Thursday, May 29, 2008
Following up on Harvey's post about the right to travel to Cuba, a few days ago Israeli security services detained American (ex-)academic Norman Finkelstein and refused to allow him entry to Israel for the next ten years. Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald quotes a Jerusalem Post article explaining that "the decision to deport Finkelstein was connected to
his anti-Zionist opinions and fierce public criticism of Israel around
the world." Even if you disagree with Finklestein's politics, there's something perverse in a country refusing admission to someone based on the content of their speech. It's one thing to keep a visiting scholar out because of real security interests, but it smacks of viewpoint censorship when scholars (like Tariq Ramadan, who writes about Islam and modernity and was denied a teaching visa by the U.S. state department back in 2004) aren't allowed to enter the marketplace of ideas. Finkelstein certainly doesn't toe the Likud party line, but it's also a stretch to call him a security threat, so it seems pretty clear why he was excluded. Ha'aretz had the right response: "It is not for the government to decide which views should be heard here and which ones should not."
Monday, May 12, 2008
By,
Wendy Kaminer
Hillary Clinton has a new excuse for continuing a campaign that is most likely doomed and clearly destructive: genetic determinism: “ I’ve come to believe that hard work, determination and resiliency are encoded in our DNA,” she declared, speaking to a group of female supporters in West Virginia, the New York Times reports. “We know that we have the ‘worry’ gene. We know we have the ‘put your coat on because it’s cold outside’ gene. But we also have the ‘stand up and fight for what you believe in’ gene.’ ”
It’s hardly surprising to hear Clinton appealing to female chauvinism, given the demographics of the race. (According to the Times, her remarks “brought thunderous applause.”) And if she is a feminist, she would not be the first caught joining the majority of people who believe that biology is destiny, instead of fighting them. The feminist movement has always been divided over theories or biases about natural cognitive and characterological sexual differences. But it is discouraging to hear an intelligent woman like Hillary Clinton frame a tribute to femininity quite so stupidly. Maybe her anti-intellectualism is genuine, after all, but I doubt she really believes that women have a “worry” or “fight” gene, anymore than men have a “science” gene, (and any feminists who applaud Clinton’s remarks should refrain from criticizing the speculations about men’s superior scientific abilities that got former Harvard President Larry Summers into so much trouble.) Clinton has often characterized criticisms of her conduct as sexist, but a woman who exploits stereotypes of femininity shouldn’t complain about being disadvantaged by them.
Friday, February 29, 2008
By Wendy Kaminer
Barack Obama’s appeal to younger democratic women is a source of great frustration to many of their mothers and grandmothers but a source of pride for me. It reflects what feminists of my generation (and Hillary’s) have strived to accomplish – the rise of a new generation of women with the confidence to feel unconstrained by femininity. Of course many recent college graduates will still encounter sexism in academia and the workforce, in unexpected slights and some discrimination, but their confidence is not delusional: Legal equality is a fact, not an aspiration; social equality is greatly increasing.
When I was in high school, employment ads were still divided into columns for male and female jobs (a practice that persisted for at least a few years after passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.) Discrimination against women in higher education was not just legal but customary and perfectly respectable: Not until Title IX was enacted in 1972 did it become illegal for undergraduate and graduate schools to maintain stingy quotas for female applicants (which is why women’s colleges attracted high achieving female students.)
But compared to the social and legal inequality that confronted our mothers, women of my generation were liberated. Read the advice offered to male supervisors in this “guide to hiring women” published by Transportation Magazine during World War 11, when women were temporarily invited into the workforce.
Tip # 6 is one of my favorites: “Give the female employee a definite day-long schedule of duties so that they’ll keep busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes. Numerous properties say that women make excellent workers when they have their jobs cut out for them, but that they lack initiative in finding work themselves.”
Or, consider Tip # 3: “General experience indicates that ‘husky' girls – those who are just a little on the heavy side – are more even tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.”
Hillary Clinton and other professional women with little down time might get a kick out of Tip #8: “Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowances for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.”
For women of my generation, this 1943 hiring guide is a poignant reminder of what our mothers endured, or surmounted. But happily, young women are laughing at these hiring tips, (circulating in emails and thousands of websites,) and that's a testament to feminism’s progress: 1943 may seem like ancient history when you’re 25 or 30, but 60 years is a relatively brief period in which to accomplish dramatic social change, which, win or lose, Hillary Clinton will always signify.
Friday, February 08, 2008
By Wendy Kaminer,
Ellen Malcolm, president of Emily’s List, the formidable PAC for democratic women, seems confident that she speaks for me, or, at least, millions of women like me, in her letter lambasting MSBNC for demeaning women. “I know I speak for millions across this country,” Malcolm wrote, “when I demand that you take immediate steps and publicly tell us what you will do to eliminate this sexist and demeaning culture that has become so pervasive in your network.”
I know I speak for myself when I say that I found Malcolm’s letter a bit theatrical, as well as presumptuous. What was MSNBC’s offense? Correspondent David Shuster remarked that Chelsea Clinton has been “pimped out in some weird way” by her mother on the campaign trail. Yes, it was a stupid and at least arguably sexist comment: Has Shuster ever said, or would he ever say, that Mitt Romney “pimped out” his five telegenic sons?
Still, I’ve heard much worse, and I bet that Malcolm has too, although she does make a point of sounding shocked and appalled: "I'm sending this letter today to let you know that the misogynistic pattern in the reporting by your network must come to an end," Malcolm thundered, in her letter to MSBNC Vice President Phil Griffin.
"Your tolerance for this behavior speaks volumes about the corporate culture of MSNBC. If you refuse to take action, women across the country, viewers, sponsors, and consumers can only assume your implicit endorsement of this type of sexist commentary on women and repugnant treatment of our children."
I don't want to be unfair to Ellen Malcolm. I understand she has a job to do, pimping for Hillary Clinton; but I don’t think she's doing a good job for feminism by threatening to boycott the network for insulting the former first daughter -- an obviously intelligent adult who should be capable of defending herself. Of course, mine may be a minority feminist view. Over at the Huffington Post, Taylor Marsh shares Malcom’s outrage over Shuster’s remark, which she takes personally, along with “all women,” she implies: “By attacking Chelsea Clinton in this way they are attacking all women,” Marsh declares. “In what world do we allow political pundits to attack a young woman proudly campaigning for her mother, a woman who is running for president, then let them get away with calling her mother a pimp and the daughter a hooker?"
In my world, Taylor, we allow political pundits to say whatever stupid little things come into their handsome little heads; at least we don’t try to get them fired for offending us. But again, I speak for myself. Shuster was temporarily suspended for his remark, and he is reportedly about to issue an on air apology. I bet he won't be speaking for himself.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
By Wendy Kaminer
Identity politics seemed to have worked for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, after all, and given the unseemly glee with which so many pundits predicted her demise, given their gratuitous brutality toward her, I confess to feeling pleased and even vindicated by the support she received from women. I'm not a member of the Hillary fan club (I'm uneasy with her centrist, communitarian instincts,) and I recoil from the notion of voting on the basis of sex, race, or any other demographic category. But when the usual blowhards mocked what seemed to me an authentic, entirely appropriate display of emotion and concern for the state of the nation, when Keith Olbermann even criticized Clinton for saying that "some of us are right and some of us are wrong" (what was she supposed to say, "vote for Obama?") I felt an atavistic urge to stand by her; and I can't help being glad that so many women did.
Friday, January 04, 2008
By
Wendy Kaminer
It’s easy to overestimate or over-hype the implications of
the Iowa caucus results, but it does seem clear that Hillary Clinton needs to
re-evaluate her reputed reliance on the “women’s vote.” Reportedly, while
Clinton had the edge with older women (and anecdotal evidence showed that
elderly women found her especially appealing) Obama captured women under 35.
The last results I heard before retiring last night gave Clinton less than a
third of the women‘s vote in Iowa.
Iowa caucus women refused to play
identity politics. Emily’s List, which worked hard for Clinton, is no doubt
disappointed, and some are bound to regard Clinton’s relatively poor showing
among women as a feminist failure. I find it refreshing, although I can only
speculate about its causes, which may not be so lofty: Maybe younger women see
Clinton as a mother, whose grasp they are trying to escape, while elderly women
regard her as a daughter, who can fulfill aspirations that they could never contemplate.
In any case, why should any feminist cheer women
with a bias in favor of female candidates and jeer men with a bias in favor of
males? If the willingness of white voters to support an African-American
candidate is a sign of progress and enlightenment, why is it regressive, or even
a betrayal, for African-Americans to support a white candidate?
Of
course, I know the many explanations that might be offered in response,
involving the historic oppression and continuing discrimination suffered by
black males and all women, and the difference between majority and minority
biases. But shouldn’t we look forward to elections in which no groups practice
identity politics instead of elections in which only some groups do?
Thursday, November 01, 2007
By Wendy Kaminer
Hillary Clinton has effectively focused on overcoming one of the primary obstacles to electing a female president: the association of women with pacifism, the belief that women are not tough enough to lead a nation in war. Early on in her Senate term, she gained a seat on the Armed Services Committee, in an apparent quest for visibility and credibility on military issues. As Clinton adviser, Ann Lewis said to me 15 years ago, a woman who wants to be president will have to convince voters of her ability to wage war: “We would know we had the first woman candidate for president when we saw a female senator on a battleship, reviewing the troops," Lewis recalled saying to a group of women (long before most of us had heard of Hillary Clinton.) "And someone said, ‘That’s terrible. Do we have to repeat the military tradition?’ And I said, 'No, you don’t have to repeat it. You can vote for Mother Theresa.' ”
So it’s not surprising that Clinton voted for the Iraq war and the recent Senate resolution condemning the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. A female democrat with no record of military service seeking the presidency in a time of war would have to be a lot less cautious than Clinton to risk appearing weak on national security.
But while Clinton assures voters that she’s tough enough to face down the demented tyrants in North Korea or Iran, she appeals to their sense of chivalry when criticized by her male opponents. It is conventional political wisdom, and possibly true, that male candidates should take care not to be overly aggressive in criticizing female opponents. (As a black male running against a white female, Barack Obama may feel compelled to be more careful than most.) In Clinton’s first successful Senate race she benefited from the sense that her Republican opponent, the hapless Rick Lazio, had approached her too aggressively on a debate stage. She’s apparently hoping that the criticisms directed at her in Tuesday’s presidential debate will similarly backfire.
According to the Washington Post, Clinton’s advisers claim “that the ‘piling on’ engaged in by an all-male field of opponents will ultimately drive more female voters into her camp.” To help make this dream come true, the Clinton camp posted a video on You Tube called the “Politics of Pile-On, comprising clips from Tuesday night’s debate.
But it’s a little hard to blame Clinton for decrying female stereotypes one day and hiding behind them the next. Election campaigns are not exercises in fair play, and besides, women seeking leadership positions or other traditionally male jobs must often contend with contradictory expectations. If they appear too tough, angry, or assertive they’re punished for being insufficiently feminine (“bitchy” or “strident”;) if they’re soft-spoken and conciliatory, they’re considered not tough or commanding enough to lead. As the New York Times reported today, commenting on a study by Catalyst, “women who act in ways that are consistent with gender stereotypes — defined as focusing ‘on work relationships’ and expressing ‘concern for other people’s perspectives’ — are considered less competent. But if they act in ways that are seen as more ‘male’ — like ‘act assertively, focus on work task, display ambition’ — they are seen as ‘too tough’ and ‘unfeminine.’ ”
Still, it would be interesting to see one of Clinton’s opponents challenge her exploitation of feminine stereotypes; girlishness does not become her.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Thanks to Hillary Clinton, Wellesley retains a certain cachet, but most women’s colleges have suffered predictable declines in popularity and prestige since the late 1960s, when the top men’s school became coed. By the late 1990s, only 1.3% of all women receiving B.A. degrees were graduates of women’s colleges. Some single sex schools, (like Vassar and Skidmore) joined a trend they could not beat and began admitting men; others, like my alma mater, Smith College, struggled to find new raison d’etres: Smith offers an engineering program and boasts of the superior science education it provides for female students.
Women who remain ideologically committed to single sex education, including many alums of single sex schools, naturally lament the decline of women’s colleges, but the fact that they’re no longer needed is a testament to their success. The dream of educational equality shared by their founders has been realized.
Or has it? A widely publicized, 1992 report prepared by the Wellesley Center for Research on Women (commissioned by the American Association of University Women) was entitled “How Schools Shortchange Girls.” The executive summary cited “gender bias as a major problem at all levels of schooling.” But the alarmist tone of the title and the summary of this report was undermined by its actual findings, which were complicated and inconclusive. In fact, the report noted that “socio-economic status,” not sex, was said to be the “best predictor of both grades and test scores.” And, just 6 years later, the AAUW published a report questioning the virtues of single sex education for girls.
The rather misleading framing of the 1992 report exemplified the primacy of ideology in what are billed as empirical studies of single sex education (among other questions involving sex and gender difference.) So it was not surprising when a boy’s movement arose in the 1990s, and advocates for boys began challenging the belief that schools shortchanged girls. They argue that it’s boys who are being shortchanged -- falling behind in verbal skills, while taking the lead in disciplinary problems and learning disabilities. They point out that a majority of college students today are female. This frequently cited development is less remarkable than it may appear: By the early 1900’s, more girls than boys were graduating from high school. Still, boys are often said to be in more trouble than girls, victims of biology or social trends – including co-education.
Recently, advocates for boys have helped revitalize single sex programs in secondary schools, with the aid of the Bush Administration, which has eased federal restrictions on them. Programs that might once have been prohibited as forms of sex discrimination are now permitted in the interests of sexual equality.
It’s an old story: from the beginning, in the 19th century, feminists have disagreed about whether separatism was good or bad for women -- whether biology was destiny, and whether sexual justice required legal protections or legal equality. Separatist or protectionist feminists stressed women's inescapably feminine natures (in modern terms, their "ways of knowing.") Today, advocates for boys (masculinists?) stress their different learning styles, temperaments, and vulnerabilities, and their consequent need for single sex environments.
What do scientists say? That’s a dangerous question, as former Harvard President Larry Summers learned; but when he speculated about natural cognitive differences between the sexes, and sparked protests that helped precipitate his resignation, he was not straying outside the mainstream. As long as there has been a feminist movement and the threat of dismantling traditional gender roles, there have been scientists who claimed that intellectual and emotional differences between the sexes were only natural. Today, some rely on technology, like brain scans purporting to show natural sexual difference. In the late 1800’s, some claimed that men were smarter than women because their brains were heavier. Whether the science of sexual difference will look equally silly 100 years from now, I cannot say (obviously.) But history suggests we should be wary of claims about natural cognitive, characterological, and moral differences between the sexes and even warier of laws and policies designed to accommodate them. Even if such differences do exist, to some degree, on average, they shouldn’t dictate the treatment of individuals.
Besides, beliefs about natural sexual difference tend to be self-perpetuating; single sex schools have long been marked by their own special form of sexism. As researcher Valerie Lee observed in a study of Catholic schools some 20 years ago, while girls' schools paid attention to equality, they also “perpetuated a pernicious form of sexism: academic dependence and nonrigorous instruction.” In chemistry classes, “undue attention was paid to neatness and cleanliness as well as to drawing parallels between domesticity and chemistry activities.”
As you may have guessed, I am not an advocate of single sex education, (having experienced its failings firsthand,) but I don’t mean to adopt a dogmatic position against it. I realize, of course, that some teenagers, male and female, prefer single sex environments and perform well in them (though I always wonder if they would perform equally well in small, well-financed, well taught coed programs.) And I can’t help suspecting single sex programs of perpetuating gender stereotypes: A recent article lauding single sex classes in the South Carolina public schools notes that “educators gear their lessons to what students like: assigning action novels for boys to read or allowing girls to evaluate cosmetics for science projects.” You can call this science, but it looks like lipstick feminism to me.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
A recent Princeton graduate,
Christian C. Sahner, who just completed a fellowship at The Wall Street Journal, wrote a departing op-ed on September 5 th, titled “Sexed Up Sex-Ed”, in which he complained about a mandatory freshman orientation presentation at Princeton that dramatizes the nature and degrees of consensual and nonconsensual sex among
undergraduates. Sahner, who is clearly both religious and socially conservative,
at least by Ivy League standards, objected primarily to the content of the
play, arguing that it depicts all students as sexually active and tacitly
endorses the so-called “hook up culture” that, in his view, it ought to discourage.
I come from a very different
background and social perspective than Mr. Sahner, but with regard to his
critique of Princeton’s program, I actually
think that he has understated the outrageousness of these pseudo-educational
exercises that are now ubiquitous on our college campuses. Having studied
freshman orientation programs closely in the past, I felt
compelled to write a letter to the editor. Many of these mandatory orientation programs are heavily influenced by
postmodernist notions of gender relations and therefore present a view of what
constitutes true consent in sexual activity that has little or no resemblance
to criminal law. There is far more ideology than law in these programs, which
often scare students by perpetrating what John Leo calls the “1-in-4 myth" that twenty-five percent of women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes
– a bogus stat that has been repeated so many times on campus that it is now widely
considered an unassailable fact. I consider these programs, as I wrote to the WSJ, to be “tendentious intrusions into
[students’] minds and very beings” that threaten to turn our campuses of higher
education into “the modern-day equivalent of a North Korean POW camp.”
Janet Smith
Dickerson, Vice President for Campus Life at Princeton,
my alma mater by the way (Class of 1964), wrote a letter that
appeared right next to mine. Her letter – inadvertently, to be sure – made
precisely my point. The purpose of the exercise, wrote Vice President
Dickerson, is to emphasize “that approximately 94% of female college sexual
assault survivors know the perpetrator to some extent.” Instead of Vice
President Dickerson asking herself whether all of these cases really involve
unwanted sexual assault or represent, rather, an after-the-fact change of
attitude on the part of one of the sex partners, she makes the assumption that
the cases all involve victims and, in the jargon of the day, “survivors.”
The notion
that college freshmen do not know the difference between assault and engaging in voluntary sex, and that such students need sensitivity
trainers to turn them into civilized human beings, is a symptom of the sickness
that pervades offices of campus life in colleges and universities all over the
country today. It has spawned a huge “training” industry that has, indeed,
turned so many of our campuses into tendentious re-education camps. That a
vice-president of Princeton does not see that
her programs are the problem and not the solution is a sad comment on the state
of our institutions of higher learning.
College
administrators like Dickerson should at least be honest and
admit that while Princeton’s standards and definitions of consent to sexual
activity have no counterpart in the criminal law, they represent Princeton’s
post-modernist requirements with regard to intimate relations, and that a
student engages in sex at his or her own risk of running afoul of the campus
definitions, or lack thereof, of the moment. This would accomplish, at least,
truth in advertising, so to speak. Instead, these administrators disguise their
social engineering as education, and that’s where civilized and rational people
have to draw the line and respond with “surely you jest that this is education.”
Monday, August 20, 2007
Maybe I should watch what I say in discussing Kia Vaughn’s defamation lawsuit against Don Imus. Vaughn, a member of the Rutger’s women basketball team, is suing Imus for referring to her team as “nappy headed ho’s.” No reasonable person would have interpreted Imus’s remark as anything but a crude, stupid, or racist joke; and indeed Rutgers basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer criticized Imus for making her team the butt of his “ joke.” But if Imus was joking, if he was engaged in satire, however stupid or cruel, then he is arguably not liable for defamation; so Vaughn’s lawyer, Richard B. Ancowitz, insists that Imus made his remark, “during a news report, it wasn't done during a comedy bit.” This blog is not a “comedy bit” either; so I better not describe Ancowitz as an ambulance chasing buffoon or make any wisecracks about shyster lawyers. I should also refrain from mocking Vaughn for filing this suit and exploiting her exalted status as a victim of Imus’s joke. (If I wanted to describe her as air-headed, I’d check with my lawyer first.) I would, of course, have very strong First Amendment defenses against any lawsuit brought by Vaughn for denigrating her claim or questioning her motives as well as her understanding of free speech. But I don’t want to spend any time or money defending myself against a frivolous claim. Who would? I prefer to engage in a little self-censorship. I bet that Imus and both CBS and MSNBC (also sued by Vaughn) would prefer to settle her claim (and watch what they say) rather than suffer the expense and publicity of litigating it. So if Vaughn’s intent is to chill politically incorrect speech, she may already have succeeded. According to Attorney Ancowitz however, Vaughn seeks simply to “restore (her) good name and reputation.” Imus has “come out smelling like a rose,” Ancowitz complains absurdly. “But what about these young women?” As anyone with a short-term memory will recall, Imus was widely condemned, ridiculed, and fired for his remarks, (for which he abjectly apologized.) In fact, it was the Rutger’s women’s basketball team that “came out smelling like a rose.” Pictured on the front page of the New York Times (and on Hillary Clinton’s website,) they were widely celebrated for their academic and athletic achievements, as well as for their dignity and grace in accepting Imus’s apology. (Apparently when coach Stringer declared that she and the team had accepted his apology and were in the “process of forgiving,” she was not speaking for Kia Vaughn.) What will Vaughn do with any proceeds from her suit? Ancowitz unctuously claims that she will establish a scholarship program to study the social effects of bigoted speech. Personally, I have long worried much more about the effects of speech policing and the cultural tendency to seek self-esteem in victimhood. As strong, accomplished, self-respecting young women – not the sort to be traumatized by one thoughtless, stupid insult - Vaughn and her teammates seemed to represent a different, healthier feminist ideal. Her lawsuit is apt to turn a testament to feminist success into a symbol of feminist failure. UPDATE, September 12, 2007 Never mind: Kia Vaughn dropped her lawsuit against Imus and CBS, explaining, through a spokeswoman, that she wanted to focus on basketball and her education at Rutgers University where she is -- get this -- a journalism major. If Rutgers offers a course on freedom of the press, Vaughn should probably take it.
Friday, April 20, 2007
At the risk of being considered impolite, I can’t help but add that every one of the five Justices who upheld the ban on a second trimester abortion procedure (in defiance of expert medical opinion) are Catholic. Four are conservative Catholics. I expect that some consider the mere mention of this obvious but salient fact an example of religious bigotry, but advocates of more religion in government who praise the influence of sectarian religious ideals on public policy should be prepared to hear it questioned. And, I’m not suggesting that judges should, or could, jettison their religious convictions on appointment to the bench. I’m pointing out the need for religious diversity in the judiciary, given the inevitable influence of religious beliefs on individual morality and opinion. Isn’t it obvious that in a pluralistic country, law should not reflect and the Supreme Court should not be dominated by one sectarian point of view?
Thursday, April 19, 2007
You’d think that a majority of Supreme Court Justices would be content with having climbed or kissed their way to the top of the judicial hierarchy, but, no -- they want to rule the medical profession too. Yesterday, in upholding a congressional ban on a particular abortion procedure, regardless of the ban’s effect on women’s health, five Justices substituted their judgments about medical necessities for the judgment of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Gonzales v Carhart involved the constitutionality of a ban on intact dilations and extractions (deceptively labeled partial birth abortions,) which are occasionally used in the second trimester. (According to rough estimates, a few thousand of these procedures are performed annually.) The ban does not include an exception for preserving a woman’s health, and in upholding it, the Court ignored an extensive record of testimony by medical specialists confirming the occasional medical necessity of the banned procedure. Pretending respect for precedent, the majority did not explicitly overrule Roe v Wade (that would have been impolitic,) but it did make this landmark guarantee of women’s right partly irrelevant by eviscerating its basic principles. As the only woman on the Court, Justice Ginsburg, stated, “for the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception safeguarding a woman’s health.”
This partial, de facto overruling of Roe was distressing but no surprise. Abortion rights advocates feared or knew it was coming. In 2000, the Court had invalidated a very similar ban enacted by the state of Nebraska, but then, last year, the deeply, socially conservative Samuel Alito replaced the moderately pro-choice Sandra Day O’Connor.
In 2003, Congress responded to the ruling against Nebraska’s abortion ban by passing a very similar federal ban, including an untruthful declaration that the banned procedure was never medically necessary, according to the medical consensus. Justice Kennedy acknowledged that this declaration was factually inaccurate but held that there was medical uncertainty about the procedure's necessity. In her angrily incisive dissent, Justice Ginsburg, suggested that even this “uncertainty” was manufactured: the doctors who testified that the procedures were never necessary lacked the expertise of the specialists who described the procedures as the safest alternatives for women in some cases.
But assume, for the sake of argument, that qualified doctors disagree about the need for resort to intact D & E’s. Who should decide what procedures are medically necessary when doctors disagree? Remarkably, the Court held that Congress is the decider, at least when a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy is at stake.
It’s hard to imagine the Court allowing Congress to override the opinion of medical specialists about treatments for heart attacks or prostate cancer, but the Court has no apparent animus toward oncologists and cardiologists. As Justice Ginsburg noted, however, it has obvious disdain for “obstetricians and gynecologists and surgeons who perform abortions,” referring to them “by the perjorative label ‘abortion doctor.’” (Alongside Kennedy’s measured legal rhetoric, there’s the language of the street.)
Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy also made clear its low opinion of women, whom Kennedy and his four brethren treat like children whose legal choices may be limited for their own good. “ (S)ome women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained. Severe depression and loss of self-esteem can follow,” Kennedy gratuitously declared (in language revealing his hostility toward all forms of abortion,) even while admitting that no reliable evidence supported this assertion. Kennedy then speculates that women’s presumed regret about abortions are intensified if they subsequently learn that their doctors had performed intact D & E’s. Lacking any factual support for this assertion, he simply describes it as “self-evident.”
Of course, as Justice Ginsburg points out, doctors could be required to describe the procedures they intend to use, in order to help insure that women make informed decisions. Kennedy does not consider that option, assuming, instead, that women seeking abortions are so fragile emotionally that doctors will not regale them with graphic details.
All this reflects a strikingly anachronististic, visceral view of women as weak, uncertain creatures whom the state is obliged to protect, sometimes from their own misjudgments. Justice Ginsburg’s apparent anguish over the majority’s ruling may reflect that fact it reverts to “shibboleths” about feminine frailty that she devoted so much of her career to combating. Chief Justice John Roberts presented himself as a rational, objective, highly sophisticated legal jurist at his confirmation hearing, but he seems content to preside over a primitive Court.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
It’s easy to sympathize with Hillary’s Clinton’s impulse to join in vilifying Imus, who has so crudely and gratuitously belittled her. But must she enlist the Rutger’s women's basketball team in her presidential campaign? They’re now pictured on her web site, with an exhortation from Clinton to “Join me in sending the young women of Rutgers a message of respect and support. Show them that we are proud to stand with them and for them.”
Emily’s List, the democratic women’s PAC supporting Clinton, is helping her spread the love: an email to Emily’s list donors includes a link to Clinton’s web page: “Like you, I have been horrified at the racist, sexist comments by Don Imus,” Emily’s List President Ellen Malcolm writes. “My anger has been building daily, so I was relieved to find a way to vent it positively. Sen. Hillary Clinton has begun a drive to support those courageous, powerful women athletes from Rutgers. I hope you will click here and send your own message to these young women as they prepare to meet with Don Imus next week. Let them know that they are not alone — that we share their outrage and stand with them . . . The Rutgers athletes are scheduled to meet with Don Imus on Tuesday so time is of the essence.”
I wouldn’t have thought it possible to seem sincere and cynical simultaneously. I take at face value the sincerity of the outrage expressed by Clinton, Malcolm, and other feminists, however unctuously it’s expressed. But I’m doubtful that transforming the Rutgers women into political symbols is a sign of respect, or that treating them like rape victims, when they have merely been insulted, constitutes “support.” I bet that without Hillary Clinton's help these young women would have had little problem confronting Imus. Even if he hadn't been fired, he'd already been neutered.
So instead of sending Hillary’s now moot message to the Rutger’s women, I’d send a message to Hillary. I’d question her assertion that Imus’s remarks were “degrading to women everywhere.” I didn’t feel degraded by them. I dismissed them as the ravings of a bigoted blowhard whose time would soon be past (I didn't know then how quickly.) Of all women, Hillary Clinton should understand. She has endured a great deal of vicious, sexist mockery, from Imus and others, without being “degraded” by it. Of all women, Hillary Clinton must know that we are capable of deflecting insults instead of absorbing them.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
When we named this civil liberties blog “free for all,” Harvey Silverglate and I signaled not just our intellectual commitment to free speech but our visceral enjoyment of vigorous debate, unbound by popular caveats about offensive speech, which both of us have frequently protested. I imagine that, like me, Harvey has received his share of hate mail over the years. So while we have both frequently protested the effort to subordinate free expression to a regime of inoffensiveness, I don’t think either one of us romanticizes what a free for all can entail. But it's probably worth noting that neither of us came of age in a digital world.
Salon editor Joan Walsh’s thoughtful and disturbing post about sexism on the web (sexism of the crude and threatening variety) and other controversies over the viral nature of vicious or libelous internet speech, made me wonder about my own impatience with women who hesitate to enter the fray, or demand that it be governed by some rule of civility -- depending, of course, on how civility is defined. If by civility they mean restraints on what now passes for offensiveness – suggestions that women are inferior to men, harsh criticism of a woman’s ideas or expressions, or heated debate about unpleasant or controversial topics – then I’m against it. But, if by civility they mean an agreement not to voice or publish vicious personal attacks on a woman’s appearance along with implicit or explicit threats of violence, they have my sympathy (which doesn't necessarily include my support.)
Like Joan Walsh, I am ambivalent even about this expression of concern over the misogynist ravings of a relative few. I have always cringed at women who cringe in the face of insults and schoolyard taunts. I considered former Harvard President Larry Summers’ famous, thoughtless remarks about women and science much less insulting to women than the reaction of a female scientist who said she had to leave the room after hearing Summers to save herself from blacking out or throwing up. I have no patience for such feminine fragility, much less for women who flaunt it.
Over the years I’ve developed a carapace, which I don’t believe has come at a cost; it needs to be hard but only skin deep, and it’s liberating: The more you can take, the more you feel free to dish out. I’m quite accustomed to being branded a strident bitch, or worse, when I argue an unpopular point strenuously or criticize sharply without apology. During my recent battles on the ACLU national board, I was referred to obliquely, but clearly, as a fucked out boozy bitch and told obliquely, but clearly, to fuck off and die.
If such misogyny can flourish at the ACLU (where it was even applauded,) it’s no surprise to find more vicious and threatening expressions of it on the web, where it’s cloaked in anonymity. And if we’re all obliged to tolerate insults and slurs without swooning, none of us should be expected to shrug off or refuse to be silenced by threats. I can't scoff at the chilling effect of threats, or vicious, sexist personal attacks on the web, all of which which women are apt hear against the backdrop of sexual violence that has placed so many of us on alert since puberty. That’s no excuse for censorship – just an acknowledgment of what free expression demands and sometimes takes from us.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Is the Equal Rights Amendment an idea whose time has past? With a sense of disloyalty, I confess to feeling less excited than fatigued by news of its rebirth. Democrats have given it a new name -- the Women’s Equality Amendment -- and re-introduced it in Congress. They promise to hold hearings on the amendment in the House and start a new push for ratification. (A two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress is required to pass the WEA and send it to the states; 38 states must ratify the amendment in order for it to become enshrined in the Constitution.)
“Equality of rights under law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” I can offer many reasons to pass this amendment and none to oppose it; still my support for an ERA (by any name) has become oddly dispassionate. Maybe it’s the perilous state of everyone’s civil liberties; maybe it’s the war; maybe it’s the systematic dishonesty and incompetence with which the country is governed; maybe it’s the tabloid culture and the failures of the press; maybe it’s religious fundamentalism; maybe it’s terrorism and global warming. Passing the Women’s Equality Amendment just doesn’t feel like a priority.
I’m not suggesting that women have achieved equality – socially, economically or even legally. Because we have no equal rights amendment, because the Supreme Court has never been composed of feminists, because many people still consider some role differentiation between men and women only natural, sexual discrimination is not quite as unconstitutional or un-respectable as racial discrimination. But women have made impressive progress toward equality since the last ERA battle in the 1970s (when the amendment was narrowly defeated in the states.)
Compare the reaction to Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro’s selection as democratic candidate for vice president in 1984 with the prospect of Hillary Clinton’s nomination as president next year. While Ferraro’s selection seemed like a breakthrough – I remember feeling buoyed by it -- Clinton’s nomination is an arguable probability (although I wouldn’t place any bets on the presidential.)
Of course, the advances of a handful of women in powerful, high profile jobs is partly symbolic and doesn’t necessarily indicate equivalent advances by the rest of us. But, look around in academic, business, government, and industry; you’ll see at least some women where you used to see only men. And some of the primary obstacles to full equality aren’t legal but social or cultural: divisions of labor within the home, sexual violence and objectification, or the devaluation of occupations dominated by women are not problems that are apt to be solved by an ERA.
So while anti-feminists will organize against the Women’s Equality Amendment, women who identify or sympathize with feminism may not be sufficiently motivated to organize for it -- although the sexism of WEA opponents might prove motivation enough. A constitutional guarantee of sexual equality should no longer be controversial, but the usual opponents are already raising the usual sorts of objections.
After some 35 years, ERA scourge Phyllis Schlafly is back. Last time around, she helped defeat the ERA by raising the specter of same sex bathrooms and pointing out the real prospect of a non-discriminatory draft. Now she argues that the amendment could compel recognition of same sex marriages and result in denial of social security benefits to widows and housewives.
Similar concerns about the ERA’s effect on legal privileges and protections for women who were presumed to be dependent on male breadwinners aroused progressive opposition to the ERA when it was first introduced by the relatively radical National Women’s Party in 1923. Schlafly might find an unlikely historical ally in Eleanor Roosevelt among other early 20th century female reformers who were intent on protecting housewives, widows, and wage earning mothers from the rigors of equality.
Women today are a lot less likely to fear equality. The question is how hard will we fight for a constitutional guarantee of it?
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