u.s. voting, "trump is a symptom," genocide, and reality: further thoughts

image: self-righteousness and left activism

Yesterday I wrote about, among other things, why Americans should vote Democrat despite their very obvious shortcomings, blindspots, corrupt partisanship, militarism, support for the Israeli apartheid regime... and so on.

The reason is simple. Life will be substantially worse for ordinary people under another Trump presidency.

Life for workers will be worse.

Life for most women will be worse.

Life for most people of colour will be worse.

Life for all transgender people will be worse.

What little is left of US democracy may well be revoked.

The courts will be more biased than they are now. Justice will be less accessible than it is now.

It will be open season for bigtory of all types -- racism, misogyny, Islamophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, and especially transphobia. Even more than it is now.

There will be no progress on gun-law reform -- and there will be no possibility of progress on gun reform. This means that children will continue to die. Teachers will continue to die. Americans will continue to be slaughtered by their fellow citizens who have unfettered access to assault weapons. Parents will continue to live in fear that every day their children go to school, they may not return, or may live through unspeakable trauma. 

There will be zero progress on climate change, and zero possibility of progress.

A convicted felon and a rapist will be President of the United States. Almost every POTUS has been a war criminal. That doesn't in any way negate, balance, or validate putting a convicted felon in the White House.

My socialist comrades -- or people who I once regarded as comrades -- are correct about many things. Trump is a symptom, not the disease. Harris will enable genocide and other horrors. True and true. But when I hear that there is no real difference between a Trump presidency and a Harris presidency, I can only believe they are full of shit. And I must conclude that they are putting their high-minded principles, and perhaps their self-image, ahead of basic empathy and compassion. 

I wonder if leftist Canadians who are so adamant about the need to vote for neither Harris nor Trump have actually tried to imagine what it would be like for themselves and their loved ones living in the US under another Trump presidency. If they have, and still hold this belief, they are fools. If they have not, they are dangerously deficient in empathy.

American lives are not more important than Palestinian lives. Neither are they less important.

If this makes me less purely leftist, less socialist, less whatever-the-fuck, than these self-righteous revolutionaries, I couldn't give a fuck, and perhaps I should be glad.

why i call kamala harris by her last name and wish you would too

Here's a question for progressive folks following the US election campaign: Why do you call Kamala Harris "Kamala" and call Tim Walz "Walz"?

* * * * 

A long time ago, way back in the late 80s, Allan and I would watch a local news broadcast together. We're talking regular TV, "the news" on three times daily -- two local broadcasts (one at 6:00, one at 10:00 or 11:00 pm), and one national broadcast.

During the sports portion of the broadcast, the sports anchor would talk about Mattingly -- Don Mattingly of the New York Yankees, Ewing -- Patrick Ewing, of the New York Knicks, and Chrissie -- tennis great Chris Evert. She wasn't Evert. She was Chrissie.

There were some pioneering broadcasters, notably on ESPN, who broke with this tradition and called female athletes by their last names, but it was unusual, and ESPN was not yet the giant it would later become.

Women's team sports, for the most part, were ignored completely. Big female sports stars were usually called by their first names. Chrissie, Martina, Steffi. Mary Lou. 

The reason for this is simple: sexism. Women's sports were not taken seriously. Calling Chris Evert Chrissie was infantilizing and disrespectful, reflecting the way women's sports were served to the public.

Through the 1990s and 2000s, women's sports grew in stature. The groundbreaking US legislation that mandated funding parity for male and female sports programs -- usually referred to as "Title 9" (Title IX) -- began to bear fruit. Young female athletes received better coaching and had more opportunities. Women's college sports became more visible and more exciting. ESPN broke new ground with a 24-hour sports-news cycle, so they needed more events to cover. That organization also had a progressive mandate to report on sports with less sexism and racism. 

I don't doubt that there are local sportscasters in Texas or Florida -- or hell, in upstate New York or rural Alberta -- that refer to Serena, Simone, or Megan, but at this point, they are likely the exceptions. Sportscasters and sportswriters routinely referring to Williams, Biles, and Rapinoe is a sign of a less sexist view of women's sports.

Can we please apply this to the political sphere?

Surely if we can refer to female athletes by their last names, we can give female candidates for the presidency of the United States the same respect?

During Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaigns, most people referred to her as Hillary. Some said this was to distinguish between Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton. Really? So during the 2016 presidential election campaign, while Hillary Clinton was running against Donald Trump, if we heard the name Clinton, we might think someone was referring to Bill Clinton, who left public office in 2001? 

Another excuse given for calling female candidates by their first names is that we feel like we know them, we believe they are our friends, so we're on a first-name basis with them. Why, then, didn't anyone call Obama Barack? And how can this be said of a woman who so many voters and pundits despise? 

A more likely suspect is the feminist age-gap: why younger women are more likely to change their last names when they marry, why they don't mind being referred to as girls rather than women. I don't get it, but those are personal choices (although with political implications). We're talking about the professional, national, and international stage. Different standards  should apply.

Office workers are still routinely called girls and health-care workers can't seem to make it past ladies. To be clear: these workers refer to themselves and their co-workers as girls and ladies. I've worked in both of these environment (combined) for decades, and the habit seems impervious to change. Every time I hear someone refer to a group of social workers, hospital workers, library workers -- any group of women working in a predominantly female field --  as girls or ladies I want to cry or scream. Or I felt that way when I was younger. Now I just feel the sadness and resignation of defeat. 

Ladies should go the way of mulatto. Lady is not only sexist, but its roots are classist and tied to gender norms -- what was considered "ladylike", i.e. acceptable female behaviour. Someone will point out that the roots of a word are not important if the word is now used in a different context. Then why are we no longer using master bedroom and grandfathered in? Because those expresisons are rooted in slavery. The same applies to ladies, a word rooted in classism. Yet it is so prevalent I despair of it ever changing. 

We are finally seeing gender-neutral terms for various jobs become the norm: writer, actor, lawyer, doctor, athlete, politician, flight attendant, cleaner, housekeeper. Speech patterns are finally reflecting reality: people of different genders do all kinds of jobs. There is no need -- never has been a need -- to qualify a job title with --ess or lady. The job is the job. 

So why is the name not the name?

I don't expect anyone to change their speech habits after reading this post. Perhaps a writer with a wider reach can at least open up the conversation. The candidates are Trump, Vance, Harris, and Walz.

what i'm reading: delusions of gender: how our minds, society, and neurosexism create difference

When I was in library school, much ink was spilled discussing a "crisis" of "boys not reading". Countless articles were written, studies were launched, hands were wrung. How do we get boys to read???

For a paper I was writing, I dug up the original study that launched this literacy catastrophe. Any guesses on what I learned?

The percentage of boys who self-reported not reading was only marginally larger than the percentage of girls who didn't read -- barely statistically significant. In other words, lots of girls also were not reading. But apparently this was not worth mentioning.

The coverage appeared to follow a predictable,  maddening pattern. First the data from the original study was cherry-picked and interpreted with a great deal of bias. Then educators and journalists read that badly-reported interpretation, never bothering with the study itself, and reported the researcher's biased conclusions.

I thought of this often as I read Cordelia Fine's persuasive, powerful, and often amusing Delusions of Gender. (The book has been published with two different subtitles.)

Neurosexism: a cottage industry

There are whole shelves of books that purport to explain that differences between men and women are innate, hard-wired, and immutable, rather than the result of upbringing, education, and social conditioning. Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus is perhaps the most famous title of a subgenre that includes The Female Brain, The Essential Difference, Why Gender Matters, What Could He Be Thinking?, and my personal favourite title, Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps. Seriously. This is the title of a published book.

These books claim to demonstrate the definitive resolution in the age-old nature/nurture debate -- which has not really been a debate in several decades, as it is widely acknowledged that human behaviour is affected by myriad influences, and that these two oversimplified, supposedly irreconcilable explanations actually engage in many complex, little-understood interactions. And, at least regarding gender, this supposed debate has been solved by... science! The neuroscience is there! We have the data to prove it!

Or not.

Cordelia Fine demonstrates how the studies cited in these books are:

-- tiny: five people here, seven people there; 

-- deeply flawed: based on false assumptions, grossly open to interpretation, not scientific in any way; and even still,

-- do not even demonstrate what authors claim they do.

These unscientific, flawed, and in many cases, fake studies are used in service of political ends, by people telling other people what they want to hear: that modernity is a scourge, and if we could just turn back the clock, we'd all be so much happier. 

Or by people who want to blame relationship issues on something immutable, thereby absolving them of the hard work of empathy, communication, and intimacy. 

And most often, it seems, this specious data is used by people who believe their privilege is threatened and don't want their dominant worldview challenged. 

Tl;dr: all the world's evils are caused by feminism.

Even the neurosexists can't keep their stories straight

Of course, people have long claimed that differences in gender -- that is, the mainstream differences seen in the dominant culture -- are innate. But the reasons have changed over time. 

For example, in the nineteenth century, when the seat of the intellect was thought to reside in the frontal lobes, careful observations of male and female brains revealed that this regional appeared both larger and more complexly structured in males, while the parietal lobes were better developed in women. Yet when scientific thought came to the opinion that it was instead the parietal lobes that furnished powers of abstract intellectual thought, subsequent observations revealed that the parietal lobes were move developed in the male, after all. 

. . . . Of course, there's nothing wrong with changing your mind in the light of new evidence about the sexes. But those who are tempted to play this game, by claiming that sex differences in the structure of the brain yield essentially different kinds of minds, should be aware that this sort of flipping seems to be a common part of the process. 

Beware of brain blobs

In the neurosexist world, it's common to show images of the brain, taken through PET scans or MRIs, as proof of the gendered brain. The thinking goes like this: this portion of the brain is responsible for x behaviour. When we give people task x, the portion that lights up in women's/men's brains is bigger/smaller that the portion that lights up in the other gender's brains, therefore men/women are better/worse at this behaviour.

Bzzzzt. 

Take, for example, a study that supposedly proves that males have a greater aptitude for mathematics than females.

First, the researcher posits a concept called "systemizing". Systemizing is loosely and vaguely defined. 

Next, we are told that systemizing is correlated with an aptitude for math. This is stated but unproved. 

Next, the researcher says that a certain task, such as how quickly one can group images into categories, is proof of good systemizing skills. This is also an unproven assumption.

And then we told that a brain scan (either fMRI or PET, both used to measure brain activity) shows a portion of the brain "lighting up" more in men than in women during this task proves that men are better at systemizing, and therefore, people with penises have a greater aptitude for math than people with vaginas.

Not only don't we really know what systemizing is, nor do we know how systemizing relates to mathematical aptitude, nor do we know that the ability to complete the assigned task is proof of a systemizing mind. It turns out that the colours shown in the scans don't prove anything! The colours do show brain activity, but what relationship that activity bears to the task at hand is mostly unknown.

This is because very little is understood about the relationship between the physical brain and the human mind. If there is a correlation between certain aptitudes, thoughts, or feelings and brain activity as shown in a scan, there is no clear interpretation of what that correlation is. As Fine writes:

There just isn't a simple one-to-one correspondence between brain regions and mental processes, which can make interpreting imaging data a difficult task. As Jonah Lehrer recently explained in the Boston Globe: 

One of the most common uses of brain scanners -- taking a complex psychological phenomenon and pinning it to a particular bit of cortex -- is now being criticized as a potentially serious oversimplification of how the brain works. . . . Critics stress the interconnectivity of the brain, noting that virtually every thought and feeling emerges from the crosstalk of different areas spread across the cortex.

. . . Then, there is the sad fact that, at its most precise, functional imaging technology averages over a few seconds the activity of literally millions of neurons that can fire up to a hundred impulses a second. (For PET the time-scale is even longer.) 'Using fMRI to spy on neurons is something like using Cold War-era satellites to spy on people: only large-scale acivity is visible,' says Science journalist Greg Miller. This severely limits the interpretations that can be made about brief psychological events.  

In fact, the "familiar spots of colour on brain activation maps" are so vague and misleading that that neurosexism skeptics have a name for it: blobology. 

So what does it all mean?

So what is known about the science behind differences in gender? An incomplete, confusing, ever-evolving jumble that true scientists are unable and unwilling to draw conclusions from. Which is a very flimsy foundation on which to build university admissions policies, hiring practices, social policy, or relationship advice. 

Because I read a lot of social history, I come across proclamations, made over the centuries, of what girls and women supposedly aren't capable of by virtue of their gender. Higher education. Running a business. Understanding politics. Driving. Performing surgery. Managing money. Enjoying sex. 

Then there are all the behaviours that men are supposedly incapable or barely capable of. Empathy. Nurturing. Nonviolence. Keeping an orderly home. Caring for children. 

These sexist assumptions were all supposedly based on science. 

Now the current interest in neuroscience has provided bigots with the perfect cover for their agenda. It's still the same old sexism, in a new, pseudo-scientific package.

real heroes for real reasons: female athletes moving the world forward

These days I can't blog about events or issues that are meaningful to me until they're old news -- which of course in today's world can mean only days or weeks past. The upside of my delayed response is an opportunity to use a wider lens and see more connections to develop. This is exactly what happened recently with several events related to women and sport.

Soccer players in Spain

In late August, players on the Women's World Cup champion soccer team refused to take the field until an incident of sexual assault or harassment was properly dealt with.

This was a brilliant and heartening episode for so many reasons. 

*** The majority of the players stood together in solidarity, backed by their union -- the oldest union in professional sport. Even after being threatened with fines and sanctions, most players continued their boycott, described in some media as "open rebellion". (Be still my heart!) 

*** Mainstream media reported this news factually and didn't mock the players. I have no doubt that right-wing media and social went berserk over this -- after all, it was "only" a kiss. But for the mainstream media to treat seriously and factually a nonconsensual kiss on the lips  is a huge change. I noticed as the story played out, the language changed from "unwanted kiss" to "nonconsensual" or "forcible" kiss.

*** Rubiales, who first took the usual tactic of portraying himself as the victim, then apologized, was finally forced to resign. 

Best of all, the players leveraged their spotlight and position of strength to focus on systemic changes. They won changes both symbolic -- the elimination of the term de futbol femenino (women's soccer) from the team's name -- and substantive, with steps that will eventually secure equal pay with the national men's team.

Tennis players in Forest Hills

Equal pay! What a concept. How fitting to see, just after the events in Spain, Billie Jean King celebrated at the US Open. Fifty years ago King won in straight sets to beat Bobby Riggs in the so-called Battle of the Sexes -- still the most-watched in tennis history. King spearheaded the drive to create a women’s professional tennis tour, equal prize money for men and women, and -- most importantly -- the passage of Title IX. The ascendancy of women's professional sports is a direct result of Title IX.

I have never been a tennis fan, but I remember very well the hype around the Battle of the Sexes. A school friend of mine pointed out that before the match, Riggs was touted as a master of a crafty game with lightning reflexes that compensated for his small stature. There was no way he was going to lose to a girl. After the game, he was suddenly "a 55-year-old man who walked like a duck". Commentators acted as if King had taken advantage of Riggs' advanced age.

In the present day, I love that Coco Gauff thanked King for making her US Open prize money possible. King's strength, commitment, willingness to fight -- and frankly, her tough skin -- ushered in a new era for female athletes.

Gymnasts saying no to winning at any cost

In the hypercompetitive world of elite and elite-aspiring sport, athletes routinely ruin their health and risk ending their careers in pursuit of victory. 

In 2004, pitcher (and homophobic asshole) Curt Schilling may have sacrificed his future to lead the Red Sox to victory in game six of the World Series. 

In 2008, Tiger Woods won the US Open while limping and in obvious pain from a badly injured knee. 

USA Gymnast Kerri Strug "heard a snap" and couldn't feel her left leg during her routine in the 1996 summer Olympics, but willed herself to finish, in her quest to secure a gold medal for her team.

These life-altering and potentially career-ending sacrifices are invariably hailed as heroic. Sportswriters and fans marvel at the players' mental toughness and unstinting determination. And those accolades perpetuate a culture where athletes on all levels -- amateurs, average professionals, and champions -- make dangerous choices in the relentless pursuit of the win. We'll never know how many young pitchers blew out their arm and burned their futures by following the advice of coaches who cared only for the short-term win. We'll never know the innumerable examples that must exist in every level of every sport.

Against this backdrop, the choice made by Olympic gymnast Simone Biles in 2020 was perhaps the most heroic of all. Biles chose her health over the win. 

From an essay by former USA gymnast Rachael Denhollander, author of What Is a Girl Worth? My Story of Breaking the Silence and Exposing the Truth About Larry Nassar and USA Gymnastics:

Simone Biles entered the 2020 Olympic Games with a record 25 World Championship medals and four moves so difficult that she alone out of all the world’s gymnasts could perform them.

But what took place on the competition floor made history in a way no one could have expected. On the first event of the games, which were held in July 2021, the athlete, who has an unparalleled ability to flip and twist, suddenly could no longer find herself in the air. Simone had “the twisties” — a complete loss of ability to perceive her body in space. The condition is known to lead to devastating injuries, as it nearly did for her that day. When she returned to the competition floor, it was to put on her warm-ups, give her team a pep talk and withdraw from competition.

I’ve witnessed many incredible moments in athletics, but as I watched from home that day, I knew I was watching a victory that redefined the others: Simone’s decision to value her own safety, on her own terms, above the voracious demands of an abusive and toxic athletic system. It was a moment so many of us had fought for, for so long.

Denhollander herself made an incredibly courageous choice: she came forward to tell how Larry Nassar, the sexual predator and former doctor for USA Gymnastics, had sexually assaulted her. She was the first player to speak out against Nassar. By the time the serial child sexual abuser was sentenced to 175 years in prison, more then 200 gymnasts had spoken out -- including Biles. Denhollander writes: 

We all knew that Mr. Nassar was a symptom of a much deeper problem -- a broken and abusive system that valued money and medals over the health and safety of its athletes.

Simone defied this system with both words and actions. Her choice to value her safety and well-being spoke the truth that human worth is not a prize we might someday earn. Rather, it is intrinsic to our very being.

Two years later, Biles returned to competition with a definitive win. But that future was unknown when she left competition to focus on her own health.

Here's the most important takeaway from this story: professional sports is work, and athletes are workers. 

[Biles's] triumph is so much more than the competitions she is once again winning, because it is laid on the foundation of the courageous choice she made in 2021. That, even more than her peerless athletic prowess, is what is inspiring her fans. And that’s what makes her victory resonate far beyond the sport, beyond any sport.

Professional athletes aren’t the only ones who face overwhelming pressure to perform on someone else’s terms -- to work past the point of what’s healthy, to define ourselves by what we achieve instead of who we truly are. That pressure is so common that it can be hard to remember there’s any other possibility. But it doesn’t have to be this way. 

Many workers have no choice. In the bad old days before labour activism forced basic changes in labour laws -- and in the present day, in much of the world -- workers must risk their health and sometimes their lives in order to keep their jobs. 

Those of us who have the privilege of choice can set the tone for our colleagues, friends, and family. We can set new boundaries for workers by setting them for ourselves. We can put down the phone, walk away from the keyboard. Take a full lunch break. End the workday earlier to spend time with our families, and our selves. Work is part of life, and it can give our lives meaning. But it is not life itself. 

This is as true for sport as it is for any other arena. 

Incidentally, this is also why watching Major League Baseball doesn't mean we support the decisions of the Commissioner or the team owners, why watching World Cup football isn't tacit approval of FIFA. We cheer for the workers, not the bosses.

A New York Times sports columnist sums it up

The Spanish footballers, Coco Grauf, and Simone Biles were on my mind when I read the final "Sports of the Times" column by New York Times writer Kurt Streeter: "How Coco Gauff Embodies the Biggest Story in Sports".

Which brings me back to a subject I considered often here, one embodied by Gauff hitting that backhand passing shot and walking off with a Grand Slam title and a winner’s check for $3 million: the rise of women in sports.

Think of all we have witnessed in this arena over the last three years.

Think of the W.N.B.A., the league’s leading role in the protests of 2020, and its continued strength as an amalgamation of women who are not afraid to challenge the status quo.

Think of the winning fight by the U.S. women’s national soccer team for equal pay, or how female soccer players across the globe and in the N.W.S.L. stood up against harassing, abusive coaches.

Did you see that volleyball game at the University of Nebraska, with 92,000 fans in the stands? Or all those record-breaking, packed-to-the-gills stadiums at the Women’s World Cup, with 75,000 on hand for the recent final in Australia?

Yep, it’s a new era.

Consider March Madness 2023. This was a year when the men’s event sat in the shadow of the women’s side — with its upsets, tension and quality. With the charismatic Angel Reese leading Louisiana State over Iowa for the national title. With Reese, bold and Black, sparking a conversation on race by taunting her white opponent, Caitlin Clark, the sharpshooting player of the year.

Yes, on the court, track, field or wherever they compete, women can be as challenging, ornery, competitive and controversial as men. That needs to be celebrated.

Where will this end? With a few exceptions, tennis being one, it’s hard to imagine women’s sports getting the kind of attention they deserve any time soon.

Who gets the most money, notice and hosannas in youth sports? By and large, boys.

Who runs most teams and controls most media that broadcast and write about the games? By and large, men.

Who runs the companies that provide the sponsorship money? Yeah, primarily men.

Change is coming. But change will take more time. Maybe a few generations more.

The decks remain stacked in favor of guys, but women continue their fight. When it comes to the games we play and love to watch, that’s the biggest story in sports right now.

. . . . 

How perfect that this year’s U.S. Open would frame that story once again. Flushing Meadows was a two-week gala celebration of the 50th anniversary of Billie Jean King’s successful push for equal prize money at the event — a landmark in sports that still stands out for its boldness.

And how fitting that on this golden anniversary — with Serena Williams now retired, with Billie Jean front and center during tributes all tournament long — Gauff would win her first Grand Slam event and do it by flashing the kind of poise that marks her as an heir to the throne.

Thank you, Coco and Serena. Thank you, Billie Jean, and all the other female and male athletes who have gone against the status quo, emerged victorious, and are still in the fight.

I thank Streeter for his excellent and anti-sexist coverage of women's sports. I thank him, too, for his coverage of the racist murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, and the racist reactions to the upwelling of anger and displays of solidarity that followed.

what i'm reading: the story of jane: the legendary underground feminist abortion service

When I first got involved in pro-choice activism, way back in 1981*, I heard about a group called Jane. Or maybe the Jane Collective. Or maybe Call Jane. No one knew for certain what they were called, only what they did. The women of Jane learned how to perform abortions, and helped women safely terminate pregnancies when abortion was still illegal in the United States. 

That was the sum total of what I knew about Jane. 

Now that abortion is again illegal in many US states, and impossible to access in most others -- and now that people outside the reproductive rights community have finally woken up to this reality -- Jane is in the spotlight. There are now several movies about Jane, both documentaries and feature films, many long feature articles have been written, and there's more than one book about it.

This book -- The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service, published in 1995, reissued in 2019 -- was written by a member of Jane. It's both a history lesson and a how-to guide. 

Putting abortion on the agenda

The Story of Jane paints a very clear picture of the landscape of women's health and reproductive freedom -- and the lack thereof -- at that time. Everyone concerned about reproductive rights should read this book, if only for that reason. 

As I've written countless times in this blog, and as countless other movement activists say, abortion is the sine qua non of liberation for women (and any person who can become pregnant). Without the ability to control our reproduction, we are slaves -- to our bodies, to governments, to other people's ideologies. The Story of Jane is a stark reminder of this.

But here's something that may surprise you: previous to the women's liberation movement (as it was then called), abortion and birth control were not talked about as women's issues. Although vast social revolutions -- the civil rights movement and the peace movement -- were re-shaping society, contraception, abortion, and violence against women** were considered personal issues, or medical issues. Women weren't part of the conversation. Or there was no conversation at all.

Feminist consciousness raising -- an instrument of the women's liberation movement -- brought a new perspective: the personal is political. Seen through this lens, the epidemic of violence against women, the lack access to birth control, and the criminalization of abortion, were not personal obstacles to be borne or somehow overcome. They became social and political issues, central to women's autonomy and personhood, necessary for all people to fully participate in the world. 

Jane was part of that change.

Two intertwined stories

This book is not only a history lesson. It's an inquiry into the nature of activism, feminism, and radical transformation. In a sense, The Story of Jane is two stories.

One story is the very practical aspects of how a group of women with no prior training in healthcare came to provide an underground, illegal service that offered counseling, abortion, and after-care -- that eventually performed 11,000 safe, illegal abortions -- that inspired "Jane" services in other cities -- and that was determined that the process itself would give women full control and agency through the entire experience. 

The women of Jane needed to answer innumerable questions and navigate countless challenges.

How to reach women who wanted to terminate pregnancies.

How to provide counseling that was effective and nonjudgemental.

Where services could be provided.

How to keep themselves safe while they engaged in these illegal activities.

How to find and safely integrate new members, as the service grew.

How to find a person who could perform safe abortions.

How to assist in procedures.

And eventually, how to perform abortions themselves.

The other story is about the power dynamics, and the potential for transformation, in radical activism. The women of Jane wanted to create a group that didn't replicate the power hierarchies of the larger society, one in which decisions were made through consensus by a group of equals. What they created was definitely not the former, and not quite the latter. 

This part of the story resonated deeply with me. Readers who have been involved with radical  grassroots activism, especially in the creation of something new, are likely to recognize themselves, too.  

Women as the authors of their own lives

Everything Jane did was grounded in feminist theory. Abortion wasn't something done to a woman. It was more than a choice: the woman was an active participant in the process.

Until the late 1960s, modern medicine was almost exclusively a male domain. Patients had virtually no decision-making power, and female patients were the bottom of the food chain. This most definitely included OB/GYN care.

Griswold, the landmark 1965 Supreme Court decision that legalized contraception, applied only to married couples. Single women were prohibited from accessing birth control until 1972 (Eisenstadt v. Baird). Most women didn't even understand their own anatomy and physiology, and there was little or no opportunity for education. 

The women's liberation movement changed that. Jane was on the very forward edge of that transformation.

The women of Jane were determined that a "Jane abortion" was not only physically safe, but was also a positive experience. It offered not only safety, but agency. It brought (in their own words) "a feminist perspective which [women] could use as a tool to understand and improve their lives". Jane "wanted women to grow from their contact with the service". 

In this new paradigm, the decision to terminate a pregnancy had the potential to be incredibly empowering. As one Jane client put it, "I've just had an illegal abortion and it was the best medical experience I've ever had". 

Groups are hard

I was very interested in Jane's group dynamics, which I recognized from my own experiences with both the Haven Coalition, a network supporting women traveling to New York City to access abortion services, and the War Resisters Support Network, which supported U.S. soldiers opposed to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. 

Anyone who has been involved with complex, high-stakes, and potentially dangerous activism will find the stories of how Jane shared information and made decisions edifying, and possibly validating. I especially related to the structure that evolved organically (and not necessarily intentionally): a series of concentric circles, based on who was entrusted with certain information.

As a feminist organization, Jane struggled with the dynamics that would churn through all feminist organizations of its day: it was mostly white, heteronormative, and middle class. I remember a Haven member observing that Haven was their most consistent cross-class experience. We were mostly women of privilege helping mostly women without. This was part of Jane as well.

That imbalance creates a lot of opportunity for awareness and growth. It can sometimes be awkward and it can sometimes be unintentionally offensive. It necessitates a lot of difficult conversations. It can be challenging, both to live with and to try to change.

Some members of Jane were people of colour, and at least one woman of colour was part of the inner circle, and in the book, she attests to the true sisterhood that existed among the group. But of course her presence didn't doesn't change the basic dynamics of power, class, and privilege.

How they got away with it... until they didn't

Jane operated in a kind of netherworld of open secrets. Thousands of women found Jane, through cryptic flyers, ads in the alternative press, and word of mouth. Hospitals and physicians, ministers and lawyers, police and professors: all referred women to Jane. The Chicago police looked the other way, and police department employees and the families of police officers used the service. 

Jane adopted many complicated practices to keep themselves and their patients safe. But Jane was heavily surveilled; eventually one of their locations was raided and some members were arrested. The story of the arrest and aftermath are gripping and sometimes ironically amusing.

Once the women of Jane learned that the police raid was not ordered from above -- and in fact "if certain higher-ups had been on duty that day, the bust would not have happened" -- the group swung back into action. It was a reduced group, but it survived and continued its work. That takes some kind of courage.

The Story of Jane is full of surprising and enlightening details. Here are some things I learned.

* Members of the clergy were integral to the early pro-abortion-rights movement. I knew that faith leaders were important in both the civil rights and peace movements, but I didn't realized they had been so active in the early fight for abortion rights, too. Ministers referred women to Jane and other illegal alternatives, and were able to use their moral standing -- their bullet-proof vestments -- to push for reform.

* During the raid and arrests, the police kept demanding, "Where is he? Where is the doctor? Where is he?". But there was no "he". The police could not conceive that this was all taking place without a doctor, and in fact without any men at all.

* At the time of the raid and arrest, hundreds of women were waiting for Jane abortions. Jane members called each one to discuss their options. Abortion clinics in New York and Washington DC, where abortions were already legal, said, "If your women can get to us, we'll give them free abortions." 

* When an experimental abortion procedure became available in a different city, about 20 Jane clients agreed to try it. Jane chartered a bus and the women travelled together. The opposition was huge, vocal, and borderline violent -- and from within the abortion-rights movement. The women on the bus became a team, determined to continue, and supported each other throughout the experience. This was a fascinating and largely unknown piece of movement history.

Words of their own

In the epilogue, I appreciated Kaplan's analysis of Roe v. Wade, what it was and was not. 

Roe was never feminist. It was a validation of the rights of doctors to make decisions for their patients. It was not a validation of a woman's right to decide whether and when to bear a child. 

I'll end this review with two quotes from Kaplan's book. This is the final paragraph:

The service embodied a shift in consciousness, from asking for something to doing it ourselves. Deborah told me that she tries to convey to her students that if a thing needs to be done, we can do it, figure it out, step by step. We in Jane learned that social change is not a gift given by leaders and heroes, but is accomplished by ordinary people working together. We make it happen by what we choose to do. 

And this, a member reflecting on her decision to become involved.

I was . . . a law-abiding citizen with a fairly strong belief in the rule of law. It [being involved in Jane] gave me a new image of myself, not only of doing something that was against the law, but, more important, being part of a group of people taking matters into their own hands, because the law was not meeting their needs.

--------

* In 1981 I attended pro-choice actions, but wasn't yet an organizer. The main focus of my activism at that time was anti-apartheid. I became a pro-choice organizer in 1985 or 1986.

** The expressions "domestic violence," "relationship violence," and "intimate partner violence" were not used at this time. In the larger world, this abuse was called "wife beating". People in the movement called it "violence against women".

what i'm reading: my notorious life by kate manning (madame restell, fictional version, nonfiction to follow)

I read this book last year, and have been recommending it nonstop, so it's about time to commit it to wmtc.

My Notorious Life was an obvious book for me to love -- or to hate. 

Much historical fiction feels contrived to me. An author takes a period of history, writes a piece of fiction, often a romance or family saga, and grafts the two together. I often see the scaffolding too much. 

I'm particularly sensitive to this when the subject matter is important to me. This book qualified on so many levels -- women, abortion, New York City. If anything had felt inauthentic to me, I couldn't have read it. 

I am happy to report that I loved it. 

Kate Manning seamlessly blends a dramatic story with historical people and events. Based on the life of a woman  who was known as Madame Restell, My Notorious Life tells the story of a child of extreme poverty who rises to fame and fortune, and who may be thrown back into poverty, and into prison -- not without several twists and turns, the outcome of which is never certain. Manning's Madame Restell is a very compelling hero -- daring and courageous, and also deeply principled and compassionate. 

Manning brings the reader into late 19th Century New York City, a world of extreme income inequality, where women have little control over their reproductive lives. In other words, a world with all too many parallels to our own. But there are striking differences, too. We can see the progress our society has made -- and the consequences of that progress being reversed and undone. When women are unable to control their reproduction, they suffer, children suffer, and society suffers.

Manning also manages to pull off something that must be incredibly difficult, given how rarely it is achieved. She weaves all the issues -- poverty, class, the treatment of children, women's autonomy, pregnancy, childbirth, abortion -- into a dramatic story with a great plot and several subplots. There are no soapboxes, no billboards. The lessons are gleaned through story.

On our recent trip to Powell's City of Books in Portland, I stumbled on* a title that practically leapt out at me: Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist by Jennifer Wright. I immediately put a copy in my basket, wondering how I had not heard of it before -- not realizing that it was published only last month. I will be reading it and writing about it soon.

* I was hunting for Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences (2010) by Cordelia Fine. I found that book, Madame Restell, and The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service (1995) by Laura Kaplan. I hope to read all three this year.

judy heumann, rest in power

Judith Heumann, one of the founders and primary movers of the disability rights movement, died recently at the too-young age of 75. 

Judith Heumann was a force of nature. She was the consummate activist -- a brilliant communicator, a charismatic organizer, and a warm, compassionate, attentive person. Judy was the kind of person that made you want to do more, to be better. 

She is one of the leads in "Crip Camp," the brilliant documentary about a summer camp experience that radicalized a group of young people with disabilities, and became an incubator of the disability rights movement. If you haven't seen it, I hope you will. 

At the very beginning of my foray into the disability rights movement, I attended an event where Judy was speaking. I don't remember much about it -- we're talking 35 years ago -- but I remember being riveted as Judy spoke. She gave me so much clarity about the intersection of feminism, human rights, and disability rights -- that indeed they were all the same thing. 

Here are some obits: The New York Times, NPR, The Guardian. Judith's own website is here.

The headline from the NPR obit is "Activist Judy Heumann led a reimagining of what it means to be disabled". 

this leftist yellowstone fan rejects the claim that's it a right-wing show

Season 5 of "Yellowstone" is streaming now. I love this show, and I'm waiting for the full season to post on Prime before I bingeing this latest installment.

I was surprised to learn that the current take on Yellowstone describes it as right-wing -- that people claim the show espouses right-wing beliefs and values. 

Taylor Sheridan, the show's creator, disagrees. So do I. 

And I wrote this, below, before I read Sheridan's response.

* * * *

I frankly don't understand how this show can be seen as representing so-called red-state values. It makes me wonder if the folks writing these pieces have actually seen the show. Could it be they've seen the cast and the setting, and read a few bullet points, and assumed they know the show? It wouldn't be the first time that cultural critics have made that mistake, and unfortunately right-wingers aren't the only ones guilty of it. 

Yellowstone, at bottom, is about land. Who owns the land, how did they come to own it? Is their claim to the land legitimate -- is it based on economic right, or settler's laws, or stewardship? How will the land be used -- for profit, for preservation, for community? 

Indigenous issues are front and centre, and the portrayal of Native issues is not only sympathetic, but nuanced, complex, and seemingly authentic. How can a show that highlights and sympathizes with Native American issues be said to be (politically) conservative? 

Women's perspectives are always present in Yellowstone, including those of Native women. The women of Yellowstone are fully realized people. They're not: window-dressing, or only reacting to men, or stereotyped, or stock characters. 

Yellowstone is also about trauma, and how trauma plays out in the lives of individuals, families, and entire communities. This is also a progressive take on the human condition.

And most importantly, Yellowstone is anti-capitalist. The root cause of every trauma is profit. The bad guys are the ones who care only about the bottom line, stock dividends, wringing profit out of every acre. Cowboys and ranchers have conflict with the Rez and with the tribal police, but (in this show) they are both coming from a place of honesty and love. The developers are coming from Wall Street.

Like all quality series, Yellowstone is complex and multi-layered: family saga, romances, coming-of-age, culture clashes, history, and politics are all rolled together. Every hero is also an anti-hero; no one (except perhaps the land developers) is purely good or evil. All these parts play out against a backdrop of gorgeous scenery, with the pace and violence of an action-adventure movie. Yellowstone is very violent, sometimes a little over-the-top, so if that's not your thing, don't even try it.

* * * * 

I wrote this post before reading this interview with Taylor Sheridan in The Atlantic, so I'm pleased to see the show's creator confirm my point of view. I'm also a big fan of the modern western genre, so it was great to read Sheridan credit The Unforgiven, the movie that began the new, progressive re-imagining of the western.

Sheridan insists that Yellowstone is not a “red-state show.” “They refer to it as ‘the conservative show’ or ‘the Republican show’ or ‘the red-state Game of Thrones,’ ” he told me. “And I just sit back laughing. I’m like, ‘Really?’ The show’s talking about the displacement of Native Americans and the way Native American women were treated and about corporate greed and the gentrification of the West, and land-grabbing. That’s a red-state show?”

Sheridan is right that the show’s politics are not easy to pin down. Yes, its red-state milieu—all those guns and horses and big, open vistas—along with its veneration of honest toil, cowboy masculinity, violence, and characters who have a general resistance to change may have drawn rural dads who fear, like John Dutton, the end of their own ways of life in a changing America.

But Yellowstone doesn’t have an explicit ideology that maps onto a traditional red–blue spectrum. It’s a mishmash of generally anti-capitalist, anti-modernist populism; pro-rancher libertarianism; conservative environmentalism (I know, today that sounds like an oxymoron, but it has sturdy Teddy Rooseveltian roots); and a sympathetic, pro–Native American revolt of the oppressed. The series isn’t a sop to conservative values, or at least it’s not only that. What Sheridan is up to is slyer, or maybe just more muddled.

Sheridan told me he aims to do “responsible storytelling,” to depict the moral consequences of certain behaviors and decisions. He says he was strongly influenced by Clint Eastwood’s 1992 film, Unforgiven, which “upended” the black-hat/white-hat conventions of the traditional Western. Eastwood “let the sheriff be a bully and the hero be this drunken, vicious killer.” He “shattered the myth of the American Western,” Sheridan said. “So when I stepped into that world, I wanted there to be real consequences. I wanted to never, ever shy away from, This was the price.”

The biggest price—and this theme runs through much of Sheridan’s work—is the one exacted by capitalism and the gentrifiers and financiers who snooker the good people who still work with their hands. Despite his professed admiration for Eastwood’s revisionist Western, Sheridan subscribes artistically to something that looks like the old cowboy way. If his work has a higher moral plane, it’s one governed by cowboy virtues: honor, bravery, physical labor, respect for tradition, and a willingness to die—and kill—in defense of your family and your land.

Noel Murray, writer of this Atlantic piece, seems to be setting up a dichotomy that doesn't exist. Sheridan's admiration for The Unforgiven is not in opposition to Yellowstone's values. The modern western is simply a more honest telling. It brings to the foreground stories that were entirely absent from Hollywood-style mythmaking of the Old West. Stories of women, enslaved people, immigrants. Stories told through a working-class and often anti-capitalist lens. And an often heartbreaking honesty about the systematic destruction of Indigenous land and culture. What Murray calls "cowboy virtues" are the same values and virtues found on the Rez -- setting up often unresolvable conflicts.

So excited to watch Season 5!

what i'm reading: gods of the upper air, outstanding nonfiction by charles king

Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century by Charles King is a compelling, fascinating, impeccably researched, and thoroughly readable work of narrative nonfiction. 

It is one of the very best nonfiction books I've read. I borrowed it from the library, but ended up buying it for my bookshelf, and my copy is bristling with sticky notes marking passages I found especially illuminating. 

Despite all this, I've been finding writing about Gods of the Upper Air extremely challenging. 

Rather than continuing to think myself in circles, I'm taking an easier route: sharing snips from some published reviews (with repetitive facts snipped out), plus a brief note about why I picked up the book in the first place.

Snips from reviews

This is from the publisher, but I find it an accurate assessment.

A dazzling group portrait of Franz Boas, the founder of cultural anthropology, and his circle of women scientists, who upended American notions of race, gender, and sexuality in the 1920s and 1930s--a sweeping chronicle of how our society began to question the basic ways we understand other cultures and ourselves.

At the end of the 19th century, everyone knew that people were defined by their race and sex and were fated by birth and biology to be more or less intelligent, able, nurturing, or warlike. But one rogue researcher looked at the data and decided everyone was wrong. Franz Boas was the very image of a mad scientist: a wild-haired immigrant with a thick German accent. By the 1920s he was also the foundational thinker and public face of a new school of thought at Columbia University called cultural anthropology. He proposed that cultures did not exist on a continuum from primitive to advanced. Instead, every society solves the same basic problems--from childrearing to how to live well--with its own set of rules, beliefs, and taboos.

Boas' students were some of the century's intellectual stars: Margaret Mead, the outspoken field researcher whose Coming of Age in Samoa is one of the most widely read works of social science of all time; Ruth Benedict, the great love of Mead's life, whose research shaped post-Second World War Japan; Ella Deloria, the Dakota Sioux activist who preserved the traditions of Native Americans of the Great Plains; and Zora Neale Hurston, whose studies under Boas fed directly into her now-classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Together, they mapped vanishing civilizations from the Arctic to the South Pacific and overturned the relationship between biology and behavior. Their work reshaped how we think of women and men, normalcy and deviance, and re-created our place in a world of many cultures and value systems.

Gods of the Upper Air is a page-turning narrative of radical ideas and adventurous lives, a history rich in scandal, romance, and rivalry, and a genesis story of the fluid conceptions of identity that define our present moment. 

New York Times:

How a Group of Heretical Thinkers Chipped Away at the Idea of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’

By Jennifer Szalai

During the 1930s, the New York-based anthropologist Franz Boas grew increasingly worried about events in his native Germany. He was in his 70s, and close to retiring from Columbia University, where he taught his students to reject the junk science underpinning the country’s restrictive immigration laws, colonial expansion and Jim Crow. Born into a Jewish burgher family, Boas was horrified to see how the Nazis took inspiration from Americans’ pathbreaking work in eugenics and state-sanctioned bigotry. He started to put the word “race” in scare quotes, calling it a “dangerous fiction.”

Boas is at the center of Charles King’s “Gods of the Upper Air,” a group portrait of the anthropologist and his circle, who collectively attempted to chip away at entrenched notions of “us” and “them.” “This book is about women and men who found themselves on the front lines of the greatest moral battle of our time,” King writes, “the struggle to prove that — despite differences of skin color, gender, ability or custom — humanity is one undivided thing.”

A century ago, the prospect of a common humanity seemed radical to an American public that had been schooled in the inherent superiority of Western civilization. Boas and his disciples argued for pluralism and tolerance at a time when cross-cultural empathy was deemed not just threatening but almost unfathomable.

. . . His ideas were particularly appealing to women who chafed at the patriarchal order. Men were constantly spouting specious and self-serving theories of what was natural; here was a man suggesting that those things might not be so natural after all.

. . . The then-dominant school of anthropology propped up a narrative tracing “the stages of human culture,” from “savagery” through to “barbarism” and finally to “civilization.” Mainstream scholars insisted that white supremacy was justified by head measurements and heel length.

. . . This looks to be the perfect moment for King’s resolutely humane book, even if the United States of the early 20th century isn’t quite the perfect mirror. Boas and his circle confronted a bigotry that was scientifically endorsed at the time, and they dismantled it by showing it wasn’t scientific at all; today’s nativists and racists generally don’t even pretend to a scientific respectability, resorting instead to a warped version of cultural relativism for fuel in their culture war. 

Kirkus:

In this deeply engaging group biography, King . . . recounts the lives and work of a handful of American scholars and intellectuals who studied other cultures in the 1920s and ’30s, fighting the “great moral evils: scientific racism, the subjugation of women, genocidal fascism, the treatment of gay people as willfully deranged.”  . . . .

King offers captivating, exquisitely detailed portraits of these remarkable individuals—the first cultural relativists—who helped demonstrate that humanity is “one undivided thing,” that race is “a social reality, not a biological one,” and that things had to be “proven” before they could shape law, government, and public policy.

. . . King’s smoothly readable story of the stubborn, impatient Boas and his acolytes emphasizes how their pioneering exploration of disparate cultures contradicts the notion that “our ways are the only commonsensical, moral ones.” Rich in ideas, the book also abounds in absorbing accounts of friendships, animosities, and rivalries among these early anthropologists.

This superb narrative of debunking scientists provides timely reading for our “great-again” era.

Why I originally picked up this book

On a visit to the U'mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay (something we do whenever we have out-of-town guests), we saw an exhibit about the work done by Boas, with his local ethnographer, George Hunt. Boas and Hunt studied the cultures of the coastal peoples on whose traditional territories I live and work.

George Hunt's descendants form a huge clan, with many famous artists and other notables among them, including the Cranmers, whose life works keep their culture alive in so many ways.

Boas and Hunt knew these Nations as the Kwatiul (pronounced kwa-gi-youth). Port Hardy is built on the traditional territory of the Kwakiutl. All the Nations who are originally from this area are referred to as  Kwakwaka'wakw (pronounced kwak-wok-yuh-wak), which means Kwak'wala-speaking people. 

When I saw George Hunt and the Kwakiutl mentioned in a review, I immediately put the book on hold. I'm so glad I did!

A note about a word

I have known for a very long time that racial theory is pseudoscience, that there is no biological basis of race, that it is a purely social construct. I make it a point to never use the word race when describing anyone, and to never refer to someone's race. I have done this for decades.

Instead I use the words color, or racialized, or ethnic background, or heritage, and so on, depending on what is appropriate. 

I hope more people will join me to move the needle that little bit.

Also I hope people will read this book.

barbara ehrenreich, rest in power. i will miss you.

I was very saddened by the news that Barbara Ehrenreich had died earlier this month. She was one of my favourite thinkers and writers, and I found it difficult to bundle my thoughts and feelings into a tribute. 

From her last book, Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer, I know she rejected continuing with  cancer treatment after a certain point, so it was good to see that she died while in hospice care.

Why did Ehrenreich's writing mean so much to me?

She was a fierce champion of the working class.

She was fearless in her research and her writing.

She was a steadfast feminist, always examining the impact of policies and trends on women, especially working-class and low-income women.

She was clear-eyed and unrepentent. Ehrenreich's essay on the 2000 US election, "Vote For Nader," was widely shared. Then her post-election "Don't Blame Me", in Time magazine, strengthened my admiration for her. 

So many supposedly leftist writers will spend 1,500 words explaining why the Democrats suck, why the two-party system is broken, why we need a new or a different party -- then close with some version of "but that's all we got, so just shut up and vote for them". Ehrenreich understood a more complex picture.

I know there's not much point arguing with a party spurned. Scapegoating is, after all, so much easier than thinking. But, dear disappointed Dems, why not vent your rage on, for example, the union guys who voted for Bush because of his easygoing attitude toward firearms? (Oh, yes, I forgot, they're armed.) And before beating up on the Democratic defectors to Nader, wouldn't it be a good idea to pause for a little numerical perspective? According to exit polls, Gore lost 11 pecent of Democratic voters to Bush, compared to only 2 percent to Nader, who also drew votes from Independents and Republicans.

One of the major charges leveled against Nader voters is that we pretended - in some perverse kind of optical malingering - that we couldn't see the difference between the major candidates. Well, I'm capable of making fine visual distinctions. But a lot of people who probably never wandered near the Nader camp kept muttering, "Bush, Gore? Gush, Bore?" right up to election eve. This was, after all, the year the parties did their utmost to resemble one another. Recall that in August, after a Republican convention full of "compassion" and black gospel choirs, the pundits gave Bush high marks for making the Republican party look more like the Democratic party. But how hard was that? He wouldn't have been able to make the Republicans look like the Democrats if the Democrats had not already spent most of the past decade making themselves look like the Republicans - embracing capital punishment, unrestricted trade, welfare reform and the need to abolish the deficit. You call this a two-party system? I demand a recount.

. . . .

The staggering thing about the Democratic party's sense of entitlement - as in, "We own your vote" - is that it has made so little effort to hold on to its base. Labor, for example. Would there have been any worry about union members' defecting to Nader if the Clinton administration had spent even half as much time fighting to raise the minimum wage as it spent on pushing free trade with China?

So back off, Democratic avengers. Nader didn't steal Gore's election; he just mobilized some of the mounting disgust for money-polluted politics, with its battery-operated candidates and look-alike, corporate-welfare-state policies, whether they're labeled Democratic or Republican. All right, maybe the Republican disguise worked for the Democrats in 1992. But if you go around long enough in camouflage clothes, you're eventually going to be mistaken for, well, a bush.

What I loved best about Ehrenreich's writing was that she wrote for everyone. Although she was a columnist for The Nation, which was (before the internet) the preeminent left publication in the US, most of her writing had a broader target. She wanted to enlighten, educate, and also entertain, anyone who could read her. For me, this put her at the absolute top of the heap of feminist and socialist writers. 

A lifetime ago, I saw Ehrenreich read on a double bill with another great feminist writer, Katha Pollitt. When she signed my copy of The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed, she said, "Hardcover! Bless you, supporting my family." Just a tiny personal memory from more than three decades of attention and admiration.

If you haven't read any of Ehrenreich's books, certainly begin with Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America, which has become a classic, then Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, and Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America.

Her obituary in The Guardian is here. Both this, and the obituary in The New York Times, recount the birth of the idea for Nickled and Dimed. 

Barbara Ehrenreich, I will miss your voice.

thoughts on privilege: using less oxygen in the room

Many years ago, at one of our wmtc parties, I was chatting with a new guest, the spouse of a friend. We had never met before, and they didn't know anyone else at the party. Wanting to be a good host, I made it a point to spend some time with her, and asked about her work. She answered briefly and shyly; seeking to draw her out, I asked some clarifying questions.

Another guest was also present, and they jumped in, verbally rolling their eyes at my apparent ignorance, and answered the question not meant for them. 

I wanted to say, I know that. I wasn't asking for information, I was trying to start a conversation. But obviously I couldn't say that, so I said nothing while the third party answered the question meant for the newer, less talkative guest. Then I tried again with a more specific question that the third person couldn't answer.

More importantly, I made a mental note of this conversation: don't be that person, realizing that I have been, more than once.

Leaving space for others to speak

Several years later, during some union training, I was reminded of this exchange. One of our ground rules for group engagement was to leave space for others to speak. 

This was revelatory to me! A new thought about another way we can see -- and check -- our privilege. A step we can take towards being an ally of people with less privilege.

Since this was made visible to me, I've become increasingly sensitive to the dynamics of group conversations. I've been challenging myself to do better. 

I think of it as using less oxygen in the room.

A diversity of voices > the sound of our own voice

Using less oxygen in the room means leaving space for others to speak -- space for voices  that may not speak as often or answer as quickly. 

These voices may be quiet from a lifetime of receiving messages that their ideas are not important and not welcome -- and the resulting inexperience, which may have led to a lack of confidence. 

The voices may be quiet from a lifetime of frustration and futility in trying to compete with the dominant voices. 

Or folks may simply be reluctant to speak in front of others. Some of us gain a lot of speaking experience in our daily work -- but many people do not. For many people, raising a hand to speak in a group setting constitutes public speaking, and public speaking is many people's greatest fear.

Those of us who don't fall into any of those categories can use less oxygen in the room for folks who do.

Slamming the buzzer

My new awareness of this dynamic has led me to examine why I and others might use up so much oxygen -- why we might claim an inequitable share of verbal space. 

Why do so many people respond to questions as if they're hitting a buzzer in a game show? Why do people need to be the first person to respond? Why are we so keen to display our knowledge?

This dynamic is separate and distinct from mansplaining. In fact, taking up too much oxygen in the room may be a result of having been mansplained excessively in the past: a rush to display knowledge before anyone else can shut you down. 

It may be the result of a lifetime of being praised for their intelligence -- and only for that, so that our positive self-image is inextricably connected to how much we know.

It may be the result of hyper-competitiveness -- viewing every interaction as a contest to be won or lost.

It may be that we're passionate about the topic and just love to talk about it.

And of course, it may be any combination of the above, and very likely some motivations I haven't thought of here.

These days, when I find myself in a group dynamic, I am learning to ask myself: Do I need to answer this question? Do I need to speak? Am I contributing something unique or necessary? And I practice being comfortable keeping my knowledge to myself.  

An active silence

Using less oxygen in the room is something men can do when there are women present. 

It's something white people can do when there are people of colour present.

It's something settler people can do when there are Indigenous people present.

It's something more experienced people can do when there are younger or less experienced people present.

It's something anyone who in a group majority can do to help anyone in a group minority feel more comfortable speaking. 

It comes down to something both simple and challenging: checking your own ego.

It doesn't mean not speaking. It means not needing to speak your every thought. It means knowing the answer, but checking your impulse to answer it, waiting to see if someone else does.

You don't need to be the smartest person in the room.

You don't need to display your knowledge. 

You don't need to draw attention to yourself.

It's not a contest. 

Your silence -- your deference to others -- can be your contribution.

rotd: feminism is an endeavor to change

Revolutionary thought of the day:

Feminism is an endeavor to change something very old, widespread, and deeply rooted in many, perhaps most, cultures around the world, innumerable institutions, and most households on Earth -- and in our minds, where it all begins and ends. That so much change has been made in four or five decades is amazing; that everything is not permanently, definitively, irrevocably changed is not a sign of failure. A woman goes walking down a thousand-mile road. Twenty minutes after she steps forth, they proclaim that she still has nine hundred ninty-nine miles to go and will never get anywhere.

-- Rebecca Solnit, from "Pandora's Box and the Volunteer Police Force", 2014

the end of roe: a day we expected for so long still has the power to shock and stun us

We've been expecting this for 20 years.

More than forty years of anti-abortion legislation, escalating every year and every decade, then Trump, then finally, the leaked draft. 

So I thought I was prepared -- mentally, emotionally. Hell, for more than 15 years I've been saying that Roe is irrelevant for millions of American women. 

We all thought we were prepared.

We were wrong.

Every progressive person I know, every feminist, every advocate for justice -- every message board, every private Facebook page, everyone -- has said the same thing. We are raging. Grieving. Stunned. Horrified.  

I cannot express how angry I am. I'm far too angry to be eloquent. I'm going to the stupid and lazy thing, and capture my postings on Facebook.

Attribution omitted

I had to take a break from Facebook when I started seeing posts blaming the repeal of Roe on people who didn't vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016. 

For sure, voting Americans had a stark choice in 2016, a referendum on Trump or not-Trump. About 74 million voters still voted for Trump, and another 88 million (give or take) chose not to vote. A second Trump presidency was the final nail in Roe's coffin.

But for gods' sake, widen your lens. 

The Democrats caused this every bit as much, or more, than the Republicans. 

One party did everything in its power, on all levels, to chip away at abortion rights in preparation for the eventual repeal of Roe v. Wade. They spent untold millions of dollars, unleashed dozens of strategies. Took over one state legislature after the next. Took over school boards. Stacked the judiciaries. Passed the legislation that led to Webster, Rust, Casey, and Carhart II. They were relentless..

The other party couldn't even utter the word abortion. The Democrats' plan to defend Roe boiled down to this: "You must vote for us, no matter what -- no matter what we do or don't do -- because the other party will take away 'a woman's right to choose'." That was never going to be enough. 

As the Republicans turned increasingly radical, the Democrats became what the Republic used to be. The handful of passionate liberals in the party are accused of class warfare and blamed for the success of the radical right.

Perhaps if the Democrats were interested in something beyond getting elected -- if the party actually cared about defending liberal democracy -- we wouldn't be where we are now. Or at least we would have stood a fucking chance.

How can you defend a right you can't even fucking say?