As the gay rights movement seems to be moving forward at lightning speed and women’s rights are slowly being stripped away in practically every statehouse, is there something organizers can learn? Steph Herold and Amanda Marcotte did readers the favor of writing about this issue, one I had been meaning to tackle for a very long time. (Read both of their posts, they’re worth it.) While a victory for one doesn’t mean a loss for the other – this is not a zero sum game or a who’s-more-discriminated-against contest, and in many areas, overlapping goals make a victory in one a victory for the other – there seems to be a difference in momentum. Why are women’s rights under such heavy attack and what have we done/not done to let that happen? Why are gay rights activists winning over the public and racking up wins? What does this say about the state of both movements?
The comparison arises out of real similarities between the gay rights and women's rights movements, which Herold and Marcotte both point out. “Both are fundamentally about sexuality, personal freedom, and (reproductive) autonomy. Both have been radically organizing for centuries or more, demanding equality, often acting as allies," writes Herold, and Marcotte concurs: “The two movements are functionally fighting for the same goal, an overturn of the patriarchy.” But I think it’s the differences that we need to pay attention to that can explain why the speed of change is roaring ahead on one side and feels like a gradual turn backward on the other.
The idea is that gay rights are gaining traction in public opinion because more and more people know someone who’s gay and have come to understand that they’re just like everyone else. By that very logic, shouldn’t people be even more willing to support women’s rights? But that’s exactly the problem – the “other” is too close by. As Marcotte alludes to, gay people securing rights that everyone else already has – particularly the right to marry – doesn’t subvert any power dynamics in heterosexual men’s lives. Giving women more autonomy and power, however, does. It’s hard to persuade men that they won’t be giving up some of their power if women have more of it. But no one loses power when a gay person is allowed to serve in the military or walk down the aisle or avoid being bullied in school (except maybe the bully). The structure of privilege can remain intact when the (current) demands of the gay rights movement are met; it can’t when women’s are. The fight for women's rights seeks not only to extend some of the privileges of participation, but also to upend deeply engrained power structures. Marcotte, acknowledging this, points out that gay marriage is easier for traditionalists to stomach because it’s a group yearning to take part in traditional roles, but a right like abortion can’t fit as neatly into that mold. “Abortion is still seen as a rejection of motherhood, because you’re not going to mother that potential baby,” she says. The same can be said for women pushing to work outside the home and to earn equal pay – fewer jobs and less money to go around for the boys and no one left to take care of the babies. If gay rights activists were to move on to try and upend the power dynamic after victories like marriage rights and the repeal of DADT, it's likely they’ll meet with a lot of the same resistance.
Not to fall victim to the Oppression Olympics, but there’s also an us versus them positioning that can help many activist movements mobilize. But when it comes to women, we live with the “enemy.” Many heterosexual women are even in love with the "other," i.e. men. In her book When Everything Changed, Gail Collins puts it this way: "[The women’s rights movement] was, as the sociologist Alice Rossi said, the only instance in which people being discriminated against lived in much more intimate association with the 'enemy' than with other members of their own group." Where gay people – and people of color, and transgendered people, and other marginalized groups – often tend to create their own communities, women much less frequently do, which can blur the lines of the fight.
The two movements are also different in the history that they have stacked up behind them. The current push for gay rights is a relatively new phenomenon. Women have made some serious achievements – Marcotte points out that a woman can legally get an abortion and cross state lines to do so, but the same doesn’t hold true for gay marriage. This creates a different sense of urgency among activists, and Marcotte notes it also means that gay rights organizers may come upon a backlash stage that women's rights experiences. We've made major gains, and are now working to hold ground; gay rights activists are still conquering new territory.
We also can’t underestimate the fact that gay rights activists have a few really concrete goals right now, and because they are somewhat new are relatively cohesive (although not entirely). Feminism used to be like that, and then after we got some wins we fractured along class, race, sexual orientation, and other lines. Different people within the movement wanted to work on different, equally important issues. I think some of this is a function of goals being met and then having a hard time figuring out where to go next. But it’s also because of sheer numbers. Women are half the world’s population. We’re literally everywhere. So discrimination against us pops up in a million and ten ways, and we could spend all of our energy fighting each instance of it. We’re also a group that is going to experience almost all other kinds of marginalization and our loyalty becomes as fractured as our goals. Many of us support and are involved in a lot of other causes. What are the key goals now? We understandably have a hard time figuring it out.
And then of course, there are those who think feminism is dead. Take The End of Men. Take Ross Douthat (and you can keep him, thanks). Whether or not you support rights for gay people, I think you’d be hard pressed to find many who think they enjoy full equality. They’re targeted by hate crimes, they (were!) forced to leave the military, they’re excluded from adoption, among a whole host of pretty easy to spot, discrimination 101 instances. People think that because women can wear pants and get jobs and have sex they’re are doing just fine. Look at Oprah and Hillary Clinton and even Sarah Palin!, they say. What gay rights activists in the United States are fighting is extremely visible – and in many cases, horrific.
Also don’t underestimate the frog in the pot metaphor. If the GOP heats the water up very slowly, many of us ladies won’t jump out. (Although the GOP has leaned heavily on the temperature dial lately and a lot more women are crying foul.) This is where I agree with Herold – the lesson to be learned is to be proud, loud, and relentless. Feminist activists are doing some of this work. They're waging Twitter campaigns that have been hugely successful because they are targeted, relentless and loud. See: #Mooreandme, #DearJohn, and campaigns to foster dialogue like #ihadanabortion and #thanksPPFA. Offline efforts are happening as well: the GOP’s war on women brought 6,000 women to the streets of New York City alone, while similar rallies took place elsewhere.
Just because we won basic rights, because we’re so far along in the movement, is no reason we can’t be more aggressive. “Why do we only mobilize when we’re desperate, when the situation is bleak?” Herold asks, pointing to yearly gay pride parades no matter the political climate. Fair question. I think the women’s rights movement can suffer from a lack of proactivity, although there are good instances of it that we can expand on. Take the push to repeal the Hyde amendment – rather than react to every president that re-signs it into law or those who want to make it worse, we can fight to get rid of it altogether. We're already doing a lot of the work, but we might just need to turn up the volume. -Bryce Covert
Bryce Covert is a journalist and blogger who writes on feminism, politics, and the energy industry. You can find her at www.brycecovert.com and www.twitter.com/brycecovert.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Memo to Dems: Women are not Bargaining Chips
The midterms are so 2010. Just a distant memory. The real story is the election season coming up in 2012, and everyone is focused on guessing who will jump into the presidential arena.
But Democrats shouldn’t forget about the midterms as they look ahead to duking it out in ‘12. Remember how right before the election everyone panicked that women wouldn’t turn out to vote? Polls were showing women tuned out, turned off and full of despair about the election. In a last-ditch effort, the White House put out a report on all of the measures it enacted to help women and boost their economic security. But as Betsy Reed pointed out, “Given the level of economic anxiety racking American women, this intervention was clearly too little, too late.” Meanwhile, women had watched extreme conservatives take on all sorts of anti-choice stances -- Tea Party darlings and GOP candidates Rand Paul, Christine O’Donnell, Sharon Angle, Joe Miller and Ken Buck all opposed all abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, just for starters. Yet even as presidential advisor David Axelrod acknowledged that women’s rights were an election issue, Democrats weren’t going to make it a big focus. And it was just months earlier that they voted in a bill in which they traded away restrictions on women’s right to access abortion for the health care reform bill, the biggest crowning achievement since Obama took office.
They might want to reconsider that strategy, and there’s no time like the present. The GOP has all but announced an all-out war on women and our rights. And Amanda Marcotte is right when she points out that there is a real chance that Dems are going to see these rights as yet another bargaining chip, particularly with a crazed GOP majority in the House demanding severe spending cuts. They may feel inclined to make “concessions” on our rights in order to lessen the hit to other services.
Here’s some free advice for the Democratic Party: DON’T DO IT.
I know why they might think it’s a good idea. Where else are women going to go? We’ve already proven that we don’t just vote with our vaginas – we were key to defeating many of the ultra conservative mama grizzlies in the midterms. So no matter how many women the GOP runs, we see through them to be anti-choice and in favor of policies that hurts women and our families. Dems are the only other option, right?
But again, I urge them: remember the panic you felt in October of 2010. Sure, they were destined to take a shellacking before the results came in, women or no women voters. But it would have been far worse if we didn’t show up like we threatened. We swept Dems to victory in 2006; we mitigated the losses in 2010. We did so even though our rights were tossed around like a hacky sack. But the fight is nastier now. It’s obvious. We’re all paying attention.
Sure, they might get lucky. We might decide to vote for the common good over our own, as we often do. But is that a risk worth taking? Men swung far more heavily to the right than women did in the past election. Isn't it perhaps time to take women’s concerns seriously and acknowledge that we are an important part of the Democratic base?
As Marcotte points out, Republicans get it. “A political party is nothing without its base. That Republicans hate the organized pro-choice world so much shows they believe that pro-choicers have the power to win elections,” she says. They’re right. We do. If Dems decide that conceding on women’s rights is a compromise worth making, all I can say is: Be afraid. Be very afraid. -Bryce Covert
Bryce Covert is a journalist and blogger who writes on feminism, politics, and the energy industry. You can find her at www.brycecovert.com and www.twitter.com/brycecovert.
But Democrats shouldn’t forget about the midterms as they look ahead to duking it out in ‘12. Remember how right before the election everyone panicked that women wouldn’t turn out to vote? Polls were showing women tuned out, turned off and full of despair about the election. In a last-ditch effort, the White House put out a report on all of the measures it enacted to help women and boost their economic security. But as Betsy Reed pointed out, “Given the level of economic anxiety racking American women, this intervention was clearly too little, too late.” Meanwhile, women had watched extreme conservatives take on all sorts of anti-choice stances -- Tea Party darlings and GOP candidates Rand Paul, Christine O’Donnell, Sharon Angle, Joe Miller and Ken Buck all opposed all abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, just for starters. Yet even as presidential advisor David Axelrod acknowledged that women’s rights were an election issue, Democrats weren’t going to make it a big focus. And it was just months earlier that they voted in a bill in which they traded away restrictions on women’s right to access abortion for the health care reform bill, the biggest crowning achievement since Obama took office.
They might want to reconsider that strategy, and there’s no time like the present. The GOP has all but announced an all-out war on women and our rights. And Amanda Marcotte is right when she points out that there is a real chance that Dems are going to see these rights as yet another bargaining chip, particularly with a crazed GOP majority in the House demanding severe spending cuts. They may feel inclined to make “concessions” on our rights in order to lessen the hit to other services.
Here’s some free advice for the Democratic Party: DON’T DO IT.
I know why they might think it’s a good idea. Where else are women going to go? We’ve already proven that we don’t just vote with our vaginas – we were key to defeating many of the ultra conservative mama grizzlies in the midterms. So no matter how many women the GOP runs, we see through them to be anti-choice and in favor of policies that hurts women and our families. Dems are the only other option, right?
But again, I urge them: remember the panic you felt in October of 2010. Sure, they were destined to take a shellacking before the results came in, women or no women voters. But it would have been far worse if we didn’t show up like we threatened. We swept Dems to victory in 2006; we mitigated the losses in 2010. We did so even though our rights were tossed around like a hacky sack. But the fight is nastier now. It’s obvious. We’re all paying attention.
Sure, they might get lucky. We might decide to vote for the common good over our own, as we often do. But is that a risk worth taking? Men swung far more heavily to the right than women did in the past election. Isn't it perhaps time to take women’s concerns seriously and acknowledge that we are an important part of the Democratic base?
As Marcotte points out, Republicans get it. “A political party is nothing without its base. That Republicans hate the organized pro-choice world so much shows they believe that pro-choicers have the power to win elections,” she says. They’re right. We do. If Dems decide that conceding on women’s rights is a compromise worth making, all I can say is: Be afraid. Be very afraid. -Bryce Covert
Bryce Covert is a journalist and blogger who writes on feminism, politics, and the energy industry. You can find her at www.brycecovert.com and www.twitter.com/brycecovert.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
A girl named Nemo
There are plenty of documented cases of men dropping everything and pitting themselves against the world’s most wild places. But where are the documented cases of women doing the same thing?
I thought reading Jon Krakauer’s book Into The Wild, on which the film was based, might offer me some insight. Instead, reading it just made me ask more questions. Although plenty of people have been quick to deride McCandless as an ill-equipped fool whose reckless behavior cost him his life, Krakauer characterizes McCandless as an explorer who turned to nature in search of truth and beauty--a pilgrim, of sorts.
Krakauer likens McCandless’s nomadic, truth-seeking impulses to those of the iconic 19th-century American naturalist John Muir, whose writings and environmental activism helped preserve some of California’s most awe-inspiring landscapes, including large sections of Northern California’s majestic Redwood Forests. Krakauer also invokes Everett Ruess, a 20-year-old poet, painter, and naturalist from California who changed his name to Nemo (Latin for nobody), and after months of wandering in the wilderness and living off the land, disappeared without a trace into the Utah desert. It took 75 years to uncover his remains.
Author Wallace Stegner said of Ruess, “It should not be denied… that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom.” Historically, have women not craved "absolute freedom" just as much as men? Have“irksome obligations” prevented females from following in the steps of Everett Ruess and Chris McCandless? Or, is there a girl named Nemo whose story has never been told?
I began thinking that the masculine Into The Wild phenomenon highlights dependencies on women. Women's contributions are essential to maintain human society as it is designed. I wondered, have women traditionally just been too busy promoting and maintaining human civilization to abandon it on a whim?
Of Ruess, Stegner wrote, “Call him adventurous boy—at 18, in a dream, he saw himself plodding through jungles, chinning up the edges of cliffs, wandering through the romantic waste places of the world. No man with any of the juices of boyhood in him has ever forgotten those dreams.” Is it really “the juices of boyhood” that motivate such dreams? What about the dreams that girls have?
There are several notable accounts of extended periods of solitude written by women. Sara Maitland’s 2008 Book of Silence—which is one part autobiography, one part historical examination—promises to become a modern classic on the subject. According to the available literature on female solitude-seekers, there are some fairly notable differences between the journeys of men and women. Almost every such book that I have found written by a female author who spent an extended amount of time in the wilderness has been written by a middle-aged or elderly woman, which suggests that women are less likely than men to fully retreat into solitude in their youth.
A possible explanation for this—based on anecdotal conversation with various women about hitchhiking across the country and retreating from civilization—is a very valid fear among young women of physical or sexual assault.
One in every six women will be sexually assaulted during her lifetime. And, college-aged women are 4 times more likely to be victims of assault. Even though most women know their attackers, young women traveling alone Chris McCandless-style (hitchhiking, riding the rails, and sleeping in the streets) are putting themselves in what is thought of as a high-risk lifestyle.
Also, most of the accounts of solitude that I read were written by women living in cabins, with some access to civilization (grocers, post offices, phones, and occasional contact with other people). Based on my literature review, women appear less compelled to try to “live off the land,” or “rough it” as Chris McCandless did. This begs the question: is inserting oneself wilderness by definition a macho ego trip? Do female “pilgrims” search for truth and beauty in different ways?
Since childhood, I’ve been a solitude seeker who has been captivated by the beauty of nature. For me, however, the concept of wilderness is a place that I journey to in my mind, not in the physical world. I’ve always thought of my emotions and my psyche as a great expanse of wilderness to be explored throughout my life. Although there have been times in my 20s when I’ve been tempted to drop everything and retire to some wild place, I always knew that the urge to take off was motivated by something that couldn’t be solved by relocating physically. But whether my stationary journey inward is gender-motivated or purely self-motivated is still unclear.
A recent Times story offers several stories of men who choose solitude over civilization. The director of the Center of Cognitive and Social NeuroScience at the University of Chicago said, “In our culture, there is this mythic individualism that we cherish…That’s particularly true for men — they are supposed to be an island unto themselves. They take that myth more seriously and try to pursue it.”
What stuck with me most after I finished reading Into The Wild is that so many of these famous accounts of men end in death. Is there no girl named Nemo because women are better survivalists? Is there no girl named Nemo because women are more apt to understand one of McCandless’s final journal entries--Happiness only real when shared”--without ever pitting themselves against anything?
In terms of sheer survival and endurance, do women have less to prove than men? Or, does the masculine Into The Wild phenomenon highlight the simple lack of relative opportunity for women to abandon worldly commitments when social limitations constrain and depend on them?
As to unraveling the mystery of why there's no girl named Nemo, I still don't have answers, and I would love to hear readers' opinions. -Jenny Poplar
Jenny Poplar is a New Orleans-based freelance writer and journalist. She is currently contributing to a PBS documentary about a resident of the Lower 9th Ward who rebuilt her house in the wake of Katrina.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
On Assange, #Mooreandme and rape culture: feminists are not valued players on the progressive team
I was surprised by my own reaction to the treatment of Julian Assange’s rape charges and the resulting #Mooreandme Twitter campaign. I’m not a rape survivor and am lucky enough to say that I’ve never even been victim to attempted assault. (Although as Andrea Grimes points out, it is statistically probable that that will change.) So while the way this case has been handled absolutely appalls me, I suspect my feelings are very different than for those who have experienced sexual assault. But it’s some progressives’ response – mainly, although not all, men – to the situation that gets me. It’s been more than disappointing. It speaks to the fact that feminism is still not automatically included in core progressive values.
Over a week of valiant, constant, near-soul-crushing activism on Twitter on the part of Sady Doyle, Jaclyn Friedman, and a veritable army of others in many ways culminated last night when Michael Moore admitted to Rachel Maddow that any rape charges, no matter how suspicious their timing, should be taken seriously and investigated with the full force of the law. (He also subsequently sent Doyle a direct message on Twitter explaining his silence.) While it’s not the apology that we had been hoping for (and the Twitter campaign continues to ask for that apology), it was a pretty incredible moment, considering his first stance was that the rape charges were “hooey.” Keith Olbermann, who hosted Moore’s misguided explanation of his support for Julian Assange on his show and then committed mistakes of his own, has also apologized via Twitter (although activists are still hoping he will go further). None of this would have happened without feminists’ concerted effort to explain to Moore and Olbermann where they went wrong as progressive men who should be feminist allies. As exhausted as I know Doyle must be, I hope she is also proud. This is what successful activism looks like.
But it shouldn’t have had to be this way. That’s the point that most stayed with me, even after I watched Moore discuss rape on camera with nuance. The way he spoke about it with Maddow was the way he should have from the very beginning. It shouldn’t take a week of explaining, coaxing, badgering and practically screaming at a staunch progressive like him to get him to see things our way.
Admittedly, this was a tricky issue, particularly for progressives. As Maddow put it, it doesn’t fit nicely on a bumper sticker. Many of us support Wikileaks’ work to bring transparency to governments and expose the truth. We value freedom of the press and feel that Wikileaks should be protected under that value. And yes, the timing of these charges and the way the Swedish government has handled them are pretty suspicious. There may be political motivation at work on the part of governments who got pie in their faces from the recent Wikileaks release. But none of that should be reason to treat the women who came forward against Assange as liars (or CIA operatives) or to dismiss their claims as nonsense. If you pay attention to high-profile rape cases, this is what often happens to the women who bring charges – they get smeared, threatened, called liars and whores. Some eve end up dropping the charges altogether because of this pressure, even as they never waver from the assertion that rape did occur. This is what we mean when we talk about rape culture. The more intimidation women see of those few who bring charges against their rapists, the less safe they feel in coming forward about their own assailants. It creates an environment where men are less accountable for sexual assault because the knee-jerk assumption is that the woman is suspect, not the man. And it leads to a dismal report rate for rape in the US.
Fighting rape culture is a huge feminist priority. So when the charges against Assange were made public, most feminists worked hard to make sure they got the real story (not a false one) and treated the situation with subtlety. But as Michael Moore, Keith Olbermann, and even Naomi Wolf made clear, many progressives’ knee-jerk reaction was to suspect these women of all the things rape victims get suspected of. Their support for Julian Assange’s work blinded them to the possibility that he sexually assaulted two women. Keeping the two things in your head at once won’t make it explode. It just requires learning to walk and chew gum at the same time and holding your feminist values at the same high level as other progressive ones. But other values, like exposing truth and freedom of the press, quickly trumped women’s rights.
Feminism isn’t just about fighting the far right when they tell us what to do with our uteruses and our lives. It’s also about making the struggle for women’s equality mainstream. Real progressives are feminist allies, no matter their gender. After Keith Olbermann called the movement to demand an apology from him on Twitter a “frenzy” and then blocked most of the users, Maya at Feministing summed up her feelings well: “I can’t think of anything that’s a bigger slap in the face to feminists who genuinely believed – or at least dared to hope – that we were valued players on the team.” The need for the #Mooreandme campaign has taught me that feminists are not valued players on the team. We’re still sitting on the sidelines of the game. But we should be on the starting line-up. -Bryce Covert
Bryce Covert is a journalist and blogger who writes on feminism, politics, and the energy industry. You can find her atwww.brycecovert.com and www.twitter.com/brycecovert.
Over a week of valiant, constant, near-soul-crushing activism on Twitter on the part of Sady Doyle, Jaclyn Friedman, and a veritable army of others in many ways culminated last night when Michael Moore admitted to Rachel Maddow that any rape charges, no matter how suspicious their timing, should be taken seriously and investigated with the full force of the law. (He also subsequently sent Doyle a direct message on Twitter explaining his silence.) While it’s not the apology that we had been hoping for (and the Twitter campaign continues to ask for that apology), it was a pretty incredible moment, considering his first stance was that the rape charges were “hooey.” Keith Olbermann, who hosted Moore’s misguided explanation of his support for Julian Assange on his show and then committed mistakes of his own, has also apologized via Twitter (although activists are still hoping he will go further). None of this would have happened without feminists’ concerted effort to explain to Moore and Olbermann where they went wrong as progressive men who should be feminist allies. As exhausted as I know Doyle must be, I hope she is also proud. This is what successful activism looks like.
But it shouldn’t have had to be this way. That’s the point that most stayed with me, even after I watched Moore discuss rape on camera with nuance. The way he spoke about it with Maddow was the way he should have from the very beginning. It shouldn’t take a week of explaining, coaxing, badgering and practically screaming at a staunch progressive like him to get him to see things our way.
Admittedly, this was a tricky issue, particularly for progressives. As Maddow put it, it doesn’t fit nicely on a bumper sticker. Many of us support Wikileaks’ work to bring transparency to governments and expose the truth. We value freedom of the press and feel that Wikileaks should be protected under that value. And yes, the timing of these charges and the way the Swedish government has handled them are pretty suspicious. There may be political motivation at work on the part of governments who got pie in their faces from the recent Wikileaks release. But none of that should be reason to treat the women who came forward against Assange as liars (or CIA operatives) or to dismiss their claims as nonsense. If you pay attention to high-profile rape cases, this is what often happens to the women who bring charges – they get smeared, threatened, called liars and whores. Some eve end up dropping the charges altogether because of this pressure, even as they never waver from the assertion that rape did occur. This is what we mean when we talk about rape culture. The more intimidation women see of those few who bring charges against their rapists, the less safe they feel in coming forward about their own assailants. It creates an environment where men are less accountable for sexual assault because the knee-jerk assumption is that the woman is suspect, not the man. And it leads to a dismal report rate for rape in the US.
Fighting rape culture is a huge feminist priority. So when the charges against Assange were made public, most feminists worked hard to make sure they got the real story (not a false one) and treated the situation with subtlety. But as Michael Moore, Keith Olbermann, and even Naomi Wolf made clear, many progressives’ knee-jerk reaction was to suspect these women of all the things rape victims get suspected of. Their support for Julian Assange’s work blinded them to the possibility that he sexually assaulted two women. Keeping the two things in your head at once won’t make it explode. It just requires learning to walk and chew gum at the same time and holding your feminist values at the same high level as other progressive ones. But other values, like exposing truth and freedom of the press, quickly trumped women’s rights.
Feminism isn’t just about fighting the far right when they tell us what to do with our uteruses and our lives. It’s also about making the struggle for women’s equality mainstream. Real progressives are feminist allies, no matter their gender. After Keith Olbermann called the movement to demand an apology from him on Twitter a “frenzy” and then blocked most of the users, Maya at Feministing summed up her feelings well: “I can’t think of anything that’s a bigger slap in the face to feminists who genuinely believed – or at least dared to hope – that we were valued players on the team.” The need for the #Mooreandme campaign has taught me that feminists are not valued players on the team. We’re still sitting on the sidelines of the game. But we should be on the starting line-up. -Bryce Covert
Bryce Covert is a journalist and blogger who writes on feminism, politics, and the energy industry. You can find her atwww.brycecovert.com and www.twitter.com/brycecovert.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
The procedure that dare not speak its name
There are a lot of words women aren’t supposed to talk about. The use of “vagina,” for example, can get a commercial banned from TV, even if a euphemism like "down there" is employed instead. “Feminist” has the suffix “nazi” tagged on, turning it into a dirty word. But perhaps the most volatile word, the one that makes skin crawl on the Right, is “abortion.” This legal medical procedure has become closeted, imbued with shame, and the term has morphed into a taboo unto itself. But more than a third of American women will have an abortion by the age of 45. It’s time women take the word back.
Steph Herold recently decided to use Twitter as a forum to connect women who had had abortions by using the hashtag #ihadanabortion. As soon as the media sniffed it out, commentators raised their eyebrows about whether it trivialized abortion to talk about it alongside Justin Beiber. And then the anti-choice brigade found the hashtag, and it’s turned into a flame war. But the idea behind #ihadanabortion is to create a space for women to “come out” so that they can know they are not alone-- and so that the rest of the world can know it, too. What some see as trivializing can also be normalizing. Herold herself explains, “Part of the risk of coming out is exposing yourself to the antichoice hatred that is on Twitter… But I've had many women tell me that the activity on the hashtag made them feel less alone in their experience with abortion, even if they don't feel comfortable tweeting their own story.” By talking about it, particularly in such an open space, it can feel less shameful. In many ways, this idea draws on the gay rights movement, mimicking efforts to shed light on private discomfort or shame, while making its members feel like part of a community.
There’s another lesson women can learn from the gay rights movement: working to de-stigmatize the words associated with the cause. Besides telling people they are homosexual, part of the movement's coming out success is reclaiming the word “queer." The organization Queer Nation, started in 1990, was one of the first that reclaimed the word, and since then it has evolved to signify not a social deviant, as it originally did, but a person of a certain sexual orientation. Now words such as “queer” and “gay” have been co-opted as positive signifiers, and with that the people they represent have make progress in claiming their rightful place in society as equals.
Abortion rights are slipping in the US, while using the word “abortion” has become a weapon of choice on the Right. As Amanda Marcotte writes for On The Issues, abortion is no longer used just to talk about a woman terminating her pregnancy. Because of the ickiness and downright revulsion the word seems to incite in some people, they’re using it to talk about contraception, health care reform, and even women’s rights. Marcotte points out that right-wingers have spread the idea that hormonal contraception causes a woman’s body to reject fertilized eggs and thus is a form of “abortion.” (In reality, this is complete nonsense. Birth control works by suppressing ovulation altogether.) But no matter how wrong the facts, the messaging has worked. Even some “rabid pro-choicers” think that birth control kills something, Marcotte notes. And much noise was made (and, sadly, is still being made) about the health care reform bill funding abortions with taxpayer money – something that just isn’t true unless you use a broader definition of abortion, Marcotte concludes.
Meanwhile, some politicians who are comfortable talking about access to mammograms are unwilling to say the word "abortion." We hear about family planning, a nice phrase, but one that doesn’t mention the reality of unplanned, surgically terminated pregnancies. President Obama likes to discuss his goal of reducing unplanned pregnancies through greater access to birth control and the need to protect women’s health, both important issues. But it is also a nice way to skate around the fact that women need greater access to abortion services, services that are drying up around the country, state by state.
Some of the outrage #ihadanabortion sparked was because of “the idea that abortion is so shameful it shouldn't be talked about in any venue,” writes Anna North on Jezebel. On AlterNet, Sarah Seltzer notes, “Many folks don't want to be reminded that it happens.” But it does happen, and we need to talk about it. We need to de-stigmatize the word. It refers to a legal, safe, and often necessary medical procedure, but has come to signify so much more. When a word becomes a slur, sometimes it's time reclaim it. Now is one of those times.
As a colleague of mine put it, abortion isn’t the tragedy. The tragedy is a lack of access to abortion services. It’s time to stop talking around the fact that abortions occur, are needed, and are legal and safe. It’s time to stop talking about expanding access to family planning and contraception without avoiding abortion. The stigma must be removed. -Bryce Covert
Bryce Covert is a journalist and blogger who writes on feminism, politics, and the energy industry. You can find her at www.brycecovert.com and www.twitter.com/brycecovert.
Steph Herold recently decided to use Twitter as a forum to connect women who had had abortions by using the hashtag #ihadanabortion. As soon as the media sniffed it out, commentators raised their eyebrows about whether it trivialized abortion to talk about it alongside Justin Beiber. And then the anti-choice brigade found the hashtag, and it’s turned into a flame war. But the idea behind #ihadanabortion is to create a space for women to “come out” so that they can know they are not alone-- and so that the rest of the world can know it, too. What some see as trivializing can also be normalizing. Herold herself explains, “Part of the risk of coming out is exposing yourself to the antichoice hatred that is on Twitter… But I've had many women tell me that the activity on the hashtag made them feel less alone in their experience with abortion, even if they don't feel comfortable tweeting their own story.” By talking about it, particularly in such an open space, it can feel less shameful. In many ways, this idea draws on the gay rights movement, mimicking efforts to shed light on private discomfort or shame, while making its members feel like part of a community.
There’s another lesson women can learn from the gay rights movement: working to de-stigmatize the words associated with the cause. Besides telling people they are homosexual, part of the movement's coming out success is reclaiming the word “queer." The organization Queer Nation, started in 1990, was one of the first that reclaimed the word, and since then it has evolved to signify not a social deviant, as it originally did, but a person of a certain sexual orientation. Now words such as “queer” and “gay” have been co-opted as positive signifiers, and with that the people they represent have make progress in claiming their rightful place in society as equals.
Abortion rights are slipping in the US, while using the word “abortion” has become a weapon of choice on the Right. As Amanda Marcotte writes for On The Issues, abortion is no longer used just to talk about a woman terminating her pregnancy. Because of the ickiness and downright revulsion the word seems to incite in some people, they’re using it to talk about contraception, health care reform, and even women’s rights. Marcotte points out that right-wingers have spread the idea that hormonal contraception causes a woman’s body to reject fertilized eggs and thus is a form of “abortion.” (In reality, this is complete nonsense. Birth control works by suppressing ovulation altogether.) But no matter how wrong the facts, the messaging has worked. Even some “rabid pro-choicers” think that birth control kills something, Marcotte notes. And much noise was made (and, sadly, is still being made) about the health care reform bill funding abortions with taxpayer money – something that just isn’t true unless you use a broader definition of abortion, Marcotte concludes.
Meanwhile, some politicians who are comfortable talking about access to mammograms are unwilling to say the word "abortion." We hear about family planning, a nice phrase, but one that doesn’t mention the reality of unplanned, surgically terminated pregnancies. President Obama likes to discuss his goal of reducing unplanned pregnancies through greater access to birth control and the need to protect women’s health, both important issues. But it is also a nice way to skate around the fact that women need greater access to abortion services, services that are drying up around the country, state by state.
Some of the outrage #ihadanabortion sparked was because of “the idea that abortion is so shameful it shouldn't be talked about in any venue,” writes Anna North on Jezebel. On AlterNet, Sarah Seltzer notes, “Many folks don't want to be reminded that it happens.” But it does happen, and we need to talk about it. We need to de-stigmatize the word. It refers to a legal, safe, and often necessary medical procedure, but has come to signify so much more. When a word becomes a slur, sometimes it's time reclaim it. Now is one of those times.
As a colleague of mine put it, abortion isn’t the tragedy. The tragedy is a lack of access to abortion services. It’s time to stop talking around the fact that abortions occur, are needed, and are legal and safe. It’s time to stop talking about expanding access to family planning and contraception without avoiding abortion. The stigma must be removed. -Bryce Covert
Bryce Covert is a journalist and blogger who writes on feminism, politics, and the energy industry. You can find her at www.brycecovert.com and www.twitter.com/brycecovert.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Can sustainable cookstoves help women and girls?
World leaders spent the better part of last week deliberating over how to speed up progress on meeting the Millennium Development Goals, charted out in 2000 and intended to be accomplished by 2015.
The bad, albeit unsurprising, news is that we’re not close to meeting these goals, which address climate change, HIV/AIDS, education, and gender equality. But the best environmental news of the week came when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a public-private partnership to be led by the UN Foundation.
The alliance’s achievable goal is to see that clean, efficient cookstoves are used in 100 million households by 2020. To those of us who can pass up a lease for the perfect apartment simply because it has an electric stove instead of gas, such an effort might sound trivial. But about half of the world’s population is exposed to dangerous smoke from traditional stoves or open fires, which are fueled with available forms of biomass ranging from wood to dung to charcoal. Causing almost 2 million deaths annually, this ubiquitous household feature is a leading global killer. The United States government has committed nearly $51 million over five years to the effort, with inter-agency support from the State Department, EPA, DOE, and Health and Human Services.
The cookstove plan highlights the neglected intersection of environmental and public health issues, with a perfectly linear cause and effect: improve the quality of emissions, save human lives. Improving the safety and environmental impact of much of the world’s primary heating and cooking tool is a step toward meeting other hercluean development goals.
Those most negatively affected by the cookstoves are women and children, who generally prepare food and are exposed most frequently to smoke. They may travel great distances to dangerous places to gather fuel sources. Improving their health and safety allows the opportunity to more effectively pursue other significant development goals like women’s empowerment and girls’ education. As noted by the Blum Center for Developing Economies project on cookstoves for Darfur, “Every trek outside of the camps [to gather wood] leaves women at risk of rape and mutilation from the Janjaweed.”
Cookstoves are also a big contributor to environmental degradation, due both to deforestation for harvesting fuel sources (TreeHugger illuminates the link between deforestation and climate change here), and the black soot produced by partial combustion of biomass. The climate change impact of the soot, ominously called “black carbon,” is unclear, but scientists think it has a significant role in warming the planet.
Economic benefits are substantial, too. Eric Van Dusen, Innovation Director of the Blum Center, told me that if the right types of programs are put in place—perhaps a lease-to-own system that could cost a family as little as $1 per month, while they save up to $5 per month on fuel—the potential for poverty alleviation is not only an important benefit of the cookstoves, but their strongest selling point.
Introducing clean cookstoves to the developing world is not a new idea. AidWatch notes that the international development community has been talking about the technology for more than 50 years. The biggest challenge now is to guide cultural changes, turning the stove into an “aspirational” item, says Van Dusen, so that “everybody wishes they had a stove.” Integrating new technology into cooking practices that have been passed down for generations is a culturally sensitive issue. When the Blum Center originally brought their work in Darfur where people cook outdoors to Ethiopia where people cook indoors, ash on the floor was a big problem. It was easily solved with the addition of a pan, but serves as a reminder that every location will need a different technology. Depending on the fuel source—twigs, dung, firewood, or coal—different stoves apply.
The Center for American Progress lauds the plan for its “unique blend of diplomacy, technology, research, advocacy, and economic opportunity,” praising it for paving the way as a model to “meet the needs of those who must develop in a carbon-constrained world.”
The potential impact of 100 million cookstoves is profound. But getting there will entail serious education and cultural changes that need to be carefully considered along with technology, supply chain infrastructure, and distribution. -Sara Rubin
Sara Rubin is an editor at The Lady Finger. This post originally appeared on Campus Progress where she is a staff writer.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
How to combat the mama grizzlies? Vote!
This is the year of the mama grizzly, but not of the woman voter. While masturbation-and-sex-hating Christine O’Donnell wins her Delaware primary, polls are now showing that women are less likely to vote in the November midterm elections and appear less informed and less fired up about the issues. Disinterested voters are making a big mistake, and it's a big problem.
It’s not hard to see why a progressive woman might be frustrated or disillusioned. Where’s the heady media coverage of exciting Democratic female candidates? Rebecca Traister of Salon sees the mama grizzly trend as a sign that there is a new appetite for addressing gender and feminism. But Democrats aren’t interested in taking up the mantle. “There is a frustration, my frustration, with my own party for not reading the signals out there and saying…we want to be the women’s party and put female candidates out there and advertise our strengths with regards to women,” she says.
Meanwhile, the President’s biggest legislative win, health care reform, came at a cost to women’s rights. President Obama signed an executive order reinstating the Hyde Amendment, a legislative provision that bars federal funds from paying for abortions, for another year as a compromise with the anti-choice House contingency. And restrictive abortion language was left in the bill, requiring those who receive federal subsidies to buy coverage in the new state-run insurance exchanges to separate their premiums into a check for abortion services and a check for everything else. Many were concerned that insurance companies would just drop abortion coverage altogether to avoid this hassle.
And indeed, while women’s choice and access to abortion has been whittled away state by state over the past two years, Democrats aren’t planning to take the issue on. While presidential advisor David Axelrod has acknowledged that abortion will be an issue in this election season, given the extremely conservative views in the Tea Party, the focus for Democrats lies elsewhere – namely, the economy. Polls show that while men are angry about the economy and getting involved in the election, the key emotion for women is simply despair.
But while men may be fired up about large deficits and fiscal conservatism, women have just as much at stake in this election season, if not more. What’s on the GOP agenda if they take over the House or Senate – both moves they’ve set their eyes on? For starters, they plan to repeal healthcare reform, legislation that ultimately made a lot of gains for women. Because of the healthcare bill, being a woman can no longer be considered a preexisting condition, maternity care is covered by basic insurance, and 4.5 million more women will be eligible for Medicaid coverage.
GOP candidates want to reduce and/or privatize Social Security. Women rely heavily on these benefits. It’s harder for them to save for retirement, as they often take time to care for children, meaning they have fewer savings and smaller pensions than men. Women rely more heavily on Social Security – one in three single women 65 or over depend on it for 90% or more of their income. And women are at a much higher risk of living in poverty after retiring than men: 12% of women over 65 are poor, versus 7% of men.
The state of the economy, despite the term "mancession," also affects women. With falling state revenues, teachers – who are 82% female – are seeing huge job cuts: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has estimated that state budget cuts imperil 100,000 to 300,000 public school jobs. Over 20% of women were head of household in 2000, with the number climbing upward. Women are heavily concentrated in jobs with low pay, with 1.7 million working as nursing home aides, 1.3 million as maids and housekeepers, and 1.2 million as child care workers, according to the Department of Labor. And they started out at a disadvantage in pay, earning only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2008. President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act upon taking office, but pay equity doesn't make the GOP agenda. Unemployment and a struggling economy will continue to hit women hard in many ways, and the GOP offers no good solutions.
And then of course there’s reproductive rights. The views of the up-and-coming GOP candidates are far more extreme than we’ve seen in recent years. Rachel Maddow points out that a renewed effort to put a "personhood amendment" on Colorado’s ballot includes language so strict it could make contraception illegal because it makes a womb inhospitable to a developing egg. If contraception is murder, what is a miscarriage, she muses – manslaughter? Tea Party darlings and GOP candidates Rand Paul, Christine O’Donnell, Sharon Angle, Joe Miller and Ken Buck all oppose all abortion, all the time – even in cases of rape and incest. And the roster of those who share this extreme aversion to choice continues to grow.
So women need to vote in the midterms. Our power is in our votes, not in our silence. We swept the Democrats to victory in the 2006 midterms, handing them Congressional majorities. We could turn the tides again. As Katrina vanden Huevel says in her column urging all progressives to vote in November: “Progressive apathy will hand right-wingers a victory.”
This election is indeed a referendum – on the extreme and anti-women conservative views of many Republican candidates. As vanden Huevel puts it: we need to eat, pray, and vote. -Bryce Covert
Bryce Covert is a journalist and blogger who writes on feminism, politics, and the energy industry. You can find her at www.brycecovert.com and www.twitter.com/brycecovert.
It’s not hard to see why a progressive woman might be frustrated or disillusioned. Where’s the heady media coverage of exciting Democratic female candidates? Rebecca Traister of Salon sees the mama grizzly trend as a sign that there is a new appetite for addressing gender and feminism. But Democrats aren’t interested in taking up the mantle. “There is a frustration, my frustration, with my own party for not reading the signals out there and saying…we want to be the women’s party and put female candidates out there and advertise our strengths with regards to women,” she says.
Meanwhile, the President’s biggest legislative win, health care reform, came at a cost to women’s rights. President Obama signed an executive order reinstating the Hyde Amendment, a legislative provision that bars federal funds from paying for abortions, for another year as a compromise with the anti-choice House contingency. And restrictive abortion language was left in the bill, requiring those who receive federal subsidies to buy coverage in the new state-run insurance exchanges to separate their premiums into a check for abortion services and a check for everything else. Many were concerned that insurance companies would just drop abortion coverage altogether to avoid this hassle.
And indeed, while women’s choice and access to abortion has been whittled away state by state over the past two years, Democrats aren’t planning to take the issue on. While presidential advisor David Axelrod has acknowledged that abortion will be an issue in this election season, given the extremely conservative views in the Tea Party, the focus for Democrats lies elsewhere – namely, the economy. Polls show that while men are angry about the economy and getting involved in the election, the key emotion for women is simply despair.
But while men may be fired up about large deficits and fiscal conservatism, women have just as much at stake in this election season, if not more. What’s on the GOP agenda if they take over the House or Senate – both moves they’ve set their eyes on? For starters, they plan to repeal healthcare reform, legislation that ultimately made a lot of gains for women. Because of the healthcare bill, being a woman can no longer be considered a preexisting condition, maternity care is covered by basic insurance, and 4.5 million more women will be eligible for Medicaid coverage.
GOP candidates want to reduce and/or privatize Social Security. Women rely heavily on these benefits. It’s harder for them to save for retirement, as they often take time to care for children, meaning they have fewer savings and smaller pensions than men. Women rely more heavily on Social Security – one in three single women 65 or over depend on it for 90% or more of their income. And women are at a much higher risk of living in poverty after retiring than men: 12% of women over 65 are poor, versus 7% of men.
The state of the economy, despite the term "mancession," also affects women. With falling state revenues, teachers – who are 82% female – are seeing huge job cuts: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has estimated that state budget cuts imperil 100,000 to 300,000 public school jobs. Over 20% of women were head of household in 2000, with the number climbing upward. Women are heavily concentrated in jobs with low pay, with 1.7 million working as nursing home aides, 1.3 million as maids and housekeepers, and 1.2 million as child care workers, according to the Department of Labor. And they started out at a disadvantage in pay, earning only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2008. President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act upon taking office, but pay equity doesn't make the GOP agenda. Unemployment and a struggling economy will continue to hit women hard in many ways, and the GOP offers no good solutions.
And then of course there’s reproductive rights. The views of the up-and-coming GOP candidates are far more extreme than we’ve seen in recent years. Rachel Maddow points out that a renewed effort to put a "personhood amendment" on Colorado’s ballot includes language so strict it could make contraception illegal because it makes a womb inhospitable to a developing egg. If contraception is murder, what is a miscarriage, she muses – manslaughter? Tea Party darlings and GOP candidates Rand Paul, Christine O’Donnell, Sharon Angle, Joe Miller and Ken Buck all oppose all abortion, all the time – even in cases of rape and incest. And the roster of those who share this extreme aversion to choice continues to grow.
So women need to vote in the midterms. Our power is in our votes, not in our silence. We swept the Democrats to victory in the 2006 midterms, handing them Congressional majorities. We could turn the tides again. As Katrina vanden Huevel says in her column urging all progressives to vote in November: “Progressive apathy will hand right-wingers a victory.”
This election is indeed a referendum – on the extreme and anti-women conservative views of many Republican candidates. As vanden Huevel puts it: we need to eat, pray, and vote. -Bryce Covert
Bryce Covert is a journalist and blogger who writes on feminism, politics, and the energy industry. You can find her at www.brycecovert.com and www.twitter.com/brycecovert.
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