Here’s Schwarzenegger’s take on single moms in 2001:
“The parents are the single most important influence on a child, followed by education and the peer group…The number of single parents in the U.S. has quadrupled since the ’60s, and there has also been an increase in violence and school shootings. All that stuff has increased largely because of a lack of parenting, and many households only have one biological parent — so many of them are fatherless. It really creates a big problem.”
An excellent speech on the importance of good parenting. Just one thing. Schwarzenegger should’ve made clear that this ‘big problem’ only applies when the dad is not a movie star. For those tragic cases, Schwarzenegger could say:
“Unfortunately, I can’t be the one to impregnate all the women in California. Therefore, we’ve got to put some policies in place to better support those women who are not involved with me or with men like me. Many women in California, I’m sorry to say, will need to find a way to financially support themselves.
So, first, we must significantly increase the minimum wage which is predominantly earned by the female dominated service industry.
We’ve also got to make it a high priority that all women in California and their children get access to affordable health care.
We must expand family planning and funding services, making sure they are available to all women. We should lead the country in mandating that all health insurance providers cover contraception.
Because teen pregnancy is the number one indicator that the mother and her child will spend a life in poverty, we must make it the highest priority to reduce teen pregnancies. All schools must teach sex education including STD prevention.
And speaking of those public schools, we’ve got to fix the broken public school system of California, ranked as one of the worst in the country. Only when women are well educated can they acquire good jobs that enable them to become breadwinners for themselves and their families.
I’ve decided to follow the great example of my Democrat wife, Maria Shriver, a well-known advocate for women. Without her support, I could never get elected (especially with pesky tattle-tales accusing me of groping them.) Improving the status of women in this state will also be my priority, because, though there are many womanizer bosses in California, I’ve come to realize, there are simply not enough of us to go around.”
In recent times, we’ve seen the tide turn. After discovering secret affairs, instead of standing by their men, several high profile women decided not to stick around. The list includes Jenny Sanford, Elin Nordegren, Eva Longoria, Sandra Bullock, and, now, Maria Shriver. I guess that’s progress for the women who can afford to leave.
I was never sure how long it would take me to decide whether or not to have an abortion. Now I know! Thank you to South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard for stipulating that all women need 72 hours to make this personal decision. It’s a relief to have this kind of clarity. Especially from a leader who, I’m sure, can totally relate to what it’s like to be pregnant.
Yes, it’s true that yesterday, Governor Daugaard signed a law stating that a woman in South Dakota who wants an abortion must undergo a 72 hour waiting period, making his state the first one in the country to require such an extensive waiting period. (There are 25 states that require a 24 hour waiting period.)
According to the new law, a woman who lives in SD must also get counseling from a ‘Crisis Pregnancy Center’ before having an abortion.
What is a ‘Crisis Pregnancy Center’?
Ms Magazine reports:
Currently, there are an estimated 3,500 CPCs nationwide, most of which are affiliated with one or more national umbrella organizations. CPCs often pose as comprehensive health centers and offer “free” pregnancy tests. Some CPCs coerce and intimidate women out of considering abortion as an option, and do not offer women neutral or comprehensive medical advice. Often CPCs are run by anti-abortion zealots who are not licensed medical professionals.
It’s hypocritical– not to mention paternalistic and unrealistic– for so-called small government advocates to legislate how long a woman should ruminate– be it 24 hours or 72 or 102– on whether or not she’s going to have an abortion. Before going to get an abortion, women have considered their lives and their situations and what they need to do. But South Dakota’s invasive law may only be the first of many like it to follow. The San Jose Mercury News reports:
Dozens of bills are advancing through statehouses nationwide that would put an array of new obstacles-legal, financial and psychological-in the paths of women seeking abortions.
The tactics vary: mandatory sonograms and anti-abortion counseling, sweeping limits on insurance coverage, bans on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy…they add up to the biggest political threat since the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 that legalized abortion nationwide.
…Mary Spaulding Balch of the National Right to Life Committee have been scrambling to keep up with legislative developments: “Until the bills get on the governors’ desks, it’s premature to claim victory. But it’s moving faster than it has in previous years. … We’re very pleased with the progress thus far.”
If you are going to be in the Bay Area next Monday, you can do something for reproductive rights. Go to the Power of Choice Luncheon which Dagmar Dolby has been leading since 1996.
Caving to pressure, today House Republicans announced that they are dropping the word “forcible” from the section of the bill about abortion that addresses rape.
It is kind of sad this is such a victory, but a victory it is. It’s pretty scary how close America just came to redefining rape.
The United States has an opportunity to take a different road than it usually does.
Barbara Victor, an author and journalist with extensive experience in the Middle East, just posted on this, read it here: Barbara Victor’s blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
Predictably, the majority of Egyptians believe that once Mubarak leaves the country, freedom will reign and chaos will end. The reality, if history is any lesson, is that Islamic Fundamentalists will take over, promise people a better life, and tragically make good on those promises. What is even more tragic of course is the price people will and have paid for that so-called, on-the-surface better life.
In exchange for the youth having the opportunity to be educated and technologically trained, they will find themselves indoctrinated into a philosophical army that deplores America, intends to obliterate Israel, and ultimately will be willing to die for their cause.
In exchange for improved social services where children will not starve and the elderly will be cared for, women will lose any gains they had made when it comes to 21st century equality.
The truth is that the United States would rather see despots ruling Arab countries than risk Islamic Fundamentalists taking over, gathering strength, and attacking American installations at home or throughout the world. France, Germany, and England, to name a few European countries which have burgeoning Arab populations that are not afforded the same rights as their citizens, consider an Arab world ruled by Fundamentalists to be dangerous to peace within their own borders. These fears are not unfounded, which only makes the solution to this dilemma—the lesser of two evils—almost impossible to achieve.
Thank you for introducing bill HR 3 to make sure federal funding will only go towards abortions if the pregnancies resulted from ‘forcible’ rape and not just any old kind of rape.
Silly me! Before I saw your bill, I actually thought all rape was forcible. I even thought that’s what ‘rape’ meant.
But now, I understand what rape is! It’s like when a stranger comes out of the bushes and rapes you, right? It doesn’t apply to some slutty fourteen year old who seduces a forty year old guy. And it sure doesn’t include a loose woman who drank too much or let herself get drugged. She was probably flirting with the guy who had sex with her passed out body anyway.
I just thought you might want to know, there’s a petition out there against you and all of your good work. Here’s the link.
Don’t worry, I’ve started my own petition against Webster’s to at least get ‘statutory’ out of their definition and clarify this word once and for all.
Thank you Peggy Orenstein for writing the brilliant book Cinderella Ate My Daughter. Every parent should read this new, excellent analysis of the ubiquitous princess kid-culture and its various mutations in the world of grown-up women.
Orenstein, a NY Times journalist, mom, and writer takes on and deconstructs two (so annoying!) messages every parent hears if she dares to challenge the monarchy of these frothy creatures.
Myth number one: we’re just giving girls what they want!
Orenstein responds with a brief history of marketing and information on child brain development– some major points paraphrased here:
Pink Children were not color-coded until early twentieth century. Before that, babies wore all white, because to get clothing clean, it had to be boiled. Boys and girls also used to all wear dresses. When nursery colors were introduced, pink was more masculine, a pastel version of the red, which was associated with strength. Blue was like the Virgin Mary and symbolized innocence, thus the girl color. When the color switched is vague. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Alice in Wonderland all wear blue. Sleeping Beauty’s gown was switched to pink to differentiate her from Cinderella.
Baby doll In an 1898 survey, less than 25% of girls said dolls were their favorite toy. “President Theodore Roosevelt… obsessed with declining birth rates among white, Anglo-Saxon women, began waging a campaign against ‘race-suicide.’ When women ‘feared motherhood,” he warned, our nation trembled on the ‘brink of doom.’ Baby dolls were seen as a way to revive the flagging maternal instinct of girls, to remind them of their patriotic duty to conceive; within a few years, dolls were ubiquitous, synonymous with girlhood itself. Miniature brooms, dustpans, and stoves tutored these same young ladies in the skills of homemaking…”
Princess When Orenstein herself was a kid, being called a Princess, specifically Jewish-American, was the worst insult a kid (and her family) could get. How had a generation transformed this word into a coveted compliment?
Disney Princesses as a group brand did not exist until 2000. Disney hired Andy Mooney from Nike. He went to a Disney on Ice show and saw little girls in homemade princess costumes. Disney had never marketed characters outside of a movie release and never princesses from different movies together. Roy Disney was against it, and that’s why, still, even on pull-ups, you won’t see the princesses looking at each other. (How’s that for a model for girls in groups or female friendships?) Princesses are now marketed to girls ages 2 – 6. Mooney began the campaign by envisioning a girl’s room and thinking about a princess fantasy: what kind of clock would a princess have? What type of bedding? Dora and Mattel followed suit with Dora and Barbie princess versions and then along came everyone else.
Toddler Clothing manufacturers in the 1930s counseled department stores that in order to increase sales they should create a ‘third stepping stone’ between infant wear and older kids clothing
Tween Coined in the mid-1980s as a marketing contrivance (originally included kids 8 – 15)
More on tweens, toddlers, girls and boys: if there is micro-segmentation of products by age and gender, people buy more stuff. If kids need a pink bat and a blue bat, you double your sales. Orenstein writes: “Splitting kids and adults, or for that matter, penguins, into ever tinier categories has proved a surefire way to boost profits. So where there was once a big group called kids we now have toddlers, pre-schoolers, tweens, young-adolescents and older adolescents, each with their own developmental and marketing profile…One of the easiest ways to segment the market is to magnify gender differences or invent them where they did not previously exist.”
http://www.jeongmeeyoon.com/aw_pinkblue.htm SeoWoo and Her Pink Things by JeongMee Yoon
One major fallout of gendering every plaything? “Segregated toys discourage cross-sex friendships.” Boys and girls stop playing together. Orenstein writes about the long-term effects: “This is a public health issue. It becomes detrimental to relationships, to psychological health and well-being, when boys and girls don’t learn how to talk to one another…Part of the reason we have the divorce rates we do, domestic violence, dating violence, stalking behaviors, sexual harassment is because the lack of ability to communicate between men and women.”
Orenstein argues: “Eliminating divorce or domestic violence may be an ambitious mandate for a pre-school curriculum, but its not without basis: young children who have friends of the opposite sex have a more positive transition into dating as teenagers and sustain their romantic relationships better.”
Myth #2: that princess stuff is just a phase– she’ll grow out of it!
Princesses are marketed to girls 2 – 6 years old; there’s something very creepy and dangerous about making these kids victims of billion dollar industries. Kids brains are literally being formed, they’re malleable. So this little phase is helping to create a brain that lasts forever.
Scientists have pretty much moved on from the anachronistic, simplistic debate of nature versus nurture. It’s now understood that nature and nurture form and create each other in an endless loop. Your experiences influence your wiring.
For example, small kids can make all kinds of sounds to learn languages. Lise Eliot, author of Pink Brain, Blue Brain is quoted by Orenstein: “Babies are born ready to absorb the sounds, grammar, and intonation of any language, but then the brain wires it up only to perceive and produce a specific language. After puberty, its possible to learn another language but far more difficult. I think of gender differences similarly. The ones that exist become amplified by the two different cultures that boys and girls are immersed in from birth. This contributes to the way their emotional and cognitive circuits get wired.”
“It’s not that pink is intrinsically bad, it is such a tiny slice of the rainbow,” Orenstein writes. To grow brains, kids need more, varied experiences, not fewer.
Phases don’t vanish, they mutate.
Orenstein’s book traces how the real life Disney stars/ girl princesses (i.e. Lindsay Lohan, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Hilary Duff, Miley Cyrus etc) attempt to make their transitions from girl-princesses into adult ones; or more crassly, from virgin to whore. Orenstein writes it’s impossible to commodify one end of the spectrum and not the other, and there are so few models of healthy female sexuality out there. She writes, “Our daughters may not be faced with the decision of whether to strip for Maxim, but they will have to figure out how to become sexual beings without being objectified or stigmatized.” All that early training for girls to focus incessantly on their appearance lasts a lifetime. What happens when these girls try to grow up? Orenstein writes girls learn, “Look sexy, but don’t feel sexual, to provoke desire in others without experiencing it themselves.”
How does this emphasis on dressing up and attention for appearance affect kids as they grow? Stephen Hinshaw, quoted from his book The Triple Bind, explains, “Girls pushed to be sexy too soon can’t really understand what they’re doing…they may never learn to connect their performance to erotic feelings or intimacy. They learn how to act desirable, but not to desire, undermining, rather than promoting, healthy sexuality.”
The basic message I got from this book: the issue is not pink or princesses, but to give your kid more experiences not less. Remember– many colors in the rainbow!
(1) Encourage and reinforce cross-gender play. If your daughter is playing with a boy, acknowledge it, reinforce what they’re doing. You are the biggest influence in your kid’s life, you’re not ‘just another person.’ Talk to your kids pre-school teachers and administrators about encouraging cross-gender play. There is lots in this book about how teachers are not trained in this area at all and miss opportunities to help brains grow.
(2) Remember, your kid is not a small adult. She has a different brain. Help that brain grow! If your son picks up a My Little Pony, buy it for him instead of yet another car. It won’t make him gay! It will make him smart!
(3) Your kids are watching you! Again, they are not just little people with fully formed minds. If you criticize your appearance (or another woman’s), how you treat your partner, how you eat, she takes note.
Instead of counting sheep last night, I made a mental list of my favorite book stores in San Francisco. How weird to wake up this morning and see someone else made a list on the same thing in today’s New York Times.
www.nytimes.com Dog Eared Books in the Mission
I was very happy to see a celebration of local bookstores, though The Times list is a little highbrow and genre focused for me. For example, City Lights in North Beach is undeniably a great book store with an excellent feminist/ women studies section, but it can be kind of oppressively intellectual to lose yourself in. If we’re talking about pleasure-seeking in bookstores, that is escapism into text, which is my goal when I enter a place, I’m more of a generalist; I like a bookstore with a good mix of highbrow/ lowbrow and a massive magazine rack. This can be a challenge because I don’t like superstores i.e. Barnes and Noble and Borders. So here are 4 local favorites:
Dog Eared Books on Valencia (which is listed in The Times.) This store has a good mix of new and used, and I also love the mix of books they choose to display prominently.
Books Inc, one in Laurel Village and the other on Chestnut Street, are perfect for me.
Christopher’s Books in Potrero Hill is my local store. I love it. At night, its all lit up with yellow light; one of my friends said of it, “18th street with Christopher’s Books is so cute; it looks just like Sesame Street!” It’s true, the street and the store have a comforting, homey appeal, though Christopher’s is very small, if you’re looking for classic, they may not have it (and it doesn’t have a magazine rack.)
I’m a bookslut, I read several at once. Here’s my current list of books I love that I’m reading now or just finished:
Just finished Big Girls Don’t Cry by Rebecca Traister. This is a great, optimistic analysis of the 2008 election. Traister writes a lot about the divide between young women and second wavers, and how a major problem with Hillary Clinton’s campaign was her failure to reach out to the younger generation. Even though their agendas were similar, the potential first woman president was framed as establishment while Obama got a monopoly on being the candidate of “change” (and of course hope!)
Traister, oddly, left my demographic out of her book: Gen Xers, women in their 30s and 40s with young kids who could have been Clinton supporters. I went to Hillary’s campaign with media advice, offering to train women in talk radio, op-eds, TV debate, and new media. They were not interested. One woman in charge of San Francisco volunteers asked me to do one workshop for them. In contrast, as Traister notes, Obama was brilliant about reaching to voters using all kinds of media including social. Traister told similar stories to mine about Clinton’s campaign and women bloggers in their 20s who had tried to help her out but were not used well.
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. I’m kind of bogged down by the plot but the characters are great.
How To Become a Scandal by Laura Kipnis. This is a brilliant book. I especially loved the Linda Tripp analysis. Anyone interested in the intersection of politics and culture should read it.
The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis. Never read Amis before, and he’s a great writer, though the sexism is challenging for me.
A Happy Marriage by Rafael Yglesias. I’m always looking for good fiction about marriage. This novel is romantic and beautiful, though very sad, the protagonist’s wife is dying.
My Hollywood by Mona Simpson. I just bought this. I loved Anywhere But Here. Simpson’s other work seemed like the same story recycled, though I’m excited to try this new one.
I Found This Funny edited by Judd Apatow. This is a really great fiction anthology that includes Alice Munro, F. Scott Fitzgerald, David Sedaris, Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore, John Stewart, and many more.
The latest issue of New York Magazine has a seven page story on the longterm fallout from the Pill’s legalization in the 1960s and it’s subsequent infiltration into mainstream American sexual culture. The magazine’s cover photo pictures a woman sticking out her tongue, a white pill stuck to it, evoking similar imagery from the Sixties of young people eagerly ingesting tabs of acid. The message is, of course, that the Pill is just as insidious as all the other drugs that came out of the era; it’s ‘free love’ revolution no better than the concomitant drug craze that left my generation moaning about their parents’ addictions and irresponsibility, feeling as if were left to clean up after somebody else’s party.
The article makes the point again and again, that yes, contraception may have advanced female independence and sexual freedom, but it, too, has an irresponsible twin movement; it’s created a modern, multi-million dollar fertility industry fueled by women who delayed childbirth too long and now, in their thirties and forties, are miserable because they’ve failed to reproduce.
The article succeeds in perpetuating beloved myths about womanhood, all which spring from one essential notion: women desperately want to have children and women who don’t are unhappy.
Once you accept this basic tenet, a series of other beliefs follow as logically as a proof from highschool geometry. Women are naturally Madonna-like and possess the qualities we prize in good mothers; they’re dedicated, nurturing, and kind; their life’s mission is to find good fathers for their offspring; that’s why they seek out men who are powerful and rich and that’s why men are attracted to women who are young and fertile; and that’s why women aren’t motivated to be in positions of power and that’s basically why the world is the way that it is. Childless women are creepy, but they’re okay if they’re sad about their state.
The way the New York Magazine article falls all over itself to highlight female pain reminds me of how the media paternalistically covers sexual assault survivors with gray dots so they don’t have to be ‘shamed’ again. Wouldn’t it be better if we had a society that actually recognized and valued those brave women for the heroes they are? Wouldn’t it be better if our culture actually valued childless women?
Bad things happen to women, but very often, they recover. Contrary to popular belief, they recover from assualt, from abortions, and from childlessness. They’d recover much faster and in far greater numbers if the world supported and valued them for their multiple roles and potentials instead of falling all over itself to celebrate motherhood as the primary female achievement. If for example, magazine covers didn’t show a woman crazily licking up a birth control pill like a tab of acid or feature multiple images of the latest starlets’ “baby bumps.”
There are also many women, perfectly happy, well-adjusted women, who don’t want kids. Elizabeth Gilbert, best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love is one of them. She writes about her blissful childlessness in her book, Committed. Gilbert, successful and talented, is widely criticized for her self-absorption.
But here’s a crazy idea: having kids is actually just about the most selfish act (read un-idealized-feminine) a human can engage in. Rapidly growing world population issues aside, we have children because we think it will make our own lives more fulfilling; we want to create another human being with someone we love; or we are seeking immortality by continuing our gene pools. That selfishness isn’t bad by the way. All ‘good’ deeds are self-centered. God was smart that way. We give money away because it feels good or work for causes or support political candidates because they further our personal beliefs. But as Erica Jong notes in her recent Wall Street Journal article, when women have kids, their worlds can become very small and limited, mothers turning away from the world’s unsolvable, overwhelming issues into the self absorption of their own families.
The species needs to reproduce, we all know that. Having kids can be incredibly fulfilling, and it’s great that so many of us do it. But the under-reported story is not only the well-adjusted, happy women who live fulling lives that don’t involve children at all, but a culture, still desperately lacking in celebrating women’s other creative acts.
The race for California’s Attorney General is getting dirty. Unusual national interest is suddenly coming to California’s election from a group in Alexandria, VA called The Republican State Leadership Committee, a group cofounded by Karl Rove. This committee just put 1.1 million to fund attack ads against Harris now showing in Los Angeles.
To put the size of this last-minute effort in context, consider that Harris has spent about $3 million for her entire campaign – which she raised within the legal limit of $6,500 per donation, with the identity of each contributor a matter of public record.
The Huffington Post reports:
www.crooksandliars.com
“What’s happening here is absolutely unprecedented in attorney general races in California,” Harris’s political strategist, Ace Smith, told reporters Monday.
“There’s a bunch of people in Washington led by Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie [the former Republican National Committee chairman who now runs the Republican State Leadership Committee] who don’t like what the Democratic attorneys general have been up to.
“They are targeting Kamala Harris, but more importantly, they are supporting Steve Cooley…. They know that he is the guy who’s going to go easy on the tobacco companies and oil companies.”
Most Democrats believe that “the female Obama” will go far in America politics. She’s a powerful woman who has fought for women and children for her entire career and pretty much stands for everything Karl Rove and the Bush Administration is against.
Huffington Post:
If she wins next Tuesday, she’ll be the first woman, the first African-American and the first Asian-American (her mother is Indian; her father Jamaican) to be elected California attorney general. And every California attorney general in recent history has used the job as a stepping stone to the governor’s race.
I hope women support Harris by writing checks now and with their votes on election day. More on Kamala Harris here.
Are the 17 Attorneys General who wanted to shut down Craigslist so badly going to work hard to change the justice system, making sure that women trafficked into prostitution stop getting doubly punished with criminal records? How is law enforcement working towards helping these women and kids recover so they can live safe and productive lives?
It’s been a process. Back in May of 2009, the site closed its “erotic services” section, replacing it with the “adult services” page that is now in question again. Any of this sounding familiar? At that time, Melissa Gira Grant, a blogger and writer on sex, technology, politics, and culture, wrote a compelling piece on Slate explaining how shutting down the “erotic services” section hurts prostitutes and cops. It seems the message didn’t get through.
www.slate.com Richard Blumenthal
Grant has been researching and working on this issue for a long time. She’s also involved with Third Wave Foundation who sent out the email blast on sex workers I put in my last 2 posts and here it is again.
When I received that email from 3Wave about young people, sex work, and sex trafficking, I felt like finally someone is disseminating real information on these issues instead of only sensationalizing the Craigslist story. The email doesn’t mention Craigslist, but as someone who has worked in the media for years, many of those as a talk radio producer, this is just the kind of info media professionals can use when a story like this is all over the airwaves.
But why isn’t Grant’s analysis getting more mainstream media play? Here’s one expert who’s been researching, writing and speaking on this issue for years. Do you hear me New York Times, CNN, Fox News?
More from Grant:
If these lead prosecutors are truly concerned about ending violence and exploitation…There’s a tremendous amount the attorneys general could do to actually curb the suffering of people within the criminal and legal systems in which they have power.
From Adelman:
Word. Like what? Gira gives several good examples. “People involved in the sex trade, whether by choice, coercion or circumstance, all still face criminal records after a prostitution conviction – even people who have been trafficked” and suggests that the attorneys general push to adopt “legislation allowing trafficking survivors to vacate prostitution-related sentences, removing these convictions from their criminal records.” She also points out that “people involved in the sex trade still face still discrimination, harassment and violence from the people charged with helping them.” Perhaps Blumenthal might one day work to combat this mistreatment of women and children- the kind that comes at the hands of government officials- as stringently as he does other kinds.
http://www.jeongmeeyoon.com/aw_pinkblue.htm SeoWoo and Her Pink Things by JeongMee Yoon
www.nytimes.com Dog Eared Books in the Mission
www.crooksandliars.com
www.slate.com Richard Blumenthal