To what do we attribute the public bickering of the women of Planned Parenthood and the women of Susan G. Komen over effective breast cancer funding?  Why did the women involved come across as emotional and unable to dialogue over differences?  I suggest that two trends are clashing and I ask, 

“Can women with deep differences in

perspective dialogue respectfully?” 

In today’s post, I offer:  Trend One, Progressive Feminists.  Tomorrow, I’ll post Trend Two, New Feminists.  I invite you to consider both descriptions, call me out (nicely please) and consider whether these two groups of feminists can dialogue. 

Trend One, Progressive Feminists.  Often demanders of free contraception and morning after pills for all menstruating females and unrestricted abortion without parental consent (including late term and for sex selection), these women are intensely earnest and often privileged.  They fight along the same battle lines drawn by Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan.  Trend One women favor terms like “inner raging feminist,” “pissed off” and “outraged.” 

Trend One is well represented by “Kelly” who blogged recently in response to opposition to the HHS contraception mandate: 

“You all can kiss my healthy, birth-controlled, educated, middle-class, well-traveled ass.” 

To explain, this blogger – a veteran Foreign Service spouse – featured her maid, an African woman who cared for her children and cleaned her house during her husband’s 1990s post in Zambia. Kelly offered her employee “Beatrice” as a poster child for her personal opinions on contraception which, Kelly passionately believes, is a woman’s entitlement in order to avoid the nightmarish existence of the “Beatrices” of the world.  Kelly posted a photograph of Beatrice embracing a little, blond haired white child (presumably Kelly’s child) and described Beatrice to her worldwide audience as follows.

Beatrice was about 35 at the time she worked for me, and had eight children, which was actually below the average per woman for Zambia at that time. But hey, she still had a good ten years to work on that. She was always tired, slightly stooped, and walked like a woman twenty years older than she was. Her breasts were long, wrinkled tubes that she pulled out of her blouse and literally unrolled when her youngest needed to nurse.

According to Kelly, it was Beatrice’s uncontracepted brood that brought Beatrice to this state, not caring for Kelly’s children or cleaning house for United States Foreign Service spouses.  Like many Trend One women, Kelly earnestly believes that she represents all women.   As Kelly put it, “we have just about all known at least one “Beatrice.” and “I have not yet heard one woman of my acquaintance express [a point of view that opposes the HHS mandate or agrees that the HHS mandate implicates religious freedom.]   Not one.  Because we know that contraception is as basic to health care as childhood immunizations.”

From Kelly’s perspective, the push back on the HHS mandate reflects the “plot” of a persistent men’s collective of “jerks and dinosaurs” and “Sexist Porkers” who are “probably terrified of women. . . . All I can say,“ Kelly wrote on behalf of her and her friends, “is I KNOW these guys.  As women, we’ve all met a few.“  Kelly points to Rick Santorum as an example of this male collective of “Mad Men,” mentioning only in passing, and unnamed, his wife and mother of seven children.  Kelly summarized, “I am deeply suspicious when a sanctimonious twerp like him starts talking about birth control being “unhealthy.”  

I want to say two things about Trend One women here, and then continue to Trend Two, New Feminists tomorrow.  First, I understand Kelly’s pointed point of view.  We educated, privileged American women have all  interacted with women who we conclude have not enjoyed an education, range of choice and options that allow them to hold primary what most women hold dear.  Second, I do not understand the judgmental exposure of personal detail to the entire world of a woman who has served so personally in order to make a political point – has any male ever publicized the state of his male employee’s penis to make a political point?  Are we as women to sacrifice compassion, sisterhood, dialogue and context upon the altar of our own political opinion?  What is more important?  ~our personal political opinion or our sisterhood? 

More tomorrow . . .  

Speaking for myself, I was thrilled to receive an email last Friday morning asking me to consider signing:

OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA, SECRETARY SEBELIUS 

AND MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

I read the short text in support of the Catholic Church’s position in its recent controversy over government-mandated contraception coverage.  Then, like 750 other women over the next 72 hours, I authorized my signature.  In this post, I address “Why?” Why was this letter written in the first place?  Why did I sign it?  And why might you consider signing it and/or asking the women in your life to consider both the viewpoint of the letter and signing this unique letter on matters at the heart of femaleness and religious beliefs.

The letter was drafted by Helen Alvare, a lawyer and an associate professor of law at George Mason University.  I asked Professor Alvare – an already overloaded full-time professor and mother – why she launched this effort.  Here is what she told me:

[I had this] idea while cooking dinner.  [There are] too many smart women, of too many faiths, happy that the Catholic Church refuses to stand down against the contraception and abortion lobbies and the “received wisdom” that sex divorced from children and even from a relationship with a person of the opposite sex is an unmitigated good.  You would have to be willfully blind to ignore the scholarly evidence pointing to difficulties for women in the current environment made possible in some part by the government’s large scale contraception and abortion promotion.

Professor Alvare decided to give voice so that the experiences, concerns and perspective of all women might be heard in this controversy.  Working with attorney Kim Daniels, the Open Letter circulated to broad support and is now posted for review and further signatures at www.womenspeakforthemselves.org.

Who has and is signing this letter?  Who are these women who are taking the time and braving backlash in their personal and professional lives? They are:  “Doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, mothers, business owners, community volunteers, scholars — women from all walks of life [who] are proud to stand together with the Catholic Church and its invaluable witness.”

I am one of the lawyers.  I signed the letter for three reasons.

1. No matter whether you agree or not with the widespread use and subsidies of contraception, there are serious – very serious – downsides to the female-targeted, commercially lucrative practice of hormonal birth control.  It has hurt and will continue to hurt MANY women, in their bodies, in their relationships, in their fertility and in their emotional well-being.  The fact that some women support it, use it, profit by it, live off its financial proceeds even – does not change one iota the harm that is occurring within our gender.
2. The voices of those harmed are often invalidated, shamed, ignored, ridiculed and even targeted for personal attack.  If they are people of faith, trying to voice faith based objections to being involved in contraceptive practices, they are additionally barraged with scorn toward their personal beliefs.
3. The Roman Catholic Church – and the collective voice of the Bishops in the United States – remains the last standing, large, institution giving voice to the women who are being silenced, even by others of their own gender.  It is legally wrong and practically dangerous to allow the Roman Catholic Church to be silenced on these critical issues of conscience, belief and fact.

Professor Alvare, myself and, no doubt, every signatory to this letter asks that you share read it, share it on your blog, your Facebook page, your social networks – if it speaks for you, please sign it.  We must work “WOMAN TO WOMAN” through every outlet we have so that our voices can be heard and the Roman Catholic Church is supported in voicing a perspective and teachings which the contraceptive industries desperately seek to silence.

 Amy Winehouse.  July 23 2011: Dead at age 27,

the misadventure of alcohol poisoning.

2008 Grammy Awards:  Record of the Year, Song of the Year,

Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Best New Artist.

Winehouse’s premature death and public self-abuse is a tragedy for women, a lethal role model for girls.  Her flamboyant failure to survive challenges feminists: why does a profound talent like Winehouse – described as a young Ella Fitzgerald – crash and burn despite the opportunity feminists have labored to bequeath her generation?  Have we paved the way for every success but that which matters most?    

Blame her fans for “over-demanding consumption of authenticity;” blame the schools where Amy “didn’t get a lot in class” or blame the failure of her synagogue to form her in the Jewish tradition of female prominence.  Blame her for not taking control of her addictions.  These factors play a role.   But Winehouse was a brilliant singer-song writer and she tells her own story.

Do you hear a mournful young woman as anguished over her fading dreams of love as she is unwilling to let go of her image that a man should “stronger than me?”  This was Winehouse’s debut album Frank.  Then barely 20 years old, looking healthy and full, Winehouse’s 2003 lyrics unfold a heart wrenching longing for a man, a male as healthy in his masculinity as Winehouse is prepared to be in her femininity: 

 You should be stronger than me,
But instead you’re longer than frozen turkey,
Why’d you always put me in control?

All I need is for my man to live up to his role,
Always wanna talk it through – I’m ok,
Always have to comfort you every day,
But that’s what I need you to do – are you gay?

Winehouse’s conclusion – “you should be stronger than me” – bemoans her slipping femininity, teetering about on high heels, struggling to steady a drunk posing as a man.  She takes us to the precipice of dashed dreams and overwhelming disappointment as a complete gender role reversal shifts the floor boards : 

Cause I’ve forgotten all of young love’s joy,
Feel like a lady, and you my lady boy

Three short years later, Winehouse’s lyrics transitioned from complaining “you my lady boy” to an alarming self-loathing, rawly expressed in this cut You Know I Am No Good. 

Here we experience a leaner, meaner, more calloused, worn and tattooed Winehouse who has turned her lyrics against herself.  Her longing remains but, now, she’s bad; she cheats sexually on someone who does not seem to care and her dreams are defeated, not by “my lady boy” but by her own behavior.  She holds herself at fault for her misery.  She is 24 years old – and will be dead soon.

I cheated myself,
Like I knew I would
I told you I was trouble,
You know that I’m no good,

These lyrics from You Know I Am No Good, like others on her 2007 Back to Black, offer “an album’s worth of heartbroken songs,” roundly agreed to reflect the deeply troubled and dysfunctional relationship and marriage she attempted with Blake Fielder-Civil, a drug-user and convict.  While Winehouse reportedly had subsequent relationships, her passion for Fielder-Civil remained the prominent narrative in her life, even as their family and friends urged that the relationship was doomed.

Despite their families’ efforts to separate the pair, Winehouse insisted that Fielder-Civil was the love of her life.  She persisted in a drug-ridden, abusive relationship that was many things, but not tender, nurturing or loving.  Fielder-Civil never approached her hope for “a man to live up to his role.”  Her lyrics and talent remained tethered to a dream of masculine love impossible to realize in a Fielder-Civil.  Somehow, despite the reordered world delivered to her by empowering feminists, she remained unequipped to distinguish her longing for manly love and the “lady man” upon whom her young emotions attached. 

Compare now a very different, very feminine Winehouse who appears to us posthumously.  This Winehouse seems a near-caricature of her own longing:  coy looks, relaxed face, liquid movements, shy but flirtatious glances – as Tony Bennett croons her to her the old fashioned way, Body and Soul.

Released after her nearly-suicidal death, we are left to savor this decidedly tragic image:  an once-in-a-decade talent melting with her deepest longings – and then vanishing.  Gone forever.  This is the tragedy of Amy Winehouse:  prepared to pursue celebrity and fame, but never equipped to find and secure the love of a good man. 

I call upon all feminists to reflect upon this story – not unlike many others being played out by young women celebrities.  Should we not spend more time helping our young women find complete fulfillment – even when that means forging a traditional male-female, committed relationship of love and loyalty?  Should we not support them in love with the same intensity we support and encourage their careers?  If we did, we might still have Amy Winehouse and her powerhouse talent to enjoy into old age.

I miss her.  I feel we failed her.  I leave you with this gritty-as-grime Youtube in which Winehouse’s shares her stunning talent – as well as her desperate pain.  Feminism certainly failed this young woman.  

With this post, I am excited to launch the first ever New Feminism blog.  NewFeminism.co brings together a group of New Feminists – and you – to reflect on daily issues and current concerns. We offer unique, female-centered perspectives on cultural, social, political, medical and health issues affecting women.

Our perspectives as feminists vary significantly, but all of the writers here are fairly called “difference feminists.” Difference feminists believe that the feminine qualities of women offer a different, but profoundly equal, contribution to the human enterprise.  From womb to tomb, every human person needs the female in their lives – the authentic female – not a masculinized or sexualized “hipless, wombless, hard-titted Barbie.” (G. Greer)  Difference feminists also seek social, medical, reproductive and health solutions that strive to respect, not neutralize, the unique characteristics of the female body.

I am well suited to the task of bringing this blog to life. I spent 15 years as a “sameness feminist” – pursuing career objectives and sexual freedoms that mirrored my male counterparts from 1974-1989. I have a law degree from University of Virginia and practiced both criminal defense (with a focus on prostitution) and bankruptcy. I have taught at the law schools at the University of Cincinnati and at the University of the Pacific. I left compensated work in 1996 and have, since, studied Canon Law and written on a freelance basis.

I am a devoted wife and mother of three. My feminism has matured and developed in response to my family and my recognition that family relationships remain central to the lives of women who, too often, struggle with excessive demands to compromise that which they hold most dear. Writers influencing my thinking as a New Feminist include Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Deal Hudson, Kay Hymowitz, Wendy Shalit, Germaine Greer, Blessed John Paul II, Pia de Solenni, Camille Paglia, Susan Will and, perhaps most importantly, Erma Bombeck whose tender love of being a mother and wife restored my sense of humor.

You will notice that the writers featured here tackle issues and problems from a uniquely female perspective. We distinguish ourselves from feminists who tether women’s success and fulfillment to the same measures used by men. Equality, we believe, should not and does not eliminate differences that enrich and benefit all of humankind and contribute to the full realization of every woman’s potential. More, our view of medical and emotional health focuses on the female body and being as we exist, not as a burdened or encumbered variation of the male body.

The charter contributors to NewFeminism.co appear in the right column.  Each writer’s first post will be biographical and, once online, available as a link through the contributor’s name. 

Please do enjoy and participate. Use the comments section to react, opine and comment. Tell the writers and the readership of other issues of interest to you – and direct our attention to projects, writings, events and posts of import and impact. We have a liberal comments policy but ask everyone to be respectful in discussing differences and avoid personal attacks and judgmental language. We seek to set the standard for New Feminism – both in content and tone which reflect our uniquely feminine concern for connecting the whole of humanity in the challenging enterprise of living daily life.