Bridging the Gap

I just returned from a hilarious and strange meeting.  An old guard feminist, one of the founders of one of the earliest local chapters, called all the county NOW members and commanded us to appear at her house to discuss the fate of the chapter.  She was a blast of energy on the phone -- saying "my goal is to choose a president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer" (in social change organizing 101, one never tells people that if they show up they are going to be elected to formal position!) -- and she was basically an airhorn-in-a-library when I met her in person at the meeting.  It was fascinating to watch the other attendees (only a handful) maneuver around her as she pressed her own agenda and dismissed ideas/topics she didn't like.  In general, I found her amusing, but then her real agenda came through: sign people up for leadership roles but figure out how the inner circle can vett the new people first.  The message was, "young people need to step up and lead this organization -- but only if they do it precisely the way we want them to."  As a scholar who studies movements for social change, particularly women's leadership in such movements, I feel pretty confident in saying this is a sure-fire recipe for disaster!

This example will serve as a good representation of being in a meeting with this woman:  she read a quotation and asked people who it was from.  I happened to know, but she told people not to answer if they knew and instead made the others guess (ugh!).  When no one came up with it, I was then called upon.  I said, "Obama" (it was from his speech on the 50th anniversary of the MOW).  Her response? "Excuse me? That is President Barack Obama, the first half-black president of this country!"  Um, yep, that is the Obama to whom I was referring.  Yikes!

Anyway, of the 9 people at the meeting, we had an amazingly good representation of NOW's history -- all white, most in their 60s, small minority of working class women feeling somewhat out of place, all formally educated.  Even in this homogeneous group, though, we had many of the movement types -- the shy workhorse, the I-knew-Gloria-Steinem, the structure and policy person, the I'm-just-here-to-watch one, the action focused one, etc. etc.

My students and I have been doing a bunch of interviews with NOW members since April.  I went to this evening's 'entertainment' in part to gather more ideas for the research project and in part because I worry about a world where NOW can't manage to hold it together in a place like Ann Arbor.  I heard some important things:

1)The older generation (women in their 60s who have been doing active feminism for decades) are tired but they don't think there are any younger feminists who want to take on the work. (They are wrong, but we'll get to that another time.)

2)This group is pretty evenly split between those who trust young women to keep on fighting the good fight, but expect that they might want to do it through different tactics and organizations and those who think young women spend too much time on the computer to do any real organizing and dress like hookers.  (Yikes!)

3)The younger generations (and even my own sandwich generation) need to get it together and figure out a way to have real conversations with their elders -- despite the stuff I mentioned above -- or they/we will lose the opportunity to take over an organization that carries pretty substantial brand recognition.

4)There are many, many issues that reach easily across generations (reproductive justice -- don't doubt it for a minute, those post-menopausal women are FIERCE on this!, equal pay, sex trafficking, rape culture, political representation, etc.).  Once the formal meeting was ended by our host ("meetings must be exactly one hour!") and we could have real conversations about the issues and ideas that motivated us as individual activists, these connecting threads were so obvious.  It was heartening to see.

5)We need to listen to each other more and we need to assume that each group is going to say something stupid about the other.  We need to find a way to get past it and focus on the shared issues.

And that is the report from the "front lines" of feminism in Washtenaw county in the late summer of 2013!

The Rite of OBOS

Last night one of the co-founders of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective visited campus and I went to hear her presentation. On my way in, I bought the most recent copy of Our Bodies, Our Selves (I already own three other editions, including two from the 1970s). Judy Norsigian's talk romped through a host of women's health issues -- troubling practices that persist despite ample research to the contrary, the power of drug companies, global issues, cultural issues... It was a powerful testament to the continuing need for advocacy work around women's health -- the impetus for the creation of the Boston Women's Health Collective in the first place.

After the talk, I asked Norsigian to sign the book for E. When E found the book on her bed tonight, she was initially deeply skeptical based on its pink cover (as was I, I must admit). Then I told her the story of how this book came to be and how it has been updated, translated, and disseminated around the world. She got much more interested. I told her that this book was political, that it represented important advocacy work that had drastically changed women's relationship to the health system in this country and was continuing to do that even today. She thanked me for the book -- and really seemed to mean it. I told her that her grandmother had given me an earlier copy of the book many years ago, but this one was hers...and I showed her the inscription. "She signed this for me?" she said excitedly. She loved it.

Then I told her that some of the book would probably not be of much interest to her right now -- like the section on menopause. At the mention of menopause, she told me to leave but I kept going and told her there were other sections that would be much more relevant... just then I leafed past the "teens and birth control" section, which I mentioned might be of more interest. She did not tell me to leave then, but I left anyway. I had said what I wanted to say. And when I peeked in later, she was contentedly curled up on her bed with her dog, reading away.

Rejection

After a couple of weeks of reading applications and conducting 27 interviews, I've made my picks for who will join the WILL (Women in Learning and Leadership) program in the fall. Sending out acceptance letters was easy -- congratulations, get registered, look for first meeting in Sept, contact me if you have questions, etc. etc.

The time-consuming and rather annoying task, however, has become writing the rejection letters for those who will not be joining us. I am only the incoming director, you see. I don't officially take over until Sept (or July... no one is quite sure) and I need to stay in the good graces of the outgoing director (who is stepping up to be Associate Dean of my college and someone I will need to work closely with on some things) so I have to follow her wishes on a few matters dealing with the administration of WILL at this moment. And she has made it very clear -- as has the director of the WGST program -- that I need to tailor rejection letters to the individual student. I'm supposed to be encouraging and positive.

But see, I'm not so good at that and I really don't see the point. The great bulk of people that I'm rejecting are people who don't make the GPA cut off. Honestly, they never should have applied and they should have known this since the 3.0 requirement is clearly stated on the application. "I'm sorry, we are unable to accept you because you do not meet the clearly stated and long established criteria of the program. If you are able to pull your grades up, we'll be happy to consider your application next year." Is that encouraging?

The other people are folks who had nothing to offer and little to say... people who could not say why they wanted to be in the program, what issues they are interested in, etc. etc. So how do I explain this while being encouraging? "I'm sorry we are unable to offer you a place in the program and we wish you the best of luck in finding something that excites you enough that you can say more than three words about it."

I'm trying very hard to not think that I am jumping through these hoops just because this is part of a Women and Gender Studies program. I reject tea party feminism where being nice to women takes precedence over doing good work and producing meaningful results. Rejection happens and we all need to learn to deal with it and not expect to be coddled through it. There is good reason why the program has a GPA requirement -- it can be intense and it is not for struggling students who need to put academics first. And if you are not invested in the program, the students who are will come to resent you for not doing your part and that will distract us all from doing what we need to do. So..."Thank you for applying, but we are unable to offer you a space in the program." Now, go study.

Feeling It (finally)

Should I admit this?

I was decidedly unmoved by Tuesday's events. There, now you know.

Don't get me wrong, I was deeeelighted to see "Daddy's Little War Criminal" leave office, but I just wasn't feeling the day like many around me. My inner cynic scoffed at all the god references and rituals and refused to get past the reality that this "peaceful transition of power" -- as peaceful and orderly as it was, and that is a wonderful thing that I don't mean to take for granted -- actually only reinforces the power of the system. He is still a politician who has to work with other politicians in a system that is specifically designed to change slowly.

But then... then I was at the Planned Parenthood fundraiser at the Corner on Friday and the m.c. announced that Obama had lifted the global gag rule. What a setting to hear the news. That did it. I felt it. Finally. One little memo signed and the relationship of my country to the rest of world now has a somewhat different texture. One little memo and my country no longer practices a policy I find abhorrent. One little memo and I'm feeling.... well, let's not go crazy here.... but I'm feeling a tad bit hopeful.