Femagination » Generation Gap

Mommy Tracked

Ellen Keim — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:50:51 +0000

I am way overdue for calling your attention to one of my favorite web sites: Mommy Tracked, which is dedicated to “Managing the Chaos of Modern Motherhood.” It is not a feminist blog per se, but it displays what I think of as the spirit of feminism. It is not afraid to call out society for its transgressions while at the same time putting a personal face on the issues that face modern women (not just mothers). It’s neither liberal nor conservative, pro-working moms or -stay-at-home mothers. What it is, is honest.

I particularly enjoyed Meredith O’Brien‘s recent article on Sarah Palin, “Sarah Palin: Rogue Not Rouge.” In it she addresses the sexism leveled against not only Sarah Palin, but also Hillary Clinton, as they attempted to enter the world of politics. I don’t agree with Palin’s views on many things, but I recognize her many accomplishments and admire her for the example she sets for other working mothers. (Funny how no one talks about Clinton being a working mom. Maybe it’s because she only had one, or because her daughter is grown?)

Other columnists on Mommy Tracked include Risa Green, Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, Leslie Morgan Steiner, Wendy Sachs, Kristy Campbell, and Christie Mellor. There are also comics by Betsy Streeter, a survival guide, a section for working moms, news, book reviews, and groups and forums. And don’t miss signing up for the newsletter; it’s worth it.

Girl Drive: A Feminist Road Trip

Ellen Keim — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:39:47 +0000

Just released on November 1st, Girldrive is a book about “criss-crossing America [and] redefining feminism.” The road trip that was undertaken by Nona Willis Aronowitz and Emma Bee Bernstein is the inspiration for the book and the blog by the same name. These videos are from the Girldrive website.

Girldrive trailer! from Girldrive on Vimeo.

Here are a few more videos highlighting different voices they heard on the trip:

Girldrive Mini-trailer #1–Redefine Feminism from Girldrive on Vimeo.

Girldrive mini-trailer #2–Be Seen and Heard from Girldrive on Vimeo.

Girldrive mini-trailer #3–Start Talking from Girldrive on Vimeo.

Baby Ladies

Ellen Keim — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:24:21 +0000

Each year as many as 100,000 little girls under the age of 12 participate in what is now a $5 billion-dollar industry: U.S. child beauty pageants. A new book has captured their perfected products, what I call “baby ladies.” High Glitz: The Extravagant World of Child Beauty Pageants contains 90 photographs taken by the author and photographer Susan Anderson.

My first reaction when I looked at these pictures was, “What were their parents thinking?” How can they not see how it skews a young girl’s sense of self when she spends countless hours being made to look (notice the passive tense) like something she isn’t: a full-grown woman?

Feminists gasp in horror at the way these pageants make little girls into sex objects before they’ve even hit puberty. And any adult in his or her right mind worries about feeding the sick fantasies of a pedophile. But parents must have some pretty strong motivations in order to get past all the glitz and “old-before-their-time” images and behavior. (Not to mention to get them to spend thousands of dollars a year on fake tans and smiles, tailor-made clothes, fancy hairdos, make-up, and dancing and singing lessons.)

One motivation is that we love all things beautiful and we especially love innocent beauty. The natural beauty of a young child is the closest we get to heavenly beauty in this world. The irony is, these toddlers and tweens look anything but innocent by the time their parents and handlers get done with them.

But there’s another motivation which can be seen in the world of little boys as well: for some strange reason we parents are in a hurry to see our children grow up. Oh we don’t want them to have sex, get married and have children too early, but what we do want is to know is that they’re all going to be successful. And because we equate success with physical beauty for girls and physical prowess for boys, we push them into beauty pageants and Little League sports.

There is a competitive spirit that courses through the veins of every American. And if we’re too old or have lost our chances to be successful, we push our children to stand in for us.

I suppose that’s not unusual, because our children are the future. I just don’t think they should be our futures. Let them have their own.

Source: Amanda Fortini’s article on Salon.com.

How (Not) to Talk About Sex

Ellen Keim — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:12:55 +0000

Martha Kempner, who is the Vice President for Information and Communications at SIECUS (Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States), has written a great post about abstinence-only sex education programs–isn’t that a contradiction in terms??–over at RH Reality Check. This time she’s writing about the scare and humiliation tactics used by such programs to supposedly terrify and shame young people so they won’t want to have sex.

In my opinion, that’s the equivalent of telling children when they do something bad that the bogeyman is going to get them. Not only that, it sends the message that sex is something to be afraid of and that you should be singled out for shame if you engage in it. What’s that going to accomplish?

I used the abstinence argument with my children but I didn’t tell them that sex was dirty and that they’d be dirty if they had it. I told them about the possibility of getting pregnant but I didn’t tell them I’d disown them or kick them out of the house if they got pregnant. I told them that I didn’t want them to rush into sex, but that I’d rather know about it than have them hide it and feel that they couldn’t talk to me about it. I don’t think any of my children take sex and its consequences lightly, but they also feel quite comfortable about it. They have, by their own accounts, reasonably healthy sex lives. In fact, the hangups that any of them (and that we all) have come from being made to feel shame about something they’d done or had done to them.

Right now there’s a lot of public concern about the H1N1 virus (or swine flu). I can tell my child to wash his hands and sneeze into his sleeve all I want, but if I’m a responsible parent I’ll get my child vaccinated if I think he or she is at risk. I can tell my child to stay away from sick people, but human nature (and an incubation period) being what it is, I know that’s unrealistic. So I use other means to protect him in case he engages in behavior that can endanger him.

But all this is missing the real point, which is that the only way we can hope to protect our children is to communicate with them. I read an article in today’s newspaper that said that children respond better when reasoned with than when they are just told to do or not to do something. Using fear or shame to back up our parental messages is not the same as reasoning with them. Spitting into a pitcher of water and then asking if anyone wants to drink from it is not the same as explaining to our children what sex is all about and why they should refrain from it.

But our children are not going to talk to us if they’ve been made to feel ashamed of what they feel or what they’ve already done. Fear and humiliation tactics might work in some cases, or for the short term, but they’re not good for our children as they attempt to make the transition to adulthood.

Which brings me to another thing that bothers me about the whole sex- education/abstinence- only debate is that both sides tend to group all children together. What you say to a nine-year-old who just got her period (yes, it happens!) or a pre-teen who has just started to go through puberty is entirely different from what you should say to a “child” who is going away to college or who just became engaged.

Let’s talk to our children where they are and not try to squeeze them into a “one-size-fits-all” philosophy.

Tuesday Tidbits

Ellen Keim — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:23:10 +0000

I apologize for being preoccupied with other things this past week: my grandson’s visit, my husband’s birthday, the observance and celebration of Ramadan and my conversion to Islam. Just little things like that. I’m easing back in with this edition of my Tuesday Tidbits. This week I’m featuring Salon’s Broadsheet. There’s so much there, I just want to share everything. If you like breaking news and entertaining insights, you want to pay frequent visits to Broadsheet. Here is a sampling of recent articles:

“The Facebook Divorce” by Amanda Fortini.

“Tweeting A Miscarriage” by Tracy Clark-Flory.

“Women Hold Up Half the Sky” by Kate Harding.

“Want Justice For Polanski? Let Him Go” by Mary Elizabeth Williams.

“Letter From a Young Feminist” by Lynn Harris.

Oh, and don’t forget the comments. Salon readers write the best.

Friday Videos: Gloria Steinem

Ellen Keim — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:56:43 +0000

This is an hour-long program featuring Gloria Steinem, a famous Second Wave feminist, now age 75. (This program is a year old.) You can pick and choose what sections you want to watch. Just click on “Watch Full Program” and select.

Talking About Sex

Ellen Keim — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:13:12 +0000

Want to know how to talk to your kids about sex? It’s very simple, really, any parent can do it: just tell your kids to wait. That’s it. Apparently that’s all they want to hear.

I love what Noble Savage has to say about a PSA on this topic put out by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Read it here: “Yes, you do need to talk about ‘the parts.’”

Like it? Here’s another Department of Health and Human Services video and a talk sheet for parents that you can find on a governmental web site for parents.

I can’t believe that our taxes are paying for this simplistic drivel.

And to shake things up a bit, here’s an alternative video. I’m not recommending it for Prime Time TV but it is more realistic.

Young Versus Old Feminists

Ellen Keim — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 09:47:18 +0000

I envy young feminists like Jessica Valenti, founder of Feministing and author of several books about feminism and women’s issues. She is only 30, but found her focus early on and has her whole life to make a name for herself. I’m almost thirty years older than she is and I struggle to feel like I’m relevant in the feminist universe. Even though I became a feminist when I was 19, I didn’t actively participate in the feminist movement and never even considered focusing on women’s studies until I went back to school in my fifties. (Of course, women’s studies didn’t really exist in 1970 when I first went to college.)

In my last post I reviewed my life to show how a woman can be a feminist and yet still act in non-feminist ways. Like with any ideology, it’s not always easy to act consistent with feminist values and principles. Especially if you’re a woman who was a little too young to be active in the feminist movement in the ’60s and ’70s. The life I lived wasn’t all that different from the one my mother lived: husband, wife, home and children.

"Older feminists [should] try to feel the pulse of the present instead of living in the past."

And yet my life also illustrates the problems that feminists identify as problematic: I didn’t finish school and establish a career so that I could be self-supporting as a divorcee and single mother. I became poorer after each divorce. I ended up in a stressful, dead-end job just to survive. I didn’t have a strong enough sense of myself to live alone and instead fell into one marriage after another. I wasn’t able to stretch myself thin enough to be a good wife, mother and fully-idealized individual.

However, I did keep on trying to break out of the strictures in which I found myself. I had enough guts to get out of marriages that weren’t meeting my needs. I kept taking classes along the way and did end up finally getting a degree. I managed to raise four daughters who didn’t repeat the mistakes I made. And throughout it all, I kept journals and wrote articles in which I explored what it meant to be a woman and a human being.

And yet, I look at young women today and I see that they have options I never thought I had. More of them are going to college, getting degrees, establishing careers, and marrying and having children later. They are entering male-identified fields in record numbers. They’re more savvy about feminist issues. They’re not afraid to live alone. They’re capable of supporting themselves. And they’re not afraid to embrace all that it means to be feminine.

And yet I can’t help but wonder if women have come as far as we’d like to think. One thing that is so appealing about the lives of young feminists is that they have yet to make the “mistakes” the rest of us made. They haven’t yet married (even though they may be cohabiting), they aren’t yet juggling children and careers, they haven’t gone through disabling divorces, they haven’t started to age and be seen as washed-up and irrelevant.

I suppose this sounds like sour grapes: just wait, you young women, you’ll get your comeuppance and then your lives won’t look as glamorous and put-together as they do now. I confess, there may be a little of that in my attitude. What I’m feeling these days is what a lot of people feel as they age: that young people are naive because they haven’t yet had to grapple with real problems.

Part of that mentality arises from the feeling older people have that they’ve been put up on the shelf. That their hard-won wisdom is ignored. That they have so much to offer, but no one is interested. I’ve noticed this when I look at how other Second Wave feminists are regarded. They may still have a certain cachet among their peers. But you don’t hear young feminists referring to them; it’s as if they’re all dead.

What I’m describing, I suppose, is the age-old generation gap. Middle-aged and older people think that young people are know-it-alls; young people think that older people are out-of-touch with reality. Neither listens to the other. And I think that’s a shame. All too often young people don’t try to learn from their elders and older people give up trying to help. We just settle into our respective life boats and ride out the storms separately.

I’d like to propose that older feminists try to feel the pulse of the present instead of living in the past. That we try to see the world as it is today and not as it was forty years ago. After all, why should we expect our children (and grand-children!) to listen to what we have to say if we aren’t even living in this century? It’s not easy to put ourselves in another’s shoes, but we can’t afford to not try if we want to contribute to the dialogue.

You notice I put the burden on the older generation. That’s as it should be. We have to earn the respect of young people by showing that we respect–and are trying to understand–them. There’s no point in grumbling about how young people don’t listen. We need to have something worth listening to. And we need to expand our horizons to include not only the present, but the future.