I Can't Take Any More Misogyny

I am trying to raise two girls here and it hasn’t been getting any easier lately. I am trying to raise young women who make their own choices and take responsibility for them, young women who can accomplish anything they set their minds to, happy, healthy, well-adjusted young women. So all of the ugly misogyny in the news lately is freaking me out.


While I am trying to tell my daughters that they can do anything they can dream, a presidential candidate is arguing publicly that they should not be allowed access to birth control. Birth control. We are not talking about late term abortion, or teenage sex, or anything that used to be controversial. They are being told that their future should be limited by their fertility and what kills me about this is that he just won primaries in three states. 20-ish years ago, when I was in high school, we never thought of contraception as anything that was in danger. It was just understood that a woman had the right to decide whether or not to conceive and that it was good for families not have more children than they could afford. These were evangelical Christians who understood that contraception was a net social benefit. I never imagined we would be having this argument.

On top of the normal fat-shaming and slut-shaming that happens every day in our society, what else has been going in misogyny lately? Well, I’ve read about people being unhappy that women breast feed in church, as if choosing to feed your child means you should be shut out of society. On the other hand, if women bottle feed, they are attacked from the other side for being selfish and not putting their baby’s health first.

A commentator on Fox News recently said that women should expect to be raped if they join the military. She criticized feminists who complain about “too much rape”. I would like to ask her what exactly would the right amount of rape be? Ladies, if you bravely decide to service your country and risk your life, expect that rape is just part of the package. What happened to support the troops?

We have all read about the Susan G. Komen foundation being pressured into dropping, and then restoring, funding to Planned Parenthood. I don’t need to cover it here. But Planned Parenthood continued to be a target because they make it possible for women to have sex, and that is bad.

Abortion rights are being systematically attacked all over the country. In these attacks women are continually portrayed as slutty, selfish, and stupid creatures who couldn’t possibly make a good decision without an authority figure helping her.

The Grammys decided that beating your girlfriend into the hospital doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be a featured performer. At my house, we turned off the volume while Chris Brown performed and discussed domestic violence. Yes, it was a teachable moment, but what we saw was that one person’s safety is less important than another person’s fame.

Today women were excluded from congressional testimony on the new federally-mandated contraception coverage. Apparently the subject at hand was religious rights, not reproductive ones.

I can’t take much more of this. My daughters’ bodies are not political footballs; they are their lives. I am more sick than I can express of the politicization of the health care of half of the population.

All of this, and more, is poison to the futures of young women. For every lesson their father and I teach them that they have as much value as any man, there are counter-lessons like these. They are being told that they need to be sexy, but not too sexy; independent, but not too independent; that they bring their problems on themselves; and that most of all, they are not to be trusted. These are not the family values I am trying to teach.

In Defense of Pink

For one reason or another, the idea of gender was a major theme for me last year. One result of this is that I am defending something I never thought I would.


I am defending pink.

Between the video of the adorable girl criticizing the gendering of toys and the outrage over new Lego for girls it seems like the internet has blown up lately talking about toys for girls. I could spend all day linking to it all, or I could just let you Google it – there is a lot out there. I used to be in the same boat as these critics. I grew up a tomboy and my lust for Star Wars action figures instead of dolls was intense. I hated it when people tried to define my femaleness with traditional femininity. It did not fit me.

While pregnant with my first daughter I put a lot of thought into how I would raise a girl, unconstrained by social expectations of girliness. I was the parent who insisted on gender neutral clothing & toys. Barbie was absolutely forbidden. I ended up with an older daughter who almost totally eschews traditional feminine trappings. Aaaaand then we had daughter number two who is a frilly femme from her waist-length hair to her sparkly blue toenails. No amount of gender neutral propaganda is going to make this child not want to twirl around in lacy dresses and a tiara. And here is the thing – that should never be my goal.

I support gender neutral toys, but I no longer support the ghettoizing of pink ones. When we tell children that pink toys are bad, we tell them that femininity is bad. Girls and women should never be locked into gender stereotypes, but they also should not be denied their true selves if that self feels girly*. We ought not to tell children of either gender that girls cannot be chemists, but we also should not tell them they cannot be fashion designers. In an effort to support telling girls they can be whatever they want and make progress in traditionally male domains, I believe some feminists are painting femininity in a negative light.

One of the things I have come to realize in the past year is that my dislike of the color pink, and various other traditional feminine traits and activities are really my own unconscious internalized misogyny. That is painful to type, because I don’t want it to be true. When I go out of my way to make sure that people realize that I don’t do X, like other women, what I am really saying is that they way women do things is not as good as the way men to them. I’m saying I’m better than other women because I act more masculine. I am not OK with that. I am also finding that the older I get the more comfortable I get with my own femininity – I could not have written this post at 20.

I love my t-shirt & blue jeans daughter and my party dress diva daughter without any desire to make either one more like the other. I honor their true selves. I only hope I do them justice as they grow into amazing young women – with pink or without.



*I’m not ignoring the fact that these issues also apply to boys and transgendered people. I don’t feel as qualified to speak to that. Those issues are real and valid, but they are not the subject of this post.

What Are We Hoping For in Iran?

May I be cynical for a moment?

My heart and hopes are with the protesters in Iran. I truly hope they will achieve a real change. Much thanks to Bill Baar for his coverage of the protests. I found myself getting caught up in the fervor of hope. We've all been hoping for years to see dramatic change in the politics and individual freedoms in Iran.

But what are we really hoping for here? Thousands of people are taking to the streets demanding change, but what will they really get? The leaders of the protest movement, Mousavi and Rafsanjani, were part of the Islamic revolution of 1979. These are not radicals or feminists in spite of Mousavi's impressive wife. Are these Iranians putting their lives on the line just so that they can wear colored veils instead of black? Will homosexuals still be executed? Will there be freedom of worship for religious minorities, or a free press?

I really want to get swept away in the beauty and passion of it all. The pictures of courageous young women shouting in the streets with their hair showing under their veils is inspiring and sobering all at the same time. It will just be too heart breaking for words if all of this courage and effort is just to bring about a slightly less repressive society for all of them.

Probably nobody know how all of this will end and I truly hope for the best. I want Iranian people to be able to live their lives in freedom and fulfillment. I want their government to stop threatening the U.S. and Israel. I just don't want all of the hopes of a whole generation of Iranians to be dashed if they wake up to find a their have marched and sacrificed for a marginally better leadership.

I make no claims to be an expert on Iran so feel free to straighten me out if I am way off target. It might even make me feel better.