Today is the 90th Anniversary of Women Gaining the Right to Vote

It is really discouraging to do feminist work sometimes. It seems like there are a thousand people working against equality for every person working towards it. When I talk to my peers, it becomes obvious that a lot of people have accepted sexism as a fact of life. But looking back on important milestones in feminist history helps. It helps to know that despite the fact that a lot of bigoted policies are still out there, the feminist movement has made huge advances in the last 100 years. A woman nearly won the democratic nomination for president, we now head two-thirds of American families, and we have a female Speaker of the House.

Speaking of which, Nancy Pelosi wrote an article today celebrating this anniversary while urging women to vote. I did a lot of voter registration work this summer and I can attest that not nearly enough women (particularly young women) vote in off-year elections. So celebrate this anniversary by voting and reading the below Susan B. Anthony quotes which I included out of hero worship.

"It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union."

"The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it."

"[T]here never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers."

"I can't say that the college-bred woman is the most contented woman. The broader her mind the more she understands the unequal conditions between men and women, the more she shafes under a government that tolerates it."

11/4/08

Last night was, of course, historic.
It was also inspiring, beautiful, personal, affecting, communal, and changing.

Last night, CNN called the election at 10pm.
McCain made his concession at 10:30pm.
Obama addressed the nation at 11pm.
At 11:45pm, we took to the streets.

Amelia and I live on a small college campus of about 1300 students in the middle of a working class town.We were in our room with some friends eating, cheering, studying, and watching CNN. We had our windows open and kept hearing people screaming, so we decided to explore. We walked towards the center of campus to see a line of several hundred students walking. Joining in, we found ourselves walking towards Old Main, the most prestigious building on campus, the last remaining site of a Lincoln-Douglas debate and the place where Abe Lincoln first publicly denounced slavery on moral grounds.
We stood on the steps of that historic building celebrating another historic moment, the election of our first black president. Surrounded by most of the campus, chanting, screaming, crying, laughing, I felt proud. Something deep inside me, something I've never known before, something I've never expected to feel, came to the surface.

I loved my country in that moment.

I loved that I could stand there, on those steps where Abe Lincoln stood before me and be surrounded by chaotic young people of all colors. That we could yell together. That we could cry together. That we could march together, later, through the streets, running and skipping, hugging and smiling, holding hands and cheering. We were, we are unified. We are American, and under the leadership of Barack Obama, I am proud of that fact.

Gay Marriage and Popular Sovereignty

At 5:01 on June 16th, gay marriage became legal in California. If you check out some pictures, they're adorable and the first couple to legal marry are Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, both in their 80's, who have been together for 50+ years (pictures of those two are just soooo cute in their old lady-ness).

Elsewhere I've discussed the legality of the case - because other cases have ruled the right to marry an inherent civil right and because sexual orientation is protected under the equal protection clause, it's unconsitutional to limit marriage between two people based on gender and sexual orientation.

However, citizens in California and elsewhere are trying to circumvent the court's ruling by gathering signatures to get a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage on the ballet in November. "It's the will of the people!" they cry, hoping to sway opinion and rule through that argument.

Marriage equality activists say that denying gay people the right to marry creates a group of second-class citizens who are discriminated against through laws and practice. It's an inherent right that two people, regardless of gender, should be able to marry (and this is an argument the CA Supreme Court agrees with in their May 15, 2008 decision on In re: Marriage Cases - the CA Supreme Court decided people should be able to marry regardless of race in 1948 in Perez v. Sharp and the SCOTUS made it federal in 1967 with Loving v. Viriginia).

We've heard these two arguments before - or at least the history of the United States has, not anyone alive today. These are almost exactly the same positions Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas took on slavery in the 1858 Illinois Senate race and then again in the 1860 Presidential race.

For several years, Douglas was the champion of popular sovereignty, or popular rule - the concept that people should be able to decide what's best for their state/territory. Lincoln agreed with popular sovereignty, or at least up to a certain degree, like when popular opinion tread on a cause that wasn't moral. For Lincoln, slavery was immoral and violated the natural rights of Black people.

In seven different debates held throughout Illinois (including one at the fine institution of Knox College, where Amelia and Kate currently attend), Douglas and Lincoln verbally sparred back and forth over popular sovereignty and the morality of slavery. Douglas and Lincoln were debating the merits of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise (the Compromise contained new slave territories to beneath the southern border of Missouri, with Missouri as the exception). Kansas-Nebraska stated that the rule of the people should decide if a new territory was to be slave or free, designed by Douglas and popular sovereignty. Other things complicated the debate as well, such as the Dred Scott SCOTUS ruling and Douglas' race-baiting of Lincoln (that's another story for another time). The debates were incredibly popular all over Illinois and they were published in various Chicago newspapers and newspapers all over the nation.

Douglas won the 1858 Illinois Senate race, however, Douglas and Lincoln faced each other again two years later on a much wider stage - this time for the President of the United States. They reiterated much of the positions and arguments throughout the 1860 race, and that time, Lincoln won.

This isn't the first time US politics has heard the popular will/natural rights debate, and it won't be the last time. However, we can make sure that the voices speaking for the expansion of rights are heard as opposed to the voices trying to limit rights. The Constitution and Bill of Rights wasn't created to close off freedoms - it was crafted so to explicitly say, "These are the specific rights that cannot be taken away from us and that goes for any other rights as deemed necessary in the future" - the right to vote based not on gender or race, for example. I believe the right to marry falls under this category as well, and the CA Supreme Court agrees with me.

So next time you hear someone say, "The people don't want gay marriage! We should follow the popular opinion of the people!" remember that this argument has been tried before and when it comes down to inherent rights, it's not going to work.

This post was influenced by Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America.

The Misogyny of Wage Gaps

Today is the 45th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, which was passed by the late President Kennedy on June 10, 1963. Since then, we've come a long way, but persistent and blatant wage gaps continue to be an issue. I think that my fellow Impersonators, Lindsay and Amelia, have covered the basics far more eloquently than I am capable of without sounding repetitive.

Regardless, wage gaps are a part of a much larger phenomenon than simple misogyny in the workplace. Female work, even if it is the same work that a male can and does do, is consistently undervalued. If a woman does a man's work, she more likely to be underpaid and less likely to be promoted. If a woman does a woman's job—housekeeping, mothering, teaching—she is more likely to see exponential wage gaps, or no monetary compensation at all.

Take any traditionally female-dominated field and it is easy to see how much more undervalued and underpaid the work is compared to traditionally masculine fields. Even underpaid and overworked masculine careers like police officers and firefighters garner more respect than a maid, a nanny, or an elementary school teacher.

Nowhere is this more apparent than the case of the stay-at-home mother. I have nothing for respect for women, such as my mother, who choose to devote all of their waking hours to their children. Regardless, women in America often have to choose between a career and a family. Women that choose to stay home and raise children, arguably the most important job a person can do, labor unpaid to the tune of $117,000 per year. My parents had an ugly divorce when I was fairly young, and one of my father's complaints was that my mother used him as a "free meal ticket". My mother, under appreciated and overworked, labored day and night to raise me and my brother in the manner in which she felt was appropriate. How many other mothers are demeaned for their work? How many others are under-appreciated? Mothers are the backbone of our society, and yet, much scorn is heaped upon the woman who dares to stay home, raise the children and maintain the household, and occasionally shop or do things for herself.

For those that choose to work and have children, or are forced to as single parents or because of financial difficulties, the stereotypical "women's work", such as housekeeping and childcare, still falls disproportionately on our shoulders. This phenomenon was dubbed the "second shift" by Arlie Russell Hochschild in The Second Shift and The Time Bind, where she used peer-reviewed research to show that in two-career couples, men and women usually work equal hours but women still do a disproportional amount of housework.

Imagine the amount of work woman do to uphold this society that goes unappreciated, unpaid, or underpaid. A single mother chasing after her ex-husband for child support is regarded as greedy and should stay out of his wallet (another gem parroted by my father, even today). A single father that works and raises his children by himself is a saint, a real trooper. The double-standard is pervasive, especially when it couples with racism to form the myth of the welfare-queen: poor southern black women who have children for their own selfish gain.

I know that no amount of legislation such as the Fair Pay Act will ever amount to true fair pay unless the persistent devaluing of "women's work" utterly ceases. Our struggle to get paid the same amount for the same work is part of a larger struggle for women everywhere to do what needs doing—whether that is behind a desk, at the stove or both—and be able to support ourselves and our families.

Remember that when we discuss Fair Pay, we are really addressing the systematic and pervasive devaluation of anything a woman chooses to do for the simple fact that she is not a man.

(Cross-posted)

"Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History"

Many people know the phrase as a sort of feminist slogan. I always thought it was a cool quote, something I could live by. I never knew who had first penned it. That woman is named Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, and this week I heard her lecture several times about what it means to be a historian, and what exactly her famous quotation means.

When I signed up to write about Ulrich's appearance at Knox College for the student newspaper, all I knew about her was her name and the title of her lecture. It was fascinating to learn so much more about her. Here is a link to the article I wrote on the website for our newspaper.

Some other things I didn't know about Laurel Thatcher Ulrich:

- In 1976, Ulrich published her first scholarly piece in American Quarterly. It was called “Virtuous Women Found: New England Ministerial Literature, 1668-1735" and the last line of its introduction read "Well-behaved women seldom make history."

- She won a Pulitzer Prize for History in 1991 (along with many other awards) for her book A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard based on her diary, 1785–1812.

- A Midwife's Tale was developed into a PBS documentary for the series “The American Experience.”

- She is 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard University, with a concentration in Early American History.

Einstein Who?

So, I'm taking an astronomy class this term and was just doing some reading for tomorrow when I discovered this:

"Our current system of stellar classification began at Harvard College Observatory." The observatory director had numerous assistants, whom he called "computers." Most of these "computers" were women....No one at the time knew why spectra followed the sequence. The correct answer - that all stars are made primarily of hydrogen and helium - was discovered by Cecilia Payne-Gaposchken...She published her discoveries in her doctoral thesis, which was later called "the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written."

Fucking Rad.