“Abortion is Not the Only Issue”

Amidst the inevitable onslaught of letters to the editor and blog posts bemoaning the millions aborted, I would like to try, on the thirty-sixth anniversary of the supreme court decision of Roe v. Wade, to create a space for recognizing the millions of women before 1973 who had no legal control over their reproduction. Seeking to complicate this space, we might recognize the current restrictions on abortion, access to birth control, and comprehensive education, the powerful triad that determines whether so many women will become pregnant.

A common complaint from my students in the class I teach at Ohio State is that the texts we read on women’s rights and experiences are outdated. Informed by images of women in suits on Wall Street, powerful images of female consumers as icons of high culture, and the compulsive representations of women in the media (no matter how, or by whom, the women are characterized), some students find that feminism is useless. Oddly, feminism’s relevance is confined to only a few questions: in a relationship, who makes the living and who cares for the home, are women still turned away when they want to be lawyers and doctors, and aren’t women sexually free now?

In the 1910s, Margaret Sanger was arrested for distributing “obscene” materials on birth control. Over forty years later, before 1965, married couples could not legally obtain information on contraceptives or contraceptive devices. And another forty years later, an American President enacted a rule that allows doctors and pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control if women having sex hurts their feelings. Progress is often seen as moving straight ahead, with only subtle regressions and set-backs that are later characterized as huge mistakes made by a people or their government. So goes the narrative of seeing so clearly years later; so why is it still so hard for women to make meaningful progress?

Not that there have not been tremendous advances. Birth control is legal. After thirty-six years, abortion is still legal, though with tightening restrictions. Rape of all kinds is seen as an outrage, but with many exceptions. But I would argue that the regressions have been substantial to the point of solidifying values that do damage and make it increasingly difficult for women to do basic things, like take a daily pill that ensures that she has control over the rest of her life.

This is where the pro-choice conversation begins today. It is not just the choice to end a pregnancy, but the choice to prevent it. Not just the choice to have a baby, but the choice to have one with your same-sex partner. Not just the choice not to have sex, but the choice to have sex with partners of your choice. This concept of choice seems to demand an awful lot; but it has been awfully long coming.

journal January 6

What is feminism capable of? Who does it reach? Who is saved by feminism, the personal life philosophy? (Granted, it did save me). Who is saved by feminist legislation? Who is saved in the feminist classroom?

My emphasis on being saved by feminism is due in part to the urgency I have recently begun to feel. Not even halfway through my first year of a master’s program in Women’s Studies, a heavy feeling of uselessness has taken over much of my desire to be doing something in the world. After spending a quarter analyzing criticism of women’s studies and observing and evaluating the limits of my own department, worries about my usefulness peaked. Yes, there was a bit of a crisis for a minute. The huge question “what is women’s studies – feminist scholarship or feminist activism?” became so daunting and difficult to negotiate that I have checked out of that argument for the moment, resigned to believing (because I do) in the redeeming powers of feminism. As a personal solution, feminism helped me solve very large problems in my life that will never be repeated, and because of feminism, I won’t let other people recreate them against me. Feminism enriches my world view, makes me feel purposeful, and has provided ways to have the richest and most love-filled relationships with people that I have ever had. As a result of my apparent love letter to feminism, the experience of learning it shouldn’t be confused with taking a sort of pill that does the work as you lie back and relax. Difficult and sometimes painful engagement led to my appreciation.

It is still there, in the back of my mind, back-seat to teaching and my own graduate courses. I am deeply in love with feminism – this is how much of a personal solution it is. My love for it doesn’t come from what is has done for tons of women, because I have learned of its limits. I feel happiness for the ways that it has enriched other women’s lives. The deep emotional attachment, however, is a result of a one-on-one interaction with feminism. Realizing this, I ask what feminism is capable of. What problems can it address today? Could aspects of it certainly be “stuck in the past”? Is it really “for everybody”? Keeping women and gender always and forever on the table as categories of analysis is no doubt beneficial. Can it go further, though? And if it does expand, does it stay feminism? 

8 days before class starts

Today I worked on getting ahead on some readings in my grad classes: Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, and Freud. I got about halfway through the Freud and the third chapter of Smith. My mind feels like it consumed tons of information today, but looking at the actual physical books, I didn’t get through that much compared to my original goals. But at this point, I’m pretty sure that getting through at least a couple texts for each class would help me out tremendously.

Reading is easy. My problem is diving into the work for my writing class. I have consistently accomplished most of the objectives I had set out for myself, but new ones keep popping up, to be expected. Something occurred to me tonight: you’re always already behind. I can’t let it debilitate me into doing nothing.

So here are some feasible goals that I’d like to reach this coming week:

Routine: less time watching TV, some healthier meals, replace coffee with green tea, regular exercise.

Finalize syllabus and prepare first-day materials.

Finish going over complementary texts, finalize what additional ones will need included for the first few days.

Finalize schedule for first day.

…and make sure I’m not missing anything…

goals for today

From today until the end of winter break, I need to make much better use of my time. I have a class (that I’m teaching) to prepare for – finalizing the syllabus, creating activities and discussion questions for each text, and preparing their major writing assignments. This preparation won’t be as difficult as it is time-consuming. I have several ideas already for how to make connections between the texts, and after a quarter of being hyper-aware of teaching while reflecting on past experiences in the classroom, I think I will be able to pull together some plans that will work.

Other than preparing for the class, I promised myself that I would get ahead on some of the readings for my own winter courses. Despite the accusations, this isn’t over-achievement at play. I would genuinely help myself out by familiarizing myself with what’s going on in the class and getting even two or three texts read beforehand.

My goal is to be more forward-thinking – planning well, diving in, resisting the urge to just “do it later.” Procrastination has always been an embarrassing flaw in my work ethic. I know it won’t change all at once, so I might as well jump in to change what happens today.

Today I plan on reading Sandra Cisneros’s House on Mango Street, the first text I have assigned in my class. Taking a lot of notes and highlighting passages that could be used to jump-start discussion has been the mode so far while reading Ethan Frome and Sula.

A major challenge while going through these texts is what to privilege and why. After being a literature major for three years, feminist literary analysis has been a joy since previously, at least at Emerson, feminist analysis is too specific, divisive, and not a “real,” true-to-the-author’s-intents sort of lens through which you understand the text. The actual lack of specificity in such analysis can make for unproductive conversations about symbols and metaphors that seem to have no context, resistant to being anchored in political biases and specific traditions of creating knowledge. If feminist analysis is appropriate, it is because certain texts have called for it, delineating them as “women’s fiction.” Toni Morrison, Edith Wharton, Sandra Cisneros, Kate Chopin…it’s sort of incestuous, no? Feminist analysis is allowed where it is most non-threatening, where writers have written texts calling for a feminist look. At least in my experience in literature classes, feminist analysis to re-read Tolstoy, Hemingway, Joyce, was pretty much regarded as an interesting experiment but short of a valid way of understanding texts.

So here I am, about to teach a course on U.S. Women Writers, where feminist literary analysis is the chief method. This is beyond exciting, of course. Some brief reflections on my experience in literature classes puts my course in perspective…

Besides reading Cisneros, I need to re-work my syllabus and browse through some of the books for my own winter courses…

Whether or Not She’s a Feminist, We Must Change the Conversation

 

When they chose Sarah Palin, conservatives were no doubt counting on the trap feminism puts us in: we absolutely must believe in and honor all women’s agency. If Sarah Palin says she’s a feminist, she must be a feminist. They were counting on feminist solidarity. They wouldn’t try to use it against us if they didn’t think it was all that powerful. 

And they were counting on us not being very critical. Remember, feminists have been out of touch and wrong before. It’s not uncommon that once some feminists find solutions to their personal problems, they stop fighting for other women and still call themselves feminists. 

Sarah Palin probably thinks that she represents a different sort of feminism, maybe not accepted by all feminists, but a feminism that has finally graduated and isn’t a threat to the status quo. Maybe to Sarah Palin, feminism means that you can feel good about being a woman and being powerful. It sounds innocent. 

And if this election weren’t so serious, and the threat to feminism as its meaning is being reshaped wasn’t such a serious threat, I might have the luxury to sit back and watch her experience this new power while she charmingly tries to hide that she’s a beginner. The urgency of this election seems to be what makes us jump on her claims that she is a feminist or does anything for women at all. 

Beware the isolated feminist philosophy that’s in our heads, like it must be in Sarah Palin’s, which (in other women) is certainly experienced for real when it acts as nothing more than a personal solution. Perhaps even some feminists we honor were, for some reason or another, not as far-reaching in their feminist philosophies as we give them credit for. Second-wave had its limitations. The founding mothers did, too. 

There are feminist philosophies that do more for all women than Sarah Palin’s philosophy does for herself. This is what we must argue. For the purposes of the 2008 election and beyond, let’s use this opportunity to better define what works for women rather than get caught in the endless trap of what feminism is. They were counting on that, too. 

 

Sarah Palin: Patriarchy’s Happy Little Sister

For a moment I couldn’t believe that I had to take this seriously. John McCain chooses a woman as his vice presidential nominee. It didn’t take long to realize what was at stake. Roe v. Wade: gone. Exceptions for those who were raped or victims of incest: gone. More attacks against birth control. What it means to be a woman, reconceptualized in that narrow, traditional frame. She can have five kids. She snagged a man who accepts her success. She is a governor. What are other women whining about? 

I want to see the nanny in that wonderful family picture. If Palin is “a woman’s candidate,” I want her to explain what poor women should do when they get pregnant and still want to go to school, or become governor. I want her to address class and race when it comes to growing your family and building your career. If she doesn’t, I will have to believe that she has a simple answer. Don’t be poor. Be rich like I am.

Or, be the partner of someone who faces no discrimination based on class, skin color, gender, or sexuality. Have children with this person, only after marriage. And when you want to do something that fulfills you, hire someone to take care of your home and your kids. It’s that simple to Palin. 

Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate is more than frustrating. It’s confusing, irritating, condescending, disrespectful. She is against the feminist concept of considering all women, their partners and their families, yet calls herself a feminist. On one hand, she would gladly deny women the health care, education, and reproductive rights they are owed. On the other, when she talks about progress for women, she herself is suddenly breaking some glass ceiling, or satisfying that feminist desire to see women in respected positions. I am sensing an alteration of feminism where Senator Clinton’s campaign left off: the installation of women in a limited number of power positions.

The popularity of this definition of feminism was and is misleading. Feminism is also the means through which we will win universal health care, reproductive justice, economic security. It is an enthusiastic encouragement, if not a bridge, to other fights against injustice. Limited to white women who want social equality with their male counterparts, this feminism fails terribly. Until the desires of the privileged stop trumping the real needs of everyone else, feminism will continue to be hijacked by anti-feminist women who love the benefits of being patriarchy’s little sister.

Java Jugs

Seriously? A Starbucks with baristas in bikini tops and short-shorts? Over at Feministing http://www.feministing.com/archives/010364.html, the comment page on the blog post about this new coffeeshop is going berserk with questions. If we get pissed about it, are we victimizing the women who choose to work there? My own skin crawls with the idea of leaning over a table of men to give one of them a latte and my boobs in his face, but should I judge other women for doing it?

Seriously, what kind of response is appropriate? Feminist analysis tries to balance observing the individual(s) (like the women who work at Java Jugs) and observing larger patterns like gender socialization. Wouldn’t it be great if we could believe that every man and woman acted individually, without influence? I wouldn’t  swoop in to save these women, but I will point to gender, and I will continue to ask questions about why these expectations and options persistently coincide with greater and possibly more fulfilling options…

The Costs of Antifeminism: Ruminations on Access to Feminism

In “I’m Not a Feminist, But…” Penny Weiss examines familiar stereotypes of feminism and feminists. She points out that “[f]eminism is unaccepted by too many with too much power,” and that powerful meaning-makers who are antifeminist often determine what feminism is. Consequently, “much less visible to too many with both too much and too little power are the costs of antifeminism.” While Weiss offers a few, “rape, domestic violence, self-hatred, poverty, and lost potential,” many costs deserve greater consideration, as women have long suffered because of antifeminism’s stubbornness.

I’m sure many antifeminists would disagree that stubbornness determines what philosophies and policies they will and will not embrace; but taking a look at a few proposals aimed at giving women anything from greater legal strength against the inevitability of harrassment to a greater, safer range of medical and reproductive options, we would see that it is often downright refusal to entertain women’s betterment that shuts down conversations and keeps many women and communities suffering. Recently a young girl asked Republican presidential nominee John McCain about his vote against equal pay for women. He said the only people likely to benefit from this proposal would be lawyers. Too many lawsuits, he said. Compare this with too many women forced to have too few options, with substantial and ignored consequences.

Something else to consider: am I too generously labeling antifeminists as I see them? What if those I call antifeminist are ignorant of feminism, and would not identify as such? They are, instead, anti-welfare, anti-lawsuits, anti-abortion, etc. Sometimes people believe feminism has nothing to do with it.

Still, they should not be excused from the responsibility of fully examining the consequences of their “ignorance.” Certainly it is ignorant to accept that you just don’t know and just don’t care to know how your votes, or your positions, disproportionately affect certain groups of individuals. It is worse when this ignorance is made a permanent blind spot in people’s minds simply because antifeminism has required it to be so: “Feminism is radical, I don’t know anything about it. It is so out there that I can’t even consider implementing it into my personal philosophy.”

If feminism was what antifeminists say it is, I wouldn’t be able to accept it, either. Who defined “antifeminism,” anyway? Feminists, or antifeminists? Ironically, we feminists can identify antifeminists/ism without necessarily fully defining feminism; and antifeminists, in quite a lot of detail, can identify feminism and unifyingly exercise their resistance against it. Is this antifeminism’s failure to embrace complexity, nuance, and contradiction, and/or is it an indication that feminism might be relying on what it is not to represent what it is? We feminists have long had difficulty defining feminism as one or even a few specific things. We rely on explanation, examples, personal narratives, wide-ranging theory that might require an extensive commitment to understanding the nature of oppression, dominance, hierarchies.

Definitions are diverse even as we all claim the same name. We embrace nuance and contradiction; those who have most power in making meaning don’t often use complex outlets to present knowledge. Is there a feminist news channel? Would it just be “our version” of the news? Would it be scorned the way women’s studies in the academy is scorned? We all want to believe we are presenting the truth, somebody’s truth, against the persistent accusation that we only seek to indoctrinate and become the dominant class, even as we consistently envision a world without dominance.

In a couple of months, I will begin leading a college class called Women, Culture and Society. Is it ideal that feminism is explored in the classroom, under the guidance and explanation of a feminist professor? Perhaps students would understand sexism more fully than if they overheard a boiled-down version from the news, where a white woman still supporting Hillary Clinton can be heard talking about a stolen election. The terms she uses, “sexism” and “oppression,” are part of a code, a type of shorthand that eliminates huge bodies of knowledge so that we are able to say what we mean in the few minutes that we have.

When I experienced my own feminist transition, one of the first things to change was the way I spoke about the world. I learned the language; I implemented it to speak about even trivial things, in otherwise meaningless interactions. Perhaps I wanted to show off what I was learning. I was, I see now, observing the social world through a different lens, one that I was proud to know other women had brought to light in many important books. I came to feminism through them. I used both the classroom and my everyday life to perfect an aggressive, unmodified feminist lifestyle. This was, of course, based on what I believed feminism to be. It changes radically all the time. For instance, I don’t believe feminism to be a lifestyle now. Being only a personal solution at the time, feminism bolstered me in many ways. I had greater confidence as someone who had always suspected, but wasn’t ever certain or entirely proven right, that people treated me differently because I was a woman.

Feminism is still a personal solution for me in many ways, but continuing to read and learn about feminism has shown me that many feminists stop fighting for other women once they see their own personal solutions don’t solve other women’s problems.

So how do we explain our message given only a short amount of time? (While, of course, continuing to perfect our message.) We are in the front of the classroom, or at our retail jobs, or in the back of the classroom, or interacting with friends and family. Can we, and do we, do it without beginning at the root every time?

Everyday Responsibility?

At the grocery store where I work in Ohio, my co-worker made a racist remark, then denied that it was racist, then justified the remark because her anger made her say it, then apologized to me because my boyfriend is black, then assured me that she didn’t have a racist bone in her body. 

After some sort of misunderstanding and altercation with a black woman, my co-worker complained to our manager (who is black), and waited for him to walk away before saying that the woman was a “ghetto black bitch.”

I was shocked. I asked her if she had actually just said that. She repeated it to me, with emphasis. I demanded to know what ghetto meant. She shrugged, and said, “Ghetto.” No, I said, what does it mean? She raised her voice: “It means trash.”

At this point a customer came to me, and I heard my co-worker saying to herself that this was “fucking ridiculous” (I think she was referring to me). She disappeared for about half an hour. During this time I called my boyfriend to tell him what happened, and that I was going to say something to her when she got back.

Perhaps to be expected, she acted like nothing had happened when she returned. I immediately told her that I couldn’t let go of that very offensive thing she had said. She looked both confused and surprised that I had brought it up. “So?” she demanded. For a second I had an honest loss of words. She continued: “I’m not a racist. I don’t have anything against black people.”

Though I was not the first to use the words “racism” and “racist,” I was happy to explain her racist comments to her. Why say “black bitch” if you didn’t mean for “black” to inform the “bitch” part? Why say “ghetto”? In a few seconds time, I was able to make the case that she must have thought blackness made the customer an even more despicable “bitch.” She denied all of this, and said she would have used the phrase “white trash bitch” if the woman had been white. And the woman is black, she argued, so why is this fact a racist thing to point out?

Another co-worker, overhearing our conversation, jumped in to tell me that her friend is not a racist. She said that she herself was living with a black man, and so was her sister. Wait, who? I said.

“Me.”

I was confused. “But you’re not the one who said ‘ghetto black bitch.’”

My point didn’t seem to matter. As someone living with a black man, she can attest to my co-worker’s racism-free thinking. Both began speaking in exaggerations about how she isn’t prejudice against anybody. The choice of “I don’t have a racist bone in my body” seems to indicate that she views racism as something ingrained, something with which you are born, or aren’t. It’s in our biology.

The incident of course showed me the continuing problems with racism. If she didn’t call the woman the n-word, then it wasn’t racist. It is also easy to see how the irresponsibility of people who know better can coincide with the problems of racism, sexism. If I hadn’t been around to hear my co-worker’s remarks, she probably would have had a much better day, feeling defended and justified by the body of workers there that rushed to her defense. Though I’m not looking to be comforted or congratulated myself, there is certainly something discomforting about knowing that (at least at my job), for every person who says, “Hey, that’s offensive, do you know that?” there are a few, or more, who privately harden their conviction against being wrong.

Response to Senator Obama’s Statements on Abortion (July 8, 2008)

Senator Obama recently explained a component of his position on abortion, saying “serious clinical mental health diseases” and “physical health” are exceptions to the rule that, in the third trimester, a woman cannot legally abort a pregnancy. He attempted to clarify by adding that “feeling blue” does not justify a “partial birth abortion.”

We might, in the aftermath of this statement, expect some women and feminists to remove their support from Obama’s campaign. While I disagree with following through with that reaction, I understand why women are disappointed and alarmed by Obama’s statement. In some women’s eyes, Obama just became another man philosophizing on the political terrain that is a woman’s body. Somewhere there are women to whom these “exceptions” apply, and they might be watching these male politicians on TV, or might be in the audience at an event as two men who know nothing about their lives or bodies talk, talk, talk. By avoiding us as people and ignoring the complex realities of our lives as women, male politicians might find talking about and around us much easier.

Some are also disappointed about Senator Obama’s statement because now that Senator Clinton is out of the running, and Obama should win the divided women’s vote, he does not seem to have much ambition to win it. He must really not care, some of us are thinking. We might also observe how, as a voting bloc, we are repeatedly taken for granted and viewed as push-overs. We resent that, and we resent that he does not seem to be fighting hard enough. We believe it indicates that nothing will change under his presidency, for us anyway.

We resent when men patronize us. We resent when men talk about us and legislate and make policy like we aren’t there. We resent that Senator Obama doesn’t defer to women on this one. And finally, “partial birth abortion” is a fake term. It is not medical, it was created by Republicans so that they could politically identify a procedure that in reality almost never happens, then they banned it, with exceptions for those cases that required the existence of this procedure in the first place: to preserve the health or save the life of the woman. And Senator Obama, our democratic candidate, used that term.

Maybe some women just won’t vote, or will vote for McCain.

Much of this is understandable, but I would offer a more cautious approach, and perhaps a better way of thinking about Senator Obama.

I was profoundly disappointed by Obama’s statements, but I will not withdrawal my support. I’m going to take a second to observe that a president will not solve everything. Some feminists wanted to elect Hillary Clinton to see a woman president before they died. If Senator Clinton had been the nominee, would they have happily sat at home because all the work appeared to be done? I truly hope not. Would she have been the answer to everything? Would our female president have worked for women, represented us, all of us, and made sure all the rights we have now remain intact? Would she lead the movement to get the rest of the rights owed to us? We really don’t know.

More than a president, we need a movement. Where we can make progress, we make it enthusiastically. Where we can forge new relationships and make men our allies (since they do make up the majority of politicians who legislate around and about us), we forge those relationships. We initiate feminist conversion wherever it can happen. And we must begin acting through the perspective that, at the very least, by voting for Obama we give ourselves the continued benefits of privacy as a constitutional right, continued support for cheap, accessible birth control, and an end in sight for abstinence-only “education,” even as all these progressions have been so imperfect and at times supported and rejected without full knowledge of what they are.

For instance, we know that the privacy argument is not enough, that abortion was decriminalized not because women were deemed human enough for full participation and full control over their reproductive capacity without exception, but because the constitution has a privacy clause that, with a certain interpretation, can include a woman deciding to terminate a pregnancy. This is imperfect, and so are distinctions made between arguments for and against abstinence-only “education,” as are those with raising minimum wage and cracking down on employers who have biases when they give out paychecks. Nobody has fixed these problems yet, so why do they fall on Obama because he has proposed changing the system?

Change is happening slowly. As feminists, we have everyday experience telling us it is difficult to change people’s minds. On one hand, I understand the impulse to cast a protest vote, or to opt out of voting altogether. But given that we have two choices in this election, Senator Barack Obama or Senator John McCain, we would do ourselves well to cast a ballot for the candidate we know for sure will at least secure what some of us have come to take for granted, and to be hopeful that with enough insistence, our representatives will work for us. In the meantime, we must add ourselves as a third choice: when we have a president in November, what will we do next?