Big Birthday Memory #18: Want a Feminist Son? Tips From a Veteran

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. This one appeared on BlogHer on January 19, 2011

Running Boys

“So Dan,” says I, “What would you think if the woman you wanted to marry decided to keep her name?”

“Well mom,” says he, “I don’t think I’d want to marry a woman who didn’t want to keep her name.”

He was around ten then (he’s 30 now), in the car with us, listening to his dad tease me, as he has for years, that he “wouldn’t have let me” have his name if I did want it.  Not a serious discussion of male oppression exactly, but humor teaches lessons too.

Someone asked me how we raised feminist sons.  I don’t have a checklist.  And if I were to respond seriously, I’d start with something really corny: teach them to respect people – all people.  The elevator man.  The bus driver.  Their best friend’s mom.  The guy at the candy counter.  Their friends.  Their parents’ friends. Their baby sitter.  They were Manhattan kids, but they were raised to think of the feelings of every person they met.  Of course, that meant all women, too.  That was an advantage.

Oh, and we respected the two of them right back.

In the families they knew, most of the moms worked as hard as the dads.  Since moms at home were an exception, they were used to two-income families.  The daughters of these moms, the girls they went to school with, wouldn’t put up with much nonsense, either.  That also helped.

We preferred offering choices over fiats.  Most boys go through a Playboy phase.  Call it curiosity.  When the magazines began to stack up behind the old-fashioned radiator in our bathroom, we didn’t seize them.  We talked about what it must have been like for the women in the pictures and how their parents might feel.  I may have said (of course I said) that it offended me, but if they wanted to keep buying Playboy, they’d have to pay for it from their allowance and keep them all put away.   Eventually the fever broke and the magazines disappeared.

Boys Hug

I also changed the endings of a lot of stories I read to them when they were really little.   No princess was given by her father to the guy who solved the riddle or won the quest in our versions. (I also had to change stories like Mr. Poppers Penguins because of terrible racial stereotypes, by the way)  We read Harriet the Spy and Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great as well as Encyclopedia Brown and Superfudge.

Also, back then when it was new, we listened to Free to Be, You and Me  until the tape wore out.  When we did come across unpleasant images of women on TV or at a movie, we talked about them.Those movie moments were also “teachable moments.”  As any parent knows, those scenes can enable a dialogue that might otherwise be impossible, whether it’s about smoking and drugs, bullies, sex, or the partnership between women and men. They’re always popping up; not just in entertainment but also on the street, with family and friends, and in easy conversations.  We made the most of those, too.

I’ve sort of written things down here as I thought of them and now as I reread this, I realize how much I’ve focused on image and media.  I guess that’s because those sorts of opportunities were overt and therefore highly productive tools.

The modeling that went on at home was also critical of course.  We were nowhere near as exemplary as couples are now in their parenting and household equity.  It was the 70’s and 80s.  Even so, we were very aware of the issues we needed to pass on and both worked to do it. (For a more contemporary look , try The Feminist Breeder, who, in a consciously egalitarian marriage, describes her own thoughts on raising feminist boys.  or Penguin Unearthed as she offers her own perspective.)

Our boys, from when they were little, learned to cook, iron (that was our babysitter, not us), do their laundry and clean the kitchen.  They made their beds (mostly) and helped out at our parties.   Each has always had close friends who were girls, and later, women.  They still do.

Boys on Boat

As I conclude though,  I return too to the concept of respect.  If you are steeped in a respect for all people – not as a political habit but a deep, personal value, it’s a lot tougher to use your maleness to seize control of a household, a family or a workplace.

Finally, beyond all the values and logistical and modeling issues lies a fundamental fact.  A child who is well-loved and respected is far more likely to accept the values we choose to pass on, and that underlies everything else.

 

The Heathers Would Love American Blogger (at least the trailer)

First, watch this and see if you notice anything odd (other than the SNL-ish narrator)

When Sheryl Sandberg launched her Lean In Foundation, I noted the homogeneity in looks, age and (not literally but almost) hair on their Who We Are page.  It’s gotten a little better over there, but the coming documentary American Blogger (or at least its trailer) … hasn’t.

I wish I were as temperate as Be Blogalicious co-founder Stacy Ferguson , as thoughtful as Katherine Stone and others on the #americanblogger Facebook thread or as enthusiastic as some of the film’s participants and their friends, but I felt like I was watching Charlie’s Angels Build a Blog..

The rest of us seemed somehow excluded — unworthy, almost.  Because life online, and blogging especially, can be such a naked experience with such power to build deep relationships and tribes, the unfortunate, beauty queen/Martha Stewart Home nature of the two minutes we saw seemed a personal assault, suggesting that the women in this film are the women we need to know to understand and appreciate the online world the rest of us have come to rely upon and love.

For me, this world is better represented by the tribe that surrounded the last journey of Susan Niebur, the infertility quest of Melissa Ford, Laurie White’s transformation, Kelly Wickham’s tales about life, The Cuban and the kids in her school, Erin Kotcecki Vest’s fight against lupus, Morra Aarons-Mele on business and on politics, Joanne Bamberger on women and politics, Jill Miller Zimon on politics and running for office (right now!) or Liz Gumbinner about almost anything.

I know the women chosen here also have deep feelings about blogging and they are in no way responsible for the choices made by the film’s creator.  The film is the sum of its parts and it seems that each individual participant joined in good faith because of their love of what they do.

But this trailer, as it introduces us to the project, is so exclusive and exclusionary that it’s hard to remember that if you know it and hard to discover if you don’t.

Take a look at this perfect response: The Real American Blogger, where bloggers across the web post less airbrushed versions of the women who write here, who are of course as diverse and generous and cranky and skinny and large and messy and neat and coifed and barely head-covered and patient and pissed and happy and sad and lonely and not as the rest of us – except, apparently, the women chosen to promote this film as it moves toward release.

 

 

From Bunny to Brave Leader of Us All. Happy Birthday Gloria!

Gloria in her "underground" Playboy Bunny garb for her 1963 expose in SHOW Magazine.
Gloria in her “underground” Playboy Bunny garb for her 1963 expose in SHOW Magazine.

I was 17 the first time I saw this, a Pittsburgh kid with grand ambitions for worldliness and intellectual heft and the ability to do the New York Times crossword puzzle in ink; so many that I actually subscribed to magazines like The Saturday Review, The New Yorker and SHOW: the Magazine of the Arts, where Gloria’s famous Playboy Club expose first appeared.

My reaction: “What a showboat, dumb thing to do!”  My (never-less-than-honest) mother responded “You’re just jealous!”  And she was right.  Gloria had done something I so wanted to do – and so early in her career!  How could I ever get from a Monongahela River mill town to that?

I never dreamed that Gloria, too, came from an industrial town – Toledo – much less that we would both have attended the same college, that I would hear her speak at my sister’s Smith graduation, and that, amazingly,  I would actually come to know this remarkable woman.  And here, on her 80th birthday, is what I learned:

In 1974, I told one of Ms’ spectacular co-founders how much I admired her.  She replied “That’s how I feel about Gloria.” Heroes have heroes too, and hers was Gloria.

In 1982, for Ms. Magazine‘s 10th birthday, I produced an anniversary story called “A Day in the Life of Gloria Steinem” for the Today Show.  The camera crew and I took a train from Penn Station to Philadelphia with her and followed her from event to event, including a couple of large public appearances.  At least once every couple of minutes, a  woman would walk up to her to thank her for something: courage, perspective, “you changed my life.”

Every time, every interruption, every stop on the street or in the hotel lobby or the ball room or the train, she treated each woman as if she were the first one she’d ever met.  She listened intently.  She responded in a very personal way.  Every time.

To Gloria, every woman: each of us, all of us, has mattered to her.  We are not just a formidable, critical cause, we are women who one by one by one have been living the lives women live, unequal, unheralded, amazing lives.

It is this that has made her the most remarkable of leaders, of change agents and of women.  Never, in all the marches and speeches and honors and sadnesses has she forgotten that each one of us is all of us.  She is not just a leader, she is a shining example.  And inside each of us, we know it.

Happy Birthday Gloria – and thanks, from all of us here now and the girls and women yet to come.

Take a look at this MAKERS profile, too.

To Letty and Marlo with Thanks: My Free to Be Grandson

My grandson Nate turned two yesterday.  He loves music.  And, a child of his era, music video.  We are avid watchers of Free to Be…You and Me clips. 

 

This morning, this song, and the others, ran on a loop in my mind as I walked passed strollers and playgrounds in the park.   Not for the first time, I was overcome with gratitude to the two of you and the others who brought these songs to what is literally now generations of children.  It was a major factor in our home when our boys were little; it was even the school play at their elementary school.  Now it belongs to their children.  And, I suspect, those who follow.

It's become my go-to baby present to young families who don't already know it – and sometimes to those who do.  And, within a few bars Glad to Have a Friend Like You or When We Grow Up, can bring me to tears.  

It's everything we wished for our kids when they were little – all of us; it's a myriad of memories of all the hours we spent loving, dancing to and singing these wonderful songs as they became part of us.

And so I presume, for all the moms and dads, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers  and teachers and friends — to thank you one more time, as I enter the third year of the second generation in our family to be "free to be."  

Glad to have a friend like you!

 

 

 

Jewish Women, Feminists, and Esther — Across the Centuries

Queen-esther-mosaic-portrait-lilian-brocaHow can there be a women's story that women are not allowed to tell?  Today is Purim – the celebration of the rescue of the Jews from the Persian King Asueras' evil adviser Haman.  In a classic (and highly fortunate) intermarriage, she became the favorite wife of the powerful king.  Unaware that she's Jewish, he's chosen her from all the maidens of Shushan and fallen for her – hard.  The story is intricate but it ends with a bad guy trying to get the King to kill all the Jews (sound familiar?) and the Jewish Queen Esther convincing the King that the bad guy is indeed bad, and thus saving the day.

It's an old story with both sexist and feminist implications but today it emerged with a new life – at least for me.  Here's why: it's required that Jews hear the story of Esther, the Megiila Esther, read twice during the holiday.  It's read with a melody – a "trope" that's quite lovely.  Usually, in observant Judaism, men preside.  Prayers and readings are the domain of the male voice.  But women are "permitted" to read the Megilla for a gathering of women.  It's a act of Jewish feminism.  And that's what happened this morning.

I wish I could describe the emotion that arises as one hears the women's voices together, and the single voices, one by one, reading out the story.  It's an act of faith, an act of love, really, but it's also an act of community – the community of women coming together to share the story of a feisty queen who overcame fear to save her people.  

Of course you would be correct to suggest that the simplest solution would be to choose a branch of Judaism that has made its way past such rules and you'd be correct.  But we've chosen, despite the difficulties, to live this life, partly because of the very community that produced this day.   And it comes, as a friend reminded me last night, as a package.  So there will be moments – many of them – of frustration and anger.  Of a sense of deprivation and loss.  And the, just when it seems terrible — something lovely happens.  Something like today.

Ellen Goodman Doesn’t Write there Anymore

GoodmanAs long as I've worked in media, which is a long time, Ellen Goodman's been there too.  Her Pulitzer-prize-winning column, originating in the Boston Globe, has been a beacon and a landmark and a treasure. 

And now it's ending.  No, nobody fired her, she still has a large audience and many adoring readers but she's decided to stop.  Here's part of what she said in her valedictory meditation on covering women in America – and I recommend you go read the entire thing:

My generation — WOMEN — thought the movement would advance on two
legs. With one, we'd kick down the doors closed to us. With the other,
we'd walk through, changing society for men and women.

It turned
out that it was easier to kick down the doors than to change society.
It was easier to fit into traditional male life patterns than to change
those patterns. We've had more luck winning the equal right to 70-hour
weeks than we've had selling the equal value of care-giving. We have
yet to solve the problem raised at the outset: Who will take care of
the family?

As a young mother and reporter, it did not occur to
me that my daughter would face the same conflicts of work and family.
Or, on the other hand, that my son-in-law would fully share those
conflicts. I did not expect that over two-thirds of mothers would be in
the work force before we had enough child care or sick pay.

Yes – those things are true.  My own sons expect (and one has) wives who keep their names and expect to remain in the workforce.  And yes, they still face issues of child care and equal pay and glass ceilings.  The sad thing is, they won't have the provocative, inspiring, funny and very gifted voice of Ellen Goodman to cheer them on.  Maybe she'll write another book though; if she does, I'll send a copy to each of them.

G-L-O-R-I-A! Happy Birthday Gloria Steinem

Gloria Bunny
I have known Gloria Steinem for a very long time.   March 25th was her birthday and she is an amazing seventy-five years old!   I've admired her since my teens.  There used to be a magazine called SHOW, kind of a cross between Vanity Fair and New York Magazine.  In 1963, when I was a senior in high school, Gloria published a piece there called "I Was a Playboy Bunny."  Describing her three weeks as an "undercover" Bunny, the piece launched her career.  I remember saying something half derogatory about it — remember I was 17 — and my mother saying to me "You're just jealous."  She was right.  What a great job, what an elegant woman, offers from magazines, everything I was determined to have for myself – she'd done it.  If she could get out of Toledo, I could get out of Pittsburgh.  (I did.)

I've had my eye on her ever since and as she helped to lead all of us out of the wilderness I felt a special ownership since we  both attended Smith College.  In those years, as I became more involved in what would be called the Second Wave of Feminism, Gloria was a spearhead for most of it.  In fact, I once told a colleague of hers, a well-respected writer herself, how much I admired her.  Her response "The way you feel about me?  That's how I feel about Gloria."  

On the tenth anniversary of Ms. Magazine, which Gloria had helped to found, I produced a series for  The Today Show .  For one segment, a camera crew and I followed her on a day-long trip to Philadelphia to make a speech.  That was when I realized that her role was larger, and more personal, than I had understood. 

Here's what happened:  We got on the Metroliner in Penn Station and a woman came up to us to tell Gloria how she had changed her life.    We arrived in Philadelphia and, right in the station, another women did the same.  So it was all through the day.  At the evening event, she could barely make her way through the room as an endless stream of women approached to thank her, express admiration, just talk to her.  Through all of it, woman after woman after woman, she was unfailingly courteous and engaged.  Each was the only one she was talking to.  None was made to feel out of place or inappropriate.  I don't know about you, but that's tough for a public person to do; Gloria has done it for years.  In other words, she wasn't leading Feminism, she was being Feminism.

It's been like that ever since.  In the public eye or out, hugely famous or less famous, she's always been there to keep the focus where it belongs and carry us further toward equality, and it's always been about all of us, not her.  It's been an honor to know her, even a little bit, and to see personally that she's not just a fine leader, she's a fine person.  Happy Birthday Gloria (a little bit late). We're lucky to have you.

Fem 2.0 Where Are We Going? Notes from a Conference (A Special Tuesday Tour)

Fem2pt0
It's the morning after the remarkable event that was Fem 2.0, and I want to think a bit about what yesterday meant.  Fem 2.0 is a new entity whose leaders organized a conference on the future of feminism and women's issues.  Sounds like old stuff, but it's not.  Because of their vision and connections, the organizers, especially  Shireen MitchellHeather Holdridge, Liza Sabater and Gloria Pan were able to attract women who think about these issues but don't always attend the usual central-casting women's gatherings.  Combined with them: several of the "rock stars" of 2nd and 3rd Wave feminism – from Gen Y to Boomers, as well as stars in the blogger universe.

For the first time I saw, at the same meeting, women my age and older, Gen X and younger, institutional and independent, white, black, brown and Asian – all terribly accomplished, articulate and thoughtful.  The goal was to work toward the elimination of barriers among these varied groups to allow more focus on the issues that unite us.  I know that sounds like Barack Obama and maybe his style increased the reception for this call to meeting, but it was really quite remarkable.

Fem20photo
Gathered were institutional "rock stars" like Eleanor Smeal, President of Feminist Majority Foundation and publisher of Ms. Magazine, Kim Gandy, President of NOW, and Karen Mulhauser, former head of NARAL – all fierce veterans for women's rights, Rene Redwood of Redwood Enterprises and Ann Stone, introduced to the assembled as VP of the National Women's History Museum, which she is. She is also the courageous founder and long-time leader of Republicans for Choice – a group that, for many years, was enormously unpopular in Republican circles.  It wasn't easy. 

Alongside them as stars, but emerging more from the world of 2.0: Elisa Camahort Page of BlogHer, Kristen Rowe-Finkbeiner of Moms Rising, Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and RH Reality Check, and Tedra Osell of Bitch PhD, among others.  For the first time that I know of, the cohorts that these women represent were in the same rooms, talking to each other not only about feminism, but also about the factors (age, geek level, parent status etc) that divide them. 

Many people have posted detailed descriptions of parts of the day.  Here are a few:  Jen Nedeau at Chang.org offers a nice summaryLaurie White live-blogged several sessions including the one at which I spoke.  Momcrats (no surprise) were out in force and report here.  Friend, house guest and major league blogger Jill Miller Zimon sums up the plenaries and some other events

I'm sure there will be more; if there are enough I'll do a follow-up.  The day was very important to most of us and if I haven't convinced you, read some of the accounts.  Sometimes barriers among allies are tougher to overcome than those among adversaries.  Fem 2.0 gave us a real start.  They deserve our thanks.  And have them, from over here where I sit.

BlogHer, Bella, Books and Us Women

Bella_bw1_2 Two weeks ago I spent the weekend with 1,000 remarkable women.  You know where; the Web has been full of posts and tweets and messages about BlogHer, the women bloggers conference.  Since its founding, BlogHer has held four conferences, and I’ve been to three of them.  For those three years I’ve wondered at the strength and power of both the gathering and each woman, most far younger than I, who is part of it.  Audacious and rambunctious, honest and gifted, they are far beyond where I was at their age.  I’ve always known that all of us, sisters from the 70’s and 80’s and 90’s, scratched and kicked and pulled and fought to move our lives, and those of the women around us, forward.  In many ways, we made a difference.  I’m proud of that.

Today though I was reminded of a real heroine, one whose star lit the way for much of what we did, in a wonderful piece in The Women’s Review of Books: Ruth Rosen‘s review of  Bella Abzug: How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought
Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed Off Jimmy Carter, Battled for the
Rights of Women and Workers, … Planet, and Shook Up Politics Along
the Way
–an oral history of the life of Bella Abzug.  Among other things, Ruth says:

She fought for the
rights of union workers and African Americans, protested the use of the atomic
bomb and the Vietnam War, waged endless battles to advance women’s rights, and
spent the last years of her life promoting environmentalism and human rights.
When she plunged into the women’s movement during the late 1960s, Abzug infused
feminism with her fierce, strategic, take-no-prisoners spirit. As Geraldine
Ferraro reminds us,
She didn’t knock lightly on the door. She didn’t even push it open or batter it
down. She took it off the hinges forever! So that those of us who came after
could walk through!

And with a bow to Bella and so many others, walk through we have.  It’s tough to pass the stories ‘I walked six miles to school in the snow’
fogey.   Younger women, though, would find courage to fight their own
battles in Bella’s story and in many of our own."

For me, Bella was a brave, untamed beacon of defiance and energy. Her story, and ours, laid the ground for these determined, gifted "blogger generation" women. I would so love to be able to tell them about her – and about all of us, just so they could know the solidarity, the battles, the anger and the hope.  And why seeing them all together, hugging, laughing and raising hell, makes me so damned happy.  And that Bella would have loved them.

TOO MANY WOMEN DOCTORS? ARE YOU SERIOUS? DON’T YOU WATCH GREY’S ANATOMY?

Too_many_women_docs_2
OK now I’m mad!  I have a pretty high tolerance for media assumptions and misrepresentations unfair to those of us who are female.  I do.  Really.  But I think I’ve hit the wall.  Listen to this, from Business Week this week (here’s a hint – the article is called "Are There Too Many
Women Doctors?" ) The premise – there’s a doctor shortage in the US and: 
This looming shortage is forcing into the open a controversy that has
been cautiously debated in hospitals and medical practices for some time: Are
women doctors part of the problem? It’s
not the abilities of female doctors that are in question. It’s that study after
study has found women doctors tend to work 20% to 25% fewer hours than their
male counterparts.

What to discuss first?  That those who work that additional 20-25% probably work too hard?  That resentments build
up in their spouses and children that never go away.  That the "problem" is in reality a grand improvement achieved through the work and suffering of a generation of women who fought their way through medical school, internships and fellowships and now use their knowledge both to take care of people and to still live a life of their own. Shocking!

Continue reading TOO MANY WOMEN DOCTORS? ARE YOU SERIOUS? DON’T YOU WATCH GREY’S ANATOMY?