feminists – Don't Gel Too Soon

Art, Truth, Feminism, JD Salinger, Lena Dunham and Sex

when: From Lena Dunham’s Website

Lena Dunham was just a little older, when she wrote this, than she was in the currently infamous story from her new book; it’s been raging through right-wing and/or feminist (?!) blogs for days. If you’ve been offline for the past few days, her new book Not That Kind of Girl, includes material about sexual curiosity, sisters, vaginas and sexual limits, all in the form of what were, to many, uncomfortable anecdotes.

Dunham and her book have been brutalized in the press and on blogs – mostly for telling the truth – a truth which some claim is the sexual abuse of a younger sibling. It seemed more like a less-than-attractive set of events and not, to child development experts, worthy of the outrage it generated.

Beyond that, it’s honest, real and revealing, so: is this cacophony of condemnation how we modern readers reward a writer’s honesty? It shouldn’t be – and JD Salinger told us why:

Since [writing] is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? … I’m so sure you’ll get asked only two questions.’ Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out? If only you knew how easy it would be for you to say yes to both questions. If only you’d remember before ever you sit down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart’s choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won’t even underline that. It’s too important to be underlined.” (Seymour, an Introduction)

HILLARY SUPPORTERS AND THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN: DON’T DO THIS!

This is breaking my heart. Why is it that we Democrats are incapable of NOT shooting ourselves in the foot (feet even)? In my view (and I’m hardly alone in this) this may be the most critical election of my lifetime. I’ve written (are you sick of it yet?) about the parallels to 1968 when the refusal of many anti-war voters to show up at the polls and vote for Hubert Humphrey brought us Richard Nixon and a cascade of disaster. That could and most likely will happen again if we don’t all pull ourselves together.

I heard a commentator quote — I thought Jefferson but can’t find the source — “True democracy means acceptance of defeat by one vote.” Sounds right, doesn’t it? But there is what we wish were true and there is political reality, and the reality this year is that every moment of hesitation by Senator Clinton’s supporters puts another barrier between Senator Obama and the White House. My most-respected friend PunditMom has a very smart analysis of where all this antipathy is coming from. And there’s a survey of much of the conversation in Lisa Stone’s summary at BlogHer.

As I write this I think about the suffragists who won us the right to have this fight in the first place just 88 years ago. What would they think now? They were willing to stand up to those who asked them to halt their campaign until WWI was over. Should women have the same singular focus now — placing their anger ahead of the outcome of this election? Is the injustice so great that it justifies putting another conservative Republican in the White House?

I think not. Our sisters will do us a disservice that will last a very long time if they continue to stand in the way of an Obama victory or even just sit on their hands, because that will betray women who are at the bottom of the power pile, raising children alone, struggling for childcare, lacking health insurance, vacation or sick leave and any kind of job security. Feminists rightly say that “every issue is a women’s issue” and that means that every decision in a McCain administration will have a heavy impact on these women, and on the rest of us.

Beyond that, in my view, the perils of an anti-choice administration that will nominate judges like those who overrode violence against women laws in Virginia and frequently support employers over women seeking redress to sexual harassment or other discrimination, an Administration that will carry on the Bush foreign policy and continue to decimate our constitutional rights — oh – you know the list — those perils outweigh any grievance.

So if sisterhood is powerful, let those whose hearts are broken by the Clinton loss recall their sisters who need so much – and consider how little their interests would be served if Barack Obama does not prevail. On this, Women’s Equality Day, let them ease their pain with the knowledge that they will help on “every issue” and therefore every “women’s issue” if they can move past the pain of their defeat and see to it that our country itself is not defeated too.

BlogHer, Bella, Books and Us Women

Two weeks ago I spent the weekend with 1,000 remarkable women. You know where; the Web has been full of posts and tweets and messages about BlogHer, the women bloggers conference. Since its founding, BlogHer has held four conferences, and I’ve been to three of them. For those three years I’ve wondered at the strength and power of both the gathering and each woman, most far younger than I, who is part of it. Audacious and rambunctious, honest and gifted, they are far beyond where I was at their age. I’ve always known that all of us, sisters from the 70’s and 80’s and 90’s, scratched and kicked and pulled and fought to move our lives, and those of the women around us, forward. In many ways, we made a difference. I’m proud of that.

Today though I was reminded of a real heroine, one whose star lit the way for much of what we did, in a wonderful piece in The Women’s Review of Books: Ruth Rosen‘s review of Bella Abzug: How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought
Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed Off Jimmy Carter, Battled for the
Rights of Women and Workers, … Planet, and Shook Up Politics Along
the Way–an oral history of the life of Bella Abzug. Among other things, Ruth says:

She fought for the
rights of union workers and African Americans, protested the use of the atomic
bomb and the Vietnam War, waged endless battles to advance women’s rights, and
spent the last years of her life promoting environmentalism and human rights.
When she plunged into the women’s movement during the late 1960s, Abzug infused
feminism with her fierce, strategic, take-no-prisoners spirit. As Geraldine
Ferraro reminds us,
She didn’t knock lightly on the door. She didn’t even push it open or batter it
down. She took it off the hinges forever! So that those of us who came after
could walk through!

And with a bow to Bella and so many others, walk through we have. It’s tough to pass the stories ‘I walked six miles to school in the snow’
fogey. Younger women, though, would find courage to fight their own
battles in Bella’s story and in many of our own."

For me, Bella was a brave, untamed beacon of defiance and energy. Her story, and ours, laid the ground for these determined, gifted "blogger generation" women. I would so love to be able to tell them about her – and about all of us, just so they could know the solidarity, the battles, the anger and the hope. And why seeing them all together, hugging, laughing and raising hell, makes me so damned happy. And that Bella would have loved them.

BITCH IS THE NEW BLACK – WHAT DO WE THINK?

This is old now and all over the interweb PLUS all the feminist listservs that reach my mailbox. What’s the verdict? Funny? Post-Feminist? JUST funny? Too true to BE funny? Too funny to be true? Other? Check one (or more…)