Category: women

  • is it because of all that armpit hair?

    In celebration of International Women’s Day, Take a minute to watch this short video “Are YOU a Feminist?”

    For whatever reason, feminism seems to be equated with armpit hair and lesbianism. That’s so odd to me, as I don’t know any female feminists that eschew shaving (tho a few male feminists that I know don’t shave their armpits) and only a handful of my feminist friends are lesbians. Why is the feminist label so maligned? Is this a legacy of the Equal Rights Amendment era? Or is this indicative of larger social discomfort with assertive women?

    An anecdote: I’ve recently found myself in a social situation where I’ve observed several undergrads who have behaved belligerently towards an older woman in a position of authority over them. These same students treat a young-ish man with a similar position with much greater respect. Though there are many reasons why this might be happening in this particular situation, I suspect that much of it has to do with gender. Most people seem to be uncomfortable with assertive women, but not so with assertive men. IMO, this is a shame. Though the woman might be more qualified and more capable, the man is preferred. Why?

    And, also in celebration of IWD and some truly radical feminist women (no hairy armpits, I promise). Take a few moments to watch and listen:

  • seeking: radical mormon feminists

    I’m looking for a handful of radical Mormon feminists to work on a project with me. If you’re interested, reply in the comments section of this post or drop me a line at phddilly atyahoo dot com.

  • feminism 101, Part II

    You can find Part I here.

    From “The Combahee River Collective“, with my changes in italics to make this more relevant to Mormon women:

    We reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces behind. To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough.

    We believe that sexual politics under patriarchy is as pervasive in Mormon women’s lives as are the politics of class and religion. We also often find it difficult to separate religion from class and sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. We know that there is such a thing as religio-sexual oppression which is neither solely religious nor solely sexual, e.g. the history of polygamy and continued practice of insititutional polygyny by Mormon men….

    In the practice of our politics we do not believe that the end always justifies the means. Many reactionary and destructive acts have been done in the name of achieving “correct” political goals. As feminists we do not want to mess over people in the name of politics. We believe in collective process and a nonhierarchical distribution of power with our own group and in our vision of a revolutionary society…we know that we have a very definite revolutionary task to perform and we are ready for the lifetime of work and struggle before us.

    Okay, so this is a ‘proclamation’ that I could stand behind. What about you?

  • we are the world…

    –Take a minute to watch this brief video about global women’s issues. Narrated by author Alice Walker. Kudos go to Mom for the link.

    –Then head over to Lorell’s blog to read why what you eat affects global warming even more than what you drive. (hmmm…reading this reminds me of the absolutely scrumptious veggie buffalo wings that john brought home from The Veggie Cafe yesterday).

  • Because today we must all raise our glasses to Virginia

    From a must-listen podcast, The Writer’s Almanac (5 min of daily literary pleasure):

    It’s the birthday of the novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf, born Virginia Stephen in London (1882). She never went to school, but her father chose books for her to read from his own library. Her brothers all went to the best universities, and she wrote letters to them about her reading. She was only allowed to move out of her family home after her father’s death, when she was 22. She moved into a house with her brothers and sister, and instead of writing letters about what she’d been reading, she began to write literary criticism for the Times Literary Supplement, and she became one of the most accomplished literary critics of the era.

    Woolf believed that the problem with 19th-century literature was that novelists had focused entirely on the clothing people wore and the food they ate and the things they did. She believed that the most mysterious and essential aspects of human beings were not their possessions or their habits, but their interior emotions and thoughts.

    She considered her first few novels failures, but then in 1922, she began to read the work of Marcel Proust, who had just died that year. She wrote to a friend, “Proust so titillates my own desire for expression that I can hardly set out the sentence. Oh if I could write like that!” Later that summer, she wrote in her diary, “There’s no doubt in my mind, that I have found out how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice.”

    Woolf’s next book was her first masterpiece: Mrs. Dalloway (1925) about all the thoughts that pass through the mind of a middle-aged woman on the day she gives a party. Woolf went on to write many more novels, including To the Lighthouse (1927) and The Waves (1931), but she was also one of the greatest essayists of her generation. In her long essay about women and literature, A Room of One’s Own (1929), she wrote: “So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery.”

  • birds of a feather

    Today we attended a luncheon and prayer service at a local mosque. A lovely experience–learning about the faith and practice of our Muslim friends. Bonny wrote a lovely summary of her impressions. I found the most provocative part of the visit was joining the women in midday prayer. We covered our heads with scarves, knelt on the lushly carpeted floor, and observed. The women’s space was far off to the side from the main mosque room. The men’s room was richly adorned with curtains, symbols, and the like. The women’s room was completely plain except for a small cupboard with some well-worn books stacked in haphazard piles and a small stash of folded white polyester headcoverings for women who’d forgotten theirs. From where we sat and stood, we couldn’t even see the speaker who voiced the prayers.

    On the drive home from the mosque we encountered this cloud up ahead:

    Then, as we got closer we saw this:

    And then this:

    And this older gent shaking whole bags of crumbs out of crumpled bags in his grocery cart. It was obvious that these birds knew this man–their numbers were far too large for this to be a chance meeting.

    We circled around the block to watch this spectacle until it was over. He balled up the empty bags and headed down the street alone.

    And John and I resolved that when we are old, we will feed the birds.

  • feminism 101

    So I’m taking a Women’s Studies class this quarter, which I really need. For too long I’ve been skirting around the edge of Feminist Theory, without ever diving in.

    So today I read my first article, “Toward a Woman-Centered University,” by Adrienne Rich in 1973. I’ll share a few portions of the article that resonated with me, though I wish I could share all as I find it highly relevant to my daily life as a mother-academic. This article builds on Virginia Woolf’s notion of “A Room of Her Own” and “Three Guineas” to propose a model for a woman-friendly college. I would add that the changes that Rich proposes would be more human-friendly and parent-friendly (not just for women, IMO).

    It is difficult to imagine, unless one has lived it, the personal division, endless improvising, and creative and intellectual holding back that for most women accompany the attempt to combine the emotional and physical demands of parenthood and the challenges of work.

    As I write this I am sitting in the midst of laundry that needs folding, dishes that need washing, and 2 kids who are working on a rock-polishing project. While I love my life and I am thrilled by the creative tensions that occur in the process of ‘improvising’ my life, it is so not easy and sometimes I wonder if I am wasting my academic pursuits because I can’t devote full-time attention to them.

    Later in her article she quotes Susan Sontag (another favorite author of mine):
    The first responsibility of a ‘liberated’ woman is to lead the fullest, freest, and most imaginative life she can. The second responsibility is her solidarity with other women. She may live and work and make love with men. But she has no right to represent her situation as simpler, or less suspect, or less full of compromises than it really is. Her good relations with men must not be bought at the price of betraying her sisters.

    Wow, there is a lot of meat in the quotation. I love the challenge that Sontag proposes–of living life as fully and imaginatively as possible. Yes, I have taken up that gauntlet. I’m not sure, though, that I have been completely honest about the challenges and compromises that I face in my academic path. Perhaps this is because I don’t discuss my academic path much at all on my blog? Perhaps it is just too raw? Perhaps my experience doesn’t involve such grand compromises because earlier women have paved the path for me to follow? I’ll continue to ruminate on these questions as I approach my later readings.

  • for she who suffers

    From a recent Women for Women flyer:

    ~80% of all refugees and displaced persons globally are women and children

    ~Rape is used as a tool of genocide and weapon of war: 20K Bosnian women raped during the Balkan War; 500K Rwandese women raped during the ’94 genocide; 100K+ of Congolese women raped in the DRC war

    ~70% of the world’s 1.3 billion poor are women

    ~90% of today’s war casualties are civilians, 75% of whom are women and children.

    These are each shocking statistics. As I sit here reading through each one and trying to wrap my head around the suffering contained in these few lines I am completely humbled by my own good fortune, and at the same time I am ANGRY that this is my world, our world, in which this is happening.

    On the advice of TanyaSue, last week I read Nectar in a Sieveand I thought a lot about the protagonist, Rukmani, and the vicissitudes of economic uncertainty in India that routinely left her and her children with only a handful of rice to eat each day. She watched family members die from malnutrition as she struggled to eke out a quiet life under intolerably harsh circumstances.

    This book made me question: at what price do I enjoy this warm apartment that I sit in as I type on my laptop, pantry cupboards full, nearly every modern convenience at my fingertips. What right do I have to live in such privilege?

    Awhile back I read of a young man about my age who decided to live as simply as possible, that he could give more of his money to those that suffer. He had only two sets of clothing. He slept on a mat on the floor with a thin blanket. He gave away all of his possessions except for those necessary in his nonprofit work.

    What do you think? Are you tempted to abandon your comforts for the sake of another?

  • criticism

    Yesterday I found myself in two different settings where the LDS Church was criticized.

    The first was a graduate seminar. We were discussing Laurel Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale. Both the professor and several class members questioned Ulrich’s objectivity as a historian because of her Mormonism. There were critical comments about polygamy, patriarchy, and Mormon racism. Because of recent changes in my own religious identity, I found it difficult to speak up and defend the LDS Church. However, I did describe my unabashed admiration for Laurel and her work, but I didn’t address the critique of Mormonism.

    Late yesterday evening I was at my AROOM book group when several of the women were bashing LDS patriarchy. For whatever reason, this really hurt my feelings. I wanted to tell those who were speaking to stop. But I didn’t. In hindsight I feel like I should have said something, but I’m not even sure what that something is/was.

    Oddly, now that I’m out of the Mo church I find myself reluctant to criticize it. Not that I don’t see its faults, but I’m so happy to finally be able to let go of the anger I felt as a Mormon, that it’s hard for me to find myself in the midst of the criticism and not feel dragged down by it–as if it is disrupting my current joy.

  • real women

    My netflix tonight was “Real Women Have Curves.” It’s taken me way too long to watch this film. And, of course, the best scene is the one in the factory where the women are competing for the most curves, the most ‘cellulite.’

    It reminds me of this now-popular blog that features photos of the bodies of real mothers. Though my stretch marks have almost completely faded in the last 10 years, I can still feel their striations as I run my hands over my lower belly. They are scars to be proud of, the physical sacrifice for my two babies that’s been well-worth every mark they left on my flesh.

    [Note: but I’m still not brave enough to share any photos of my current belly (my least favorite part of my body). And, unfortunately, I have no such photos from my pregnancies, either–I think Demi Moore hadn’t yet broken the belly barrier back when I was pregnant]

  • why I blog

    I’m preparing to speak about Mormon feminist blogging in a few weeks. So as I’ve been mulling over various thoughts, I thought I’d make a list of the top 10 reasons why I blog….

    1)For reflection. Each time I sit at my computer to write a post, I reflect on my life and cull the gems that I feel are worth sharing. This affords the opportunity to recall joy, blessings, frustrations. I like these moments of examination, they offer great insight.
    2)For FUN. Often, blogging is play for me. I take an experience and try to render it in text. I experiment with phrasing, punctuation and pauses. I attempt to express humor and pathos.
    3)To tell it like it is. I like having the uninterrupted space to tell my stories. No one us cutting me off mid-sentence or censoring my words. It’s probably the narcissist in me that enjoys the blog as both soapbox and pedestal.
    4)To speak the unspeakable. On my blog I’ve often discussed my disability. This is a fairly taboo subject in mainstream culture. It’s empowering to me to tell the stories of my different body without framing them in terms of an inspirational or pity-full narrative. Yet, ironically, it is the parts of my life that are the most visible (my religious practice, my academic pursuits) that I discuss least often. I’m not yet sure why that is. (more on this in #10)
    5)To share pictures. I’ve just started really enjoying photography. I know our camera sucks and my photos are amateur-ish, but they bring me great joy. I love sharing my ‘lens’ with you.
    6)For community. Several of you, dear readers, know me only through my blog. Others of you are old familiar friends who like to continue to keep in touch through cyberspace. I cherish my virtual neighborhood. Your blogs and emails nourish me, your thoughts buoy me, and your comments affirm, challenge, provoke and validate my musings.
    7)For memory. What joy it is to scroll through my blog history and remember the fun things I’ve done!
    8)Because I’m a geek. Hmmmm….yes, I spend a good chunk of my day sitting at my laptop writing emails and composing blogposts. ‘nuff said.
    9)To mimic John. I’m not really the jealous type, but I saw all the benefits that he’s gotten from blogging through the years, and I wanted in on it, too!
    10)To be vulnerable. Though the personal essays and other opportunities I’ve had to share the intimate parts of my life over the past 10 years, I have often been afraid. I’ve been afraid to tell the truth as I see it, I’ve been afraid of offending, I’ve even been afraid of ‘discipline.’* But there is something so empowering about laying out truth bare. My truth-telling brings me closer to others, creates bonds with strangers, allows an intimacy that is both frightening and exhilarating.

    *I suspect that the reason I feel reticent to discuss school and church are because of fear of backlash. Within academia there’s a pretty high barrier to becoming personal and vulnerable. The LDS church has a history is censuring its more outspoken members, especially feminist women. So far, no one in the Mormon ‘Bloggernacle’ has been disciplined by church authorities for what they’ve written on their blogs, yet I am still wary. I love the freedom of the LDS community on the Net. I don’t want to see that change.

  • where have all of the feminists gone?

    http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html