F 'em! Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Praise

  Dedication

  Introduction

  THE THIRD WAVE IS 40

  THAT SEVENTIES SHOW

  LESSON # 1: JUST BECAUSE A WRITER IS A FEMINIST DOESN’T MEAN SHE DOESN’T (OR ...

  LESSON #2: JUST BECAUSE A SECOND WAVE FEMINIST IS OLD ENOUGH TO BE MY MOTHER ...

  LESSON #3: DO IT YOURSELF.

  LESSON #4: FEMINISM MEANS REJECTING RECEIVED WISDOM.

  LESSON #5: YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT, BUT SOMETIMES YOU CAN.

  EPILOGUE

  WOMYN’S MUSIC 101

  Kathleen Hanna

  FEMINISM IS A FAILURE, AND OTHER MYTHS

  EPILOGUE

  SUSTAINABLE FEMINISM

  Debbie Stoller

  THIS IS WHAT A PATRIARCH LOOKS LIKE

  WOULD YOU PLEDGE YOUR VIRGINITY TO YOUR FATHER?

  Shelby Knox

  MY ILLEGITIMATE FAMILY

  Björk: freaky momma

  HOW TO DO EVERYTHING WRONG

  ALL THE SINGLE LADIES

  Ani DiFranco

  BREAST FRIENDS

  EPILOGUE

  WHY WE SPEAK OUT WHEN WE SPEAK OUT

  Loretta Ross

  WHEN MOM AND DAD DON’T KNOW WHAT’S BEST

  EPILOGUE

  TROUBLE IN NUMBERS

  MY BI-TRANS-FEMINIST POWER TRIP

  Julia Serano

  LESBIAN AFTER MARRIAGE

  DISCARDED LABELS

  BI FOR NOW

  Amy Ray

  TAKE BACK THE NIGHT. AGAIN.

  A WOMAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE

  IS THERE A FOURTH WAVE? DOES IT MATTER?

  WAVE ZERO

  THE FIRST WAVE (APPROXIMATELY 1840–1920)

  THE SECOND WAVE (APPROXIMATELY 1960–1988)

  THE THIRD WAVE (APPROXIMATELY 1988–2010)

  THE FOURTH WAVE (APPROXIMATELY 2008–ONWARD!)

  Acknowledgements

  PHOTO CREDITS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SELECTED TITLES FROM SEAL PRESS

  Copyright Page

  PRAISE FOR JENNIFER BAUMGARDNER

  “Jennifer Baumgardner is the cultural, historical observer of our generation. My film The Itty Bitty Titty Committee was inspired by her uniquely irreverent, boundary-pushing writing.”

  —Jamie Babbit, director of But I’m a Cheerleader

  “In F ’em!, Jennifer Baumgardner writes about feminism with such unforced panache, it feels as if she’s speaking directly, fascinatingly, into the reader’s ear. Even the most controversial or erudite subjects are warmly grounded by her sane, candid, witty, intelligent voice. She is a kickass writer.”

  —Kate Christensen, author of The Great Man and The Astral

  “Feminism is frequently defined in terms of ‘waves,’ as if women were continually out to sea. I count on feminists like Jennifer Baumgardner to get out of the damned water so that we can finally begin basking in the sun of complete equality.”

  —Judy Chicago, artist, writer, and educator

  “This new collection of essays and interviews by the fearlessly intelligent Jennifer Baumgardner is the book you want to give your sister, your best friend, the college roommate who invited you to your first Take Back the Night and your brother who has two teenage daughters. I hope someone gives it to Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Sarah Palin. The book is called F ’em, but the writing gets an A+.”

  —Veronica Chambers, journalist and author of several books, including Kickboxing Geishas and The Joy of Doing Things Badly

  For Skuli,

  who encapsulated writing and activism for me when he said, “I like Silly Putty, but the more interesting toy is ‘Serious Putty.’ Serious Putty is a blank piece of paper.”

  And for Magnus and BD,

  who, with just the right combination of serious and silly, created the Bedbaums.

  INTRODUCTION

  IS THIS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE?

  “Is Sarah Palin a feminist?” I asked a group of intelligent, fresh-faced Iowa undergrads, their professors, and assorted locals in the fall of 2010. I was giving a lecture at Cornell College, standing in their commons. “No way!” was the immediate reply from a few, coupled with some hissing. I was game. “Okay, why?” I asked. “What precludes Sarah Palin from being a feminist? Sarah Palin calls herself a feminist, acknowledges that her station in life is in part due to feminist battles fought in the past, and believes women can and should be in positions of power and authority. Her husband is the supporting player in their marriage and doesn’t appear emasculated by the role. She has five children, a grandchild, and she works full-time. Is it because she’s a Republican?”

  No one thought being a Republican meant you couldn’t be a feminist.

  “She’s pro-life,” offered one student with long dark hair. “That’s my problem with her.”

  “Do you have to be pro-choice to be a feminist?” I asked.

  Some people nodded, but the dark-haired student said, “No. I don’t think you do.”

  “You can be personally pro-life,” offered another student, “but you can’t pass laws that make it so women can’t get abortions.” Others nodded.

  “But Sarah Palin hasn’t done that,” I countered, playing the Grizzly Mama’s advocate. “She had opportunities as governor to restrict abortion and she didn’t take them.” We ended up with an awkward consensus that Sarah Palin didn’t seem like she could be a feminist, but it was hard to say why.

  Lady Gaga was similarly vexing. “She doesn’t self-describe as a feminist,” said a women’s studies professor in the audience, citing a Norwegian interview. “But she does,” I challenged, citing several other quotes in the LA Times, Cosmopolitan, and Bust. “She’s self-made, sexual-yet-untethered to one person or gender, writes her own music, makes strange videos that make me think about women and gender and sex, and she is electrifying,” I added. After all, Gaga’s “Born That Way” anthem helps me get out of a recent neurotic state about my own looks.

  IN NEARLY FIFTEEN years of lecturing across the country about feminism, visiting more than 300 colleges, community groups, and high schools, I have learned two things. First: Many, many people relate to its core ideas—egalitarianism, eradicating sexism, and recognizing the historic oppression of women. Second: Most of these same people are very confused about feminism. What does the philosophy mean? Who can be a feminist? What does feminism demand of a person?

  Feminism is a belief in the full political, social, and economic equality of all people. This part is uncontroversial to most people I meet because it shares qualities with other widely held belief systems such as democracy, meritocracy, and human rights. Feminism is also a movement to make sure that all people have access to enough information and resources (money, social support) to make authentic decisions about their lives. Thus, it’s not the decision one makes so much as the ability to make a decision that indicates whether feminism has arrived in your life. This part of the definition is more controversial because it implies freedom (which people like) but also confounds commonly held assumptions about what makes a decision feminist. Is taking your husband’s name anti-feminist? How about having your fourth abortion? In both cases, context is all.

  Because some choices have historically been labeled feminist. The Second Wave critiqued institutions that unfairly targeted women, such as marriage, makeup, and domestic labor.

  The critiques were designed to unmask the constraints that married life, beauty standards, and housework unfairly placed on women, usually for the benefit of men. This analysis also interrupted the idea that a woman’s value was based primarily on her looks and her ability to attract a man who would support her while she did unpaid labor for
him. The criticism implied that there were choices that challenged norms, but not that there was a laundry list of automatically feminist decisions. You weren’t a feminist simply because you kept your own name, didn’t marry, wore hemp clothing, ate vegan, slept only with women, or didn’t shave—though certainly you could be a feminist who did those things. In other words, you might be a feminist who wore stilettos, but your shoes neither clinched nor disqualified your membership.

  Regardless of one’s footwear, a feminist understands and acknowledges the historic oppression of women and the existence of sexism. Sexist assumptions certainly hurt men, but it is women and girls who are more often the victims of laws and norms that hold men above women. A feminist acknowledges this history also but reacts to the conditions of his or her time, taking insight and strategies from the past but not living in it. To live in the past is to ignore the obligations and challenges of the present.

  Manifesting feminism in the present is hard work. It means willing it to come into being, in our own lives and in our communities, not by ticking off chores on a feminist to-do list, but by constantly turning the central definition of it over and over in our minds, trying to more deeply understand how to expose and defang sexism. Forty years ago, one feminist task was kicking open doors marked “Men Only.” The job of the Third Wave wasn’t to keep knocking on that door, but to enter and inhabit the rooms.

  The pieces in this book all emanate from feminism—the movement and the sensibility. The book is three equally distributed elements: old, new, and inspiration. The old, reprinted pieces span from when I left Ms. magazine (1997), and began writing full time, to the present. During that time, I learned to write the feminist piece for every type of magazine rather than a piece in the (one, often marginalized) feminist magazine. I have been lucky that editors from publications as diverse as The Nation, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, and Dissent were interested in my perspective and afforded me a chance to learn and delve into the issues that meant most to me—from abortion to rape to sex to parenting. The new essays in this book represent some of my current thinking about feminism, and I hope provoke debate and spur deeper understanding of what feminism can mean. The inspirational pieces are interviews with some of the most important influences on the Third Wave, and on me. Not Sarah Palin and Lady Gaga, but rebels and intellectuals such as Kathleen Hanna, Julia Serano, and Loretta Ross. These are women who revolutionized my thinking and created the architecture of current feminism.

  IN THE LAST decade, I have received dozens of “This Is What A Feminist Looks Like” shirts. It just recently occurred to me that the slogan isn’t just to point out that there is no single feminist “look,” the line demonstrates that feminists actually look at the world differently. Every morning , we wake up and put on our feminist lenses. These prescription specs enable us to see history with women in it, to reinterpret our present so that women are valued, and to envision a humane and compassionate future.

  At the end of this book, I hope you will believe that it is less important for you to figure out if Sarah Palin and Lady Gaga are feminists, and far more crucial to figure out if you are. If the answer is yes, how will you marshal your power, skills, and values to make the world a place in which all people matter? What will your feminism look like?

  —Jennifer Baumgardner, New York City, April 2011

  THE THIRD WAVE IS 40

  “Why do you do that?” asked my twenty-something student Jake in front of the class. Jake wears skinny cobalt jeans, studded Louboutin shoes, and carries a chic man-satchel. “Why do you always joke that you are elderly and 120 years old? It doesn’t fit in with the rest of your attitude.”

  I stammered a bit. “I think it’s because of my forehead wrinkles,” I said finally, gesturing at the squiggly lines and raising my eyebrows dramatically. “And because forty seems sort of old to me and . . . ” I petered out, deflated by how stupid I sounded. Ever since I’d passed thirty-five, I had found myself constantly referring to my age and my geriatric failings. Instead of just asking that my shyer students speak up, I mentioned my bad hearing. I babbled about how out of it I was, how inept at Twitter. I didn’t go so far as to suggest the past tense of “tweet” wasn’t “tweeted,” but “twat,” as a Second Wave friend had, but I peppered my conversation with anxious little belches about my advancing age.

  It wasn’t an expression of the charming self-deprecation I advise my students at The New School to employ to gain the trust of their readers; it was much more awkward than that. On the surface, it was bait—I wanted people to cut me off with a snort and say, “You? You’re hardly old! What are you, thirty?” I wasn’t reassured when I occasionally got that response, though, because I knew I all but demanded, rather than inspired, the compliment. Jake was right—given my stated values, I shouldn’t need this kind of propping up. I wasn’t a “do these jeans make my butt look fat?” kind of gal. I was the “let’s tell the truth about our vulnerabilities and use this mirror to look at our vulvas” kind. I don’t even believe that forty is remotely old, nor do I fear aging. My grandma is 101 and I want to look like her when I’m 90.

  Underneath it all, I believe this unfortunate tic is because of feminism—or at least my identity within it. For nearly twenty years, I have described how the world I was raised in differed from that of the Second Wave and how the feminism I practiced was an expression of the trends that shaped my youth. Thus, my mother’s generation couldn’t play sports; my generation of girls had many opportunities to do so, thanks to Title IX, the 1972 law that ensured equal access to resources in education. Some of these sports-playing girls went on to found the Women’s World Cup and the WNBA, something our foremothers could scarcely have imagined.

  When it came to sex, we had birth control, sex education, feminist bibles like Our Bodies, Ourselves, and legal abortion, not to mention toy stores like Babeland and the expectation that girls have sex, just like boys (though not necessarily with boys). My coming-of-age as a feminist began with becoming conscious of the Second Wave, but I wasn’t confident about my views and my identity as a feminist until I discovered and aligned with my own peers.

  I remember very clearly those first heady days when I began to see what we Third Wavers were doing right. We came into focus one day, and I could suddenly see that we were all over the place, making change and evolving feminism. One snapshot: I read Nomy Lamm’s zine I’m So Fucking Beautiful in 1994 and feel electrified by the marriage of DIY form and radical feminist content. Among many accomplishments, Lamm builds on Susie Orbach’s seminal Fat Is a Feminist Issue—and introduces me to that Second Wave classic. Click! Or: I’m lecturing at a small Midwestern college with Amy Richards just after our book Manifesta has come out. The crowd is huge, filled with students, and yet the women’s studies professor who is our host stands and says, “Young women today reject feminism.” Amy and I smile as a crowd of young women and men stand up to protest the characterization. Click! Or: One day in 2003, I interview a woman who says she thinks of her aborted fetus as a baby, and I know, as I didn’t the year before, that the feminist thing to do is to listen and learn, not to talk her out of her feelings. Click!

  These personal clicks came fast and furious. They enabled Amy and me to write Manifesta, which was primarily an attempt to document the feminism we saw all around us—the women and men leading feminist lives, even if they didn’t call it feminism. While we were basically the same people before Manifesta as we were after the book came out, we were treated very differently by many Second Wave feminists. Suddenly, younger women were more visible. The contributions we were making to feminism—our willingness to engage in complicated discussions about rape and abortion and sex work where rhetoric could go only so far—began to look less like backtracking and more like momentum. After all, we were the future. We had inevitability on our side and had even earned some credibility.

  Second Wave feminists were still very active and had many important things to do for the movement, and their individual and collecti
ve achievements continued to be relevant, effective, inspiring, and vital to women’s progress all over the world. On the other hand, they were no longer the ones needing abortions or utilizing current technology. The time had come for those raised on Title IX, Madonna, Riot Grrrls, and Oprah to move the movement.

  In college in the early 1990s, I was awakened by the work of Andrea Dworkin and amazed by the antics of the Guerrilla Girls. Still, it wasn’t until I read Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women—the 1991 bestseller that people passed around my dorm like pot—that I truly felt spoken to as a young feminist. Several years later, I mentioned how influential Wolf’s book was for me to Alix Kates Shulman, a Second Wave friend, over tea. An original Redstocking, a major player in the Miss America protest, and a hugely successful author, Alix arched her lovely eyebrow at me. “Really?” she said. “But we [her peers] already wrote all of that theory critiquing beauty standards and how they keep women down in the seventies.” It’s true, they had. But I hadn’t read it until Wolf. And I certainly hadn’t received the information in that kind of package. Wolf’s voluminous hair, pretty face, and accessible jejuneness had invited me to read the book as much as my interest in feminism had.