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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781641600316 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Chicago Review Press, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 09/04/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 176 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
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CHAPTER ONE
Your Legacy
Here I sit, head bent, writing you an intimate letter. I sense your presence, even though I don't know your name. I envision you as a young woman, possibly a young man, somewhere between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, but you may also be a decade older--or younger--than that. You may not yet be born.
Perhaps I am trying to speak to my own younger self. When I was coming of age--a process which is still far from over--no one ever spoke strong truths to me in a loving voice. When I was your age, I did not know what I needed to know in order to understand my life--anybody's life. Perhaps, in writing to you, I wish to correct that, to make amends.
In the past, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote a letter such as mine to a prince, Sun Tzu to a king, Virginia Woolf to a gentleman, Rainer Maria Rilke to a male admirer. This letter is for you. You are either poor or rich; you are any or all the colors of the human rainbow, all shades of luck and character. You are my heir. This letter is your legacy. Without your conscious intervention, that legacy may again lie dormant for one hundred years. Or longer.
I imagine you are a person who wants to know why evil exists. People commit evil deeds because we, the good people, do not stop them. To quote Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing." Ah, Burke, evil also triumphs when good women do nothing.
Men alone are not responsible for patriarchy; women are also their willing, even ardent, collaborators.
Perhaps you believe you can "have it all": a brilliant career, a loving, life-long marriage, healthy children/no children, enough money, and happiness too. If you're anything like I was, you probably believe that whatever awful things may have happened to women in the past, or still are happening to "other" women today, cannot happen to you.
Darling, I don't want to frighten you away, but I don't want to waste your time either, so I can't pretend that simply because you or I want it to be so that in fact women and men are equal.
Even when men and women do exactly the same thing, it means something different. The father who changes a diaper is often seen as a hero; not so the mother who is, after all, only doing what she's expected to do. This is not true in reverse. The woman who succeeds in a man's world--although she is not expected to do so--is rarely treated as a conquering hero. She is, more often, seen as an aggressive bitch. She may well be aggressive--but no more than her male colleagues are. Some women try to prove their worth by outdoing their male colleagues in tough, anti-female behavior. Some women feel compelled to behave in "feminine" or "maternal" ways to appease those who would otherwise punish them for stepping so far out of line.
Thus, unlike her male counterparts, the chief judge pours her own coffee, and the police officer may not use what she's learned on the job to stop her husband from beating her; whatever she's learned at work can't over-ride what she's learned all her life about being a woman. The female employee--not her male counterpart--is still expected to buy the gifts, take the coats, bake the cookies for an office party, babysit her employer's child. Hardly gang-rape, but sexism nevertheless.
Yes, the world is different now than it was when I was your age. In only thirty years, a visionary feminism has managed to seriously challenge, if not transform, world consciousness. Some astronauts, army officers, ministers, prime ministers, and senators are women--there are women's studies programs too, and you can't open a newspaper without reading about some man on trial for rape or sexual harassment. But the truth is women are still far from free. We're not even within striking range.
Fundamentalist passions are threatening to destroy what feminists have accomplished. Three examples immediately come to mind.
The right to an abortion remains under an increasingly bloody siege.
Although we now understand that rape is epidemic and has lasting consequences, we are, as yet, unable to stop it. Today, in Algeria, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Guatemala, Haiti, Rwanda, rape has become a systematic, full-fledged weapon--not merely a spoil--of war. In an era of ethnic cleansing, rape is a form of gender cleansing.
We remain separate and unequal--segregated both by race and gender. In the 1950s and 1960s, brave, young, African-American school children were confronted with adult faces contorted with rage, verbal abuse, turned backs, and hate-filled hearts when they integrated previously all-white schools. Today, brave young women are facing similar fury and danger for trying to integrate traditionally male-only military schools such as the Citadel in South Carolina.
In 1995, heroic nineteen-year-old Shannon Faulkner, the first woman ever to enroll in the previously all-male institution, faced the hate alone; she (and many young men) left after a few weeks. In September of 1996, four women were admitted. By December, two women, Kim Messer and Jeanie Mentavlos, and seventy-five men had quit. While all first-year cadets endured sadistic ritual hazing and harassment, the female cadets were singled out and, in addition to all else, subjected to vulgar songs about masturbation, obscene pictures, sexualized physical intimidation, and death threats. One was also set on fire. Like Faulkner, they were "hated out."
The most extraordinary legal victories are only scraps of paper until human beings test them on the ground. As I write, twenty-four young women have been accepted as cadets at the Citadel. Like their African-American counterparts, the women will not be deterred--but they will pay a high price.
As feminists, we learned that one cannot do such things alone, only together.
I want you to know what our feminist gains are, and why you must not take them for granted. (Although it is your right to do so--we fought for that too.) I also want you to know what remains to be done. I want you to see your place in the historical scheme of things, so you may choose whether and how to stand your ground in history.
Hear me: It may be 1998 but, in my view, we are still living in the 1950s. The poet Sylvia Plath (God/dess rest her soul) is about to put her head in the oven again. I am saying that we have not come far enough. We are also still living in the 1930s, and that great writer, Virginia Woolf, is slowly making her way down to the sea, about to drown herself. No, we are still living in 1913. The sculptor, Camille Claudel, who assisted her lover, Auguste Rodin, on some of his works, is--even as we speak--trussed up and on her way to a lunatic asylum. Claudel was imprisoned in one by her own mother and brother, Paul (the poet). The family condemned her to languish there for thirty years. She died in captivity, in 1943.
I often want to discreetly remove Rodin's august name and replace it with Camille Claudel's in various museums around the world--but then, I'm also the one who wants to behead the statue of Perseus who stands, triumphantly, at the top of the steps at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, holding aloft Medusa's severed head. Her honor demands it, her snaky locks tempt me to it.
There's a worthy precedent for such an action. Did you know that in 1914, while British suffragists were jailed, beaten, and force-fed (they went on hunger strikes) for demanding the vote, suffragist Polly Richardson marched into a London museum and swung an ax at Diego Velazquez's Rokeby Venus. Society howled. Velazquez's perfect woman is a reclining nude, and vain too; we observe Venus observing herself (and us) in a mirror. Perhaps this was Richardson's way of saying: My Lords, this portrait mocks real women who are, in fact, powerless. How does it feel to have something you value mutilated and destroyed?
Some say that Plath, Woolf, and Claudel were "mad" geniuses who'd have ended up the same sad way even if they'd each been nourished in a woman-loving family and culture.
How can such cynics be so sure?
Although many a sane woman has, in the past, been locked away in a loony bin, I am not saying that madness itself is a myth. Madness is real. Neither ideology nor good friends can save a woman from it. Still, the accumulation of daily slights and humiliations that most women must learn to absorb, to "not see," does have a way of calling down more than the usual number of demons.
I am thinking about the demands for perfection to which most girls and women are routinely subjected, combined with the lack of rewards--in fact, the grave punishments that most women must endure in order to survive. I am no longer talking only about educated white women of genius with whom you may be most familiar, but about all women, of all colors, in all lines of work. So many women are deprived, punished, forced to walk a far narrower line than most men ever are. Our genius does not save us, nor does our obedience.
Dutiful women, rebellious women, "mad" geniuses too, so many of us are systematically ground down and "disappeared," rendered invisible, forced to sink out of sight for centuries at a time. We lose touch with one another in our own lifetimes.
If we cannot see each other, we cannot see ourselves.
You must stand on our feminist shoulders in order to go further than we did.
Confinement distorts character. Centuries of women have been swallowed whole and doomed to such darkness that, like prisoners, we instinctively come to fear the light; it is blinding, unnatural. We fear standing up, we take small and careful steps when we do, we stumble, and we look to our jailors for protection.
Stand up as early as you can in life. Take up as much space in the (male) universe as you need to. Sit with your legs apart, not together. Climb trees. Climb mountains too. Engage in group sports. Dress comfortably. Dress as you wish.
How do we stop injustice?
We begin by speaking truth to power. That child who told the emperor he was naked is one of ours.
We begin by daring to remain connected to those whom prejudice silences, renders less than human.
We begin, of course, by fighting back.
Towards that end, you must move beyond words. You must act. Do not hesitate because your actions may not be perfect enough, or beyond criticism. "Action" is how you put your principles into practice. Not just publicly, or towards those more powerful than you, but also privately, towards those less fortunate than you. Not just towards those who are (safely) far away, but towards those with whom you live and work.
If you're on the right track, you can expect some pretty savage criticism. Trust it. Revel in it. It is the truest measure of your success.
Those who endure small humiliations--daily--say that the most lasting and haunting harm resides in growing accustomed to such treatment, in large part because others insist that you do. After all, they have. What's so special about you? "So, your boss asked you and not your male colleagues to make coffee at the meeting--big deal. At least you have a job." "So, your husband keeps forgetting his promise to help out with the housework--At least you have a husband."
Always implied, but unspoken: "It could be worse." But things could also be better. That will not happen if you do not act heroically.
Telling a rape survivor that she's "exaggerating the trauma in order to get attention" is not useful. Nor is asking her: "Why did you go out with that guy in the first place?"
Comments like these shame a woman into silence and inaction. They imply that there is nothing she can do or say that will change anything so she might as well give up and accept things as they are. Such comments forbid her to storm the gates of power. In a sense, this kind of gatekeeping constitutes bystander behavior. Survivors of serious atrocities say they are haunted by those who heard their screams but turned their backs, closed their doors, remained neutral, refused to take any stand other than an opportunistic one.
One cannot remain a bystander without becoming complicit. Morally, one must "take sides." But, once a person takes the side of anyone who's suffered a grave injustice, listens to her, believes what she says, tries to help her--that quiet act of humanity and courage will be viewed as a traitorous act.
Commit such treason as often as you can.
Women's hearts, men's hearts, are irretrievably broken when people default on the dream of a common, moral humanity (we are all connected, what happens to one happens to all) and do nothing.
I think such interventions are possible when we are inspired by a larger vision, guided by a great dream. Not otherwise.
Women do not need a room of their own. Feminists, both men and women, need a very large continent of our own. Nothing less will do.
Table of Contents
Letter One: Your Legacy,
Letter Two: Thinking Feminist,
Letter Three: My Life as a Girl in America,
Letter Four: How to Develop a Strong Self in a "Post"-Feminist Age,
Letter Five: The Canon,
Letter Six: Radical Compassion,
Letter Seven: An Opening in History,
Letter Eight: Feminist Myths about Sisterhood,
Letter Nine: Self-Love and Team-Spirit,
Letter Ten: Principles, Not Popularity,
Letter Eleven: We Need a Feminist Continent,
Letter Twelve: "Love Is Not Love Which Alters When It Alteration Finds",
Letter Thirteen: Sex and Humanity,
Letter Fourteen: "Not the Church, Not the State, Women Must Decide Their Fate.",
Letter Fifteen: The Joys of Motherhood,
Letter Sixteen: "Making Family" in the Modern Age,
Letter Seventeen: Marriage: A Not-So-Sacred Institution,
Letter Eighteen: Female Fugue States,
Letter Nineteen: Boundaries,
Letter Twenty: Telling,
Letter Twenty-One: Economic Independence,
Letter Twenty-Two: Letter to a Young Feminist Who Happens to Be a Man Who Happens to Be My Son,
Bibliography,
Interviews
On Saturday, March 21st, barnesandnoble.com welcomed Phyllis Chesler to discuss LETTERS TO A YOUNG FEMINIST.
Moderator: Tonight we welcome acclaimed psychologist and feminist Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D., to discuss her latest book, LETTERS TO A YOUNG FEMINIST. Welcome, Phyllis Chesler. Thank you for joining us online tonight. How are you doing this evening?
Phyllis Chesler: Thank you very much for asking. I am holding my own. I need to take a day off but rarely can.
Leslie from Fargo, ND: I am often frustrated by my generation's lack of interest in feminism and continuing the cause. What do you think a young feminist can do to get others interested? What are some of the best tactics, and which ones should you avoid? Thanks.
Phyllis Chesler: This is a good question. First, I believe it takes far more courage to be a feminist today when one is young than 30 years ago. You may have to start organizing junior high school. Try to get girls before they reach that age of 11 or 12.... Today young people will say I am not a feminist, but I am for equal pay for equal work, against domestic violence and incest. I am for a women's right to have an abortion. These are all feminist demands and expectations. If you get the young person to focus on the issue, not the label -- feminist equals man-hating dyke whore from hell -- then I believe young people will pay attention to the issues that matter. If they have a chance at getting information which is routinely withheld from them.
Samantha from Delaware: Phyllis, how did you come into a feminist consciousness? Who were your early female role models or inspirations? What influence did your mother have on you? Do you have any literary influences?
Phyllis Chesler: In LETTERS, I spell out a few role models that were heroic or rebellious that were available when I was in my teens or all through my 20s. The good news is that clearly one can discover and even invent one's own role models when necessary. It is important to have these feminist forerunners' shoulders to stand on. I would say that my own mother was very patriarchal but also very smart and forceful, and I am sure that these two traits influenced me. She used these skills to uphold traditional values, and in classic daughterly fashion, I took those skills to challenge them. I think that it is important that there are the beginnings to a multicultural, multiethnic, radical visionary feminist tenet. Read it and pass the information on.
Janine from Athens, Ohio: Could you please tell us about the birth, so to speak, of women's studies programs at universities? What was the founding idea behind it, and how have you seen such programs develop and change since your early work? Thank you.
Phyllis Chesler: Well, in the late 1960s, grassroots feminism exploded in consciousness all across this country, and what we learned in consciousness-raising groups and in the speak-outs that we pioneered -- in which women came forward in public and talked about being raped, being incest victims, enduring domestic violence, being battered, being unpaid or underpaid, having abortions, or being forced into motherhood against their will -- was liberating information. This knowledge needed to be brought to continuing generations -- hence in universities, which were all men's studies by the end of the 1960s -- beginning in the 1970s to create small ghettos of women's studies in a sea of men's studies, which continues to this day. I would like women's studies to expand, because the knowledge has power to transform our daily lives and realities. I would like women's studies programs to retain a revolutionary edge, which is hard to do.
Mindy from Cleveland: You say in LETTERS TO A YOUNG FEMINIST that men alone are not responsible for creating this patriarchy that we live in -- that women are even "willing, ardent collaborators." Please explain this further, and do you really feel a matriarchy is any better? Isn't it wrong to assume any single-sex form of leadership is best? Can't we coexist in peace?
Phyllis Chesler: I have written this book for both genders. Its title is not LETTERS TO A YOUNG WOMAN but LETTERS TO A YOUNG FEMINIST. Women collaborate in upholding patriarchy when they stand by violent men, help violent men to minimize or deny sexual and economic crimes against women, when they banish the woman victim and socially ostracize her and continue to be loyal and depend on those men -- not all men -- who sexually harass or rape or mock women and children. There is a war on women globally, and women and men as feminists are attempting to fight back, to resist. How shall the gang-raped women of Bosnia or Uganda or Cleveland make peace with torturers and rapists? This question will be solved by many of us over hundreds of years.
Dias from Brazil: Do you feel the average woman in the U.S. is better off nowadays than women anywhere else? If so, would you care to explain?
Phyllis Chesler: Yes. I greet you on behalf on the feminist government in exile which is a state of mind in formation everywhere. The same machismo which allows men to batter and murder women in Brazil with immunity exists in North America, too, as does poverty, prostitution, rape, and domestic servitude of women. Some American women have some privileges, such as access to education, but we are still not in the Constitution, we do not have an equal rights amendment -- so we have our work cut out for us both here and in South America.
Linda from Petersburg: A week ago I heard a commentary on NPR "Morning Edition" that discussed the latest research finding that young girls are not getting treated equally in school classrooms. Boys are called on twice as much by their teachers, girls are intimidated or harassed by male teachers, etc. Phyllis, is there anything we can we do to counteract this trend? What would be your advice to girls in these classes?
Phyllis Chesler: I would advise small groups of consciousness raising before and after school and the kind of bonding that young girls can do if they are involved in competitive team sports. If the girls strengthen each other to fight for airtime in classrooms, even though fighting may not be "ladylike," then that is all it will take, a fighting spirit as part of a team. And I don't want to say that young boys of goodwill couldn't be part of the team -- but in the beginning they will be in the minority.
Melanie from Williamsburg, VA: What do you think of the state of the women's movement today and the organizations that lead it, such as NOW? What do you think is the biggest threat against the movement's survival?
Phyllis Chesler: Good question. We have a strong fundamentalist right-wing movement globally and in this country, with ardent male and female advocates that would seek to have women married at home with babies and barefoot, so to speak, denied abortion, denied equal opportunities, and condemned to a bottomless pit of poverty. Token numbers of women in corporate structures can hit their heads against the glass ceiling. This movement is organized, is multinational, and is the largest threat to the survival of both liberal and radical feminist organizations. And often religious institutions are part of or are used by misogynist fundamentalist groups, but sometimes ritual or organized religion will stand on behalf of the mothers, the outcasts, the prostitutes, the strangers, and women.
Moderator: Thank you so much for joining us tonight, Phyllis Chesler. It has been enlightening, and we do hope you will join us again with your next book. Before you go, do you have any closing comments for our online audience?
Phyllis Chesler: Well, I hope that everyone learns their legacy by reading LETTERS TO A YOUNG FEMINIST. My next book will be out on Mother's Day with a new introduction by my now 20-year-old son and an afterword by me. This book is titled A DIARY OF MOTHERHOOD, and I wrote it 20 years ago. Aim for greatness, not goodness. Heroism is our only feminist alternative.