I grew up in the 1970's and my mother was a feminist. As a child I didn't really know what that word meant, but I lived by the example of someone struggling to make her passion, her intellect, her work as important as the men around her.
She graduated top of her high school class, and got a partial scholarship to the University of Illinois for Civil Engineering in the mid 1950's. But her father told her women weren't engineers, and if she wanted him to pay for the other half of college she had to go to a liberal arts school, and work on a degree more appropriate for a woman - like a teacher. So she went to Saint Olaf College, in Northfield Minnesota. At the time, women had a curfew at 10:00pm each evening, and freshman year it was 9:30pm and all the electricity was shut off at 10:00 pm - lights out. She said she used to study after hours in the stairwell by the glow of the exit light. The men had no curfew and never had their lights turned off for them. She became a math and chemistry teacher. She got pregnant in 1965 with me, and was promptly fired, as her contract wasn't renewed because you couldn't be pregnant and teach at the same time. As if seeing a pregnant woman would be the incentive for any hormone happy teenager to want to have sex. And I don't mean to be crass, but it's not like pregnant women are often displayed on the cover of Playboy and Hustler! So she went to graduate school part time. After my sister was born, she was hired back to teach, and she finished up a Masters Degree in Library Science, then became a Media Director for a small school district 45 minutes from home. Because my father was a teacher, he was home most days when we got back from school, and she would get in later in the evening, make dinner and get us to bed.
My mother had two toys you couldn't play with as a child. Toy guns and Barbie. Toy guns - because a gun is a gun. They are used for one purpose - to kill people, not ever in her mind something that should be considered a toy. Barbie because well, let me demonstrate. (Kaaren pulled up a Barbie doll for demonstration purposes) Here's Barbie. Say hi to these nice folks out there. "Hi nice folks!" Let's see if Barbie can stand up by herself. Oh my, she can't! Because her feet are permanently molded to stand on her tip toes as if she is wearing high heels, and my mother reasoned that if a doll that is supposed to represent a woman couldn't stand up on her own two feet by herself, then it was a poor model for a child to grow up with as an icon of a woman's strength and possibility. Hence, no Barbie.
When I was in middle school, she bought a Triumph Spitfire, a 2 person, 5 speed, British sports car that she plugged it in all winter in order to start. My friend's mothers drove station wagons, and picked them up from after-school activities. My mother drove this sports car, where you felt like your rear-end was dragging on the ground when you took a spin with her, and we were expected to walk home from after-school activities. After all it was only seven or eight blocks, and you've got feet, that's what they're for - walking. Fostering independence was revered as a nurturing quality in my family.
She moved up again, now to district media director at a larger school district with eighteen administrators in the district and she the only woman. I'll never forget in sixth grade sitting on the front porch one July evening as my parents shared openly her new boss's latest proposition. It was a doozey. He had told her she had to either sleep with him, or he would make it incredibly difficult to stay in her new position. She asked around her female staff, had they had a similar experience? You bet, and they complained too, but in the past to a male administrator who hadn't made it into a big deal. Here was their chance to do something. My folks weren't confused about what to do, but rather whom my mother could trust. Ultimately she went to the superintendent, and it turns out this was the straw that broke the camel's back for the superintendent. Her boss lost his job, thanks in large part to my mother and other vocal women for their ability to articulate an egregious act of discrimination and harassment. Mind you, sexual harassment was not covered under the law at this time.
In two years she was recruited to become the Department of Education Director of Media Services for the State of Wisconsin. Four years later she was recruited by Apple Computers as an Education Consultant where she stayed for seventeen years until she retired two years ago.
My mother was a feminist. She broke ground for my sister and me, and I never ever had the feeling that I couldn't do what I wanted to do if I applied myself. (Well okay, that's a lie, because I stink at math and science. So yes, even I applied myself. I was barely going to pass geometry.) But as far as thinking about a career choice that capitalized on my strengths, a career heavily dominated by males? You bet, go for it. I wasn't ever told that I couldn't do it. As a child I had never met a female minister, and it wasn't until I went to seminary myself that I met my first female pastor. Am I grateful to my mother for her hard work, for her example? I certainly am. Because of her I didn't question that if I applied myself, I could do something.
Which is why I'm shocked as an adult, that feminism gets such a bad rap. When polled, young women and men wouldn't call themselves feminists if it were the last label they had to associate themselves with. As one woman named Martha wrote lately, "I completely abhor the fact that many people do not understand what it means to be a feminist. Immediately they think you are a man-hating, hairy, bitter hag."
Kristen-Rowe Finkbeiner recently wrote the book, The F Word - Feminism in Jeopardy. She says, "Women's magazines jokingly say the f-word when referring to feminism and the word is often hurled in insults on talk radio; think 'feminazi.'" That's a lot of flack for a word that simply means the belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.
When I go back through all the waves of feminism, it seems that feminism has never gotten a good rap. During the first wave of feminism, the suffragette movement, women were pushing for property rights and the right to vote. Rebecca West opined in 1913, "People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute."
During the second wave, spurred on in the 1960's and brought to life in the 1970's, the issues were equal treatment under the law, with respect to reproductive choice and professional advancement. The jokes were around differentiating oneself from the opposite sex, like, "If Moses had been a woman she would have asked for directions and been in Israel in a week." And Gloria Steinem, who in her comment sums up the fortitude it took to make it in a man's world with: "Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry."
Which gets me to the third wave so to speak, which I've always thought I was part of. My momma got me to believe in myself. To empower myself, to fight for my own equality and freedom, and to believe in my daughters the same way my mother believed in me. But the question that has come to mind this last week is, "Is this feminism?" I have always thought of myself as a feminist, but does that alone let me carry the title feminist?
Because here's the hitch for me: In going over the first and second wave, what allowed someone to claim the distinction of feminist was, someone who fought for women's issues, not just someone who stuck up for herself. The focus was on equality for all women, not just a woman who fights for her own equality. In other words, I'm still wrestling with this. The heretical question that comes to my mind is, "Have feminists become selfish?" You heard me, selfish. If you look to popular writing right now from young, bold, educated women, the discourse has changed. As one writer states, "the discussion has moved from the dissection of the world around us to the dissection of the worlds within us- to the guilt that plagues women and the psychological expectations that hold us back." A good example of this is a new book - a collection of essays by various American women writers, called, The Bitch in the House. As one commentary writes, "This book lifts the lid on the ways that women are still shouting, striving and bellyaching and raging in order to try to get men to take their responsibilities at home at all seriously."
Again, I'm asking a heretical question, I know, but has feminism become selfish? I'm asking myself that too, have I become a selfish feminist? Because this is what privileged, educated, smart, empowered women of the West have come up with as the biggest problem that plagues them: their personal fight with their husbands-- who takes out the trash, and puts the kids to bed, and does the dishes kind of thing. Okay, I don't mean to minimize this whole problem, but if you step back and look at the status of women in the world, what with the sex slave trade, female genital mutilation, laws in Iran where men can divorce women but women can't divorce men, where men automatically get custody of children, where working class poor women in our city receive poverty level wages, and don't have adequate childcare or health insurance, a book about how upper and middle class women have to make dinner more often than their husband, is currently being praised as the issue of our time- as the modern day feminist question? Come on! Do we really as Western women seriously want to proudly give that book to non-middle class educated women in the world, those who have been victims of human sex trafficking, female slave trades, who are struggling to make ends meet by working two jobs as a single mom, or the millions of women in India who are widows left to live in houses of poverty still because they are considered inhuman after their spouses die? Do we?
Okay, so here it is, I don't usually give sermons to part of our congregation, and you men can listen in but this is for the women here. Shame on us. Shame on us. How did we, as WOMEN let feminism, arguably one of the most powerful inspiring movements in human history, devolve from upholding human rights to arguments over household equality? We've done a spiritual wrong to our sisters in this world, in this country, in this city. We've allowed ourselves to slide from other-centeredness, from feminism as an upholder of human rights, to a self-centeredness of upholding middle class women's angst. We have - in the traditional sense of the word - sinned. Which I know you're all freaking out right now that I'm saying that, but I mean sinned in the Hebrew sense, meaning to miss the mark.
I remember someone once saying, "Where did all the hippies go?", and someone once replied by saying, "They became middle class and comfortable - they let comfort buy out their radical ideas." So I'm asking, do we want to be known as middle class women who were bought off by our comfort? Do we really want that? I think it's a question we have to ask. Because it's happening to us lovely women, it's happening. For the sake of the woman on the wall out there, (pointing to the Susan B. Anthony lounge), and the women who are going to come after us, we've got to ask the question, do we want to be known as middle class women who were bought off by our comfort?
It says something to me that it has only been in the last year that I have ever truly felt like a feminist in my life. Doing the work with fellow clergy helping to organize hard working, mostly women of color, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Hearing their stories of how difficult it is to not be able to provide for your children on a poverty level job, or have good childcare, or be worried any of their children will get sick because you make too much to qualify for state funded health care and can't afford what your employers health coverage charges, has made me a feminist, a believer in the right to use that word, as an upholder, and lover of human rights all over again.
Three weeks ago, I said to Scott, on one of my "I'm wiped out" days, "Oh, geez, I want to start a small group next year for working moms. We could have coffee first or something, and talk about how to balance motherhood and work, a place and time to complain and regroup." And now I'm thinking starting a working mothers support group - no, no way. We don't need more coffee and a chance to complain about how we don't get to the gym as often as we would like club. Instead, I want an angry woman's club. I want you and me ticked off that our people, women of the world, or our city, of our generations, are living without the things we would be up in arms about if we didn't have. I want you and me focused on helping poor women at the hotel, not just feel empowered, but get empowered. That the safety and health and love of their children is your concern too. Because that, my friends, is what feminism should do. I want us to form a coalition of angry women for human rights.
What I'm saying this morning, and gentlemen, you can listen again if you like, is that our task as religious people is not just to feel empowered, but to use our power.
Friday night, we had most of these new members over to our house. Now that they were becoming members the questions we would like to ask of them is different than when they first came. "Now as a member, as an owner," we asked them, "three years from now, if you were talking to a friend or coworker, and said, 'My church is doing this great thing. It is. . .' what would it be?" A number of them said they wanted the church to be known as a place that gets things done, that has made a big difference, famous, as radical. . .in other words though they didn't use the word, they were talking about being a powerful church. So maybe this is the other thing that may be heretical, but why don't we wrestle with it a little bit? It's sort of heretical to say that we want to be powerful, but especially when we are talking about feminism and making a difference in people's lives, heck YES! I want this place to be powerful, to help people obtain those basic human rights in their life. A living wage, childcare, healthcare. And if we can use our power as a community, as a church, as a collective group of folks to bring people into their fullest capacity, into vibrant alive people, with our power, what on earth is holding us back from doing it?
Recently, I was looking over the last couple of my sermons, and I realize that the things I've gone off about from this pulpit the last couple of times, it could easily be seen as a lot of nagging or feeling guilty for not doing more. And I don't want you to leave this sanctuary this morning, or a newcomer to feel like, geez, I'm not doing enough. Let me assure you this is guilt-free work, this work with the hotel, I'm doing it because it is an amazing adventure. It is truly an amazing adventure to make other people's lives come alive, and that is what is at the core of this work. You can't tell me that Susan B. Anthony at the end of her life didn't feel exhausted, tired, angry that others weren't helping or some were just plain stubborn and selfish, but she right along side of that must have felt like she was on a great ride! I don't think she ever felt that her efforts were trivial, that her life didn't have worth, or that all the energy and courage she put into her work, ultimately wasn't an awesome privilege to have lived that way.
So here it is, I am asking you dear charming ladies that I love so much, to join me in a coalition of Angry Outraged Women for Justice. I'll pay for the T-shirts for us to wear that say, "Angry Outraged Women for Justice." When you show up at a rally or protest or leafleting or sign a petition for the hotel workers, (and if any men want to come along as feminists for human rights with the hotel workers, if you sign up today, I'll make you all t-shirts that say, "I'm with her!"), I want us, nay I need us as a church, as people of faith, as other-centered people rather than self-centered people, to join together, in working for these basic human rights to claim feminism as ours once again. To take it back from the strongholds of middle class comfort, and give it some vim and vigor and be angry once again, remembering that our sisters, that the women of the world, need our passion, our voices, our faith, our outrage and our love. They need us united for their rights. I'm taking orders today. And remember, as the slogan says, "The t-shirt is free, the experience - invaluable."
Blessed Be!
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