Keep your friendships in repair.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

I love Facebook.  But after a full year of socializing through FB, I have taken a summer pause to evaluate my “Facebook friendships,” relationships which are not all traditional or non-virtual but which can as easily become dysfunctional.  Reviewing and cleaning up my FB network took both time and reflection – but all worthy relationships require diligence, purpose and care.  Facebook relationships are no exception.

Let me emphasize that I love Facebook.  Like people who use several rolls of aluminum foil a month, I am a “heavy wrapper” when it comes to Facebook:  I like to share photos, status, articles, funny stuff, news, family matters and posts from this blog and others, often several times a day.  I like to read where others are and what they find of interest.  I don’t mind the deluge of posts from heavy wrappers like Elizabeth Scalia or Leticia Velasquez – neither of whom I’ve met but both are bloggers who share posts and links on Facebook everyday, all day.  I enjoy light wrappers, too – friends or family members who only occasionally post a tidbit, peak or comment, made precious by its rarity.

I’ve met some wonderful New Feminists and new friends on Facebook, connecting through mutual friends or “cold calling” to be friends because they wrote something interesting, provocative or memorable.  I’ve joined the community support for heroes like Travis Mills and followed interests ranging from Snowshoe Magazine to Beauty and the Beast to New Feminism.  I have FB friends who post recipes, tattoos, prayers, military videos, political quotes, vacation photos, cute puppies, health alerts, and pleas to add one more “like” or one more donation to a favorite cause.

I especially love comments – that tell-me-what-you-really-think space where a post becomes a connection, maturing into a discussion with FB friends and strangers.   I get a buzz from the occasional snarky comments I receive from people who experience something I’ve posted emotionally, even personally, as though I posted specifically to aggravate them.  I appreciate these comments – and doubtless, I make them myself.  This is the buzz of engagement, an intentional sparring of differences, where we are invited to another point of view and “like” can mean, “I hear you,” not “I agree with you.”  I value what I learn in these exchanges and how relationships – based on blood, shared experiences or simple fascination – prevail and no one defriends each other, at least, not for long.

This is the healthy side of Facebook, I’ve concluded, well worth preserving and sharing – and protecting.

To protect the health of my FB network, I have decided to set boundaries on my network.  I have implemented two criteria for defriending family or friends on Facebook.

1.  Abusive language.  Call me sensitive – many people do – but when snarky becomes abusive, it’s time to part company.  I recognize that posts or comments with pointed insults, name-calling or cursing are truly “just words” on FB and, often, reflect a user’s passing mood, alcohol level or frustrated passion, but I am not an “idiot” and my opinions are not “asinine” and if a “friend” thinks otherwise, that person is not a friend – real or virtual.  Even on Facebook – perhaps especially on Facebook and other social networks – word choice recognizes and honors the dignity of the other person, or not.  I have no interest in comments and posts that invalidate, denigrate or verbally assault groups or individuals, perpetuating online personal dysfunctions.  To remain FB friends with such users enables behavior that destroys and dismantles – not nurtures and builds – community.  All human communities will have multiple differences, even disputes – but they are guaranteed to escalate in hostility when we turn the other into an opponent, combatant or object for defeat.

2.  One-sidedness.   Lopsided friendships are always suspect, typically characterized by boundary issues that leave one person anxious to please another who is needy and without personal resource.  We’ve all seen or known these situations: where one person never seems able to say “no” just as the other person can’t resist asking one more favor – or where one person works pathetically to win affection that is withheld but not foreclosed.  FB, I discovered in my summer review, can foster a similar “one-sidedness” that I almost did not notice:  FB friends who never post, never comment, never share but amply consume information about other people.  There may well be situations where lack of mutuality is relatively harmless – but I decided to give focused consideration whether the FB eavesdroppers upon my life are people who I really ought to be having real relationships with.  Defriending FB friends because the friendship is not mutual, I hope, will define the reality because, without virtual contact, we will either reach out for face time, or we won’t.

I am only half way through summer.  Facebook – how it connects me, how I use and misuse it – remains in my near sights.  Possibly, I’ve just begun to wrench this social tool, and when to defriend friends, into proper position.

The following New Feminism Mission Statement for the recently created New Feminism Facebook Community was released today.  I participated in the drafting of this statement which brings together a wide variety of faces and approaches to the work of New Feminism.  You can join this community at Facebook by searching “New Feminism” and clicking on “New Feminism, Cause.”

We, the women of the New Feminism Movement, come together on this site/page to unite our cause upon the following principles.

1.  We come together to liberate woman, in her naturally designed femininity, not only from masculinization, but also from denigration as sexual object, commercial commodity or disfavored gender.

2.  We believe that women have a unique voice and role in protecting the dignity of the human person and creating a culture that values the life of every person, regardless of race, age, gender, physical ability, faith or any other category invoked to dominate or marginalize.

3.  We reject the imitation of masculine models of success and domination and acknowledge and affirm the true genius of women in every aspect of society.

4.  We embrace a wide variety of projects that seek to achieve true equality and incorporation of the feminine throughout society.

5.   We seek to introduce a new paradigm of feminism, whereby woman and the female virtues (i.e. Empathy, Interpersonal Relations, Emotive Capacity, Subjectivity, Communication, Intuition, & Personalization) are valued as fundamental to the health and sustainability of the human family.

We acknowledge there are many faces, many approaches within this movement including philosophical, secular, religious, moral, economic, medical, business, familial, and other perspectives whereby a woman expresses and becomes most fully herself.   In this forum, we all come together to share and be united in the cause of New Feminism.

We like to sleep in, go on last-minute vacations, and pull all-nighters working on projects we care about. We’d rather spend the money we do have on dates, not diapers. ~Nona Willis Aronowitz, 27 years old.

Have babies become another in a checklist of cost items for young women?  Are they juggling the “baby option” with the “mortgage option,” the “cruise option” or the “new job option”?  Have contraception, egg-freezing, sperm-on-demand and other baby-timing technologies tricked our young women into thinking that having and nurturing a child is another “To Do,” to be scheduled amid the demands of their career?

Ms. Aronowitz – a 27-year-old journalist – seems to think so.  She recently wrote:

Deciding when to have children is a riddle of figuring out the right age when neither my ovaries nor my career prospects will wither.  Why shouldn’t we wait until we’re financially secure and emotionally mature to have children?

How many young women think that having and nurturing a child competes in purpose and satisfaction with a job promotion?  Did these young women miss Anne-Marie Slaughter’s recent “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” message that nothing else a woman does trumps the “maternal imperative” of nurturing children?  Slaughter’s explanation for giving up a high power government job is worth repeating.

Deep down, I wanted to go home.  I wanted to be able to spend time with my children in the last few years that they are likely to live at home, crucial years for their development into responsible, productive, happy, and caring adults.  But also irreplaceable years for me to enjoy the simple pleasures of parenting—baseball games, piano recitals, waffle breakfasts, family trips, and goofy rituals.

Breaking the comfortable routine young married professionals often find themselves enjoying – finally independent, with some disposable income, stably removed from the stress of dating and sport sexing – can be challenging.  It’s often a wonderful stage of life, as the caterpillar unfurls her first set of wings.  The baby you always thought you wanted – you always intend to have – can suddenly seem like an expensive, cloying threat.

Young people often don’t know that they will never really grow up, mature into the satisfactions of adulthood, until they have moved beyond themselves.  Most young women don’t know that having a baby will be the single most profound change of their lives; or as one author put it, “Making the decision to have a child . . . is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.”  This “maternal imperative” is the wisdom of women – the sort of folklore older women like Slaughter used to pass from generation to generation.

It’s hardly surprising that many young women like Ms. Aronowitz sincerely believe that having a child depends on the right combination of income, job security and government programs.  Progressive feminism has infused their youth with the illusion that a baby is another accessory and that women happen to be the humans stuck with gestating them.  These young women have heard very few professionals like Slaughter call the bluff as she did in her recent Atlantic piece – a piece Slaughter wrote because she could no longer hawk the illusion to the next generation of women.

Ms. Aronowitz’ circumstances suggest another reason that some young women miss the wisdom passed from mother to daughter, the female wisdom about what deepens a feminine life, what unveils feminine satisfaction and significance.  Ms. Aronowitz herself was a birth postponed by her parents until “late” – and she then lost her mother early at age 64.  As Ms. Aronowitz painfully shares, “Losing my mother in my formative years was gut-wrenching, and all of my grandparents had died by the time I turned 25.”   It’s hard to learn what older women know when there are no older women in your life.

“Babies, my dear Ms. Aronowitz,” I and other nurturing women would tell her, “are not accessories.  They cannot be tacked on last minute, as time is running out, like a beach cottage you always wanted.”  

Babies are not made manageable one day by the “free and ubiquitous” child care or the easier “job market” Ms. Aronowitz wishfully thinks will move “having a baby” up on her To Do list.   No, these will not preserve the “last minute vacations” and date money Aronowitz prefers.  They will not make balancing a career any easier.  Babies still wake up needing you for hours at night.  They throw up on you unexpectedly as you head out the door for a meeting.  They stare mournfully into your eyes through a 103° fever, limp in your arms.  Babies find ways to draw from your heart protective longings shockingly beyond imagination and appallingly beyond control.  One of my own babies – when all else failed to pry me from a dogged determination to litigate full time – learned to speed dial my office number by age 36 months and whisper, “Me misths yous mommy.  Come home peas.”

Our young women are entitled to the truth, not an illusion.   Having a child may well be something a woman decides not to do, but it’s not an item you can expect to juggle like a new job, mortgage or car, a function of timing, dollars and favorable government programs.  No, babies are not an accessory.  A baby will take your life away from you – and hand back something so unexpected and magnificent that you will tear up your youthful To Do with a laugh, infused with the stunning wisdom nurturing women share.

The reason to read – and the reason not to read – 50 Shades of Grey are identical:  it isn’t real. 

It’s a fantasy.  It’s a dark, erotic tale about a guy named Christian and his domination of Anastasia, a tale that includes spankings and beatings.  Not surprisingly, the people who seem most to like this book relate the unreal, disturbing fantasy of Ana and Christian’s relationship to reality:  “I started reading it and almost instantly fell in love with Christian, he can be over bearing at times but really he just needs the love and attention a good woman can give him.”  People who know better, who know that these fantasies have no relation to reality, call Ana and Christian’s relationship “domestic abuse.”

Women have long indulged sexual domination fantasies – just as they have criticized these fantasies as immoral and politically objectionable.  Women’s conflict over fantasies featuring their own subjugation as a source of sexual pleasure began the moment women admitted to having sex drive in the first place.  Sexual domination fantasies make (some) women crazy:  some with desire, others with repulsion.  For some women, the push-pull conflict itself causes interest, like sneaking Godiva chocolate during a diet. 

Consider Nora Ephron’s typically witty 1975 essay “Fantasies” from the aptly named collection Crazy Salad.  Here was a woman admittedly conflicted. 

I have never told anyone the exact details of my particular sex fantasy.  I once told almost all of it to my former therapist; he died last year, and when I saw his obituary I felt a great sense of relief.  Anyway, without giving away any of the juicy parts, I can tell you that in its broad outlines it has largely to do with being dominated by faceless males who rip my clothes off.  It’s terrific.  

Ephron shared her fantasy to argue that women should reject domination ideation and give “sexual behavior and relations between the sexes” a chance of changing favorably in the wake of modern feminism.  “It is possible,” Ephron pled, “through sheer willpower, to stop having unhealthy sex fantasies.”  (Crazy Salad, p. 16).

Others, like Camille Paglia, have rationalized women’s indulging in subjugation fantasy on the theory that aggression, eroticism and power inequities are intimately and biologically linked.  The Roman Catholic Church would concur that, by virtue of man’s fallen nature, disorders of desire and fantasy are gravely tempting, but, like Ephron, the Catholic Church and many other religions favor the discipline of self control and rejection of unhealthy sexual thoughts and practices. 

While both politically and religiously incorrect, female domination fantasies have the added problem of being totally unhinged from reality.  Rape fantasies may be captivating and thrilling, but rape never, ever comports to the fantasy.  To the contrary, in the real world, sex by domination – that is any form of sexual interaction that occurs against the will of another person – is no fun at all:  it strays naturally toward violence, self absorbed pursuit and complete objectification of the victim.  In realty, sexual domination is not fantasy play – it’s physical abuse.

Ask Kim Basinger who turned a book similar to 50 Shades of Grey into the 1986 film 9 ½ Weeks with Mickey Rourke.  Filming that movie – characterized by its “none-too-subtle overtones of sado-masochism” – was reportedly “terrifying” for Basinger who found acting her role as Rourke’s sex slave anything but sexy. 

Or read up on the nasty scandal being covered by Salon.com within the sadomasochistic-bondage communities where participants self-identified as “submissives” find themselves in the awkward position of publicly complaining of being raped:  not pretend rape (which is “fun”) but real rape (which is not fun).   Grasping at credibility, the women being really raped insist that “we’re talking about real abuse here, not . . . ‘consensual non-consent’ that the scene is built around.”  While the fine line may seem foolish to outsiders, the difference between pretend nonconsensual sex – called “play” – and real nonconsensual sex – called “assault” – demonstrates the dramatic and fundamental difference between the fantasy of it all and the abusive, decidedly unsexy reality.  The two cannot co-exist in real time. 

These woes of “kink and bondage” women bring us back to 50 Shades of Grey:  to read or not to read? 

I think not.  Material featuring the humiliation and subjugation of a woman, while tempting in the dark corners of the mind, is ultimately dangerous simply because we are so easily tricked into relating its abusive content to reality.  When both secular and religious figures are in agreement on the unhealthiness of a course of behavior, when even the people who try to convert the fantasy to reality admit complete failure, there’s nothing grey about it.  I’m not going to read 50 Shades of Grey. 

Progressive feminism had a hard week.

An online article “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” – by the successful academic and State Department professional Anne-Marie Slaughter – blew the leotard off Superwoman.  Slaughter’s widely read piece soundly exposes the professional woman/wonder wife/marvelous mother as the exhausted and conflicted real person so many of us know through personal and vicarious experience.  Slaughter slays the myth of progressive feminism that women “are to blame if they cannot manage to rise up the ladder as fast as men and also have a family and an active home life (and be thin and beautiful to boot)” and blames, instead, the chimera progressive feminism crafted at the expense of my generation of women.  Remarkably, Slaughter attributes her conversion in perspective to a realization that she could not hawk this fundamentally flawed feminist image to the next generation of women.

Slaughter left her power position in DC because of “my desire to be with my family and my conclusion that juggling high-level government work with the needs of two teenage boys was not possible.”  “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” is a loving – though still confused – lament over changes that might make work and family easier to juggle for women in elite leadership positions.  Unwittingly, Slaughter actually explains why no set of changes will alleviate the conflict.  Indeed, of the many changes Slaughter tosses about – work from home, irregular “stair steps” as career path, matching work and school schedules and freezing eggs as a protection against declining fertility – none would have derailed her decision to go home.

In real life today, women have choices that men simply don’t have.  Having more choices means having to make choices that men do not have to make, choices that arise solely from our gender based differences.   Slaughter gives voice to the New Feminist assertion that gender equality means respecting and supporting women’s feminine reality, not re-engineering women in the mold of men or pretending that women’s life choices mirror those of men.   Slaughter’s explanation of her decision to “go home” is so beautifully, uniquely feminine, it’s worth quoting:

But I realized that I didn’t just need to go home. Deep down, I wanted to go home.  I wanted to be able to spend time with my children in the last few years that they are likely to live at home, crucial years for their development into responsible, productive, happy, and caring adults.  But also irreplaceable years for me to enjoy the simple pleasures of parenting—baseball games, piano recitals, waffle breakfasts, family trips, and goofy rituals.  My older son is doing very well these days, but even when he gives us a hard time, as all teenagers do, being home to shape his choices and help him make good decisions is deeply satisfying.

Even as Slaughter testily pokes ideas that might ease the balance of work and family, she recognizes the fundamental flaw in setting as ideal work-family combinations men favor – a flaw that academics like Elizabeth Fox-Genovese identified as New Feminism developed.  Namely, women are fundamentally different than men in their orientation to family and children and the human person.  These differences reflect a natural, gender-based concern for human well-being that often conflicts and most certainly contrasts with the male model of measuring success through individual ambition and pursuit.   Indeed, Slaughter points out the much higher frequency of women leaders who forego having families compared to their male colleagues.  As many of us know firsthand, this choice often does not signify that women in consuming leadership roles don’t want families but, rather, they embrace the human component of their office and profession (as well as friends and relatives) as their family.  Slaughter’s description is, again, so feminine in tone, it is worth quoting.

Still, the proposition that women can have high-powered careers as long as their husbands or partners are willing to share the parenting load equally (or disproportionately) assumes that most women will feel as comfortable as men do about being away from their children, as long as their partner is home with them.  In my experience, that is simply not the case.

Here I step onto treacherous ground, mined with stereotypes.  From years of conversations and observations, however, I’ve come to believe that men and women respond quite differently when problems at home force them to recognize that their absence is hurting a child, or at least that their presence would likely help.  I do not believe fathers love their children any less than mothers do, but men do seem more likely to choose their job at a cost to their family, while women seem more likely to choose their family at a cost to their job.

When I described the choice between my children and my job to Senator Jeanne Shaheen, she said exactly what I felt: “There’s really no choice.”  She wasn’t referring to social expectations, but to a maternal imperative felt so deeply that the “choice” is reflexive.

It is that “maternal imperative” – which Betty Friedan cavalierly dismissed when she called women the persons who happen to bear children – that “sameness” feminists deny, decry and demand destroyed that women might better measure up to male-defined success.  As Salon.com predictably responded to Slaughter’s article:

We are still very much in the midst of reversing eons of gendered injustice . . . Backlash politics . . . pushes back against every female stride, every achievement, and there’s still enormous effort to put into righting gender . . . injustices that make true equality elusive. A document like Slaughter’s offers a valuable testament to these remaining challenges. But its presentation as a deadening diagnosis of insurmountability is antifeminist, anti-woman, cheap and reactionary.

And that sucks.

Well, yes, I suppose from the progressive feminist point of view, Slaughter’s very real description of women as female beings, deeply and differently moved in relation to the human person than male beings, “sucks” – the way my sons say losing a ballgame or getting a “C” sucks.  New Feminists don’t see it that way.  New Feminism rejects the assertion that gender equality requires socially engineering our young women into the life styles, measurements and values used by men.  New Feminism rather embraces our “maternal imperative” and the feminine values that flow from that imperative as a “deeply satisfying” pursuit for women, a badly needed benefit to humankind.  NewFeminism.co welcomes the discussion initiated by Slaughter as a long overdue affirmation of the feminine as truly equal.

Two items of note crossed my review last week:  Kent Willis resigned after 25 years as Executive Director of the ACLU of Virginia and Congress failed to pass the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act.  Here is how these seemingly unrelated events relate. 

I knew Willis before his tenure at the ACLU, when he was employed by a nonprofit organization Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME).  Blond and white, Willis meandered about the Richmond,Virginia area posing as a young professional looking for housing.  Unbeknown to the agents or offices Willis approached, Willis was, in fact, a “white” housing tester, paired with an African American tester who pursued a parallel interest in the same properties within the same time frame as Willis.  

As a HOME tester, Willis was convinced that the only way to eliminate the ongoing, often insipid discrimination in housing – still thought to contribute to persistent patterns of segregation – was to trick, catch and sue those who used steering, lying and manipulation to keep housing racially segregated.  Repeatedly, HOME caught agents and rental offices giving contrary information about availability and suitability of particular housing to HOME’s white and African American testers.  It was a blatant practice of discrimination based solely upon race.    

I admired Willis’ work.  It proved highly effective, particularly after Willis and an African American tester pursued their standing to assert discrimination claims based upon the disparate treatment they received.  The case of Havens Realty v. Coleman was vigorously battled all the way to the US Supreme Court.  There, the Court ruled that:  

Insofar as . . . Willis [has] alleged that the steering practices of petitioners have deprived the two respondents of the benefits of interracial association, the Court of Appeals properly held that dismissal was inappropriate at this juncture in the proceedings.

A similar type of discrimination is now equally well documented:  the destruction of female fetuses who, simply because they are female, are denied the nurture and home of a womb and the opportunity to be born.  Like the unwanted African American testers Willis worked with, female fetuses are “turned away” and rejected, not for race, but solely by reason of their gender.  We know this practice occurs worldwide, with over 50 countries now reporting sex ratios at birth reflecting widespread elimination of female fetuses.  We know this practice occurs in the United States because testers, like Willis, have posed as women pregnant with females they do not want due to the gender and received advice and direction on sex selection abortion.  

Sex-selective abortion is by now so widespread and so frequent that it has come to distort the population composition of the entire human species: this new and medicalized war against baby girls is indeed truly global in scale and scope. 

Despite this overwhelming, uncontested discrimination against females, Congress was unable to pass the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act which, in its original form, bans abortion based on race or gender.  Like persons accused of racial steering in housing, the most radical pro-choice advocates insist that these patterns result from private, unique decisions that are neither the business of government nor the fault or responsibility of service providers.  

Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortion and proponent of unrestricted, unregulated abortion, insists that every abortion decision is a “personal” decision and that any legislative limitation – including any protections against discrimination – will “limit [a woman’s] choices as she makes personal medical decisions.”  Planned Parenthood strongly opposed this legislation in keeping with its objection to all legislation which seeks to limit or regulate the “choice” of an abortion, even when that “choice” would be a blatant act of illegal discrimination if perpetrated against a born person.  Killing a newborn because it is a female would be a hate crime – but Planned Parenthood calls taking the life of a 6 month old fetus because it is female a “personal medical decision.” 

This makes no sense from the perspective of society’s interest in preventing behaviors that affect us all as a community.  If testers like Willis have standing to pursue discrimination claims because “the steering practices of Havens deprived Coleman and Willis of the benefits of interracial association,” it is difficult to understand why Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers which support and carry out a discriminatory practice of denying life to a fetus for the sole reason that it is female should remain beyond examination and regulation.  The elimination of females, because they are female, and the skewed ratios of male to female demographics suggest as compelling a concern for government involvement as Willis’ interest in interracial association.  As the recent report The Global War Against Baby Girls warns:

The consequences of medically abetted mass feticide are far-reaching and manifestly adverse. In populations with unnaturally skewed [sex ratios at birth], the very fact that many thousands — or in some cases, millions — of prospective girls and young women have been deliberately eliminated simply because they would have been female establishes a new social reality that inescapably colors the whole realm of human relationships, redefining the role of women as the disfavored sex in nakedly utilitarian terms, and indeed signaling that their very existence is now conditional and contingent.

Perhaps there will emerge well funded litigants, like HOME and Willis, who will represent us all in defending against and eliminating the highly discriminatory practice – cloaked as “individual choice” – which is depriving humanity of the benefits of the female gender.

First it was Maggie Gallagher.  Today, it’s Helen Alvare.  Salon.com has taken aim at New Feminists.

A sure indicator that New Feminism has arrived in the public forum are recent attack pieces at Salon.com which focus not upon approaches to a specific issue affecting women, but upon a particular woman who is injecting a conservative, religious or politically incorrect point of view into the public discussion.

Today’s piece by Sarah Posner, “Birth Control’s Worst Enemy,” is nasty and disapproving in tone and surprisingly devoid of analysis.  Posner ignores entirely the content of the Alvare’s OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA, SECRETARY SEBELIUS AND MEMBERS OF CONGRESS:  DON’T CLAIM TO SPEAK FOR ALL WOMEN, now signed by over 28,000 women.  Rather, Posner assumes her readers find women like Alvare “absurd.” Posner wastes no brain power on Alvare’s – or New Feminism’s – actual arguments against funding “free”  contraception for all fertile females, treating unplanned pregnancy as a female disease, promoting sexual intercourse as a sport activity unrelated to human reproduction and exposing young women to a disturbing range of serious health consequences and STDs which the free meds and devices popular with progressive feminists like Posner often occasion.

While Posner does acknowledge Alvare’s argument that the HHS mandate grossly infringes on the First Amendment protections for free practice of religion, Posner oddly abandons her train of thought when she notes that the Administration’s next most recent effort to restrict what constitutes religious practice lost 9-0 at the Supreme Court.  Posner, at any rate, seems anxious not to distinguish Alvare’s legal arguments against the HHS mandate from Alvare’s social arguments against promoting wider use of contraception among women:  both of which Posner would have her readers believe Alvare argues as a mouthpiece for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (for which Alvare worked over a decade ago before becoming a law professor).

Posner’s attack on Alvare, and her disregard for the substance of Alvare’s arguments, disserves women. 

I am going to assume that Posner, like 99% of the women I know, is a person of goodwill and sincerely interested in the health and happiness of women.  I am going to assume that she wrote the piece, not to engage in dialogue, but to entertain the choir to which Salon.com sings.  I am going to hope that Posner will, in another forum, tackle some of the hard underlying realities that have motivated activists like Alvare and other New Feminists to challenge prevailing cultural norms as detrimental to the long-term health and well-being of females.  While we might not reach agreement, we most certainly can agree that rational discussion and analysis better serve the future of women than mindless compliance with prevailing systems of domination and intimidation – such as Posner’s attack piece represents.

Here are but a few of the “realities” that are motivating New Feminists like Alvare to challenge social policies being foisted upon all women as presumptively in their interests – rather than in the interest of male sexual standards, pharmaceutical profits or Malthusian anti-population theorists.

• “Women’s happiness has fallen both absolutely and relative to men’s in a pervasive way among groups, such that women no longer report being happier than men, and, in many instances, now report happiness that is below that of men.”

• One in four women is taking medication, including antidepressants, for a mental health condition.

• STDs affect young women in epidemic proportions and adversely impact their health, leaving our healthiest young women with reproductive damage, infertility and other long term health consequences.

• Unplanned pregnancy is not necessarily unwanted pregnancy.  Contraception has little impact on the birth rate of impoverished teens.  The majority of women who terminate a pregnancy do so because they perceive lack of support from those around them for having the child.

• Suicide rates among girls have drastically risen in recent years.

• Young women are increasingly unable to find healthy, responsible young men with whom to interact and date and begin the families which young women seek to combine with their career objectives.

Progressive feminists, like Posner – who often fail to place their outrage and dismay at opposing points of view in the broader context of women’s daily realities – might say, “What do these realities have to do with contraception? ~we are just talking about meds and devices which will repress normal female fertility so that females can have sex whenever they want just like a guy?”  To which the New Feminists reply, “Exactly.  We are talking about the very same thing.”

And as Posner notes with some distress in her article, we are not going away anytime soon.

Who came up with the “war on women” terminology in the first place?

Most women I know hate war.  They hate the concept; they hate sending their children and spouses into battle; they think combat is a stupid way to resolve disputes and weapons an atrocious way to spend scarce resources.  Most women I know struggle whether to permit water, nerf, bee bee and airsoft guns into the hands of their youngsters – forget about sniper rifles and M9 pistols.  Many women participate in religious observances that emphasis peaceful co-existence, not survival of the “bad asses” with the biggest artillery.

I am well aware there are some female warriors, and women who talk in military terms like “My husband is visiting behind enemy lines” when he’s gone to see his mother.  But most women I know talk about differences in point of view in a more female way.  

EXAMPLE: 

“Did you hear that Fred decided to stop carrying light chocolate Silk soy milk at the corner store, girls?”

SHRIEK and interspersed exclamations: 

“Well, he will get an earful from me.”

“How could they?  It’s soooo delicious?”

“I am not spending another dime there until he restocks it.”

Silent pause and SHRIEK. 

“OMG, I know his wife.  I’ll talk to her and get this taken care of!”

I do not mean to make light of the conflicts raging over Obamacare and who will pay what for contraception.  I do not find the First Amendment encroachment of this administration remotely funny – to the contrary, it’s breath-taking serious business involving the future of religious practice in this country.

But who decided to try to woo women voters by calling the heated disagreement over a range of issues most directly impacting women  “war on women?”  And who decided to counter the charge with a countercharge about the “real” war on women? 

First, no one is making any war on women and most women both know and admit this.  You can certainly pay some women enough money to use the words on air or convince them that, for the good of the cause, they will have to characterize the differences over access to contraception and abortion – and who decides what is religious and what is not – as a theater of battle.  But I have never heard one single woman in my broad range of friends use any military metaphor to describe the divide or the differences.  Rather, I have engaged in interesting and often insightful discussion with points like these: 

1.  Why should the government be paying for oral contraceptives that can gravely injure and even cause death in young women? And why would the government pay for any contraception that does not safeguard against STDs? 

2.  Is the government going to pay for men’s contraception?  How is it remotely fair to expect young women to assume all responsibility for reproduction?

3.  Why is female fertility being treated like a disease in young women and medicated?  And when it becomes infertility due to age, women are medicated again, as if they have a disease?  Is this really what feminism sought to accomplish? 

Most women I know are discussing concerns and questions they have typically from a deep sense of responsibility for improving the options and quality of life for the next generation of women.  My female lawyer friends are discussing the First Amendment issues with an informed sense that the administration seeks a historical expansion of government into the religious realm.  We may not reach agreement on many conclusions, but we most certainly do not think we are fighting or defending a war, as much as the political rhethoric is trying to create the sense of a war zone.

Second, to the extent today’s “war against women” is waged over abortion access, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, new about these tensions.  In fact, the “war” over abortion – if you have to call it that – is more fairly characterized as a “war” among women, not “against” women – and it always has been.  As one scholar has rightfully pointed out,

On the one hand, the [abortion] issue does mobilize donations, and galvanize support among one group of women. On the other hand, it was perhaps the most polarizing issue—between women themselves, and among self-identified feminists—from the start. And in this sense the abortion issue was a foundation [of feminism] built on a faultline.  

So it does not surprise me that the first “assault” from the left flopped.  And I would expect the “assaults”  from the right to be a “dud” as well.  I am waiting for someone to come up with a political campaign that speaks to women in the terms they use, stroking the values they hold dear. 

That will catch my interest.

Today marks the 75^th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge – one of the great architectural Wonders of the World.  The arched bridge spans the one mile yawn of the San Francisco Bay from San Francisco to the Marin Headlands and includes walkways to accommodate the hundreds of pedestrians and cyclists who exercise and sight see from its famous orange frame everyday.

 I can see the full expanse of this marvel from my living room.

It is much more than an architectural achievement.  It’s a lesson in the species – and the feats, frailty and unpredictability of humanity.  While my husband, and today’s celebration, focus upon the nuts & bolts engineering breakthroughs and man’s dominance over nature, I reflect on the human side of the bridge – the other side of the bridge – the interaction of frailed and flawed human beings with their own masterpiece.    

1.  Human memory. Eleven men died during construction of the bridge – not because of callous disregard for their safety.  Ten of the men who died plunged into a newly designed, mobile safety net that had saved lives over the course of construction.  It was well designed to catch and save men.  It was not designed, however, to catch the scaffolding which fell with the men on February 13, 1937 and tore through the net.   

You might think memory of the deeply tragic incident would run with the bridge but things do not remember, only people.  Sometimes people forget what they do not want to remember . . . which is why the 50^th Anniversary celebration of the Golden Gate Bridge drew to a close with an enormous sigh of relief. 

GOLDEN GATE CROWD MADE BRIDGE BEND

”Imagine the Golden Gate Bridge flattened out by the weight of human beings!”

Officials estimated that 250,000 people crowded the bridge deck Sunday morning to walk across the Golden Gate.  More than 500,000 others packed the bridge approaches, but were denied access by the authorities.

Mr.Giacomini said officials regretted that so many were turned away, but added, ”In a way, I’m grateful because if they had gotten out there, maybe the bridge would have fallen down.”

Sometimes, people do remember what they would rather forget.  This year, on the 75^th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, organizers announced: 

Marking the official 75th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, tens of thousands of participants are expected at the historic celebration along the San Francisco waterfront.

• There is NO BRIDGE WALK.

2.  U-turns.  Today, the bridge has six undivided lanes for vehicular traffic.

The flow is divided manually each day by a slowly moving crew switching yellow cone-like peg markers across lanes.  This does not, however, prevent head on accidents by confused drivers.  Nor do these highly visible, closely spaced markers stop people from making u-turns in the middle of the bridge.

I know this because my sister lives north of San Francisco and I was expecting her to arrive to my home in downtown San Francisco any minute.  When my cell phone rang, my sister said,

 “Marge.  I am stuck on the bridge.  Seriously stuck.  Traffic both ways is stopped.  Marge.  There is a woman trying to make a (expletive deleted) U-turn.”

The bridge authorities know this, too.  It has happened enough that they posted signs – hoping plain language will supplement where common sense fails. 

3.  Fog.  Man may have bridged the gap between the city and her north neighbors but he’s yet to dent the fog.  You can drive the bridge, walk the bridge, travel to visit the bridge but, many days, you can’t see the bridge.  It’s a shock to some people.

Tourist walking along water’s edge in Crissy Field: “Excuss me, we look for famous biddged.  We got map.  Map says biddged near to here.”

Me, wiping from my glasses the cold, condensed fog that I have been walking through for 30 minutes:  “I have good news and bad news for you.  The good news is that you are less than 100 yards from the Golden Gate Bridge.   The bad news is that you are not going to see the Golden Gate Bridge until this fog burns off.  I suggest you go that way (pointing), look up and you will be able to see the underside of the bridge.  Sorry.”

A disappointment to tourists, a nuisance to commuters, the fog keeps the bridge unpredictable and people, humbled.  From my living room, I have watched fog come and go over a day, moving in, under and about the bridge in every imaginable density and pattern, like a juvenile showing off, unable to hold anything back.  But I know the fog.  It will do something new tomorrow. 

Personally, I am glad that the engineers have settled (so far) with fitting the bridge only with deep, resonating fog horns.  I worry they may one day affix a gigantic, fan system which will try to blow the mighty fog into Marin because the county needs the moisture.  For now, the fog prevails

The bridge, in all it’s engineering wonder, attracts a range of human events, tragedies and celebrations no one planned for, no one intended.  But it is these human events – the suicides, marriage proposals, small plane passes, and bungee jumping (to name a few) – that keep the bridge alive and the bridge authorities endlessly challenged by the humanity, the other side, of the bridge.  It is this side of the bridge I think about today on its 75th Anniversary.

“Baby on the belt number 5, baby on belt number 5,” a husky TSA security guard barked into his walkie-talkie as I was clearing the lane for my departing flight.

Over one line, a young mother struggled to get her 6-month-old chunky boy positioned into his baby seat.  Mom had balanced the seat unsteadily on the rollers just beyond the moving belt.  Juggling suitcases, coats, shoes, grey bins and the big baby, busy Mom did not notice that oncoming luggage aimed to bump and dislodge both seat and baby – who was flailing and unbuckled.

“Baby on the belt, number 5,” the TSA agent barked one more time bringing belt number 5 to an abrupt stop and a wave of people to help buckle up and move chunky baby off of number 5.

“Whew,” I mumbled, “nice move everyone,” instantly recalling a large sign flashed recently in my face.  Waved by a loud, green-haired, multi-pierced, pissed off young woman at a demonstration, the gal and her black bold lettering declared:

Women Are Not Incubators

Staring at the baby on the belt, I imagined the sign I’d give the angry young woman to wave:

Women Are Incubators & You Are Going to Help Like It or Not

To “incubate” is to regulate the environment, to provide conditions, protection and care that allow an organism to grow and develop properly.  Women, like it or not, tend to serve this role with respect to their babies with a natural talent.  Men most certainly can take on the incubating role but the near-unanimous observation is that they do this function differently and, often, not as well.  What we expect of men, and others around us, is to help and support us as we incubate the young.

Mom’s near miss on TSA belt number 5 is what, after all, we women expect and demand of the world.  We expect and demand that others around us take notice that we hold in trust the future of humanity.  Babies, after all, grow up to be humans – and somebody has to incubate those babies, keeping them safe in a busy, fast paced world not designed for them.

If luggage had knocked boy baby off belt number 5, TSA would have had hell to pay to Mom who, doing her job, fully and righteously expects everyone in the vicinity to support her.  Her expectations and demands as the primary incubator of the baby not only dictate what Mom does going through TSA but, as importantly, imposes responsibilities upon TSA and everyone else going through security with her.

Women serve this role not only for babies but also for adults acting like babies.  Women, in fact, incubate all of humanity with concern for nurturing, caring and empathy.  We are called to this role even when we really don’t want to.

I live in San Francisco and take a daily walk.  I typically wear a visor, sunglasses and earphones blasting Talking Heads, Tim McGraw and Amy Winehouse.  I walk briskly and don’t wait for stoplights.  I don’t make eye contact with other pedestrians and I most certainly do not stop to pet the hordes of dogs this city adores.  I like to think of the time as my alone time.

But it never is.  Nine walks out of 10, cars, pedestrians and even bicycle riders draw alongside me, point at my earphones (a hand signal for “You need to listen to me”) and proceed to ask, “Where is the nearest bathroom?” or “Is there a bus stop nearby?” or “We’re looking for someplace yummy to eat. What do you recommend?”

I Am A Walking Incubator Like it or Not.

Often, to be honest, I feel a tad resentful of the interruption.  Inevitably, there is any number of men or couples or teenagers in the exact same vicinity of me, but no one stops them.  The lost are riding around looking for a mature, motherly looking woman, preferably doing “nothing,” so they can say, “Help me.”

And I do.  I push aside my annoyance, look at the trusting face needing some gentle directions and start telling them the best route to get where they want to go.   I am after all an incubator for this ratty species called human.  That’s why a car with 4 20ish young men recently stopped me in the Presidio … pointed at my ear phones … and then asked in embarrassed spurt and starts, “Where are the, you know right, the buffalo?  This is San Francisco … and there are buffalo, right?”

Their trust that I would help them was so lovely, so ridiculous, that I had to make myself stop laughing as I leaned in the car window and said, “yes, but you are in the Presidio and the buffalo are in Golden Gate Park, my dears.”  I watched them drive away following the directions I’d just given them. I’d done my part.  For that, I hoped they’d do their part one day when they noticed a “baby on the belt,” a big baby in danger on belt number 5, like it or not.