Josie Sustaire, Resident Blogger (’14, University of Oregon School of Law)

I was raised by my stay-at-home mom.  She told me on numerous occasions that I could be whatever I wanted to be when I grew up.  I believed her.  I grew up adoring Punky Brewster, Cyndi Lauper and Madonna.  These were girls who refused to fit a mold.  However, I mostly clung to these role models to avoid the other predominant role models I saw on television shows: the moms.  Family Ties, Growing Pains, Roseanne.  I was inundated with images of the stay-at-home mom.  I knew early on, however, that I did not want to be a stay-at-home mom and I disliked the idea that the yardstick against which I would be measured was the at-home mom model.  I know I’m not the only girl to have been raised by parents who told her she could be anything she wanted to be nor am I the first girl to not want to be a stay-at-home mom.  So if this is true, then why are there so few women in leadership roles?  Well, I don’t have the answer, but I have a hunch.

Two of my classmates recently sent me two different news stories addressing this very issue.  The first was an article about Marissa Mayer, who recently made a command decision at Yahoo! to put an end to telecommuting.  This decision has sparked fierce debates (seriously, just Google Marissa Mayer and telecommuting).  This article makes it clear from its title “Marissa Mayer is killing telecommuting, and that’s a good thing,” that Marissa Mayer’s decision was the right one.

For starters, I fundamentally disagree with this approach.  As a woman, I despise when women (the author is a woman) tell other women the “right” and “wrong” way to either parent or run a company because, of course, you can’t do both.  Intelligent, successful women should be fully aware of the fact that what works for one doesn’t work for all.  What I found most troubling is that the author completely ignores the fact that Mayer, despite having axed telecommuting, just had a private nursery built next to her office, an option not available to the other women in her building.  So, as much as I can appreciate the focus on actual interpersonal communication and face-to-face interactions among staff, I find it difficult to look up to a woman who sets two separate standards, one for her and one for all other women below her.

The second article sent to me was a story about Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook.  Sandberg, in her 60 Minutes interview points the finger at women.  She believes that women are their own worst enemies and that women have put up their own barriers to success.  Now, I’ll agree that there are undoubtedly women who make certain decisions that aren’t the pursuit of reaching the top rung of the ladder but I won’t stand with Sandberg and point the finger at one group.  We are ALL to blame for this.  The lack of female leaders isn’t attributable to just some women making some choices, I would wager that it is much more likely to be attributed to a society that still measures a women’s success in a 1950’s framework.

I have a number of titles, at school and at home.  Wife, mommy, part-time chef, partly-part-time housekeeper, student, group leader, mentor, friend.  I wear each of them proudly and at times I am slow to switch gears and I make mistakes.  I’m not perfect.  But I manage and I would like to think I manage fairly well.  I want to succeed just as much as I want my husband, marriage, and my children to succeed.  I don’t feel compelled to choose one title over another.  In fact, when the media, movies, or Momsters make me feel as if I do, I get angry.  I asked a Federal court judge recently who raised five children how to combat the sneers and snide comments from the PTA moms (aka Momsters).  She leaned in and whispered, “You don’t need to worry about them because you know.  You know about you and your family and they don’t.”  At first, I thought, “what the hell kind of advice is that?”  But now I know what she meant.  I am the only one who truly knows what works for me, not the Momsters, or my classmates, professors, advisors, the media, movies, or even powerful female executives. 

Elisabeth Smith, Resident Blogger (’14, University of Washington School of Law)

Over Christmas my cousins and I were watching television and we just kept flipping channels until we got to TLC and saw some women dressed up in 1950s garb turn from black and white to full color. Heard of Wives with Beehives? The show is basically a Real Housewives variant, but all the women live a “vintage lifestyle”. Other people have talked about the show, but I want to highlight something besides its antiquated notions of gender roles.

All of the women go on and on about the magic of the 1950s.  Dollie calls the 50s “a very romantic period. It’s romantic to have a husband [who] you love, and beautiful children [who] you take care of and a beautiful home you take pride in.”  Here’s where I take issue with this show. Traditional gender roles aren’t my cup of tea, but a show about 4 white women mooning over the romance of the 50s without any recognition that the decade wasn’t all moonbeams and starbursts for everyone is gross.

Let’s start in reverse order. The home.  After World War II, “FHA underwriters warned that the presence of even one or two non-white families could undermine real estate values in the new suburbs. These government guidelines were widely adopted by private industry.” [Click here @ 1:30:55]  So if you were a white GI you could take advance of the GI Bill and get a home in the new suburbs. A GI of color had far fewer options. As Dalton Conley, a sociologist, a points out “basically, the whites moving to the suburbs were being subsidized in the accumulation of wealth, while blacks were being divested.” If a beautiful home is one component of the magical 50s, it was out of reach for many people.

Okay, two: beautiful children with whom you spend your time. In the 1950s, African American women worked outside the home in large numbers so they if they spent their day with children, those children probably weren’t their own.   Another statement made by one the “Wives with Beehives” underscores this reality. When the women discuss whether any of them have dishwashers, one replies “I don’t need a dishwasher, I have Maria.”  Wow. So living a vintage lifestyle also includes vintage racism!

Yikes, people, yikes. I get that these women have chosen to make the 50s their thing, but seriously, what we say on tv does have effects.

Rosie Wang, Resident Blogger (’14, Columbia Law School)

As the year comes to a close, and law school finals draw close, my already questionable domestic skills really go by the wayside.  I have no real groceries besides frozen tater tots and a jar of capers, my desk is in disarray, and my laundry is perilously close to what can only be described as a underwear crisis. It’s times like these that I can’t help wondering, how do people who work and have kids and other obligations keep up with their housework if even I can’t? How do actual lawyers do this? The answer to this question turns out to be a complicated one, involving gender roles in parenting, housekeeping, and work.

For example, did you know that 84% of married women who are lawyers have a spouse who is employed full time compared to only 44% of married men who are lawyers?  Thus, lawyers who are men are more likely to have a partner shoulder the majority of housework and childcare. This phenomenon isn’t unique to lawyers however, as 55.1% of men compared to 72.1% of women spent time on childcare on the average day. Perhaps even more worryingly, the class divide between women is growing so that even if more educated, more well off women have increased their access to paid maternity leave over time (27% in the early 1970s to 66% in 2006-2008), women who do not have their high school degree’s access has stagnated at 18% through the same time period. All of this matters for reproductive justice because there is a gender-based imbalance in career consequences related to getting married, starting a family, and having children.

Wrapped up in this imbalance is also the debate on the division of domestic labor and it’s impact on marriage.  One study reports that the equal division of housework is correlated with higher rates of divorce (in Norwegian married couples). On the other side,  it doesn’t seem unimaginable to me that communities where the norm is for women take on all the household responsibilities would also stigmatize divorce more, pressuring couples to stay together despite unhappiness or incompatibility.

Stress rates, measured by levels of cortisol, were measured in married women and men, and declined in married women when their husbands shared the housework.  Stress rates for men, on the other hand, did not  decline in married men unless men had more time to relax, at the expense of their wives’ leisure time. Alternately, a different study promisingly shows that men have higher levels of well-being and lower levels of work-family conflict when making an equal contribution to the household work. How can these be reconciled? The former study was conducted on 30 dual earner couples in Los Angeles, and the latter over 7 European countries. Maybe the difference lies in the sample. By changing innate attitudes in our country towards work as gendered, perhaps we can change stress levels and happiness levels for the better across the board.

Josie Sustaire, Resident Blogger (’14, University of Oregon School of Law)

There have been few times in my life that I have thought about my hymen.  Somehow, it just hasn’t come up in conversation.  I wasn’t aware that I had essentially taken its existence for granted until my friend introduced me to the artificial hymen.  My immediate reaction was giggling, followed by more giggling, followed by disgust, and ending with contemplation.  And I’m still contemplating.  For me, the idea of the artificial hymen is completely offensive.  To think that virginity can be bought for $29.95 or that virginity even matters enough to necessitate faking is ridiculous to me.  Particularly after reading descriptions of the “device,” I realized that gummy, fake blood-gushing artifices that you wedge into your vagina aren’t my style.

What I didn’t take into consideration while I giggled and then turned my nose up at the artificial hymen was the reality that for some women in the world, virginity is no joke.  While my friends and I can giggle over the idea of faking chastity, a number of countries permit “honor killings” of women who lose their virginity before marriage.  Women in Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, and a whole host of other countries are under threat of being asked or in most cases forced to undergo a virginity examination.  These tests, as one can imagine, are highly invasive and demoralizing examinations of the woman’s hymen in search of signs that she is no longer chaste.

After all these hymen considerations, a friend brought to my attention yet another.  What about the virgins?  “What about them,” I asked rather clueless.  She then confided that she was a virgin and as much as she might have enjoyed giggling along with the rest of us, inside she felt as though the joke was on her.  As shocked as I was at the idea of the fake hymen, I was just as shocked at the idea of the 25 year-old virgin.  But why?  In the world we live in, it seems, she has surmounted incredible odds with her chastity intact.  But only to feel inadequate?  I say enough is enough.

Fake hymen or real hymen we need to stop defining ourselves by them.  I won’t get into comparatives among males and females (I would be here all day).  The fact of the matter is that men have rarely, if ever, fallen under the scrutiny that women face.  A woman is more than her hymen.

Rosie Wang, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

Somewhere along the way, as part of the natural process of hitting their mid twenties, my friends are making wiser decisions, marveling that that people born during the height of Spice Girl mania are old enough to drive now, and forgoing buying birthday cards in favor of birthday beers. That might explain why I was in for an unpleasant surprise when I looked at birthday cards recently, with the “Getting Older (Humor)” section standing out as a complete minefield.

Comparing the cards that fell under the “For Her” section with those in the “For Him” section, there was a clear divide in the mindset towards aging that reflects the general attitude society sees women bodies versus men’s. Check out the American Greetings website, you can see for yourself gender bias in their selection of print-out birthday cards.

Beyond the cake and shoes women’s cards, the hot-rod and baseball men’s cards, and the “Celebrating You” platitudes that both genders must suffer, these supposedly humorous cards focused on fear when they targeted women. Specifically, the fear that aging diminishes your sex appeal as a woman was joked about while simultaneously reinforced. For men, changes in their body were celebrated with friendly irony, without any competitiveness. In fact aging frees, rather than constrains them. Sure, one card references “breaking wind” instead of “breaking hearts” and mentions Viagra, but another lists ten reasons it’s great to be a man, including not fussing about shoes, nails, weddings, but above all “the older you get, the more you fart.” Crass perhaps, but it still focuses on what your body is capable of rather than what it looks like and highlights the release from other people’s expectations. The only card I found that addressed men’s changing physical appearances was in a drugstore. It had a quasi-vintage image of a boxer with six-pack abs and the caption “Is this the year to start sucking it in? Not for you! Happy Birthday!” It was downright reassuring.

Compare that to birthday cards for women, who with age, are increasingly subject to mockery that seems markedly more mean-spirited. Take this one for example, which says “Remember when you were a kid and how you always tried to make yourself look older? I guess all that practice paid off!” Or one that says there are six stages to a woman’s life, with stage 4 through 6 as “Young woman,” because all women lie about their age and the insecurity being further fed by cards like these is hilarious. A particularly vicious one asks, “What do you call a bunch of women who look fabulous in aerobic wear? A) A group B) A flock C) A gaggle, and then inside: d) Bitches.” The kindest one about bodily appearance is the insipid, “May your life be filled with one good hair day after another.”

What is really disturbing is that women are supposed to be sending such messages to each other in the spirit of well wishing. It is a bonding activity to agree that all women feel inadequate about how their bodies change over time, or to hatefully talk about other women’s bodies as a point of comparison. It says women’s relationships with each other and women’s identity are defined by a competition to fulfill an ideal. They send the message that it is normal for women to critique and police each other’s bodies in that process. In light of the fact that pregnancy and birth are the catalysts to some of the most dramatic changes in many women’s bodies as they age, this type of body snark criticizes by proxy people’s reproductive and health decisions. It shows a lack of respect for women beyond their bodies and tells women not to trust one another. I’ll take a birthday beer over that any day.

Shelley Halstead, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

I am not a reviewer of movies but I feel like I can review previews of movies. OK, I don’t even know if I can do that. But I can tell if I want to go see a movie from the preview. And after watching the Ruby Sparks preview I now know I will not be going to see that movie.

Dig this: Through a young author’s spark of imagination, his protagonist, the ingénue Ruby, transforms from existing on the page to a living breathing entity to behold. Or to be held as our writer protagonist will soon enough be able to do. The opening shot of the preview begins with the young male author putting paper into a typewriter (old school, perhaps it’s just that old fashioned kind of love he’s looking for) with his voice over telling us that he has a good idea but then says he thinks “it’s just stupid.” To which another male voice responds, “Tell me about it.” Immediately I think the response is sarcastic, exasperated like mine, as in yeah, buddy, tell me about your stupid idea. So, the young author begins to speak about the girl he wants to write about as her image appears on screen backlit by the sunshine, nothing discernible except the outline of her body, with her legs and figure accentuated beneath a white flowing skirt  as she walks through a golden field. His therapist(?) editor(?) says that it sounds romantic. Cut to him saying: “Ruby is from Dayton, Ohio” (sounds wholesome) “but was kicked out of high school for sleeping with her art teacher, or maybe her Spanish teacher. I haven’t decided yet.” So ok, not that wholesome. And why does he almost immediately begin with examples of her sexual  exploration? Does this exemplify her free spirit? I, of course, wonder what happened to the male teacher she was sleeping with? How old was he? How old was she? Cut to:

Therapist/editor: I’m glad you found something that inspires you.

Young author: [But] I can’t fall in love with a girl I write.

Therapist/editor:  Why not?

Young author: Because she’s not real.

Oh, but soon enough she will be. She will be everything he’s ever wanted, ever dreamed of, ever created. When she does appear in the preview sequence the young author calls his friend to tell him the wacky news. His friend, incredulous at first, says, “There’s no possible way that girl is in your house, because she’s not a real person. People don’t just appear out of thin air.”

But because it’s the movies we can suspend reality for the sake of art. The art of let’s make believe you are loved not for yourself but what you could be.

 Friend: Have you tried writing more?

Author writes, Ruby acts.

Friend: That’s insane, you’ve manifested a woman with your mind. You can make her do anything you want. For men everywhere, tell me you’re not going to let that go to waste.

This audience member: Big yawn.

 Omniscient voiceover (again): You may see this and think it’s magic, but falling in love is an act of magic.

What’s frustrating about this preview is that it leads us down the oft-trodden male fantasy of the perfect woman. If only one could create her she’d be perfect. (Bwwaahaahaa.) And according to an interview with the NY times, Ms. Kazan, who in real life is the author of the screenplay and plays Ruby on the screen says that “I think I was writing in reaction to a lot of fictional female characters that have been on screen the last few years,” and “just feeling like there’s a diminutive ideal of a girl that’s just one shade away from being true.” While the director puts it more succinctly, “The film is really talking about a male fantasy in a very blatant way.”

Again, I don’t know about the film, but the preview certainly conveys that. For me, it hit that male fantasy squarely on the nose, and appropriately, it made my skin crawl. For the untrained or less cynical or even more hopeful in the crowd (none of whom are me) it’s selling the most magical of magic—it’s selling love or at least the idea of it. The problem is that the preview sells what the interviews, the artists’ statements, and the movie purport to critique—female autonomy within a three dimensional relationship/character. When the omniscient voiceover calls this magic and love it’s forgoing all the creepiness that we just witnessed. They’re selling the fantasy whereby the leading male, lost and forlorn, is to be saved or invigorated by the love of his/the woman.

Believe me, I agree with Kazan and the director that this notion of love, the one where women can be molded by her intimate’s desire, should be critiqued. And I understand that the studio and not the actor/screenwriter/director have a say in the how their film is marketed, but if one does want to make a statement or turn a trope on its head, this preview makes it more difficult for someone like me to buy it.  So even if this movie ends up being quirky and lovely, or quirky and thought provoking, I will never know. But then again, I’m apparently not their target audience.

Ash Moore, University of Oklahoma College of Law

When I signed up for this weekend, I wasn’t too sure I was going to enjoy it. From the first moment I stepped in to the LSRJ Leadership Institute, I knew I was in for a bit of a culture shock. People were throwing around the “f” word like it was perfectly acceptable language.

I’m talking about “feminism,” of course. That word scares folks in Oklahoma and surrounding states. Everyone gets an immediate picture of bra-burning, man-hating, bleeding-heart liberal vegans. And I have to admit, I came here with some preconceptions as well. Even I was expecting a much higher vegan attendance (there’s only one here).

It was really refreshing to see a room full of people from different backgrounds coming together and civilly talking about reproductive issues (and it ain’t all about abortion folks. I know, color me surprised). But even in this group, we had disagreements over the issues. Astonishingly though, there was no yelling and, as far as I know, no one was offended. It was truly amazing to have an open, honest, discourse about these issues and not be vilified. Day one is at an end, and I can’t wait for day two.

Rosie Wang, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

I saw Daniel Tosh in March 2011, at Improv in LA, without really knowing who he was. Even with two bloody marys aiding the generosity of my judgment, I didn’t really find his material memorable, mainly because his jokes and all the other ones told that night sounded pretty much the same. Which was concerning, because nearly all of the punchlines centered on the most tired stereotypes about histrionic women and scary black people and clueless white people possible. By now, if you search “Daniel Tosh rape” on Google, you’ll come up with 31.6 million results. Most of them are responses to a tumblr post that reported that Tosh, doing stand-up, announced that rape jokes are always funny, and then when challenged by a female member of the audience, continued,  “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…” The responses by other comics to this incident and Tosh’s semi-apology on Twitter seem to confirm my suspicion that Tosh isn’t an egregious outlier in the comedy world, but part of the mainstream. These tweets show a fundamental misunderstanding about the issue as heckling rather than dehumanizing women, trivializing rape, and threatening someone’s sense of safety when they are in a vulnerable position. To respond to some of these comedians:

• Kumail  Nanjiani said: Do any of you truly believe Tosh would think it was funny if a rape happened in front of him? No. None of you do. It’s called sarcasm.
• And:  It was said in the moment and not a pre written thing.

This only points out that to Nanjiani and Tosh, rape is not real to until they witness it – never mind that statistically it is impossible for them to not know women who have been raped. Even more puzzling is the fact that Nanjiani thinks that Tosh’s gang rape comment wasn’t pre-written is some sort of exonerating factor. I would think it is worse that Tosh spoke of rape, not just in a way that is contrived for easy shock value, but out of instinct, in the heat of the moment, to threaten and belittle a woman he felt was speaking out of turn and place.

• Patton Oswalt said: Wow, @danieltosh had to apologize to a self-aggrandizing, idiotic blogger. Hope I never have to do that (again).

To say that the blogger only wanted attention, that they were idiotic (presumably for going somewhere they know they might be offended) is not just distasteful, it is lazy. It’s lazy to assume a woman is an opportunist trying to show a performer up, rather than putting in the effort to understand her experiences and point of view. It is lazy to task a huge part of the population with swimming against the tide of a culture that constantly reminds them of their pain rather than trying ensure that every space is safe for them. By implying that he’s also offended others, Oswalt turns being hateful into a badge of honor.

• Jim Norton said: “Comics are pigs for making rape jokes, but Christian Bale is a great actor for American Psycho. Everyone can go fuck themselves.”

False comparison. American Psycho is a critique of modern American culture’s ideal of the alpha male, and thus the very mindset fuels rape jokes and attempts to justify them. It’s a work that makes artistic use of hyperbole to show us what the revolting and disturbing endpoint of an obsession with money, status, and machismo is. Admittedly, the movie glamorizes violence and is troublesome in many ways, but in the end it shows Patrick Bateman as the clearly mentally ill star of a cautionary tale. Ideally, if you’re aiming for dark, transgressive humor, this kind of evisceration of mainstream mores is what smart, creative comedy is supposed to do. It’s not taboo to make light of rape, because despite the cries of “PC Police” by the privileged, desensitization to rape is everywhere. It is actually more transgressive, creative, and unexpected to attack rape culture itself, as has been successfully done before.

Some comedians are reflexively defending Tosh to defend comedy and its ability to push boundaries. But comedy is the most powerful and at its best when the boundaries belong to those in power, not those who are already marginalized. All of these excuses serve to reinforce the message to rape survivors: “Large segments of society don’t value you as much as they value the brief thrill of feeling ‘edgy.’ Your feelings are messy and a wet blanket on our fun at your expense.”  It is also part of a larger epidemic of men talking over women who are trying to explain what it is like to live in a society that shames rape victims, accusing them of deserving it if they don’t guard against rape in the right ways, and of being paranoid and hysterical if they do. In the end, there is simply no right place to make fun of rape victims and no wrong place to speak up against rape culture.

Tennessee abstinence-only bill shuns hand holding, as it is, wait for it, a gateway to sex.

Just for laughs, The Daily Show exposes the hypocrisy of personhood bills when the men’s right to masturbation is challenged.

Arizona faces 20 week abortion ban with just days to be vetoed.

Vanessa gives us our daily dose of intersection as she explains how Trans rights are reproductive rights.

After Trayvon Martin’s murder, Colorlines presents interesting myth busters on crime in Black America.

I am sick of being harassed and intimidated on the streets! Whether it’s catcalls from drunk frat boys back on my school campus, or lewd gestures from randoms while walking home from work, I, along with every individual, deserve to feel safe and, hell, even sexy, while walking down the street. I know I am not the only one, as a group of women have launched the Hollaback! website, a Facebook page, and a movement that uses local activism and mobile technology to end street harassment. The movement asks, “Been holla’ed at? Hollaback!” They recognize that street harassment is one of the most prominent forms of gender-based violence (which is nearly never reported and one of the least legislated issues) affecting women, girls, and LGBTQ people, and is thus providing the tools necessary to fight back.

Here’s how it works (more…)