John Kerry & feminism

[whometense]

I was out walking around town doing my Saturday errands, when for some reason I started hearing "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" in my head. Don't ask. Anyway, it got me wondering, since we are such a mixed-age lot, what the younger Kerryites feel and think about feminism.

I scooped these quotes off the Kerry website:

In America, women should be able to go as far as their talents will take them.

But today, women are witnessing an unprecedented erosion of their basic rights. Over the last three years, they've seen attempts to block access to contraceptives, gag doctors from even mentioning abortion to their patients, freeze funding for family planning across the world, take away their constitutional right to choose, and ban medical procedures even when a woman's health is at stake.

They've seen 500,000 children shut out of afterschool programs. They've witnessed the end of the Equal Pay initiative, funding cuts for programs designed to promote gender equality, cuts to emergency shelters that protect women from violence, and administration-backed efforts to weaken Title IX.

Now more than ever, we need a president who will put the American government and legal system back on the side of women. Throughout his decades-long career in public service, John Kerry has been a champion of women's issues. He and John Edwards will commit to helping women balance work and family, expand college opportunities, protect their health and their constitutional right to choose, increase funding for cancer research, fight violent crime and close the pay gap.

Even among my own age group there's a vast difference of opinion on what feminism is, how women should balance home and work and etc. It's my impression that the word "feminist" has picked up a bad rep - angry, in-your-face confrontational, bra-burning and so forth. So I'm curious what you younger people think about this (guys too.)

[Withywindle]

1. OK, I'll take it up, I guess....

...though I don't know if I count as "younger." :) At 35, I'm kind of in between the Second Wave and Third Wave generations....I have never run from or disowned the term "feminist"--what's that great quote about feminism being the radical belief that women are people? And I don't mind being seen as "angry"--I think we have a lot of good reasons to be angry!

My only quibble with that statement quoted above is this: "He and John Edwards will commit to helping women balance work and family..." What I think this world needs most is for MEN to also have to think about "balancing work and family." Personally, I am very career-oriented and also childless by choice, but I believe in fighting for the rights of ALL women and men to make the decisions about children and work that are right for them. Which includes the economic power to make those choices: a lot of the middle- and upper-class debate about being a "working mother" or "SAHM" ignores the fact that MOST families in the US do not have the financial luxury of sustaining an able-bodied adult who doesn't bring in money. Everyone suffers then.

I see the right wing working tirelessly to roll back every advancement women have made--including labor improvements that allow both women and men more options--and I worry, and I get mad, and I don't care who knows it and thinks I'm "confrontational." I also don't bother shaving my legs in the winter. :)

[TayTay]

2. I'm not young, but

This is actually a fascinating question. I believe that part of what makes this so interesting is the growth of fundamentalism across the globe, including America. I saw recently on C-Span a seminar put on by the Heritage Foundation (gag) that was talking about the role of women in work and childrearing. The HF guy had a study that said that women come home from work and dump on their husbands the troubles that they are having with their bosses. The husbands have such deep anxiety about not being abot to defend their wives against their bosses that they have stress about 6 times what the wives have. (Leads to high blood pressure, etc.) This, according to these ratf*cks is why men die earlier than women. (Or part of the reason.) Their solution was obvious, women should stay home and raise children so they don't stress out their husbands. (I shit you not.)

One of the questions asked afterwards had to do with how to get women to attrack men who will want to support them and provide for them. The subject of 'finishing schools' came up. (Again, I shit you not.)

So, to echo Whometense, what do you young 'uns think of this. Good, bad, whatever. Let 'er rip, ladies.

Edit: TayTay is a sexist pig. I meant ladies and gentlemen.

[whometense]

3. You just reminded me of another reason why I've been

thinking about this. It was Maureen Dowd's column Men Just Want Mommy from last Thursday.

A few years ago at a White House Correspondents' dinner, I met a very beautiful actress. Within moments, she blurted out: "I can't believe I'm 46 and not married. Men only want to marry their personal assistants or P.R. women."

I'd been noticing a trend along these lines, as famous and powerful men took up with the young women whose job it was to tend to them and care for them in some way: their secretaries, assistants, nannies, caterers, flight attendants, researchers and fact-checkers.

Women in staff support are the new sirens because, as a guy I know put it, they look upon the men they work for as "the moon, the sun and the stars." It's all about orbiting, serving and salaaming their Sun Gods.

In all those great Tracy/Hepburn movies more than a half-century ago, it was the snap and crackle of a romance between equals that was so exciting. Moviemakers these days seem far more interested in the soothing aura of romances between unequals.

As a mother of a very bright, sassy, and self-confident daughter this stuff gives me the creeps.

When I was her age I was a feminist of the soft variety. I was very into guys (bad feminist), shaved my legs (;-) but no longer in the winter, Withywindle)(bad feminist). I figured I'd have a career, but also hoped I'd be able to stay home with my kids when they were little (VERY bad feminist).

On the other hand, the idea of elderly men telling a young woman what she can and cannot do with her own body makes me - I can't come up with a word for how furious it makes me. The lack of respect the * administration collectively have for women and women's intelligence makes me want to heave massive projectiles at them. And I loathe Laura Bush for being the worst role model possible for young women - passive, glassy-eyed, and docile.

I don't see a whole lot of docility on this forum, which is what led me to ask the question.

[TayTay]

5. My first response when I read Dowd's column was

Oh No! Sales of small hand-held electronic devices are about to go up again in key American cities. (Sorry, that was my first response. Really.)

BTW, you are not a bad Feminist. Feminism is about choice, not about fulfilling anyone's expectation of a woman. You can choose what to do with your life, not fulfill a predetermined outline. Making the choice to stay home and postpone a career in order to raise kids is a valid choice. To believe otherwise, you have to accept the RW argument that Feminism means turning your back on others and on ties to family. This is a false argument from the getgo. It never meant that.

RWers like Puke Limbaugh and others tried to discredit Feminism as an essentially anti-social and anti-authoritarian movement that will result in tearing down the known order and devaluating mens place in the world. Not so. Well, not in the way they mean it. It is about choice, about believing that a woman can make choices for herself based on her own observations about what is the best use of her time, talents and ambitions.

I am something of a healer in my family during times of stress. This is a 'soft' position that utilizes compassion, insight and the ability to reconcile factions in order to achieve harmony and peace. (I am older, I am allowed to have insights into how I fit into the world that are plainly, humbly true. I know that in my family I will always be called into a crisis as a mediator and councilor. It has happened so many times, I am accustomed to the role.) Parts of this role are historically assigned to the feminine. So what? I do it not because it is my cosmically assigned role, but because I am good at it. (I was the first one my Rethug brother called when he was dealing with the fact that his son had impregnated a 15 year old. He was 18. I was the first one at the hospital when we were told my Dad was terminal and they needed a decision on when to pull life-support. And so forth. I get to be crisis-girl.)

Feminism was never about building women a new career-oriented template. It was about blowing up templates altogether. Maybe if you blow up women's templates, you blow up the ones for men as well. Then people get to actually choose what they want to do in life. And that is indeed threatening to the established order.

[whometense]

6. You make some great points,

and basically I agree with you.

Though I always knew who I was and what I wanted, my experience in the real world taught me that working women often looked right through me when they found out I was a stay-at-home mother. And that there was a huge amount of less-than-sisterly tension among women who had made different choices.

It seemed to me (and I'm mostly talking here about my young mother days) that the women I encountered were often so overcome with guilt over their personal choices - no matter what they happened to be - that it led to a kind of psychic paralysis. Never happy, never content, never measuring up, somehow.

I guess what I'm saying here is that, though the *ies are doing their level best to try to eliminate the possibilities, even without that women often seem(ed) to be doing a pretty good job of sabotaging themselves - and each other. I don't know if that's a time capsule though, or if things have changed at all since then. Judging from Vinessa's comment, maybe nothing's changed.

[TayTay]

7. I've had a foot in both worlds

I went back to work nights after my daughter was about 4 months old. It was hard to leave her. She was a preemie and almost died at birth. (I found out she would live 3 days after she was born, on my Birthday, appropriately enough.) I had time off again when my son was born two years later. I went back to work days and felt guilty because I wasn't with my kids. (I had local, licensed day care. Very good people, I was lucky.) My son had developmental disabilities and was proving too much for his day care provider. She worked with me to get him Special Ed services. Together we found the most amazing teacher in all the land and she helped my son emerge. I'm not sure if that would have happened if I wasn't working. I would have tried to 'tough it out' at home.

I got laid off after 5 years at one place. So, I decided to stay at home and do my own small business. I spent three years at home and I felt guilty because I wasn't working and I really missed daily contact with other adults. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

There are so many other issues that are included in this discussion. There is the myth of the 'Super-Mom.' (No wonder women feel exhausted. There are no Super-Moms, just ordinary women trying to figure it out.) I know a lot of perfectly contented couples who have deccided they do not want kids. Supporting choice means sometimes supporting the choices you don't make but that are right for others. Then there are the money arguments and the consumerism arguments. Lord, this is a big topic.

[whometense]

8. If you contrast your experience

with mine we might appear to be on opposite sides of the issue, but I completely agree that it's all about choice, not about what choices people make.

I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. That was my choice. We made big financial sacrifices for me to do it, but did so with our eyes open. I know that there are many good reasons why women make different choices. What I'm very much for is real solidarity - that is to say, we impose way too much guilt on ourselves as it is. Women should be less competitive with each other and more supportive and accepting. God, do I sound like a fantasist!

I do have issues with what I call the Cambridge/Brookline grandsupermoms. By that I mean very upscale women who had their kids so late that they treat the little darlings as if they were their own grandkids. But that does not relate to feminism, and is really a different topic for a different thread....

[vinessa4freedom]

9. It depends on who you talk to, I guess

I think a lot of the self-sabotage is based on the perception that we are supposed to be internalizing. It's a clever game they play, even though we do give them lots of credit for being stupid. I wrote an essay for a school project called "Beauty and the Bitch" about how the entertainment industry portrays professional women, and how the stereotypes of "eye-candy" or "dominatrix" set up professional women to feel inferior whether it be in terms of strength or physical attractiveness.

It's funny, because until I was brainstorming topics for the essay, I didn't realize I had that opinion at all. I was also forced to reexamine some of the movies and t.v. series that I like, to see them with a more critical eye. It was a rather disturbing revelation, but the chauvinist mindset is alive and well.

[vinessa4freedom]

4. I'm 36, and I've seen the progress go backwards...

I think the gay marriage debate has sparked a lot of it, too. The fundies are trying to lump it all together in the good Christian values category. The purpose of marriage is procreation, so the purpose of a wife is to crank out babies. I have no children, and have had people have the balls to ask what I got married for. Fortunately, my husband is a feminist, too. He's not as obnoxious as I am in the responses, but he gets just as pissed.

As an aside, it's a personal pet peeve of both of ours to get mail addressed to "Mr. and Mrs. Matthew" as if I don't have my own identity worthy of an envelope. One of our friends, highly sensitized to our feelings, sent an invite to her wedding addressed "Mrs. and Mr. Vinessa."