feminist blogs

Today's Women's History Tidbit:
1972: A small group of young Jewish feminists under the name "Ezrat Nashim" presented a manifesto entitled "Jewish Women Call For Change" at the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly convention.*


Sexism in America: Alive, Well and Ruining our Future is an excellent feminism 101 book. It might bore those of us who have been keeping up with how sexist our society still is despite our many successes. Dr. Barbara J. Berg does a fab job at summarizing so many parts of our society in short and succinct chapters. Some chapters were so short, I was like, "That's it?" But it's not the length of the chapters, but the information she crams in there without feeling like I was being lectured at.

Despite my statement that this is a primer text, I still would recommend this book to us vets. Why? Because Berg pulls a Nancy Drew, digging up items that I'm sure some of us have forgotten or just plain missed. I found myself nodding along, sometimes in a "yeah, yeah" stupor only to be bowled over by a factoid like part of the post-WWII safety/Red Scare was built upon women keeping their homes clean. For reals. Just when you thought you couldn't hate the Donna Reed stereotype more.

It's not just a downer, Berg takes the time to point out the high points and in a sense, points to them as a way to say, "If we can have THIS, why do we put up with THAT?"

It took me a bit of get into the book, for the reasons stated above...One more women's history 101 book...yawn, but grew to love Berg's take on how we live in a so-called post-feminist society yet still need feminism desperately.

I wrote this post while listening to Berg's BookTV segement, I highly recommend it too.

Grab a copy for yourself at an indie bookstore or Powells.com.

Disclaimer: The only payment I received was the copy of the book after the publisher contacted me.

* Source: Jewish Women's Archive

Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls edited by Melinda Tankard Reist is a collection of essays/charges against the world-wide phenomena of the pornification of childhood thru advertising, marketing and pop culture.

This was a great book to read as the authors are Australian and sometimes I wonder how much of our collective reaction to porn and adult images going mainstream is a reflection of our country's Puritanical leanings. For the contributors to Getting Real, the problem is embedded in not just faux-feminism, but a twisting of feminism by marketers and others to make women believe that if they are "in charge" of their sexuality, then there isn't anything wrong with stripping, making out with other women to turn on men and so forth.


About half way thru the book I came across a few statements that made me think, "Wait a minute...This isn't a feminist book!" So I did some investigating of Reist and found that she is part of a women's think tank. Hmmm...Upon further digging, I came to the conclusion that the Women's Forum Australia seems to be what one might get if NOW and the Independent Women's Fourm had a lefty baby. If anyone has more info on them, I'd love for you to leave it in the comments. There's just a tinge of anti-sex sentiment in some essays.

While there are some essays that wade into slut-shaming such as calling out strippers and sex workers, I think on the whole it's a pretty good book. It's definitely a quick read. The essays are well cited, but avoid a lot of academic jargon. There's an eye-opening essay on street billboards and how it is illegal for people to have porn at the workplace, but we have to walk thru porn infested streets on a daily basis.

There was also one paragraph that turned the issue back onto me. The idea that many of us are Flickr'ing and YouTube'ing our children's lives that we are teaching them to perform their lives on camera. What's to stop them...are we teaching them the difference between that and performing sexually on camera? 

The best part of the book was a new term: corporate paedophilia. "Sexualising products being sold specifically for children, and children themselves being presented in images or directed to act in advertisements in ways modelled on adult sexual behaviour. (pg 42)" This goes far beyond the dress-up of our youth to performance on a daily basis. "The task for today's teenagers is to win back their freedom from the adults who run the advertising agencies and girls magazines and the 'sex-positive' media academics who insist that 'bad girls' are powerful girls. (page 93)"

There is also a discussion about the medicalization of girls' bodies. From HPV vaccines to plastic surgery, it's all there to ponder. As I said, the book is feminist, but with a dash of moderate/conservative feminism thrown in. But this topic does bring together some usually opposing forces. Thus it's always a good discussion.

Grab a copy for yourself at an indie bookstore or Powells.com.

Disclaimer: The only payment I received was the copy of the book after the publishers contacted me. And yes, when I cite passages, I kept the spelling the same, thus all the u's.

The House of Secrets: The Hidden World of the Mikveh by Varda Polak-Sahm
(Beacon Press)

One clear evening in Jerusalem, Varda Polak-Sahm shows up alone at her neighborhood mikveh – a ritual bath for Jewish women – to purify herself before her second wedding. After her first mikveh experience, during which she kept her out-of-wedlock pregnancy a secret from her family and the Orthodox balaniyot (mikveh guides), she’s understandably nervous. Yet this time, as the balaniyot towel her off and push congratulatory candies into her mouth after her plunge, Polak-Sahm experiences “an elemental emotion so stunning in its intensity, so acute, it was as if every fiber of my being was stirring wondrously to life.” Fascinated by the incongruity between the dull building, the slightly scary women running the place, and the depth of her spiritual experience, she decides to return to the same mikveh and interview all the women connected with it – clients, guides, and anyone passing through.

Among the various commandments that Jews observe, the commandment to immerse is one of the more obscure. The purpose of the mikveh is to bring women out of niddah, the spiritual impurity associated with menstruation, but Polak-Sahm quickly discovers that the practice has taken on a whole host of extra meanings and superstitions. She paints a decidedly unflattering picture of the Orthodox women who subscribe to it, chronicling bizarre and often offensive claims that impure brides give birth to disabled children, that ritual purity is the only way to keep a marriage together, and that Jews are preternaturally brilliant because their mothers immersed before conception. Unsurprisingly, purity laws are used to oppress women, as Polak-Sahm demonstrates when she describes rabbinical control over reproduction.

But she’s not alone in her spiritual – and intensely pleasurable – reaction to immersion. She interviews secular women who abstain from sex during niddah and love the feeling of purification. She even meets a non-Jewish women from the same Kabbalah center as Madonna, desperate to immerse during her trip to Israel. (The balaniyot, recoiling at the cross around her neck, don’t let her in.) Despite its superstitious overtones, the mikveh clearly functions as a center where women can support other women without male interference, and the scenes detailing the tender moments between mothers, daughters, aunts, nieces, and cousins – not to mention the balaniyot’s protocols for gaining the trust of battered women – attest to this. In between the chilling glimpses into Orthodoxy, in which women are banned from studying sacred texts and must present underwear stains to rabbis for inspection, the mikveh reveals itself as an oasis of female control.

The book’s biggest limitation is Polak-Sahm’s unfortunate decision to write about only one mikveh. We only see the Orthodox interpretation of the commandment to immerse, which comes with a maddening list of “barriers” that nullify the immersion (letting a hair touch your back, leaving your earrings in, forgetting to empty your bowels beforehand). Even liberal clients’ experiences are seen through the Orthodox lens – for example, the woman who grudgingly comes in just to fulfill Israel’s draconian requirements for a marriage license. Stories like that are interesting in a depressing sort of way, but aren’t there any progressive, non-traditional, or LGBT-friendly mikvehs out there? Well, yes, but they’re relegated to quick descriptions in the Afterword. The book would have been richer if Polak-Sahm had given them more attention.

Still, the book is an interesting window into Orthodox beliefs and customs. It also functions as a refreshing cross-section of Israeli Jews, who are too often portrayed as 100% Ashkenazi (even though Ashkenazim make up less than half of Israel’s Jewish population). Polak-Sahm herself is Sephardic and a seventh-generation Jerusalemite, and many of the women who run and frequent the mikveh are Mizrahi. Arab delicacies and Ladino folk songs fill the room every time a bridal party bursts in.

What exactly caused Polak-Sahm’s spiritual experience? Unfortunately, after the prologue, the book never addresses that question again. Instead, it spirals off into a survey of different beliefs and attitudes about immersion. Furthermore, the book is laced with ableism and fatphobia, which are especially evident in one treacly scene involving a bride in a wheelchair. But if its purpose is to shed some light on what goes on in a ritual immersion, the book succeeds. Despite its off-putting rules and taboos, the mikveh can clearly be a powerful spiritual tool for women, and Polak-Sahm’s respect for it is evident on every page.

I am totally unqualified to review this book as I totally missed the Riot Grrrl moment. On the other hand, I totally dove into the Lilith Fair moment, so I think that I could write the rebuttal or sequel to Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music by Marisa Meltzer, as Meltzer says she never attended Lilith Fair. But I don't hold that against her.

Girl Power is a quick read. In fact I dare say that it's a must have on your summer 2010 reading list. It's not fluffy, but at only 145 pages, it delves thru the 1990s women's music scene quickly and in fairly accessible language. In other words, Meltzer doesn't compare Avril to Courtney by using uber-academic jargon. Because of that, I'd also say that this would make an awesome book group selection. I can only imagine the music throw downs at the Women & Children First Feminist book group.

As someone who missed the Riot Grrrl moment, I really appreciated reading about how it came about, got popular and then essentially killed itself thru a media boycott. Meltzer ponders if that would have been conceivable in today's media soaked culture. I concur.

But what I found most intriguing about the book was how Meltzer outlines how a group of feminists grabbed guitars, drums and the mic and launched a very real music revolution and then how that revolution was so successful that it is quickly evolved into what we typically think of as "Girl Power" music.

From Alanis to the Spice Girls, few pop "Girl Power" acts are left un-examined as to how well they stay true to feminism and the benchmark of Riot Grrrl. Meltzer also looks at how some Riot Grrrl acts moved into the mainstream and how that impacted their music. One could use this book to examine just about any grassroots, indie movement to see how it evolves into something vastly different in a short amount of time.

The immediate thing I thought of was mom blogging. How we went from moms using blogging as a medium to reach out and find intelligent adult conversation while raising our fab kids to a community where we are thought of as idiot product whores. Meltzer discusses how once Riot Grrrl peaked, others joined in, but not to spread radical ideas such as embracing our sexuality as women, but to cash in on fame and sometimes money. People started to see newbies rocket to stardom while those who paved the path were left behind, sometimes willingly. This is a familiar plot line from many movements.

I didn't agree with many of Meltzer's conclusions such as grouping P!nk with Avril as bullies. She points to "Stupid Girls" as being problematic by calling out specific "stupid girls" instead of calling out society. I think that's exactly what P!nk does by calling out "tiny dog" accessorizing celebs. Maybe I'm just still reeling from Meltzer making a great case as to why the Spice Girls were a good thing and not P!nk. And reeling in the sense that I think it's an excellent case and one we should all reexamine.

Girl Power also made me stop and consider how do we want girls to discover feminism. Or more to the point, how do we think we can get them to discover feminism?

My daughter has taken a liking to this book solely due to the title.

The kid has asked me how I have liked the book, what it's about and tried to read over my shoulder. This is a book I do plan to leave on a shelf for her to have easy access to when she's around 10. Maybe a bit sooner, but 6 is still too soon for me to discuss rape with her. But the thing is that she knows "girl power" and what it means to her. I asked her and she said, "That girls can play soccer, girls can play chess and girls can play guitars!" Then she laughed and confessed that she cribbed that response from the cover of Girl Studies. I tell ya, she's a smart cookie. But if even 75% of girls her age know "girl power" as a slogan that translated into "Of course, I can do X!" then isn't that a good thing?

I guess it can be a not-good thing if the girl in question doesn't have someone in her life to build upon that feeling and reinforce it.

Hopefully you get that the bottom line of this review is that it was a good read, a fast read and one that did make me ponder if it's feminist to "go down in a movie theater" or not. So whatacha waiting for? Grab a copy thru an indie bookstore or Powells.com.

Disclaimer: The only payment I received for this review was the copy of the book. I met Marisa years ago when she was with Bitch magazine, but I highly doubt that it is why when I asked for a review copy, her peeps sent one.

Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly by James E. McWilliams
(Little, Brown)

Say what you want about publishers, but they know how to sell a book.

Let’s say a manuscript ended up on an editor’s desk with a title like Some More Things You Need to be Aware of About Our Food System or Why Aquaponics are Great. Boring! They’d toss it aside, right? Or at least send it back to the author with a request for a different angle.

But what if that same manuscript landed on that same desk with the words “Where Locavores Get It Wrong” splashed across the cover sheet? If it called the “eat local” ethic “not only pragmatically unachievable but simplistically smug” and called itself “an attack on the food world’s sacred cow”? Why, that editor would spit out their organic spinach-on-nine-grain-whole-wheat cibatta sandwich and start drawing up a contract!

Okay, I’m probably being unfair. Perhaps the birth of Just Food: Where Locavores Get it Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly didn’t go quite like that. But I’m always skeptical of everything-you-know-is-wrong books – and James McWilliams’ polemic against the locavore movement is so full of questionable assumptions and faulty logic that it’s hard not to be suspicious of his motives.

The premise of the book is this: eating local isn’t enough, in and of itself, to solve our broken food system. Although it feels good to shop at farmers’ markets and subscribe to CSA boxes, there are many other factors that need to be addressed before problems with food production can be solved.

Sounds… obvious, doesn’t it?

Not in the world McWilliams seems to be living in. Although he claims, over and over again, that his goal isn’t to bash locavores for the sake of bashing locavores, he makes some pretty stunning assumptions about them. Here’s a list of things he seems to believe about people who support local agriculture:

1. They have zero experience with farming, and thus have no idea what it takes to grow and raise food;

2. They care little, if at all, about a holistic solution to the food crisis, and just want to feel the cheap thrill of taking part in a faux-activist fad;

3. They do not compost, garden, or raise microlivestock (or do they? McWilliams briefly mentions backyard hens and rooftop gardens when he wants to poke fun at the urban homestead mystique, but ignores them when they prove inconvenient to his argument. He claims, for example, that locavores freak out about food miles but happily toss all their kitchen scraps into the trash).

4. They are exclusively upper-middle class, with the leisure to discuss lofty concepts that only affect them in the most abstract way – with the added consequence of only being exposed to pesticides at the table (although, in another puzzling contradiction, McWilliams suddenly remembers that farm workers are people when he’s criticizing organic pesticides);

5. They eat lots and lots of meat, like a pig a day or something;

6. They demand fresh tropical fruit in the dead of winter and can’t handle the idea of a cannery near their neighborhood.

And, just because I don’t know where else to put it, here’s a winner of a quote from the introduction:

It’s hard to identify exactly when my skepticism became committed doubt, but several random observations nudged me down the path of crankiness. Maybe it was watching one too many times the pretentious woman with the hemp shopping bag declaring “This bag is not plastic!” make her way to the market in an SUV the size of my house. Or maybe it was the baffling association between buying local food and dressing as if it were Haight-Ashbury circa 1968 that got me thinking that my sacred farmers’ market was a stage set more for posturing [point of interest: McWilliams’ author photo shows him sporting gigantic Buddy Holly specs] than for environmental activism.

If you tell me there exists a hypocrite in an SUV, I’ll believe you, but what if the hippies are just buying their groceries?

“We must… stop insisting that our behavior is, if universalized, a viable answer to the world’s present and future problems,” he declares. But who exactly is insisting this? Although he drops the names of a few mainstream luminaries, he almost never responds to any specific thing anyone actually said, except to shoot down a couple of Carlo Petrini and Vandana Shiva quotes that, removed from all context, become easy targets.* Other than that, it’s always “the locavores” with this guy. “The locavores” claim that such-and-such, “the locavores” insist that so-and-so. Look, I haven’t read every locavore book out there – I’m sure there’s plenty of naivete. But is that naivete really endemic to the entire movement? Consistently arguing with a vaguely defined, unidentified collective instead of an actual opponent, as McWilliams does throughout the book, is the clumsiest kind of strawman.

Anyway, aside from the perplexing lack of self-awareness, how does the rest of the book stand up? Actually, a lot of it is pretty interesting. Many factoids, like the problem of grass-fed cattle producing four times as much methane as feedlot cattle, were enlightening (albeit in a depressing sort of way). The chapter on aquaponics, detailing a style of farming in which fish are raised and vegetables grown in the same space, was the most hopeful in the book. Overall, McWilliams’ argument focuses on sustainable global trade, which is a useful complement to visions of healthy local economies (even if it does have a whiff of the Western savior complex, rushing seed to helpless African farmers rather than looking at root causes).

Other parts of the book, however, are underdeveloped, impractical, or ripped off from other writers. In “Food Miles or Friendly Miles?,” McWilliams states that factors like cooking and harvesting methods actually eat up much more energy than transportation – but then doesn’t explain which cooking methods are wasteful, or what exactly he expects the average person to do about nets versus trawls (although throwing out that tie-dye shirt and getting a haircut is apparently a good first step). “Meat – The New Caviar” mostly rehashes what other food activists have been saying for years, and “Frankenfood?: A Case for Genetically Modified Crops” makes the plausible-sounding argument that GM seed could be used for the forces of good… but only if control of said seed is magically transferred from Monsanto to the average Global South farmer. And after shaking his head at Vandana Shiva’s supposed myopia, he goes on to criticize some of the same harmful practices that she herself has campaigned against.

Of course, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he’s unfamiliar with the food justice work being done on the ground, because it’s clear that he hasn’t actually researched any food justice movements, other than the “glossy coffee-table cookbook[s]” he complains about at the beginning. “Most people I know who work outside of elite professions such as academia and journalism would roll their eyes at such antiestablishment prescriptions,” he sneers when criticizing the overlap between food justice and anti-globalization movements, effectively erasing every single low-to-middle-income or non-academic activist, writer, or thinker in existence. If he doesn’t know them personally, then they must not be real.

Oy. You know, this book would have been terrific had it been a completely different book. If McWilliams had chosen to work with locavores rather than picking a fight with them – if he’d managed to separate his irritation with some posers at a famers’ market from his understanding of movements like Slow Food – then this would have been a valuable and welcome addition to any food justice library. As it is, though, it’s hardly worth digging through the drek to find the hidden jewels inside.

__________
* I haven’t read much Petrini, but I know that locavorism is only a fraction of Shiva’s food justice activism. Furthermore, her emphasis on local agriculture is as much about the health, cultures, and livelihoods of Global South farmers, all of which are threatened by industrial agriculture, as it is about environmentalism.

I finally got to visit one of the classic (and often cited) sex shops this past week in San Francisco, Good Vibrations. The San Francisco store is most famous for originally functioning as a worker-owned sex toy collective (as are relatively common in SF) but in 2005, the cooperative structure was abandoned and they became a more traditional corporate entity.

I never visited the store before 2005, so I can't say from first hand experience, but I've heard that the store has changed a lot in that time. Good Vibrations also has locations in Berkeley and Brookline Massachusetts.

I found Good Vibes to be a pretty mainstream, though well-stocked, sex shop. Nothing in their company policies talks explicitly about feminism, but they do talk about being woman-focused, social change oriented and employing fair labor practices.

To be honest, looking over the mission and vision on their website gave me a much different impression that the store itself. The policies have a lot of discussion that I appreciate, particularly this statement about their "sex and gender policy:"

Good Vibrations has long accepted that gender and sex are subjective notions. The Good Vibrations Mission Statement champions diversity and difference as valuable facets of sexuality. All staff members have the right to present any gender or sex with the expectation that they will be supported and respected by the rest of the staff, including and not limited to names and pronoun usage appropriate to their gender identity. We invite you to read the Good Vibrations Sex and Gender Policy Good Vibrations Sex and Gender Policy.

The store itself, however, struck me as more mainstream mostly because of the size and strong Good Vibrations branding. They had a lot of GV products, things like the "sexcessories kit" or the "friday nite delight kit."

I think my impression of the store may be more from expectation of what a worker-owned sex toy shop would be like, and to be totally honest, possibly some feminist sex toy shop burnout. At this point I've visited more than ten different shops around the country, so it's the unique touches and pecularities that stand out.

Overall, Good Vibes has all the staples of a good feminist sex shop, including a wide range of toys, books and movies, products that are good for our bodies and staff who are knowledgeable and willing to do education for the customers.

Check them out online or in San Francisco, Berkeley or Brookline Massachusetts.

Previous Reviews:

SheBop in Portland Oregon
Nomia in Portland Maine
Sugar in Baltimore, MD
Smitten Kitten in Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN
Hysteria in Denver, CO
Early to Bed in Chicago, IL
VaVaVoom in Asheville, NC
Aphrodite's Toy Box in Atlanta, GA

If you joined the CREDO campaign to send a coat hanger to the Democrats in Congress who voted in favor of the Stupak amendment, you may have received a flyer in the mail recently about CREDO’s cell phone service. I’ve been a CREDO long distance customer since 2000. I like knowing that a portion of my long distance bill goes towards progressive causes, and that CREDO won’t turn over my phone records to the federal government. They’re the only service provider to take a stand against the Patriot Act. So when I got a flyer from them about how AT&T and Verizon support anti-choice candidates, I was intrigued.

A recent issue of Consumer Reports rated all of the major cell phone providers in the US, and rated Verizon as the number one provider in terms of customer satisfaction. Verizon also rated very high when it came to cost of service. But AT&T is rated the highest when it comes to smart phones and internet accessibility.

CREDO operates on the Sprint cell phone network. Sprint rates very low in terms of customer service, but their ratings are actually pretty decent when it comes to cell phone coverage and internet accessibility. All of my experiences with CREDO’s customer service department have been very positive. When I looked for customer reviews on the internet, the number one complaint that customers had about CREDO is that billing errors are a frequent issue. Like I said, I’ve been with CREDO’s long distance for almost ten years, and I’ve ever had a problem with billing. However, when I was an AT&T customer, I had frequent issues with my cell phone bill. And Sprint’s customer service is the worst ever in my opinion.

When I put out a request for feedback on Twitter and Facebook to see if anyone else has used CREDO’s cell phone service, I only had three responses from people who have used their service. All three had positive feedback, though. So I’m seriously thinking about taking the plunge. CREDO’s pricing for a family plan with internet access is comparable to Verizon’s. They don’t have a wide selection of phones, but I really just want to know that I will be able to make a phone call and hop onto the web during work hours. Having the sleekest smart phone with lots of apps really isn’t important to me.

CREDO’s politics are truly the strongest point that they have in their favor. The list of pro-choice causes that they support is pretty extensive. And I like knowing that the money I fork over to the phone company each month isn’t lining anti-choice coffers.

What about you? Have you switched to CREDO? Do you think that a company’s politics are important? Or do you simply make your decisions based on dollars and cents? I’d love to hear your opinion.

Girls' Studies by Elline Lipkin was a great little read. I don't mean to be flip about this book. It's well written and chock full of information about the fledgling field of girls' studies. It's just that I've read enough about girls' studies that I actually knew most of the information in it.

That said, Girls' Studies is in the Seal Press Seal Studies line and I do believe that this would make an excellent addition to a women's studies course or even the basis for an entire course on girls itself.

It's also a great summation of the research on gender roles and how they impact our girls (and boys) as they grow. It's not pro-girl as much as it is anti-gender stereotypes/gender roles. I'll say it again, if we can smash the box girls are put into with stereotypes, we can also free our boys from the patriarchy box too. There is a lot of discussion about 'standard behavior' and how it has swung from boys to girls and how neither is appropriate.

The other sections that I really appreciated were discussions on the lack of girls of color in young adult literature and how as the realm of possibility is growing for girls, they still splinter into groups (girly girls, kick ass girls, etc). This last one is hitting home big time right now. It's hard raising a girl in this culture that tells her she has to choose what kind of girl she has to be.

I would recommend this book to every mom and dad out there with a girl. Want to know the real insanity that they are living under? How much they are targets of marketing and advertising? Why they hear you tell them that they are fine just the way they are, but still want to diet at age 8? Read this book. It's all in here. You think you know, but it's only the tip of the iceberg.

Get yourself an early holiday present and grab a copy thru an indie bookstore or Powells.com.

Disclaimer: The only payment I received for this review was the copy of the book.  Elline and I both also write at Girl with Pen. But I received the book thru my relationship with Seal Press not Elline.

Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the Myth of Two Sexes by Gerald N. Callahan, Ph.D.
(Chicago Review Press)

Hi, all!

As some of you may have noticed, my flow of book reviews has slowed to a trickle over the past few months. It’s not because I don’t love what I do! I’m applying to graduate programs, you see, and I’ve been eaten up by applications and entrance requirements. As a result, it took me two whole months to make my way through a 160-page book, and I’ve done barely any non-personal-statement writing at all. Hopefully, though, I’ll be able to pick up the pace after the holidays.

The aforementioned 160-page book is Gerald N. Callahan’s Beyond XX and XY, which was sent to me right after the controversy over Caster Semenya’s gold medal erupted. The book, with a focus much more frank and progressive than most media out there, seems at first glance to be a good primer for non-intersex people who need a basic education about the range of human sexual development. “My purpose,” Callahan writes in the introduction, “is not to convince you that we need to imagine more sexes, because the concept of five sexes would be no closer to solving the problem than the idea of two sexes is.” Instead, he says, society needs to reexamine its very concept of sex, and ditch the binary system we’re dealing with now. He starts the book with a brief history of Western ideas of sex, highlighting Classical and Renaissance theories that male and female genitalia are identical, with only different positioning (males wear theirs on the outside and females on the inside), and explains early medical attitudes towards intersex conditions that mandated as little involvement from the parents or patient as possible. He stresses that bias and preconceptions influence science more than scientists care to admit – and doesn’t exclude modern medicine and research from his critique. He even censures bans against same-sex marriage (”Never mind that it is impossible to define exactly what a man or a woman is”) and acknowledges that Fallopian tubes probably weren’t first discovered by Gabriel Fallopius.

Unfortunately, although Callahan seems to have noble intentions, most of the book fails to really deviate from popular ideas about intersex conditions. First off, he doesn’t seem to consider the possibility that intersex or non-gender conforming people might read the book, and habitually refers to cisgendered non-intersex readers as “us” and the subjects of the book as “they.” Although “we” accept that gender is socially constructed, “sex remains inviolate to us – boy/girl, black/white.” Even if the intended audience is people new to intersex issues, would it hurt to be a little more inclusive? This tone reaches a nauseating climax at the end, when he begins to expound upon all the favors intersex people do for “us,” and explains that “we should be grateful” because “they have shown us that we can untie the knots that bind us to our own preconceptions and begin to live freer lives.” More disturbingly, in the middle of the book Callahan presents a string of stories about the trials and tribulations of intersex individuals, highlighting accounts of rape, assault, depression, and suicide. What was horrific and unjust in the real lives of his interviewees turns into lurid sensationalism on the page – and it’s hard to even see what point he’s trying to make about sex and gender. He follows up this chapter with a series of graphic descriptions of sexual reassignment surgery, making it seem as if a whole swath of the book was designed more to satisfy non-intersex readers’ morbid curiosity than to lead to a greater understanding of intersex.

Other chapters are more level-headed, although not very groundbreaking. Callahan discusses the development of sex in utero, various types of sexual activity in the animal world, and some cultures that are more welcoming to non-gender-conforming people than the West is. I suppose this is all information that would be useful to someone with no knowledge of intersex issues, but it doesn’t offer much more than, say, a trip to Wikipedia.

So is this book a useful introduction? On the one hand, any media that challenges harmful and nonsensical ideas about sex must be at least somewhat useful. On the other hand, I wonder if this book’s portrayal of intersex people and their bodies does more harm than good. It fails to make a convincing case for why people with non-conforming bodies don’t need to be “fixed,” but does make sure that non-intersex readers know all the steps that go into constructing a penis. I commend Callahan’s goal of educating readers about a widely misunderstood range of anatomies – but this book never quite gets there.

Coming up when I get my life back: food justice, Wal-Mart, and Merilyn French!

The book is traumatic with a capital, bold T. At one part about 1/3 of the way thru, I threw the book down in disgust and decided I was done. You are warned.

Impossible Motherhood by Irene Vilar has received a lot of press and been a topic of debate on many a listserv due to the subtitle "Testimony of an Abortion Addict." When I first found out about this book my first thought was "Oh shit." Many people, including Vilar, believe that this book will be used by anti-abortion activists as proof of women using abortion as birth control and thus a reason for the procedure to be banned outright.

But if you read Impossible Motherhood, you'll soon discover that abortion is the hook not the heart of the story. Rather you find a sad story of a young woman thrust into an adult world and quickly found herself in a situation most of us would probably fall apart in as well. Depression soon engulfed her life, althou it was most likely merely lurking in Vilar's life after her mother's suicide.

Her 15 abortions didn't cause her depression, rather just like a 2008 American Psychological Association task force found, abortion can exacerbate depression that is already present in a woman's life. It was more of a symptom of her out of control life rather than a catalyst. And that is important to keep in mind.

While Vilar's life is more dramatic than most reality shows and it sometimes hard to believe, it does make you stop and wonder what you would do in her situations, especially as each abortion occurs.  She falls in love with a bully 34 years older than her who "enlightens" her that children and family weigh you down, so a free and independent woman must remain child-free and thus is her excuse for multiple abortions.

Interestingly Vilar claims the label of feminist. She reads feminist authors and talks about them. She finds some strength in them, but talks about how feminism had no answer for her. And honestly I believe she is correct.

What I took away from this book was that while so many of us will fight to the death for abortion rights, many of us would shun Vilar from the movement due to having 15 abortions. She turns to the same people in her life. Would you stand by her abortion after abortion? I honestly don't know. One or two we can forgive* support, but after that many of us start to blame the woman for not taking care of themselves, not protecting themselves, etc.

Another interesting aspect of this book is that this is Vilar's second memoir to cover the years she spent with her ex-husband (the bully). In her first, she talks says it was the happiest time of her life. Obviously in this one she takes a difference view of her marriage. With the number of memoirs being written by younger people (anyone under 50, I'd say) I think there is a lot that could change. Perhaps not as dramatic as Vilar, but think about how you looked at your 20s at age 30 then perhaps 10, 20 years later.

Do I think you should read this book? I'm not sure. It made me think and made me furious. The abuse she suffered in her marriage is what sticks with me far more than her abortions.

Politically you should read this book because I believe it makes a great case of why abortion can't be stopped by legality, if a woman wants one, she will get one. I also think the anti's will use this book and we should be aware of what Vilar actually says.

If you get a copy, please get one thru an indie bookstore or Powells.com.

Fellow Girl w/Pen writer, Allison McCarthy, wrote a review too. 

If you have read this book and would be interested in an online chat or email discussion about the book, please leave your info in comments. A lot of us are conflicted about the book and a few of us have discussed this idea. Thanks!

Disclaimer: The only payment I received for this review was the copy of the book.  

* Read my comments to see why I changed this word.