The Divine Ms. S. at a Glamour magazine event (image from GOOGLE IMAGES).We entered “The Skylight Room,” a bright, open space on the third floor of Baruch College’s Mason Hall building, for the small reception preceding that day’s lecture. Gloria Steinem had been invited to speak as part of The 15
th Annual Addison Gayle Memorial Lecture Series. The topic: “The Longest Revolution.”
To our left a small crowd had gathered around a woman dressed entirely in black; black, body-hugging top, no bra, black pants and a silver, low-slung belt. Her long hair was not quite gray, but not quite auburn anymore, and she wore
frame-less glasses that shone each time a camera flashed in her face. She looked exactly like...Gloria Steinem. Just, older.
Julie Des
Jardins, my hostess for the day and Professor of History at Baruch, later observed that, all these years later, the part in Ms. Steinem’s hair was in
exactly the same place. I wondered if her trademark look — her hair, her glasses — had played a role in making her the most identifiable icon of the Second Wave of Feminism, and one of the most recognized women in the world.
The reception was mobbed with college administrators and eager students but eventually we were led over for an introduction. At the precise second I could have shaken Gloria’s hand, the Development department interrupted for a photo opp. So much for my big moment. But I did manage to give her a copy of the November ’08 issue of
The MotherHood, our “God & Politics” issue. Which included, appropriately, our cover satirizing Sarah
Palin’s role in the November election, and a reference to an article by Gloria herself in Suzanne
Vickberg’s
Work/ Life Balance column.
Of
Palin, Gloria said: “Sarah’s going to look back in a few years and realize how she was used.” How she was trotted out ill prepared and thoroughly blind-sided. On
Palin calling herself a feminist Gloria said, “You know you’re doing well when [the opposition] uses your language to define themselves.”
I did get to see Gloria up close. She’s thin. Not in the ‘never too rich or too thin’ way, but rather in the ‘grandma seems to shrink a little more each year’ way. We found out that she had just celebrated her 75
th birthday when the Dean presented her with roses at the end of the lecture. There was no denying that she still looked great, yes, but older, and perhaps...fragile.
That notion was dispelled when she took the podium.
In a soft but firm voice, she began by telling the standing-room only crowd about “The Journey of Man,” a new National Geographic documentary and book of the same title. How she was put off by the title until she learned that it is, literally, a study of male DNA and it’s origins.
Geneticist Spencer Wells, by analyzing the y-chromosome from people around the globe (the ‘Y’ is passed as a chunk of DNA from father to son relatively unchanged for generations), has concluded that all humans alive today are “descended from a single man who lived in Africa 60,000 years ago.”
(http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/12/1212_021213_journeyofman.html)“This new data,” Ms. Steinem declared, “exposes the fiction of Race.” And, “Any grouping of us now is remedial.”
She went on to say that fifty years from now someone else would be standing at another podium, telling an incredulous audience of college students that our culture once endlessly “sorted its people by gender and skin color.” And, that we used these false labels to subjugate one another.
Ms. Steinem said that despite recent evidence of great progress — the election of Barack Obama, among other indicators — sexism and racism are still problems, and are bound together. These caste systems are intertwined. She added that the liberation of sexual identity was yet to be won, as well. One could not fight for the rights of women, Gloria said, without fighting for the civil rights of all the disenfranchised people in a culture.
She suggested that society cuts off the blood to a man’s heart and mind with its narrow definitions of appropriate masculine behavior, and she further proposed that women would not be completely free until men were equally free to acknowledge and develop their nurturing qualities.
That certainly sounded familiar! We asserted as much in our Premiere issue (March 2006), in our article about “Pop Culture,” a support group for dads created by local dad John Havens:
- “There is evidence everywhere in women’s lives of the success of the feminist movement. But perhaps it is in the stories of today’s fathers that we see the far-reaching effects of the revolution — a generation of men who fully participate in the raising of their children. Fathers who change diapers, walk the floors with screaming babies, do the grocery shopping and the laundry, braid hair, help with homework, choose schools, and give baths. Maplewood and South Orange abound with these dads. In fact, there is even a group dedicated to their support, cleverly named Pop Culture; its slogan — “modern dadvocacy.”
Those of us engaged in contemporary parenting are familiar with the divisive nature of labels; the stay-at-homers vs. the working mothers, the “involved” Dads vs. the “traditionalists,” and the further need to label others as “two-dad’ or “two-mom” or “adoptive” families.
These media-manufactured wars and semantic short-cuts only work to stall the real conversations about pay parity, universal
healthcare and childcare that truly address the underlying, practical inequalities that are strangling families.
So, if we are engaged in “the longest revolution” as the title of Ms. Steinem’s lecture suggests, and the word Feminist no longer describes us accurately as the soldiers for
human rights that we have become, what do we call ourselves?
I’m going to stick with Parent, that all-inclusive noun.
It won’t tell you what gender or color or sexual orientation I am, but it will tell you everything you need to know.
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COMING SOON:
THE STATE OF BIRTH IN AMERICA
Featuring The MotherHood columnists Kim Collins, Helena Holgersson-Shorter, Maria Parlapiano and Gayle Lemke, doula, and owner of Shakti yoga studio in Mapelwood NJ.
The CDC has released the 2007 birth statistics and, as reported on her blog DoulaMomma, by Kim Collins (see March 21 entry) New Jersey bears the dubious distinction of having the highest rate in the country — AGAIN.
NJ's average is 38.3%; the 2007 national average is 31.8% (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr57/nvsr57_12.pdf).
Why are so many babies being 'born' via major abdominal surgery? Is it making birth safer for mothers or babies? And what does it say about contemporary attitudes towards women and their bodies?
Stay tuned this month for a discussion on the State of Birth in NJ and America.
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To read more about The MotherHood magazine, or order back issues, go to:
www.themotherhoodmagazine.com, or contact us at themotherhood@comcast.net.
