23S week 4: Feminism's Gains at Risk: Stemming the Tide

Focus —Barbara Villandry

Barbara began her career working for Shawmut Bank, first in operations and then in Human Resources handling employee communications and activities.  Shawmut awarded Barbara a scholarship to Simmons College to attend a specially designed undergraduate management program sponsored by the National Association of Banking Women.  She continued at Simmons earning her Master’s degree in Communications Management.

     Barbara moved to academia when she became Assistant Director of her graduate program at Simmons College.  From there, she became Chair of the Communications Programs at Hesser College in Manchester, NH where she developed and managed a program in radio and television broadcasting, and a program in public relations. 

    Her home and garden have been her salvation during the pandemic where she has quarantined with her husband and pet poodle.  

CHANGES I’VE SEEN FOR WOMEN IN MY LIFETIME

    I’m hoping you will bear with me as I spend some time walking down my own memory lane.   I’ve been asked to talk about the changes I’ve seen happening for women in my lifetime.  I grew up in the 50s when there was an expectation that little girls would play with dolls and have imaginary tea parties.  I had a miniature porcelain tea set my grandmother gave me.  I loved it when she explained all the conventions of socializing while we would pretend to sip tea.  I cherished those moments, but when I was in my own house, I loved playing cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians with the boy next door in his basement.  I don’t know how many other little girls did that.   I never had girlfriends as confidants.  My mom tried to get me interested in dolls, but that really wasn’t my thing.  Finally, she settled on buying  me “storybook” dolls that were exquisitely costumed dolls designed for display.  I kept them in a cupboard high above my closet and they only came out when someone special came to visit like my cousins.  Other than that, I could be found outside hanging upside down off the bars of the swing set and walking the top of our fence with the boy next door.  

     When our family met for a family dinner at the country club, I had beautiful dresses that I loved to wear.  I understood that when the family was in public, I was expected to be well behaved, and I always acted like a young lady should.  My mom worked six days a week in her father’s jewelry store.  I knew that all of my friends’ moms didn’t work, but I never gave that much thought.  Fast forward to today’s world when I bought my great niece a tea set that I have yet to give her.  I have no idea if in today’s world that is an appropriate gift for a little girl.  I definitely haven’t bought her a doll for fear of pushing her into a stereotype of what a little girl should be interested in.  Last summer, I was truly astonished when my nephew sent me a video of his three-year old boy and five-year old girl riding bucking lambs at the annual rodeo….  Without living in proximity to these kids, buying gifts is a guessing game.

     In middle school, I had a girlfriend who was desperately ill once a month when she got her period.  The nurse wouldn’t allow her to go home.  She had to hang in for the whole day when she needed to be in bed.  My guess is that wouldn’t happen today, and if it did, the nurse and administration would be answering to my friend’s parents and perhaps a lawyer.

     In high school, girls had bouffant hairdos.  They would attempt to sleep with their hair wrapped around giant curlers.  I can’t imagine any girl doing that today.  The girls in high school were all required to wear dresses and nylons.  This was before pantyhose, so these were individual nylons with seams going up the back that were held up by a garter strap or a girdle.  So comfortable!  A couple of years later I was back home visiting an instructor at the high school, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  The girls were wearing pants and the guys were wearing colorful print shirts.  That was a bit difficult to wrap my mind around.  It looked more comfortable, but it was a major shift of expectations.

    In college, I attended an evening lecture of a visiting poet.  I was enjoying the lecture when I realized that I had to walk out so I could make my dorm’s 10:00 curfew.  The guys remained to hear the end of the lecture.  At the time I thought that this was so unfair.

     Then there was the time when I accompanied two of my housemothers to dinner.  Yes, housemothers were a part of my college experience!  A female student joined us who was a law student.  I was intrigued that she was training to be a lawyer, but it never occurred to me that I could go to law school.  I had a subscription for The Congressional Record delivered to me at school, but I couldn’t make the leap to think that I could become a lawyer.  When I reflect on that at this age, I’m stunned.  What I did instead was come to Boston to train as a court reporter.  

     The school recommended that I stay at the Franklin Square House, a women’s residence in Roxbury.  When I arrived with my foot locker and suitcase, they put me in a tiny long room that was so much smaller than the single I’d had in college.  Then, I learned that they had a 10:00 curfew.  I was beside myself.  Not that I was planning to close all the bars in Boston every night, but I have never done well with arbitrary rules.  There was a new YWCA residence opening on Clarendon Street in Boston.  I reserved a room, turned up at the desk of the Franklin Square House with my trunk and suitcase, and told them I was leaving!  I took a cab to the new YWCA where a lovely room was awaiting me, and where there were no curfews.  It was eight blocks from my court reporting school, and on a good day, I could walk there.  Later I made friends with a woman who was at The Franklin Square House at that time.  She was amazed the staff just let me leave.  My guess is that I looked older and professional, and they didn’t think I was a student. 

     I never became a court reporter.  I was working at Shawmut Bank in operations and the bank kept promoting me.  My husband and I were married in 1968.  It never occurred to me to keep my maiden name.  That idea gathered momentum a few years later.  There was one officer at the bank, however, whose wife insisted that he take her name.  I never could quite wrap my mind around that.  Today, I’m coming to terms with the fact that “husband” and “wife” seem to be terms that are passe, replaced by the term “partner,” which I always thought was only used by gay couples.  Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with all these changes.

    Around 1979, there were many more young women college graduates hired at the bank into jobs that had never before been filled by women.  One of the things that struck me was they were all dressing in the same pinstriped suit with the required silk tie at the collar.  They were attempting to look like their male counterparts.  The fact that none of these women seemed to have any sense of style made me a bit nuts.  Somewhere in the mid-80s, one of the female banking officers became pregnant and was going to take maternity leave.  She was one of the few women Vice Presidents.  The bank administration was in a dither thinking that she couldn’t hold onto her VP title if she wasn’t working full time.  They did come to their senses and allowed her to keep her title.  She had her baby and returned to have a very successful banking career that included bringing in a lot of money for the banking division.

     About that same time, I went to a conference at Harvard that was centered on family and children.  It was the first session of the afternoon and I did a double take thinking that I’d misheard the speaker.  He was predicting a phenomenal increase in single heads of households.  He was chronicling what turned out to be a major cultural shift.  More women were choosing to have children without marrying the father, or were marrying the father but were not staying in the marriage.  And there were more women and men who were choosing not to marry or to have children.  

     I think back to a month before my high school graduation when all the female graduating high school seniors were invited to an event sponsored by the Association of University Women.  The soon to be high school graduates showed up all dressed in heels wearing hats and gloves that matched their outfits.  I’m sitting there listening to one of these speakers tell the audience there is an order for living our lives.  We should go to college, find a husband, marry, and have children.  I remember wanting to get up and walk out.  It wasn’t that I had other plans, but I thought it was extraordinarily presumptuous for this woman to tell us how we should live our lives.  I can’t imagine her horror as she watched the American social order turn upside down two decades later.

     The birth control pill came on the market in 1960, and for the first time, women had access to a reliable form of birth control.  The 1960s was labeled the decade of the sexual revolution.  Free love was talked about a lot, and Haight Ashbury in San Francisco was identified as the center of the counterculture.  That didn’t impact me.  I was a traditional college student for less than a year in Montana in 1963.  I was in Boston in 1966 training to be a court reporter and working at the bank.  I was married in 1968.  Having said that, the pill was what I was using for birth control until 1979 when I had my tubes tied.  Unlike a lot of women, I didn’t seem to have a ticking biological clock.  The one time I thought about having a child I asked my husband if he would come with me into the delivery room, a practice that was just gaining steam.  He said “no,” and I said, ”Well, that’s the end of that idea!”  

     My pilot undergraduate degree at Simmons consisted of banking women whose banks gave them fellowships to attend this special program to earn their degree.  Almost all of them deferred having children until they were older, some in their 40s.  When I was 24, I had a gyn tell me to have my children in my 20s when I had the energy to keep up with them.  I’ve thought that having children when you are older makes you a different kind of mother.  From my vantage point, it looks to me like my classmates have been very successful in their roles as moms.  My guess is there are tradeoffs between having children when you are younger versus when you are older.  I’d love to see the research on this phenomenon.

     At one of Simmons Leadership Conferences, I listened to Whoopie Goldberg who had just come from a women’s march on Washington.  She talked about bringing a coat hanger to show her young D.C. audience as a way of reminding them what women used to do to abort an unwanted fetus before Roe vs Wade was law.  Today I watch the news coverage of how difficult some states are making it for women to have an abortion since Roe versus Wade has been overturned.  I can’t help thinking that some of these states’ legislators might as well join the Taliban.  It seems to me that subjugating women to their rules, no matter how restrictive, is right up their alley.  

     One of the culture shifts that I’m still coming to terms with is the husband who stays at home and takes care of the kids while his wife works.  In my neighborhood I see men wheeling baby carriages on my street during the day taking the baby out for some fresh air.  Trust me, when I was growing up, there was never a man wheeling a baby carriage down the street.  In a different time, however, I think my parents might have adapted that model if it had been acceptable.  My dad had wonderful parenting skills and my mom had no interest in that at all.

     When my husband and I were first dating in Boston, we’d gotten into an argument, and he pushed me which frightened me.  I went to the police department to see if they could help.  I’m not sure what I expected them to do.  That was a really bad idea.  Their policy was not to get involved in domestic disputes, and I was quickly rushed out of the department and back out onto the street.  Today if I went to the police, they would be required to listen and follow up.  That’s a huge change because a woman’s voice is finally heard.

     Lauren is a childhood friend who wrote Jane Fonda and told her she admired her and wanted to work for her.  Jane hired her to find scripts that her production company could produce.  Because of Fonda’s connections in Hollywood, she was one of the first women to form her own production company.  After five years working for Jane, Lauren formed her own production company which successfully produced three films.  That was possible, although not easy, because women were just beginning to get a foot in the door doing jobs that had always been the province of men.

     Lore Anne is a high school friend who after her freshman year at MIT was told by her father that he wasn’t paying this kind of money for her to earn Cs.  Her dad made her transfer to Montana State University to complete her undergraduate degree.  She completed her PhD at BU, and went on to be one of the first women to head up a division at NIH.  She has two accomplished daughters, one of whom is an oncologist specializing in brain cancer at Einstein.  That would have been a career that was unthinkable for a girl when her mom and I were in high school.  

     So yes, I have seen lots of things change for women, and I’ve had many of my own expectations drastically altered.  And as encouraging as these changes have been, I’ve also been distressed to see the backlash created by folks who want things to be the way they always were.  The speed of change may depend on your perspective.  For a lot of us, these changes have been very slow in coming, but for some, they have come too fast to accept and to embrace.

Click here to hear Barb's talk.

Linda Ai-Yun Liu, PhD

Linda Ai-Yun Liu is a Lecturer of Sociology in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She teaches and writes about feminisms, neoliberalism, cultural studies, and film and media studies. Her work has been published in Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, and New Review of Film and Television Studies. She serves on the Executive Committee of the Faculty Staff Union at UMass Boston and is active in labor struggles to improve higher ed working conditions. She lives in Dorchester with her partner Joe, baby daughter Lila, and cat Hermes.

Click here to hear Linda Liu's lecture.

References:

Talk at UMass Boston  "Armed Conflict, Gender and the Rights of Nature": Dr. Keina Yoshida, International Human Rights Lawyer  on Thursday 30th March 2023.  (Possible speaker for WE)

Interesting article about expectations for women to do emotional labor work in the workplace: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/27/emotional-labor-work-women-career-gender

     

GENDER DELUSIONS

—by ELIZABETH DODSON GRAY,  November 10, 2011
Theological Opportunities Program / WomenExplore Lecture and Discussion Forum

Every morning when you and I, as women, walk out our front door, we walk out into a culture that is permeated with assumptions—Dare I say "gender delusions"?—assumptions that men are superior to women. That men are smarter—more competent, more "suited" than women for public office.

If we as a culture do not believe this, then explain to me why we regard as "normal" all the male heads of corporate business? Why do we regard as "normal" the great preponderance of males in the Congress and in the state legislatures, and all the male governors, and, yes, foreign heads of state.

The Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was first written by Alice Paul in 1923. Explain to me why the Equal Rights Amendment was not passed by the Congress until 1972— and then failed to be passed by enough State Legislatures by the 1982 deadline for it to become a Constitutional amendment.

The Gender Delusion of Male Superiority

I remember seeing a cartoon of a little boy and a little girl standing nude around a toilet. The little girl looks over at the little boy’s body and says, "Oh, is that why you make more than I do?"

In a similar vein I remember a three-year-old girl who was being raised by her divorced mother. The mother’s college friend was spending the night, and the little girl and the friend’s young son had a bath together. Going to bed that night the little girl whispered in her mother’s ear, "Isn’t it a blessing it didn’t grow on his face!"

The gender delusion is silently invisible in our culture— and it only occasionally "rises up" to full consciousness. Several decades ago I was showing to a group of couples who were my good friends a slide show based on an academic paper I had done recently.

In the middle of the slide show, one of the husbands suddenly glimpsed the fact that I don’t think that men are superior to women. He burst out with the comment, "But I am superior to you, Liz!" I made a withering response: "And just how did you figure that out, Ken?"

His reply was astounding to all present—"Because I can run a jack hammer and you can’t!"

The room exploded! The men said, "If you think you’re better than me, Ken, just because you can run a jack hammer, you’re crazy!" The women pointed out the obvious—That I could have a baby, and he couldn’t!

What astounded and sobered me was the chilling realization that this man had secretly chosen a jack hammer to indicate his superiority! Ken was a vice president of a major New England utility and was in a rather "liberated" marriage. But in his head and heart all these years he felt he was superior because he could run a jack hammer!

Only Being Powerful and Dominant

Sometimes in this culture we confront a sense of masculinity that seems to depend for its validity and strength upon men being superior to women! Men want to be super-rational, "cool," always in control, never uncertain, can’t ask for directions, can’t admit mistakes—and are only comfortable with being powerful and dominant— because women are not allowed to be that!

Where did all that come from? You might think that, from prehistoric times to now, men worldwide would be deeply grateful for the childbearing which women do, to bring into the world the next generation of the human race!

But worldwide there is no gratitude. No appreciation! Instead we find widespread oppression of women, expressed in honor-killings, cliterodectomies, and laws to control female reproduction.

Do you remember the woman taxi-driver who commented to Gloria Steinem, "If men gave birth, abortion would be a sacrament!"

Nowhere in worldwide patriarchy is women giving birth named as sacred. Instead from earliest times in human history women seem to be feared, and found to be needing "control." Retired Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong has an explanation for this: I quote
An examination of the taboos of almost every primitive human community reveals the male need to put down or control the female. A universal need to put down or control another is a sure sign of both fear and hostility. One cannot help but wonder why the male—who was generally larger, stronger and faster— could be so threatened by the female.

Spong continues: One has to look beneath the obvious and explore psychological dimensions for answers. The ancient taboos of our primitive ancestors focus the male fear of women on the mystery of the female reproductive process. Early societies did not understand the male connection with reproduction. The women seemed to be capable of producing life alone. The woman was also the one who experienced the menstrual cycle, and only the development of a new human life in the woman’s womb could interrupt the regular mystery of female bleeding.

The menstrual cycle was a source of enormous male anxiety, the taboos reveal. The menstrual blood was felt to be capable of great evil, so the woman would be banished during her menstrual flow, and liturgical cleansing rituals were necessary before she could be readmitted to the tribe.

Spong continues: In every primitive society, blood and life were intimately connected, and the regular female experience of bleeding without dying gave rise to many superstitions.

The female menstrual cycle was even thought to control the moon, which turned more or less on the same span of time. Through the moon, the tides seemed to be responsive to women’s mysterious power. The woman who possessed these cosmic powers was greatly feared and needed to be controlled by the physically stronger males. That was the ancient conclusion.¹

A Culture to Reassure

I think what men did everywhere was to set about creating for themselves a "culture to reassure"—which is patriarchy!

Margaret Mead reports that  "In every known human society, the male’s need for achievement can be recognized. Men may cook, or weave or dress dolls or hunt hummingbirds, but if such activities are appropriate occupations of men, then the whole society, men and women alike, views them as important. When the same occupations are performed by women, they are regarded as less important. In a great number of human societies men’s sureness of their sex role is tied up with their right, or ability, to practice some activity that women are not allowed to practice. Their maleness, in fact, has to be underwritten by preventing women from entering some field or performing some feat. . . . There seems no evidence that it is necessary for men to surpass women in any specific way, but rather that men do need to find reassurance in achievement, and because of this connection, cultures frequently phrase achievement as something that women do not or cannot do,rather than directly as something which men do well."²

This leaves us today confronting a culture which in a thousand small ways reassures men that they are superior—and are "intended" to be superior. Male entitlement wafts its quiet but persuasive refrains through every lived moment. Biologically "entitled" to have sex without getting pregnant, the male is further biologically entitled to have children without experiencing either pregnancy or childbirth.

A Family without Anteing Up

Our daughter Lisa was throwing up into her toilet during the nausea of the first three months of her pregnancy, and our daughter interrupted to say to her husband, "You owe me big-time for this!"

The male then feels further entitled to have a family without "anteing up" his share of housework and childcare. I remember David saying when Lisa was a toddler and sick one night, "I have to get my sleep. I have to work tomorrow!" (My unpaid work of caring for a sick child the next day was unseen.)

Lest you think these examples extreme, let me tell you this story. A colleague came up to me and said, "Liz, I have to tell you this story. I just retired, and my wife is not yet retired. So I volunteered to do some of the housework while she’s still working." (Clearly, he had not done any before!) So, he continued, "I got out the vacuum cleaner and I am vacuuming away, when inside me this little voice says, ‘YOU should not be doing this!’ Liz, can you believe that?" And I say, "Yes, I can believe that!"

Growing up in this culture, male entitlement is quietly and perniciously and deeply embedded in each young man. It is "socialized" into the emerging young male consciousness—and it is what makes even the most egalitarian or feminist heterosexual relationship a challenging life journey!

Before I leave the gender delusion of male superiority, let me show you exactly why it is false and therefore a delusion.

VISUAL of Generations of Ancestors (and their DNA)

Each of us is a random combination of DNA from both a mother and a father, and each of them is likewise a chance combination of their parents and ancestors’ DNA. If there were to be genius in the DNA of our forebears—the generations of our parents and grandparents and great-grands and so on, it is a process involving random chance which produces here or there another Einstein or Beethoven or Fanny Mendelsohn or Georgia O'Keefe. There is no physiological way for that genius not to go into a female body. It is impossible. Half of the genius available to the human species is in women’s minds, bodies, hearts. And for thousands of years we have missed it because it has been suppressed. In Afganistan the insurgents target for destruction the schools for girls, as a way of suppressing girls’ potential.

So there is no genetic bias toward male superiority.

VISUAL of genetic ancestors.

Adam’s World

But there is another big gender delusion which is even more insidious and less understood in our culture. Do you remember those beautiful snow-globes which you shake to make the snow fall? Has it ever occurred to you that you could be living inside someone’s snow-globe?

We really are inside someone’s snow-globe, because we are inside a culture of assumptions about life and reality.

The point is that reality does not just exist "out there." Rather, we perceive reality through the mental eyeglasses of our social formulations. These are like the green eyeglasses in The Wizard of Oz. Sociologists call this "a social construction of reality." I call it living in Adam’s world.

Remember in the Bible when Adam names all the animals? We live inside a social construction of reality (a virtual snow-globe) in which Adam, the male of the human species, has named everything and thought everything from the point of view of his male body and male life-experience.

Of their socially-dominant gender, the generic male can say—like Adam—"Everything is named, everything is thought, from my point of view." And all of us, having been born "into and socialized within this "Adam’s world," feel what patriarchal history for centuries said: "This is the way the world really is," for we have never experienced life another way.

Our language itself reflects Adam’s world. So-called "generic" language has perpetuated the illusion that all of the human species is made visible in the words man and mankind. Our language is like a Rorschach test, imaging back to us reflections of even uniquely male genital experience in statements such as "the thrust of his thinking," "a penetrating comment," "a seminal book," even "seminars." Yet male consciousness, like the Washington Monument to "the father of our country," has left us blissfully unaware of the frequently phallic nature of the sculpting of its monuments as well as its words.

In the long history of thought, Adam’s world has given us male-constructed philosophy, male-constructed psychology, and, yes, male-constructed theology. It has been men who have "erected" these great conceptual systems. Thus traditional Christian theology has imaged the generic human in the form of the male, and also imaged the divine in the form of the male. Michelangelo’s portrayal of a bearded God reaching the finger of creation-energy to fill Adam with life has been accepted in Western culture as an icon, a visual summary, of the theological statement at "God created man in His own image."

VISUAL—Michelangelo’s "Creation"

But when we take account of the sociology of knowledge, and notice who is doing the knowing, we realize that the flow of creation really happened as the reverse of what we earlier perceived. It is actually the human male who has created God in his own image. Yes, like Narcissus of old, the male sees only himself in the cosmos reflecting-pool of ultimate mystery.

The feminist theologian Mary Daly said that "When God is male, then the male is God."³

Within Adam’s World, Naming Is Power

VISUAL of Naming Is Power.

If you doubt this perspective, ask yourself about the new meaning in our current vocabulary of the word "hot." The word embodies the truth that now in this cultureall female bodies are subjected to the all-seeing male lecherous "EYE"—ranking them for their sexual vibrations.

We used to say that it wasn’t good to treat women like sex objects. Today "HOT’ says it all, and nobody (not even feminists) seem to object!

Naming is power. Consider the hostile and denigrating names given to men and women in this English-speaking culture. Did you know that there are 227 words in English which denigrate women. (Think of doll, broad, tomato, chick, fox, cat, dog, bitch, cunt, whore, "ho".) How many English words are denigrating to men? A grand total of 12, of which some are denigrating because they are denigrating to women—like mother-fucker, son of a bitch, and bastard!⁴

Consider also the presently running TV commercial for a hard-working truck. The truck says "I take a tank of gas as far as she will go!" Can you imagine naming as male a tank of gasoline? No.

Naming Is Power—and the power to name is potent in Adam’s world. What a struggle it was for feminism to name the realities of "date rape," "spousal rape," "sexual harassment" (Think of Herman Cain and today’s news!). "Domestic violence" is a reality with a terribly misleading name. "Domestic violence" hides the truly violent partner (almost always male!). And "domestic violence" sounds like the walls are beating up the intimate partner. Do you notice that for all the violence to women, we never add the word male? The male connection to violence to women goes unnamed.

YES, Naming is power

We were once buying a rug. The salesman threw down a rug for us to consider buying, saying "There she is!" My quick feminist husband said, "Why do you call the rug ‘She’?" The young salesman looked confused and I filled in "Because you throw it on the floor and walk on it!"

Then there are words like "slut" which express moral contempt for femalepromiscuous sexual behavior. But there are no corresponding words for expressing similar moral contempt for promiscuous male sexual behavior. What is comparable? "Womanizing"? No! Little moral contempt there. "Don Juan"?—this is almost a title of admiration. TV commentators, lacking any proper word despite all the real-life examples from Arnold Schwarzenegger to John Edwards, fall back on "affairs" or "bad behavior." Bad behavior! Do you notice that the word adultery is practically never used?

Living as Women in Adam’s World

Question—What does the existence of Adam’s world mean to feminists? If you truly understand that we as women must live in a cultural world which is based almost totally on male life-experience, what does that mean for how we as women live our lives?

I think it means that we must have an attitude of "suspicion" toward every cultural attitude and assumption, not just "HOT"! We need continually to ask ourselves "Do we as women feel that way on this issue and this area of life? Is the male view of sex truly my woman’s view? Is the male view of family, or success, or foreign policy, my woman’s view?

But it is hard to do that as one woman alone. And that is where TOP comes in. TOP is a woman’s standing point. TOP is where we find our voice to dialogue together in safety about our women’s views of everything from globalization to immigration to family—yes, even to sex. TOP is where we gather our life stories, our experience of violence toward women, and our experience of the cherishing of women, our experiences of both love and of betrayal.

As women we will always walk in two worlds—one the patriarchal world of male naming, Adam’s world, and the other the fragile yet blossoming world of women’s experience and women’s naming.

With the help of TOP, we will walk more surely and more confidently in that awakening women’s world.
 
—Elizabeth Dodson Gray

Misconstrued Once Again

Since my blog post of November 10, 2009, I’ve been pondering feminism. Even today some young women, when they hear the term “feminist” think: hairy, bra-burning, man-hating, fat, radical, and lesbian.

I know this because these words came up in a recent workshop held at Lesley University right here in liberal Cambridge, MA. The young women involved weren’t even born when such terms were first applied to the Second Wave of feminists, yet these misperceptions live on.

Personally, I’d like to be a bra-burner. I enjoyed the freedom of going to school and work without a bra in the 70s, a freedom that doesn’t seem to exist today.

Two Myths

But there actually were no bra-burners back in the day. You may have read the article by Ariel Levy in the November 16, New Yorker and learned to your surprise, as I did, that no bras were ever burned at the famous protest against the Miss America pageant in the summer of 1968. Not a single one.

Corsets and girdles, along with copies of Playboy and high-heeled shoes, says Levy, were tossed into a trash can. A reporter at the time likened the act to burning draft cards and voila, the two actions were conflated to become, in the media and then the public mind, “bra-burning”, a scary attack on . . . well, something.

Gail Collins, in her book When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, writes that, despite popular belief, “by 1960 there were as many women working as there had been at the peak of WWII, and the vast majority of them were married.”

Huh? Wait a minute. What happened to the Doris Day mother who dressed herself up impeccably as she stayed home tending to the kiddies and the hubby whilst singing in the kitchen? If feminists didn’t burn bra’s and many married women, not just feminists, worked outside the home for the last 50 years, what else have we been led astray on?

The Definition of Feminism

You guessed it: the meaning of feminism. The media can’t seem to think past myth and menace, but the American Heritage Dictionary, that radical tome, has managed to get it right: Feminism: Belief in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes. A “feminist,” according to the Dictionary, is one who believes in feminism.

How could any fair-minded person not subscribe to feminism? How could any fair-minded person, therefore, not, be a feminist?

If you still don’t believe me, here’s another dictionary for you. Cheris Kramerae, author of A Feminist Dictionary, writes: “Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings.”

Enough said. Now, will someone please alert the media?

—Cheryl Suchors

Who's A Feminist Today?

In her response to the topic “What Is The Evolving Meaning of Feminism?” Jaclyn Friedman told us that she—at 38—bridges the gap between older feminists who say, “Where are the young women? Why aren’t they feminists?” and younger feminists who say, “Why don’t the older women support us?”

There are young feminists out there I’m not supporting? Please tell me where. Many other Second Wavers and I are eager to join forces with them. Friedman said because younger women don’t do feminism the way we of the Second Wave do, we tend not to find them. They’re on the Internet.

So I went to the Internet. I checked out Feministing.com, a place Friedman recommended and that must get a lot of traffic. First thing I looked at was their mission:

Young women are rarely given the opportunity to speak on their own behalf on issues that affect their lives and futures. Feministing provides a platform for us to comment, analyze, influence and connect.

I’m down with that. Sounds a lot like TOP. Except we meet face-to-face on Thursdays rather than connecting mostly on line. Is that the only difference between young feminists and me?

Approach and Images Differ

The first thing I noticed on the website was the logo: black cutouts of women with simplified outlines accentuating breasts, hips and hair that made me think of the trailers for the Charlie’s Angels movie popular with middle-schoolers at the turn of the millennium. The logo also looked like some of the figures cavorting through the title sequence of old James Bond movies. (That’s the second time I’ve referred to Bond in two blogs; is it me or something in the air when the subject of feminism comes up?)

Feministing creators call their logo “the mud-flap girl” and it’s meant to be ironic because she’s raising her middle finger (oops— I interpreted that as an adamant index finger) and they’re taking the image back. I’m more open to this kind of tactic than I once was (see earlier November blog Virgin or What?)

Language Differs

The Feministing site uses contemporary terms—“you guys” and “girls”— referring to women that feel like a poke in the eye to this Second Waver. Along with others, I spent years training colleagues in the business world, friends, relatives and lovers to say and write the radical word “woman” when referring to a female human older than your average high school graduate.

But I also learned a term—cis-gendered—that refers to a group I didn’t know I was in! Cis-gendered people are comfortable in the sexual identity they were born with, unlike trans-gendered folks. (Cis is a Latin prefix used in chemistry for “on the same side” vs. trans which means “on the other side.”)

I applaud this term, despite its initial awkwardness on the tongue. It follows the principle of naming the majority (instead of leaving it as the unspoken norm) as well as the minority, much like “straight” and “gay.”

Evolution Includes Differences and Similarities

Maybe these differences are what my 20 year-old daughter means when, if asked if she's a feminist, she responds, “Yeah, but not like she is,” pointing at her mother. There seem to be looser parameters around language and imagery for younger feminists than the ones we set up for ourselves in the 1960s and 1970s.

It will take more exploring online and more conversations with younger women for me to come to a deeper understanding than this brief reaction to Jaclyn Friedman’s comment about bridging a divide on my behalf. I have some homework to do, and I’m looking forward to it.

I feel great hope for Second Wavers’ ability to work with today’s generation of feminists when I see things like Sarah Jayne’s blog on Feministing. She quotes her friend’s perfect description of feminism:

“…feminism is about waking up and finding yourself in a community, its about having wicked empowered sex, feeling like you can take on any challenge, build real love, and stop feeling like you are the only person who ever thought.... damn, this world needs to change...”

What feminist in her right mind wouldn’t be delighted to subscribe to that world view?

—Cheryl Suchors