Who cares about Minnesota women? I do.

...but Nick Coleman doesn't know me, and the StarTribune doesn't care.

Coleman wrote a well-meaning column in the September 19th edition called: "Women face challenges, but who cares?" His jumping-off point was the current governor's race, featuring three well-off white dudes, none of whom are particularly excited about how Minnesota women are faring these days.

Like I said, Coleman clearly means well. But goddammit if I'm not ALSO annoyed by the fact that Coleman himself is a well-off white dude (though not nearly as well off as Mark Dayton). My gut reaction to the piece? THANKS FOR CARING, DAD! He felt like HE was the only person on the staff at the Strib who could tackle this issue? Couldn't he pass the subject along to a female colleague? There ARE women on the Opinion page who aren't Katherine Kersten, ya know.

I e-mailed the paper a commentary submission the afternoon of the 19th that was deemed unfit for print....AGAIN (perhaps due to the fact that I badmouth the paper whenever possible). What follows is the essay in its entirety.

Who cares about Minnesota women? I do. I'm not the only one, either.

By Shannon Drury

Nick Coleman issued a challenge in his September 19 column: who will speak for Minnesota women? I can’t claim to represent every female in our state, but I can speak on behalf of the more than 2000 women and men who are members of our state’s chapter of National Organization for Women (NOW). The statistics quoted by Mr. Coleman, while disturbing, are not new to us; they are the reason that we do the work we do.

Unfortunately, Minnesota NOW and our allies are increasingly fighting against a culture that sees gains made by individual women as evidence of gains for all women. The electoral victories of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Sarah Palin are laudable, but as Coleman points out, these wins have done little to end domestic violence or close the wage gap. The appointments of Supreme Court justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan won’t truly make history until their review of the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 renders the 2007 Ledbetter v. Goodyear ruling null and void (for those not up to date on feminist history, that doozy of a decision allowed Goodyear to get away with shorting Ledbetter’s salary for over twenty years).

I was born and raised in Minneapolis by Hubert Humphrey voters who believed him when he said “compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.” As Coleman wrote in his column, a disproportionate number of today’s low-wage workers are women, a large segment of whom also unpaid caregivers to children and/or elders. Quality health care (including, as Coleman notes, sexual health care), child care, and schooling are increasingly out of reach for Minnesota women, but our current governor recently likened federal health care funding to illegal drugs: toxic and corrupting. In such an environment, one can forgive Coleman for guessing that nobody cares.

What happened? I have some theories: inevitable backlash, conservative retrenchment, and a consumer culture that hijacked feminism’s language to sell us cigarettes, luxury cars, and high-heeled shoes. We’ve come a long way, baby.

It’s an irony not lost on me that the study Coleman quotes comes from the research institute that carries the name of my hometown’s former mayor. Minnesota has moved away from its culture of inclusion, towards an attitude of every man (pun intended) for himself. I commend Coleman for bringing these inequities to light, and I urge Minnesotans to ask their governor candidates what specific plans they have for eradicating them.

Shannon Drury

President, Minnesota NOW

Attention Literary Agents!

I see that you are interested in women writers telling the secret truth that parenthood is sometimes soul-sucking hard work.

'All Joy and No Fun: The Parent's Paradox' Author Scores Book Deal

HAVE I GOT A BOOK FOR YOU!

In my book, I too reveal painful truths about parenting, but I offer something that readers can do about it! (hint: it involves scads of government money. Yep, I'm a pinko and a damned good one.)

This hilarious, informative, passionately defended, and FINISHED book is a political memoir called The Radical Housewife. Its 70,000 words describe a decade of feminist parenting by a Minneapolis-based liberal committed to destroying the myth of American "family values," one dirty diaper and Palinista at a time.

Contact me at theradicalhousewife (at) gmail (dot) com for a proposal and first chapter.

YEEEEEEEE-HAW!

Domestic violence as "other"

On the afternoon of September 20, I was contacted by a City Pages writer asking for comment on an acid attack on a woman in St. Louis Park. The writer asked fairly predictably questions, including if I knew anything about acid as part of a larger trend, perhaps linked to an increase in honor attacks in this country.

I wrote him the following:

This is the first I have heard about this Minneapolis attack. The KARE 11 piece (that he linked me to) is short on information other than this was a domestic assault, unusual only in its execution. Do you have information that leads you to believe this was an "honor" attack?

Acid attacks are certainly gruesome; their very nature makes them more likely to earn headlines. A troubled woman who cuts herself won't get on TV, but splashing herself with acid will. I wonder if your article seeks to sensationalize these acts of violence as a "new" problem, when, as you're no doubt aware, statistics estimate that one in four women will experience this kind of violence in her lifetime (from a handy guide to such things at http://www.ncadv.org/files/Minnesota.pdf). I'm happy to talk about the plague of violence in this state, as well as the dearth of funding for victims and their families under the reign of T-Paw, as long as I'm able to note that less sensational stories happen ALL THE TIME. And nobody seems to care.

The author assuaged my fears about sensationalism appropriately, so I wrote him the following e-mail, which we both considered on the record (the words in bold are the quotes Van Dernberg chose to run):

This is the first acid attack I've heard of in the Twin Cities. I don't blame the local media for jumping on this story--the attacker's weapon of choice was so gruesome that they couldn't help themselves. If this man had punched his girlfriend in the face for ignoring him, no one would have noticed. The story also resonates among the many who saw the Time magazine cover with the acid-melted face of a young Afghani woman, and linking the two seems inevitable, especially since the attacker has a foreign-sounding name.

In fact, I was just reading the comments on the Minneapolis story on KSTP.com, all of which were horrifying. The victim was described as "lucky," because in her home country she would have been stoned to death. Nowhere in the article is the victim's country of origin mentioned.

And that's what I find the most disturbing about this story: that the attacker's race, his supposed foreignness, and his weapon of choice can converge to make this attack something “other,” rather than just another case of domestic violence in Minnesota.

A 2006 CDC report stated that women in the US experience around 4.8 million intimate partner related assaults and rapes. (http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/dvp/ipv_factsheet.pdf). This number is an estimate, of course, because many victims do not report their abuse. Again, I wonder if Jarso Yohannes Adem's victim would have come forward if she'd only been punched in the mouth? I sound cynical because I'm so frustrated. Our state still fails to see domestic abuse as a public health problem. Back in September 2007, I wrote an article for the Minnesota Women's Press that called for the resignation of Rep. Mark Olson, who pled guilty to misdemeanor domestic assault. Olson was ousted in the next primary, but no member of Republican leadership asked him to step down. Gov. Pawlenty stated before the conviction that he ought to step down, but failed to apply pressure after the fact.

Pawlenty, interestingly enough, is behind dramatic state funding cuts to domestic violence shelters and prevention services (http://www.ncadv.org/files/Minnesota.pdf). This is not to imply that he doesn't care at all about victims, but it tells you where his priorities are. We as a state are implicated whenever we turn a blind eye, either to a victim that we know, or to a news story about funding cuts that we fail to act upon.

I can't call any attack on a woman positive, but if this acid attack does anything to provoke a frank discussion about how inured we are to partner violence, I'll be happy.

Regarding the coverage of the woman who doused herself: as I mentioned before, acid is having a moment. A mentally ill person seeking attention while self-harming would be wise to choose such a method. The fascination with the fact that this was a hoax feeds into lingering suspicion that all domestic violence claims are without merit. Many feel that victims manipulate their stories for attention, sympathy, or advantage in legal proceedings. Even Rihanna, a beloved pop star, was thought by millions of teens to have been somehow culpable in her own vicious beating. If Rihanna can't catch a break, how can the average girl on the street hope to be believed? Domestic crimes remain hidden, perpetrators believe that their behavior is "normal," and we all just go on our merry way.

Did I make myself clear? I'm not sure.

Hart Van Denberg’s piece appeared September 22, with the two quotes above, THREE PICTURES of acid-burned victims, the words “Afghanistan, South Asia, and Africa,” and a reader comment that said I was being awfully insensitive to the St. Louis Park victim by suggesting that she’d been better off with a punch in the face.

?????

You tell me, readers: did the finished City Pages piece express my concern about these cases? Or am I justified in my worry that I became part of City Pages’ excuse for running exploitative photos of acid-scorched faces?

Things on my mind this Tuesday

Acid attacks on women--abroad and at home.

http://kstp.com/news/stories/s1748469.shtml

Lame arguments for banning same-sex marriage.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/245649/case-marriage-editors

Juliana Hatfield writes better songs now than she did back in the day, but nobody knows it.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001BRZ556/ref=cm_rdp_product

I seem to have been caught up in a Twitter virus.

http://www.businessinsider.com/a-security-flaw-is-slamming-twitter-right-now-2010-9

Forever 21, a store for teens, sells maternity clothes.

http://www.forever21.com/category.asp?catalog_name=FOREVER21&category_name=maternity_main&Page=all&promotype=2&cookie_test=1

It's a gonna be a busy day!


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Who don't like dishtowels?

Yes, fans, I have new work appearing in a new venue: Elevate Difference, which is appropriate for two divergent reviews of products by the company Sin in Linen. Your link appears below.

Tattoo Flash Print Dishtowels, reviewed by none other than The Radical Housewife herself.

On the home page of ED you'll see that another writer took a stab at reviewing a set of bedsheets with same retro tattoo print. The contrast between Irene Wazgowska's more serious approach and mine made me laugh out loud--my snark is so thick you need to wipe it with ....well, a punk rock dishtowel.

Enjoy it with a cold one and Hole's "Plump" burning through your speakers.

Melissa Harris Lacewell 2012!

By now, interested parties are aware that The Manuscript has a chapter called "The Best Feminist in the World." Tongue firmly planted in cheek, you read my case for Hillary Clinton, Jessica Valenti, Shirley Chisholm, and ME. All that changed today.

The following clip from the brilliant Rachel Maddow (a Best Feminist candidate herself) is extraordinary not simply for the fact that Maddow is bringing to light how outrageously disgusting the new crop of anti-choice conservatives are. What totally blew my mind, and should blow yours, is the passion, intelligence, and calm conviction of Maddow's guest, Princeton professor Melissa Harris Lacewell.



Says The New Best Feminist in the World:

"There is no place in the world and no time in history where restricting women‘s reproductive rights makes a people or a nation more free or more equal. These extreme positions on abortion are without any question a war on American girls and women."

"When you talk about the rape and incest clause, I suspect that many Americans, maybe even many pro-choice Americans think that rape and incest and pregnancy resulting from it is a pretty unusual occurrence. ....but the fact is that sexual assault is an embarrassingly common experience......we‘re talking about hundreds of women, thousands of women in pregnancies."

"Look, I‘m from a people who really did experience the need to hold on to a God who would see them through difficult times, including generations of black women who in slavery were forced to bear the children of their rapists. .....But I'm also an American who believes that the point of government isn‘t to make life so hard for half of our citizens that the only force there to help them is God. We, as a government and as a people, deserve and should do better."

I LOVE YOU, MELISSA HARRIS LACEWELL. You should be running for Senate, not Sharon "rape lemonade" Angle or Christine "no touchy" O'Donnell. Let's start her fanclub now!

"Parenting" as purpose

Lisa Belkin, she of 2003's infamous "Opt-Out Generation" piece, wrote an essay in last Sunday's New York Times magazine that's eerily echoing the finishing touches I'm putting on The Manuscript.

You read that right: FINISHING. The end is in sight. I should be done by Matt's birthday, which is next Wednesday. I will have to buy him something extra wonderful to thank him for his patience, support, and confidence when I had none. Anyone got a line on a Favre bobblehead for the birthday boy?

Back to Belkin. In "Living to be a Parent," she writes that a gaggle of academic psychologists want to revise Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs so that parenting sits at the top. THE TOP! Belkin complains that this emphasis on "parenting," both as a verb and as a crowning achievement in life, is what's responsible for all the spoiled brats who entered college last week with helicopters in tow. "They are more dependent," she writes, "expecting trophies just for trying and texting their parents to ask for advice about what to eat for breakfast."

I take a different perspective in The Radical Housewife, the book. I'm not worried about the Yale frosh who don't know how to put quarters in the laundry machine--he'll be fine. I'm worried about what happens to all the other kids out there, the kids who don't have a chance to get to Yale because the rich folks with the means to place "parenting" at the center of their lives have diverted funds away from them.

It's a competitive culture, in case you haven't noticed. Resources are not allocated evenly. The haves hoard, and the have-nots are stuck. In my kids' school district, the only schools that consistently make Adequate Yearly Progress are the ones that receive no Title I funding anyway. In plainer terms, the better-off the family, the better-off the school, the better-off your future.

And while this seems obvious, I'll mention it anyway: putting parenting at the center of your universe is only going to make all you middle- and upper-class parents (like Belkin and other NYT subscribers) MORE anxious, insecure, and miserable, which leaves you (and me) even more vulnerable to swallowing this Mommy Wars bullshit.

Chew on that while I finish my book.

Overheard on 9/11

Elliott: Why are they talking on the radio about burning books?
Mom: Oh, some clueless moron in Florida wants to burn the Koran because he thinks--

(long pause while Mom figures out how to explain all this to a very curious ten-year-old)

Mom: Let's just say that there's some guy who wants to burn a book to get attention. And it's working.
Elliott: But why would someone burn a book? What's so wrong with a book that someone would burn it?
Mom: Nothing. Books don't have feelings. They're only words on a page.
Miriam: I love books.
Elliott: I don't think they should burn it.
Mom: I don't either.
Elliott: I think they should READ it.
Mom: You're right. If more people read more books, the world would be a happier place.
Miriam: I READ BOOKS!
Mom: I'm not worried about you, honey. It's the rest of the world I'm worried about.


Book power design by Fat American.

Research is fun!

While much of my work emphasizes the former half of the creative nonfiction genre, some if it has to be true. This requires research. Too often I'm bogged down in statistics from the Guttmacher Institute or my state's health and human services web page, but sometimes I stumble upon material that is too insane to keep to myself. Today's hilarity is brought to us by a pamphlet called The Christian Worldview on the Family, credited to none other than George "rentboy.com" Rekers.

BUT! Because The Radical Parasite lives to challenge you, I have slipped in a few Bible passages that Rekers forgot, courtesy of the good people at Evil Bible.com. Can YOU decide which of God's words you must follow and which you can freely ignore??

Chart by Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian.

HERE WE GO!

We affirm that a man's authority as head of his wife is delegated to him by God; ...and that all authority is established by God and no one and no social institution has the right to exert any authority contrary to God's laws or the bounds God has set for the man's office in the family. (Romans 13:1; Ephesians 5:22-23)

All who curse their father or mother must be put to death. They are guilty of a capital offense. (Leviticus 20:9 NLT)

We deny....that wives ought to use Biblical limits on husbands' authority as opportunities to quibble and undermine their husbands' authority. (1 Peter 3:1-6)

If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her. (Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NLT)

We deny both that any man should force his wife to abandon her calling in the home for the sake of mere financial gain unnecessary for minimal physical survival, and that the wife should volunteer to do so (1 Timothy 5:8; Ephesians 5:5); that the trappings of middle-class lifestyle are necessities that justify forcing the wife to work outside the home (1 Timothy 6:8);

If within the city a man comes upon a maiden who is betrothed, and has relations with her, you shall bring them both out of the gate of the city and there stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry out for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbors wife. (Deuteronomy 22:23-24 NAB)

We affirm that God calls the wife to submit willingly in loving obedience and respect to her husband as the Church submits herself to Christ (Ephesians 5:22-24; Colossians 3:18); and that wives with non-Christian husbands are called by God to be a testimony to their husbands by their gentle, submissive obedience, and not to weary them with constant criticism. (1 Peter 3:1-5)

We affirm that a mother's primary duty is to nurture her minor children; that the wife's responsibility is to manage the home and make it a center of ministry (1 Timothy 5:10, 14; Titus 2:3-5; Proverbs 31:10-31); that Christian media therefore should not glamorize outside careers for mothers with minor children; and that the Church ought to commend godly wives and mothers who work at home as role models.

When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment. (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)

We deny that married mothers of minor children should seek male economic provider roles; that Christian wives should put the world's idea of self-fulfillment through careers before the calling of God (Matthew 16:24-26; Mark 8:34,35; Luke 9:23-26); that following God's commands in this area exploits women; and that only women with outside careers are "working women" while others are social and economic "parasites."


I told you it was fun!

Back to work

If the kids are back to school, that means I am back to what is known around here as (dum-dum-dum) The Manuscript. Everyone who asks what on earth I am going to do with myself now that my youngest is in all-day kindergarten is told that I am finishing (dum-dum-dum) The Manuscript.

So now I have to do it. Shit.

To get back on track, I've been rereading my old work, including chapters, columns, and miscellaneous essays. Below is something I wrote for the 25th anniversary issue of the Minnesota Women's Press that I don't believe I linked to here. I was challenged to present my feminist vision for the next 25 years, and not surprisingly, it involves caregiving. Here it is:

25 years ago, despite the determined efforts of Mrs. Phyllis Schlafly, women were out of the home and into the workplace in then-record numbers. The women’s liberation movement was a success! Wasn’t it?

Today, think-tankers bemoan what New York Times writer Lisa Belkin dubbed “the opt-out revolution,” the gradual return of educated women back to the realm of unpaid home work. Does that mean that the women’s movement was a failure?

Two questions, one answer: maybe.

I’ve often felt that second wave feminism of the ‘70s made a big mistake when it failed to urge men out of the workplace and into the home. After all, the need for caregiving remains constant no matter the gender of the worker. 20^th and 21^st century mothers with careers must entrust their children to workers who are often paid as little as hamburger flippers—workers who are, almost without exception, other women.

What will it take for our culture to value caregiving? Imagine the impact if Brad Pitt quit the film industry to watch six small children while Angelina Jolie earned the family millions. Like anything else in American life, caregiving will earn respect once more men do it.

Our tasks for the next 25 years are the tasks of our foremothers. First, we must pass a federal Equal Rights Amendment to combat pay inequity and other discriminatory practices that conspire against the moms who want paid work. Next, we need the social revolutions of the last century to come full circle with a paradigm shift in American masculinity. We’ve already destroyed the notion that women are biologically unfit for work; let’s teach our sons that men can care for children and elders as well as women do. Only then will our society be able to intelligently debate how to balance work and family.

photo: Elliott pushing his cousin Hadley around at the Minnesota State Fair, August 2010.

Now if you'll excuse me, Ryan Lavery is about to booked for the murder of David Heyward, whom I suspect is only faking his death to exact revenge upon his wife (and Ryan's ex) Greenlee. You didn't think I was going to give up all of my housewife pleasures, did you?