinence—without establishing corresponding Centers for Serial Monogamy or BDSM—the University would privilege one particular sexual lifestyle over all others, based solely on the moral beliefs of a select subset of students. This is not something a secular university with a culturally and philosophically diverse student body should be doing in the 21^st Century.

I’ve written in the past of the need for a new sexual ethic, based on honesty and personal responsibility, rather than pluralistic ignorance and self-denial. There are steps that Princeton could be taking to promote this new ethic, but a Chastity Center would be a big step backward.

Rihanna, Her New Single, and Her Questionable Status as Feminist Icon

2009-10-25T14:53:00.004-04:00

by Ayse Gursoy

The discourse surrounding "Russian Roulette," Rihanna's new ‘comeback single,’ seems a bit bizarre. Rihanna, despite having experienced domestic abuse, never claimed to speak for survivors. Yet her experience seems to have defined her in the public eye: either she demonstrates admirable courage in addressing it, or she lets down a crowd who expect her to speak out against abuse.

Many reviews call attention to the obvious domestic abuse references in the song. Lyrics like “I’m terrified but I’m not leaving” and “It’s too late to pick up the value of my life” portray a scared, depressed victim who feels unable to control the circumstances of life. The very conceit Rihanna uses, Russian Roulette, suggests the volatile and dangerous aspects of an abusive relationship. And yet, assuming that Rihanna’s music constantly addresses domestic abuse denies her control over her own life. She has the right to address this issue, or to not address this issue, and the public should respect that. Amanda Hess asks us, "Why is Rihanna expected to be a feminist icon?" Seriously. Why is she?

How do we even define a feminist icon? Is any woman in a position of power automatically a feminist?

Feminism is not a state of being; it is a set of goals and beliefs. Simply being a woman does not make a feminist. There are quite a few women in power (or who were recently in power) who would be considered antifeminist by a vast majority, such as Sarah Palin or Phyllis Schlafly.

When I was younger, I always felt uncomfortable trying to identify Jean d'Arc as a feminist. Simply because she led an army, she was placed as an example to show that women can do the same tasks as men, and do a better job of it. And yet she never considered herself typical. Rather than challenging gender roles and stereotypes, she just claimed exemption from them. In contrast, Tamora Pierce's (fictional) female characters constantly attempt to prove that these gender stereotypes are outdated and out of touch with reality. Her most well-known character, Alanna, doesn't consider her success a fluke, but proof that women are equal to men. More people would recognize Jean d'Arc, however, than Alanna, as a feminist.

Perhaps the very nature of being an "icon" requires consideration of how one is viewed. I hesitate to label someone a feminist icon if they do not consider themselves a feminist, but I can understand why someone would.

Who do you consider to be feminist icons?

Photo from Bob Xu's flickr.

Brobama: Is Our President a Frat Boy?

2009-10-24T21:38:00.005-04:00

An article in today's NYT discusses the possibility that President Obama is running a "man's world" in the White House, citing a high-profile pickup basketball game to which he invited no female players, lower visibility of his female colleagues, and the general climate of "a White House rife with fist-bumping young men who call each other 'dude.'"

It's true; Obama has exhibited certain "bro" behaviors:

"Since being elected, he has demonstrated an encyclopedic knowledge of college hoops on ESPN, indulged a craving for weekend golf, expressed a preference for adopting a “big rambunctious dog” over a “girlie dog” and hoisted beer in a peacemaking effort."

And it's a little suspicious that less attention (or power?) is given to female colleagues like Hillary Clinton:

"While the senior adviser Valerie Jarrett is undeniably one of the president’s closest White House confidantes, some women inside or close to the administration complain that Mr. Obama’s female advisers are not as visible as their male colleagues or, they suspect, as influential."

But Obama has emphasized the presence and importance of the powerful women at home and in the White House. Jarrett also rejected "boys' club" accusations by noting the vast inclusion of women in high-octane positions:

"She cites the prominent women Mr. Obama has appointed to top positions, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and six other cabinet-level officials; Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor; the health care czar, Nancy-Ann DeParle; and the domestic policy adviser, Melody Barnes. According to figures provided by the administration, there is a 50-50 gender split among White House employees."

But I'm not convinced that Obama's all-male golfing trips make him a bro, and it's so exciting to see intelligent women gaining influence at the national level. As White House communications director Anita Dunn remarked, the "Obama administration [is] 'refreshingly un-self-conscious' about matters of equality, maybe to a point where they neglected the 'optics' of the all-male basketball game."

Image from clared23's flickr.

Being a woman is not a pre-existing condition

2009-10-24T19:23:00.003-04:00

by Kelsey Zimmerman

The news has been dominated by the health care debate for the last few months. I can’t count the number of times I’ve turned on the TV or read a newspaper and seen the various parts of the bill- the public option, abortion funding, etc.- been featured again. However, I was surprised to learn that there is a major issue in health care that many people are unaware of. Gender rating, the practice of charging women more for healthcare, has largely flown under the public’s radar. This sexist system is a serious problem, as this is costing large numbers of women their health insurance coverage.

The National Women’s Law Center recently published a report that found widespread variety in pricing for health insurance based on gender. Women were charged inconsistently high rates, depending on their age and location. For example, a twenty five year old woman could be charged 6 to 45% more than a man of the same age. The reports also found out that in some states not only were women being charged more for their insurance, they were being denied coverage for having preexisting conditions like “pregnancy” or having a c-section in the past. In the states, it is even legal for an insurance company to reject a woman’s claim for coverage if she has been a victim (note: victim) of domestic violence or rape.

Insurance companies claim they only use gender rating as factor in figuring out the cost of insurance because it has been proven that women go to the doctor more than men. Apparently, this justifies charging women absurd amounts of money for coverage or denying them coverage altogether for “womanly” preexisting conditions. Sadly, only twelve states have barred or limited this practice, although many states are now considering legislation of the same effect. However, with the emphasis on the health care reform in Washington right now, there is no better time to have a nationwide law put in effect to end this sexist system. When Montana banned gender rating in 1993, it demonstrated how ending gender rating would have no serious economic effect on the health care industry. There is no reason why this practice should continue.

For gender rating to end, the government needs to hear how unacceptable we find it. Go to this site to learn more about gender rating and how to get involved in the campaign against it.

Kuwaiti Women May Obtain Passports without Husbands' Consent

2009-10-24T15:42:00.000-04:00

by Malavika Balachandran

This Wednesday, Kuwaiti women finally gained the right to obtain their own passports without the consent of their husbands, according to AP. Prior to this ruling by the Kuwaiti constitutional court, a woman could not get a passport unless her husband signed the application.

After receiving complaints that many women could not leave the country because their husbands would not permit it, the court reviewed the passport policy. It decided just this week that the policy violated women's right to gender equality in the Kuwaiti constitution.

This is one of many signs of progress in the Middle East. More Middle Eastern women are becoming politically active; just this May, several women became members of Parliament in Kuwait. As more women are becoming literate, the pressure for gender equality grows. Through education and political involvement, the Middle East will continue to move towards civil equality.

Photo of Kuwait City from Ikarus Kuwait's flickr.

A center for sex, God and good feeling

2009-10-24T10:54:00.000-04:00

by Christopher Moses

The right wing screeches with insecurity. The Republican establishment worries that fringe movements undercut the party’s future. The Onion satirizes a ‘Moron’s March on Washington State.’ So it’s no surprise that a little group like the Princeton Anscombe Society would, in this big bad world of Democratic ascendancy, find itself with a bit of an image problem.

Last week Anscombe’s proposed Chastity Center got something of a well-deserved smack-down from Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman. Though rather than pushing them aside, I want to take some of Anscombe’s propositions seriously—in order to dismiss them that much more fully. And in turn, to offer a counter-point to their lunacy with a little bit of lightheartedness that, in all seriousness, I hope can lead to more sex, and better sex at that.

Sex first:

I’m forever amazed with the scientific and analytical tone pushed by Anscombe (and certain strands of right-to-lifers, creationists and so forth). They borrow from ‘sociology, psychology, medicine, philosophy, theology, and human experience’ to prove their argument. This is for the good of people and society—big stuff like that.

Yet by succumbing to this scientific and analytical-philosophy-sounding speech, Anscombe makes a deal with the devil. It’s an attempt to appropriate the terms and forms of argument made powerful by secular, rational and often explicitly anti-religious movements.

Anscombe tries to hedge religion, but theology slips through (even if it’s only fifth). Indeed, these folks are far more faith-driven than anything else. Just look at the idea of being ‘called’ to chastity, especially as to ‘true’ feminism and the supposed life situation of gays. This is lock-and-load Protestantism of a perversely post-modern sort.

Now on to God:

The denial of sex, or promotion of chastity before marriage—however you want to spin it—sounds strange as a positive mission statement for such an empirically minded group. How do they know so much about sex? And is sex really that good, unequivocally so, during marriage?

I know some splendidly, happily married folks. I bet even they sometimes have bad sex. What, then, is the shamanistic power of vows, or a legal license, to stand between a couple who, after years of chaste commitment, then promise to stay together and indulge in unifying sex? Or does it not work absent Godly sacrament?

Some mighty good, fulfilling, whole and loving sex happens beyond marriage. Either that, or tribal savages the world over forever live in a state of perpetual misery awaiting Anscombe’s ritualized, legalized monogamous bliss. Happily we have missionaries!

More seriously: Anscombe’s fear of sex is the same as an atheist’s fear of God. Why so much energy to deny something you know nothing about, or can’t prove one way or the other? It’s part of a sickly, dishonest attempt to hide the religious thrust of such positions.

I don’t really have faith in a God as given by mainstream Christianity. Still I believe in a lot of things I can’t prove, quite a bit of it irrational. For the most part, I think this is just about being human. Some of my beliefs blur into faith of a humanistic sort, but that’s another story. The point is, let’s be ok with belief, and explore its how’s and why’s, rather than trying to make opinions and perspectives into exclusionary, uncompromising proofs. Hurray for pragmatism!

Yet in a more analytical strain, I’m reminded of words I heard spoken by the late, great philosopher Donald Davidson: ‘you believe more than you know.’ Which is to say, in quantitative terms, we know very little and believe quite a bit; and also, we engage in believing far more often than we think; and yet more, belief encompasses a bigger space itself than knowing.

Davidson’s clever comment put forever to rest that fifteen minutes of atheist anxiety I once had in tenth grade. But enough pretending to do philosophy—I can’t—and anyhow, Anscombe does more than enough of that on its own.

Finally, good feeling:

Anscombe might be better off telling us what we should be doing, rather than staying so belted to chastity. Where will we’ll find all this sex-free fulfillment?

Honestly, I agree that much insecurity, aggression, and other less-loving emotions often mar good, healthy sex. Though I also think that love is complicated, and that even the best sex, in marriage or not, will be implicated by questions of power and less-than-blissful emotions. But at least give us some sense of what we’re winning, other than a life tensely and repressively anticipating permanent coupling (as an aside, Anscombers should really reckon with Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach).

So here’s my proposal (with a much better ring to it than anything of Anscombe’s): the Center for Sex, God and Good Feeling. Talk about it; have if you wish, or wait; believe all you want; and whatever your choice, feel good about it.

As the Beatles put it, ‘I’ve got a feeling, a feeling deep inside… a feeling I can’t hide… Oh no! Oh no. Yeah! Yeah!’ To the Center! Come one, come all.

Food is for fat people: the saga of the size zero model continues

2009-10-23T12:52:00.004-04:00

by Beth Zak-Cohen

Last week New York Magazine published an article questioning the firing of one of Ralph Lauren’s models. She says it was because she gained too much weight. She was 5’8” and 120 pounds! He says it was because of her “inability to meet the obligations under her contract”. Lack of denial much?

The model in question was in these crazily proportioned and obviously Photoshopped ads making her intensely and strangely skinny, adding to the debate.

Robin Givhan, Washington Post fashion editor, has an interesting take. She says fashion represents an ideal, its what everyone wants to be. Fashion models, she says, won’t get smaller until we do. She says our nation has never embraced being fat; we congratulate people for losing weight, even if that weight loss is unhealthy.

I read the article with an expectation that I would disagree empathetically. I do disagree (to the extreme) with some related statements like the one by Robert Verdi who said, in response to the controversy. He says: “I think food is for fat people and poor people.” Excuse me?

However, Givhan has a point. Our nation has a huge problem with obesity and consistently celebrates weight loss and thinness. This makes the criticism of ultra-thin models somewhat hypocritical. Givhan gives the example of Oprah. When she loses a ton of weight, we don’t question her health. Unfortunately, we probably should. Society’s obsession with thinness has led to epidemics of anorexia and bulimia and people who seem of totally normal weight, when they really have huge health problems surrounding self-image. Not all thin models are unhealthy, and models shouldn’t be criticized just for being thin. To fire a model for being too thin would be just as bad as firing one for being too fat. Theoretically. When thin is 85 pounds and fat is 120, it adds a slightly different dimension. Because most of these models are unhealthily thin and those considered fat are nowhere near unhealthily overweight, let alone obese.

So what’s the solution? The cliché is that we need to celebrate girls of all sizes but obesity and extreme thinness can have major consequences health wise. However, there’s no reason we have to make weight the center of the debate. Why don’t we make the debate a health-centered one? Whether a girl, or woman, is fat, thin, or in-between, she can be living a healthy lifestyle or an unhealthy one. Our society needs to glorify a healthy lifestyle and living up to one’s goals and potential. That is really the main thing, once you do that, size comes naturally. If it’s bigger or smaller who cares, if you’re healthy and happy that’s what’s important. It’s still kind of a cliché, but when society is giving us such conflicting messages, what’s a girl to do?

Quick hit: Midwife Cara Muhlhahn sued for negligence

2009-10-22T11:34:00.009-04:00

I've blogged about celebrity midwife Cara Muhlhahn on Equal Writes before, but she bears revisiting today because she is being sued for "gross negligence" by a Manhattan couple who are claiming that she was responsible for the stillbirth of their son. Catherine and Ricardo McKenzie, who turned to "outlaw" midwife Muhlhahn after seeing Ricki Lake's documentary The Business of Being Born, are contending that Muhlhahn broke state law by failing to refer Catherine McKenzie to a hospital during her three-day labor. Their lawyer, Richard Reich, said, "This is a woman who identified herself as 'the guardian of safety.' Her practice was anything but safe."

If you read Andrew Goldman's NY Mag profile of Muhlhahn last March, or my post about it here, you know that Muhlhahn has a somewhat checkered and controversial past. She has popularized, and normalized, the idea of home birth significantly. But this particular case has also hurt midwives - inspiring, among other media coverage, a Today Show segment last month titled "The Perils of Midwifery" that sparked much outcry among the home birth community.

I wrote a longer and more extensive post on the Muhlhahn controversy at Care2.com - take a look if you're interested.

What do you think? Are Cara Muhlhahn's practices dangerous, or are they defensible?

Senators refuse to protect rape victims from corporations

2009-10-21T09:38:00.003-04:00

by Jillian Hewitt

Senator Al Franken (D-Minn) proposed an amendment to the FY 2010 Defense Appropriations Bill—deemed the “anti-rape amendment”—that would allow employees of defense contractors to sue their employers should they be raped or sexually assaulted in some other way. What’s that? Surely employees of American corporations should be allow to sue in the event that they’re like, gang-raped? Think again. I’ve done a fair amount of research into the things that our government has either allowed or refused to punish during the “war on terror,” but this is by far the most outrageous thing I’ve heard about to date. Sadly, there are so many outrageous things that the public will never hear about. With that, I should start at the beginning…

As a 19-year-old employee for KBR (a then-subsidiary of Haliburton,) Jamie Leigh Jones was stationed at Camp Hope, in Baghdad. On July 28th, 2005 a group of KBR employees put date rape drugs into a drink and gave it to her; she passed out; they raped her repeatedly. She woke up naked, bruised, and bleeding. She tried to get help from an Army physician, Jodi Schultz, who gave her a rape kit. It was given to KBR security forces, and then it disappeared for 2 years only to be found without vital information. Under orders of KBR, Jones was kept in a shipping container for several days after the rape so that she wouldn’t be able to report it. She was finally rescued by dispatchers from the US Embassy in Baghdad and brought back to the United States.

Then, Jamie tried to sue KBR and its employees—she never found out exactly who raped her, because she was unconscious, but one man admitted that he had been part of the group. KBR responded that Jones had no right to sue, and that the matter would have to be resolved in private arbitration because of the terms of her employment contract. Now this seems ridiculous, but hey, never underestimate a private defense contractor’s desire for complete freedom from the law. So someone in the Senate, Al Franken, decides something needs to be done about this and writes up an amendment. The amendment requires that defense contractors allow their employees access to U.S. courts—not just private arbitrators—in the event that they are raped or sexually assaulted. Sounds pretty straightforward right? The amendment passed 68-30. Not 98-0, but 68-30. This is how far 30 (male, white) Republican senators were willing to go to ensure that government doesn’t “get involved in private contracts.” To be sure, there were Republicans who voted for this amendment; in fact, Ted Poe (R-TX) was the Representative responsible for rescuing Jones from KBR in the first place.

I guess it shouldn’t shock me, but it really does: how do you justify putting your allegiance to a private defense contractor (Haliburton/KBR) over your obligation to protect women who are raped and sexually assaulted? I don’t have to try to answer this question myself, thank God, because a few of the senators who voted against the amendment have already done it for me. For instance, John Thune (R-S.D.) said in a filmed hallway interview that “he might have supported the amendment if it had been narrowed to cover rape rather than extended to cover other sexual-related abuses.” So you would have given women who are raped the right to sue their employees, if only the amendment hadn’t given power to those pesky souls who were only sexually abused? Wow, Senator Thune, that is so compassionate of you! In his explanation for voting against the amendment, Jeff Sessions (R-AL) explained that “congress should not be involved in writing or rewriting private contracts; that’s just not how we should handle matters in the United States Senate.”

As Jon Stewart was smart to point out, that is, in fact, how the Senate is supposed to work: the government hires private contractors, and in turn they get a say in how the contractor handles its business. And wait a minute, did he seriously defend himself with the “get government out of businesses!” argument? Again, Stewart’s response is better than anything I could come up with on my own, so I’ll just quote him: “If, to protect Haliburton, you have to side against rape victims, you might want to rethink your allegiances.”

Every one of these senators had the choice to either protect defense contractors from public litigation, or give power to those who have been sexually abused. Please speak out by calling, emailing, or sending letters to the following senators who chose the former:

Alexander (R-TN), Barrasso (R-WY), Bond (R-MO), Brownback (R-KS), Bunning (R-KY), Burr (R-NC), Chambliss (R-GA), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Crapo (R-ID), DeMint (R-SC), Ensign (R-NV), Enzi (R-WY), Graham (R-SC), Gregg (R-NH), Inhofe (R-OK), Isakson (R-GA), Johanns (R-NE), Kyl (R-AZ), McCain (R-AZ), McConnell (R-KY), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Sessions (R-AL), Shelby (R-AL), Thune (R-SD), Vitter (R-LA), Wicker (R-MS)

Careers, children, choices: why the usual feminist argument against “career vs. family” is actually hurting us

2009-10-20T12:25:00.003-04:00

by Molly Borowitz

Last night I posted a comment in response to Amelia’s link to a recent survey on maternity leave, which revealed that about 75% of British moms believe that women who don’t have children should also be entitled to some kind of leave equivalent:

“While I have the greatest of respect for working moms, I do have to point out that perhaps some kind of not-motivated-by-a-change-in-your-parental-status leave isn't actually as ridiculous as it first sounds. After all, there are quite a few people in the world who choose not to (or, for whatever reason, are unable to) have children. We talk a lot on this blog about empowerment, and yet women still face the implicit belief that we are intended to have children, and that our lives cannot be complete, significant, or meaningful without them. Obviously maternity leave is a medical and mental-health necessity, but it does represent a right that comes with a specific lifestyle choice—one that we usually celebrate with parties and gifts. Our culture dictates that we support and reward our friends who choose marriage and/or children (and often quite lavishly), but no such system of encouragement and congratulation exists for the men and women who choose to be single and/or childless. Why? Because we don't regard it as a CHOICE; spinsters, bachelors, and childless people are more often construed as social, emotional, or biological unfortunates who missed the marriage-and-babies boat. The government is absolutely obligated to respect and honor a pregnant woman's choice to have a child—but wouldn't it be pretty cool if it was also obligated to respect and honor a woman's choice NOT to?”

Like Amelia, I can’t immediately think of many ways to resolve this issue, and I absolutely agree with her that the introduction of non-maternity maternity leave might diminish our appreciation for the physical and mental significance of childbirth and a new mom’s need to recuperate and adjust. However, I think it might be productive to meditate further about the ramifications of treating childlessness as a choice; if we abstract away from the specificity of the maternity-leave issue, it’s possible to contemplate the complicated relationship between women, employment, and motherhood in a new way.

Several months ago I wrote a piece about the cultural stigma that working moms face, wherein I said that “we seem to be stuck in a catch-22 where stay-at-home moms aren't ambitious enough, working moms neglect their children, and super-ambitious women are selfish for choosing not to have any children.” At the risk of a reductio ad incommodum, I think the underlying cultural assumptions that motivated this point and my earlier question about choosing childlessness are as follows:

1) Unmarried and childless people rarely choose to be so.

2) Working women have to choose between fulfilling their career potential and having a family.

Assumedly both these statements have some elements of truth, since they carry so much popular currency. Frequent EW readers (and Sarah Haskins watchers) will be familiar with the pressure that popular media exerts upon women to find mates—everything from milk ads and chocolate commercials to romantic comedies and Disney films —and with the feminist complaint that ambitious women are forced to choose between a family and a career, while it’s rarely necessary for men to make such decisions. However, constructing the choice in this way actually does more to reinforce these stereotypes than to combat them. If we describe the working woman’s difficult position as a societally-coerced choice between being a good employee (or boss) and a good wife and mother, we make several gendered assumptions.

Firstly, we assume that all working women should have mates, and therefore martial responsibilities that their jobs might make difficult to fulfill—and by making this assumption, we reinforce the implicit (or, as in the case of popular media, rather explicit) cultural beliefs that all women should be married, and that few single women remain so by choice. Secondly, the constructed opposition between “career” and “family” assumes that all married couples should want to have children—which again upholds the notion that childless people rarely choose to be so (not least because, as I mentioned earlier, parenthood is often construed as a woman’s true fulfillment). But perhaps most importantly, by constructing the problem in this way, we advance a woman’s career as her only excuse to be childless—the only reason she should ever decide not to have children. By placing her career immediately at odds with her family, we automatically presume that all women (whether employed outside the home or not) should want to have children, and that the pursuit of professional success is the only legitimate and fulfilling alternative to motherhood.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t find this construction empowering. I think what we really need is to find a way of describing these difficulties that doesn’t presuppose marriage and children as the necessary and appropriate outcomes for all women, with a high-powered career being the only possible alternative. In my opinion, learning to conceptualize a woman’s single or childless status as an active choice rather than a social misfortune is a way of empowering her, giving her greater agency in negotiating the relationship between her identity as a woman, her profession, and her lifestyle choices. Obviously a simple discursive change isn’t going to overthrow the complex system of pressures and restrictions that working women face, but I do think that if we afford women this greater agency—wherein we respect and acknowledge the active choices of women who are single and/or childless just as much as we do those who are married and/or mothers—eventually the term “choice” won’t just be a discursive label, but an empirical fact.

A thought about the abstinence and chastity center

2009-10-19T23:37:00.000-04:00

by Josh Franklin

Over this past week, there has been a lot of discussion about a center for abstinence and chastity on campus. Although I have already written about this, after following the discussion on campus, attending one of the week's events, and talking about the idea with many other Princeton students, I thought it would be good to re-articulate my position on this issue.

I think that a center for abstinence and chastity is inappropriate on this campus. While I agree with some of the principles that lead its supporters to the conclusion that it is needed, I think that in the end, establishing this center would be harmful to the campus community. Students come to Princeton with a variety of different beliefs surrounding sex and sexuality. Moreover, everybody is in the process of understanding their own developing sexualities. I think that the vast majority of students believe that sex is something that is deeply meaningful; however, I think that that belief takes many different forms.

Something that I've read and heard many times during discussions about the proposed chastity center is the idea of sex as a mindless rubbing of body parts, done simply for pleasure. I believe that this idea of 'meaningless' sex, which would be a fair way to describe the hookup culture, is an illusion. Put in another way, while relatively few people understand sex to be such a casual activity, or behave as if they do, it certainly seems as if a great number of students feel that way. Establishing a chastity center has the unintended, negative effect of institutionalizing this myth of the hookup culture. Instead of establishing the opportunity for choice, a chastity center represents a false dichotomy between ultimate promiscuity and total abstinence, leaving the vast majority of students who grapple with the choices in between without support.

I want to make it clear that I respect and admire abstinence, and more than that, I appreciate that today's campus culture of sexuality is full of negative pressures and can be stressful and difficult. What I'm trying to say is that a center for abstinence and chastity plays into and reinforces this culture of sexual pressure. While I admit that such a center might be experienced as positive for a small group of students, it would affect all students (as much as a University center could affect anybody, which in my opinion has been exaggerated throughout this discussion). Thus the goal should be to think about how as a community we can change our culture of sexuality on campus so that it fundamentally doesn't create these pressures. Like most other instances, I don't think it is productive to create more spaces where difference and opposition can be articulated, but to think as a community about the ways in which a plurality of perspectives can be accommodated.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

A patronizing attitude: abolish lower standards for women in chess

2009-10-19T22:58:00.003-04:00

by Kelsey Zimmerman

There was a great op-ed in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week about a game that seems to be an unlikely candidate for gender discrimination: chess. Unlike other competitive activities, chess is one where very few people could argue that sex matters. It is not an issue of physical prowess, where males are generally stronger and faster than females and standards are adjusted accordingly for women. Chess is a wholly intellectual activity; its main requirements are excellent strategy and timing skills. So it would be logical for there to be no disparity in how men and women are judged in the realm of chess.

Sadly, this is not the case. The World Chess Federation persists in having anachronistic rankings that insult women by having lower point standards for attaining the ranks of grandmaster and international master. Instead of giving the all-encompassing titles of grandmaster or international master, they receive the titles of “woman” grandmaster and “woman” international master despite the fact the “male” titles have no preface of “man”. Ultimately, it is significantly easier to attain these “female rankings”. This is not only unfair; it is downright demeaning to suggest that women should aspire to a lower standard than male chess player. The bottom line: the WCF seems to think that women are less intelligent than men.

The woman’s international master and women’s grandmaster titles were originally instituted in 1950 and 1976, respectively. The idea that women were intellectually inferior to men was more acceptable in the 1950’s, and it’s understandable, if not particularly palatable, that this “woman’s” title was instituted, as least in 1950. But by 1976 the perception of women had changed radically enough that we can reasonably ask why the second sexist standard was instituted. Either way, it’s unacceptable, in 2009, to allow the same sexist and degrading standards to continue in this modern age of equality and women’s rights. Chess rankings should be decided on the basis of ability; gender should not factor into the equation at all.

A separate but no less crucial issue is the dearth of women in the chess world in general. It wasn’t until 1991 that a Hungarian chess player named Susan Polger finally became the first woman to attain the lauded title of grandmaster by meeting the performance standards for women. Strangely, the proliferation of Internet chess, where gender is more invisible, has allowed many women to have the access to expert training and practice. This was more challenging before the advent of online chess because of hostile attitudes within male-dominated chess clubs. Still, women only make up 10% of the WFC and only 2% of its top 1000 players. High-ranked women cite several reasons for this, from lack of funding for female chess players from sponsors, to the uncompetitive nature of women, and to the solitary nature of chess, which is apparently undesirable for women. But whatever the reason, it’s clear that competitive chess is one area in which women still have far to go.

Bike for equality

2009-10-19T15:44:00.003-04:00

by Emily Sullivan

A few weekends ago I packed into a 7-passenger van with six guys. No, we weren’t headed to a prostate cancer survivor’s conference, but rather the Trexlertown bike swap. T-town is one of the biggest bike swaps events in the country, and only happens twice a year. Women were about as scarce as the Campagnolo 8-speed components I needed at the swap. My rough estimate is that maybe 5% of the crowd had two X chromosomes.

It was an awesome event and overall a great day, but one particular occurrence left a bad taste in my mouth. I walked over to a seller’s table and picked up a pair of brake levers—a pretty basic bike component. As I lifted them off the table, the older man behind it looked at me and said, “Come on. You don’t even know what those are!”

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the presence of mind to beat him over the head with them…

For a variety of reasons—which I will likely write about in future posts--bike riding and maintenance are arenas dominated by men. Many people don’t know that women and bicycles have a fascinating history together. Susan B. Anthony once suggested that bicycles have "done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.” Women began riding bicycles at the close of the 19th century. This had two dramatic effects on society: it made women exponentially more mobile, and it changed fashion. Mobility at large means independence—women did not have to rely on men to get around, and were able to set their own agendas independent of their husbands’ and fathers’. In the fashion world, cycling forced the invention of bloomers and a departure from the corset.

Of course, this terrified men. What is disturbing is that it evidently still does!

Link round-up: feminist weddings, maternity leave, and Barbara Ehrenreich

2009-10-19T12:48:00.006-04:00

I haven't done a link round-up in a while, so just to give you a brief overview of what's been new, noteworthy and commented upon in the feminist world over the past week or so:

Feministing editor and all-around feminist rock star Jessica Valenti got married on October 3 to Talking Points Memo blogger Andrew Golis, and her wedding announcement was in the NYT's Style section yesterday. I was mildly horrified by the NYT's coverage, and it turns out, so was Princeton professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell (who is something of a rock star herself), who wrote a piece about it for the Nation's blog last night. I wrote about this for Care2 today, but really, Harris-Lacewell's piece speaks for itself.

File this under ridiculous: a survey conducted in Britain revealed that 74% of women think that maternity leave, or its equivalent, should be available to people who don't have children. Because we all know that maternity leave is just a fun vacation.

Barbara Ehrenreich debunks the new research that people use to blame feminism for society's ills. Are women really unhappier now than they were in the 1970's? Ehrenreich says that the research "doesn't pass the giggle test."

This is just horrible: an interracial couple in Louisiana were denied a marriage license because the judge felt that their children might face "difficulties" in later life due to their parents' ethnicities. Right, I'm sure they'll encounter difficulties - like racist judges!

What have you been reading and writing over the past week? We always love to hear from you in our comments section.

Calvin Klein "enhances" men's jeans

2009-10-18T10:33:00.002-04:00

by Jordan Kisner

Calvin Klein's newest pair of jeans for men comes with a little *ahem* enhancement built in. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, we're talking about a pair of jeans with padding to boost the bulge.

My first reaction? Laughter. And then I remembered the Wonder Bra. And Spanx. And LashBlast mascara and high heels and collagen and any number of ridiculous products designed to help women appear bustier, slimmer, fuller, taller, plumper, tanner, and tighter. Body by Calvin Klein Jeans are being marketed to men in the same way that the Wonder Bra is marketed to women: as a boost (good grief the puns) of confidence.

"They were a breakthrough! Such comfort, such support! And yes, my confidence was bigger! It looked bigger, at least."

There is a sociology thesis waiting to be written about the way this man's penis and his sense of confidence suddenly seem equivalent because of a pair of jeans, but I'd rather focus for the moment on the inauguration of modern men into the world of "enhancing apparel" that women have occupied (been victimized by?) for centuries. I can't say I'm all that happy they've arrived. While some people will make the claim that this is a positive development for gender equality, it seems more of a defeat than a victory to have men participating in a mentality that has done immeasurable harm to women. I wonder if feminists aren't now faced with double duty-- already absorbed with the effort to get American culture to value women's bodies unenhanced, has the time come to focus on men's bodies, too?

Sarah Haskins takes on beauty contraptions

2009-10-17T11:04:00.001-04:00

"Just because you're not rich doesn't mean you can't get pretty...in five easy installments!"

President Shirley Tilghman Opposes Idea of Campus Chastity Center

2009-10-16T19:59:00.004-04:00

Threatening to temper the "inspiration and joy" following last weekend's National Equality March in DC, the Anscombe Society scheduled a full week of "diverse and important events" to show Princeton that "yes, indeed, it is time for a University-sponsored Center for Abstinence and Chastity."

I obviously have a few objections, not least of which is the timing coincidence: the events immediately follow both the march and National Coming Out Day and overlap with LGBT Awareness Week. But I was thrilled when I read that President Tilghman firmly shares my position (and gave some great reasons why) in The Daily Princetonian on Thursday:

In an e-mail sent in response to the petition signers, Tilghman wrote, “The question of whether the University would sponsor the establishment of a ‘Center for Abstinence and Chastity’ was raised with several members of the University administration last year, and each of us provided the same response, which was a firm ‘no.’ ”

She acknowledges the difficulties of remaining abstinent but affirms that there is no reason to dedicate a center to this issue:

“I understand that it is sometimes difficult to stand up for what you believe when you are in the minority, but the fact that you are greeted with opposing points of view when you do so is not sufficient grounds for the University to establish a center,” she said.

Though Brandon McGinley of Anscombe points to the existence of the Women's Center and the LGBT Center as reasons for the creation of a chastity center, our president rightfully acknowledges that these centers are not just about sex:

Tilghman, however, said this assessment of the University’s already-established centers was incorrect. “There are a number of problems with this argument,” she said in the e-mail. “First it implies that the Women’s and LGBT Centers are there to support a non-chaste or non-abstinent lifestyle, which is not the case, and would be considered offensive by both centers.”

It's great to know that President Tilghman is emphatically on our side.

Photo from Katie Tegtmeyer's flickr.

Some thoughts on "cougars" from two EW bloggers

2009-10-16T17:03:00.003-04:00

Yesterday's NYT article about "cougars" (older women who date younger men) was so compelling that not one, but two of our bloggers chose to write about it, and you, our EW readers, get to reap the benefits. So enjoy - two perspectives on this article from Nick and Brenda.

"Cougar Season"

by Nick Cox

Check out the article in the New York Times on relationships between older women and younger men. The "cougar" archetype has been near the forefront of popular culture for a good while now, mainly in the person of Demi Moore—who has been married to Ashton Kutcher for four years now—as well as the character of Samantha on Sex in the City. Recently the cougar has been blossoming into a bona fide cultural obsession, probably catalyzed by Cougar Town, the new TV show with Courtney Cox. The interesting thing, though, is that much of this cultural trend has taken the form not of shows like Cougar Town, which are about fictional cougars, but rather of products marketed to women who self-identfiy as cougars—the article mentions cougar cruises as well as online cougar communities.

As this last detail implies, and a number of surveys have confirmed, cougars—defined as women in relationships with men who are fifteen or more years younger than they are—are a growing demographic. At least on the surface, this development seems to be cause for more or less unqualified celebration. If women are freeing themselves from the conventions of society dictating that they marry older men with better educations and more money, there doesn't seem to be much for us to be unhappy about.

But, as feminists, we should always find something to be unhappy about, or at least look for something. It's only through that sort of critical obstinacy that we can uncover our culture's hidden sexism, which often shows up in the most outwardly laudable places. In this case, I don't think there's anything particularly disturbing about the relationships themselves. The question, then, is whether the sexualized stereotype of the older woman, especially one propagated in a large part by self-described "cougars," is an empowering move, or whether it is just another case of women being fetishized. I myself am at a loss for how to answer this question, but I'd be interested to here what other people have to say.

"Could 'Cougar' Relationships Be...Good?"

by Brenda Jin

The so-called (and controversially named) “cougar” phenomenon—older women who seek relationships with younger men—has made headlines in the New York Times today. This is probably not a surprise to anyone who has ever seen a copy of “People” or “Cosmo”; popular media have already focused attention on prominent “cougars” such as Demi Moore, Mariah Carey, Eva Longoria Parker, Janet Jackson, Kim Cattrall, and Cameron Diaz.

While I personally am not at a time in my life where men who are five to ten years younger would make compatible (or legal) partners, the idea is not novel to me. Yet I can see how a shift in attitudes would be more striking to the baby boomer generation, on whom the NYTimes article focuses. In previous generations, the conventional heterosexual relationship has often featured a man “two to three years older, of similar background and higher levels of education and income”. I originally thought the fact that our culture firmly fixes beauty in youth would be a contributor to why men would be reluctant to date older women, but it seems that another taboo is at play here, as men report that they were drawn to older women because of physical attraction in the first place (yay!).

Although a number of relationships outside of marriage are unaccounted for in census data, a shift in attitudes from the previous half century can be discerned nonetheless: “…the number of marriages between women who are at least 5 or 10 years older than their spouses is still small, 5.4 percent and 1.3 percent, respectively. But both rates doubled between 1960 and 2007”. According to some sociologists, female baby boomers in a so-called “marriage squeeze” are more likely to be open-minded to shifting relationship conventions regarding age, race, religion, and economic status. Since they have delayed marriage, the pool of conventionally accepted male partners has decreased, as male baby boomers have likely stuck with convention and sought younger partners.

The term “cougar” is problematic, because it is loaded with taboo connotations of wildness and conjures images of older women desperate for sexual satisfaction which can only be achieved by virile strapping young men, despite the fact that many of these so-called “cougars” are married. Yet why don’t we apply these attitudes to men who date younger women? Why don’t we view the male counterparts of so-called “cougars” as sex-hungry men who are on the prowl for the fulfillment of their sexual desires through an accompanying obsession with the attractiveness of youth?

The idea of a maternal relationship has been named as another taboo for older women who date younger women. But when a man is older than a woman in a relationship, why is it not seen as patriarchal? It seems to be more acceptable and less taboo to have a man marry a younger woman. I personally would be wary of being in a relationship with a man whose age might be directly related to his economic advantage, higher job status, or any other uneven power relationship. I would be wary that he would be patriarchal or patronizing. I wonder how the other women of my generation feel? I also wonder whether the increased presence of these relationships could reflect the urge to find equality in relationships as more women gain economic independence seek partners not for the sake of child-rearing, stability, or necessity, but out of a desire for equal partnership?

Gender-Neutral Housing Comes to Princeton

2009-10-15T12:43:00.007-04:00

As our friend Emily Rutherford (Princeton '12) posted in Campus Progress yesterday, next year one of our dorms, Spelman Hall, will be gender-neutral. In a letter addressed to the student body, Undergraduate Student Government President Connor Diemand-Yauman confirmed the "pilot program," which will permit "male, female and transgender students to not only be in the same draw group, but live together in GNH suites" with "private sleeping spaces" and sharing a "common living area and bathroom."

Princeton joins a growing number of Ivy League schools offering GNH options. The Daily Princetonian writes: "Harvard, Stanford, Brown and the Penn all offer gender-neutral housing. Yale formed a committee last year to consider gender-neutral housing, but announced in March that it was delaying a final decision."

Though the GNH option is only available to those eligible to live in Spelman (and thus no underclassmen), Emily writes that "it's a major change in university policy that brings Princeton quite dramatically and unequivocally into the 21st century."

Photo from (and of) Emily Rutherford.

We are the change that we seek

2009-10-14T11:17:00.011-04:00

by Jillian Hewitt

In light of the National Equality March, I want to use this week’s post as a kind of hodgepodge of musings about gay rights. I was unable to go to the march in D.C., so I’ll be speaking to the movement more generally rather than the march itself. To anyone who would question what gay rights has to do with feminism, I would ask—what kind of feminist would I be to ignore the rights of 10% of the female population? What kind of person would I be to ignore the rights of 10% of the human population?

At the heart of the gay marriage debate is the division between first- and second-class citizens. I often hear the moderate wing of the “traditional marriage” camp—Republicans and Democrats alike, who do not wish to extend marriage rights to gays but who also do not wish to isolate the gay population—attempt to present themselves as tolerant. That is, they claim that they have nothing “against” gays, but they believe in “traditional marriage.” They say that they do not wish to discriminate against gays, but they believe in the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman. But it’s completely contradictory. It’s contradictory when Sarah Palin says it, it’s contradictory when Carrie Prejean says it, it’s contradictory when Barack Obama says it. By disallowing gay people from marrying, our government—and as a whole, our society—tells these individuals that their love is different from “our” love and, in the end, not as valuable as “our” love. This inherently, without exception, creates first- and second-class citizens. No matter what spin you put on it, it is both intolerant and discriminatory. It is just has abhorrent as laws that prevented interracial marriage, and I truly believe that in 40 years we will look back on this time and wonder what the hell our country was thinking. But how can we work towards this America—one in which the vast majority of the population sees discrimination based on sexuality as overtly and egregiously wrong—when ideologies of intolerance seem so entrenched?

This week for a class on public opinion I read Hearing the Other Side by Diana Mutz, which talks about how much exposure Americans get to those with views that oppose their own. The answer is: very little. In America we surround ourselves with those who are like us—those who are of a similar socioeconomic background, those of the same race, those of the same ideology, whatever. We are more willing to accept the discrimination of those who are unlike us than those of our own “group.” Not surprising. However, there is hope: those who are exposed to the rationales behind “opposing” groups and understand these rationales are more likely to extend the same rights to these groups as to their own. And of course, those who are more willing to “hear the other side” are more likely to be exposed to those rationales and experience the positive, tolerance-promoting benefits. This “perspective-taking ability,” as author Diana Mutz calls it, is teachable. If we are to create a tolerant culture, we need to start putting greater emphasis on teaching school-age children the skill of perspective-taking. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning has made amazing progress developing curriculums that can be implemented in schools to teach young children these invaluable skills. Being proactive with school-age children will help us cultivate a generation of “engaged life-long learners who are self-aware, caring and connected to others, and responsible in their decision-making.”

I’m not suggesting that teaching skills of perspective-taking and compassion to our kids would magically eradicate intolerance and create a new generation of completely open, wonderful human beings. But I am saying that we shouldn’t overlook evidence that tolerance is a skill that can be taught, and intolerance is not an inevitable worldview. It is only by systematically wearing away at the prejudices used to justify inequality that we can create sweeping and pervasive change. But in the mean time, projecting our outrage at these inequalities in passionate, active, and loving ways can help to bring more immediate relief from discrimination.

Egyptian University Bans Niqab in All-Female Areas

2009-10-13T19:01:00.006-04:00

by Shannon Togawa Mercer

An all male committee at Al-Azhar University in Egypt has banned use of the niqab (conservative, face-covering veil) by female students in women-only areas like male dormitories and all-female classes, according to CNN. Al-Azhar, the center of Sunni Islam and debatably the oldest university in the world, is an influential center of Islamic theology and scholarship.

The niqab is worn by a more conservative Muslim female population in Egypt, but it is a common choice for women in the Arabian Peninsula nations and Pakistan. CNN reports that many Egyptians interpret this as Al-Azhar’s attempt to counteract the “growing appeal of the strictest interpretations of Islam”. The niqab is not mandated by the Qur’an and its origins are still debated among scholars of Islam.

As expected, the Muslim Brotherhood, an opposition party, is protesting the ban, arguing that the niqab is being characterized as “something bad that needs to be suppressed”. A group representative told CNN that the wearing of the Niqab is a personal choice that the Sheikh of Al-Azhar has no business legislating.

This ban has drawn mixed reactions from all sides of the issue (female, male, students and scholars). Egyptian society is quite liberal compared to many of its neighboring Middle Eastern nations, but this move on the part of a traditionally more moderate institution hints at a deeper political agenda.

For more on women’s educational issues, check out a new not-for-profit group on campus that works to fund raise and plan for girl’s schools in developing countries. The “Circle of Women” (as this group is so aptly dubbed) has just “circled up” a Princeton chapter headed by the inimitable forces-of-nature Sandy Thomas ‘11 (sandyt@) and Janelle Morris ’11 (jmorris@). Princeton’s project is just getting off the ground with a proposed location in India and several collaboration possibilities on the table. Harvard’s chapter has already successfully established a girl’s school in Afghanistan. For more information meetings are every Tuesday at 9 pm in Campus Club or visit www.circleofwomen.org.

Image from CharlesFred's flickr.

Actually, we call them "women's colleges"

2009-10-13T11:35:00.002-04:00

by Molly Borowitz

So. I go to Cambridge now.

Actually, it feels a lot like Princeton—a quiet academic backwater, a quirky town built up around a prestigious university, just a short hop from a bustling cultural center. Except—oh wait—I’m a grad student. And I’m in England. And I live in an all-women’s college.

In the 1860s, after more than 650 years of existence, the University of Cambridge finally decided (albeit grudgingly) to admit women into its ranks. Unsurprisingly, progress was slow: the foundations of the first women’s colleges, Girton (1869) and Newnham (my college, 1872), enabled women to attend university lectures—at the lecturer’s discretion, of course—but they weren’t awarded degrees in recognition of their studies until 1947.

Almost all of Cambridge’s colleges went co-ed during the 1970s (although there were a few holdouts—for instance, Peterhouse, which resisted until 1985, and whose male residents processed through the streets dressed in black on the day that women finally entered the college). King’s, Clare, and Churchill were the first to admit women, in 1972. Girton admitted its first male residents in 1977. Oxford, too, surrendered to the tide of mixed education; in 2007, the last of Oxford’s women’s colleges admitted men. But Newnham? Not a chance. As of today, Cambridge is the only university in the United Kingdom with colleges that do not admit men.

Call me a crappy feminist, but I was not thrilled to have been assigned to a women’s college. However, after two weeks here, I am forced to admit that I like it. Newnham is an incredible historical force—alumnae include Rosalind Franklin, Jane Goodall, Sylvia Plath, Emma Thompson, and Germaine Greer—and also a breathtakingly beautiful space. When you gather in the period rooms or stand in the sunken rose garden, you can picture young women in nineteenth-century dress reading diligently from dusty volumes, living quietly in an ivory tower, a little oasis in the midst of the odd fraternal-but-solemn, academic-gown-wearing Cambridge atmosphere. The isolation must have been complete: Newnham boasts one of the most extensive college libraries at the University, mostly because the men’s colleges didn’t want to share their books with the female students.

These days, of course, living here doesn’t preclude you from interacting with men. I see them in all my lectures and seminars, at various social events, and often in my own house (because most of my housemates have boyfriends). There are male friends and visitors all over the place—in the library, on the grounds, in the dining hall—and, as best I can tell, they feel completely comfortable here. The concept of an all-women’s college under the aegis of a mixed university doesn’t seem to strike Cantabrigians as incongruous, nor do they regard it as outdated or somehow inferior.

Of course, there is the occasional sexist joke. Amongst the undergraduates, Newnham is affectionately known as the “Virgin Mega-Store,” and it’s commonly held that during early-morning fire drills there are as many men as women standing outside the dorms, often wrapped in pink dressing-gowns or girls’ overcoats. But on the flipside, women reign supreme here. All the buildings are named after women, the administrative staff is comprised of women, all the resident Tutors and Fellows are women, the Principal and all the College authorities are women, and so forth. (Of course, there are male employees and tutors, but they constitute a very small minority, and women occupy all the highest positions.)

Obviously, as a young feminist, I like to see women empowered. It is objectively cool to live in a place where everyone you are expected to respect, admire, or emulate is a woman. And Newnham is beautiful, warm, and welcoming. I am very happy here. However, I still think Cambridge’s women’s colleges present a problem for women’s equality in the university. As long as there are spaces reserved exclusively for women, it will remain possible for us to be diverted into a separate sphere of success. Or perhaps, to put it another way, the women’s colleges create an alternate stage upon which Cambridge women can be recognized and acclaimed for their successes (e.g., women scholars get buildings named after them at Newnham, New Hall, or Lucy Cavendish, rather than on the University grounds at large). And as long as women’s colleges exist, it will be possible for the strong and brilliant female scholars, teachers, and leaders here to be set up as role models exclusively for Cambridge’s female students, rather than for all Cantabrigians. I don’t think Newnham will be admitting men any time soon, but until that time I wonder whether it will be possible for its residents and alumnae to move beyond the legacy of “Cambridge’s women” in order to contribute to that of Cambridge itself.

How exactly do we use those images of aborted fetuses?

2009-10-13T09:17:00.001-04:00

by Gracie Remington

The New York Times' Lens blog has an interesting and unsettling piece on the production of images of aborted fetuses, featuring an interview with Monica Migliorino Miller, a theology professor at Madonna University and the director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, who has been salvaging discarded fetuses and photographing them since 1988. Initially motivated by journalistic ideals ("We felt it was very important to make a record of the reality of abortion"), she has adapted her ideas of what is appropriate for use in the anti-abortion movement over time, and no longer believes that images featuring blood or organs are acceptable; additionally, she argues against the use of graphic images when attempting to involve children in the anti-abortion movement.

The article features interesting commentary from leaders on both sides of the abortion issue, and provides valuable insight into the various principles at work in the visual battle over a woman's right to an abortion. A highly recommended read.

The legal consequences of fetal personhood

2009-10-12T22:09:00.002-04:00

by Thomas Dollar

In the ongoing war against women’s reproductive freedoms, the religious organization PersonhoodUSA has been pushing for state referenda on Personhood Amendments. These initiatives would define legal personhood under a state’s constitution as beginning at the moment an egg is fertilized. This would, of course, criminalize abortion, as well as methods of birth control that may interfere with a fertilized egg (like the morning-after pill, and perhaps even the regular Pill). Seventy-three percent of Colorado voters rejected one of these amendments last fall, but PersonhoodUSA is pushing on to get another on the ballot in Florida in 2010.

This proposed amendment reads: “The words ‘person’ and ‘natural person’ apply to all human beings, irrespective of age,…from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.”

Under this amendment, Florida could make no legal distinction between a one-celled zygote and anyone else. (Some of our more science-minded readers might point out that “the beginning of biological development” of any human being occurred with the rise of the first cell, between 3 and 3.3 billion years ago. This is correct; however for now I will accept fertilization as the legal definition.)

Redefining legal personhood to include the unborn is a radical change in policy that goes beyond the mere prohibition of abortion: as Justice Blackmun observed in Roe v. Wade (see §IX, A), never in the United States has “person” been defined to mean anything other than a born human—even when abortion was criminalized generally. This redefinition (if it is taken seriously as public policy) will inevitably lead to some sticky—and unintended—legal consequences.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution states that “No State shall…deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The Fourteenth Amendment means that the state may not treat Person A differently from Person B, and guarantees all persons the rights and protections that are necessary to a concept of “ordered liberty.” If a fetus or embryo is a person, then it must also be guaranteed equal protection of the laws and all the same rights and protections.

The US Constitution also mandates a decennial census for the purposes of apportioning Representatives, to be based on “the whole number of persons in each state...” This “whole number of persons” must also include the unborn, which leads to a major logistical problem. Pregnancy does not begin until a blastocyst implants in the uterine wall—about seven days after fertilization. Between 40 and 80% of blastocysts never implant, never result in a pregnancy, and are secreted. There is no way of knowing (apart from installing microscopic cameras in every woman’s uterus) whether an egg has been fertilized until after implantation has occurred, and the hormonal signs of pregnancy can be detected. Under the Personhood Amendments, there are now thousands (millions? tens of millions?) of legal persons out there who may or may not exist. This will make life very difficult for Census takers, who will now have to count Schrödinger’s persons, in addition to the whole number of born persons.

And it will make life more difficult still for women. Florida’s penal code (§782.07 (3)) states that: “A person who causes the death of any person under the age of 18 by culpable negligence…commits aggravated manslaughter of a child, a felony of the first degree…” This is punishable by up to 30 years in prison (§775.082 (b)).

“Neglect of a child” is defined as: “ A caregiver's failure or omission to provide a child with the care, supervision, and services necessary to maintain the child's physical and mental health, including, but not limited to, food, nutrition, clothing, shelter, supervision, medicine, and medical services that a prudent person would consider essential for the well-being of the child.” (§827.03 (3)(a)(1)).

Therefore, any woman who may be carrying a fertilized egg (which is to say, any ovulating, sexually active woman) must do everything that “a prudent person would consider essential” to maintain that person’s health. Hormonal contraceptives, needless to say, are prima facie evidence of criminal intent. If her lack of care results in the death of the child, she faces up to 30 years in prison for aggravated manslaughter.

Gathering evidence of this manslaughter will be difficult, as no one can be quite sure when these persons exist. The state could subpoena women’s menstrual blood, inspect the endometria for evidence of an ovum, and verify that it was fertilized. An expensive and cumbersome process to be sure, but state officials would have to do it: if they didn’t, they would risk being sued for failure to enforce equal protection of Florida’s laws.

By granting the embryo equal protection of the laws, the state would be forced to deny the same to the woman—who is, after all, also a person under the Constitution. A man’s body would not be subject to the same scrutiny, nor would the body of a pre-pubescent girl or post-menopausal woman. By creating a new class of legal persons (embryos and fetuses), an existing class of persons (fertile women) would invariably be singled out for unequal treatment by the law. An unborn organism’s survival depends entirely and uniquely upon the sustained metabolic processes of another—a symbiotic relationship that can never be an equal one. Making the unborn a legal person sets the Equal Protection Clause on a collision course with itself: it forces the Constitution to balance two incompatible goods, until—like Isaac Asimov’s robots—it shuts itself down completely.

If the legal consequences of these Personhood Amendments seem absurd or grotesque, it is because nobody intends that they be interpreted to mean what they say. PersonhoodUSA has no desire to subpoena women’s menstrual blood or count embryos in the Census—only to wear away at women’s reproductive rights by forcing endless litigation. But it is what the amendments mean. Next November, Florida voters will have a choice: either a fetus/embryo has all the protections and guarantees of legal personhood, or a woman does. It is not possible to have both.

Reflections on the National March for Equality

2009-10-12T15:07:00.002-04:00

by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux

Yesterday, I was one of the 70 Princeton students who traveled to Washington, D.C. for the National March for Equality. We boarded a bus (or, in my case, a rental car) at 6 am and drove three hours, jittery with coffee and adrenaline. I hadn't been to a march since 2005, when I marched in Washington for the end of the war in Iraq, but I remember that day being filled with quiet resignation - we knew, even as we filled the streets, that the war wasn't going to end. Yesterday was different. Surrounded by my classmates and people of all ages, genders, races, sexualities, and religions, I was filled with hope. It was a day of inspiration and joy - I have these days all too rarely, and I was incredibly grateful to spend it surrounded by people I loved, doing something that I loved.

I wrote about the march on Care2.com, and Emily Rutherford, one of the people who made it possible for so many Princeton students to go to Washington, wrote about it for Campus Progress. I'm not going to repeat my sentiments or Emily's; rather, I'd encourage you to read both posts. If you went to the march, we'd love to hear your reflections in the comment section, and even if you didn't, write about your thoughts. I think that yesterday was a crucial day for activists of our generation - let's keep the conversation and the energy going.

"Sex and the Soul": Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance and Religion on College Campuses

2009-10-12T12:02:00.004-04:00

How should religious beliefs define sexual practices? What are the intersections between religious life and the "hookup culture"? How do college students deal with religion and their sex lives?

If you're interested in any of these questions, come hear Donna Freitas speak! Donna Freitas is a professor at Boston University whose book, Sex and the Soul, is based on hundreds of interviews with college students across the country. Freitas depicts college students' often painful struggle with their sexuality with insight and compassion, and is not interested in denouncing or exalting this sexual culture, but rather understanding the forces behind it. Freitas' analysis of the conflict between students' religious beliefs and perceived sexual norms is relevant to students of many different faiths and backgrounds, and provides a warm and fascinating exploration of how students can truly reconcile their religion with their sexual desires. The event is part of the Let's Talk Sex "Conversations About Sex" fall speaker series.

Donna will be speaking at 7:30 pm on Tuesday, October 13, in McCosh 46 (note: this is a change from the information on the poster). Interested students can attend an informal dinner beforehand in the Mathey Private Dining Room with Donna at 6 pm. Meal passes will be available for upperclassmen without meal plans. To RSVP for the dinner, contact Amelia at ajthomso@ or Cristina at cstanoje@.

Ralph Lauren's photoshop flop

2009-10-12T11:43:00.002-04:00

by Jordan Kisner

Well, Polo Ralph Lauren has finally dared to go where no clothing company has gone before: they crossed the photoshop line between eerie perfection and the horrifyingly uncanny. In a recent campaign for their Blue Label, their photo of model Filippa Hamilton was photoshopped so carelessly that Hamilton, who is quite thin but absolutely proportionate, appears to be the victim of some cruel stretching machine. It would appear as though everything from her ribcage downward belongs to a thinner, shorter woman. As one reader on Jezebel pointed out, her pelvis is smaller than her head.

Polo Ralph Lauren, no doubt hoping to avoid a reputation as a company that creates an unhealthy body standard for women, issued this apology: "For over 42 years we have built a brand based on quality and integrity. After further investigation, we have learned that we are responsible for the poor imaging and retouching that resulted in a very distorted image of a woman's body. We have addressed the problem and going forward will take every precaution to ensure that the caliber of our artwork represents our brand appropriately."

While one might give Ralph Lauren a modicum of credit for going through the motions of an apology, this statement is pretty pathetic. Let's not forget that every image Ralph Lauren produces has been "distorted"-- this distortion was simply more obvious. Instead of addressing the way this image loudly calls attention to the ethical complications and social irresponsibility of creating and endorsing an standard of beauty that requires that every (already beautiful) face and body must be altered, they chose instead to plug the "quality and integrity" of their brand. Instead of assuring their customers that they respect and admire the female form and will ensure no further distortions of it, they tell us that they'll take precautions to "ensure that the caliber of our artwork represents our brand appropriately."

Does anyone hear a real apology in there?

As consumers, we should demand more from companies like Polo Ralph Lauren-- a more ethical approach to the representation of the female body, and, if nothing else, a more serious regard for the feelings and intellect of their consumer.

Birthers, babies and the politics of reproduction

2009-10-10T21:11:00.005-04:00

by Christopher Moses

Recent and ongoing right-wing debates about Barack Obama’s birth—and in turn his ability to serve as President—belie a larger, darker fear about women’s rights and gender equity.

Race plays a definitive role, too. Though Obama himself has, I believe, made the brilliant, categorical decision to deny race as a factor in current political debates (the ‘I was black before I was elected’ line). With him we’ve all flip-flopped: liberals now espouse a color-blind, color-doesn’t-matter politics, while the right sees a conspiratorial rainbow overshadowing their white world. With Obama unwilling to engage, they either get cut off at the race-baiting pass, or end up saying things so absurdly racist that the President can just wink and nod.

This profound and consequential shift in debates about race deserves much more attention and analysis. But for now, a post more squarely about gender—though still with a tawny tinge.

Let the Birthers speak for themselves:

[Obama’s] mother perhaps believed color was not an issue in human relations. But her influence on him evaporated when she sent him back to Hawaii, and as a 10 year old, the feelings of abandonment festered. As nature abhors a vacuum, so does the soul. A race agitating, communist Frank Marshall Davis took this young psychologically impressionable boy and befriended him… Davis built up the young Obama’s sense of “Black Pride,” until he became more black than the 50% white of his birth.

However fascinating this analysis of racial ratios and darky disfigurement may be (aren’t these usually nature-over-nurture folks?)—instead the central issue here involves the power of patriarchy.

The whiteness of Obama’s mother couldn’t cut it, couldn’t persevere within this impressionable young man. The ever-greater power of personhood inherited from his father magnetized this racial rage until he became less white, less human, and, above all, less American. Back to the Congo—or woops, I meant Kenya—did the blackening boy go. (Geography gets hard with Africa one big continent of a mess of brutal barbarity and backwards savagery.)

How could a mother ever give to her son the things of greatest importance (race, rights, what have you?) Yet for all their faults, the Founders were reacting fiercely against an aristocratic culture of lineal privilege and patriarchal power. Birth meant a fresh start, not a bonded, stagnant status (except for slaves, but that’s another story). For people just as for the new nation, each day meant a call to make the world anew. Such was the rage of republican motherhood and women’s importance for raising a country of caring citizens.

American Democracy and the Constitutional provisions for citizenship undercut patrilineal decent. So the Birthers really are a self-contradictory and screwed up mess: ‘Dedicated to the rebirth of our Constitutional Republic,’ they might need to allow mothers a bit more wherewithal. (At least they’re on track with race and slavery.)

Giving birth and giving citizenship make women extremely powerful and, in turn, a rather dangerous threat . Birther absurdism may be just that, but as with the broader right-wing assault against reproductive rights, end-of-life care and individual freedom—their desire to reinstate a patriarchal theocracy—we need to keep fighting for the revolutionary promise of our Founding Fathers—and Founding Mothers. (Minus the slavery.)

Stay at home moms

2009-10-09T12:42:00.002-04:00

by Beth Zak-Cohen

Growing up in a city, the phrase “stay-at-home mom” brings to my mind suburbs , white picket fences, soccer practices, and cupcakes. That’s why I was surprised to see a new study by the Pew Research Center. Stay-at-home moms today, it concludes, are more likely to be younger, poorer, Hispanic, and foreign born. More likely simply means that more stay at home moms fit this description now than ever before. Another interesting fact from the article is that 12.3% of moms who stay at home were below poverty level, compared to 5.1% of their counterparts. This begs the question: why are these mothers staying at home, when they could be working and, possibly, bringing their family above the poverty line? I think one major reason is probably lack of childcare. Many areas, especially rural ones, do not provide public daycare or nursery care and babysitters are expensive. Kids cannot be left alone, so what’s the alternative?

I don’t want to assume that these stay at home moms aren’t there by choice. But, according to the study, only 3 out of 10 say family responsibilities are the reason they don’t work so what’s the explanation for the other 7 of 10?

46% of stay at home moms had not attended college. Maybe this contributes to mothers staying at home. With the economy how it is right now, college degrees are becoming more important in finding a job with decent benefits and hours. When given the choice between a minimum wage job with long hours and spending time with my kids, I know which I’d choose. With the 34% of stay at home moms being Hispanic or foreign born it’s also possible that either immigration status or racial prejudice keep these below-poverty line mothers out of the workforce.

The New York Times quotes a NYU professor who offers an alternative from the theory that sprang to my mind. Stay at home moms, he claims, are younger, so they’re probably still attending school. This would make them non-working, although they’d presumably be above the poverty line, as they can afford college.

In some ways this study can be seen as positive for feminists. Upper income moms are more likely to work and lower income moms more likely to stay home, than ever before. This suggests that neither income nor societal expectations are affecting women’s decisions about how to raise their children. But should that be a personal choice? If that personal choice affects your ability to feed or clothe (or for upper class working moms, to see and really be a part of the life of) your children, maybe you should have second thoughts.

The demographic of the stay at home mother is changing in a a way that those 1950s sitcoms could never have imagined. It certainly shows that are society is changing, becoming one where women have more choices than ever before. However, by providing childcare and jobs to these women, we could make sure they all have real choice as to how to spend their days and how to raise their children.

Gay book prize accused of discrimination

2009-10-08T10:19:00.001-04:00

by Kaite Welsh

As most of the literary world gears up for the Booker prize, new guidelines for another prestigious award are causing controversy. The Lambda Literary Award is presented every year to an author whose book deals with LGBT issues and characters. Whilst in previous years authors of any sexual orientation were allowed to enter, now submissions for the award, which open on Thursday, are restricted to “LGBT writers who use their work to explore LGBT lives”.

The move has divided readers of all sexualities. For a large number of gay readers, objections to the new guidelines are seen as an issue of entitlement, of straight writers impinging on one of the few spaces open to gay and trans authors. These authors are seen to be appropriating gay culture and issues from a position of heterosexual privilege, which would negate the veracity of their writing.

Katherine V Forrest, Interim Trustee of the LLF and herself an openly lesbian author of several classic science fiction novels, says that the decision was taken partly out of “consideration [of] the despair of our own writers when a heterosexual writer, who has written a fine book about us, wins a Lambda Award, when one or more of our own LGBT writers may have as a Finalist a book that may be the only chance in a career at a Lambda Literary Award.”

Regardless of the ethics of the award’s new guidelines, it cannot be disputed that the market works against writers who identify themselves as gay, bi or transgender, and the effect of the current economic climate on independent publishers and booksellers has hit the queer literary community hard.

So when an award designed to promote LGBT experiences is won by a straight author, it is natural for the gay and trans communities to feel slighted – as though their experience wasn’t good enough, was only valid when filtered through the perspective of someone who may have observed these issues but has never lived them.

But there is another problem that Forrest does not address – that of authors who are reluctant to reveal their sexual or gender orientation, even if it means losing the opportunity to have their work lauded by their own community. According to the new rules, by submitting your novel for the award, you are effectively outing yourself and many writers, regardless of their subject matter, are not ready or able to take that step.

Catherynne Valente, whose work has twice been shortlisted for the rival Spectrum award, says that she has “serious reservations about an award committee becoming an arbiter of what is and is not LGBTQ. Many authors are not out and their experience is no less valid.” She herself identifies as bisexual but admits that she in the past she has not “always felt comfortable disclosing my sexuality in professional circles".

Awards like Lambda are necessary not only for the writing community, but for disadvantaged groups as a whole. They tell people that their experiences are not only worth writing about, but worth offering prizes over. They up the standard of writing, and award authors who present marginalised people in a positive light. Whilst restrictions on the entrants in order to preserve a safe space for gay writers makes sense, the LLF would do well to consider the sections of the LGBT community that they are inadvertently excluding.

How women deal with depression during pregnancy

2009-10-07T12:50:00.002-04:00

by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux

I was surprised and pleased to see this article in the NYT yesterday, discussing the unspoken taboos surrounding depression during pregnancy. I actually wrote a paper on pregnancy advice books last semester, focusing specifically on the language that the books used to advise pregnant women on putting substances (medication, alcohol, and food) into their bodies, and although post-partum depression was fairly extensively covered (thanks, perhaps, to Tom Cruise and Brooke Shields), there was barely a mention of what women should do if they were taking anti-depressants before becoming pregnant, or if they became depressed during pregnancy. There is such a proscriptive language surrounding what pregnant women should ingest during pregnancy that this isn't surprising - most pregnancy advice writers would have women forget about their own bodies entirely, and concentrate on what would most nourish the fetus. There is a gaping absence of any advice about what expectant mothers should do for themselves.

The problem is that if there is any chance of danger to the fetus because of a particular medication, like anti-depressants or even asthma medication, most people advise pregnant women to refrain, "for the good of the baby." The idea that it might be more important for the mother to be happy and healthy rarely enters into the picture, which is why anti-depressants seem unfeasible to most pregnant women. Disappointingly, the NYT did not really interrogate the social taboos of pregnancy (something I've written about, particularly with respect to alcohol, several times on this blog), but they did begin with a telling story from a mother-to-be who eloquently describes the dilemma that pregnant women face.

“Every single thing you put in your body when you’re pregnant, you wonder, ‘Oh, my God, am I growing my baby an extra finger?’ ” Sherean Malekzadeh Allen said. “I was worried that I would hurt the baby if I took the pills, and I was worried I would hurt the baby if I didn’t.”

There have been connections between heart defects, fetal malformations, and pulmonary hypertension in babies and anti-depressant use in pregnant mothers. But the risks surrounding anti-depressants are relatively low. The APA and ACOG both agree that therapy should be the first recourse for pregnant women suffering from depression, but also recommend that decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis. Their research is full of caveats, and I'm not sure how much it will do to shatter some of the paralyzing guilt that is placed on pregnant women who might be in need of anti-depressants, even though it might actually be more harmful to the fetus to refrain from taking them. And indeed, according to the NYT, "studies have linked depression during pregnancy to premature births, growth changes, and irritability and inattention in the baby after birth."

The bottom line is that undertreatment is the main issue. “By the time I get to hear about somebody’s perinatal depression,” said Dr. Shari I. Lusskin, director of reproductive psychiatry at N.Y.U. Langone Medical Center, “it’s usually worse than what can be treated with psychotherapy alone, because women go out of their way not to complain; they don’t want to be put on medication, and they feel guilty."

I can attest from my extensive reading of pregnancy advice literature that the guilt placed on pregnant women is pervasive and powerful; I always think of a line from What To Expect When You're Expecting where the author instructs women to, "as they lift fork to mouth," to think, "is this a bite that will benefit my child?" Where are the pregnancy books telling women to do what they need to do to have a happy, healthy pregnancy? Where are the acknowledgments that maternal and fetal health are intimately connected? This article is a good first step, but we need far more information - and far less proscriptive rhetoric - before pregnant women will be able to make healthy decisions for themselves, guilt-free.

Guinea citizens raped violently during political protest

2009-10-07T10:24:00.003-04:00

by Jillian Hewitt

On Monday, the NY Times ran an article documenting the horrors of sexual violence in Guinea. I commend Adam Nossiter, the author, for writing the piece and the Times for running it on the front page; it is only with the help of the national news media that these atrocities can be exposed for what they are.

This is what happened: in the wake of a coup, citizens protested in a stadium. The demonstration was brutally crushed, and in its wake, witnesses are (and anonymously) coming forward about the use of rape and violence as political weapons.

Almost 50,000 people assembled to protest the actions of the leader of the military junta, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara. According to human rights organizations, at least 157 people were killed by government forces. But beyond that, witnesses have come forward, some with photographs taken with their cell phones, to describe the systematic use of rape as a weapon of violence, shame, and humiliation. This is a shame so penetrating that “victims are reluctant to speak, and local doctors refuse to do so.” It is astonishing to think that, had it not been for the courage of the witnesses who spoke out, these systematic rapes might never have been publicized.

Nossiter goes on to explain that “Rape is a fairly common tool of military repression in Africa, but large-scale violence against women has not been a previous government tactic here.” Events like these force us to consider how much degradation and human abuse is simply never covered in the media. But it’s when these abuses happen day in and day out for years on end that they become obsolete to the news media—it is a story with no ending, an article with no narrative. Not to mention the difficulty of writing a story about rape as a weapon of war when the women who are abused are too mortified to speak out.

International adoptions fuel "family planning" kidnappings

2009-10-05T16:17:00.004-04:00

by Laura Smith-Gary

In late September, Chinese families told reporters from the Los Angeles Times that their babies have been stolen from them by "family planning" officials and given -- or perhaps more correctly, "laundered" -- to American adoptive couples. According to these families, the officials wield China's family planning policies as weapons, financially coercing and physically forcing Chinese parents to give up their children. The infants are then labeled “abandoned” and put up for international adoption, and the officials collect a substantial cut of the $3,000 in fees adoptive parents pay. These stories are supported by an investigation by the state-owned Southern Metropolis News, which found that at least 80 baby girls from the Guizhou province had been seized from their parents when the families couldn't pay exorbitant fines for having more than two children. The girls were given in transnational adoptions to American and European parents. The adoption fees, the News reported, were split between orphanages and local officials.

The demand for Chinese babies by American and other Western parents is fueling these outrageous kidnappings.* Many of those consulted by the Times point out that were foreign citizens not ready and willing to pay high fees for healthy Chinese babies -- and happy to accept that the infant they want to take home has been abandoned by its (usually her) parents -- it is inconceivable that family planning officials would go beyond their legal authority and confiscate children to be raised at the expense of the state. One of the cruel ironies of the situation is that the demand by Americans to adopt Chinese babies, especially Chinese girls, comes largely from the idea that Chinese girls are regularly abandoned by their parents and face a grim future if they are not adopted by foreign families. As one adoptive mother explained, "When we adopted in 2006, we were fed the same stories, that there were millions of unwanted girls in China, that they would be left on the street to die if we didn't help."

These stories are not without a basis in reality. In many parts of China, daughters are less valued than sons. Sons provide an economic safety net for their parents, give them honor and social standing, and customarily care for the souls of their ancestors. Daughters give no such benefits, and can be seen as a burden rather than an asset. Chinese limits on childbearing can also mean having a girl prevents the birth of a son -- in some provinces this is considered so serious that a couple who have a daughter as their first child are permitted to have a second in the hope of getting a boy. At times, Chinese families’ preference for sons leads to sex-selective abortion; in the most extreme cases a family desperate for a son may abandon a female infant who would fill their legally allowed number of children.

This situation is a bitter example of the tangle of problems Americans and other Westerners can inadvertently generate when attempting to change structural and cultural sexism in other societies, even in small ways. Adopting an unwanted female infant seems to be a private, personal way to affect a small amount of change, and there is little doubt that in many cases truly abandoned and subsequently transnationally adopted girls benefit greatly from the love, comfort, and opportunities their lives with their adopted family afford them. Understanding the full ramifications of Western interference, however, is tricky and must take into account the cultural structures and institutions playing a role in the layers of sexism in a country. China's family planning laws are an example of an institution that is fundamentally about controlling women's reproduction, and taken in the context of son-preferencing Chinese culture, they provides pressure that lead to some girls being aborted, neglected, and abandoned. It seems to be a fundamentally sexist law, and it also seems that mitigating its effects -- for instance, by adopting one of the unwanted female infants -- would be a purely good act.

While attempting to work against institutionalized sexism, though, we must be aware that we may be feeding into other systems of oppression, like structural racism, poverty, and the exploitation of developing countries by developed countries. China's family planning laws and adoption laws exist in a number of systems besides that of gender, and must also be considered both in the context of rural poverty and disenfranchisement within China and in the context of wealth flowing between Western individuals and Chinese institutions. Family planning laws in China not only limit the legal number of children a family can have and allow forced abortions, sterilizations, and insertion of IUDs, they allow officials to levy steep fines to families found to be in violation of the restrictions on family size. This gives officials economic power as well as power over reproduction. The lack of legal redress available to those in rural villages also means that officials can exceed their legal authority and confiscate children without much fear of discipline. As one Chinese scholar told the LA Times, family planning officials are more powerful, and more feared, than the Ministry of Public Security.

The insertion of Western wealth into such a situation, even if done with the purest of intentions, has resulted in rampant corruption -- and now, kidnappings. Transnational adoption has fostered a system in which poor, powerless families from non-white, "third world" nations are exploited to meet the desires of white Americans -- even if that desire is to “rescue” a baby girl. Children become a commodity and an export, marketed to relatively wealthy Americans as exotic accessories, as demure and delicate "China dolls", or (and) as discarded infants in need of rescue from an oppressive patriarchal regime.** The discrimination girls face in China is extremely real, and it has also become part of the marketing for the adoption of Chinese infants. Upon reading this article I was ashamed to realize how I'd been thinking of Chinese parents who loved and valued daughters as the exception rather than the rule -- an absurd supposition stemming from my own racism and "othering" of Chinese families.

It is evident from the LA Times article that the interviewed adoptive parents love their children, also that they feel their lifestyle and the fact that they are "rescuers" entitles them to the children. One mother says she worries her daughter was stolen, and that though she would never consider returning her even if that was the case, she would “maybe send a picture.” While I can’t imagine having to contemplate the idea that your beloved child was kidnapped and functionally sold to you, but this struck me as a continuation of the racism-tinged idea that Chinese parents don’t really care about their daughters as American parents do -- the girl’s adoptive mother doesn’t seem to contemplate the fact that if their daughter was taken from them by force, six years later her birth parents are probably still in agony. The narrative (again, the not-unsubstantiated narrative) that some Chinese families consider girls dispensable is believed even if there is evidence that in this particular case it is not true. The idea that these girls are better off in America no matter how they got here lingers unpleasantly in the background. Indeed, they would probably have fewer opportunities as women growing up in China than they will growing up in America, and the fact that such a disparity of opportunity for female children exists is not something to be dismissed lightly. However, we should be extremely wary of using structural sexism in another country to justify any of our own racist beliefs about that culture (ie "Chinese people are barbaric, they leave their daughters on the streets to die"), and should be extraordinarily cautious about allowing our understanding of sexism in some culture to justify our exploitation of that country's people. In our naivete and willful ignorance, it seems we have been doing just that, feeding into a system that hurts girls and hurts families.

While I've moved this into the abstract a bit, I don't want to again make the mistake of forgetting that there are real families in pain, all individuals and none of them experiencing the loss of their child in exactly the same way. Concluding their article, the LA Times quotes a woman whose daughter was kidnapped by a "family planning" official and (the mother was told) adopted by Americans. The mother says that given the opportunity she wouldn’t try to force her daughter to come back to China, since the Americanized girl wouldn't want to live in a "poor village." Then she says, "But we'd like to know where she is. We'd like to see a picture. And we'd like her to know that we miss her and that we didn't throw her away."

*A few months ago I discussed a New York Times article reporting that family planning laws combined with some Chinese families’ desperation for sons had also led to a spate of young boys being kidnapped from urban areas and sold in rural provinces. There is more than one kind of trafficking of children happening in China, domestically and internationally, and though they have elements in common that should be noted, they are all subject to different sorts of pressures and motivations.

**This isn't only true of Chinese transnational adoptions -- it has been known for years, for instance, that Guatemalan children have been kidnapped to launder to American couples in adoption.

Hat tip, Resist Racism.

A few more resources: For more on transnational and transracial adoption, Racialicious has a good discussion going on here, which touches on the commodification of children and the narrative of abandoned Chinese girls covering dubious adoption practices -- I highly recommend reading the article and the comments, and following the links they give.

David M. Smolin's extremely informative paper for the 2005 Wayne Law Review titled "Child Laundering: How the Intercountry Adoption System Legitimizes and Incentivizes the Practices of Buying, Trafficking, Kidnapping, and Stealing Children" is definitely worth reading; it doesn't deal specifically with China but delves into the roots of corruption and exploitation in transnational adoption systems.

In 2002’s Law and Society Review, Kay Johnson writes “Politics of international and domestic adoption in China,” a fascinating analysis of hows and whys of China’s thriving international adoption and stuttering domestic adoption businesses.

Roller derby women in "Whip It!"

2009-10-05T10:02:00.002-04:00

by Jordan Kisner

This week, women's roller derby is dominating the box offices in Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, Whip It. Whip It stars Ellen Page (of Juno fame) as a teenage girl who secretly joins a roller derby team in order to escape from the monotony of her life in a small Texas town. The film is ably directed by Barrymore, who is also featured as one of Page's teammates, and Kristin Wiig of SNL and Alia Shawkat (the memorable Maeby Funke from Arrested Development) are just two highlights of a truly awesome female cast.

There are two elements of Whip It that make it worth seeing, especially for feminists. The first is the introduction it provides to the world of roller derby, one of the most intense contact sports available to women and one of the most interesting integrations of feminine and masculine gender roles in one place. These women are tough: shoving each other into railings, tripping each other and throwing elbows, all while careening around a track on eight wheels apiece. These women are muscular, aggressive, and tattooed. At the same time, they wear minidresses and fishnets to play, along with heavy, punk-infused makeup. They play as dirty as the worst hockey teams, but in push-up bras. While the movie suggests that the almost campily feminized apparel is just for show, it shows us that the physical power engendered in the women who play the sport proves empowering for them personally: Ellen Page's character, Bliss, doesn't dress or style herself differently after she picks up the sport, but she does become more inclined to stand up for herself, cheerfully hip-checking a high-school bully over a railing.

The other strong point of Whip It is the fraught relationship between Bliss and her mother. Bliss' mother, played with sensitivity and vulnerability by Marcia Gay Harden, has a vision of the kind of life Bliss will have, one that involves a long line of beauty pageants and an advantageous marriage. In essence, she is the kind of Texan mother that my own mother had: traditional and well-meaning, if somewhat unable to creatively imagine her daughter's potential. She wants the best possible future for her daughter, only Bliss' personality and goals are at odds with her mother's vision. The most interesting, provocative moments of the film are the scenes between Harden and Page; their loving, if frustrated, attempts to reconcile their ideas about the kinds of goals young women should have are so believable and sweet that many if not most women will recognize something of themselves and their mother (or perhaps their generation and the previous one) in their relationship.

All in all? 4 out of 5 stars, a fun feminist flick for your weekend.

Thoughts on my experience as a male feminist

2009-10-05T08:32:00.001-04:00

by Josh Franklin

Partially in reaction to the controversy at Feministe over EW blogger Tom Dollar's post titled "Remember the Men", and partially in reaction to my experience this year facilitating discussions about sexual assault after Sex on a Saturday Night, I wanted to write here about male involvement in feminist spaces. I realize that there is a lot that I don't understand about gender, and this is not a comprehensive critical account of male participation in discussions about gender. Rather, I want to share some thoughts and provide an additional perspective.

One of the most troubling things that I have noticed during my participation in discussions about sexual assault is the way in which male survivors are discussed. It seems to me that sometimes there is some difficulty appreciating individuality in discussions where understanding the meanings and effects of cultural categories--gender, sexual orientation, race, and so forth--are crucial. I think that there are often subtle but unfortunate conflations. The idea that women are more likely to be survivors is somehow transformed into the myth that men cannot be survivors or that there are virtually no male survivors. The truth is that, according to RAINN, 1 in 33 men is a survivor of sexual assault, which is 2.78 million men, a statistic that Tom referenced in his post.

How should we interpret this? It clearly doesn't mean that there is no power dynamic that privileges men in our society. It shouldn't be necessary to say this, but there is no single male experience: men have a wide range of experiences, determined in part by their race, class, sexual orientation, and so forth, but also by the idiosyncratic details of their lives. Just as we recognize the suffering that accompanies the sexual assault of female students at Princeton, despite their privileged status as Princeton students, we recognize the suffering of male survivors despite their male privilege. At the same time, the existence of male survivors doesn't excuse men in general for male power.

The essence of what I want to say is that although gendered structures of power affect our lives, they do not determine them. That is to say, patriarchy is a part of each of our lives, but it does not account fully for our experiences. A lot of the feminist discussions that I have participated in have emphasized that members of privileged groups are often not in a position to make fair judgments about social interactions, since they do not fully understand their privilege.

Personally, I feel that I have developed a tendency to suppress my emotions, telling myself that though I might think I am unhappy, I am too privileged to know what it means to be unhappy. I'm not sure whether this tendency is a feature of feminist discourse in general, or something specific to my experience. And maybe it's true that I'm too privileged to really know what it means to be unhappy. But I do know that I started this semester at Princeton with a lot of anxiety about eating, about my body, about my religious experience, and about my gender, which I had been dismissing for a while as illusions. I will write more about my experiences in the future, but for now I want to say only this: I find it very difficult to acknowledge my own suffering, maybe because I feel guilty for thinking that I suffer despite my privilege, which I accept as enormous. And this raises the question that I want to bring to EW, which is: how do we create spaces that allow men to accept their own difficulties without undermining the feminist project? Do we create men's spaces? If so, what should be men's roles in feminist spaces?

Women are almost half the workforce: why is this bad news?

2009-10-04T21:09:00.004-04:00

by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux

I just returned from my grandmother's 92nd birthday party, where I found myself trying to explain to her that yes, indeed she is a feminist (this, surprisingly, was not a hard sell), and ended up hearing some heartbreaking stories about her experiences as a teacher in the 1940s and 1950s, when it was still against the rules to smoke, drink or get married. Although she wasn't one of them, my grandmother had colleagues who were forced out of their jobs because they got pregnant, or even because there was a man who wanted their position, regardless of whether he was better qualified. She was paid something like $1,200 a year (when the average salary in 1950 was almost $3,000) and finally quit her job for 19 years after my aunt, her first daughter, was born.

I was thinking about all of this when I came across Lisa Belkin's article in today's NYT mag. Belkin had some good news, and some bad news. The good news? Women are almost half the workforce - the numbers are so close that they may actually be half the workforce as you read this. This seems to be a fairly significant accomplishment, considering that women were only 34.9 percent of the working population 40 years ago.

We joyfully begin uncorking the champagne, and then Belkin reveals the bad news: it turns out that this good news isn't really all that good. Why are women gaining their place in the workforce? Mostly because men are the ones who are suffering during the recession - 78 percent of the jobs lost were held by men. And it's not necessarily because women are being retained over their male colleagues - they're being kept on because women are cheap. And because they're concentrated in lower-paying industries like health care and education, where there have been fewer layoffs. And because, Belkin claims, women are more willing to settle for less. Belkin quotes Ellen Galinsky, president and co-founder of the Families and Work Institute, who says that "women might be seen as less resentful about taking a job with less money and authority, and they might also be less likely to bolt if something better comes along."

Ironically, it might be better if women were losing jobs at the same rate as men. That might prove some kind of parity. As it is, women are still earning 78 cents on average for every dollar earned by a man, but this breaks down differently state by state, and there are some places where it particularly sucks to be female. Wyoming, for example, where women earn 64 cents to a man's dollar.

So it's definitely not good news that women may be turning into the primary breadwinners, if they're still earning 20% less than the men who are losing their jobs. We can't recover from the recession quickly if this is the story behind the statistics - or if men are simply restored to their jobs. Pay equity is the only solution, something we hoped for in the wake of the Lilly Ledbetter Act earlier this year. But until we have that, let's not wave around these statistics to prove that women have finally broken the glass ceiling.

Women in the Military: Changing Standards in Australia and Elsewhere

2009-10-04T12:12:00.005-04:00

by Ayse Gursoy

On Thursday, TIME reported that the Defense Science and Technology Organization at Australia’s Wollongong University began examining physical standards for the military. This ongoing process will eventually require all branches of the Australian Defense Force (ADF) — not just the ninety-two percent currently open to women — to accept recruits purely on these physical standards and not on age or gender restrictions. The ADF has, up to now, claimed exemption to Australia’s 1984 Sex Discrimination Act and thus barred women from the remaining eight percent of military roles. Australia’s discussion of the role of women in the military complements similar discussions happening in the United States, especially in the context of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Currently, only a few nations allow women to serve in active combat roles. Israel, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Denmark, France, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Switzerland all permit women on the front. Some countries prohibit women in active infantry positions, such as the UK and the U.S., while allowing them to serve in support, artillery, or other key roles.

The involvement of women in the military is increasing. 220,000 of the two million soldiers (about eleven percent) who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are women. Admissions statistics for West Point reveal that seventeen percent of the Class of 2012 is female. According to The New York Times, women comprise only about six percent of the top military ranks. Ann E. Dunwoody became the first female four-star general, the highest rank in the U.S. military, in 2008. On September 22, 2009, Command Sgt. Maj. Teresa L. King was made commandant of the U.S. Army’s drill sergeant school in Fort Jackson. She is the first woman to run one of these schools, and will influence the training of every enlisted soldier. Sergeant Major King has affirmed her commitment to recruiting more qualified women as drill sergeants, and dismissed any suggestions that her success is due to her gender. When she looks in the mirror, she “see[s] a soldier”.

The changing nature of war makes defining “combat roles” extremely difficult. Urban warfare and counterinsurgency, namely the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, make every role a combat role. Whether a soldier is on a base, out on patrol, or in a checkpoint, s/he is at constant risk of being targeted by suicide bombers, IEDs, or other insurgents. In such dangerous situations, women have proved to be capable soldiers, and have become an essential part of the military. While the U.S. military currently bars women from entering combat branches and serving in support roles for these units, officers circumvent these restrictions due to necessity. Women can lead some male troops as officers, and these limitations do not apply when women are “attached”, rather than “assigned”, to a combat unit. In Iraq and Afghanistan, cultural norms prevent male soldiers from searching civilian women for weapons. Ironically, this segregation on gender lines made women indispensable to the U.S. military, and the Marine Corps founded units of “lionesses” assigned to this task. The Marines also recently opened two more sets of intelligence jobs to women.

The expansion of women’s roles in the military obviously comes with opposition. An Australian politician and former officer, Stuart Robert, has dismissed the current discussion as “outrageous”. The most common objections cite physical and emotional differences between the sexes, health risks associated with pregnancy and menstruation, male reactions to witnessing female soldiers wounded, and enemy combatants’ fear (or lack thereof) of female soldiers. Many of these objections are themselves products of a male-dominated military; if women had historically served in combat, then these stereotypes preventing women from combat roles would not exist. The question of how to increase women’s involvement in the military is a classic catch-22. The U.S. military’s strict physical standards are gender-blind (but they are dependent on age). Women endure the same basic training as men, meet the same requirements, and are told that they are physically inferior? If a soldier, not a man or a woman, proves physically fit, they deserve the same consideration as any other. Eva Cox, a member of the Women’s Electoral Lobby (in Australia), points out that “Being told that you can't do something, that you're not allowed to do something, that you're inadequate in some way to do it, or that you're going to be just so distracting that nobody else is going to be able to do their job properly, I think it undermines the whole way that the culture or organisations work”. Given a chance, women have shown themselves to be capable soldiers. Hopefully the military will recognize this fact.

Image from BL1961's flickr.

Short Rom Com in which the Pregnant Girl Actually Gets an Abortion

2009-10-03T20:34:00.003-04:00

...and doesn't regret it.

You have to see this short film (below) by director Gillian Robespierre (posted on Jezebel and Bitch Magazine). It's funny. It's cute. It features a totally quirky main character, Donna (Jenny Slate), who faces an unwanted pregnancy (like Juno and Knocked Up) but who decides that single-handedly raising the byproduct of a thoughtless fling just isn't right for her (unlike Juno and Knocked Up):

Obvious Child from Gillian Robespierre on Vimeo.

Sure, the acting is a little cheesy, and obviously there's nothing wrong with women who choose not to abort. But it's important for films to show that abortions do happen and women can feel fine about them afterwards – especially considering that nationwide support for abortion has fallen slightly since Obama's election. When huge films (like Juno and Knocked Up) gloss over the abortion option, the process – which only takes a few minutes, by the way – becomes a scary mystery, a Big Deal that it doesn't have to be. What I like about this short: Donna goes through with the abortion, her friend and mother (who had an abortion herself) support her, the procedure isn't depicted as torture, and she still gets a cute, sappy ending.

Sarah Haskins: You need special tactics to get those "hot chicks"

2009-10-02T23:10:00.001-04:00

"Would a regular woman come to your room to watch Bride Wars? No. Bride Wars is a very bad movie."

Judged for her appearance: a feminist "click" moment

2009-10-02T20:40:00.002-04:00

by Kelsey Zimmerman

The women’s rights movement has made great strides in the last century. However, traces of sexism still linger in everyday life. This was shown most clearly to me during my junior year of high school. My history class would regularly hold debates, pitting two presidents against each other in some imagined competition to get the students to try to remember the specifics of their terms better. One chilly March morning, we happened to be discussing Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, the legendary Democrat against an iconic Republican. I have no recollections as to the specifics of the debate, except for comment a guy in my class used in his closing argument. He finished his rebuttal against FDR’s politics with a comment something to the like of “and that would be as appealing as Eleanor Roosevelt in a wet t-shirt contest!” The whole class burst into raucous laughter while the guy received numerous high fives from his friends, hooting and hollering.

I remember sitting there for a moment, generally amused by the whole debacle, until a curious realization struck me. Eleanor Roosevelt is regarded as a monumental historical figure who did a great deal of charitable work while supporting her crippled husband during his presidencies. Suddenly, I was insulted that her physical appearance came into the matter at all. Her achievements and her work towards helping society were trivialized in that moment in a blasé comparison because she was not perceived as attractive. Many men in history who have done notable deeds would never be judged in that way.

Why? Because it doesn’t matter: why would anyone care if this guy was fat or had a crowbar mustache? He helped the world and that’s the bottom line. Sadly, important women from the past are not given the same courtesy. The fact that it is socially acceptable to make a joke about a woman’s appearance when the woman in question did so much for society, to me, is similar to the Ku Klux Klan members cracking racist jokes about Martin Luther King, Jr. during his public speeches. The people in my class didn’t see what was wrong with the joke, and I didn’t at first either.

But looking back, it shows how in our country, women are still judged on their appearance while men are scrutiny-free. Consider the recent presidential election, when the more personal and vicious media attacks were directed towards Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton, in particular, was often mocked of for her looks. None of the other male candidates received anywhere near the same amount of media scrutiny because of their appearance.

In the last century, we have made a lot of progress in women’s rights. But we have much further to go.

What if God is a Woman?

2009-10-02T14:42:00.004-04:00

by Nick Cox

Gender is everywhere—isn't it amazing? On Wednesday I had a surprise encounter with it during a seminar on Ethics, the magnum opus of 17th Century Dutch-Jewish philosopher Benedict Spinoza. In it, Spinoza makes the controversial claim that "everything that is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived of without God," whom he conceives of as "a being absolutely infinite." This idea was so controversial in its time in part because it went against the dominant understanding of God as a creator. Creation, as it is commonly understood, requires the creator and that which is created to be two separate entities. If the world simply exists in God, it could not have been created by God—and, indeed, Spinoza explicitly argues against this paradigm of God as "creator."

As I thought about these two seemingly irreconcilable understandings of God's relationship with the world, it occurred to me to ask: so, what if God is a woman? Does that change anything? As I thought about the prospect of a female God, I was immediately struck by how much more sense it made than the Judeo-Christian patriarch we're accustomed to. In the Bible it says that God—the male God—created the world. How does a man go about creating something such as, say, a house? First he draws up the blueprints, then he gathers the materials, and then, using his hands, he builds the house on the site that he selected. At no point during the whole process is there ever a question of where the man ends and his creation begins, and he is in control the entire time. If God is male, then he must have made the world more or less in that way, because that is the way men make things.

Obviously, women can make things in that way just as well as men can. But women can also make things in a way that men cannot and (let's be realistic) probably never will: women can bear children. Bearing a child is nothing whatsoever like building a house: there are no blueprints, no tools, and no control—not directly, at least. More importantly, the ontological status of the mother with respect to her unborn child—that is, the extent to which the mother and the child qualify as separate existences—is a point of contention. All the furious controversy over abortion ultimately reduces to disagreement over this ontological question. The other sort of creation does not cause this sort of confusion.

Now answer this: what is the world more like, a house or a child? The world is not a rigid, static structure such as a carpenter might have built—it is constantly changing and developing just like a living organism. In light of this, the idea of a female God giving birth to the world rather than creating it—which appears in many non-Western religions—makes a whole lot more sense. It also is much more in line with Spinoza's scrupulously de-anthropomorphized understanding of God, a "substance of consisting of infinite attributes" that contains the whole world.

People who believe in Intelligent Design often cite the complexity of the world as evidence supporting their belief; the world, they say, is too complex and perfect to have arisen on its own, and must have been designed by someone. This erroneous argument rests on a ludicrous overestimation of design. It seems to me, if anything, that the opposite should be true: the complexity of the world suggests that it must have developed organically. Creationism's confidence in the omnipotence of design betrays a hidden sexism: it trusts design, traditionally the domain of men, over and above the sort of creation that only women are capable of. If the God that Creationists believed in were a woman instead of a man, they might not find the idea of evolution so problematic. It's interesting to think about what else might be different, in philosophy and elsewhere, if God were allowed to be a woman.

Prehistoric sexism: speculation about gender roles and "Ardi"

2009-10-02T14:34:00.003-04:00

by Brenda Jin

The biggest news in the study of human history this week is the discovery of 4.4 million year old fossil of a female human ancestor, “Ardi”. Now scientists have fossil remains that pre-date Lucy and have a closer glimpse at the origins of bipedalism, especially because Ardi represents a transition phase in human history; her pelvis was not yet fully adapted for upright walking. These fossils have debunked previous speculation about a number of conditions from which bipedalism arose. The team working to reconstruct Ardi’s fossil remains did an excellent and thorough job of collecting other remnants of the environment in which she lived, pointing to the fact that was a woodland creature, and the very beginnings of upright walking started in the forest instead of where Lucy lived on a savannah.

But another interesting and speculative discussion has arisen about the origins of walking. Jamie Shreeve from National Geographic has recently written a blog post titled “Did Early Humans Start Walking for Sex?”. He writes about Ardi's discoverers' analysis based on chimpanzee social structures in which non-alpha males can gain mating advantages by bringing gifts to females. Drawing from the researchers' insights on Ardi, Shreeve applies this structure to our early ancestors, writing that perhaps the rise of monogamous relationships led males to walk upright in order to facilitate carrying food and gifts to females.

To add insult to injury, Shreeve proceeds to write:

“But there is one other, essential piece to this puzzle that leaves no trace in the fossil record. If the female knew when she was fertile, she could basically cheat the system by taking all the food offered by her milquetoast of a provider, then cuckold him with a dominant male when she was ovulating, scoring the best of both worlds. The food-for-sex contract thus depends on what Lovejoy calls “the most unique human character”—ovulation that not only goes unannounced to the males of the group, but is concealed even from the female herself.”

Now I’m no archaeologist, evolutionary anthropologist, or scientist, but this article seems quite speculative to me. If males and females had the same size canines and if our male and female human ancestors were about the same size, then how do we know that males were physically dominant and that females were not responsible and less capable of gathering their own food? And, since Ardi is less biologically similar to a chimpanzee than scientists previously imagined, why are we still comparing her to a chimpanzee?

Let us not exclude the possibility of a matriarchal society when speculating about Ardi’s social life. Perhaps we should be more careful about our patriarchal assumptions about Ardi’s world.

Care about LGBT rights?

2009-10-02T12:59:00.004-04:00

Do something about it.

Be part of a historic movement: March in the National Equality March (the largest LGBT rights march in over a decade)

Who? ANYBODY who cares about LGBT equality (perfect opportunity for allies to get involved)

Why? Be involved in a movement, make a difference, learn what it means to be an activist, meet other passionate individuals, and of course, have fun

When? Sunday, October 11, 2009

How? Bus leaving from Princeton at 6 am, returning at night - you must RSVP to princeton.equality.march@gmail.com

Facebook event here.

Female university students are "perks of the job"?

2009-10-01T11:28:00.003-04:00

by Kaite Welsh

University women's groups in Britain are up in arms after a leading academic referred to female students as "perks of the job." In a Times article titled ‘The Seven Deadly Sins of the Academy’, Vice-Chancellor Kealey of Buckingham University claims, “Most male lecturers know that, most years, there will be a girl in class who flashes her admiration and who asks for advice on her essays.” To add insult to injury, he assumes that he is speaking to an all-male readership. Presumably the female academics of his acquaintance were too busy swooning over his alleged charms - or filing sexual harassment suits.

Despite enjoying the position of power he has over all these nubile young women, Kealey insists that teacher/student relationships are in no way an abuse of power – or rather, it's those damn women offering sex for good grades who are abusing their position. He even goes as far as to say that “[t]he fault lies with the females.” And here I was thinking that one of the prerequisites for an academic career was the capacity for original thought! He compares female students to strippers at the notorious London club Stringfellows and concludes with the reminder that it, as in that esteemed establishment, extracurricular desire should go no further than admiring from a distance, mysteriously admonishing the reader that “You should have learnt by now that all cats are grey in the dark.” What he means, I’m not sure. That all women are interchangeable? Maybe so. After all, it isn’t their brains he is interested in.

As both a former student and a fledgling academic, I was left feeling profoundly discomfited by his remarks -, and by the fact that a well-regarded academic newspaper felt that they were worthy of publication. I don’t want to worry about what I wear to class, in case my lecturer finds it provocative. I don't want to have my interest in someone's research misinterpreted as romantic interest. If we cannot be valued for our minds at university, we may as well give up now.

I am not a perk to be enjoyed. If I seek your approval, it is because of my ideas, not my cleavage. If I gaze at you intently during a seminar, it is because your words inspire, frustrate or confuse me – or, as happened during my undergraduate days, because you have egg salad on your tie.

I feel sorry for the poor student who arrived at Vice-Chancellor Kealey’s office hours to be met by a seduction rather than any academic support. Then again, given the quality of his prose, perhaps she was better off.

New study on women's sexuality reaches startling conclusion: women are complicated

2009-10-01T08:42:00.002-04:00

by Jordan Kisner

Two psychologists at the University of Texas at Austin have spent the last three years conducting extensive research on the subject of women’s sexuality, leading them to a conclusion that, for most of us sexually active women, seems obvious: women have sex for lots of different reasons. “It turns out that women’s reasons for having sex range from love to pure pleasure to a sense of duty to curiosity to curing a headache,” notes the CNN article.

It turns out, huh? Who’da thunk it.

In all seriousness, while the reporting on the results seems a little fatuous, the study deserves some attention, not least because it was inspired by the desire to understand female sexuality on its own terms. “We do bring in men occasionally by way of contrast,” says David Buss, who co-led the study with colleague Cindy Meston, “but we wanted to focus exclusively on women so that the complexity of women’s sexual psychology was not given short shrift.”

If this last comment were not enough to make me leap from my seat in celebration, the nuance and evenhandedness of the results would do the trick. Meston and Buss found that, yes, some women suffer blows to self-esteem due to sexual experiences, but that many others reported that “their sexual experiences provided the soaring height of euphoria and made them feel alive and vibrant.” The study also notes that many young women are defying the social pressure to be more chaste than their male counterparts, and that, female arousal relies on a much wider array of psychological and physical factors than it does for men. The element of the study that I suspect will prove most relevant to a feminist discussion is the conclusion that women’s interest in their own pleasure during sexual encounters seems to decrease with age and emotional attachment to their partner (though I wonder why CNN decided to make this their closing remark).

Most of all, the study seems inspired by a respect and genuine curiosity for the complexity of female sexuality, so hip hip hoorah for Meston and Buss, and may many other promising psychologists follow their lead in giving women equal attention in the study of sex and sexuality.

Jon and Kate plus 8 (and minus Jon)

2009-09-30T12:45:00.004-04:00

by Shannon Mercer

To follow Gracie Remmington’s article posted yesterday I felt it appropriate to bring up another moderately intriguing television development: The Learning Channel’s cash-cow reality show “Jon and Kate plus 8”, a show that follows a family with two sets of multiples -- a pair of twins and one set of sextuplets -- has recently let go of part of its previously fruitful equation. The show experienced unprecedented levels of broadcasting tumult when Jon Gosselin, father, allegedly cheated on his wife (Kate) of ten years. Audiences have since been following the Gosselin couple through divorce proceedings, emotional upheaval and the all around unpleasant adjustment these 8 children have had to make.

After a painful few months of filming around the messy divorce, TLC has decided to put an end to ambiguity and to own up to their family’s new living arrangements. This next season will be titled, simply: “Kate plus 8” and will focus on Kate’s struggle as a single mother (“raising 5-year old sextuplets and 8-year old twins” ala CNN.com). The network also hints at the development of a special “Kate” project, shifting the emphasis off of the children and onto their mother and her new found fan base.

If you’ve never seen the show before it’d behoove you to know that the relationship dynamic between Jon and Kate was the centerpiece of every episode. While the projected arrangements are still unclear, CNN speculates that Jon will have a "reduced role” in the show, subtly changing gears on viewers and moving the focus off of the adulterous husband and back on to the adorable tots and their outspoken mother.

There are several reasons why I bring this all up:

- Under these new circumstances one finds a large opportunity to foster dialogue about the issues of living as a single mother.

- This potential could easily be wasted if this show’s producers choose to capitalize on the soap-opera set up that has miraculously fallen into their laps. This could easily morph into a tragedy that no television channel should be allowed to take advantage of.

- What about the kids? (This question is the prompt for a much longer post)

Hopefully TLC harkens back to its educational roots instead of sticking to its less-than-impressive recent repertoire, a list that includes: “Toddlers & Tiaras” and “What Not to Wear”. It may be in the better interest of this (highly unusual) family to be left alone but that is a judgment call that I am not qualified to make and the high-profile nature of this programming makes the opportunity to share in and learn from the Gosselins' life that much more tempting. There is a huge pool of emotionally invested individuals who have followed this show since its inception and if these new arrangements open the doors to talking about single parenting and relationship issues in households that would otherwise have shunned such conversation then we are better off for it! Maybe there is space for a few reality TV shows in modern educational programming.

Billboards about sex and rape: unfit for children's eyes?

2009-09-30T09:56:00.002-04:00

by Jillian Hewitt

A local Fox news station in Florida ran a segment last week about a very scandalous new move by the Florida Department of Health; they put up billboards in 16 Florida cities that read “Sex Without Consent is Rape.” The sign also encourages readers to “Talk About It, Prevent It!” As you might’ve guessed, there are lots of parents who are outraged about the billboards. Most of the arguments put forth by the people interviewed in this Fox segment center around the fact that the billboard “forces” them to explain what rape is to their children and that they as parents have the right to decide when and how they want to talk about rape to children. Apparently a billboard—unlike media outlets such as radio, tv, newspaper, and computer—prevents the parent from making this decision. Please allow me to run through a couple of the ridiculous fallacies and hypocrisies found in this three minute video…

One of the main complaints about the billboard is that children of a certain age are not prepared to deal with the “rape” conversation. I’m not going to get into what the “right” age to have such a conversation is, but I think we can all agree that this is a valid claim: children under a certain age obviously can’t understand the concepts of sex, rape, harassment, etc. However, to jump to the conclusion that the billboards are upsetting, unnecessary, or inappropriate because kids of a certain age aren’t “ready” for the conversation is ridiculous. How often do children ask their parents questions whose answers are too complicated or inappropriate for the child’s age? (Mommy, Daddy, where do babies come from?) And how often do parents come up with an answer that they think is appropriately tailored to the child’s maturity level? If a parent is really that uncomfortable discussing a topic with their child, they’ll find a way to avoid the discussion someway or another. And obviously, I’m not saying that they should—I’m just trying to discredit this assertion that “we can’t have these billboards! My kids are too young!” At what age are children too young to be told “if somebody does anything to you that you don't like then it is simply wrong and most of all, not your fault.” I can remember being extremely young and having my dad tell me that if I was ever in an uncomfortable situation with a boy—with anyone—that if anyone ever touched me in a way that I didn’t like, that I should scream and get away as fast as possible. Maybe I didn’t know the definition of the word “rape,” but it didn’t go over my head.

And while we’re on the topic, if their minds aren’t ready for the topic of rape, shouldn’t we be raising hell about all manner of other billboards too? How do these moms feel about anti-drug billboards? Ones that warn against drunk driving? I mean, these topics are just so far over their heads. And how about billboards like these? Would these women have the same concerns about a billboard that encourages parents to talk about virginity?

I want to bring up (and shut down, of course) one more argument about the billboards, which is that—unlike other forms of media—a billboard cannot be escaped. It cannot be changed to another channel; the volume can’t be turned down. This is true. I get it. But the thing is, other media outlets can’t be escaped either. One of the women in this video—Pat Neagle Close, Tampa mom—claims that the billboard is especially offensive because she is able to regulate all other forms of media that her child is exposed to. I have a hard time believing this. In your own home? Maybe, though even there it would be difficult. But unless we’re keeping our kids in solitary confinement at home, they’re going to be exposed to things we might not be comfortable with. No matter what we do, they’ll see things we wish they hadn’t. They’ll ask questions we wish they hadn’t. So let’s ask ourselves, does a billboard that encourages us to speak openly about the problem of rape really fall into one of those categories? If so—and I think many would say that it does—we need to seriously consider what makes rape a more offensive, more inappropriate topic than drugs or violence.

Workshop tonight on creating healthy sexual boundaries

2009-09-30T09:14:00.004-04:00

Tonight, Let's Talk Sex will be holding a workshop with Amy Jo Goddard, a fantastic sex educator from New York, who will do an interactive workshop on those two little words, "yes," and "no," and how to integrate them into your current or future sex life.

Women and men will work to get in touch with what they want sexually, what they don't want and how to communicate clearly so they get their needs met while developing a healthy sexuality and healthy relationships.

The workshop will be at 8 pm in the Frist Multipurpose Room. See you there!

New NBC series on "contemporary women"

2009-09-29T09:26:00.004-04:00

by Gracie Remington

Color me moderately intrigued: NBC will devote a significant portion of its news broadcasting time to the evolving roles of contemporary women. These broadcasts will focus on a study conducted by Maria Shriver on the consumer behavior of women. Shriver, a former NBC correspondent (and current spouse of California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger), will appear on the October 18's broadcast of "Meet the Press" to kick start the programming, and will serve as a "guest editor" for the entire series, which will encompass not only NBC but CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, and the website iVillage. The project is billed as an attempt to "educate the public on the current state of women in America". Coverage pertaining to the study will be broadcast over the course of a full week on NBC's evening newscasts as well as three morning segments on the channel's "Today" show.

"The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything," is a non-government based study modeled another study conducted during the JFK years, spearheaded by Eleanor Roosevelt (JFK was Shriver’s uncle). While the scope of the current study is vaguely referred to as an investigation into female consumer behavior, buying power, and their respective impact on advertising and the marketplace, Lauren Zalaznick, the president of NBC Universal Women and Lifestyle Entertainment networks called the study "eye-opening." Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, said that he had not yet seen the results, but that it "seemed like a natural idea to do news stories that look at these issues."

While both the study and its potential findings intrigue me, the focus on women's consumer behavior slightly rubs me the wrong way. Purchasing power is of incredible importance, undoubtedly, but focusing on spending in a time of economic crisis (and when there are so many other gender-based injustices that go under-discussed and unnoticed) seems to be in poor taste. Regardless, it will be interesting to see what Shriver has found with regard to women and their spending habits and how it can prompt advertisers and the market to change their behaviors towards female consumers. I'll be tuning in.

Reproductive health and the public option

2009-09-28T16:42:00.003-04:00

by Thomas Dollar

The better part of this country’s political energy this summer has been consumed by the debate over health insurance reform. As one of the 47 million uninsured Americans, I have been following this debate quite closely—especially the contentious proposal to provide a public health insurance option. Opponents of the public option have employed a “kitchen sink” approach to defeating it, stoking people’s fears of death panels, rationing, and—the classic trump card—Socialism. This not being enough, opponents have tossed another controversial issue into the mix: abortion.

Since 1976, the Hyde Amendment (brainchild of the late Rep. Henry Hyde, famed adulterer, Clinton impeacher, and Savings and Loan profiteer) has banned Federal funding of abortions, except in cases of rape, incest and endangerment of the woman’s life. Most states also place these same restrictions on their own Medicaid funding. Still, most private health insurers cover comprehensive reproductive health care (in some states by law)—including abortions. If the public option is meant to be a meaningful alternative to private health insurance, it would have to offer the same medical coverage as private plans—including reproductive care. The public option would not be a Federally funded plan like Medicare. Like private plans, it would be funded through by employer contributions and insurance premiums. Not one dime of Federal money would go to pay for abortions (or anything else). Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood, points out that “individuals who oppose abortion will not be forced to pay for abortion services.” The president has said the same.

So why do the falsehoods persist? In part it’s to add another poison pill to kill meaningful health insurance reform. But it also represents a larger shift among anti-abortion activists, who are increasingly targeting contraception and other non-abortion reproductive health care. Though the vast majority of Americans approves of contraception (even most of those who call themselves “pro-life”), coverage of birth control has come under attack. The Federal Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 already sent subsidized birth control to the chopping block (though this “budgetary oversight” has recently been corrected). Last fall, voters in Colorado defeated ballot initiatives that would have defined personhood under the state consitution—with all the rights and guarantees thereof—as beginning at the moment of conception. Unfazed by this defeat, its backers are pushing a similar initiative in Florida. This law would prohibit not only abortion, but the morning-after pill and the regular old Pill too. (Under a strict interpretation, it would also criminalize menstruation, as up to two-thirds of fertilized eggs never implant. One wonders how they intend to enforce this.) These initiatives blatantly conflict with the US Constitution (not to mention basic standards of reasonability), but are meant to erode reproductive health care with a barrage of attacks. Cutting reproductive health coverage out of a public insurance program would go one step further toward a health system that delegitimizes women’s health care as non-essential.

President Obama and pro-choice members of Congress face a great deal of pressure to make compromises to pass some sort of health insurance reform. But reform should not come at the expense of reproductive health care, and no compromise should be made to placate people who won’t vote for any reform bill anyway. The Planned Parenthood Action Center has more information on the different bills wending their way through Congress, and what you can do to help safeguard reproductive health care.

Whatever happens with health insurance reform, it won’t resolve the problem of the Hyde Amendment. Having legalized abortion is completely meaningless if women cannot access it. The Hyde Amendment establishes a two-tiered health system: freedom of choice for wealthy women with private insurance, tough luck for low-income women and women in the military. (As Justice Ginsburg noted last spring, women of means can always get an abortion if they want to—here and everywhere else.) Congress renews the Hyde Amendment every year, and pro-choice members of Congress have so far been unsuccessful in removing it from budget negotiations. But with a pro-choice president and majorities in both houses of Congress, there is hope for positive change. The proposed Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) would overturn the so-called “Partial Birth Abortion Act” and codify Roe v. Wade into Federal law. Obama has expressed his support from FOCA, but so far the loudest voices on the issue have been in opposition.

I understand that some people object to their tax money being used to pay for abortions. I object to my tax money being used for lethal injections, cluster bombs, and subsidized logging in the Tongass National Forest. But individual taxpayers are not given a line-item veto over Federal appropriations. The Supreme Court has ruled that our Constitution’s guarantee of due process gives women the right to make fundamental decisions about their bodies. That right means nothing if it’s not backed up by a health care system—public and private—that covers reproductive care.

Roman Polanski arrested Saturday in Switzerland

2009-09-28T16:11:00.004-04:00

There has been extensive writing on the subject of Roman Polanski's arrest in Switzerland on Saturday night throughout the internet world today, some of it mine (you can read my post on Care2.com here - I would post it in full here but it violates some kind of contractual agreement). Roman Polanski, if you don't know, is a renowned film director (you may know him from Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby, or The Pianist, to name just a few) who was arrested in 1978 for raping a 13-year-old model during a photo shoot. He had given her Quaaludes and champagne, and they had sex that the model later described as "not rape, but not consensual" (which I think means that it was rape). Polanski was sent to prison for a little over a month for a psychiatric evaluation, but as soon as he was freed, he fled the country. He has not set foot in the United States since, although he won a Best Director Oscar in 2003.

There have been a variety of reactions, ranging from outrage at Polanski's supposed victimhood (this, I don't mind telling you, I think is bullshit) to cries for immediate punishment (which seems less than feasible to me, considering that the case is more than thirty years old). I come down somewhere in the middle, among those of us who are just not sure how to fairly punish Polanski at this point, but it's extremely interesting to see what people are writing, and how it relates to how rape is written about generally in the media. It's certainly something that has caused a lot of emotion - which was visible during the 2003 Oscars, when the audience gave Polanski a standing ovation in his absence. That was not the right message to send.

Some articles of interest:

What Jezebel thinks about "The View's" analysis this morning
Attempts to understand Polanski through his films by a HuffPo blogger
Kate Harding reminds us that Polanski raped a child
Amanda Marcotte thinks that we need to show that power or celebrity doesn't excuse rape
Some common defenses of Polanski refuted

What do you think? Should Polanski be punished, allowed back into the United States, extradited or released?

Kavita Ramdas talks about Princeton and global women's issues

2009-09-27T18:29:00.002-04:00

by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux

I got an email a few days ago that I really couldn't believe - a friend, who coordinates events at Princeton's Carl A. Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding, had sent out an invitation to an informal brunch with Kavita Ramdas, the president and CEO of the Global Women's Fund. The Global Women's Fund is the largest grant-making foundation in the world focused exclusively on women, and during Ramdas' tenure, the foundation has more than tripled its assets and the countries in which it has made grants. It turns out that Ramdas attended Princeton for grad school (she has an MPA from the Woodrow Wilson School), and is now on the board of trustees. I probably should have known this, but I've always made the (perhaps unfair) assumption that the board of trustees is entirely composed of old white men. Sorry, Princeton, for jumping to conclusions. Maybe some things are changing.

The brunch was this morning, and it was one of the most pleasant and interesting meals I have had in a long time. Ramdas is incredibly charming and articulate, and she talked a lot about both her experiences at Princeton for graduate school and her work with the Global Women's Fund. As a feminist activist at Princeton, I have a lot of trouble with the fact that people seem much more willing to attend a fundraiser for microfinance in Asia than to engage in honest conversation about sexism on our own campus (why, for example, all of the eating club presidents this year are male). This unwillingness or inability to critically engage with the shortcomings of our own culture is something that I wrote about when the New York Times published its issue on women, an article that was problematic because it seemed like a crusade - save those poor third-world women from abusive third-world men! - when in fact helping women in developing countries is far more complicated. Ramdas brought up many of these issues, including her thoughts on Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's new book, Half the Sky, which I'm about to start reading.

She talked openly and honestly about some of the challenges of working with a foundation, including the ethical gray area surrounding where one gets money (is there a point at which the funds become "dirty" - can you justify taking money from a company that engages in environmental destruction, for example?). And she pointed out the essential hypocrisy of putting on a superhero cape and flying to save women in the developing world when maternal mortality is still an issue in the United States (and black women are 3 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women). One of the central tenets of the Global Women's Fund is that women hold many of the solutions to problems of global poverty and environmental destruction. But it doesn't help to look at women in the developing world as an "other" - or to pity them, which amounts to the same thing. Instead, we have to accept that our culture isn't perfect, and work to continue to fight gender-based injustice within our own country, while treating women in other countries as partners and equals.

Conference on women in theater raises important questions

2009-09-27T16:56:00.001-04:00

by Jordan Kisner

This weekend, Princeton hosted a conference titled Women in Theater: Issues for the 21st Century. Jill Dolan, Princeton professor of English and Theater and new Director of the Program for the Study of Women in Gender, organized the conference and succeeded in putting together one incredible group of artistic directors, playwrights, directors, administrators and artists. Emily Mann (artistic director of the McCarter) spoke alongside Paula Vogel (Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of How I Learned to Drive) and Gigi Bolt (former director of theater at the National Endowment for the Arts); Lisa Loomer (screenwriter for Girl, Interrupted) shared the stage with upcoming actress and playwright Danai Gurira. It was a stage all-stars, all convening to discuss a single problem.

Women are drastically underrepresented and underpaid in American theater. The information cited by panelist Julia Jordan indicate just how bleak things seem for women in the theater:

Plays with female protagonists are demonstrably more likely to meet with commercial success (tours, productions in regional theaters, etc.), and seven out of the ten most recent Pulitzers had female protagonists, but shows about women are demonstrably less likely to get produced. The most produced plays are written by men with male protagonists, followed by shows by men about women, then by women about men, then, finally, by women about women.
As a result, it is much harder for female actors to get work. Only 30% of the roles in shows at New York City theaters (99+ seats) are female roles, indicating that men are more than twice as likely to get financially sustaining work at an actor.
According to the U.S. Census, women working in theater (in any job, not just acting) still work in a "nontraditional profession." In this classification, women who work in theater are joined by female machinists, movers, and manual laborers.

As another panel member noted: "Women are wildly underrepresented on American stages. End of discussion. The only thing to talk about is what to do." So, there was much of that, much strategizing about how to change these numbers, how to reimagine and reinvent the theater industry so that women's voices can be heard. But, to my mind, the most interesting comment of the afternoon came from Susan Jonas:

We can talk all we want about how women want a voice in theater (or in politics, finance, culture, the world), but what will we have to say when we finally achieve the parity that we're seeking? We're on the edge of a huge cultural moment, we're at the precipice of whatever will define the 21st century, and what will women, what will feminists have to contribute when our contributions are finally valued equally? In the fight to be heard, let's not forget to think about what we want to say when we finally get the stage.

Corona commercials and female stereotypes

2009-09-25T19:40:00.001-04:00

by Nick Cox

Watching TV commercials is a very good way to get a feel for what the cultural status quo is at any given moment. This is especially the case for current attitudes toward and feelings about gender, probably because the goal of a TV commercial is generally to stir up some form of erotic desire in the viewer, and to make the product being advertised the object of that desire. When the assumed viewer is a man, the commercial will try to imbue the product, or at least associate it, with qualities that men in their focus groups found appealing. All things considered, advertisers probably know more about gender than even the savviest gender theorists, although they use their knowledge for what some might consider dishonorable ends.

I saw this Corona commercial (embedded above) Wednesday night on ESPN, during a baseball game. A beer commercial screened during a sporting event: obviously it was aimed squarely at men. So let's look at what happens: A man and a woman—presumably boyfriend and girlfriend—are sitting on the beach in matching beach chairs, facing the surf with their backs to the camera. They are both sitting motionless and looking straight ahead, which is kind of weird. Between them is a table holding two Coronas with the customary slices of lime protruding from the necks. A fetching blonde in a white bikini walks by, and the man looks up at her and follows her with his gaze. After the blonde has left and the man has resumed looking straight ahead, the woman—without moving her head at all—reaches her left hand out to daintily pluck the lime out of the man's Corona and squirt the juice in his face, making him flinch slightly. She puts the lime slice back in the bottle and returns her hand to her lap, he wipes his face a bit, and the commercial ends with the message "Relax Responsibly."

Now, if this blog were devoted to evaluating the artistic merits of TV commercials, I would give this one nothing but unqualified praise. With its minimalist composition, its deadpan humor and its flawless comic timing, it is everything a beer commercial should be. I laughed, and I'm sure millions of other guys laughed as well. But as much as I appreciated it, I also noted that, from a feminist standpoint, it has some problems—or rather, it reveals some problems that are present in society at large. Commercials are engineered to appeal to their target audience as much as possible, so in general it is fair to say that anything problematic about a commercial is merely a reflection of a broader cultural problem.

The commercial has three characters: the guy (who is the protagonist), his girlfriend, and the woman in the white bikini. The latter is a timeless cultural archetype that feminists have already chewed through thousands of times: the Blonde Temptress who makes all the guys heads turn. The interesting person here is the girlfriend, who represents just as much of an archetype as the blonde does. The Uptight Girlfriend also appeared in The Hangover (which was aimed squarely at guys), in the person of Ed Helms' character's kiss-withholding girlfriend. In that movie her venomous uptightness was pushed to absurd extremes, but the underlying character is the same. For what it's worth, both the girlfriend in The Hangover and the one in the commercial are brunettes who wear their hair in ponytails; and the stripper that Ed Helms' character eventually falls for is, like the woman in the white bikini, a blonde who wears her hair down.

Feminists are more or less unanimous in their hatred of the Blonde Temptress, but the Uptight Girlfriend may be an even more worthy target of criticism. The reason is that it represents a superficial concession to feminism while remaining just as harmful under the surface. It would be easy for a feminist to watch the commercial and, without thinking about it very hard, say "I like this, because the woman asserts herself when the man does something objectionable." While this is true, it fails to acknowledge some important things. First, the woman does assert herself, but she does so in the most petty, impotent way imaginable; she even puts the lime back his beer after squirting him with it. Second, the thing that the woman objects to—her boyfriend looking a bit too long at someone else—is a pathetically small thing to get upset over. So the woman might get her revenge, but ultimately she is still the weak one. In The Hangover, remember, boyfriend ends up breaking up with the girlfriend.

Between the Blonde Temptress and the Uptight Girlfriend, neither is any sort of a desirable archetype from a feminist perspective. But what would be? I will say things: when the guy was gazing at the blonde, I was expecting that the girlfriend would steal his beer. That would be a woman who uses the man's weaknesses to her advantage instead of punishing him for them. The Woman-as-Trickster is not very prevalent in our culture right now but I think it is due for a revival.

Cross-generational discussions can be difficult - but we need to have them

2009-09-24T16:47:00.001-04:00

by Molly Borowitz

I know I’m not the only one who doesn’t thrill at the prospect of spending time with extended family. But during a recent trip to Chicago—to move my little sister into college (!)—I think “family time” hit an all-time low. We’ve always known that older people have different perspectives on issues like women’s rights and sexual assault, but this weekend I learned just how short-sighted and narrow-minded our parents’ generation—i.e., the generation running our country—can be.

We were having dinner at a charming downtown bistro when somehow, toward the end of the main course, I ended up arguing with my aunt and uncle about sexual assault and famous people. At first, we were just talking rather generally about Kobe Bryant, Ben Roethlisberger, and the ways that high-profile sexual-assault cases often played out. Then my aunt stated that most of the women who accused these famous men of rape probably hadn’t actually been assaulted; no, they were just out for money.

In my naïveté, I kind of thought she was kidding. I pointed out that the women who leveled such accusations were subsequently subjected to an enormous amount of media scrutiny and public abuse, practically tortured by rabid fans and turned into complete social pariahs. Is it actually worth a few thousand dollars, I asked, to go through that kind of ordeal? Aside from the Bryant and Roethlisberger cases, I told my aunt, there’s also Chris Brown: even though he confessed to having abused his girlfriend—even though it was an established fact—people continued to insist that he should not be punished in any way, continued to slander and harass Rihanna, continued to declare that she had deserved to be beaten, that it was her fault, that she’d brought it upon herself. These men are famous; they have both the media and the public automatically on their side. It is almost impossible to accuse a celebrity of sexual assault without having your life destroyed. As such, I told my aunt, I’m not sure you can say that most of these people are out for money: it’s just not worth it.

My aunt doesn’t really read the news, and she didn’t follow the Bryant, Roethlisberger, or Brown cases—she confessed as much—but she decided that my arguments were invalid because (for one thing) I’m a kid and (for another) “these people” are apparently wacked-out money-grubbing whores. “Maybe for a normal, nice person, it would be a deterrent,” she told me, “all that media coverage and stuff. But for these crazy sick women, it doesn’t matter—twenty, thirty thousand dollars? Of course that’s worth it!” But hang on, I said—I don’t know much about the legal system, but what’s the likelihood of a woman actually winning a case that she’d invented out of thin air? “That’s a ridiculous question,” she said. “These guys, they’ll just pay the women off, even though the accusation’s not true, because they don’t want it damaging their reputations.”

Now, I don’t want you to think I’m being partisan here: my aunt is a staunchly liberal, Democratic-voting woman with a post-graduate education. Nor do I want to portray her too unflatteringly—after all, she’s family. We had both had two glasses of wine, we were both tired, and the conversation was getting pretty heated. But when I continued to disagree with my aunt, she got uncomfortable. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Molly,” she snapped at me. “I was a lawyer.”

I had to dig my fingernails into my skin to keep myself from screaming across the table at her, “YOU don’t know what YOU’RE talking about! I WAS ASSAULTED!”

But I didn’t. Why not? Because I never told anyone in my family, not even my parents. And I never told them because I was afraid. Afraid either that they wouldn’t believe me, or that they would tell me it was my own fault. Afraid that their attitudes toward victims of sexual assault would be exactly the one that my aunt demonstrated to me this weekend: inherently skeptical, disdainful, dismissive.

Guess I was right.

As the conversation drew to a close, I said to my aunt, “I think it’s incredibly disturbing that you would believe a woman was lying through her teeth to get some money before you’d believe she was raped. Rape is the most underreported crime in our country, and I think I just learned why.”

I don’t think she got it. The moment passed. My aunt let it go. But a tight, searing knot of anger continued to burn in the pit of my stomach for the rest of the night, and I wondered—what kind of nation is their generation trying to build? One where people who have never been assaulted can claim that they have, and be rewarded with vast sums of money? So that, in turn, people who have been assaulted are afraid and ashamed to speak out about it, for fear that they’ll be hounded, harassed, blamed, and disbelieved? There may be a lot of crazy people out there, but I think it’s lazy and cowardly to blame the state of sexual-assault litigation on them. The fault lies with the system that my aunt’s and previous generations have created, and especially with their unwillingness to talk about “uncomfortable” subjects like rape over the dinner table.

Equal Writes is an amazing forum of intellectual exchange and development, a space for young feminists to discuss contemporary women’s issues like sexual assault. But most of our readership (and readers, we love you!) is young like us; our parents, aunts, and uncles—the ones whose worldviews we most need to alter—aren’t very likely to visit our site. Instead, I’m realizing, we have to force their generation to talk about issues like sexual assault. We have to dismantle their preconceptions, disrupt their complacency about the world they’re handing to us; we can’t let them push these things under the rug anymore. And even if their generation hasn’t wanted to talk about it, hasn’t wanted to fix it, fine. We will.

Is murdered anti-choice activist a martyr?

2009-09-24T10:47:00.002-04:00

by Thúy-Lan Võ Lite

I have a few updates on the case of slain anti-abortion activist James Pouillon, who was killed in front of a school on September 11 in Owassa, Michigan.

A brief post on Jezebel informed me that two Congressmen – Reps. Dave Camp and Dale Kildee – from Pouillon’s home state introduced a resolution to honor the late protestor: House Resolution 759 (available on Camp’s website), after noting that “Jim Pouillon is mourned by his family, friends, community, and fellow defenders of the First Amendment and the unborn,” offers condolences to the victim’s family and recognizes the importance of free speech.

The resolution has been introduced amid an ongoing debate over Pouillon’s posthumous martyrization. Anti-choice leaders note that he was killed on the job, or “gunned down as he stood for life” (Operation Rescue), but it’s misleading to conclude that his victimization was a direct result of his ideology. According to Flint News, “[a]uthorities have said Harlan Drake, 33, of Owosso had a grudge against Pouillon and didn't think that children should have to look at graphic pictures of abortion on their way to school.”

The article continues: “Shiawassee County Prosecutor Randy Colbry says he doesn't have any information that the abortion issue was the motivation for the slaying, saying that it is not his impression that the shooting was a hate crime or politically motivated.” Keep in mind that Drake had killed another man earlier in the day based on a completely unrelated “grudge.”

Dr. James M. Pouillon – the late activist’s son – had some interesting opinions of his own, which he wrote in a blog post (via Flint) a few days after the murder. Asserting that his father “really didn’t care about aborton (sic),” he noted that “He did this [protesting] to stalk, harass, terrorize, scream at, threaten, frighten, and verbally abuse women. He had a pathologic hatred of women: his mom, my mom, everyone.”

But whether or not Pouillon, Sr. was killed for his stance or for his persistent, disrespectful methods remains up in the air; it’s definitely too soon for anti-choice leaders to galvanize support in his name.

Hey baby: living with catcalls in NYC

2009-09-23T20:33:00.003-04:00

by Jordan Kisner

I’ve been living in New York City for two months now, and I think I’m about to break down and join a gym. Not because I want to lose weight (though the availability and affordability of New York pizza hasn’t done me any favors there) but because I need an outlet for blowing off some steam: several times a week, I arrive home from my daily commute (2 different subways and several city blocks) ready to scream.

When I moved here I was not prepared for the catcalling.

Men of all shapes and sizes, men of all ages, races and avocations are getting their daily jollies catcalling at any and every woman they see walking down the street. “Hey baby,” “How you doing, sweet thing,” “Can I get your number,” are well worn pages in the book of street-side pervert tricks, and I personally dealt with three or four of these stunners this afternoon. Truthfully, I find these a welcome alternative to the experience of a man boldly undressing you with his eyes as you walk down the street, his tongue out and his head bobbing. This has happened to me four times so far this week. This evening, two men on the subway today got in a loud argument about my ass.

Never has my body felt less my own. Never have I felt more physically powerless.

I’m not alone here. A friend recently rounded on a man in the street who made a rude gesture at her and asked for her number, yelling “Has any woman ever given you her number? If so, I want HER number.” My roommate was followed and harassed by a man for several blocks. I myself have taken to fantasizing about punching these men in the face. The rage that these encounters inspire is so much a reaction to feeling helpless, a futile attempt to mitigate the feeling that your body has been turned into a commodity of the lewdest kind without your consent.

Not surprisingly, none of the men who engage in this kind of behavior lead lives of much power or importance themselves. They are the kind of men who sit on the street corner in the middle of the day, or deliver freight, or sweep steps. (Note: I am NOT making an argument that men of only a certain income or class harass and demean women. We all know this is not true. I am pointing only to the pattern I’ve seen in men who catcall on the streets or subways of New York City.) These men, who have little substantive influence and –apparently—lots of time on their hands, can seize a modicum of power by exercising verbal and sexual dominance over any woman unlucky enough to walk in their sights. Conversely, the most empowered, successful, influential women in New York suffer the risk of being reduced to a sexual fantasy on every street corner.

The women of New York City, like the women of Cairo, are ready for a change.

Quick hit: Polish newspaper fined for abortion-related slur

2009-09-23T12:41:00.006-04:00

The NYT reported today that a Polish court has ordered a Catholic magazine to pay a fine and apologize for calling a woman who tried to obtain an abortion a killer, and likening the practice as a whole to genocidal acts committed during the Holocaust. This is part of a heated and ongoing debate about abortion in Poland, a primarily Roman Catholic country where abortion is mostly illegal. The woman in question, Alicja Tysiac, attempted to obtain an abortion when it became clear that giving birth would significantly damage her eyesight. After challenging Poland's abortion ban with the European Court of Human Rights, Tysiac was awarded around $37,000 in damages because after childbirth, she was declared significantly disabled due to retinal hemorrhage.

The Catholic magazine, Gosc Niedzielny (Sunday Visitor), wrote: ''We live in a world where a mother receives an award for very much wanting to kill her child, but not being allowed to do so.'' He then compared abortion to genocidal crimes committed at Auschwitz, saying, "'They had become accustomed to the murders being carried out behind the fence of the camp. And what is the case today? Different, but just as terrible." The magazine is now claiming that the ruling is a freedom of speech violation.

This whole situation, to me, is just terribly, terribly sad - I can't imagine that being awarded damages from the Polish government, unless it can restore her eyesight, will help Tysiac significantly, and I also wonder what pursuing this in court is doing to her family. The fact is that she should have been allowed to obtain an abortion when she discovered that giving birth would impair her health, and being publicly libeled in addition to being disabled is really horrifying - this magazine should be reprimanded, but I'm also not sure whether the discourse on abortion is going to improve because of the court's intervention.

Thoughts? Also, does anyone know about the situation with birth control availability in Poland?

More on women and (un)happiness

2009-09-23T09:28:00.002-04:00

by Jillian Hewitt

I’m not the first to talk about it this week (see Gracie's post from Monday), but I also want to address the issue of women’s happiness in light of recent media attention. Marcus Buckingham, who himself has written a book titled Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently, wrote an article that appeared in the Huffington Post this week discussing the phenomenon of female unhappiness. Indeed, from 1972 to 2006 women became increasingly unhappy—and in the same time frame, came to enjoy many of the benefits of the feminist movement. As Buckingham puts it, “greater educational, political, and employment opportunities have corresponded to decreases in life happiness for women, as compared to men.” In fact, men’s happiness has steadily increased since 1972.

So what’s the deal? Would most women really rather go back to a time when society assured them that their sole calling was to be a mother and housewife? I’m sure some would, and I won’t pretend to speak for them. I’m also not going to pretend that I have any answers as to why this is the case; I just want to touch on some thoughts I have about the subject. It’s important for us to have an open discussion about this topic, especially when it may be seen as extremely damaging to the feminist movement. Because, you know, what’s the point having all these rights and opportunities and stuff if we were happier being Mrs. Cleaver? So let’s open up and take a look not only at why we might be less happy, but why (and whether) it matters that we are less happy. To be clear, there are thousands of issues I won’t address in this post, not the least of which are the possible reasons for increasing male happiness.

First, I’m going to assume that the data is accurate: Buckingham sites the United States General Social Survey but also notes that six recent, major studies from around the world have produced similar findings. So in 1972, the average woman rated her happiness as a 2.24; in 2006 she rated her happiness as a 2.17 on a scale from 1-3. But is it possible that the factors on which women based their happiness ratings have changed in the past forty years? In 1972, how many women evaluated their happiness with regards to whether they had a husband, children, and a stable income? To me it seems quite possible that women may have evaluated themselves as happy without ever really feeling fulfilled. Is it possible that the list of factors contributing to our happiness has been greatly expanded, and thus women have more awareness as to what might be “missing” from their lives?

I’d like to relate this question to a study I read this week for a class on developing countries that analyzed the results of a Gallup World Poll regarding life satisfaction. In the analysis, the author (Angus Deaton) discusses a phenomenon—that often times, those who are the worst off do not perceive their situation as it objectively is. He asserts that “People do not necessarily perceive the constraints caused by their lack of freedom; the child who is potentially a great musician but never has a chance to find out will not express a lack of life satisfaction.” I wouldn’t dare suggest that the situation of American women in 1972 is nearly as dire as the situation of the poorest of this world, but the analogy seems to hold: that often people do not fully perceive their lack of freedom, and thus do not have strong feelings of unhappiness.

But even if happiness was overstated in 1972, why hasn’t greater opportunity and freedom for women led us to have at least the same levels of happiness? Perhaps there’s something to be said for the fact that with greater opportunities, higher standards of living, etc. come more opportunities for problems: problems with our jobs, problems funding our education, problems with relationships, problems balancing motherhood and a career,…the list goes on. Maybe we just need to face up to the fact that there are simply more things to be unhappy about. But even if we are more unhappy, I would argue that we still have reason to feel more fulfilled. Even if we fail—fail to get into the school we want, fail to get the job we want, fail to find the man or woman of our dreams—we can still be grateful that we had the opportunity to do so.

This reminds me of a scene in Garden State (see it if you haven’t already) when Zach Braff’s character decides to go off his depression medication and confronts his father about their relationship. He concludes that “We may not be as happy as you always dreamed we would be, but for the first time let’s just allow ourselves to be whatever it is we are and that will be better.” So maybe we need to think about the trade-off between self-assessed, numerical “happiness” and a sense of true being—a sense of being that allows us to be unhappy for reasons that we couldn’t even have dreamt about forty years ago.

The final point I want to make is actually drawn off of a quote used by Gracie earlier in the week. She quotes Betsey Stevenson, who explains that “Across the happiness data, the one thing in life that will make you less happy is having children…Yet I know very few people who would tell me they wish they hadn’t had kids or who would tell me they feel their kids were the destroyer of their happiness.” And I think the same logic applies in light of this situation, too: maybe it’s true that our “greater educational, political, and employment opportunities” have made us less happy. But those opportunities aren’t ones that I’m willing to give back.

Who are the people in your life who make you happier? What do you have to be grateful for today?

Gossip Girl: New Jersey edition

2009-09-23T09:12:00.006-04:00

by Kelly Roache

This week, the NYT reported that Millburn High School, well known in New Jersey for its academic and extracurricular excellence, was the center of a particularly ugly hazing of incoming freshmen – that is, ugly enough to cause such a small town to make New York Times headlines. Allegedly, a group of Millburn senior girls wrote a “slut list” rife with vulgar details containing the names of incoming freshmen, passing them out by the hundreds. School authorities claim that the list targeted “pretty and popular incoming ninth graders,” accompanied by senior athletes pushing the girls into lockers and blowing whistles in their faces. A slew of anonymous parent and student comments alike echoed the same sentiment: the girls felt both unsafe and unwelcome in their new school environment.

The recent events at Millburn hardly constitute an isolated incident; the token girl-on-girl hazing story is covered every year during sorority rush and the start of the fall athletic season. Yet some encounters are much more pernicious, with the number of 10- to 17-year-old girls arrested for aggravated assault doubling from twenty years ago. For instance, in one highly publicized case in 2007, in New York a 13-year-old girl was attacked and beaten by three female classmates, who recorded and posted the assault on YouTube – that is, they were proud of their “accomplishment.”

The rise of girl-on-girl violence is not only despicable for its direct consequences, but problematic for feminism in general. Our movement is judged – however fairly or unfairly – by the way women treat each other. Incidents such as these provide fodder for those hostile to and looking to discredit the feminist cause, perpetuating stereotypes of girls and women as boy-crazed (the 13-year-old’s beating was spurred by a catfight over a guy) and emotional to the point of irrational behavior – both of which I have toiled to debunk in my own experience. Even if their usage to give feminism a bad name is unjust, these cases paint the end for which so many women have fought for equal rights as petty, manipulative, mean-spirited, and hypocritical. Until this behavior is addressed, it will always seem to some as if we don’t have a leg on which to stand, and when it comes to our critics, perception is often, sadly, reality in the roadblock it poses for us.

This point aside – and worse yet – is the question of the source of this disturbing and violent trend among girls. For instance, the oldest assailant in the New York case was just 14; these girls are learning this somewhere. Certainly there has always been a fair amount of cattiness and angst as girls become young women struggling to define and explore their place in the social quagmire that is high school. But when did the drama get so far out of hand? Perhaps the most disturbing point was broached by Millburn’s principal regarding the infamous “slut list”: “We’ve had girls — which is one of the bad things — obsessed that their names are on it, and girls who were upset that they didn’t make the list.” Other freshman shrugged off the significance of the hazing as “all in good fun,” saying of those who wouldn’t participate, “Then you’ll be the loser.” One senior described her involvement in the hazing as, “Not more than anyone else.” So how did we stray so far from the progress of the past century?

At the risk of sounding like my father spewing it’s-that-darn-MTV diatribe, I blame Gossip Girl. Not exclusively of course –a farrago of social factors bears some share of responsibility, not to mention GG’s equally inane and lesser-famous equivalents – but this show makes asinine bitchery into an art. The insipid behavior of the main female characters, Blair and Serena, has been lionized for reasons that continue to surpass my understanding. Bitch is the new black, and “whore” is just another name for your best friend when you’re angry with her. None of this would be particularly problematic were the show not so popular, even and especially disturbingly so among friends who consider themselves active feminists. Try as I might to view it as escapism, I can’t quite justify a “guilty pleasure” that contains such witty exchanges between ex-best girlfriends fighting over a tangled web of men as, “Brown doesn’t offer degrees in ‘slut’” (ah, my favorite word again).

Maybe I’m particularly fired up because the Millburn hazings hit a little close to home – I spent quite a bit of time there in high school at academic competitions, and got to know some of the students fairly well. Maybe it’s because it wasn’t all that long ago that I was a freshman, or that my little sister is one now. Or maybe I’m just taking a pop culture phenomenon that’s supposed to be “fun” too seriously. But I doubt it. I used to laugh at Tina Fey’s Mean Girls when Lindsay Lohan’s character daydreamed about high school as jungle where girls physically wrestled like animals over boys and shoes, or when she slipped the most popular girl in school protein bars to make her unwittingly gain weight. But more and more, this seems less and less like a joke, while we anxiously await Serena and Blair’s next vapid moves in the coming weeks’ episodes.

Thoughts on the "hookup culture"

2009-09-22T11:44:00.001-04:00

[The author of this piece has chosen to remain anonymous]

I wrote this shortly before the school year began:

From what I’ve seen and experienced, hooking up can be a fun, great, exciting experience, but for some people, it can also seem empty and meaningless.

I don’t hook up anymore. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was uncomfortable with the reality of one-night stands. When presented with the opportunity, I wanted to get to know the person, and that just doesn’t lend itself well to alcohol-fueled, physical encounters. But that’s just me. I know plenty of people who enjoy the hook up scene precisely because there are no strings attached.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I had a hook-up that followed up. It didn’t work out. My closest male friend also has an unsuccessful tendency to pursue his hook-ups. This is not the norm, but it does color my perceptions.

There are people in this school that are looking for real relationships, and they’re not all members of the Anscombe Society. If you suspect that you’re one of them, I would stay away from the hook up scene, or experiment just enough to find out.

Having said that, I don’t regret finding out.

Just a few weeks later, I feel that I can’t stand behind these words, because I did hook up again despite telling myself that I wouldn’t. Why would I do such a thing?

Well, alcohol played a role, but alcohol is no excuse. I guess it was a matter of opportunity. The right boy was there at the right time, and yes, I knew him, and yes, I had feelings for him, and when the emotion is there already, having a little bit of casual fun doesn’t seem like a bad idea.

I’m not saying that hook-ups are a bad idea. They are different for everyone, and affect everyone differently. Some of my best friends hook up on a regular basis while others believe in abstinence until marriage. To each her own.

However, I am saying that my thoughts on pre-marital sex, and by extension, on the hook-up culture, were heavily influenced by my thoughts on feminism, prior to having actually experienced hook-ups. By this, I mean that I was under the mistaken impression that feminism meant sexual liberation which meant that just following the urges of your body was enough, and plenty of women could separate sex and emotion, so why couldn’t I? This was my thought process when I encountered my first hook-up.

I’m not here to talk about nonsense like oxytocin, or even discuss morality and ethics. But I am here to say there is some truth in the assumption that women (and men, actually) can get hurt by the hook-up culture. I’ve seen people get hurt and I’ve been hurt by it, too. For me, at least, it’s not as fun and carefree as some people make it out to be. As a result of my experiences, I can honestly say that I never want to have sex outside of a relationship ever again.

And yeah, for a while, I did blame my feminist views on causing me so much pain. Maybe men and women do process things differently? Maybe women are prone to emotion, or maybe women do need to be taken care of, shielded from such things? I mean, how could I hurt so much when I had walked into the situation thinking that it was a one-night stand, trying my hardest not to care, and trying to enjoy my body for the sake of enjoyment?

But maybe it’s just me.

Intellectually, I know that there are women who enjoy the hook-up scene. Yeah, women enjoy sex too, guys, even casual sex sometimes. But these women, unlike me, have frameworks that make this a comfortable experience for them. Maybe they can distance themselves from the situation, or maybe they’re just not inclined to bond as quickly. Who knows? They should be able to express their sexuality as they see fit without fearing being called a slut or a whore.

Hell, I’m still a sex-positive feminist in that I don’t judge others for their actions. I’m just saying that after my experimentation, I know that I have to follow the traditional pattern—yes, I do want dinner dates and a kiss at the third date—to be emotionally comfortable. This pattern is pretty incompatible with the dating/relationship scene at Princeton. C’est la vie. But I think I’ll be ok.