Feminism

We both love our kids

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

You guys, I’m super excited. Today is a big day for the momming community because it’s Moms for Moms Day! CT Working Moms and their awesome Campaign for Judgment Free Motherhood have teamed up with TheBump.com to organize moms around the net to show their support for moms to stop judging and being judged, and to come together to support one another. Which, you guys know that’s TOTALLY what this blog is about, so I’m super excited to be participating, with the post below. If you guys dig the message, jump in the mix today on Facebook or Twitter, with the hash tag #moms4moms.

I have a cousin in Wisconsin who I haven’t seen since we were kids, but we’re Facebook friends, so we keep up with each other’s lives. She’s got two kids, and she loves NASCAR and professional wrestling. Like, she posts on FB about how she loves or hates some NASCAR driver or how happy she is that some wrestler brought in the pain or whatever it is you say about wrestlers, is that what you say about wrestlers? I know nothing about NASCAR or wrestling. I watched WWF back when it was still called WWF back in law school when I was dating The Hubs, because The Hubs and his roommates watched it, but I never really got it. And NASCAR? I know even less about it. Is there a driver named Jeff Gordon? that sounds familiar? something something Junior? It’s just not my thing. But you know what? She’s my cousin, and we do have one thing in common: we both love our kids. (And the Seahawks.)

My college BFF is a Republican. She’s also a church-every-Sunday Catholic and her oldest son is an alter boy. We all know I am a heathen, and I am most definitely not a Republican. She also doesn’t drink and doesn’t eat dessert. Have you read my Girl Scout cookie cocktail recipe? But you know what? She’s my BFF, and we both love our kids. (And Star Trek. And very bad puns.)

Our neighbor who runs the daycare where we send The Girl (and where we send The Boy during school breaks) is a vegan Mormon. That means she doesn’t drink coffee (GASP) and she doesn’t eat bacon. I love bacon so much. Pig really is the most delicious animal, isn’t it? And we’ve already discussed my heathenism. But you know what? She is an awesome neighbor and an awesome child care provider, and we both love our kids. (And going on cruises.)

Everyone in this world is different. Every kid is different, and every mom is different. But the longer I live and the more moms I meet, the more I realize that our differences are interesting and worth acknowledging, but what’s really powerful is that no matter how different we are, we all love our kids. I feel like if we can all remember that every mom loves her children, maybe we can stop judging each other for our differences, and focus on what we have in common: our love for our children. Because when moms love more and judge less, we can make the world a better place, for all of us, and for all of our children.

I was going to finish with a photo of me and my local BFF because she loves to run, and I hate running. But you know what? I love her new baby and I don’t want to share my nasty cold with him. So instead, I’ll just share a link to her blog here so you guys can go over there and share some love with a new mom!

What We Need: Paid Maternity Leave

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

One of my biggest beefs with the feminist scholarship of my college years (the mid 90’s) was how detached it felt from the everyday lives of the women I knew. A lot of the feminist theory we studied then was about reclaiming language. Like spelling women with a y, so “men” isn’t part of the word anymore, so women stop being defined in relation to men. My reaction then, as now, is “I mean, that’s all fine and dandy, but is that REALLY what women need most? Like, shouldn’t we be doing something about domestic violence and equal pay?” Not that there haven’t always been plenty of feminists pushing for equal pay and combatting domestic violence, including the ones working on theory, but the feminist movement seemed to be mired in the weeds of stuff that wasn’t important to me. No offense, feminists theorists of the 90’s, but I got bigger fish to fry than how we spell things, and no amount of your theorizing was able to convince me that changes in spelling would bring about a feminist utopia.

I feel like maybe that’s why less and less women identified as feminists in the 90’s. From the outside, it can look like a movement that is about minutiae, not about what is important to women. We argue about whether this musician or that film are “feminist” but we don’t seem to be making much traction on the big stuff. In fact, it can feel like we are moving backwards at times.

I feel really impatient about women’s rights. It makes me completely insane that the glass ceiling is still a thing. I am so sick of celebrating the first woman this, or the first lesbian that, or the first Latina whatever. And if I have to see one more video montage of women pioneering their fields, followed by a tagline like “Keep on dreaming” or whatever, I’m going to vomit. “Hooray, we aren’t barred from having jobs anymore, we must rejoice!” BLEEAARRGGGHHHH. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act is a lot older than me, and I’m no spring chicken anymore. We should be past the pioneer phase of change by now. We should have equal pay by now. We should have adequate funding for domestic violence survivors’ services by now. We should have paid maternity leave by now. That we still are begging for this stuff in 2014 makes me completely insane.

I think part of the problem is that we as women are distracted. We’re distracted with the Mommy Wars. We’re distracted with how to spell words. We’re distracted with the argument about whether Beyonce is a real feminist. Meanwhile, we lose our access to birth control pills, and we watch our mothers, daughters, and sisters hide bruises because they’re in even bigger risk of being murdered by their abuser if they leave him.

Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t have patience for the distractions anymore. The distractions are killing women. It’s time we moved past them. It’s time we stopped arguing WITH each other and did something FOR each other. There are plenty of things to disagree about, but there are even more things that bring us together.

So, I’m gonna start with one issue here today that I hope we can agree on: paid maternity leave. Did you know that the US is one of only FOUR countries in the entire world that don’t have at least some kind national law requiring paid maternity leave? That’s right, we’re in a club with Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and Liberia. The next time someone complains about strong US labor laws pushing companies to move jobs to Mexico, I’m gonna point out that in Mexico, women are entitled to 12 weeks of 100% paid maternity leave. Also, when someone complains about how complicated it must be to reassign work when women are gone from the office for three months, I’m gonna point out that EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD except us 4 have managed to figure it out. I think US employers are at least as smart as the ones in Uruguay, don’t you? Also, has nobody ever heard of a damn temp? Seriously?

But what really moves me isn’t arguing with people who say no. It’s stories from women about why it’s important. When I came back to work when The Girl was 8 weeks old (I took a few weeks off before she was born, and was completely out of money, and not entitled to more leave even if I had the money to pay the bills while I was taking unpaid leave), I was still so sleep deprived, it is fair to say I wasn’t doing my best work. Imagine how much worse that was when The Boy was in the NICU and I went back to work right away, so I could save the sick leave I had saved up for when he came home from the hospital. Was I focused on my job? Not really, no.

Now imagine you are a woman living in poverty, where every spare dime you have is going to have to go to child care so you can go back to work immediately after birth because your employer is too small to be covered by the FMLA and you have no right to even unpaid maternity leave. How is this good for families? For babies? Or frankly, for employers? Are stressed out, overtired employees really a benefit to a company? Wouldn’t it be better if we let those families bond and those women get some rest before throwing them back into the workplace?

If this is an issue you care about, what can you do to help move our country to join the vast majority of the world that has paid maternity leave laws? Well, you can write to your members of Congress, repeatedly, and tell them to support the FAMILY Act. Also, you can also get involved with groups like MomsRising.org and the National Partnership for Women and Families. And you can also tell your friends and families the facts about the US’s shameful lack of paid maternity leave and ask THEM to write to Congress and get involved. That’s basically how it works to advocate for stuff–you connect with like-minded people, and you ask for what you need from those with the power to grant it. And you keep asking, no matter how many times they say no, until you get it.

I’m going to do several of these posts on topics I feel passionate about–things that women can do to help each other to improve our lives. I hope it will make all of you feel empowered and connected. And I know it will make me feel like at least I am doing something positive and practical to help women. If you have an issue you’d like me to write about, share it in the comments!

Success

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

Over the summer, my favorite college professor was passing through Seattle and so I got to have a visit with her. She is a women’s studies professor, which means she is ridiculously underpaid and will never have tenure. It’s not that she’s not brilliant and extremely well respected in her field–she is one of the smartest people I know and gets flown to conferences around the world and invited to the White House because of her expertise. She doesn’t get tenure because she’s in a field that academia does not reward with tenure and high pay. Women’s Studies is often one of the first programs cut when a college has to make cutbacks–it’s seen as expendible in a way that, say, biology is not. So, unless they are also teaching in another department as well, women’s studies professors don’t tend to be eligible for tenure, which means they don’t tend to make much money. And so my favorite professor, who has published books that were literally best sellers, crashes on futons at her former students’ houses when she takes the few vacations she can afford.

We had a lovely brunch while she was here, during which we had a great conversation about careers. And she said that she has noticed that her east coast friends tend to say things like “What a pity you never got tenure” as if her life is not complete and her career is not a success because she didn’t get that label. But that her west coast friends don’t seem to care much about titles like that, so they tend not to think much of her non-tenured status.

That cultural difference between easterners and westerners resonated with me too. Professionally, I am doing work that I find interesting that I think is important, but I will never be rich or famous doing this work. And honestly, I am OK with that. I am proud of the work I do, even if I do it quietly and without big monetary rewards. Living on the west coast, it feels easy to stay in a job that I am comfortable with, and that gives me the flexibility I need as a parent of small children, without feeling pressure to climb a ladder. I think if I lived back east, I might feel more pressure to move up than I do living in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve had parents of my east coast friends ask me how much money I make and say point blank that they think I should take a more high-pressure, prestigious job. As in “You want to do public interest work? No no no, you should get a job at a big firm and just donate your money to legal clinics or do a little pro bono work on the side.” (That one actually came from my ex-boyfriend’s dad. Thank god he dumped me, because that would have been one awful father-in-law.) I have never had that experience on the West Coast.

So, I was thinking of that conversation the other day as I was thinking about people who see momming as a competition. Like, they brag about how much better their kids are turning out than their friends’ kids, or they look down their nose at other moms who aren’t putting their kids in piano lessons and all that at an early age, or whatever. And I realized that one of the reasons I find people who talk that way so grating is that there aren’t as many of them out here as in, say, Manhattan. We worry about our kids and we want the best for them, but we just don’t seem to put the same value on external measures of success that Easterners do. I joke about The Girl curing cancer and The Boy founding the next Microsoft and taking care of me financially in my old age, but it’s a joke, and it’s funny because I don’t really care if my kids are big shots someday. What I care about is that they are happy. If curing cancer and being a billionaire entrepreneur make them happy, then great, but if they find their joy in a quieter field, and if they aren’t rock stars, that’s great too.

I think if I lived back east, I would find more parents who do see prestigious careers and status labels as the pathway to happiness, and I would probably feel a lot of pressure to pour all my resources into producing the next Bill Gates and Marie Curie. I would worry about choosing the right daycare that will get them into the right school that will get them into the right college that will get them access to the right people, so they can climb into a prestigious career that I believe will bring them happiness. When I talk to many of my east coast friends, the accepted wisdom among most of them is that this is how you create a good life for your kids.

In the end, I don’t necessarily think either parenting style is right or better. I think it’s just a cultural difference. The Cult of Perfect Motherhood tries to tell us that if we’re not parenting perfectly, then we are horrible people and our children’s futures are doomed. But, if different cultures place different value on things like financial success and status and prestige, then clearly there isn’t one perfect way to parent, and we are not failures for parenting differently. And that’s why competing with each other to see who’s the best parent because of how their kids turned out is futile. Because, some of us aren’t trying to produce rock stars. Our goals are different.

Juliette Low: Feminist Warrior

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

When I was in college, I used to get drunk on cheap vodka with some of my friends from band (add another layer of nerd to my profile: band geek) and watch a fantastic independent film called Love and Other Catastrophes. Please go rent it right now, because it’s HILARIOUS. One of the characters in the movie was working on her thesis, entitled “Doris Day as Feminist Warrior.” Which, is just really really funny to a women’s studies student, because, have you seen Pillow Talk? But the phrase “feminist warrior” has stuck with me over the years and I have often thought about how fun it would be to write a dissertation on different women from Hollywood or history in which I explained why they are, despite all appearances, a feminist warrior. Marilyn Monroe is on that list.

But today, I’m going to tell you about someone who is so obviously a feminist warrior, it’s not actually funny. And that person is Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of Girl Scouts. I am a lifetime member of Girl Scouts (add another layer of nerd to my profile) and it’s an awesome organization and not homophobic like the Boy Scouts are. (Gay men are not pedophiles. Stop being assholes, Boy Scouts of America, and let them be troop leaders.) I am such a big Girl Scout person, I even read the extremely boring official biography of Juliette Gordon Low, Lady From Savannah. And because I love you guys, I’m gonna write about her for you, Drunk History style, just like I did with our pal Julia Ward Howe.

OK, so, Juliette was from Savannah, and she was born just before the Civil War, and her family was pretty rich, which means they owned slaves and her dad fought on the Confederate side of the Civil War–although, her mom was from Chicago and was anti-slavery, so her mom hung out with General Sherman. I know for some of you, you’ll hear “Confederate slave-owning family” and you’re just gonna be “That’s it, I’m out.” I respect that, because I’m a white girl and I don’t pretend to get what it is to be black and live in a country that is still super racist and where so many of our historical figures were slave owners. But seriously, you’re about to miss out on hearing about someone who turned out to be pretty awesome in spite of the circumstances of her birth into a suuuuper racist society. The rest of you, here we go.

Juliette’s nickname was Daisy, and like a lot of these women from that era who went on to do fabulous things, she was super precocious. Daisy got some childhood illness that left her mostly deaf in one ear–and all the crazy stuff doctors tried to do to fix it just made it worse. She also liked to do stuff like make clothes for poor people and take in stray cats like a crazy cat lady.

Daisy grew up and at age 26 (which was pretty old by 1880’s standards) she got married to William Mackay Low. Here’s where it gets really crazy: when people were throwing rice at the happy couple after the ceremony, a piece of it got stuck in her ear and it got infected and she lost her hearing in THAT ear too, so she spent most of the rest of her life mostly deaf. Anytime someone tries to act like people with disabilities can’t do awesome things, you tell them “FUCK YOU ASSHOLE. Juliette Low founded Girl Scouts, and she was mostly deaf.” Also: if you go to a wedding where the bride is a Girl Scout, do not expect there to be hard shit like rice or bird seed to be thrown at the couple, because we don’t want to accidentally go deaf. Live and learn, people.

So, there’s Daisy, just like our pal Julia, married and rich and you’re supposed to live happily ever after, right? Hahahaha, no. Willy (that was his nickname, I am not even making that up) and Daisy had marital trouble for quite a while. At one point, Daisy came home from a trip and found Willy with his mistress living in Daisy’s house, and Daisy had to go live in the servant quarters because Willy was all “I’m the man, do what I say.” They spent the next several years trying to sort out the divorce, because it wasn’t as simple back then. You couldn’t just go to the courthouse and say “My husband is fucking this other woman and I have to live in the servant quarters, so, I’m done here” like you can now. It was a huge deal to get divorced. In fact, it was so difficult that eventually Willy died before the divorce was done. And just like Julia, her asshole of a husband left Daisy almost no money (she had to sue to get her house in Savannah because that asshole Willy tried to leave it to his mistress), but at least she was free.

Daisy traveled a lot, and she got to be friends with Lord and Lady Baden Powell, an English couple who could tell that World War I was coming and thought “Let’s start training the kids in our country to be army scouts and nurses, because, we’re really gonna need some of those here in a minute when this war starts.” So, they founded Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, and the boys learned stuff like semaphore and the girls learned how to roll bandages and do first aid. Daisy was like, “Dude, great idea, but how come the girls gotta be nurses? Why can’t they be scouts like the boys?” So she came home to Savannah and said, “Imma teach these girls morse code and how to build a fire” and she started the very first Girl Scout troop on March 12, 1912.

If you want to know what it was like to be a Girl Scout back then, check out The Golden Eaglet, a silent recruiting film from 1917. Daisy didn’t fuck around thinking girls needed to be coddled and protected. To hell with that. She wanted her Girl Scouts to be badasses, because being a badass is fun. And they were badasses and they did have fun…and they still are and do. When I worked at a Girl Scout camp, I taught girls how to wield an axe. I can start a fire with one match and no paper. And more than that, Girl Scouts taught me how to lead. You need a tough job done right? Ask a Girl Scout. Daisy created an organization that teaches girls to dream big AND gives them the skills they need to make those dreams a reality. What could be more feminist than that?

Why am I writing about Daisy today? Well, it’s her birthday. That’s right, she was born on Halloween, and today is her 153rd birthday. So, if you know a Girl Scout, don’t say “Happy Halloween” to them. Tell them “Happy Birthday to your founder, Juliette Low, Feminist Warrior!”

Privilege and Choice

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the writing I have been reading lately about motherhood. I love reading mom blogs, and there are so many good (and funny) ones out there. Sometimes, though, I feel like there is a voice missing in all the conversations about PTA fundraising, minivans, tantrums in restaurants, and leaning in and opting out. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was, but something was nagging at me…a little thought in the back of my head that said “This is all awesome, but something is missing.”

And then I read something from Al Jazeera America. Just, go read it right now. (“OMG SHE READS AL JAZEERA SHE MUST BE A TERRORIST” say my Glen Beck-loving readers. Hahahaha, I don’t have any Glen Beck-loving readers.)

This article hit home for me SO much.

Second wave feminists made it possible for middle and upper class women to work outside the home. They got us civil rights, like equal educational opportunity, employment discrimination protections, and rights to fair treatment in the courts. They made it theoretically possible for women to have choices in their lives. And for that, we should be grateful. (Don’t get me started on people who shit on Second Wave feminists for not bringing on a feminist utopia. Have you seen Mad Men? I am glad I’m not living like that, aren’t you? Then thank a feminist.)

But the work left for feminism to do post-second-wave is to make it so that all women have enough economic stability that those choices are no longer just theoretical. So that women really are making choices based on their hearts, not their pocketbooks. Really choosing how to live your life–leaning in or opting out, going to college or going to work, SAHM or in-the-workforce mom–isn’t possible for every woman. Being a 20-year-old low-income mom with two kids? Yeah, your choices are going to be WAY more limited than mine were as a 20 year old, when I had parents able to pay for college, and no children of my own to take care of. I could go to a college back east and spend my free time playing in the pep band and drinking cheap vodka, because there were no kids waiting at home for me.

Which brings me back to that missing voice. I think the mom blogs that get the most attention tend to be women who are at least middle class, women like me who are writing from a place of privilege. Our lives aren’t perfect or easy, but they do give us the freedom to have time to write. And what we write about reflects our lives, as it should–we shouldn’t try to speak for others, that’s a recipe for disaster–and we lead lives where not every opportunity is open to us, but a hell of a lot more of them are than they are for poor women.

There ARE mom bloggers who are poor, but you have to seek them out. I wish the HuffPo’s and Upworthy’s of the world would pick them up more often. I think listening to their voices, understanding the particular flavor of their struggle, is important. And I am going to try to do a better job of sharing them on my Facebook page. To kick things off, check out this awesome blog post from a mom named Tara–it’s an oldie but a goodie.

The Color Purple

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

The Boy’s favorite color is purple. It’s not surprising really, since his father and I are both University of Washington alums, and not only that, his father was in the Husky Marching Band. For those who don’t know, UW’s colors are purple and gold, so there is a lot of purple in our world. And so, since he was old enough to express a preference for a color, he has chosen purple.

This would be unremarkable except that in 2013, purple is a girl color. How the fuck purple became a girl color is beyond me, but I dare you to find a single piece of purple clothing in the boy section of any major retailer’s website. Just like pink, purple is officially a female color. So, when he wants a purple coat, or a purple backpack, or anything else purple, we have to shop from the girl section of the store. He’s old enough now to understand that, so I have taken to buying things online whenever possible, so he can’t tell that I am buying him a girl’s coat.

Our stores are now very divided between boy and girl. Go to any large toy store, or the toy department at any big box store, and you’ll see that the aisles are color-coded. Pink aisles have dolls and…dolls, and more dolls, and maybe some more dolls. Oh, and clothes for dressing up. Boy aisles have trucks and guns and cars and dinosaurs and action figures (which are really just dolls with tougher clothes).

Now, The Girl is still young, but she seems to like cars and trains and dinosaurs as much as her brother. And she also likes dolls. But The Boy shuns dolls, and pink things. The moment he catches a whiff that something is a “girl” thing, he wants nothing to do with it. And, I think that’s fairly common, for girls play with boy stuff, and for boys to refuse to play with girl stuff.

How does this happen, that boys learn to reject what they perceive as feminine? Well, one way is this: a friend recently told me about her friend’s son being bullied because he has a purple bicycle, and purple is a girl color. (The Boy has a purple bicycle too.) It just gets worse the older boys get, and the more gendered every product is–the peer pressure to reject the feminine and embrace the masculine is powerful and cruel.

And don’t even get me started on people who think that letting their son dress up as a princess will make him gay. First off, as if being gay is a bad thing. You know who doesn’t accidentally knock anyone up when they’re teenagers? Gay people, that’s who. Check one worry off the parenting-a-teenager list, amiright? Secondly, if all it took was dressing my son in some princess dresses to make it so I never have to worry about him knocking a girl up in high school, I would go out and buy out the entire Disney store. Thirdly, how come people think princess garb can make a boy gay, but nobody is worried about a pirate costume Turing their daughter into a lesbian? Oh yes, because it’s OK for girls to be masculine now, but it’s not OK for boys to be feminine.

When faced with this reality, my first thought was, “How sad for The Boy to be so limited. Maybe it’s finally better, more powerful, to be female, because there are more options for girls.” But then I realized, what is happening is that the feminine is still seen as lesser in our society. Boys don’t want feminine toys because they think feminine things aren’t as good. And girls can go for masculine things because masculine is better. They’re just aspiring to be something “better” by choosing the boy toys.

It’s great that girls have more choices. But it’s not OK that the feminine is still lesser. We’ll know we’re on the right track when I can buy The Boy a purple coat without worrying about what happens when he finds out I bought it from the girl section of the store.

Who’s That Lady?

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

A few folks have asked me who that dour looking woman is here on this blog. She’s one of my personal heroes, Julia Ward Howe. The Indigo Girls (who I discovered at Girl Scout camp as a teenager) have a song called Virginia Woolf about becoming a friend of Woolf’s through the pages of her books. I feel that way about Julia Ward Howe. I think if she was alive today, she and I would have a laugh and a cry together about motherhood and writing and balancing family and work. That is to say, I think she’s one of us, and I’d like to introduce you all to her, Drunk History style, except I happen to be sober right now (alas).

Julia (we’re old friends, so I am allowed to call her by her first name) was born in 1819 into an affluent family in New York. Her mom died when she was very young, and so she was raised by her extremely overbearing dad who didn’t let her go to parties or meet people. She was a total brainiac, and read EVERYTHING, and was super serious about learning and writing, even as a child. Eventually her dad died, which meant she was free to go out and meet people and find herself a husband. And she did: Samuel Gridley Howe, a social reformer who ran a school for the blind outside of Boston. Everyone called him The Chevalier, or Chev for short, even Julia.

Now, the problem with fairy tales is that they end with the happy couple getting married, and they don’t show what happens AFTER the honeymoon. In real life, a lot of people don’t live happily ever after, and in Julia’s case, man, was there a lot of drama in that marriage. It turned out she had married a guy as overbearing as her father, who didn’t want her to have any kind of public life or be a writer–he wanted her to only run the household, and be completely dedicated to their children, and that’s it, nothing else. This was Cult of True Womanhood time, and Chev wanted his wife to be a True Woman all the way. Living so far outside Boston, she rarely got to hang out with friends or go out to dinner or the opera or do much of anything, other than run her household and watch her children. It didn’t take long for her to get really sick of having no outlet for that giant brain of hers.

So she started writing poetry about how shitty it was being stuck out in the country with a bunch of little kids and no adults to talk to but her overbearing husband. And THEN she got the poetry published, anonymously but EVERYONE knew it was her. Chev was super embarrassed, AND pissed, and he told her to stop writing. And she told him she’d be more domestic and compliant, but she was like, “Whatever, I am going to keep on writing, good luck trying to stop me.” And she wrote more angsty poetry that she had published that pissed Chev off and he yelled at her some more. And she cried a lot and felt hurt and frustrated, because it’s not easy being a writer in 1850 when your husband, who you love, wants you to have no life beyond raising your kids and running your household.

And then she wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and got suuuuuuuper famous, and she published more and made a lot of speeches and tried to change the world and get women the vote and stop war from happening. And Chev got more pissed, and sometimes her kids took Chev’s side and yelled at her too, and she still said, “Whatever, this is who I am, I can’t change who I am.” And she kept on writing and making speeches and just doing Julia as best she could. Then Chev died, and she didn’t have to balance pleasing her husband and being domestic, with writing and speaking and trying to change the world.

Julia is also famous for kind-of inventing Mother’s Day. But not like Mother’s Day that we celebrate today. She wanted moms to take a day away from their regular domestic chores to come together to talk about how to make the world a better place for their children. She was an idealist, and believed in the power of motherhood to work as a positive force in the world, that moms working together could make the world a better place. I believe that too.

Reading Julia’s letters and poems, what strikes me is how honest she was about how she felt and what was happening in her life, AND how relevant her writings still are 150 years later. I know so many women who struggle with being their own person and also being a good mom. They feel guilty for taking time away from their children to have a career or even hobbies or other activities that aren’t directly related to their children. Being a parent DOES mean making choices and doing stuff you’d rather not. But if they give up those outside activities, then they feel bored, or worse, like they have lost who they are. As Julia said, “In giving life to others, do we lose our own vitality and sink into dimness, nothingness, a living death?”

Julia didn’t find escaping the Cult of True Womanhood any easier than it is for us to escape the Cult of Perfect Motherhood today. It came with tears and arguments and feeling like everyone around her was judging her for not being what the world told her she should be. But she fought against the cult anyway, and she found satisfaction in being both a mother AND a fully realized human being. She’s an inspiration to me and I wish I could have met her in person instead of through her writings. I like to think that wherever she is now, she’s reading this blog and saying “Rock on sister!”

Comparative Pain

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

I’m about to get deep, y’all. You might want to turn off the TV and get out your ADD meds for this one. I was watching Reverend Al Sharpton speaking at the 50th anniversary March on Washington (yes, this white heathen woman DOES like The Rev) and something he said made me have something to say, that involves saying the word “shitty” a lot.

I tell a lot of people, including all you lovely folks, about The Boy being early and spending 9 weeks in the NICU. So, a lot of people know what happened, and that, you know, it was a pretty shitty thing to live through. Because of that, I find that when other friends have birth trauma or kids in NICU (which happens waaaaaaaaaaay too often) but their experience is less shitty, like, they only spent a week in NICU instead of 9, they seem to feel like they shouldn’t be allowed to complain to me about their birth trauma or their NICU stay. Like, because my experience was shittier, they shouldn’t complain about their slightly less shitty experience. And they often say apologetically “But I know you had it so much worse.”

Fuck that noise.

See, here’s the thing. There is always someone who had it worse. I know people whose kids are permanently disabled from their prematurity. I know people whose preemie died. Did they suffer something shittier than I did? You bet. Does that mean what happened to The Boy was no big deal? Of course not. The NICU is shitty. It’s shitty if your kid is there for an hour, and it’s shitty if your kid is there for a year. Having something shitty happen to you is shitty, and no matter how much shittier someone else has had it, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t shitty.

AND, I feel like it’s uncool of me to belittle another NICU mom’s pain just because she has it less shitty than me. I think I should be sympathetic and try to give her the support she needs, and not say “Well I had it worse, so you should just suck it up.” So, when a mom says to me “I know you had it worse” in that apologetic way, I always say, “Hey, even an hour in the NICU is shitty.” Comparing our pain to see who’s had it the most shitty is stupid and pointless and creates walls between us. It makes more sense to acknowledge that we’re all struggling, and try to understand the flavor of each other’s struggles, and work together to support each other.

What does all this have to do with The Rev? Well, during the March on Washington this year, he said, “We need all of us together. These bogus arguments about ‘Well, they didn’t suffer like us’ or ‘They are not as bad as us.’ The most insane thing for sick people to do is to lay up in the hospital debating about who’s the sickest. We all need to unite and get well together. We should not be comparing pain. We ought to be strategizing and coalescing for all of us to have equal justice under the law and equal opportunity.”

It was like The Rev and I were sharing a brain.

See, lots of us face challenges in our lives. Some of us have bigger challenges, or multiple challenges, or different kinds of challenges. Arguing about whose challenges are hardest is stupid and pointless and it keeps us apart. It makes more sense to acknowledge that we’re all struggling, and try to understand the flavor of each other’s struggles, and work together to support each other through whatever those struggles are. And that goes not just for NICU moms, but all of us whose lives could be made just a little bit easier if we support one another.

Seriously? What year is this?!?!

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

I say this all the time. No, really, every time I read something like this. Or like this. Or like this, this, and this. It’s like we’re living in an episode of Mad Men, except nobody I know looks like Don Draper and it’s not socially acceptable for me to have a bottle of vodka on my desk at work anymore. All the sexual harassment of 1960, none of the fun.

I’ve written before about the Cult of True Womanhood, and students of 20th century history may have read what I wrote and said, “Hey! That sounds just like the 1950’s.” YES. Women made all that fantastic progress during World War II and then, holy crap, the post-war era happened. Was this a great time for women’s liberation? Not so much. But, remember what I said about progress? And how it’s steps in the right direction, and you don’t give up trying or declare victory just because you made a few steps forward or took a few steps back. No, you keep trying and fighting and dragging society kicking and screaming towards justice. And it takes time, and it’s hard and slow, but we keep our eyes on the prize, right?

So here we are again, in yet another nadir of progress for women’s rights. Sure, things are great for gay folks and their rights right now, and I cried with joy when I read the Supreme Court’s decision on DOMA. (I was on a bus on the way to work, reading it on my smart phone. The people on the bus all looked at me like I was crazy. It was awesome.) There are good days sometimes for those of us who lean left, and that was definitely one of them. But then it becomes the summer of anti-choice legislation and women not being allowed to bring tampons into the Texas Capitol building because, watch out, those Tampax are dangerous. You might put someone’s eye out with that thing. Also, eew, keep away from me with your lady products. You’re grossing me out just thinking about something every woman does every month for decades and decades of their lives. Women’s bodies are gross, mmmkay? This is why we have to pass laws telling you what to do with them. OY. Seriously, what year is this?!?!

It gets really hard to keep fighting these fights. I get it, I am tired too. But part of being a woman, especially one who is a mom, is knowing that we have to keep fighting for equality. Because I don’t want my daughter living in some Handmaid’s Tale dystopian future. Hell, at this rate, if we don’t fight for it, she won’t even have access to birth control when she is a stupid teenager and she thinks that guy in her class is SO CUTE and it turns out he’s got the clap AND she’s pregnant and OMG, this is why we have to keep fighting. Because as exhausting as it is, it’s easier than living with a teen mom with the clap.

The Cult of True Womanhood

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

Where did I come up with this phrase, “Cult of Perfect Motherhood”? Well, that is a story that takes me back to my college days. I was a history major in college and I minored in women’s studies. Had there been a major in women’s studies at my university at the time (there is now), I almost certainly would have double-majored in history and women’s studies. I know, you’re SHOCKED! SHOCKED! to learn that there is a feminist writing this blog. And not only a feminist, but a university-trained one, which means I know my shit. I learned my women’s history from the best, including Bonnie Morris (whose books are amazing because she is brilliant) and some other amazing professors. Because of what they taught me, now when I look at how the women around me are living their lives, I see all sorts of parallels between the shit that happened to women in the past, and the shit that happens to them now.

And one of those parallels that jumps out to me all the time is between how mothers experience parenthood now, and what feminist historians call the Cult of True Womanhood, AKA the Cult of Domesticity. Shout out right here to Barbara Welter’s classic text on the subject. What feminist historians mean by that phrase is this: during the Victorian era, middle and upper class women were expected by society to meet an ideal of womanhood that included being docile to one’s husband, being pure and chaste, being super pious (Christian was preferable), and of course, being the ultimate homemaker. I’m really abbreviating the historical discussion here, but just think of poor long-suffering Melanie Hamilton from Gone with the Wind, and there’s your example of the ideal woman during the Cult of True Womanhood era. (You haven’t read the book OR seen the movie?!?! Stop reading right now and go fix that. No, seriously, go right now. I’ll wait.)

How was that ideal enforced? Well, women who didn’t live up to the ideals of the Cult of True Womanhood got shit on. God forbid a woman did something untoward or worse, unchaste. Throw that woman out of “decent” society, shunning is the solution! Poverty in 19th century America was even shittier than it is today. Nobody wanted to be disowned by their parents and end up living in a tenement in 1870. Seriously.

Now, you may be saying at this point, “Gee, that sounds shitty, but hello, it’s 2013.” Yes, in the words of Ani DiFranco (see, feminist!), “Chicks got it good now–they can almost be president.” See, the thing is, progress doesn’t mean the end of the need for change. You don’t stop potty training your kid after the first time they pee on the potty and say “That’s progress, no need to actually get you to stop using diapers entirely.” Nor do you say, “We tried teaching you to use the potty, but you had an accident, so we give up, you’re wearing diapers for the rest of your life.” No, you keep at it until you no longer have to keep cleaning their shit off their asses for them. And, feminism doesn’t stop just because women are going to college and playing sports, because women are still living with crazy unrealistic expectations placed on them. The expectations have a slightly different flavor than they did in the 19th century, but we have to keep pushing back against those expectations. Because they are crazy and nobody can meet them. Hell, even Melanie Hamilton took that money from Belle Watling.

So, I started calling the flavor of today’s idealized womanhood The Cult of Perfect Motherhood. Start with the Cult of True Womanhood, and replace being docile with being constantly vigilant about your child’s safety, and replace being pious with being completely dedicated to following the teachings of the latest parenting “experts.” Being the perfect homemaker remains part of the picture (Martha Stewart, Pinterest). Chastity is no longer the standard exactly, but it’s been replaced by an extremely complicated relationship with our sexuality–must be attractive, can’t be slutty. See? Same cult, different flavor.

What’s so fantastic about studying women’s history is that we can learn from the women who fought the last cult, and maybe they can teach us how to fight back against the cult. There were some seriously badass women who took a big bite out of the patriarchy back then. Did they eat it all and poop it out and now we live in some utopian paradise? Of course not, but they made progress, and maybe if we learn from them, SO CAN WE.