"The boss is hurrying the life out of me."

Rose Cohen and her father immigrated from Czarist Russia to the tenements of New York City, working exhausting schedules under harsh conditions to survive and to send for the rest of the family.  In this podcast, I read an excerpt from Rose Cohen’s book, Out of the Shadow:  A Russian Jewish Girlhood on the Lower East Side, published in 1918.  She tells of her first days as a child worker in a garment sweatshop.

My First Job by Rose Cohen is taken from Out of the Sweatshop: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy, edited by Leon Stein, published in 1977.

Listen at Cyberears

This podcast is 18:53 min. 

"In the public discourse the fetus has been elevated to an equal status with a living, breathing human being.  More and more, women are viewed as the enemy of children, requiring the State’s intervention to protect their developing children from them.  But, in reality, women still conceive, nurture, give birth to and, in most cases, are the primary caregivers of children.  Women are being reduced, once again, to the incubators of future generations with total responsibility but no power.  That is the same oppressive view that the women’s movement sought to challenge.  It is not just abortion, but women’s power to control their destinies that is at stake."

These words were written in 1995 by Laura Kaplan, who was a member of Jane, the underground abortion service that developed in Chicago before abortion was legalized in Roe v. Wade.  In her book, The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service, Kaplan narrates an age-old story replayed in the context of the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s.  The story reminds us that abortion has been and will always be a decision "rooted in the concrete conditions" of a woman’s life.  

"She will weigh her decision and then try to act on it.  This is what women have always done, irrespective of the law or even of the risks to their own lives."

In this podcast, I connect The Story of Jane to the current abortion battles, and then read excerpts of Kaplan’s introduction to this riveting and relevant story for all women.

Listen at Cyberears.

This podcast is 20:00 min.

Jennifer Pozner comes out swinging as she takes aim at the "Reality TV" industry and its ever-growing universe of so-called "harmless" shows in her book REALITY BITES BACK: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV, published by Seal Press.  Pozner uncovers sexism, racism, classism, stereotyping, violence against women, phony psychological help and what really drives the content of TV we passively consume for entertainment.  This is an important book, fun to read, and what Library Journal has determined "an essential read."  Pozner’s research and analysis are mind-blowing, but you really have to hear Jennifer Pozner in person to understand the passion and knife-sharp wit she brings to her work.

Since I created the Google Map "Mapping the Femisphere," I’ve had requests to get on the Map (by invitation only and I welcome requests) from people I don’t know.  So, I’ve inquired about their work as a feminist or other, especially after clicking on their website, blog or Facebook page and seeing nothing about feminism or even particularly about the status of women.  In one case, the requestor never answered.  In another, the requestor expressed a desire "to help women" but realized that she hadn’t done much… yet.

I started thinking about the definition of a feminist, or a womanist, or an activist working to help women.  It’s pretty clear what being an "activist" is.  Isn’t it?  Although being feminist doesn’t equal being womanist (I’m not the best explainer of the differences and urge you to visit writings by Alice Walker, who defined the distinction), I think there’s lots of overlap.  What being a feminist and/or a radical feminist is has defined my quest to create meaning as a woman living in patriarchy for about the past 30 years, so I have formulated some "identifiers" in that category.  But I also have questions for other feminists and womanists.

Does "identifying" as feminist make you a feminist?  If you were asked to explain your feminist philosophy or to state what still needs to be done in the world regarding the status of women either in your home country or globally, would you be able to answer?  Is joining the Facebook group "This Is What a Feminist Looks Like" a form of activism as a feminist?  Do you blog about feminist/womanist issues or the human rights of women?  How do you do sisterhood?  Do you do sisterhood at all?  And what is sisterhood to you?  Do you promote women?  Do you help women?  Do you mentor any women?  Do you give money to existing organizations that fight for women’s rights all around the world?  When a misogynist statement is made around your family’s holiday table or in a group with whom you socialize, or at a party, do you call it out?  Do you organize at your workplace for parental leave, childcare, a schedule allowing you to parent as well as have a career?

Or are you merely content to say "I want equal rights for women" and leave it there?  Who in the United States will say "I’m not in favor of equal rights for women" these days?  (Actually, I recently posted on Facebook and Twitter about a religious movement telling women God wants them to submit to their husband’s authority, but I think it made the New York Times because these days it’s the exception that proves the rule).  "Equal rights for women" is a cliche, in my opinion, and reveals that the speaker hasn’t examined what being feminist requires.  It reminds me of a dating service I joined especially for people who loved classical music.  The questionnaire was paper and pen (uh huh, ancient), and one day I got a thick manila envelope of the handwritten answers of every guy who had seen my profile and wanted to meet me.  One man listed his favorite composer as "Montovani" and that was the only one he listed.  Montovani is to classical music what muzak is to the Beatles.  That answer told me he knew nothing about classical music!

Am I being an elitist bitch by thinking there should be a "standard" for calling oneself feminist?  The last thing I want to do is turn women off to feminism!  In fact, I’m working on a theory that will appeal to women who are very much in sync with feminism but don’t identify with it because of its bad rap as a bunch of angry, man-hating lesbians

I’m asking this question earnestly.  What makes a woman or man feminist other than thinking women should be "equal?"  Because I don’t think this statement communicates anything and, moreover, communicates some kind of identical-ness or aping of men, patriarchal values and structures which many feminists want to tear down and re-vision.  No, women don’t want to be the same as men because that’s not an improvement on humanity.  What does "being equal" mean, then?  Do you mean equal pay for equal work?  Do you mean that there should be an absolute 50/50 split in doing the domestic drudgery?  Do you mean that until Congress has 50% women that women are not equal to men?  Do you mean that when 50% of corporations are headed up by women we’ll be equal?  When half of the Fortune 500 list is women we’ll be equal?  When women in countries like Afghanistan and many other countries as violent against and repressive to women have full human rights? 

Yes, I do think feminism has become individualized into meaninglessness, but hey, maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe a movement in the 21st century is a million points of light (did Reagan make up this phrase or just popularize it?), shining individual lights on the plight of women.  I don’t think there’s any opportunity for leverage in that approach, but I know feminists who think the kind of in-the-street, collective action of the 60′s and 70′s isn’t necessary anymore.

So, tell me:  does feminism need a definition of feminist?

If you are getting the rush of "heartwarming" and high-fiving and celebration of human spirit, determination and ingenuity pouring out 24/7 on mainstream media around the rescue of the miners in Chile, don’t read this post.  You’ve been warned.

There are many important political and economic factors to be discussed regarding this event and they are not within the scope of my expertise, however, I hope that once the public gets past the rescue and the rush of feelings generated by this event, we can get down to some hard thinking.  I’ve been watching this mainly because my husband is captivated by it.  It’s not that I don’t feel for these men and it’s not that I don’t admire Chile and the dedication of the rescue team.  So, please.  Don’t get stuck on that.  Open up your mind to what I have to say.

Women who must wear burqas or other head-to-toe dark clothing are living without sunlight and underground.  First, let’s talk about sunlight.  Have you ever been swathed in material every time you go outside?  You are not exposed to sunlight.  Even in Arizona where people get so much exposure to sun that they’re prematurely wrinkled, crinkled and leathered, supplementation of Vitamin D is necessary.  This is because Vitamin D is critical to health and it’s produced from exposure to sunlight.  It’s necessary for sunlight to enter the human body via the eyes and the skin.  I have suffered from depression my entire life–I know from my own years of dealing with it as well as from psychiatrists urging me:  it is imperative for me to get sunlight every day or I will experience worse mental health consequences than are genetically embedded in my brain.

Now, imagine that you are not allowed to leave your house or to go to school, as is the case in many countries where Islamic philosophy is perverted so that women are enslaved sexually, domestically and brutally.  That is living underground your whole life. Now imagine being sold into sexual slavery, possibly chained to a bed and powerless to say no to any paying customer who wants to fuck you, all day long or all night long. This is a reality in Thailand, for instance, where sexual tourism is a big industry.  Now imagine that your father has imprisoned you in the basement of your childhood home, impregnated you and kept you a prisoner living underground, raising the children of incest and trauma.  There are documented cases of this.  Now imagine that you are a girl like Jaycee Dugard who was kidnapped and held as a sexual prisoner, never allowed to leave a shack in which she was successfully hidden from neighbors or anyone wondering what the hell was going on there.  

Now imagine that you are a street kid who lives in tunnels or subway stations, sniffs glue and begs spare change for food. You getting the idea?  I’ve got lots more examples of people living underground in unbearable, unthinkable, horrendous circumstances and I haven’t even dipped into the history of slavery in the U.S. or the exploitation of immigrants who are enslaved or the wrongful life imprisonment of innocent people or the jails full of young black men or political detainees who get locked away for dissenting from oppressive, cruel governments like China, Myanmar and many others.

Here’s my question:  when and how do we rescue these people?  Or do we just go on letting them be invisible-ized and congratulate ourselves when a good thing happens like the rescue of miners in Chile?  When?  When already?  It almost made me sick to my stomach to hear news anchor after news anchor falling all over themselves about how the miners had endured their imprisonment underground for 69 days as if it were the worst ordeal any people had ever endured.  NOT.  They had a safe place to gather and they had each other and they had reason to believe that the outside world cared about them.  The people I’ve just written about do not.

Gloria Feldt and I are feminists from the second wave of women’s movement when the DIS-Parities (yes, shades of Mary Daly in my writing; cain’t hep maself…) between opportunities for men and women pushed into the full flowering of public discourse.  Women organized, women protested, women gathered in consciousness-raising groups, women wrote books about patriarchy and sexuality and new ways of valuing the work we do, our social/emotional skills, our movement "from margin to center" (find this feminist classic by bell hooks here).  Young women went to Planned Parenthood to get the pill and, in my case, to get my one and only frank discussion about sex from a mature, kind, motherly woman.  University departments in feminist studies/women’s history were founded (not without the heroic perseverance of quite a few founding mothers in academia), Roe v. Wade established a woman’s right to privacy, giving us ultimate control over our bodies, ourselves (find this updated feminist classic here). The list of barriers stampeded and demolished by women is a long one and, to some of the young feminists coming up in the world today, so long ago they don’t realize how new and how fragile these gains are. 

Gloria Feldt, former CEO of Planned Parenthood and now a stumper/speaker/social-media activist and teacher, says "You’ve Come a Long Way, Maybe."  In the prologue to her new book No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, she signs on to Ellen Goodman’s grade of "Incomplete" for the revolution.  I can think of a few other second-wavers voicing the same frustrations, including the formidable Loretta Ross of SisterSong, who was a panelist at a Feminist Town Hall meeting held the day after Obama won the presidential election.  The chutzpah of organizers Jaclyn Friedman and The Center for New Words!  Since I don’t live in Boston where the panelists convened, I attended by streaming video.  To the mostly thirty-something-ish crowd of women, Loretta said "Let’s finish this revolution!"  I resonated.  Gloria was also in attendance virtually at that Town Hall.  I think I’m safe in saying neither Gloria nor I were surprised by Loretta’s battle cry, but I can tell you that I felt enormous relief upon hearing another woman speak my own frustration.

Older feminists who see how much still needs to be done are talking with younger feminists about how to do it.  "If we give the fulcrum of parity one last heave-ho, it will very likely propel women to equal footing with men for good — ours and theirs," writes Feldt, who describes herself as a "practical activist" and a "movement builder."  I had several "Aha!" moments while interviewing Gloria about No Excuses.  I don’t want to spoil it for you… BUT… Gloria Feldt is kick-starting again, this time with the wisdom of a mature warrior. 

Listen to the entire interview at Interview4Obama.

© Maryanne Russel

I liked Melissa Harris-Lacewell’s take on Sharron Angle’s "let God take care of it" position re no abortion for rape/incest victims as she stated it last night on The Rachel Maddow Show.  Harris-Lacewell said:  I’m a person of faith & I like the idea that god can help, but we can’t leave EVERYTHING up to god.  We have to solve these problems at OUR level with OUR knowledge (my paraphrasing & my refusal to capitalize the "g"). 

OTOH, the Sharron Angles of the world could argue that by providing adoption counseling, helping girls/women avoid the "trauma" of abortion, teaching abstinence etc., that THEY ARE taking steps to solve the problem in accordance with what god really wants, which is that humans shouldn’t monkey around with the life processes HE deemed best.  So, actually, this is a very easy stance to rebut.  Recently I saw a report about the women in Congo who have been repeatedly raped, given birth to the children of their rapists and remain "hopeful."  This reminds me of "been down so long looks like up to me."  And I’ve known pregnant teens who will never admit that having a baby at age 13 or 14 or 15 was not only a short trip to poverty but also unfair to their children.  Here’s how the Angle interpretation of this would get spun: see, sometimes god has to knock you down in order to pull you up again…

Pro-abortion, pro-comprehensive reproductive health care/comprehensive sex-ed activists can’t win arguments relying on value judgments about quality of life.  You just can’t persuade a "god knows best" person to look at socioeconomic or psychosocial data.  IMO, the bottom line is the absolute sovereignty of a woman over her body.  This applies not only to abortion, but also to all kinds of sexual exploitation, trafficking, enslavement, prohibitions against where she can go (to a job or to school, or out and about without a male relative, etc.), and in the U.S. this goes to the question of what law enforcement and community education OWE women in order to ensure that we can move around safely in the world, at night even.

No, as I think more and more about it, arguing these issues HAS to be based on the ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY of WOMEN to control their lives.  Period.  Bowing to piecemeal or incremental debates weakens our ability to INSIST on the human rights of all women.

When feminists/womanists conceive of our work as activists for human rights, will it be more evident, both to the world and to ourselves, that we are all really on the same page?  And will it push this agenda more into the foreground of the human rights agendas of other organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International or the government of the United States?  And how about the preponderance of young black men in prison and the rights of gay/lesbian/transgender/transsexual people?  And how about the human rights of children?  Will it be less possible for "wedge" issues to sink our ship and our spirit and our solidarity?  Will it make prioritizing our agenda an easier job?

This article originally appeared on the patriarchalDISORDER site 

You are growing up in a house with no mirrors.  That’s right, no mirrors.  But wait a sec, it’s not just your house!  As you venture out into the world, you discover there are no mirrors anywhere.  You can’t see what you look like and must rely on other people to tell you about yourself.  

You are growing up in a family, a church, a school, a community that corrects you every time you speak for yourself, even if it’s only an idea in development or a dream or a wish.  They know what’s best for you to undertake as well as what’s best for you to think.

You are confronted with this education and advice so pervasively that ultimately you don’t know what you think.  You can’t tell what you really feel or what you really want and you have no authentic connection to a sense of self or agency.  You might even be angry but you can’t be sure because you can’t feel your own feelings and, anyway, you’ve been taught that angry women are ugly and will end up as lonely spinsters.

You are growing up in a family where the policy for misbehaving is to whup all the children in the family no matter who may have misbehaved and no matter what the cause of the misbehavior.  When something goes awry, all the children get a whupping right there, together.  It’s a family ritual.  It seems to really cut down on the hijinks of those kids, alright.

You are a member of a losing team and nobody on the team can figure out why they keep losing.  How can this be?  The team members practice, practice, practice.  They are perfectionists, trying so hard to please their coach, their school, their parents!  They scrutinize their performance and themselves so harshly that the sport is no longer fun. Feeling like losers has taken over their lives and they’re so desperate they’re ready to settle for one win!  Just one!  Is that so much to ask?  But no, this is a jinxed team.  This team never wins.  As the losing seasons roll on, the teammates begin to silently and secretly hate themselves.  They would never admit it, but they hate each other, too. Somebody on the team has to be the culprit, the one responsible for losing every game.

Do you have a metaphor for Internalized Misogyny?  Share it here!

In this interview we discuss how it’s possible for an educated and skilled woman to fear her husband, to lose her confidence or the right to discuss dysfunctional dynamics in their marriage and to develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  In hindsight, Patty has come to understand some of the warning signs of the cycle of abuse and the traps victims can fall into, such as believing that "I had let it happen to me."  Through therapy and self-education, she now knows she didn’t deserve the abuse she received.  Patty hopes that by speaking out she can help other victims realize that there is nothing they did to bring abuse upon themselves, nothing they can do to mollify a husband’s need to control them, keeping them fearful and dehumanized, why it’s hard to leave and how it’s possible to get help.

Go to Pickle Player or CyberEars to listen (41:50 min.).

Cross-posted with permission from Interview4Obama.

For the past ten and a half months she’s been in solitary confinement in Evin prison, Iran. Before that she was traveling in Syria, Yemen and Ethiopia, writing about women in these cultures, struggling to understand them as she says in her blog title "Through Unfettered Eyes:  Dispatches from Addis Ababa to Damascus." Before that, as a 20 year old, she traveled to Chiapas to learn about women in a revolutionary state, as well as to confront issues of femicide in Mexico.  She was a student at Berkeley becoming sensitized to global issues. Her now husband-to-be, Shane Bauer (they got engaged while in prison), and friend Josh Fattal, are writers, activists and global citizens with a sense of responsibility to the world beyond the United States.

A few days ago I received a mailing from The Women’s Media Center asking that people blog about Sarah, Shane and Josh. It said that the mothers had reached out to women’s organizations asking for this. It said that Nora, Sarah’s mother, was available for interview. Interviewing is my bag — I like to understand people, their stories, the decisions they made along the way, what it was like for them, how it changed them, what they will do with the new person they’ve discovered in themselves. It turned out that Nora was looking for that kind of interview, a place to tell the story of her daughter Sarah so that people will care about her imprisonment and work toward her freedom. I spent a day getting my head around the story and then we did the interview on Saturday. I had the interview up on Sunday and as of [yesterday], Tuesday June 15, 435 people have listened to the interview.

You can help get Sarah, Shane and Josh out of prison and back to work as global citizens by listening to this interview and passing it on to your networks. There are other ways to help — see freethehikers.org. I’m invested in Sarah’s freedom not only as a human being but also as a feminist; I’m eager to see what Sarah Shourd does when she’s back in the free world, unfettering her eyes. I think she’s a global feminist to watch.