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The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...
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As if Emily's article hadn't left me t appalled enough about South Dakota's Orwellian new abortion "disclosure" law, I actually clicked over to read the 8th circuit's appalling decision. Fortunately, no one else was in the office -- everyone's sensibly headed out for the July 4th holiday -- so they couldn't hear the astonished and foul language erupting from my corner. Let me add some thoughts to what Dana has been saying. First, I have trouble believing that any female in the country has failed to think about what's happening in her tummy (to use the technical term) when she's pregnant. I remember imagining it when I was in grade school, putting my hands on my tummy just like my mother did, and thinking about something growing in there. Maybe I was an unusually imaginative child, but every girl knows the story: that collection of rapidly dividing cells could become a human being if not stopped. That's the whole point of getting an abortion: to prevent that cluster of cells from becoming an actual person who is your responsibility. It is insanely paternalistic to suggest that girls and women haven't considered what they are doing--especially, as Dana suggests, if they must make the 350 mile drive to the clinic. Second point: that 350-mile drive. Rachael, to me, the point of noting that distance isn't to decide whether or not this dearth of full ob/gyn health clinics in the state is an evil conspiracy, or a consequence of the harsh anti-abortion policies and rhetoric of the past 30 years, or just a neutral fact. The point is that a lot of thought and planning goes into making that trip, and into pulling together the gas money and funds to pay for the procedure. Third point: To force doctors to mouth nonsense language that they flatly can't believe about a blastocyst being a human being, or about unlikely and unproven possible consequences--well, I don't think I can finish that sentence. It's appalling. The very fact that the law must mandate such statements reminds you that there is a furious national debate over precisely this question. Which tells you outright that the 8th circuit was on crack when it said there isn't a free speech issue here: the government is forcing doctors to mouth political beliefs that they do not agree with. What's worse is that the 8th Circuit says that a court shouldn't easily overrule duly elected representatives. Well, yes--except when the government is trying to violate an individual's basic rights. As it is trying to do here. Isn't that why we have a Bill of Rights and constitutional review: to protect the individual from the overreaching state?
Fourth, the dearth of abortion services IS a consequence of the harsh rhetoric, et al., of the past 30 years. Why doesn't every ob/gyn offer this surgery? Wouldn't they all, if they'd
seen the deaths and maimings of women that came before Roe, and could
see that legal, medically supervised abortion is a lifesaving procedure? Yes, I am writing this even though, for decades, I have had zero risk of accidental pregnancy. (It always used to be fun to answer a new doctor's or nurse's questions: "Are you sexually active?" Yes. "What contraception method do you use?" None. Their doubletakes were very amusing.) But I have friends, sisters, cousins who need to control their own sexuality and fertility. And I care about women being able to have a say about what happens inside their own organs.
I realize that I am aiming now into basic disagreement territory, so I will stop. Besides, it's time to start celebrating the July 4th weekend.
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Dana,
Even though we sit on opposite sides of the abortion debate, I am also uneasy with South Dakota's law compelling abortion doctors to tell women that they are terminating the "the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being." There are a million and one better ways to reduce the number of abortions, from better sex education and better access to birth control to charities who work tirelessly to support women who choose to keep their child or keep the pregnancy and give the child up for adoption. And while I do think pre-operative counseling for women seeking abortion is beneficial and would support laws mandating such counseling (it seems like some in the pro-choice movement are acknowledging the emotional and psychological difficulties that some women who choose abortion face, as there are pro-choice groups springing up that offer counseling to women post-abortion), this particular law seems unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds.
But I'd like to address another part of your original post. The fact that there is only one abortion clinic in South Dakota is not that remarkable and I'm guessing has little to do with the state's abortion laws. South Dakota's population hovers below 800,000. North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming—states with similarly huge square mileage and tiny populations—also have a single abortion clinic each, at least according to Abortion.com. For the Dakotas, at least, it's been that way since the late 1980s. Such a lack of services isn't limited to abortion providers. Any kind of medical specialist could be a half-day's drive away, depending on where you live. An ob-gyn can be an hour or more away. You might find the dearth of abortion providers unfortunate, but it's not a conspiracy.
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But the point, Melinda, of my hypothetical story about the pregnant woman in South Dakota is that neither she nor her doctors necessarily hold the belief that abortion is the taking of a life. The doctors who require her to sign aren't "pointing out" that there's "a person in there" (or "a human being," in the carefully parsed words of the bill). They're being compelled by the state to go through the motions of simulating that belief, which, I'm sorry, is a Stalinesque absurdity that serves no purpose I can see besides terrorizing that individual patient and driving a wedge into Roe v. Wade nationwide. Doctors in South Dakota, or anywhere else, who are morally opposed to abortion have an option: They can work in a practice that doesn't offer the procedure. In fact, that's what the vast majority of women's health practitioners in South Dakota already do. But for women seeking what is still, whatever one's personal beliefs about it, a legal medical procedure, the options in South Dakota (and if copycat legislation has its way, elsewhere as well) are rapidly narrowing.
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I agree with Will Saletan that it is an abomination that the late Leona Helmsley wished her potentially $8 billion foundation to go entirely to the dogs. Uber-narcissist Helmsley left one of her largest personal bequests, $12 million, to her badly behaved (surprise!) Maltese dog, Trouble, an amount cut to $2 million by the judge overseeing the case. Looking at the photo of Helmsley's taut, rotten face cuddled up to Trouble, the only creature on earth who could bear the sight of her, fills one with faint longings for the return of Marxism. Helmsley's newly revealed preference for her foundation's mission does not have legal standing, so let's hope the trustees ignore it completely. How much better if they decide to do something useful with the money, follow Warren Buffett's lead, and give the pile to the Gates Foundation. If they do honor their benefactor's wishes, be prepared to see that the best-endowed professorship in the country is the veterinary school that establishes the Leona Helmsley Chair in Canine Anal Gland Impaction.
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Actually, Dana, I am a big fan of moral bullying, and wish it had been more effectively used to keep us out of Iraq. I'm hopeful that eventually, through better moral bullying, we will join other civilized nations in outlawing capital punishment. And it is only by building a moral consensus - bullying, if you prefer - that we'll ever see a real reduction in the number of abortions performed in this country every year. I'm not so sure I approve of the particulars of the law Emily wrote about; if the evidence is iffy on whether having an abortion is any more likely to lead to depression than giving birth is, for example, then doctors obviously shouldn't pretend otherwise. But as to whether they are being "forced to lie'' when they point out that there's a person in there, we will never agree. I get that if you don't see an abortion as the taking of a life, you'll see this exercise as offensive. But if you did see it that way, why would you blanch? (You'd still expect doctors to behave with compassion -- and if these are the same doctors who perform abortions, why wouldn't they?) But why would people who sincerely feel lives are at stake think, "Darn, I'd like a shot at saving those lives, if only I didn't have to go so far as to make women read a piece of paper and then sign it; that I will not do!'
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Emily’s piece about the new abortion bill set to go into effect in South Dakota has me madder and sadder than anything I’ve read in some time. (Actually, the last thing that got me into this state was also in Slate: In Steven Greenhouse’s story about the scarcity of vacation time in America, he mentions that the United States is one of four countries in the world without required paid maternity leave. The other three are Swaziland, Liberia, and Papua New Guinea.)
But back to South Dakota. Imagine you live there—in Rapid City, say—and you want an abortion. Who knows why? Maybe you’ve been raped; maybe you’re in an abusive relationship with a partner on whom you’re financially dependent; maybe you’re only 15. Or maybe, for reasons that are nobody’s business, you just really don’t want to have a baby right now. The point is, you need, with some urgency, to schedule a medical procedure that’s been legal in this country for 35 years.
So you get in your car, if you’re lucky enough to have one, and drive 350 miles to Sioux Falls, where the state’s lone abortion clinic is located (let me repeat that: a state with an area of 77,121 square miles has only one clinic that will perform abortions). How you get time off work to make this six-hour-each-way drive, what you tell your family about where you’re going, or how you get past the protesters screaming outside the clinic is not my concern here. No, I’m thinking of the moment when, filling out the paperwork for a procedure that (like many medical events in life) may already have you ambivalent, worried, and scared, you’re asked to sign a statement attesting that what you’re about to do will “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” To translate: We’ll help you terminate that pregnancy right away, little lady—as soon as you admit in writing that you’re a murderer.
The trauma induced by this forced confession probably will scare a few women out of the clinic (hell, all it took for Juno was an ugly waiting room), and thus slightly increase the population of South Dakota. But it seems incredible that the state legislature, with its Justice Kennedy-inspired concern for the “depression” and “increased suicidal ideation” that abortion supposedly brings about, haven’t considered the harm that might come as a result of being forced to sign such a document (in the presence of a doctor who, as Emily points out, is also being legally compelled to lie about his or her beliefs). I’d hope that even those opposed to abortion, whether for themselves or as a matter of public policy, would blanch at the idea of such state-sponsored moral bullying.
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 Pixar’s latest kiddie masterpiece, Wall-E, did some massive damage at the box office on its opening weekend. As A.O. Scott recently noted in a New York Times essay about Kit Kittredge (watch this space for more on that film), Pixar has yet to build a movie around a girl protagonist. But Wall-E does prominently feature a pretty bad-ass lady: Wall-E’s crush object, Eve, a sleekly minimalist commando-bot with an itchy trigger finger. What kind of girl is Eve? One XX Factor-er wondered whether Pixar had intentionally made Eve beautiful but dangerous. The hapless Wall-E “is attracted to her,” she noted, “yet fears she will destroy him or, at the very least, come to his house and mess up his stuff.” Is Eve some kind of femme fatale? (Or, given the fact that she looks like a floor model from a Japanese tech show, is she an electronic dragon lady?) I, for one, found Eve’s wanton destructiveness hilarious, and it occurred to me that she actually evokes a specifically male comic archetype—the powerful brute who can’t control his own strength—which I think makes her even funnier, not to mention a little subversive. In other words, I think she’s more Small Wonder than Angelina Jolie.
Eve also fits into another classic comedy narrative: the chic, competent career woman who falls for a bumbling but sweethearted schlub. Do you think Judd Apatow got a consulting credit for that?
The more I thought about it, though, what Eve reminded me of most was the world’s first Eve—in particular, the vision of her found in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Like her namesake, robot Eve’s initial design objective is to incubate the first stirrings of life; it’s no coincidence that she’s shaped like an egg. And the biblical Eve was pretty destructive in her own right. (“Oh, honey, about that whole ‘ruining our chances at immortality and losing God’s everlasting favor’ thing: Totally my bad.”) But even more significant in my eyes, both Pixar’s film and Milton’s poem are about the importance of finding a true partner and companion. The famous last image of Paradise Lost shows Adam and Eve standing outside the gates of Eden; as they prepare to begin a brand new life in a brand new world, they take hold of each other’s hands. If you saw Wall-E, you know that it’s pretty much a 100-minute pantomime about a boy robot trying to hold hands with an oblivious girl robot—before they go repopulate the Earth. The good stories never change, I guess.
Also in Slate, read Dana Stevens' review of Wall-E and see what critics are saying about the new Pixar film in Slate V's Summary Judgment.
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The whole Yearning for Zion case left me creeped out. The feminist in me finds polygamy in general a little creepy, but even more so when young women—girls even—are married off to more powerful older men. The mother in me hates the way they kick out the boys to make the numbers work, and I'm saddened by stories that the children apparently grow up without toys or anything else that might inspire their imagination. But the civil libertarian in me also gets creeped out when the state oversteps its bounds and removes children from loving homes on grounds of child abuse wherein the "abuse," it turns out, is largely having a weird religion.
So this story from the Salt Lake Tribune (via the Drudge Report) brought a smile to my face. The hundreds of children who were taken from the YFZ ranch have been returned to their mothers, but the mothers have been advised not to return to the ranch. They are renting apartments and trying to feed their families, and—contrary to one of the arguments against polygamy, that it increases the welfare roles—the women are trying to make it on their own. So some of them have launched a Web site to sell the modest garb that their sect requires. One of the mothers is quoted in the story thusly: "They accuse us of [relying] on welfare, but that's untrue. We like to be busy and learn to meet our needs—out of ashes growing lilies."
I'm still creeped out by the FLDS, and I probably will stick to Old Navy when I need to stock up on kids' clothes, but I admire the heck out of these women for trying to make a go of it in a way that allows them to be true to themselves.
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I'm struck by this debate because in many ways it perfectly encapsulates something I've been feeling lately. As a 20-year-old girl (woman?!) who aspires to a career as a conservative journalist, I find myself agonizing over where I'll find my place professionally.
I've spent several summers working in journalism, and I've always thought it's better to be a conservative in a liberal pool than to hole myself away with a bunch of neoconservatives. But sometimes I feel like I don't get credit for that. I've found that at many news outlets, conservatives are written off as either stupid or delusional. Smart conservatives tend to be regarded as interesting conversation pieces. Experiences such as those have me toying with the idea of dyeing my hair a few shades blonder and throwing myself into a career as the next Ann Coulter.
Emily may be right that there's more immediate glory for women who play "truth-teller" against feminist tenets. My own critics would probably label me that way, and in truth, in my short writing career as a college undergraduate, I probably have gained more attention than I otherwise would have because of my willingness to bash one popular feminist cause or another. Still, I like to think that I'm taking those stands because I'm searching for intellectual clarity, not because I like attention. (On a related note, I won't even tackle the Larry Summers reference of earlier posts, because then we could be here awhile.)
Suffice it to say that I worry every day that I could fall into the peroxide trap of some of the Fox News extremists (though those women do dress well). Maybe other conservative women are not as idealistic as I am, but I think we might need to cut them some slack, "ka-ching, ka-ching" and all. If we don't, there really is nothing keeping these new conservative voices from diving into the right-wing deep end—yes, I acknowledge there is a very troubling conservative deep end. Once that has happened, the landscape of media could become even more polarized than it is now and even less effective. And that's a problem I'm eager to avoid.
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I'm saying, Emily, that it's not acceptable, much less a Fast Pass, to question feminist dogma on choice within the ranks of "mainstream media"—though I'm sure there are no shortage of book contracts to be had at Regnery. Until the Times hired Bill Kristol, weren't such voices almost exclusively consigned to conservative outlets? Maybe you're thinking, "Sure, isn't that where they're supposed to be?' (And maybe you're not, though ah, how much easier to win arguments with myself; I also enjoy solitaire Scrabble.) But it does seem to me that that is the one issue on which there is little to no diversity of opinion at news organizations that otherwise try to present all sides.
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Emily, you asked why self-identified feminists like Susan Pinker and LouAnn Brizendine publish books that focus on the differences between men and women. The cynic in me says: The marketplace finds it sexier than more talk about feminist goals that haven't been met yet. (As you pointed out, Brizendine's book was a best-seller.) But to be less simplistic about it: It seems to me that we are at a crux where we think we know more about the brain than ever before. Whether we do or not is perhaps subject to debate—and I really look forward to reading Amanda's series. But all this scientific novelty has resulted in a frenzy of really old activity: the use of new technologies to reaffirm traditional canards about "how women are." (We don't like to take risks, etc.) Whatever the realities of "hard-wired differences," it's kind of astonishing to watch so many columnists and authors use "brain science" to embrace the idea that things are the way they are for a reason.
So in response to your fascinating question, I have to conclude that even for women it's sometimes a relief to imagine that we don't need to set ourselves the task of reinventing the world. That, combined with the fact that there are some studies that show "real" differences, makes for a tempting menu option. Not to mention that sometimes relationships can make everything seem completely oppositional. Hence, the paradigm that men are from Mars; women are from Venus. It's easier than thinking we're all on Pluto and need to do the hard work of getting back to Earth.
A wonderful book that debunks a lot of gender myths is Carol Tavris' The Mismeasure of Women. I read it a few summers back, and parts of it are a bit outdated now. But I still recommend it to anyone interested in these questions. Among many other useful exercises, she invites the reader to try to perform a useful thought experiment: Imagine there were a third gender. Men, women, and, say, it. Would we be so focused all the time on construing "difference" as "oppositional"? As she points out, differences between the genders may indeed exist; but as more than one scientist has noted, the differences may pale in comparison to the similiarities.
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Melinda, I think you are tellling me to go have that drink. Actually, I can think of more than two fingers' worth of women journalists who are pro-life, or who I think are, but I'll stipulate that they are relatively few. So what does that prove? That not many pro-life women are drawn to journalism, especially opinion journalism? Or that there are lots of women out there who are being stomped on by the liberal establishment and not enough conservative outlets to house them? I'm not sure I buy the idea of making the pro-choice/pro-life divide stand for feminism more broadly. But is your point that women commentators pay for having conservative views much more often than they're rewarded for that, and that I should welcome the exceptions who stumble through somehow? Because you may well be right about that, though I'm not sure how we'd prove it one way or the other.
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Emily: Ha! Here's a question in answer to your question about whether women who take on feminist orthodoxy are making a wily career move: How many pro-life female journalists do you know?
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Yes, I think it's safe to say that Clark Hoyt doesn't get Maureen Dowd, despite her efforts to explain herself to him (what a fun interview that must have been). Dowd said that she's playing with sexist gender constructs, not aping them. She also defended herself as an equal opportunity offender—she questions Obambi's masculinity as well as Hillary's womanliness, and this makes it all more OK. That works for me, most of the time.
It does drive me crazy, though, when women writers or TV commentators, or whoever, make their name by taking supposedly brave stands against what they've decided are feminist platitudes. I'm not talking about Dowd. The easy-mark offender of late is Charlotte Allen, and sometimes Caitlin Flanagan plays this game; in past days, Ruth Shalit had it nailed, if I remember right.
Today in Slate, Amanda Schaffer has a series that takes on a related breed: two scientists (Louann Brizendine and Susan Pinker) who say they're feminists, have read the literature on sex differences in the brain, and emerged to tell us what they frame as the politically incorrect truth—women really are from Venus and men really are from Mars. Specifically, they say that women have better verbal aptitude, talk more often and use more words, are better at empathizing. Men are better bets to be top mathematicians and scientists, a la Larry Summers, and that's not likely to change as the culture changes. Amanda expertly goes in and takes her own look at the science and finds that Brizendine and Pinker played down the contrary evidence, made various questions seem far more settled than they are, and hype the idea that differences are innate, and fixed, when that may well not be the case. She also interviewed various scientists who said, hey, Pinker and Brizendine made my work stand for a proposition it doesn't stand for.
Amanda has also done some thinking about why the reluctant truth-teller female scientist walks among us so prominently at the moment. (Other than the obvious ka-ching, ka-ching answer: Brizendine's book, which came first, was a best-seller.) That part of the series won't run til next week. In the meantime, any thoughts? Do you think that bashing principles or ideas that feminists hold dear fast-tracks certain women to success? Or am I oversensitive, huffy, and in need of a tall glass of iced tea since it's too early in the day for a drink?
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 I don't know how this escaped my notice, unless maybe it's because I never read anything newspaper ombudsmen (or ombudswomen) have to say, and not only because they are so boring. (With the business model failing, the industry in apparent freefall, staffs shrinking so fast the survivors have to scurry just to keep up on government disinformation, and left and right uniting against the lazy, dull-witted, and otherwise very bad people without whom we would know nothing—nothing!—that is going on in the world, aren't in-house scolds superfluous?) Anyway, as the rest of you doubtless saw, the public editor at the New York Times, Clark Hoyt, called out Maureen Dowd for her supposedly sexist Hillary coverage. Maybe I wouldn't feel this way if I hadn't agreed with every last nasty word of it, but since when does the public editor tell columnists what to think? "Dowd's columns about Clinton's campaign were so loaded with language painting her as a 50-foot woman with a suffocating embrace, a conniving film noir dame and a victim dependent on her husband that they could easily have been listed in that Times article on sexism,'' he wrote. OK, I never read Clark Hoyt, but he never reads Maureen Dowd? (And since she is a woman, does that make Hoyt's opinion of her opinion sexist, too?)
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The Sunday New York Times chronicled the trials and tribulations of women who run businesses and employ their husbands. The piece profiled women who sell backpacks and run temp-services agencies, women who run companies that deliver meals or set up trade-show displays. But somehow they missed my favorite female CEO, Patty Brisben, who runs a sex-toy company in a suburb of Cincinnati.
Brisben's story is your classic Horatio Alger tale. As this Cincinnati Magazine article explains, she married at 17, and her first husband left her because "he wanted to spend his life with someone who was going to be successful." Some years later, having remarried, she started selling sex toys at in-home parties to make some extra cash. Fast forward to the present: Her company, Pure Romance, did $60 million in sales in 2006. Brisben's son is the president, which frees her up to run her foundation focused on women's health, and to do things like sponsor Sex Week at Yale University. The most delicious part, though, is that Brisben allows her first husband—he who thought she wouldn't be successful enough for his liking—to help the company out as an occasional consultant. (Her other ex-husband works for her, too.)
I've never met Brisben, but—confession time—I have been to a Pure Romance party. The sales reps don't speak in clinical terms, but neither do they act like they've just stepped off the set of a porn shoot. The parties are tasteful and discreet, and sex is treated like a normal, important part of a healthy relationship. When Brisben's son sought to buy radio advertising during drive time over the objection of some stations, he explained: "Look, the moms in the minivans are the ones who need the sex toys. They're looking to spice up their relationships." I love that Brisben has made sex toys safe for the soccer-mom set and that she is down-to-earth and magnanimous enough to make it a family business. But most of all I love it that she's succeeded in the same town that resisted Larry Flynt and Hustler for so long.
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In his "Human Nature" blog, Slate's Will Saletan rejoices over the recession's toll on the cosmetic surgery business and expresses horror at the idea that some suckers (social parasites?) still refinance their homes to get cosmetic surgery during economic downturns. Then these vain people justify their ill-gotten boobs and rhinoplasties on the grounds that their plastic surgery was "an investment." Saletan cries foul: "When you can't pay the mortgage, we're supposed to bail you out? And your surgeon calls what you did an 'investment'?"
But isn't that a perfectly reasonable perspective? Sad but apparently true: We live in a society that rewards beauty and punishes ugliness, often using the medium of cold, hard cash. A 2005 Federal Reserve study, for instance, found that attractive people—in all occupations—earned 5 percent more per hour than the physically average, while the ugly earn 9 percent less an hour than everyone else. So say you find yourself, through sheer genetic bad luck, stuck in the low-earning "ugly" category—why shouldn't you decide that putting down $5,000 for a nose job or $2,500 for a "chin augmentation" is a smart long-term investment? If you can go from "ugly" to "average," you've potentially got a lifetime 9 percent income boost right there! Even if you're utterly devoid of vanity, some wisely chosen plastic surgery might be a sound economic decision.
I'll go further: Research suggests that the benefits of physical attractiveness start at birth. Nurses in maternity wards spend more time with the cute babies. And even parents, God help us all, apparently take better care of cute kids than of ugly ones—in a 2005 Canadian study, researchers found that parents with unattractive children often didn't even bother to buckle the little tykes' seat belts. Clearly, parents, if you want your ugly kid to get a fair shake in life, you need to get him or her to a cosmetic surgeon, pronto. And this, comrades, should be our new rallying cry: high-quality, government-subsidized day care; universal preschool; and free pediatric cosmetic surgery on demand!
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 I'm encouraged by the announcement from the Department of Defense yesterday about the nomination of Army Lt. Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody to the position of four-star general. If the Senate confirms her nomination, Dunwoody will be the first woman to attain a status that historically has been achieved through combat jobs, which women are not allowed to hold. What's especially promising about her nomination is the fact that the government lifted its own barrier to recognize her achievements and capabilities by allowing her to circumvent the combat route.
Still, there is plenty of progress left to be made. Only five women have attained the next status beneath Dunwoody's, that of lieutenant general, as CNN reported. Dunwoody's success shows potential, but having one woman at the top does not change the fact that so many others ranking below her have yet to rise up.
I wonder how long it will take for other women in the military to move up the ranks as Dunwoody has over the last 33 years. Her nomination was announced the same day The New York Times reported that women in the military are more likely to suffer under the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, which requires gay members of the military not to reveal their sexual identity. According to the Times article, the percentage of women discharged from the Army last year under that policy increased from 35 percent to 46 percent, although females only make up 14 percent of the Army as a whole. How can women battle gender stereotypes to attain the top positions if many of them are being kicked out due to other types of discrimination?
In an ideal world, Dunwoody's nomination will shatter that glass ceiling for all of her talented female comrades to follow in her wake; in reality, it may take a while for women to be treated equally alongside their male counterparts in the military. Let's hope for the former. And if we reach that goal, perhaps the United States will be ready to reconsider the prospect of a female commander in chief by the 2012 presidential election.
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Kara, go forth and absorb Picasso and Bernini (and then enlighten the rest of us). For my part, I'm sorry I didn't take art history in college. Or music history. In fact I think I'm a cretin. But I also regret, just as much, that I took zero math and as little science as I could get away with. I thought I was following my passions, too, and maybe I was, but now I think of the puzzle-solving part of math, which I like, and wonder if I dropped it for the wrong ie gendered reasons. Melinda, I should have known that if I wrote about reading a novel in the evening I would offer myself up as How Does She Do It poster-woman. From now on I will write only after watching The View and Flight of the Conchords reruns. I think mother-guilt dates from whenever mothers, whether stay-at-home or working, decided that it was no longer OK to tell their kids to run outside to play and not give them another thought until bedtime (or maybe on a good night, dinner). I would hark back fondly to that time except that it was the 1950s.
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While I can't answer Melinda's question of whether the bar for mothers-who-do-it-all was always set so high, as a young twentysomething just starting out in my career, I can see that bar vaulting upward among the women of my own generation. With few glass ceilings remaining, the limits to our professional ambitions seem next to nonexistent. But along with our heightened career expectations comes the decision to try to balance both work and family life. For all the inspirational value of Hillary Clinton's historic campaign, even she got choked up trying to explain how she did it all.
About a year and a half ago, I heard Linda Hirshman speak about her book, Get to Work ... And Get a Life, Before It's Too Late, at the women's college I attended. I remember vividly her assertion that women in college should not waste their time studying subjects such as art history. Now, I was an art history major at a liberal arts college, and among the audience were a number of art majors who had emerged from the print-making and painting studios down the hall to hear Hirshman speak. Needless to say, none of us were thrilled with her advice. We were all passionate about the subjects and challenged and fulfilled by our work. Why should we have felt guilty for pursuing our interests?
With the opportunity in recent years to disprove the stereotypes about women's aptitude (or lack thereof) in math and the hard sciences, I often felt in college that I was letting down women everywhere by taking art and literature courses instead of math and physics. Studying at a women's college, I didn't have to contend with gendered expectations about the classes I should take; test tubes and equations just didn't excite me. Still, Hirshman and others like her made me feel that there were fields into which I should venture simply because they remained unconquered by women. It's taken me some time to realize that this can't be right. Can it? Just because a woman can be an astrophysicist, doesn't mean she ought to be one, and just because female art historians are not venturing into male-only territory doesn't mean they should feel guilty about studying Picasso's cubist paintings or Bernini's sublime sculptures.
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