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Why Bother?

Some days I wonder why I keep arguing about feminism on the message boards, especially when I should be working on my next book.
But then I turn on the television for ten minutes – 10 minutes of PBS – and there’s a public service announcement co-funded by Liz Claiborne that states that one 1 in 5 teenage girls is sexually or emotionally abused by their boyfriends.
So I did a little research and discovered a website dedicated to preventing relationship abuse called Love is Not Abuse.

And in its statistics section, this is what I found:

  • 1 in 3 teenagers report knowing a friend or peer who has been hit, punched, kicked, slapped, choked or physically hurt by their partner. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study on teen dating abuse conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited, February 2005.)
  • Nearly 1 in 5 teenage girls who have been in a relationship said a boyfriend had threatened violence or self-harm if presented with a break-up. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study)
  • 13% of teenage girls who said they have been in a relationship report being physically hurt or hit. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study)
  • 1 in 4 teenage girls who have been in relationships reveal they have been pressured to perform oral sex or engage in intercourse. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study.)
  • More than 1 in 4 teenage girls in a relationship (26%) report enduring repeated verbal abuse. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study.)
  • 80% of teens regard verbal abuse as a “serious issue” for their age group. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study.)
  • If trapped in an abusive relationship, 73% of teens said they would turn to a friend for help; but only 33% who have been in or known about an abusive relationship said they have told anyone about it. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study.)
  • Twenty-four percent of 14 to 17-year-olds know at least one student who has been the victim of dating violence, yet 81% of parents either believe teen dating violence is not an issue or admit they don’t know if it is an issue. (Survey commissioned by the Empower Program, sponsored by Liz Claiborne Inc. and conducted by Knowledge Networks, Social Control, Verbal Abuse, and Violence Among Teenagers, December 2000)
  • Less than 25% of teens say they have discussed dating violence with their parents. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study of teens 13-17 conducted by Applied Research and Consulting LLC, Spring 2000)
  • 89% of teens between the ages of 13 and 18 say they have been in dating relationships; forty percent of teenage girls age 14 to 17 report knowing someone their age who has been hit or beaten by a boyfriend. (Children Now/Kaiser Permanente poll, December 1995)
  • Nearly 80% of girls who have been physically abused in their intimate relationships continue to date their abuser. (City of New York, Teen Relationship Abuse Fact Sheet, March 1998)
  • Of the women between the ages 15-19 murdered each year, 30% are killed by their husband or boyfriend. (City of New York, Teen Relationship Abuse Fact Sheet, March 1998)

    • That’s why I keep arguing. While it may not seem that discussions as to whether or not women can use their sexuality as a kind of power have any relevance to the above statistics, I think they do. There is a tendency in the world in general to gloss over the actual lives of women, and instead fixate on the exception. Ironically, I think that comes out of an optimistic impulse: we don’t really want to believe that women’s lives can be so horrible only because they’re women.
    But there’s something really wrong here. Women’s lives have not gotten better because they can show some cleavage and get some guy to buy them a drink. When a married tranny argues with me that getting yourself bought a drink or turning a man’s head is power, I often wonder if they think first to ask their wives why they don’t use their sexuality as power. After all, a lot of us are attractive women. But we’re also smart. And we don’t use that power for a reason – and it’s not because we don’t think we have it. It’s because once you use it, there’s this raft of assumptions about who and what you are. Most of us, frankly, just want to get through a day on our skills or our brains and really don’t need our tits to help out.
    These arguments are not abstractions for me. I’m not arguing for the hell of it – I’d rather be writing. But I have very little patience for people who want to and willfully try to believe in something that makes them feel better instead of dealing with what’s really going on in the world. And I acknowledge that I get especially impatient when that person occasionally dresses as a woman, but remains somewhat oblivious of the reality of most women’s lives.

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    A Room of Her Own

    Recently, a transwoman wrote to me casually that all she ever wanted to do was be a ________. As a child, as a teenager, as an adult, she (then he) was intent on that goal. My first impulse was to think that I’ve never had that kind of calling, that kind of goal, but then – a few days later – I realized that’s not entirely true, either.
    The problem with wanting to be a writer is somewhat like discovering you’re trans. You’d prefer anything else. You’d prefer a magic wand of a “cure.” You know it’s going to cost – socially, financially, familially – so it takes a while to admit to yourself who you are and own it, as the kids say. It’s as if something in you knows not to say it out loud, not to commit to that secret yearning in the corner of your heart.
    I’m still waiting and hoping for my calling to be an accountant much as Betty is still waiting to feel comfortable living as a man. We may as well buy lottery tickets if we’re already playing odds like that.
    I know exactly why I never knew, much less articulated, my urge to be a writer. I grew up working class, and writing was not on the list of career choices. It wasn’t a job. It was a luxury of rich people, the earned perk of a family that already had a generation of college educations and healthy business professions. My older sister was the first in our family to graduate from college, though a few of her siblings, like me, followed after. She is a banker. One brother is an accountant. Another runs the regional area for a supermarket chain. Another is a psychologist. In a nutshell, they all chose practical careers.
    They make me feel like the dreamy, impractical baby of the family, which is, in a sense, what I am. During a recent family discussion (read: argument) my brother asked my sister why I didn’t have a full-time job. To her credit, she answered, “I don’t know, but why haven’t you written a book?”
    His critical questions aside, I’ve been learning a lot about the publishing industry. While holding my breath (and pulling my hair and stamping my feet) through the negotiations around my next book, I’ve wondered why I’m in this profession at all.
    I write because it’s what I do. I’ve kept a written journal since I was nine, which is about the same time I wrote my first short story (Called “Rainy Day,” it was a two-page ripoff of Madelaine L’Engle, of course; I’d just read A Wrinkle in Time.) I had to get married in order to be able to write full-time. The feminist implications of having marriage deliver this wish don’t please me.
    Writing is about time.

    “What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he’s staring out the window.”
    Rudolph Erich Rascoe

    I’m lucky to have a husband who understands that even without a job, I’m working. Betty is a voracious reader, who actually enjoys having a writer for a wife. Still in all, what are the real problems of being a woman writer – even a married one?

      Here are some things to think about:

    • Only 9 out of 52 winners of the National Book Award for Fiction are women.
    • Only 11 out of 48 winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction have been women.
    • Women writers won 63 percent of the awards but less than 30 percent of the money in awards and grants reported by Poets & Writers. (January/February 2003 issue)
    • In 2002 all but one of the Pulitzer Prize finalists for Fiction and Poetry were male.
    • 94 percent of all the writing awards at the Oscars have gone to men.
    • Only 25 percent of the advisory members of the National Endowment for the Arts are women.
    • 68 percent of total art income in the U.S. goes to men and 73 percent of all grants and fellowships in the arts go to men.

      • (Source: A Room of Her Own Foundation)

    The Humanities are supposed to be woman-friendly, too! I can’t even imagine what the stats are for women in the Sciences; I almost don’t want to know.
    It’s a bit easier to understand why “I want to be a writer” never crossed my lips as a child, isn’t it? It is for me. Some days I’d still like that calling to be an accountant, maybe just for a little while, so that when I’m 40 or 50 I can quit accounting and write full-time without caring who the writing awards and grants go to and maybe even fund a few of them myself.

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    Rape Crisis Center fights judge's order to talk about woman it counseled

    Rape Crisis Center fights judge’s order to talk about woman it counseled
    Last Update: 05/08/2005 2:46:35 PM
    By: Associated Press
    SANTA FE (AP) – A New Mexico judge has ordered two rape crisis center workers to reveal information about a woman they counseled. But rape crisis center operators say the order is alarming.
    Operators say if they can’t guarantee confidentiality, victims won’t turn to them for help.
    The Albuquerque Rape Crisis Center is asking the state’s Supreme Court to overturn the order issued by state District Judge James Blackmer.
    The woman says she was raped in January 2003 by a former boyfriend.
    The man’s public defender, Sophie Cooper, says she wants conversations between the center workers and the woman disclosed.
    She says the center workers played an important role in convincing the woman she had been raped.
    The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case Tuesday.
    Reported by KOB-TV, and thanks to Lynne for bringing it to my attention.

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    Um, DUH!

    The 13 year old girl whose abortion Jeb Bush and his cronies tried to keep from happening apparently faced her judge with these words:

    Why can’t I make my own decision? What is it that you can’t understand? I don’t think I should have the baby becuase I’m 13, I’m in a shelter and I can’t get a job.

    They were trying to prove, of course, that she’s too immature to understand what having an abortion means. But it seems to me they might want to listen to her, instead.

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    Ladies' Room?

    There are many meaningful things said about the gender divide vis a vis bathrooms, but I didn’t expect to be blogging about it. Still, a couple of recent articles – one in The New York Times, and the other in The NY Post – have brought up all the usual issues and complaints.
    If we allow crossdressed men to go into a ladies room, the end of civilization is upon us. Pedophilia will occur at mind-boggling rates. Women will no longer feel safe.

      A few things have occurred to me.
      1) The reason women already go to the bathroom in pairs (other than a chance to gossip) is safety. So it’s apparent they already don’t feel safe going alone to the ladies’ room, trannies or not.
      2) One of our loyal bloggers actually did some research on the incidence of men crossdressing in order to assault children in bathrooms, and after an evening of making himself heartsick with horrible stories, found only one incidence – which turned out, after all, to be a mistake.
      3) It strikes me that the easy answer to this problem is to legislate that new buildings need to include one single-occupancy bathroom. Period. So that the transperson, or woman-raised-female, or child-and-parent (fathers take their kids to the bathroom, too) can use a room that is lockable and private. Other buildings could be required over a period of time to retrofit their own bathrooms for similar use.
      4) I wonder often at the people who spew such fear and hatred of strangers, or the unknown. I wonder how they ever feel safe in their worlds.
      5) The first time I shared a ladies’ room with a drag queen the only thing that upset me was that she’d remembered to stop at a mirror to freshen her lipstick and I hadn’t.

    Not to make light of the situation: women are vulnerable to unprotected spaces, and getting stuck behind a locked door. But I don’t think crossdressers are the men who are going to be assaulting them, and I don’t think the average sex assailant would be willing to emasculate himself to that degree in order to assault women. Transpeople are usually just as scared as women are of assault from men.
    Since stalls create the privacy, why aren’t ladies’ room doors transparent? I don’t have a problem with someone watching me put on lipstick or make sure there’s no toilet paper stuck on my shoe (and maybe the clear doors would shame more people into washing their hands – like they’re supposed to). Extra eyes help cut down on violence.
    So the real issue is: why don’t women feel safe in restrooms?
    My guess is that it’s because we don’t take crimes against women seriously enough – no matter who perpetrates them. They say you can judge a society by how well it treats its women and children, and by those standards, we’re not getting a passing grade. ABC reports an increase in child abuse that’s ‘epidemic’ and the stats on violence against women stay the same year after year. If women don’t feel safe in their own homes, why on earth would they feel safe in a public bathroom? And while you might say these are two different issues, the late Andrea Dworkin said:

    By the time we are women, fear is as familiar to us as air; it is our element. We live in it, we inhale it, we exhale it, and most of the time we do not even notice it. Instead of “I am afraid,” we say, “I don’t want to,” or “I don’t know how,” or “I can’t.”

    So why are women afraid of transfolks in restrooms? Because women are afraid. While they may not understand that transpeople are not the ones who will assault them, they don’t expect their boyfriends and husbands to assault them, either. And they do. They do. And as usual, what can be feared (because it is unknown, sometimes unknowable, and new) will be feared instead. Their fear is legitimate. Transpeople’s need for accomodation is legitimate. But once again, we’ve got this tiny sliver of pie, and no one’s getting enough to eat. The issue again is male violence – male violence against gay men, transpeople, and women. When we all realize that we’re in this together, maybe, maybe, we’ll take back the night.
    Resources: The NY Post and NY Times articles can be found on the MHB Boards, and there’s some sensible legal consideration given to the issue by Michael C. Dore of FindLaw.com.

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    New Pope

    Having grown up Catholic, I was really hopeful that the next pope chosen would be of a more liberal bent on women’s issues than JP II. Unfortunately, Ratzinger – now Pope Benedict the XVI – was Pope JP II’s ‘hardliner’ on women’s issues.
    He’s written things like this:

    A second tendency emerges in the wake of the first. In order to avoid the domination of one sex or the other, their differences tend to be denied, viewed as mere effects of historical and cultural conditioning. In this perspective, physical difference, termed sex, is minimized, while the purely cultural element, termed gender, is emphasized to the maximum and held to be primary. The obscuring of the difference or duality of the sexes has enormous consequences on a variety of levels. This theory of the human person, intended to promote prospects for equality of women through liberation from biological determinism, has in reality inspired ideologies which, for example, call into question the family, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father, and make homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent, in a new model of polymorphous sexuality.
    3. While the immediate roots of this second tendency are found in the context of reflection on women’s roles, its deeper motivation must be sought in the human attempt to be freed from one’s biological conditioning.2 According to this perspective, human nature in itself does not possess characteristics in an absolute manner: all persons can and ought to constitute themselves as they like, since they are free from every predetermination linked to their essential constitution.
    This perspective has many consequences. Above all it strengthens the idea that the liberation of women entails criticism of Sacred Scripture, which would be seen as handing on a patriarchal conception of God nourished by an essentially male-dominated culture. Second, this tendency would consider as lacking in importance and relevance the fact that the Son of God assumed human nature in its male form.

    It’s not good news for women or GLBT people – in fact, it’s really bad news. You can read the whole of the Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church On the Collaboration of Men and Women, if you’d like.
    Matt Foreman of the Gay and Lesbian Task Force wrote:

    “Today, the princes of the Roman Catholic Church elected as Pope a man whose record has been one of unrelenting, venomous hatred for gay people, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. In fact, during the reign of John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger was the driving force behind a long string of pronouncements using the term ‘evil’ to describe gay people, homosexuality, and marriage equality. As a long-time Catholic from a staunchly Catholic family, I know that the history of the church is full of shameful, centuries-long chapters involving vilification, persecution, and violence against others. Someday, the church will apologize to gay people as it has to others it has oppressed in the past. I very much doubt that this day will come during this Pope’s reign. In fact, it seems inevitable that this Pope will cause even more pain and give his successors even more for which to seek atonement.”

    All told, this is not a Pope that will deal with pressing issues of the Church in any kind of enlightened way: no ordainment for women, no marriage for priests, no rational understanding of the natural existence of homosexuality, or the new family, or even changing roles for women. He may only be a “caretaker” pope, but depending on how long he lives – there may be a lot for the next pope to undo. Another religion moves toward fundamentalism, which is about the last thing we needed.
    I’m calling him Pope Maledict, myself.

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    Cervical Cancer Vaccine – Blocked?

    HPV, or the Human Papilloma Virus, is one cause of cervical cancer among women. Spread by sexual contact like HIV and other STDs, it starts as an infection – which sometimes clears up, and other times predicts cervical cancer.
    The good news is that there’s a vaccine against HPV that’s showing up in clinical tests as being very effective in preventing HPV infection (and thus the later cervical cancer it causes). You’d think this would be great news, right?
    Well, there’s a sticking point: girls will have to be vaccinated before they’re sexually active, and so the usual group of people who want to deny that women are sexual – or that women get sexual diseases from their husbands – are at it again.

    • “Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV,” says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council. She further clarifies: “”Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex.”

      • God forbid.

    • Parents often think their own daughters are virtuous, and so not in need of the vaccination.

      • As if teenage girls tell their moralistic parents if they’re having sex…

    • Asian women in Britian already resist getting tested for HPV, because if they’re found positive they fear death at their husbands’ hands – when it’s most likely those very same husbands were the ones who infected them. Even though there is screening for the disease, which is effective in treating it before it becomes cervical cancer, the usual suspects prevent treatment. (If women, however, could get vaccinated, there would be no need to get screened later on.)
    • And then there’s this simple fact: the most effective way to keep women from getting HPV and the cervical cancer it causes is for men to get vaccinated. If they can’t get it, they can’t spread it. But of course men themselves aren’t fatally threatened by HPV – only the women they give it to are.

    So once again, women will die because of our ass-backwards attitudes about women’s sexuality, about sex in general, and because – well, women’s lives and health are effectively in men’s hands.
    You’d think, once in a while, our rational selves would win. The good news is that the new vaccine might be available as early as next year.
    Thanks to Betty for sending me the link, to Arthur Silbur for blogging it, and to The New Scientist for the article.

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    Burlington

    Where do I start? Betty and I spent four fantastic days up in Burlington, VT this past (long) weekend, and the entire trip was a pleasure – from the surprise of having a jacuzzi tub in our hotel room to the wonderful people we got to meet.
    On Thursday, we were very excited to meet David Houston’s anthropology class on Kinship & Identity. They had already read the whole of My Husband Betty, and had posted comments on a blog which we both read. Their questions and thoughts were a joy to read. Their comments were an exploration of the riddles of gender, ideas of “normalcy,” and even the struggles and joys of being married. Once we arrived, there was at first a certain tension in the room, which I joked to Betty was really them trying to figure out which one of us was the tranny. But we sat down, David introduced us, and the class quickly became a session of “Ask the Tranny” (after all, they’d already read 300 pp of what I had to say!). Betty is a charming emissary for transness, let me say. Most of the time when we do these workshops, I talk and she contributes occasionally. But she was so enthused, and the students really started to relax. At one point, one of the female students started to try to ask about Betty’s anatomy, and Betty clarified, “you mean my dick?” Laughing added to the relaxation, and after that, the questions about Betty’s sexuality – and mine – started coming. Overall, it was a really satisfying experience. David was especially amazed that one of the students invited us out for a drink; he said he’d never seen that happen before. (Whew! So we’re still relatively cool, I thought.)
    The next day I was presenting a roundtable on “Transwomen & Feminism” as part of UVM’s Women Center’s Women’s Herstory Month events. About 20 people came, including a few of the local transfolks, as well as other educators, allies, advocates, and others working with multiculturalism and identity issues. What a great group! The director of the Women’s Center, Tim Shiner, was a charming, warm person, whose encouraging nods throughout the roundtable only egged me on, and we ended up spending two hours together instead of the one that was scheduled. I also especially enjoyed meeting Samuel and Eli, two local transmen who would be coming to the TIC conference the following day; Eli, in fact, would be giving the Plenary address at 9am.
    We had a lovely, relaxed time of it the rest of the day; window-shopped, had a lovely dinner, watched a bad movie and a ton of animal shows on TV, and enjoyed that jacuzzi! I’m going to leave the TIC conference for a separate entry – because there’s just so much to say about it!

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    UVM Women's Herstory Month

    From UVM’s Women’s Center’s website:
    March 4, Noon, 34 S Williams St
    Helen Boyd: Trans-Women & Feminism: Connections & Challenges
    Over the past three decades, an increase in writing and activism by transgender individuals has brought some unique challenges and expansions to the writings and theories of genetic women on oppression and social justice, including much of the existing feminist scholarship. Join us for a discussion with Helen Boyd, author of My Husband Betty, on where we all can learn and grow from the differences in our experiences. Lunch will be provided.

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    Women & Activism

    I’m very excited that while we’re up in Burlington at the University of Vermont, I’ll also be doing an event for UVM’s “Women’s History Month” series. Their theme this year is “Women & Activism” and I’ll be hosting a roundtable on feminism and transness.
    The event will take place at UVM’s Women’s Center on March 4th, sometime around noon.
    It is, need I say, a great pleasure to be able to do an event for Women’s History Month, and especially one that focuses on women and activism.