I have always found Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique troublesome. I could never put my finger on why exactly. Of course, I am writing from a privileged position. No one has questioned my desire not to be a housewife or have children. No one has told me that I can’t go to graduate school based upon my gender. The world has changed a lot since 1963 when the book appeared.

Christina Hoff Summers reconsiders this groundbreaking text:

But in building her case, Friedan made a fatal mistake that undermined her book’s appeal at the time and permanently weakened the movement it helped create. She not only attacked a postwar culture that aggressively consigned women to the domestic sphere, but she attacked the sphere itself — along with all the women who chose to live there.

Perhaps, what my issue with the text is that some women did choose to live in the private sphere of that time. However, how many other choices did women have?

Whatever the issue may be, The Feminine Mystique’s influence is still felt over sixty years later.

Rebecca Walker’s piece about her mother and feminism was disconcerting to say the least. Girl w/ Pen! and Feministing both posted tasteful disagreements with Walker’s assessments of feminism.  The part that caught me offguard that a writer like Rebecca Walker who avoided addressing such solid bifurcations or face and gender in her previous books like Black, White & Jewish, went ahead and claimed that feminism was a major reason why her mother was not their for her grousing up.

According to the strident feminist ideology of the Seventies, women were sisters first, and my mother chose to see me as a sister rather than a daughter. From the age of 13, I spent days at a time alone while my mother retreated to her writing studio  -  some 100 miles away. I was left with money to buy my own meals and lived on a diet of fast food. via 

If it weren’t for feminism Rebecca Walker wouldn’t have the opportunities she is able to take advantage of now. Her work wouldn’t be published as readily. Her diatribe on motherhood would be relegated only to kitchen conversations. Without feminism, Rebecca would still have her father’s last name. Without feminism, Walker wouldn’t be the person she is. I am sure her relationship with her mother is a difficult one, and probably Alice Walker took advantage of feminism to avoid being a proper parent. However, it is not feminism’s fault that the Walkers don’t have the best relationship. It is a combination of timing, ideologies, personality, the past, present, and future.

This Women’s History Month began with a bang with interesting news bits that hasn’t positively affected women.

On March 6, Samantha Power, key foreign policy aid to Barack Obama called Hilary Clinton a monster. Following the negative press, she stepped down from the campaign.

A similar story about a much more well established woman in the media and politics occurred a day later.

On March 7, news broke that Geraldine Ferraro made some unfortunate comments about Barack Obama:

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept. via

She was then dropped by the Clinton campaign, and Hilary Clinton was accused of being racist among many other things.

On March 10, it was announced that Eliot Spitzer cheated on his wife with a prostitute probably more than once. And then begins the whole should she have stood next to her man questions about Silda Wall Spitzer.

Even better (worse) was the media breaking the myspace page of the prostitute he slept with.

Following these headlines, we saw plenty of Dina Matos McGreevy and with the latest revelation that the newest NYC Governor Paterson also cheated, we saw a lot of imagery of his wife as well.

All of these issues inspired a NYTimes article that I wrote about in this entry.

The rest of NWHM went by (unfortunately) quietly. With St. Patrick’s Day and earlier Easter a week a part, a lot of people stopped paying attention to women’s history in the middle of the month.

To celebrate the month, I attended two events put on by the National Women’s History Project. They honored women in the arts this year. The events finished up with a brunch at the Pen & Brush organization. The brunch honored Molly Murphy MacGregor who had the original idea for National Women’s History Month. She is a woman who I have been in close touch with for the past five years, as I wrote my M.A. thesis about the development of women’s history as its own academic field in the 1970s. MacGregor was one of the powerhouses behind that development.

It has been a hectic month. I wish I could have had more time to focus on NWHM but I had to attend to life’s matters.

I wonder what NWHM will be like next year when I am in graduate school again!

To commemorate thirty-fifth anniversary of Roe V. Wade, it’s Blog For Choice Day!

This year’s theme is why it’s important to vote pro-choice…

Why I vote pro-choice:

• To ensure that we maintain the legacy of American feminism started by women before and after Seneca Falls by allowing women to have complete freedom over their bodies.
• To ensure women have complete access to health care which includes reproductive rights.
• To ensure that there is comprehensive sex education available to women of all backgrounds, ages, races and socioeconomic stations.
• To ensure that women and men know what options are available to them.
• To ensure that Roe V. Wade is upheld by congress and the government.
• To ensure that Roe V. Wade decision is respected by the government.

These are just some of the many reasons, I support and vote pro-choice.

- Ms. Rose

My husband and I went to see Laurel Thatcher Ulrich at the Tenement Museum in New York. He bought me her new book which I, of course, had autographed.

There was some very intriguing points made:

• Idealization of women in the past. Having to live up to those who came before us.
• Public records, such as a census, determining and informing what history is.
• History is not created by action alone.

• Feminist activism made women’s history as a field of scholarship possible.

Professor Ulrich also shared the panel with Deborah Siegel of Girl with Pen and Pamela Thompson who wrote Every Past Thing (Great video link here too.) It was a great talk that I really appreciated, having been out of academia for awhile. Also, I am reading Siegel’s book Sisterhood Interrupted. Such a resource! I wish I had this when I was writing my MA thesis about women’s history as an academic field and its relationship to women’s studies!

On feminism: “It appears that America’s anti-biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men’s movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening.”

That’s right…Jerry Fallwell.

This article is great and basically calls out all the politicians who rushed to say something nice about the dude.

Did Rudy Giuliani really believe “we all have great respect for him”? Does John McCain - who was savaged by Falwell and his ilk in the 2000 presidential race - really think Falwell was “a man of distinguished accomplishments”? Did Mitt Romney really find it a good thing that “the legacy of his important work will continue”?

I guess in a world where you are shunned publicly when you say something racist, sexist or homophobic, its important only to say nice things about one of the most angry, mean men of all.

Awesome line:

So it may be time to step back from all this girl-power cheermongering and recognize a simple fact: Women don’t just need to be free to aspire; they also need to be free to just be. Yes, women can be every bit as good as men in track or mathematics, but we don’t have to excel in either to deserve respect as human beings. Wait, haven’t a bunch of feminists been telling us that all along? Duh!

From The Supergirl Syndrome by Lakshi Chaudhry

And I just found out about The Scholar & Feminist Online from Feministing.

I can’t wait to start reading.

Jessica Valenti’s (of Feministing) new book called Full Frontal Feminism.  I totally love the title. I read an interview she linked to on Feministing with Rebecca Traister of Salon.

What I like about Valenti’s style is that she is so honest and nothing is sugar coated.  Like her, I have been unsettled by women who believe in equal pay, equal rights, voting rights, are prochoice etc etc but would rather die than call themselves a feminist.

The most meanigful parts of the interview for me occurs when Traister asks Valenti about her opinions toward rape, rapists and their unfortunate victims:

You write about your frustration with critics who say rape and murder victims like Imette St. Guillen should not have been out so late alone at a bar, but I presume that you also want to teach women how to be safer.

All people should be taught to be safe and make smart decisions. But when you say, “Of course she was raped and murdered,” because she was transgressing by being in a bar having a drink … [Fellow feminist blogger] Shakespeare’s Sister did an amazing post on this pointing out that women aren’t raped because they’re drunk or dress a certain way, women are raped because they’re in the presence of a rapist.

Not to sound lame but you GO GIRL!

(1) This story from USA Today about pay gaps between men and women makes me a bit depressed. Makes me wonder about places I’ve worked and where my female friends have worked.
(2) Pole dancing a new brand of feminism….??!?!

I find it interesting how whenever anything slightly subversive, like pole-dancing, is proven to actually help women gain confidence it is suddenly branded as “feminist.” Does feminist = subversive?

(3) No link between Abortion, Miscarriage and Breast Cancer

(4) Sheryl and Karl discuss the earth…woah!

In 1977, when the women who would establish the National Women’s History Project began planning a women’s history week, March 8th, International Women’s Day, was chosen as the focal date.The selection was based on wanting to ensure that the celebration of women’s history would include a multicultural perspective, an international connection between and among all women, and the recognition of women as significant in the paid workforce.

Women’s History Week, always the week that included March 8th, became National Women’s History Week in 1981 and in 1987 National Women’s History Week became National Women’s History Month. The expansion from local to national and from week to month was the result of a lobbying effort that included hundreds of individuals and dozens of women’s, educational, and historical organizations. It was an effort mobilized and spearheaded by the National Women’s History Project.

From National Women’s History Project