Eat Shit, Caroline
Caroline Kennedy, mommy wars, New York Times | Salon Life
In this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine, contributing writer Lisa Belkin made a comparison between the plight of Caroline Kennedy, a New Yorker who never committed to a particular career path and is now hoping Gov. David Paterson will appoint her to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat, and Whitney Hoffman, a mother who has stayed at home with her kids for more than a decade, worked on a variety of professional projects, but is now nervous about how to return to the workplace full-time. Responding to critics' cries that John F. Kennedy's daughter is inexperienced and unqualified for the Senate job, Belkin links Kennedy's quandary to that of the many former professional or professionally educated women who were part of what Belkin dubbed the "opt-out revolution" five years ago, some of whom are now trying to make their way back into the ranks of the gainfully employed.

Woozy, woozy, girlies. You wanted your 13-year Mommy "Sabbaticals" and now you want to jump off into good jobs? No sympathy for me. I have three kids and took off exactly one week with each of them--the same time my husband took off. I have never done anything for or with my kids that a "traditional" male wouldn't do: I was a female father. I have no sympathy for women who want to be Mommies.

As if that weren't bad enough, here is Caroline Kennedy who not only wants to jump back into the labor force after assing around for all her adult life, but wants to be a senator. Give me a break. Caroline didn't have to opt out: she had the money to buy half a dozen nannies and other servants to do the mommy work and housework for her. But of course, why should she bother? If you've got money you don't have to work, so why bother working? And if you're a woman you can always make smarmy noises about doing your mommy jobbie--and get kudos for it.

You pays your money and you takes your choice. It's not easy to behave like a man if you're a woman: I didn't have the support services my male colleagues had. They could just roll out of bed, grab a cup of coffee and get to their 8 am classes. I had to get the kids dressed, pack little lunches for them and get them to childcare because, unlike them, I didn't have a wife to do it. But I did it.

If women want to opt out that's fine with me. As long as they don't expect to opt back in again.

Apologies: I quit smoking on the 1st and at this point I hate everyone and the entire universe. But, even in the best of circumstances, I don't think I'd be favorably disposed to Caroline Kennedy--a rich brat with an inflated sense of entitlement.

Feminism:
What Went Wrong?

I don't think Sarah Palin is qualified to be Vice President of the United States and, given her views on a range of issues, I wouldn't support her for any elected office. But I'd much rather have a beer with her than with any of he other candidates.

Palin is the beneficiary of the left-wing politics that she despises, and of Second Wave feminism which was part of that package. If she had been born 20 years earlier, and gotten her BA in 1967 instead of 1987, she would never have gotten a job as a sportscaster when she graduated. If she had been running for high political office in 1988 instead of 2008, her socially conservative, religious right constituency would have been horrified at the idea of the mother of a 4 month old baby working outside the home in any capacity, much less running for the vice presidency of the United States. And in 1988, she wouldn't have been running because there wouldn't have been an affirmative action pick on the Republican ticket.

Palin is the living symbol of what I took to be the goal of the feminist movement: to fix things so that women could be like guys. That was it. Very simple. To see to it that women had could get guy jobs and hunt moose--if, of course, that is what they wanted to do. The purpose of feminism as I understood it was to eliminate sex roles so that both men and women could do the jobs and live the lives traditionally reserved for men only or for women only--so that no one's options would be constrained by an accident of birth.

That's what I thought it was all about. But then strange doctrines started creeping in. First and foremost, there was the idea that feminism was inextricably linked to every other edifying sort of -ism. Gay rights, and the rights of every oppressed or marginalized group was supposed to be intrinsic to feminism. Peace was a feminist issue because, rather than freeing women, and men, from the constraints of sex roles, a significant vocal minority of feminists held that the aim was rather to valorize traditional femininity.

Finally, abortion took center stage as the defining feminist issue. To make matters worse the very rationale for making it the central issue was sexist. The working assumption was that if a woman had a baby then she must inevitably raise it, that women "bonded" with their babies through pregnancy as so that giving them up for adoption was unthinkable. Of course, the idea that a woman could simply dump the baby on its dad never crossed anyone's mind. That's what I'd do if I had a baby I didn't want: first stop out of hospital--dad's place. "Here's your baby. I'll come by from time to time to see how he's coming along, and send you a little money every once and a while if I remember. Bye."

Now Democrats are being skewered on the abortion issue because they will not compromise. And compromising would skewer Palin because most Americans wouldn't want to see the kind of draconian anti-abortion legislation she wants--with no exceptions for rape or incest, whatever the stage of pregnancy. Suppose some miserable 14 year old girl is abused and raped by her father. No morning-after pill for her. And then there there are those sweet, cuddley stem cells. Those atheistic pro-abortionists may trot out that actor who has Parkenson's and scientists may whine, but all human life is sacred (exceptions: capital punishment and war).

Even on the worst case scenario, if Roe v. Wade went down in flames, and a significant number of women did not have access to abortion, parenthood is a matter of choice--as fathers know. Work for most women is not a matter of choice and for the 2/3 of American women who are not college graduates, the labor market is thoroughly sex-segregated and sex discrimination is the norm. Feminist activists, members of the unisex elite, don't seem to notice and the Democratic party taking abortion to be the central feminist issue has not made workplace issues a priority.

Right now the Walmart class action sex discrimination lawsuit, involving over 1.5 million current and former Walmart employees, is chugging its way through the courts. Hundreds of women have told their stories--stories with which most working class women can empathize. Abortion is controversial but it is uncontroversial that women should get equal pay for equal work and, more fundamentally, that they should have equal access to on-the-job training, promotion, and a fair opportunity to get equal work.

Sarah Palin got to be a guy--to shoot moose, work as a sportscaster and, through the Republican Party's one-off affirmative action program, run for the vice presidency of the United States. Most women don't get the chance. If Democrats want to recapture the working class vote it might be helpful to do something for the millions of working class women who are stuck in boring, poorly-paid, deadend, pink-collar jobs.