feminist blogs

“I wish someone would have told me that our job as mothers is not to take emotional pain away from our children but to hold them through it.”

I like that advice. I read it in a recent blog post on Feministing (which, eh-hem, was quite slanted in its leaving out dads…it’s okay…it happens). And then I decided to come up with some advices all by myself, cuz some of my friends are starting to raise kids, like 5 – 10 years after me because I was pregnant and momming before it was cool Heehee. Just kidding. Here goes:

1. Still do what you love. No matter what. It will show your kid how to make oneself happy and not have to rely on others for thrills.

2. Eat good food. It’s good for you, daddy. And you can’t take care of other people if you only have processed, chemical-ridden, nasty junk running through your veins.

3. Read to your kid. Duh.

4. Read them books you think are well-written and smart. Think about what you read them before you read it to them. Because if they like it, they are gonna want to hear you read it EVERY. DAMN. DAY.

5. Ask your kid questions. Serious and difficult and philosophical ones. Like “Do you believe in a god? Many gods? Which ones?Why or why not?” And “Have you ever wondered where your thoughts come from?” And “What did you dream about last night? What do you think dreams mean, if anything?”

6. Get ready to answer those questions yourself. Honestly. And in words that we all understand.

7. When your kid asks you a question that seriously perplexes you, don’t be afraid to tell her that you don’t know. Uncertainty is certain, mommy.

8. Under no circumstances should you produce more than 8. And I must admit here that I think 3 is pushin’ it.

9. Encourage her to be smart and kind. Encourage him to be the same.

10. If you want to make sure your kid hates you, buy them more toys and games and gadgets and what-nots and disposable bullshit than you had as a child. This will also ensure that your kid will hate herself, and everyone you meet will think both you and your kid are total assholes. The same goes for when you become a grandparent. Spoiling is not cute. It’s annoying.

What about you, moms and dads? Any advice for the future parents of the world? Also, I would love to hear from those of you that don’t have kids, what do you think about parenting?

It takes a village, ya know,

Spring

It’s really off-putting when a group of disabled people are trying to have a conversation and a caregiver butts in with “you’re wrong. I know, because I care for someone with such and such a disability”. This makes me squirm. Even worse are those disability organisations or charities that have only parents and caregivers on their boards. “Oh, but it’s all right, my brother has this condition. In fact, we all have family members with this condition!”

It’s troubling enough that there are so many such organisations out there that just don’t have anyone who actually has the disability concerned on their boards – it’s as though we can’t speak for ourselves or have unique experiences people who don’t have our disabilities can’t relate to or advocate about! – but that’s not directly what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about who gets to run conversations about disability and who gets to run the narratives. All too frequently, abled caregivers and family members are centered in conversations that really ought to be run by and focus on disabled people.

The thing is, abled caregivers and family members, while pretty involved in the lives of those they are caring for, have their own perspectives, which is great. But treating those perspectives like substitutes for those of disabled people themselves makes me really uneasy. So when the perspectives of disabled people get pushed out because carers are brought to the forefront – in legislating, in daily conversation, in interviews – for me, that’s a clear example of ableism run rampant. Because it seems like those in charge think that disabled people aren’t worth listening to or are incapable of informing their own opinions. The dominant narrative is that abled people are better worth listening to, and I get sad when abled carers and parents just don’t seem to realise that they’re dominating conversations at the expense of disabled people. (It reminds me of those times when men start talking loudly about feminism and everyone else in the room has to keep quiet, is denied a chance to speak.) And “advocacy” of disabled people shouldn’t be at the expense of disabled people.

Of course, it’s usually particular kinds of caregivers who get centred – who centre themselves – in these conversations: abled ones. As ever, it is those with multiple roles who are pushed to the margins, because their existence is held to be just too complicated to deal with. I think acknowledging disabled people who are also caregivers would be a really good start to decentralising the place of abled caregivers in these conversations. Moreover, acknowledging the multifaceted nature of experience brings out the nuance: we really have to engage with the dynamics of different people’s situations here – what are the power dynamics like when you’re both in a position of power and disabled? how do these conversations apply to you? – rather than defaulting to listening to abled parents and caregivers.

Now, I’m not saying that abled caregivers and such should have no place in conversations about disability and ableism, you understand: I’m saying that such folk have dominated conversations about these matters. There is a place, it just shouldn’t be a place that replicates the hierarchies present in society already: hierarchies around who gets to speak, who gets to do the representing. The effect of this – and you can look at a range of newspaper articles or documentaries or whatever you please – is that disabled people get silenced. The effect is that, more often than not, it becomes all about portraying the caregiver as angelic and the person cared for as a burden they have kindly taken on.

And that’s not on.

[Cross-posted at Zero at the Bone and FWD/Forward]

I’m easing back in from hiatus with a fresh post.

In 2006, I wrote about the historic drop in the onset of menstruation and the rising age of marriage. It’s a topic familiar to many of my women’s history students. The basic premise is that the average age of first menstruation (menarche) dropped by about five years (from about 16 to about 11) between 1900 and 2000 in America, while the average age that women first married increased from about 21 to about 27. Meanwhile, studies have shown that the average American girl (if there is such a thing) loses her virginity around age 16.

What’s the interesting point? Call it the “constancy of five”. Today, the “average” American girl first has heterosexual intercourse approximately five years after menarche. In 1900, if we can make the dangerous assumption that at least a fair percentage of American young women were virgins when they wed, they too were having their first intercourse approximately five years after they began menstruating. The five year gap is the one constant even as all the other variables have shifted.

This is statistically intriguing, but has huge implications for those who wish to foist nineteenth century morality onto twenty-first century minds and bodies. Parents who expect (as many parents from traditional cultures expect) their daughters to marry as virgins, but to only marry after finishing a degree and starting a career, are asking their girls to “wait” three times as long as women “waited” a century ago. When the old folks lament the “declining morality” of the younger generation, they miss the fact that what they’re asking their daughters to do is considerably more than was expected of their great-grandmothers.

I thought of all this when the study came out last week showing that girls are continuing to enter puberty earlier and earlier. Since 1997, when Joan Brumberg’s indispensable Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls was published, the percentage of girls aged 6-8 who exhibited early breast development has doubled among whites and gone up 50% among African-Americans. (Thelarche is the term for the beginning of secondary breast development, btw.) There has been a corresponding increase, other studies report, in the percentage of girls who have their first period before their tenth birthday.

Whatever the reasons (obesity, a diet heavy in meat, etc.) there’s little question that the real challenge for feminists is to focus on the needs of this very vulnerable population. There’s no question that fifteen year-olds are better (if imperfectly) equipped to deal with the challenges of menstruation and changing bodies than are girls five years younger. There has been no concomitant rise in the rate of emotional maturation to go along with the declining age of menarche. As school nurses across the country can attest, adapting advice about menstruation to an ever younger group of girls presents special challenges, the anxieties of parents not least among them.

It’s important to remember that earlier maturation doesn’t need to lead inexorably to premature sexualization. We need to distinguish these as two separate issues. Physiological changes that cause preteens to develop breasts and hips do not cause adult men to leer. The fetishization of young women (pedophila chic, as some have dubbed it) is a cultural response to men’s anxiety about women’s increasing power. Part of the anti-feminist backlash is the sexualization of the very young. For those who fantasize about a pre-feminist world in which women are pliable and submissive, it makes perverse sense to focus desire increasingly on the very youngest girls whose capacity to set boundaries and to exercise agency is obviously limited. The growing physiological reality of early puberty serves as justification for sexualizing preteen and “tween” girls. The vulgar expression “Old enough to bleed, old enough to breed” dates back at least as far as the Second World War (and may be much older) — but read in the light of a dramatically falling age of menarche, it becomes more unconscionable to repeat with each passing decade.

We can start to carve out safe space for this vulnerable population of pubescent youngsters by committing ourselves individually and collectively to a zero-tolerance policy on their sexualization. This doesn’t mean forbidding your eleven year-old daughter from wearing a miniskirt. It means holding adults (parents, teachers, strangers on the street, Uncle Bert) responsible for seeing these girls in women’s bodies as children still. It means watching our language; for some, it may mean watching their eyes. It means sending a message to girls and to everyone who interacts with them that their bodies are theirs and theirs alone. It means redefining our notion of development so that ten year-olds who have already entered puberty continue to be allowed to be children safe for as long as possible from the harassment, the leers, and the judgment that is so much a part of female adolescence in our society.

The next time you hear an adult man make a sexualized remark about a teen girl –even a celebrity such as, say, Miley Cyrus — call him on it. Make it clear that a girl in what appears to be a woman’s body is still a girl, and that adult men are fully capable of distinguishing between eroticising a well-developed 13 year-old child and a woman twice her age. Men are not so weak, so stupid, or so blind that they cannot make these distinctions in their actions, in their words, and in their very thoughts. Now, more than ever, we need to commit ourselves to empowering a generation of girls who are confronting unprecedented challenges. And we empower them by giving them the safe space to mature emotionally at their own pace, regardless of the ever-increasing speed at which their bodies are developing.

 It’s World Breastfeeding Week sponsored by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA), a global network of individuals and organizations concerned with the protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding worldwide. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “breastfeeding contributes to a lifetime of good health. Adults who were breastfed as babies often have lower blood [...]

August 1st-7th is:

World Breastfeeding Week


World Breastfeeding Week's purpose is to raise awareness about the numerous benefits of breastfeeding and to encourage society to stop viewing it as some sort of pornographic act that belongs in the home. New mothers have every right to breastfeed when and where they feel it necessary, but unfortunately we still have to fight for that right.

Learn more about what you can do in honor of World Breastfeeding Week at the official website.

This post was prompted by a line in my post entitled "Toddlers are not grown women" in which I said:

I also believe that parents should play a role in helping their child make decisions and that they should view their child as a partner in this regard.

In the comment section of that post, Anonymous challenged my idea that children could or should ever be viewed as partners with their parents, suggesting that parents' roles in their children's lives should be that of "bosses" who make decisions for children because they are not capable of doing so on their own until adulthood (which I read to mean legal adulthood, suggested by this commenter in another comment that was not posted due to its tangential nature, to mean 18 years of age).

Anonymous said:

Raising kids by being their "friend" results in horrible, maladjusted kids with a lot of selfishness and problems.

First of all, nowhere in that post did I suggest that parents should act as their children's friends. I do not even suggest that children should be viewed as completely equal partners with their parents. All I meant to suggest was that children should be viewed as more than objects to be controlled by their parents. I'll expand on that idea here.

I'd like to clarify that I do not have any children. However, I have experienced a type of parenting that I would not want to replicate if I ever had the desire to raise children of my own. In the middle class, white American culture I grew up in, there is an overarching idea that children have little capacity for personhood. They are treated like objects or pets that should be, in essence, ruled over by parents who always know what was best for their children, without question. Children's opinions and desires do not matter because of their age. In effect, children are lesser people, if they can even be considered people at all.

I have a huge problem with conceptualizing children in the same manner as one might think of a pet. I do not believe this mindset is healthy for the parent or the child. It has the potential to create dependence in children that may make it difficult for them to take on "adult" responsibilities once they reach legal adulthood and it presents a way for parents to place on their children an unfair burden - the responsibility of making their parents feel useful. When the roles of parents and children change as children grow up, it cane be difficult on everyone.

I believe that this idea that children just are not capable of doing certain things is, largely, due to socialization. If parents treat children as if they are incapable of making any decisions at all (as opposed to only life-altering ones), children will not have to rise to the occasion and will fill their parents' low expectations. If parents expected more out of their children and viewed them as capable of doing more, I think a lot of people would be surprised by how much children are capable of.

I also want to stress my belief in parents' roles in helping oversee their children's decisions and helping them navigate the world while teaching and disciplining when necessary. However, allowing children appropriate amounts of control over aspects of their lives is important because no person, small or not, should be ruled by someone else who denies them the opporunity to exercise any amount of power over their lives.

This acknowledgement of a child's personhood throughout life (as opposed to waiting until a child reaches some arbitrary age) could easily create more independent children who are better equipped to handle "adult" situations and responsibilities without doubting themselves. Treating children as smaller people could also easily create within the minds of children reasonable expectations of respect. When they are not used to thinking of themselves of subjects under their parents' rule, it might be easier for them to fight for their rights and perhaps even those of others when they finally leave the nest.

  Dear Mr. President: I just watched your appearance on “The View.” I had never watched the show before; I’d only seen clips on YouTube of  Whoopi Goldberg saying what Roman Polanski did wasn’t “rape rape” and then defending Mel Gibson, because after all what he’s accused of doing isn’t really “abuse abuse.” The show [...]

Today's guest post is from Kyle Simpson, who writes for a Medical Billing website where you can find more information about a career in the medical coding industry. Thanks Kyle! If you're interested in writing a guest post, or cross-posting, send an e-mail to rosiered23 (at) sparecandy (dot) com.

As the debate rages on over whether or not gay and lesbian couples should legally be allowed to wed, millions of these couples are managing to carve out a life for themselves in committed relationships and turning their eyes towards creating a family and a legacy that so many married couples take for granted.  And once the legislation making gay marriage legal passes (and it will pass), one must wonder where the bigots will throw the next stone.  My guess would be straight at gay and lesbian parents.

The truth is, one parent is better than none and two is better than one.  There is a simple science behind this.  First of all, a child with no parents will have a much harder time forming correctly.  Children who end up in foster care at a young age, bounced around from home to home, may suffer physical and psychological abuse as well as neglect.  While there are plenty of foster families that truly care for their charges and give them a good home, there are just as many unscrupulous individuals who see these children as a meal ticket and nothing more.  The sad fact is, a temporary home is no home at all.

And orphanages are no better.  Do you really believe that a state-run institution can raise a child better than a loving parent?  A ward of the state is really nothing more than a number; a mouth to feed, a brain to standardize, and a body to dress and bed.  These kids are shuffled through the system like cattle and left to fend for themselves, alone and often unskilled, as soon as they reach legal adulthood.  How can that possibly be the best choice for unwanted children?

On the other hand, there are many gay and lesbian couples looking to adopt who face a world of challenges that the average married couple (or even some single parents) would not.  Many organizations (and even entire states) do not allow gay and lesbian couples seeking children to adopt, and it is a huge mistake.  Children thrive when they’re in a loving and stable home, and if there are people in the world who are both willing and able to provide such an environment, it seems antithetical to deny them simply based on their so-called “alternate” lifestyle.  And choosing single parents over a homosexual couple is equally ridiculous.  An adult who has a partner to lean on and consult is going to do a better job of parenting than a single person simply because of the added support (which is not to say that single parents can’t manage, but they certainly can’t be expected to provide the same attention and care as two people).

Let’s face it: the nuclear families of 1950s Americana are a thing of the past.  Dad as the breadwinner and mom as the happy homemaker with 2.5 kids just doesn’t apply anymore.  With broken homes and blended families outweighing the married-for-life mentality, there simply isn’t room for these narrow-minded notions of what a “normal” family should be.  And beyond that, there are over a million lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender parents raising children in the United States today, facing all the same doubts, difficulties, and rewards as countless heterosexual parents, and probably faring equally well, despite the fact that they must do the same job while facing ridicule, hostility, and underhanded bigotry at every turn.  If anything, it seems that they are even more devoted to their chosen path than those of us who take it as a given that we can marry and procreate with whomever we choose.

On Sunday, I saw The Kids Are All Right, a new film directed by Lisa Cholodenko. I enjoyed the film for many reasons, but perhaps the most significant one is that I loved watching a mainstream movie depicting lesbian parenting as completely normal. The family is never overtly politicized, and none of the characters question [...]

This post was inspired by several posts over at Shakesville regarding the idea that women who choose to remain childless are selfish. I agree with the commentary at that blog, so I recommend you check it out.

The idea that deliberately childless women are selfish is a general theme when it comes to policing women in this society and smothering them with ideas of what other, more important people expect them to do with their lives as opposed to allowing them to make their own decisions without comment. When a woman, especially a married woman, chooses not to have children, it opens her up for all sorts of comments ranging from her being selfish to the idea that she must be very unhappy because she doesn't have kids.

And in this piece about men who really really want to be daddies, the wishes of men are added to the mix of reasons why women should feel terrible if they do not reproduce as society (and perhaps their husband) expects them to. (Trigger warning on that link for descriptions of reproductive coercion)

According to this piece, there are a growing number of men who desperately desire to be fathers, but are hitting roadblocks because the women they are with would rather do things like pursue careers, or they just plain aren't interested in being mothers. The disturbing part of it all is that it shows that some men want to be fathers so badly that they will pressure their wives into trying to get pregnant.

Take Neil, whose wife Fiona was made a partner at a PR company and does not feel ready to be a mother. Neil said:

"I'm putting pressure on her to stop taking the Pill and to leave the situation to fate," he admits. "I know it's a decision we've got to make together, but I don't want to be an old dad. A baby would make my world complete."

There is a sad but interesting point here. Evolving gender roles and opportunities have allowed more and more women to progress in careers that they may not be willing to give up right away to start a family. They have also allowed men to express their desire for fatherhood more openly. While that may seem like progress, where women used to be forced to follow husbands pursuing careers, they are still facing opposition to living the lives they want from husbands who are willing to coerce them into having children to fulfill their own desires.

It's great and all that men are coming around to the idea of fatherhood and that they don't have to be alienated from their feelings when it comes to wanting children. But women should also be allowed to be true to themselves, whether or not their visions for their futures include children. They shouldn't be ridiculed or looked down upon for not fitting into other people's expectations. All in all, women still lose.

I guess this whole motherhood/children thing has been on my mind lately because of the unsettling trend among girls I went to high school with of getting pregnant and married before they turn 23.

I'm relatively young, but I have known for most of my life, with much certainty, that I will never be a mother. Children tire me. I have never been able to stomach babysitting for more than a few hours at a stretch. Holding babies makes me anxious, and I have several memories of being a child and family members practically forcing me to hold a baby, a new member of the family, because why shouldn't I want to hold a cute little baby? The thought of being responsible for a human being, emotionally, financially, what have you, terrifies me.

When I've expressed these feelings to various people, generally my family, it has been said that I will change my mind once I grow older. You know, right about the time that this society will start expecting me to pop out some babies and fulfill my womanly duty of self-imposed motherhood.

Not to mention my type 1 Diabetes and the difficulties of managing the disease with another human growing inside me and the potential complications that could arise from that. Not to mention the obvious idea that me parenting a child that I did not want to be a parent to is the ultimate form of unfairness. Not to mention that with those things taken into consideration, I might sound like a good person who has made the right choice when it comes to bearing children.

But that's not what people will see when they look at me in a few years and ask if I have children. Or if I want them. All they'll see is the word "Selfish" stamped across my forehead. Unfortunately, as long as women continue to be necessary for creating babies and as long as we live in a society that believes that arbitrary expectations are more important than the desires of individual women, it's a brand that many of us will not be able to escape.