The XX Factor: What women really think.

David Grann's Chilling Story of a Wrongful Execution

In a blockbuster New Yorker piece this week, David Grann persuasively demonstrates that in 2004, Texas executed an innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham. It is chilling reading. Whatever you think about the death penalty, you can't want it to misfire. So how did we get here, to a legal regime in which a junk-science arson investigation was never questioned by indifferent defense lawyers, as Grann portrays them, nor by unsympathetic judges, parole board members, and Texas Governor Rick Perrry's office? ... (Read more in DoubleX)

Is Feminism More Than a Label?

Emily and Jessica,

I was very interested in reading Sandra O'Connor's interview in the New York Times Magazine, and I wish she had elaborated more on why she doesn't call herself a feminist. I've never been comfortable identifying as a feminist, but neither do I like the implication that I'm anti-feminist. To me, abortion has always been something of a litmus-test on that front. If being anti-abortion means I can't be part of the club, well, so be it.

But it goes beyond that. Sure, I want women to have equal pay and equal access to education and jobs, and protection from violence and domestic abuse. Yet I still end up with the nagging feeling that feminists talk about women having more opportunities and choices available to them, but are mostly supportive only of those who make the "right" choices—having a career, for example—or focus on the right priorities. (I get a hint of this from Jessica's post, when she says that the pro-life movement and even the cardio-striptease phenomenon have "co-opted the language of empowerment and feminism.") The quest for universal day care, for example, ignores the fact that providing such programs for working families will doubtlessly punish with a higher tax burden those single-income families in which women have chosen to stay at home to raise the kids.

Sandra Day and Feminist Foils

Emily, I've been mulling over your question all morning: Does it matter that Sandra Day O'Connor won't call herself a feminist? My gut instinct is that actions speak louder than words, and as a feminist I would vastly prefer better work policies for women than widespread embrace of the term. But I suspect that O'Connor's reticence to self-identify as a feminist is for different reasons than later generations' reaction to the word.

Though you say that Sarah Palin doesn't call herself a feminist, she actually flip-flopped on the matter: She initially called herself a feminist to Katie Couric but refused to label herself when interviewed by Brian Williams. She's even a member of a organization called Feminists for Life. I suspect that deep down, Sarah Palin does think of herself as a feminist, and that's precisely why I think women of later generations may be uncomfortable with the term: Its meaning has become completely muddled.

So many things have co-opted the language of empowerment and feminism—from the pro-life movement to cardio striptease classes—I wonder if women of generations X and Y are afraid to call themselves feminist because that self-definition is more confusing than illuminating. Sandra Day O'Connor may have been defining herself in opposition to the bra burners, but today's young women don't have such a clear-cut foil.

Sandra Says No