Binders FULL of Women!

I can't not jump on this one - this is your friendly morning reminder that not only was Romney's binders full of women remark patronizing, but it was a lie.

Via David Bernstein

What actually happened was that in 2002 — prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration — a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor.
They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.
....Note that in Romney's story as he tells it, this man who had led and consulted for businesses for 25 years didn't know any qualified women, or know where to find any qualified women. So what does that say?

 So to summarize, Romney did not seek out these binders full of qualified women - 25 years of business experience apparently had not taught him how. Prior to the election, information about qualified women was put together and handed to him, and his answer to the wage gap was to take credit for that, and then assure us that the Free Market would provide a flexible workplace because there would just be so many jobs that businesses would even hire women!

Uh. Sure. You tell us how that works out for you.

The Hunger Games

A few weeks ago Anne and I went to see The Hunger Games in theaters!

Well, let me back up. A few weeks ago Anne, myself, and a hundred or so members of Forum Society went to see The Hunger Games the night before it was released. In preparation, I borrowed a copy of the book and read it all in one night, and we were all really excited. So naturally, the movie didn't work, and we went home Hunger Games-less but as late at night as if we'd actually watched the whole movie, with vouchers to come back another time.

This ended up working out fantastically, in my opinion, because I saw it the next week with just Anne, as a date. (I will spare you a ton of corny babbling about how awesome she is, but the two weeks or so since going to the movies together can be summarized as follows: :D <3 :D <3 :D.)

Anyway! Since then, the whole universe has also seen the Hunger Games, and I've read quite articles about the film, mostly about the whole mess with horribly racist fans upset that Rue was black. But Alyssa Rosenberg has a kind of cool article on Katniss and gender, which is about a lot of things, including the scene where Rue dies.

I'm not going to lie, that scene had me bawling like a baby. Here's Rosenberg's summary:

Rue is speared, Katniss shoots and kills Rue’s attacker, she puts Rue to rest in a striking act of political symbolism—and then she cries, hard, in a way that involves her entire body.

I found that striking too, but I didn't figure out why until I read this article - mostly, female action heroes deal with violence very calmly. Lara Croft or Catwomen aren't likely to start sobbing after a fight scene.

The whole article makes a lot of interesting points about Katniss's femininity as an action hero, but that was the one I found most interesting.

A Fencing Story

Today an older woman at church came up to me after the service and asked, "Do they let women fence sabre?"

 It took me a minute to realize I was wearing my fencing club track jacket, with our club name and a picture of two stick figures bouting, so I very eloquently answered, "Huh?"

"Can women fence sabre in your club?" she repeated.

 "Oh, yeah," I replied. "I mean, I fence foil, but we have a few female sabreists."

 "That's good," she said. "When I fenced they only let the girls use point weapons."

 I assured her that our girls did as much wild slashing as anyone, and she looked quite pleased.

Guest Post: Masculine/Maternal

A while ago, I asked several of my friends how they thought about their gender - then, when their answers proved really interesting, asked them to write them down for me so I could post them here. This post is by my friend Michelle, who can also be found blogging at Paladin and Dragon. If you find all this personal identity stuff interesting, please feel free to write a post of your own and send it my way!

It took me too long to write this. I over-thought how I would phrase this part or that part, and then wondered if I would sound too extreme or too moderate. I feared that I would leave something out and sound ignorant.

Now, the irony does not escape me that I was the quickest to respond to my friend’s question about how I identify myself, and yet, quite late on my promise to write for her this guest post.

I am a female. I have the anatomy of a woman. But, in terms of my personality in light of today’s gendered culture, I would say that I have a masculine personality. I am aggressive. I like to be in control of things. I like to be the leader. I am independent.

And I am still female.

My most recent thoughts on how my gender and personality co-exist are that I often assume a maternal role. Mothers are generally accepted as protective, and in doing so, aggression, strength (emotionally and physically), and assertion pay off.

Perhaps some would argue that mothers should be subservient to their children. I doubt they are reading this, but I would ask them this: who is most likely to be a child’s first role model? I certainly know mine was my mother, and her mother, and my father’s mother. This isn’t to say that I have horrible paternal figures. That is far from the truth. Rather, I identify with women who were not ashamed of themselves.

I identify as myself, and all that that may entail. I over-think things. I want to be a nice person. I like playing with my hair. I don’t feel entirely comfortable in skirts. I was the girl who terrorized boys on the playground. I am the woman who wants to solve the world’s problems, and the woman who sometimes needs to remember to step back and solve her own, first.

But in the end, I know who I am. Do you?

Who's In The Kitchen?

Do you remember this? It's Jamie Oliver's TED talk, which came out about a year and a half ago. It's well worth a watch, if you have a moment, but the summary is obesity is bad and unhealthy food is bad and people need to learn how to cook properly and school lunches need to suck less. Some blogs I read had qualms with his discussion of obesity, for good reason, but other than that there seems to be nothing objectionable about suggesting that healthy food should be more available and people should be educated in how to prepare it.



But I remember, when I finished watching it last year, something about it felt... off. To me. I tweeted: "It sounds kind of like he's saying, 'women, get back to the kitchen.'" A teacher disagreed with me - He heard: "everyone, get back to the kitchen." But I went back through the transcripts he gave, and found it striking that all the examples he gave - with the exception of a minister - were women. He talks about a young woman whose poor diet led to serious health problems, a mother who doesn't know how to cook and whose children are obese, another woman whose obese father died in her arms. (Why not just tell us about him? Why make the story about her, as though she had something to do with it?) He talks at length about lunch ladies, called that, because men don't cook school lunch. He waxes nostalgically about a time when cooking knowledge was passed down from grandmothers and mothers - presumably to daughters, though it's not stated that way.

Today TreeHugger has an article making a similar point: part of increasing access to healthier food would have to be teaching people how to cook. In my middle school, cooking class was a co-ed, several-week affair, of which the only thing I remember is how to lay a formal table setting and that wrapping croissants around marshmallows is incredibly delicious. So perhaps it left something to be desired on the health and nutrition side. But everyone knew that cooking was the 'girls'' part of the year - later that year, we spent a few weeks in shop class learning how to use big fancy tools, and that was the boys' part.

I think if we're really going to have a conversation about teaching people how to cook healthy food, we have to make it a conversation about gender. I know Jamie Oliver probably didn't mean to, but he managed to lay the blame for unhealthy food at least in part on the backs of women. Why not ask the boys and men in those families he interviewed what they think about cooking, and whose job it is, and whether or not they're able to do it (or that it's worth their time)? Maybe it's just because I think everything about gender, but I think that'd be a much more productive conversation in figuring out how to encourage healthy cooking for everyone!

Girls with Swords

This article totally made my morning:

There were way more female Vikings than we thought, and they got buried with their swords, too.

Previously, Viking remains had been assumed male if they were found with swords and shields, but recent studies show that about half of those bones actually were women. As a girl with a sword, I was inspired by the broadsword-swinging Viking ladies to start thinking of what tortures, I mean, fencing drills, I'll have for the new members of the fencing club in the fall!

Guest Post: A Bit of Each

Today's guest post is by my friend Heather Brady, who got roped into it after making the mistake of saying something interesting in my hearing, and even volunteered to write multiple posts! So stay tuned for more from her.

We were sitting in a coffee shop when the topic came up. Spiffy, who was sitting cross-legged on the large windowsill next to our table, bounced her knees excitedly a couple of times before asking us about it.

“So, do you think we could talk about gender identity?” she said, pressing her fingertips together thoughtfully.

The general response was positive, a curious yes from those of us around her. She seemed like she had something on her mind.

Spiffy said she’d been thinking a lot about gender identity ever since she had participated in a session at her workplace on the transgender experience. She had been trying to figure out where she fit into the gender equation, and she said she most strongly identified with femininity. But when she tried to conjure up an image of what that would look like, all she could think of was Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

As we went around the table and each shared what we identified with, I remembered an online brain gender test that I took a year and a half ago. I answered all of the questions seriously. The result? I was dead center between masculine and feminine.

I have felt this way for a while, that I can see some of each gender’s standard definition in my personality and the way I think. I spent many of my teenage years working to prove that I wasn’t girly or stupid. I was smart, and I didn’t think smart could blend well with femininity. I wanted recognition of my intelligence and ability to contribute productively to society, and I thought that being feminine would hurt my cause. I focused on strength and force of intellect, rather that what I looked like or some of my more girly desires. I even wore boy clothing like cargo shorts for a bit, just to flaunt gender roles even more.

Then, in the pages of my AP U.S. History textbook, I discovered Abigail Adams. This brilliant, smart, funny woman was a driving force in her husband’s presidency, despite living in a society that looked down on strong women. And she wore fantastic dresses. I began to learn what it means to be a strong woman, and how a string of them in American history have had a defining impact on the U.S. and the world as a result.

I could see femininity in action, and it spurred me to action. I began to dress how I wanted to, rather than how I felt I should. I discovered that I liked pearls, cooking and sewing—traditionally domestic, feminine things that housewives embodied. But I also learned that a woman can be strong and graceful, smart and silly. She can like lace and hiking. Heels and Chuck Taylors. Sewing and living outdoors.

Having mastered the societal perception of gender, my next struggle has become gender in the workplace. I’m still struggling with this concept. How do I find a job where I can simultaneously be nice and tough? A good listener and an opinionated talker? Creative and analytical? And will anyone take me seriously if I use all of my strengths in these areas, without regard to gender roles?

The semi-scientific online test I took did help to articulate what I was thinking, but the significance of gender is more than what a test can prove to us. The lines of gender are so blurred that it’s easy to see bits and pieces of both genders inside of us. After all, Belle might have been a Disney princess, but she did fight bravely for what she believed in. She was a nerd, an intellectual with Stockholm Syndrome who stood up for what she believed in, even to the point of interfering with mob mentality. Don’t be fooled by the sparkly yellow dress; Belle was a badass in a ball gown.

So where does that leave us? Well, if our different replies at the coffee shop were any indication, there’s a mixed bag of gender inside pretty much everyone.

But I think the key isn’t to focus on a definition that puts us neatly into a category. I think the key is to find what makes us unique, and then work like hell to bring it to the table, sharing ourselves so that the world may grow and change. I’m not sure what the end result of that would look like, but I do know that it starts with a whole lot of self-honesty and love.

Perhaps, then, the only definition of gender that we need is the one staring back at us in the mirror.

Photo by Kathleen Bennett

I'm a Girl Cuz I Sew

Recently, in one of those random Facebook discussions that sometimes just happens, a friend said that if we had a Greek gods themed party, I'd be Hestia - goddess of the hearth, the "domestic goddess." I thought this was awesome. I often joke that it's a shame I was born too late for compulsory heterosexuality, because I would have made a hell of a housewife. (Perhaps in multiple senses of the phrase, even! What fun!)

And then, in typical me fashion, I started thinking about it, and got all confused.

I do like a lot of traditionally feminine things - in fact, they're very important to me. I cook, I sew, I dabble in knitting and any other craft that strikes my fancy, I follow interior design blogs and recipe blogs and crafting blogs like it's my job. I know men who do all these things too - some much more skillfully than me - but always with the gentle teasing, "are you sure you're not gay?", and I have this unexamined idea that for them the experience must somehow be different.

The only thing I can think of to compare it with is my academic work. I like to think that, if I were to write a research paper and a recipe, the two would be of equal value, theoretically. But if you asked me to pick one or the other, I would probably always go with the research - it feels like a more worthwhile endeavor overall, something I can put on my resume and brag about out in the Real World in a way that I can't brag about my kick-ass lemon scones.

But at the same time, I'm not confident in my voice when I'm doing academic work, even something as mild as, say, writing a blog post with my opinions. I feel, as a student, as a young woman, that my place is probably to listen more than talk, and that I should tread carefully, because there aren't enough hours in the day to read all the books and learn all the theories I would need to understand to speak confidently on any given topic. I tend to defer to experts, and find mountains of citations to back up the smallest thought.

For me, my "voice" when baking, sewing, whatever, isn't like that. I sew the most, so I can speak to that in particular - I feel completely free to experiment, ask questions, and make mistakes in my sewing. If I want to do something and don't know how I trust my friends or Google to help me figure it out, and I can wing it from there in a way I wouldn't dream of winging writing.

I think part of the difference is how I understand those two different skill sets. Sewing is something passed from my great-grandma to my grandma to my mom to me. I hardly had to do anything other than learn how to use the sewing machine without breaking it, and I felt able to sew. I don't use patterns very often - it's all rather slapdash and intuitive. And that's considered feminine, right? Compared to the more stereotypically masculine logic and forethought needed in, say, writing an essay. (By the way, this post did not get that much logic and forethought. Sorry.)

Actually, that reminds me of something we talked about in Psych of Men. "Manliness" is something earned, acted on - as in the expression "man up!" You never hear women told to "Women up!", because "womanliness" is something natural and inherent. I describe my "domestic" hobbies as something intuitive, inherited, easy, compared to always needing to prove myself out there in the "real world."

So maybe that's part of why I identify so strongly as feminine. Because even if that whole public-private, logical-intuitive dichotomy is a bullshit social construct, I personally experience the tension it creates and find myself turning to the "feminine" side for comfort and fun.

Leah Says: "Less brain more tongue!"

My fabulous friend Leah sent me a series of text messages about what gender means to her, sending my phone ringing like mad while I was trying to nap, so I'm making them the first in a series of guests posts on the topic!

I think girls are pretty! I think boys are pretty! I like making out with both! I think people who aren't girls or boys or are maybe both are pretty! I like making out with them too! In fact I don't really think there are separate kinds! And therefore I have vajayjay but that doesn't mean I'm going to be smart or sporty or pretty or good at cooking. It means I might get pregnant. Some boys also have vajayjays! Things are complicated! Think less make out more!!!