What I learned from a pregnant, Catholic "feminist"

Friends,

Today, two fellow FemWord authors and I went to listen to a pro-life speech given by a self-proclaimed "feminist".  The speaker, Erika Bachiochi, structured the speech around the personal experiences that made her transition from a pro-choice college student to a pro-life married Catholic with 5 children.  Her address tackled the most controversial issues possible; in 45 minutes, she summarily dispensed with all opposition to divorce, contraception, sex before marriage, and - most notably - abortion.

While a seemingly educated woman - she obtained a master's in theology from Boston College and a law degree from Boston University - her rhetoric was 100% party line, no more and certainly no less.  Some of her arguments crystallized the omnipresent and seemingly uncrossable abyss between the pro-life and pro-choice camps.  Her assumptions were frustrating and she seemed completely unwilling to consider alternate positions, in spite of having been vehemently pro-choice in college herself.

Erika started the debate by saying that she was going to argue the case of abortion from a non-theological standpoint.  Statistics about perpetuating cycles of poverty, single-parent homes, and depression were loosely thrown around.  She suggested instead that society should become more 'motherhood friendly', so that there is no stigma or social consequence for a woman having a child.  I think that this is a great point, and I initially appreciated that her speech was not ostensibly centered upon Catholic dogma.  But when I brought up the fact that there are countries - i.e. in Scandinavia - where abortion is legal *and* maternity is supported with access to child-care, generous financial support, and excellent parental (i.e. maternal AND paternal) leave, all of her carefully constructed statistics, social arguments, and policy points went out the window.  Her response?  A fetus is a baby and a life, and abortion shouldn't be legal because we can't kill babies.  *sigh*  It's funny that, no matter the debate, no matter the arguments that are used to dress up one's position, the fundamental point of contention is always the same.

Erika didn't just discuss abortion, though.  Her views on contraception were, well, "Don't Use Contraception", even in marriage, in spite of this: (98 percent of Catholic women use contraception banned by the Church).    I  found this segment of her talk much more insidious and harmful than her typical abortion mantra.  It should be noted that she was speaking to the epicenter of the Catholic community on campus, the 40 most devout Catholics on campus ( about 30 of whom were young women) and only 5 people who disagreed with her.  She said that, when a married couple has no desire to have a child, they should abstain from all sexual activity - no surprises there.   Her premise was that, when a couple followed this tenet of the Catholic faith, a man could respect his wife by allowing her the choice to abstain from sex.  She continued to say that, when contraception was available, a man wouldn't necessarily show his wife the same respect.  One of the other editors of TheFemWord asked Erika whether she was implying that men, with the option of contraception, would force themselves upon their wives.  She hemmed and hawed, and ended by saying that she *hoped* that men with access to contraception wouldn't do that...though her tone of voice, raised eyebrows and overly-dramatic side-glances to the rest of the audience were clearly meant to imply that contraception leads to unwanted, forced marital sex.  In other words, spousal rape. Her scare tactics were truly deplorable, and while I can respect a couple's decision not to use contraception, I cannot under any circumstances condone scaring a room of women by suggesting a preposterous link between contraception and rape.  Shame on her.

Her divorce argument was standard.  Studies show that children of divorce have problems with depression, self-esteem, poverty, blah blah blah.   Similarly, abstaining from sex before marriage was a textbook "why buy the cow" argument.

There was a facet of her speech that I've neglected to explore, and that's how she considered herself to be a feminist in spite of her Catholic dogma.  I think I'll save that for a later post.....

Peace for now,

mittens

Jane Austen: A Sexual Conservative's Wet Dream?

I recently had one of the most infuriating email conversations of my life (yes, perhaps more infuriating than the one I had with Hannibal Lecter). And it was all over Jane Austen. Well, not really. Let me explain.

Although my school masquerades as liberal (examples abound of sustainability, composting, and streaking), it isn't really. Traditional values still reign supreme on a campus where women couldn't matriculate until the 1970s. Sufficed to say that men still stroll around here in their Vineyard Vines polos and their Sperry Topsiders with a certain sense of entitlement. Gender issues are a hot and widely-discussed topic here, and no one does it as poorly as the school newspaper. Every once in a while an opinion column will appear that flippantly mentions important gender issues, the most recent of which disguised a condemnation of modern sexuality via Jane Austen. Yes, Jane Austen. The columnist (a pretty well-known conservative and Catholic voice in the newspaper who once posited that our intolerance of religious intolerance toward homosexuals is just plain... intolerant. Yeah, how did this guy get into this school?) attempted to explain what he sees as a generational obsession with Jane Austen. He says we must like the romance and faithfulness that is represented in the relationships between Austen's characters because we secretly dislike the instability of the hook-up culture. As if all of those people satisfied by the hooking up are just deluding themselves.

Now, I personally do not participate in the hook-up culture (whatever that term actually means) and do find aspects of it problematic--mostly that all of this hooking up seems to happen in male-dominated spaces where women have little control and that some of it is actually sexual assault. I would not have reacted so strongly to this column had the columnist, who I will from now on refer to as Paul, not been a repeat offender. His previous column claimed that the sexual revolution robbed women, since, you know, now that women are freer to engage in sex they've lost much of their "historical prerogative"--that is, holding sex over men's heads to force them into marriage. He also claimed that women must abstain from sex to control men, who are really just animals (both an underestimation of women's sexual desires and men's self-control). It would have been more succinct to write "Who will buy the cow when they can get the milk for free?" and left the remaining 1500 words for other authors' more complex arguments.

Anyway, I was tired of Paul foisting his judgements of others' sexual decisions on the entirety of campus. And telling me I like Jane Austen? Well that was just the final straw! I commented on Paul's column via the newspaper's website, stating that in fact I don't like Austen because of the same reasons why Paul likes her: she wrote of a time when "men were men and women were women." Her female characters lack total agency. Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice marries a man who is in love with another woman. She does all of this, not for love, but for social mobility and practicality. Not only do Austen's female lead characters lack agency, they also exemplify the passive and frivolous woman prototype. Lydia Bennett, for instance, is tricked into running off with a soldier and she (read: her virginity) must be saved by the heroic Mr. Darcy. And to me, the nostalgia I might feel for frilly dresses, country parties, and ole timey courtship is nothing compared to the nausea I feel toward traditional gender roles that strip women of responsibility over their own sexual decision-making. Of course I said it a little snarkier than that.

A couple of hours later I received an email from none other than Paul himself (since I used my real name on the comment--none of that weak anonymous shit--he could find my email address through the school). It was a pleasant enough email, just meant to clarify that his intention was to try to construct an explanation for what he viewed as a strange phenomenon (i.e. wide interest in Austen), given what our society values. Wait... what? What does our society value, Paul? It certainly doesn't value women making their own sexual decisions. In fact, I would argue American society values traditional marriage and sex (between a man and a woman, of course. Try to argue otherwise to all of the gay men and women currently at arms trying to win the right to marry). I replied and gave it to him straight (though very politely, at least the first time): I don't like any of his columns, including his most innocuous Austen column, because he writes as if his values and views apply to everyone, then makes moral judgements of people who don't fit into his mold (like the women who participate in the hook-up culture). What ensued was a useless email back-and-forth that consisted of me trying to convince him that his moral view guides the opinions in his columns and him trying to persuade me that he's just looking at empirical facts. And it ended in me telling him, "You spew your moral judgements on the [newspaper's] opinion page and I will spew mine in the comments section. Now you know how I feel, so I hope you won't contact me in the future to clarify."


I felt bettered. And not because I had been out-argued or out-smarted. After writing all of this, I've figured out why. It's because you cannot possibly use logical explanations with people who cannot recognize that their world view in some way shapes their opinions and their interpretation of facts. Otherwise, they will continue to tell you that interpretations of facts are actually facts. How we were raised, where we grew up, who our friends were, what our siblings thought, the schools we attended, the churches we went to... all of these things figure into how both Paul and I think of the world. Had he been able to admit to me, "yes, my judeo-Christian background has affected the way I view the hook-up culture" I don't think I would have gotten sucked into such an epic and fruitless battle. And had I been able to admit to him, "yes, my feminist perspective prohibits me from agreeing with anything you're saying because underneath it all is a desire to push us toward more traditional gender roles" I think he would have stopped too. Or he would have kept proselytizing and pontificating, who knows? Life lesson: don't enter into an argument unless you're willing to be honest with yourself and back down when you know there's nothing else for you to say. I should have figured it out two emails in, but I guess I was still holding on to some semblance of a hope to convince him that I don't need to be told what I like and why; that women have sexual desires, will do what they want, and are not tools to control men; and that if he really believes all of this nonsense, he should come out with it instead of hiding behind Jane Austen.


Of course, I haven't mentioned that another columnist responded to Paul's by saying we should leave our own opinions at the door when we are reading literature and try and interpret it for what it is--art. But then he ruined all of that by hurling the worst insult possible at the many people who commented on Paul's column ("feminist"). Darn, we were so close.

Sexual Violence in Language

During my first month at college, my roommate was deemed the “Flo Ho” [Floor Ho]. She was in a monogamous relationship with a guy that lasted for almost two years. In the meantime, when I joined a conversation with my guy friends I would often be cut off by them taunting “Blah blah blah, I’m a dirty slut.” Which was odd, considering I had only ever kissed one guy and done nothing more. Throughout the next two years, I tried explaining how this behavior was completely offensive, but nothing worked. I eventually stopped contacting them, frustrated that my opinion seemed to matter less because I am a woman (Wow, as a twenty-something college student it’s hard to realize that I am now a woman and not a teenage girl with no responsibilities. Growing up is kind of scary.)

I soon realized that my friends were not making personal attacks against me, but rather deemed all women to be “sluts” or “hoes” because of their anatomy. Regardless of one’s sexual activity and behavior, merely having a vagina warranted these malicious labels. It’s like that old misogynist “lock and key” metaphor: “a key that opens many locks is great but a lock that takes many key is shitty and full of STDS.” I also have female peers to liberally throw around terms like: “Come on you sluts, let’s get some food.” I really do not understand how this is acceptable. Apparently our progressive society that is overcoming a racist past is still clinging to sexism and misogyny?

Another phrase that makes me twinge is using “rape” in relation to academics: “Oh man, that test raped me.” NO IT DIDN’T! It was really difficult and might have lowered your grade, but it certainly did not physically rape and traumatize you. From a linguistic approach, the more people who use “rape” for situations outside of sexual violence, the less power it has for victims. A comparison might be in the word “Nazi.” Now many people, including myself, use “Nazi” to mean any person who is particularly unpleasant, demanding, or severe. I would imagine that in the years immediately following the Holocaust, no one was using “Nazi” so liberally. Considering “rape” was almost too taboo to say in the early twentieth century, it would be quite concerning if the word “rape” lost all of its significance.

I’m also bothered by some of the disgusting phrases that allude to sex, such as: “Dude, tonight I’m going to get my dick wet.” Not only is this simply gross, but it leaves women out of the occasion. Women are no longer valuable human beings, they are a penis depository.

The normalization of sexual violence in language is a huge problem in society and has severe negative repercussions. While many people say they’re joking, normalizing this phrases and words does have an impact. In sociology class last winter we watched a documentary on hip-hop culture and one of the scenes involved a convention. As it was on the beach, many women were wearing swimsuits, shorts, and skirts. Many of the men groped passing women, even hugging them tightly against their will. Because these women were dressed in a sexy manner, one man explained, “The hoes love attention.” When asked if he would want a random man doing this to his mother or sister, the man grew quiet and looked down. The first step to stopping sexual violence against women lies in our language.

I don’t know how to end this post, so here’s a picture that represents the vibe in my freshman friend group.

[freeiphone4wallpapers.com]

Book Review: The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti.

I just finished reading The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti, founder and editor of Feministing.com, and thought I would give you all a brief summary and review.


In The Purity Myth, Valenti deconstructs the purity and abstinence movement, including its proponents' hidden (if not so hidden) motives, the means with which they try to achieve their ends, and how all of this affects young women living in the United States. Her point is that the purity movement views women's sexuality in a simple, black and white way in which their sexual (and no other types of) decisions reflect their morality. It sets unattainable goals for women who--because women are judged by their sexuality and their sexuality alone--can only be pigeonholed as virgins or sluts. Valenti claims that regressive purity movement proponents believe that women's worth (read: their virginity) lies in their sexuality (or lack thereof) and that they must be protected from this big bad world at all costs--they treat women, Valenti claimes, as "moral children." She also writes that many women are left out of the simplistic worldview perpetuated by the purity myth, including women of color and lesbian women. Overall, she argues that the purity movement is gaining traction and working tirelessly to return the U.S. to a time past when women were passive and men are active in the realm of sexual choice.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Purity Myth and thought Valenti did an excellent job connecting abstinence movement ideals with their real world consequences. The damage endured by women is often tangible and heartbreaking: Valenti gives many examples, including the torture, rape, and murder of college student Imette St. Guillen. Valenti describes the resultant media frenzy as initially sympathetic, but one that quickly turned nasty when it was discovered that St. Guillen had been drinking at the time, as if she had "gotten herself raped." I also thought Valenti's analysis of current and proposed legislation--and how current American political culture reflects a deep mistrust of women and their decisions in all things sexual--was excellent.

I thought the author did a wonderful job parsing out a nuanced argument against a movement that considers sexuality as a very clear-cut topic. For example, Valenti critiques Ariel Levy, one feminist author who asserts women who participate in raunch culture (think Girls Gone Wild) believing they are feminists are wrong. Valenti argues,

"Levy's book is dead-on in many cases--when she discusses how raunch culture promotes inauthentic, performance-based female sexuality, for example--but she fails in that she seems to have little sympathy for the women she interviews, who she assumes are fooling themselves into thinking they're happy with what raunch culture has given them. And I'm sure in many cases, Levy is right. But I think we should give women a little more credit. As reporter Kara Jesella wrote in 2005, 'Participating in raunch culture may not always be a feminist act, but that doesn't make those engaging in it antifeminists--or deluded.'"

It is this nuance and sympathy that makes Valenti in The Purity Myth a wonderful advocate for women forced to survive in a world dominated by the virgin/whore dichotomy. (Side note, the above quote reminded me so much of my previous post that it really made me feel validated! Yay!) Valenti is also incredibly witty: in one footnote she quips, "Notably, the article's author, Matthew Fitzgerald, also wrote a book called Sex-Ploytation: How Women Use Their Bodies to Extort Money from Men, available on Amazon.com for just $135. What a steal!"

My only criticism of The Purity Myth is that it is not an extremely accessible book. I suppose it was not Valenti's goal to sway purity fanatics to her side (since why would an abstinence proponent even pick up a book called "The Purity Myth"?). However, I think she could have made the same arguments while opening herself to a wider audience had she explained more thoroughly her fundamental criticisms of the purity movement. (For example, she talks about the false statistics that abstinence-only educators spew at their students, but doesn't give examples nor does she correct the misinformation. Without evidence, I can see how, to purity proponents, the book would seem like an unfounded attack against abstinence-only education.) Instead, she assumes that the reader already disagrees with many aspects of the purity movement (which, in the end, is probably a correct assumption).

Overall, though, I would recommend The Purity Myth to anyone grappling with these kinds of issues or looking for advice on how to argue your points to a purity proponent. Valenti lays out a well-organized argument that helped me, at least, organize my own thoughts on the issue. Definitely a good read!

All the women who're independent

Throw your hands up at meeee!

I’ll start off with a small apology in case this sounds a little bit catty or nitpicky. SORRY.

Part of being Greek during spring term at my college is bequests. Bequests is an event where graduating members of the fraternity or sorority pass down items that are silly, meaningful, or full of house history to younger members of the frat or sorority. Generally, the more names written on the bequest, the “cooler” it is. Often, in order to decide who the senior should give all of her bequests to, she will send out a list of “Bequestions” to the soror for anyone to answer.

Yesterday a list of bequestions was sent to the soror. These bequestions included: Are you still a little girl at heart? Do you have a crazy family? And What makes you an independent woman? With a qualifier of “This is a meaningful bequest for me, so answer this bequestion thoughtfully.”

It’s this last question that I take issue with. I mean, I love Destiny’s Child just as much if not more than the next person, BUT

-- Why does she even have to ask this question? I feel like she should know us well enough to already have someone in mind for this bequest, especially if it is so meaningful to her. Does she really just want to give it away to whoever gives the best answer? And if I choose to answer this question and then don’t receive the bequest from her, does that mean that she doesn’t believe that I am independent? Or that my flavor of independence isn’t good enough for her?

However, the real question is:

--What makes an independent woman? Is it making your own money and buying your own clothes? Is it the absence of a steady boyfriend or girlfriend? Is it not shaving your legs? Is it choosing not to get married or have kids? Or is it waxing your private bits and then claiming “I do it because I like it, not because I care about what my boyfriend thinks” ?

And on the other hand, does the reverse of any of these things make a woman any less “independent” ? We are all women (in the soror at least) and we are all strong in our own rights. I firmly believe that we shouldn’t be asked to qualify our independence to anyone other than maybe, MAYBE ourselves (unless we don’t feel like it).

I think I’ll just assert my independence by not answering this particular bequestion, and leave y’all with this:

Girl I didn’t know you could get down like that.