Feminist Truths

Killing Female Babies in India

2008-06-30T08:47:00.000-07:00

BAGHPAT, INDIA - Six years ago, Sandhya Sharma lived in a mountain village in Himachal Pradesh, the land of snowy mountains that is nestled in the western Himalayan range.

Sharma, 26, had never left her village before she was brought here, to the Indo-Gangetic plains of Uttar Pradesh, India's most densely populated state, married to a man whose language and culture were unknown to her.

Sharma talked about the deep isolation she felt immediately after her marriage.

"At first I never spoke to people. When I did, no one would understand me, so I cried a lot," said Sharma as she gently fussed over her year-old twins.

Such set-ups are neither marriages of convenience, nor of choice. But in the northwestern states of Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, such arrangements are on the rise. It's a trend that seems strange in a culture where language, caste and regional identity are so deeply and separately treasured. But take one look at the 2001 national census and the numbers offer an explanation – they reflect the sad saga of the killing of baby girls and aborting female fetuses in India.

As the Indian population has grown, the country's ratio between girls to boys has declined. With a national average of 927 girls for every 1,000 boys, the ratio for children from infancy to age 6 is 798 girls to 1,000 boys in Punjab, 819 girls in Haryana and 916 in Uttar Pradesh, according to the 2001 census of India.

Over 27 per cent of India's 593 districts have an adult population ratio of under 900 females for every, 1,000 males, indicating a long-standing practice of female infanticide and feticide.

That means thousands of men can't find brides in their areas, a shortage that is felt particularly in states where the practice of female infanticide, and now feticide, is practised and accepted.

The British medical journal The Lancet recently estimated that 500,000 female fetuses are aborted each year in India solely because of their gender.

It's hard to tell whether marriages of majboori or helpless compulsion are a rising trend. The stories, to date, are anecdotal, and research on them is limited. But social workers documenting the impact of female infanticide and feticide on society insist that such marriages are on the rise.

"They are importing women from all over," said Davinder Singh Dhamo, who runs the Navodya Lok Chetna Kalyan Samiti, a non-governmental organization that has worked hard to advocate for the rights of girls, and that has fought against ultrasound clinics that are aiding the feticide business.

"In every village there are a few women who have come from far-flung areas – from Assam, from Bihar, and Jharkhand, for example."

Loneliness and culture shock shape the experiences of many of the women who've been traded casually by their families, poor mountain dwellers or impoverished rural folk for whom the spectre of dowry and the lifelong financial burdens it promises ease the crime of selling or sending their daughters far, far away.

Beyond the interstate marriages fixed through personal ties and word-of-mouth, is the more sinister trade in trafficking women, which analysts say, is on the rise. Dhamo has a vault full of horrific tales about women sold off through auctions. Among them is the tale of Sonia, a young woman from Banaras who was sold for $1,000 before a sea of curious faces.

The business in trafficking women for marriages wouldn't be thriving quite so much if female feticide and infanticide were under control. In April, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh termed female feticide "a national shame."

"The practice (of female feticide) is rising and it's all about money," said Sabu George, a researcher and activist who has worked in this area for several years.

"There are increasing numbers of doctors getting involved in this profession. Let us wait for the 2011 census and we will see."

More marriages of a forced nature are taking place every day, according to George, who fears that failure to implement laws against feticide will only add to this small but growing population of unnatural unions.

Several decades ago, men from villages in these parts trekked across India in search of brides. Almost all such marriages were second marriages, borne of desperation – a widower's desire to remarry after being spurned by a village girl on account of his age.

That was the fate of Tanjala, 35, from Bihar, who was married 20 years ago to Lal Mohammad, now 60, in Ibrahimpur, in Uttar Pradesh. Her friend and village mate, Sameema, 32, also from Bihar, was married to a man 28 years her senior when she was just 17.

"It was hard for my husband to find a young woman willing to marry him so they looked outside the state," said Tanjala.

"It was so difficult when we first came," said Sameema, whispering so that other women in the village would not hear her. "People would call us names and abuse us under their breath."

Open Letter to Anti-Abortionists

2008-06-26T09:42:00.000-07:00

Open Letter to Anti-Abortionists

"IF ANTI-ABORTIONISTS SPENT HALF AS MUCH TIME GETTING RID OF POVERTY AS THEY SPEND TRYING TO GET RID OF ABORTION POOR WOMEN WOULDN'T NEED ABORTIONS AS OFTEN ANYWAY."

73% of women who have abortions are living below the poverty level (earning $9,570 or less per year).

Read more...

An Interview with Charles Moffat

2008-04-23T05:46:00.000-07:00

Questions by Kellyann Byrne. Answers by Charles Moffat.

As a male artist what are your views on feminism in the 70s compared to that of now?

That is basically asking me to compare feminism to postfeminism. Artistically I'd say feminism in the 70s was more interested in interpreting women as nature and making earth mother comparisons. Judy Chicago's Dinner Table for example was obsessed with fertility goddesses, Christian saints and historical figures. Right now I'd say women are more willing to show aspects of their own sexuality in their art and talk about issues like rape, sexual abuse, and if you go to central America they're also making works about femicide. So to some extent feminist art has gone from depicting mythology/history and is now more interested in life changing events from the world around us.

http://www.feministezine.com/feminist/international/Femicide-in-Guatemala-Canada.html

http://www.feministezine.com/feminist/international/Gender-Violence-in-Mexico.html

You once stated that you did not agree with the separatist feminist strategies which had no place for pro-feminist men. Do you think there is still an exclusion of male sympathizers in the art world?

Absolutely. The words male feminist still sounds like an oxymoron and that isn't going to change for a very long time. For myself I don't deal solely in feminist art, I deal with controversial issues that bother me and I even paint nudes occasionally. That doesn't make me a hypocrite, it makes me honest about my own sexual preferences. Male artists who deal with feminist topics have to be very careful where they tread and they need to know the theory and terminology about what they are discussing in their art, and since most men know nothing or very little about such theory/terms it is very difficult for them to create art pieces that stand on their own with little or no explanation.

Do you feel that male artists who wish to express feminist views can now do so in contemporary art compared to the art of the 70s?

Yes, but they have to be careful about it and stick to things they know about. For myself I started out with works dealing with mythology and advertising, and as my knowledge of different subjects grew (as the result of plenty of research) I became more confident painting topics I had previously known very little about.

How would you describe your artwork in terms of how it supports feminism?

It varies. My work has evolved quite a bit. If we take a work like "Pacifism" with the two male Siamese fighting fish (beta fish) it is more about alpha male posturing and war, and viewers would have to know what beta fish are to get the full meaning of the painting. Male beta fish make their fins go erect when they fight each other but the two in the painting are limp, which is contrasted with the torso with the limp penis camouflaged in the background. So the piece ends up being a metaphor for the male psyche, male aggression and arms races. So indirectly its commenting on male leadership when it comes to war scenarios.

In contrast if we take a painting like "Bald Girl Shaving" the painting is about an anorexic female who has become so obsessed with self-image she is even shaving off all her hair (although I did leave her eyebrows). My other paintings of bald women (Salmacis in the Rain, Bald Grrl and Above the City) use baldness in a positive light as parts of their identity, and with regards to hair in general there is also Hairy Armpits #1 and #2 which treat hair as being both sexual and natural. In Bald Girl Shaving I bring together both the baldness and armpit ideas to tell a narrative about the obsessive nature of self-image.

My most recent finished work is "Atalanta with the Head of Orpheus", right before she is about to toss his head into the sea.

The weird thing about Atalanta is that after she gets married there is no more stories about her (asides from the one where she accidentally kills her father). She lived this wild and free life, and then when she married the myth suggests that she suddenly settles down and becomes domestic. It does raise a question for feminists: What comes after marriage? Can they balance children and a career or do they want to choose one over the other. What happened to Atalanta after she married? Did she continue hunting boars and raised her kids at the same time? Alas, that is a topic for a 2nd painting... I'm planning a series of them.

How would you pin-point the term feminism in contemporary society? Through my research of feminist theory I have found that in the past the term has always been defined in as a movement or a subtype of that movement. I am more inclined to think that the term has lost its meaning now, because "feminism" has such a stigma to it associated with females only.

No, I can't. I can say what it means to me, that people are people and should be treated equally in all respects. But the stigma attached to it these days is such that the younger generation is now using terms like "grrl power" to represent the same thing (without the negative connotations of "female supremacy" that conservative people claim feminism represents).

Would you agree that feminism has the ability to include both genders and should be about personal experience, communication and activism rather than a distinct focus on genders?

There are basically two types of people in the world: Those who are socially active and want to create a better society for everyone, and those who want to stick their head in the sand and avoid all contact with political/societal change except for that 1 day every four years when they have to vote (and a percentage of them don't even vote).

When a woman says she isn't a feminist, but says she still believes in equality what she is really saying is that she isn't an activist. She really does believe in feminism, but doesn't want the responsibility of being socially active to make the changes that are needed.

We've all heard stories about women who claim they were never feminists until some event in their lives forces them to make a choice and take a stand to fight for women's rights. Men, in contrast, are almost never in the position to take a stand for women's rights, unless they are fortunate enough to be made a supreme court judge or something similar.

So while the core of feminism may be political and social activism, the outer shell is really people who every day make millions of tiny decisions. A husband who gets home before his wife and decides to make supper makes that little decision to go into the kitchen and do a domestic chore to feed his family. Their children see this, and unconsciously know that men can succeed in domestic chores and have a role to play in domestic life, and that these roles can be reversed. So while the core activists are fighting for big societal changes, it is the outer shell that makes broad social changes by changing not laws but how their children think.

Women will always be the core of feminism, but there is a huge role to be played by men and women making tiny decisions that result in them teaching their children by example.

The Truth about Anti-Feminists

2008-03-09T05:56:00.000-07:00

I recently tangled with the Anti-Feminist movement and came away with several conclusions.

I decided to go to Anti-Feminist websites and make a list of what their major complaints against feminists were.

After awhile it became clear that there was one major theme mentioned on almost all the websites that bash feminists.

Spousal and child support.

You see what has happened is these are men who got a woman pregnant (possibly by refusing to wear a condom), and maybe even married her before or after the pregnancy. Either way, their relationship fells apart and now these men are paying for child support (and spousal support if they married/divorced them too).

After they are separated and now paying for diapers and baby food these men become very angry and bitter about their depleted wallets.

So who do they blame?

Feminists for fighting for the right to child/spousal support. As if being a single mother isn't hard enough these "deadbeat dads" want to renege on their financial obligations and because the law is deducting from the pay-cheques there isn't a lot they can do about it.

So the vast majority of anti-feminists are simply deadbeat dads. That is it. Such a simple truth when you think about it.

And they shall suffer the consequences of their 5 minutes of pleasure just for the sake of what... not wearing a condom?

These losers have only one person they should really be blaming: Themselves.

The Truth about Misogyny, from the horse's mouth...

2008-02-12T11:36:00.000-08:00

Ever wondered what causes misogyny and sexist behaviours?

Well, here is an excellent article about it: The Origins & Causes of Misogyny.

Written by a man who asserts that it is years of bitterness against females that leads to feelings of misogyny, in combination with other factors such as parental misogyny and more.

The male author however asserts at the same time that women need to be treating men with more sensitivity in order to prevent this kind of bitterness. Treating men like insensitive jerks is actually causing them to turn into insensitive jerks.

"However at the same time women need to learn that men are not insensitive jerks. Rather, they are HIGHLY sensitive jerks and need to be treated more gently and fairly. It may take more time and effort on the part of women, but if more women took the time to reject men in such a way it doesn't feel like a rejection then we'd have a lot less bitter men walking around."

He stresses that both men and women need to learn more about how the opposite sex thinks, women need to learn how to reject men with sensitivity, and men need to learn how to deal with rejection so that the man doesn't end up feeling bitterness.

The article therefore asserts that women are partially to blame for sexism due to our mistreatment of men. Perhaps he is correct. There is a ring of truth to that, even though we may not want to admit it.

Relationships are a two way street and we need to think twice about how we treat men, whether we are treating them fairly, especially if we expect them to treat us fairly too.

Finally the Truth about Rape Victim in Saudi Arabia

2007-12-17T16:17:00.000-08:00

Justice and Truth: Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has pardoned the victim of a gang rape, whose sentencing to 200 lashes caused an international outcry.

Justice Minister Abdullah bin Mohammad al-Sheikh said the king had the right to issue pardons if it was in the "public interest". The Saudi monarch usually issues pardons to mark the Muslim Eid al-Adha festival which begins on Wednesday this week.

The 19-year-old Shi'ite woman was abducted and raped along with a male companion by seven men last year in a case that has drawn criticism from around the world.

Ruling according to Saudi Arabia's strict reading of Islamic law, a court originally sentenced the woman to 90 lashes for being alone with an unrelated man and the rapists to prison terms of up to five years.

The Supreme Judicial Council last month increased the sentence to 200 lashes for the woman and six months in prison and ordered the rapists to serve between two years and nine years in prison.

President George W. Bush said earlier this month that King Abdullah "knows our position loud and clear" on the case, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said last month he hoped the ruling would be changed.

Fawziya al-Oyouni, a women's rights activist, welcomed the change but said it was not enough.

"We don't want to rely simply on pardons. We need harsher sentences for the guilty parties and we want to feel safe," she said, citing another rape case in the Eastern Province this month.

Is this a sign that rape victims in Saudi Arabia might finally be treated equitably? Maybe. Give it time and the truth will eventually shine like a beacon of light to the rest of the Middle East.

MORE DETAILS:

She was only 19 and a new bride when it happened.

Seven men held her at knifepoint and, for a number of hours, she was subjected to a horrific gang rape.

But when she later went to the authorities, they sentenced her to 90 lashes.

She complained in the media, so the punishment was increased to 200 lashes and imprisonment.

Her lawyer has been suspended for speaking out against it.

Too outlandish to be true? Well, these are the bare facts of the so- called "Qatif girl" case, which has become a cause celebre among Western liberals and in Saudi Arabia, the West's most important Middle Eastern ally.

Earlier this week, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, declared that what had happened was, indeed, an "outrage".

But he did not mean that the rape victim had suffered a gross injustice.

No, only that criticism of his country was a foreign conspiracy.

The plight of the anonymous victim has served to cast an embarrassing light on one of the world's most authoritarian and oppressive regimes.

Specifically, it has exposed the power of a judicial system based on the Sharia law of the extreme Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam and its appalling treatment of women and persecution of religious minorities.

International pressure to clear the young woman is growing.

Now, as one Saudi judge who might well hear her latest appeal declares that she should have been sentenced to death, the victim's voice has been heard in public for the first time.

The pressure group Human Rights Watch has just released a transcript of an interview which the Qatif girl gave to one of its workers.

Her account reveals the horrific details of the original ordeal and how, having gone to the police, she was abused and demonised by the Saudi judicial system.

The attack took place in February last year and had its roots in a typical Saudi teenage arrangement which in the West would seem odd, but is a way of getting round the strict Islamic sex segregation laws.

Forbidden from approaching young women directly, young men make contact by publicly displaying their own mobile phone numbers on cards as they pass in the street or by dropping the cards through open car windows.

Others make contact using their phone's Bluetooth technology, which allows users to send messages to nearby mobile phones without knowing the telephone number.

"I had a relationship with someone on the phone," recalled the Qatif girl.

"It started when we were both 16. I had never seen him before, I just knew his voice. Then he started to threaten me and I got afraid.

"He threatened to tell my family about the relationship. Because of the threats and fear, I agreed to give him a photo of myself."

But when the girl wed another young man she became worried about the photo she had given to her "ex-boyfriend".

"I asked him for the photo back but he refused. He said: 'I'll give you the photo on the condition that you come out with me in my car.'

"I told him we could meet at a souk [market] near my neighbourhood in Qatif."

She recalled: "He started to drive me home, and when were about to turn the corner to my house, another car stopped right in front of our car.

"Two people got out of their car and stood on either side of our car. The man on my side had a knife.

"They tried to open our door. I told the individual with me not to open the door, but he did. He let them come in. I screamed."

The ordeal had begun.

"One of the men brought a knife to my throat. They told me not to speak. They pushed both of us to the back of the car and started driving. We drove a lot, but I didn't see anything since my head was forced down.

"They took us to an area with lots of palm trees. No one was there. If you kill someone there, no one would know about it."

First, they took the girl's male companion from the car.

He was the victim of homosexual rape a number of times during the course of the evening.

"I was so afraid," the girl said.

"Then they forced me out of the car. They pushed me really hard. I yelled out: 'Where are you taking me? I'm like your sister.'"

They took her to a building. Then two men came in and stripped her.

"The first man with the knife raped me. I was destroyed. I tried to force them off but I couldn't. Another man came in and did the same thing to me. I didn't even feel anything after that."

For two hours the girl begged the two men to take her home.

"I told them that it was late and that my family would be asking about me.

Then I saw a third man come into the room. There was a lot of violence.

After the third man came in, a fourth came. He slapped me and tried to choke me.

"The fifth and sixth ones were the most abusive. The fifth one took a photo of me like this. After the seventh one, I couldn't feel my body any more. I didn't know what to do. When a very fat man was on top of me I could no longer breathe."

Before she was eventually taken home by the gang, she was raped again by all seven attackers.

"They took my mobile and saw my husband's picture in my wallet.

"When I got out of the car [at her home], I couldn't even walk. I rang the doorbell and my mother opened the door. She said: 'You look tired.'

"She thought I was with my husband.

"I went to the hospital the next day. I didn't eat for one week after that, just drank water. I didn't tell anyone, but I would see the rapists faces in my sleep."

However, the story began to leak out.

"The criminals started talking about it in my neighbourhood. They thought my husband would divorce me. They wanted to ruin my reputation. Slowly, my husband started to know what had happened."

But he stood by her, outraged at what the men had done and the fact they were going unpunished.

"Two of the criminals were walking round our neighbourhood, right in front of me," her husband said.

He complained to the police on four occasions before anything was done.

Human rights activists are sure the authorities' reluctance to investigate and their subsequent actions have much to do with the fact that the woman was from Saudi's Shi'ite minority, while the accused are from the majority Sunni Muslims.

When her attackers were finally called to account, the girl had to go to court, where she received a hostile reception.

"At the first session, the judges said to me: 'What kind of relationship did you have with this individual [the man she originally agreed to meet]? Why did you leave the house? Do you know these men?'

"They asked me to describe the situation. They yelled at me. They were insulting. The judge refused to allow my husband in the room with me.

"One judge told me I was a liar because I didn't remember the dates well. They kept saying: 'Why did you leave the house? Why didn't you tell your husband where you were going?'"

The second session, in October last year, proved to be even more shocking.

Four of the attackers - the three others were not found - were given sentences of between one and five years and between 80 and 1,000 lashes.

They were convicted only of kidnapping because the prosecution could not prove rape even though the video images taken on the mobile phone during the attack were presented to the judges.

"I thought these people shouldn't even live," said their victim.

"I thought they would get a minimum of 20 years."

Then the senior judge turned to her and her male companion on the night of the gang rape.

"He said: 'You get 90 lashes. You should thank God you're not in prison.'

"I asked him why and he said: "You know why. Because mingling begets evil.' "

She had been convicted under the khalwa - Sharia law which forbids any woman from being alone in the company of a male to whom she is not related.

"Don't you have any dignity?" her husband demanded of the judges. It was no good. And worse was to follow. The girl grew suicidal. Her own brother blamed her for the attack and his family's "shame".

"He hit me and tried to kill me," she said.

But she was not prepared to accept her unjust punishment.

With the backing of the leading Saudi human rights lawyer, Abdul Rahman al-Laham, she made the facts public, even giving an interview to an Arab TV channel. But far from embarrassing the authorities, this merely seemed to enrage them.

On November 14, the General Court of Qatif struck back, increasing her sentence to 200 lashes and six months in prison.

(Flogging is usually carried out in batches by a prison official who has to hold a copy of the Koran under his whip arm, which prevents it from being raised very high).

The rapists' sentences were also increased to between two and 11 years each.

An official at the court said that her sentence was raised because of "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media".

Judge Sa'd al-Muhanna also banned her lawyer, Abdul Rahman al-Laham, from the courtroom and from representing her in future for allegedly raising his voice in court.

His licence to practise has been suspended and his passport seized.

He faces a further hearing before a Ministry of Justice disciplinary committee in Riyadh next week for appearing regularly on television and talking about the case.

Overnight, though, the Qatif girl's case became a matter of international interest.

How on earth could the Saudi authorities justify such behaviour?

US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton became involved. But far from retreating, the Saudi authorities dug their heels in.

Official statements posted on the Ministry of Justice website in the past fortnight have alleged that the girl admitted adultery and was already undressed in the car when she was attacked by the rapists.

One statement went so far as to say that it was her own fault: "The main reason the crime took place was because the woman and her companion, who exposed her to this heinous crime, did not follow the law."

The ministry chastised the media for providing an "unjustified defence" of the woman.

A representative of the ministry also appeared on television blaming her for the attack.

He strongly hinted that she had engaged in adultery.

Earlier this week a Saudi newspaper published an interview with Judge Dr Ibrahim bin Salih al-Khudairi of the Riyadh Appeals Court, in which he said that he would have sentenced her to death.

The Appeals Court, and possibly Judge al-Khudairi, will consider the appeal that the Qatif girl said she intends to file.

Impartial? Hardly.

"How is this woman going to get a fair hearing?" asks Farida Deif, of Human Rights Watch.

"The Ministry of Justice has been highly defamatory of her and suggestive that she committed adultery and it was, therefore, her own fault.

"Yes, she broke the law on mingling, but the court should have shown some discretion given that she was brutally gang-raped.

"But this is a country with no written penal law, in which the judges are religious scholars with very little formal legal training."

Thanks to the internet and satellite television however, the Qatif girl's case has caused many Saudis to question the fairness of their own judicial system.

Legal reforms have been announced recently.

But life in the kingdom is still dominated by the religious police who work for the Commission For The Propagation Of Virtue And The Prevention Of Vice to enforce a strict Islamic lifestyle.

They are the untouchables.

Indeed, only on Thursday it was reported that charges against two religious policemen had been dropped. They had been investigated following the death of a man in custody.

The man had been arrested for allegedly drinking alcohol and there was evidence that he had been kicked in the head - but not sufficient to pursue the case, a judge decided.

It echoes a similar case in the summer in which three other members of the religious police had charges dropped after the death of another suspect in custody.

The victim's alleged crime was, like that of the Qatif girl, being alone with an unrelated member of the opposite sex.

The Saudi foreign minister has said that the judicial system will review the Qatif girl's case.

In the meantime, as she awaits her fate, she remains under virtual house arrest, unable to communicate with the outside world; her traumatised family's phones are tapped by the religious police and they are followed when they leave the house.

Meanwhile, the girl is still tormented by thoughts of suicide. But then, in the medieval world of Saudi law she has only herself to blame.

Feminists = Good Lovers?

2007-10-22T15:11:00.001-07:00

Feminists are not the ideal wives or lovers right? So we've been told for years.

But that assumption would be false. Feminism can improve the quality of heterosexual relationships, according to Laurie Rudman and Julie Phelan, from Rutgers University in the USA. They've published a study (The Interpersonal Power of Feminism: Is feminism good for romantic relationships?) that shows that we have unflattering stereotypes of feminists, that depict feminists as unattractive and sexually unappealing.

But are feminists ugly and sexually unattractive? Are they horrible sex partners and wives? False, their study concludes.

Most people believe that feminists can't be romantic, but Rudman and Phelan have discovered this to be false. They carried out a laboratory survey of 242 American undergraduates and an online survey including 289 older adults, and determined that couples with feminists are more likely to have had longer relationships and greater life experience. They looked at men's and women's perception of their own feminism and its link to relationship health, measured by a combination of overall relationship quality, agreement about gender equality, relationship stability and sexual satisfaction.

They also found that having a feminist partner was linked to healthier heterosexual relationships for women. Men with feminist partners have more stable relationships and better sex lives. According to the results feminism does not predict poor romantic results, but in fact actually boosts the amount of "spark" in the relationship and adds to healthier and more romantic results.

The two authors also tested whether feminist stereotypical beliefs were valid and asked participants a series of questions to determine whether feminists really are more likely to report themselves as being single, lesbian, or sexually unattractive, compared with non-feminist women. Instead Rudman and Phelan found no support for this hypothesis amongst their study participants. In fact, feminist women were more likely to be in a romantic heterosexual relationship than non-feminist women. The authors concluded that feminist stereotypes are wildly inaccurate, and that the stereotypes are unfounded.

In other words the idea that feminists would make poor lovers is just plain a lie.

So what is the real truth? Misogynists have been spreading these lies for years, spreading it as a combination of urban myths and hearsay.

Your wife dumped you for her lesbian lover and got married in Canada? Don't get angry. She was probably a lesbian long before she married you and only married you to have kids (or keep up appearances).

Think feminists are ugly or sexually unappealing? Think twice. Take a look at Gloria Steinem (former Playboy Bunny and feminist activist) and Dorothy Pitman Hughes (renowned black feminist). Pretty hot looking I think.

And think the authors of this study are probably ugly too? Wrong. I checked them out. One hot redhead and one sexy brunette.

Think your girlfriend has too much self-respect to marry you? Maybe she's just not interested in marriage just yet.

Women have dedicated years of writing in magazines in trying to understand men and what men want in their sex lives, but how much writing is dedicated to helping men actually understand women? Comparatively little.

But I'm willing to bet there are lots of men out there who would be interested in getting the inside scoop for what women really find romantic.

Jesus said...

2007-04-11T00:29:00.000-07:00

By Suzanne MacNevin

Jesus said: "I am the way, the truth, and the life..." (John 14:6)

Jesus said a lot of things. 99% of it is pure rhetoric. Rhetoric is a technique of persuasion in which basically you make statements that appeal to the listener (or in the bible's case, the reader) and will be generally accepted because it cannot be unproven... because the sentence itself is largely meaningless and open to interpretation (and likely contains a metaphor, a simile or more).

We cannot simply say that "Jesus was a liar." (like most politicians) because that in itself cannot be proven. Maybe Jesus REALLY is the way, the truth and life. Or maybe he was just speaking in riddles.

Until the recent re-discovery of Jesus's tomb in Israel it was never actually proven that Jesus ever existed. Now it has been proven... along with the body of his wife Mary Magdalene and his son. So Jesus was a real person. He was convicted of blasphemy, being a false prophet/etc and died for it. (Whether or not his soul went anywhere after his death is really a matter of faith.)

The interesting thing to me is that now the truth about Mary Magdalene has finally been proven: She was Jesus's wife, and more-so, she bore him at least one son (and possibly more), this opens up the field of feminism to reinterpretations of the Bible and looking for how Jesus treated his wife and gives us more insight into how Jesus felt about women (and equality for women).

For a long time Jesus has actually had a pretty bad reputation with regards to women. There were no female disciples and in one instance in the bible he scolded a woman who wanted to take part in their discussions and essentially told her to go back to the kitchen and stop being disrespectful to males present.

Was Jesus a sexist bigot?

Or has the above story been misinterpreted? Perhaps Jesus was far more liberal.

Again we come back to the issue of rhetoric. So much of what Jesus said is open to interpretation. Anything he said can be used to support different arguments.

For example, Jesus never actually says anything against slavery. And yet we know that during his day and age there were slaves of many different colours living in that part of the world. Jesus never brings up these issues of colour or slavery. Instead he just maintains the status quo. Was Jesus pro-slavery or against it? We will never know.

Rhetoric is not truth, truth is not fact, and rhetoric is so far removed from fact that it practically the opposite in meaning.

Even if we do sit down and re-read the bible hoping to find new meanings we will always instead find either what we are looking for... or what we're expecting to find but are nevertheless unhappy with.

In Corinthians St. Paul says that women must cover their heads (lest they be considered harlots), that men can divorce their wives but wives cannot divorce their husbands, circumcision is nothing and its the keeping of god's commandments that is important, and homosexuals cannot go to heaven.

Please note that the Book of Corinthians is actually a letter from St. Paul. Jesus himself didn't write the letter. It is not Jesus's words, they are St. Paul's letter. Jesus was illiterate and was long dead by the time the letter was written and it would be hundreds of years before that letter became part of what we now call "the bible".

"Bible Thumpers" (and I do not use the term lightly) like to quote phrases from the bible constantly as if everything in the bible is a FACT (or at very least the truth), and that these so-called "facts" are god-given facts, as if god himself wrote the bible.

The only parts of the bible actually attributed wholly to god is the Ten Commandments. Thats it. Everything else is a combination of mythology and written letters from one prophet to another.

If Christians today simply ignored the bible and paid more attention to the Ten Commandments (perhaps even becoming "Commandment Thumpers") I would be so much more pleased with Christianity as a whole.

Jesus said a lot of things that cannot be proven, but I think we can all find SOME truth in the following:

The Ten Commandments

You shall have no other Gods but me.
You shall not make for yourself any idol, nor bow down to it or worship it.
You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.
You shall remember and keep the Sabbath day holy.
Respect your father and mother.
You must not kill.
You must not commit adultery.
You must not steal.
You must not give false evidence against your neighbour.
You must not be envious of your neighbour's goods. You shall not be envious of his house nor his wife, nor anything that belongs to your neighbour.

If I may be so bold as to add a few:

Respect your wife as you would your mother and father.
Do not beat your wife with a "rule of thumb" (like the bible says you can).
If you're going to commit adultery and don't want to be stoned to death... get a divorce first.

After all its probably best to be honest that your marriage has failed and end it ASAP so that both of you can stop living a lie.

"God Bless Us, Every One." - Tiny Tim (from Charles Dicken's "A Christmas Carol".)

Feminists Censoring Feminists

2007-04-06T15:14:00.000-07:00

Censorship in the name of Copyright...

This really burns my boat. We're all on the same side here. Feminists should be fighting side by side not squabbling over copyright concerns.

I'm speaking of course the "Queens of the Stone Age" feminist article I posted on here.

I didn't ask the author's permission to post the article because I had no way of CONTACTING the author.

Well apparently the author (Laura Miller) noticed and contacted Blogspot and demanded it removed...

Totally unnecessary from my perspective. We're both feminists supporting a cause.

But apparently Laura Miller supports feminism only when she's getting paid for it.

So is she really a crusading feminist? Or just a money-grubbing author who cares only about her pocketbook?

My answer is the latter.

So my question for the REAL feminists out there is: Do you really care about copyright when your writing helps to support a cause?

I am in pursuit of FEMINIST TRUTH. I'm more than happy to remove an article by someone who turns out to be a liar and not a real feminist.

So Laura Miller, now that I've exposed you as a phoney, are you going to continue complaining?

Feminism's stormy history with religion

2007-03-26T21:03:00.000-07:00

In October 1971, the Memorial Church at Harvard University invited professor Mary Daly to preach. No woman had ever preached in that church before and, at the time, Daly was a sponsor of "feminist theology," intent on changing the way society thinks about women, the Bible, the church, and religion.

Daly called her sermon "Beyond God the Father," a title she would use often in the ensuing decades. What she said was fiery and irreverent. But what made the event even more memorable is that, at the end of her sermon, she walked out of the church and asked the women in the congregation and sympathetic men to do the same. An assistant minister at the time wrote later. "The few of us who were left behind, sang the final hymn, 'Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,' and wondered what happened."

Well, what did happen? What did that walkout signify? Where did it leave "religion in general" and Judeo-Christianity in particular, for the remainder of the two decades of activism that we now call Feminism's Second Wave?

The celebration of Women's History Month in March gives us an opportunity to explore the sometimes rocky but always intense relationship between feminists and religion.

My conclusion — which may surprise you — is:

Even though certain churches are hostile to the claim of women's equal value to men in the eyes of God,

And even though others still remain unwilling to ordain women as deacons, ministers and priests,

One thing is certain: Many women continue to want some sort of larger-than-life Godhead or Spirit to whom they can express their needs, their awe and their gratitude.

This is not to imply that the relationship of feminism to religion hasn't been unruly.

When early women's-rights advocates argued for equality in the home, in the workplace and at the ballot box, they were met with the argument that women's subordination was justified in the Bible and was the will of God.

No wonder they felt they had to "rewrite" the Bible.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton's 1895 "Woman's Bible" did just that. It gives us the flavor of what today we would call a "deconstruction" of the Holy Book from the point of view of the most significant women's-rights advocate of her time.

Stanton began by reinterpreting the Trinity. "Instead of three male personages as generally represented," she wrote, "the Father, the Son, and the Holy Sprit (presumed male) . . . a Heavenly Father, Mother, and Son would seem more rational."

Anger at the "Good Book" (the Bible) extended to anger at the priests, the rabbis, the mullahs and the shamans for excluding women as persons from the texts and as eligible for various priesthoods.

Some second-wave feminists gave up on Judeo-Christianity altogether and threw in their lot with fertility goddesses, who, they argue, had once reigned but were dethroned by a cabal of ancient males who replaced the idols of fertility with the abstraction of Monotheism.

The order: "Thou shalt worship no other gods besides ME," they argue, was nothing more or less than a cultural plot to keep women in their place. If God were male, then patriarchy would be (and for a long time has been considered) both "natural" and divinely ordained.

Still, many women's-rights activists have always been unwilling to leave their church and so a large number of feminists have striven to change it from within. The first step has been ordination.

Mark Chaves, professor and chair of sociology at the University of Arizona, lists in his book "Ordaining Women" the many Protestant denominations, beginning with the Universalists in 1863, that have ordained female ministers. Today, a large proportion of American Protestant churches allow women to conduct worship services and, in the case of the Reform Jewish Temple, to handle the Torah.

Embracing modernity

So, why was it not always like this? Why have our traditional religions emphasized male/female differences and reflected in the Godhead male superiority?

The reason is that life was short.

When men died in their early 40s and women often younger (during childbirth), males and females lived very different lives with few overlapping tasks and responsibilities. Traditional religion served them by providing rules and explanations that reflected their reality.

But with ever-increasing life expectancy (in the developed world), far fewer children to tie a mother down and power tools and "knowledge work" replacing hard labor, sex roles and sex differences — especially after age 50 — are no longer as relevant as they once were.

This combination of birth control and industrialization (and I am adding longevity to the mix) is called "modernity."

My view is that feminism and religion are compatible from a feminist perspective so long as religious leaders are willing to modernize their strictures to accommodate modern lives.

Today's great threat to women's continued emancipation, then, comes not from religion per se, but from the anti-modern fundamentalisms, whether Judeo-Christian or Muslim, which, in their determination to stamp out modernity, will restrict women to what they have decided are their "traditional" roles.

"In their sacred enclaves," Karen Armstrong writes about fundamentalism, here and in the Middle East, "fundamentalists overemphasize the traditional role of women because women's emancipation has become a hallmark of modernity."

The truth is many Muslim women embrace modernity — for the same reasons Christian women do. To my ears, Asma Barlas, a Muslim thinker and writer, sounds a lot like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Mary Daly when she argues that "patriarchy is contrary to Islam, because it sets up men as rulers when only God should be seen as supreme."

Which is not so different from what I believe:

Religion, which is supposed to be about the search for eternal truths, should never be used as a means to oppress women.

No man should seek the meaning of life in patriarchy.

And no woman should accept any religion that assigns her a role that is at best secondary to men.

What Women Have Done to Art

2007-03-26T20:53:00.001-07:00

Most people who remember the glory days of feminism in the 1970s think first of the consciousness-raising sessions, of Betty Friedan and Kate Millett and of Jane Fonda in a shag-helmet haircut. But if you spend much time in galleries and museums, you know that feminist ideas roared through the art world too, at a time when it was even more of a boy's club than it is today. How much more? Until 1986, H.W. Janson's History of Art, the standard college text, did not include a single woman among the 2,300 artists mentioned in its pages. That year it was revised to admit 19.

Nobody is saying the word equality yet, but a lot has changed since then, a lot of it thanks to women artists and scholars in the '70s who proved that art was women's work too and could go places the guys hadn't taken it. Nudes with a woman's point of view, works that use household arts like weaving, videos and photographs that ask what gender is all about in the first place--there's plenty of that around now, some of it even made by men, all of it indebted to the feminist explosion of three decades ago.

Suddenly, this has become the year to look back on all that and take stock of the ways feminist ideas have entered the bloodstream of art for good. Not only are there big, boisterous exhibitions in Los Angeles and New York City, but on March 23 feminist art's most resolute artifact, The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, goes on permanent display in a specially constructed gallery within the new Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Say what you will about it, that it's middlebrow, elementary and literal-minded (which it is), but as a vessel to express a collective longing to rescue great women from oblivion, The Dinner Party has held its ground. In the absence for now of any better contenders, it's the Liberty Bell of women's history.

And what is it, exactly? A table in the form of an equilateral triangle. Along each of its sides are 13 place settings--think Christ and his 12 disciples--each assigned to a significant woman from legend or history, from "the primordial goddess" to Sojourner Truth and Georgia O'Keeffe. The table rests on a triangular white ceramic-tile floor that bears the names of another 999 women painted in gold. And on the plates? Most of them carry more or less vaginal images, some merely painted on the plates, some rising in high relief. In a world that has seen The Vagina Monologues, not many people will be shocked to hear that an artwork might focus on women's genitals. But in 1980, when The Dinner Party went on a hugely popular national tour, all those pudendal things caused some people to take a deep breath. As late as 1990, when a proposal was made to house the work on a Washington campus, Republican Congressman Robert K. Dornan could still denounce it in the House as "ceramic 3-D pornography."

Dornan is gone from the House. And The Dinner Party is handsomely installed at its new home in Brooklyn in a darkened triangular enclosure with reflective glass-lined walls. Designed by Susan T. Rodriguez of Polshek Partnership Architects, the space isn't as much a gallery as it is a shrine. (Can we get something like this for Michelangelo's Pietà?) And the work itself? The Dinner Party has been compared to the AIDS quilt, which seems right--up to a point. The quilt is a genuine piece of collective folk art, whereas The Dinner Party, though it required the work of roughly 400 volunteers, is still guided by Chicago and her unsteady taste, skills and judgment. But like, say, the World War II Memorial in Washington, it speaks to feelings so powerful you can almost forgive its shortcomings as art.

Chicago, who was born Judy Cohen in 1939, started out making big minimalist sculptures and hard-edged abstract paintings, some of them quite good. But in the early '70s, under the influence of feminist thinking about personal experience, she took a turn into work that was confessional, therapeutic and maudlin. In The Rejection Quintet from 1974, color drawings similar to the vaginal emblems she would use for The Dinner Party are combined with hand-lettered texts describing various personal humiliations. The drawing is adequate, the sentimentality nothing short of Victorian.

It was also in 1974 that she started work on The Dinner Party. It took Chicago and her volunteers five years to produce. A good part of their labor was devoted to the elaborate cloth runners, the real glories of the piece, that commemorate centuries of anonymous women's crafts. Each of those features needlework and decorative techniques--quilting, braiding, embroidery--appropriate to the woman whose plate it sits beneath. But even those runners can't rescue the plates, which are literally heavy handed. And the work's overall appeal to pious sentiment can remind you sometimes of the most hectoring kind of patriotic art. In a way, The Dinner Party is feminism's version of Washington Crossing the Delaware--or it would be if Washington had made the trip with his fly open.

As it happens, feminist ideas were the force behind some of the smartest, most powerful art of the past century. You're reminded of that all through "Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution," a pinwheel of an exhibition that runs through July 16 at the Geffen Contemporary outpost of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. "Wack!" which was curated by Cornelia Butler, starts with a bang. It's called Abakan Red, a coarsely woven, more or less circular bolt of red cloth. Suspended from the ceiling almost to the floor, it was made in 1969 by the great Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz, an early adopter of "humble" women's crafts like weaving as high-art techniques. She also understood how abstract images could be adjusted until they hinted again at something human. So the quasi-vaginal slit that runs the length of her piece shifts it from the realm of mere geometry to something much more intimate. And the scale, roughly 13 ft. in diameter, makes it not so much a thing as a place, enveloping and pulsing with red life. That's a lot of psychic reverberation for one piece of humble cloth.

"Wack!," a hugely enjoyable show, immerses you in the plucky, unfettered atmosphere of '70s feminism. After centuries in which men had the last word on how women's bodies were seen in art, it was finally the turn of women to see what to make of themselves. So Ana Mendieta, a Cuban refugee, traveled around the U.S. and Mexico making deep impressions on the ground in the shape of her silhouette. These she filled with rocks or flowers, making feminist earthworks that used a woman's body, not the steam shovels favored by the guys, to connect with nature.

The energies of that moment subsided, but they never died out. If it hadn't been for all that weaving and sewing, for instance, the embroidered work of Egyptian artist Ghada Amer would be hard to imagine--to say nothing of Mike Kelley's stuffed-animal art. That's the point of the other big, smart new show "Global Feminisms" at the Brooklyn Museum. Organized by Maura Reilly and art historian Linda Nochlin, it concentrates on art made since 1990 and demonstrates that the concerns of the '70s have spread around the world. Jenny Saville's big nudes, for instance, with their masses of battered flesh, are descended from the questions women asked then about the abuse of women's bodies. There's even a residue of feminist thinking in Study of a Boy 1, a haunting photograph by the German artist Loretta Lux, in which a woman's gaze inspects, or "studies," a wary little man in the making. Feminism lives--and in mysterious ways.

As an inspirational and pedagogical device, The Dinner Party has a long life ahead of it too. For generations of schoolkids it will offer a first encounter with the honor roll of women's history. Who can argue with that? With luck, some of those kids will go on to discover O'Keeffe, Agnes Martin and Sally Mann. Or Kara Walker, Janet Cardiff and Kiki Smith. There are some names in there you don't know? Look them up on the Internet. You can bet a few smart kids will. That's how they'll find out how much more art can do.

Men Bashing Hillary Proves We Need A Woman President

2007-03-19T14:45:00.000-07:00

Does America need a Woman President?

I'm starting to think so.

The amount of men (with websites) out there who are bashing Hillary Clinton only reaffirms my belief that America is so misogynistic that it has deluded itself into thinking "women are already equal" and that "America doesn't need a Female President".

The sheer amount of bashing only proves that WE ARE NOT YET EQUAL.

Maybe under the law we are equal, but society itself (in particular the men in society) DOES NOT TREAT WOMEN AS EQUALS.

Only when women are treated equally by society and all men will we ever truly have equality. Until that day we will always be in a constant battle against barbaric women-haters.

So yes, we need Hillary. We need a woman president. We need to teach people that we are equal and we are not going to be swayed by anything less than full equality.

Its one small step for Hillary. One big step for womankind.

Confronting Misogyny

2007-03-19T14:31:00.000-07:00

There are plenty of websites (and blogs) out there which bash feminists and decry the horrors of feminism. These websites are perpetuated by misogynist (women hating) males that have been dumped one too many times, who have been raised to believe that women deserve to be bashed around, and that women are MEANT to be slaves to a man's every whim.

"Clean my toilet bitch. Go make me a sandwich you lazy cunt. I need a beer refill you stupid whore!"

You get the idea.

There are literally tonnes of websites that fit that generic description, their primary motivation being to bash women, degrade feminists and piss on equal rights.

But I'm writing here to say that its well past time women stand up and confront these misogynistic jerks. CONFRONT THEM and show them you are not going to be bossed around with their manipulative statistics that claim women aren't date raped, that "patriarchy is a good thing" and "women should go back to the kitchen and stop messing up the economy".

Their Misogynistic lies are all about getting attention to soothe their male egos (and possibly make a buck off advertising on the side by posting complete garbage that will make people like myself fuss about it).

Well I'm not going to fall for that trick. Thats why I'm not going to post any links to their idiotic websites and instead I'm going to re-post their garbage on here and then analyze it so we can see these lies out in the open for everyone to see (and without the pricks making $ off the attention).

I feel its important that other women out there do this too. Confront the Lies. Confront the Misogyny.

Why?

Because Misogyny will only continue to perpetuate UNLESS people confront it.

Its a battle of the sexes alright and we have to stand firm and fight for our rights.

Sexuality and Truth

2007-02-16T11:37:00.000-08:00

Sexuality and Truth
By Suzanne MacNevin

In our modern society people are often discriminated against based upon their sex or sexuality. Both women and men are discriminated against and discriminate against others. Likewise, heterosexuals and homosexuals discriminate back and forth and pass judgement far too easily.

The problem I have is that people are not honest when they discriminate. They provide 'reasons' (excuses) to justify their actions or their speech. Lets start with the example of Gay Marriage.

Marriage is a promise to stay faithful to your mate. It embodies truth, honesty and love for one another. Marriage based on a lie (such as marrying for money) is not a real marriage.

EXCUSES:
In traditional Christian thought, marriage is for the purpose of one thing, and its not love: To make babies. The idea of gay marriages with the lack of children is therefore an abomination in the eyes of traditional Christianity.

The next factor is the idea of gay married couples adopting children and the idea that gay couples can't raise children properly or might molest the children. Homophobes are scared and upset at this idea because it gives gay couples the same right as heterosexual couples.

If we allow gay couples to marry, whats next? Polygamy marriages? Beastiality marriages? (Besides the point that there is no way beastiality marriages will ever become legal.)

Thus you see the excuses line up, and you could see more of them. But the fact remains that marriage is still just a promise and an oath, and totally unrelated to the other factors.

Whether or not people actually believe their own excuses is besides the point. My primary concern is the fact that they are lying just for the sake of being ignorant and mean.

People derive pleasure from being mean, but what they don't realize is that their discrimination just makes people MORE determined to fight for their rights.

Twenty years ago gay marriages was barely an issue. It rarely made headlines. These days its constantly in the news and the gay community isn't going to give up until they have won their rights.

And as for the people who stand in their way? Well, they will simply be exposed as liars, bigots and homophobes.

People talk a lot about who will be the first female president or the first black president of the United States. I'm actually more curious about who will be the first lesbian or gay president. Its not an issue yet, but I think someday it will be.

Thoughtfully,
Suzanne MacNevin

Truth in Feminism - Book Review

2007-02-16T11:36:00.000-08:00

Book Review

NOTES FROM AN INCOMPLETE REVOLUTION
Real Life Since Feminism.
By Meredith Maran.
257 pp. New York:
Bantam Books. $22.95.

Femininity isn't what it used to be. Women today shout, spit, smoke and sit with their legs apart. They assert their opinions, demand satisfaction of their needs, pursue their private fantasies. At the same time, many aspects of femininity -- especially those involving beauty, romance and nurturing -- haven't changed much in the past 30 years. Feminist theorists typically attribute this discrepancy to the perseverance of patriarchal norms and the power of ''backlash.'' Writers who have attempted to argue otherwise have been dismissed for betraying the women's movement's line on gender and are often called pawns of right-wing misogynists.

It would be hard for anyone to call Meredith Maran right wing. A former anti-Vietnam War protester, New Mexico hippie, Marxist union organizer and women's health-collective worker, she currently advises ''socially responsible'' businesses, writes about incest as a feminist issue and has been a co-parent of her two sons with Ann, her partner of a decade. Yet in ''Notes From an Incomplete Revolution,'' Ms. Maran admits to being ''appalled by the distance between my instincts and my beliefs,'' and proceeds to question and ultimately reject some of the most sacred tenets of feminist theory, especially those concerning differences between the sexes.

''Is it social conditioning, biological inevitability or a combination of the two that makes me feel more 'womanly' when I'm planting seedlings in my garden than when I'm chopping wood at my cabin?'' she asks. Why are women still more interested in feelings and affection and intimacy than men? Why do most women -- even homosexual women -- still love to dress up and flirt with men? Why do even her most true-believing feminist friends still feel a far stronger urge to stay home with their children than do their politically sensitive husbands? And why can't she or her friends do anything to change this? ''Our daughters refuse to play with trucks; our sons point the dolls we've given them at us and say 'Bang! You're dead.' ''

While Ms. Maran isn't proposing any grand theory on sexual differences, she refreshingly doesn't rule out the possibility that biology may be heavily invested in many of our behaviors. Her main concern is more fundamental, showing the ''daily differences between how feminism says women's lives should be and how our lives actually are.'' This desire to tell ''the truth'' about the real world was also the subject of her first book, ''What It's Like to Live Now,'' which more generally probed the gap between the dreams of the 60's and the realities of the 90's.

Ms. Maran's troubled relationship with her mother, who is active in many causes in Berkeley, Calif., is a recurring theme in both books. The connection between her mother's good feminism and bad mothering remains murky, but the relationship does seem to have influenced Ms. Maran's suggestion that most women today -- even young, college-educated women -- are still choosing lives that allow them to give motherhood top priority. ''The point of feminism was to give women choices, not to dictate what those choices should be,'' she concludes, though she doesn't note the irony of orthodox feminists being the last to realize this.

Ms. Maran herself hasn't completely escaped the contradictions of what she refers to as her ''sagging ideology.'' Phrases like ''the life-threatening condition of being female'' turn up sporadically, often seemingly by rote. But they never blunt this book's important point: that at this stage in the history of feminism, being honest about women's lives is far more a sign of progress than retreat; that to complete the revolution, women need realistic analysis more than symbolic gestures. ''If the personal is indeed political,'' Ms. Maran asks at the start of the book, ''what does my real life say about my politics?'' Perhaps that those politics are as outdated, repressive and condescending as the politics women set out to change.