Were the Little House on the Prairie books anti-feminist? What a question!

 

  

 

President Biden warns us repeatedly that the November election is the most significant in American history. We will choose between democracy and fascism. Recently I’ve noticed another threat—to women. It’s not just abortion or our rights over our own bodies; it’s our place in society, in the world in which we live. The presumptive Republican candidate for the governorship of Norh Carolina, a man named Mark Robinson who is endorsed by trump, has said he’d like to go back to a time when women didn’t have the vote. A politician (I think it was Montana, and I apologize I didn’t get his name) said that America ought to be ruled by men of God—strong, white men. In Texas and in my home county of Tarrant, incumbent women lost a significant number of offices, everything from state representative to tax collector and the state school board. Nationally, there’s the quixotic campaign of Nikki Haley, now ended, or the well-publicized shootout in California between Katie Porter and Adam Schiff. Porter s now being criticized for being a sore leader, akin to trump, but I think she was doing what she does best: exposing politics and corruption. Could her being a woman have added to her current dilemma? After years of fighting the glass ceiling, women are once again gradually being edged out of power, influence, etc.  

Senator Katie Britt’s response to the State of the Union has been mocked, critiqued, disputed all over the internet, and I won’t repeat the comments here, though some are hysterically funny, especially the cold open of SNL. But beneath all the laughter, there’s serious concern. Right-wing extremists give every indication of wanting to send women back to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. The dismissive attitude is summed up by a recent incident in Arizona: when Gov. Katie Hobbs called for reproductive freedom in her State of the State speech, a male legislator who must have thought he was clever said there’s already aspirin. He advised women to hold an aspirin between their knees, a suggestion so demeaning and insulting I hardly know what to say.

In her March 8 column, Letter from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson traces the demonization of women back to the Sixties and cites protests over the 1968 Miss America contest. She doesn’t say it, but the early 1960s saw publication of Betty Freidan’s The Feminine Mystique, the book many credit with starting the late-twentieth-century feminist movement. Richardson traces the status of women through those years: Nixon’s turn against abortion in an effort to win the Catholic vote, Phyllis Schafly’s screeching attacks on the Equal Rights Amendment, the 1973 Roe v Wade, which did so much to free women from traditional, pre-WWII roles, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Prairie books which Richardson suggests reinforced the idea of women needing men to take care of them. In 1984, Walter Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate, and they were soundly defeated. And then there was Rush Limbaugh with his “feminazis” and right on up to Hillary Clinton’s battle with donald trump. I urge you to read the entire column: March 8, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson (substack.com)

Of course, the battle began at least a century earlier than the Sixties. It was 1848 when women met in Seneca Falls, NY to plan their fight for rights. There followed years of protest, jailings, beatings, and unbelievable courage until in 1920 the 19^th Amendment gave women the right to vote. The fight is different today but nonetheless intense. Anger and indignation are not good motivation for action, but in this case, I think they are appropriate. I hope women across America will see the insidious nature of this campaign against us and rise up en masse to tell right-wing extremists we are no handmaidens. Will you join me? I am tempted to say “Vote Blue!” but much as I personally want to see Joe Biden in office for another four years, that’s not the point here. I think every woman should evaluate each candidate on his or her stance not only on abortion but on women’s rights and the rights of minorities, because the two go hand in hand.

In peace.

Learning about the past

 

When I first saw the title, Dinners with Ruth, I was all excited because I thought it would be a book about fabulous menus at dinners with Ruth Reichl. Alas, the Ruth of the title is not Reichl but Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They say perseverance is the key, and I persevered—and was hooked.

This is mostly a memoir by award-winning NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg, and her life is interesting enough to keep me reading without RBG. I’m halfway through the book as of this evening, and RBG is there like a thread woven into the text. One of the things that has always stymied me about memoir is that I think it needs a peg to hang it on. You can’t just write, “This is my life” and expect to attract readers, no matter how thrilling, adventuresome, exotic your life has been. There needs to be that theme, that idea that holds it all together. For Totenberg, it was her friendship with RBG through many professional ups and downs, marriage, widowhood, the whole gambit of life. It might well have been Cokie Roberts, whose comforting, efficient presence hovers over this book like the housemother/big sister/aunt every woman wishes for.

But it is RBG who holds Totenberg’s attention. They connected by telephone in the sixties and became friends in the seventies. Those were still the days when women could not own property, open a bank account, apply for a credit card. The general opinion was that a woman needed a man to care for her, and her job was to keep the home fires, raise the children, cook the meals. None of that appealed to Totenberg, who was single, and RBG who was married and had a child. They fought their way, almost literally, into careers in journalism and the judiciary—places where women were not welcome.

I remember those days because, on a much smaller scale, I fought that battle. I was working on a Ph.D. in English in the late sixties and held an NDEA (National Defense Education Act) fellowship by which my tuition and fees were paid plus a stipend for living expenses. In return, I taught one class of freshman English each semester. There was a hue and cry in the department that another girl and I should not have fellowships because we had husbands to support us. Her husband was a fellow graduate student, also on a fellowship if I remember correctly, and they had two daughters. My then-husband was a surgical resident, and I brought home $30 a month more than he did. Our combined monthly income was something like $730, and I remember yet his indignation when he had to pay his first income taxes--$7.77.

So far, Totenberg’s story plays out against the background of politics in the last quarter of the twentieth century, particularly the politics of judicial appointments. I’m learning a lot about events that I remember but didn’t understand at the time. For instance, I remember the hearings about the appointment of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, a nomination which ultimately failed. I knew there were people aligned against him, but I didn’t understand what an arch conservative he was in a time of legislative cordiality nor how smugly confident he was.

Totenberg is a good writer who pulls her audience into the story and makes us feel that we are there with her—in the courtroom at Timothy McVeigh’s trial, in the hospital room with her dying husband, at the opera with RBG who is distracting her from tragedy. She makes me think of the power of good writing, and the ability of words to sway, persuade, inform. Totenberg is pretty straightforward.

The other thing she makes me realize is how complicated political life in D.C. is, what a complex understructure holds it together, how politicians, the judiciary, and associated personnel can call in a debt or pull a string or ferret out a bit of needed information. I can’t decide if I am reassured or frightened by that, but I think Totenberg has a good grasp of what goes on and is a honest journalist, striving for distance from her subjects and yet making them come alive.

Much to my surprise I am enjoying this book. I suspect the last half will have more about RBG.

Thoughts on aging, independence, and who knows what

 

My generation has grown old

A friend complained to me the other night about ageism, and I thought to myself I rarely feel that. When feminism had us ladies all up at arms, I rarely felt that I was discriminated against. Maybe I’m just insensitive, but I remember Karen Perkins, founder of the Women’s Center and a real dynamo for women’s rights. I once heard her say she didn’t mind bringing the potato salad as long as she had a seat at the table. And that was me—I almost always felt I had a seat at the table. Oh, sure, at the university, some tried to pat me on the head (thank goodness not elsewhere) and tell me I was a good girl, but I knew how to use that.

But as if to spite me ageism came up the very next night after my friend brought it up. I was frustrated with a computer access problem. To this minute, I remain convinced that it was a problem of the slight tremor in my hands (Facebook wanted to photograph my i.d. card and each try resulted in the command to retake) and not of my computer understanding, but somehow my whole family got involved, it became a big issue (via telephone), and I was advised to read a book and go to sleep. My computer guru son-in-law would fix it in the morning. Let me say it outright: I was offended, probably out of proportion because my frustration level was so high. Contrary to everyone’s loving advice, I did not go to sleep. I tossed and turned and fretted well into the wee hours of the morning.

Brandon did fix it, though bless him, it took about an hour out of his workday and a long phone call. But all is well, and I am back in Facebook’s good graces—don’t judge, it’s an important part of my day. But the incident got me to thinking about independence. As Jean, who dines with me often, will testify, I’m pretty firm about not wanting help in the kitchen. I remind myself of my kids when they were little: “I do it by self!” But to me, it’s part of showing that I’m still capable—in the kitchen, at the computer.

If I need help, I ask for it. And I often do. I can’t get that bowl that is stored high in my closet, nor can my walker and I get around the coffee table to straighten the pillows Sophie has dislodged on the couch. Little stuff, but the things I can’t do. Someone asked recently if I was getting the care I need, and my response was, “Care? I don’t need much care. I just need someone to check that I’ve not fallen (I almost always have my phone with me, especially in the night on a bathroom trip) and to make sure I didn’t die in my sleep. A longtime friend recently was home alone for several days. When his wife returned from a trip, she found him on the floor, unable to get up. Best guess is that he had a stroke, fell and hit his head, and lay there for 24 hours. When you get to be my age, such is always a possibility, so I am grateful that Jordan looks out every morning to be sure I have raised the blind in my kitchen door.

But if insisting on doing what I can is part of the picture, so is accepting what I cannot do. Someone recently said unhappily that she could no longer walk a half mile—since from here to the main house stretches my abilities, I wasn’t as sympathetic as I perhaps could have been. But my philosophy these days is that in my 80+ years I have lived a full life, had a lot of wonderful experiences, and now the time is for me to treasure those memories, perhaps live on them. Oh, sure, in my dreams I am sometimes once again fleet of foot, but that’s a dream, not a reality. I probably cannot take that cross-country railroad trip I’d love to take, though Jamie insists he and I can do it, and I may or may not ever get to Santa Fe again (jury’s out on that one). I probably won’t fly again, mostly because I’m not an easy flyer and there’s no place I want to go badly enough to get on a plane. Chicago is a possible exception, especially since I’m now writing books set there. But my whole point is that I’m not going to kvetch (a great Yiddish word for complain) about what I can’t do but stress what I can do. And enjoy.

Last night, Jordan had a group of friends at the house to pick up their travel documents. They are all going to Cabo together to celebrate Christian’s 50^th (other kids will babysit me and at first, I was a bit unsure about needing babysitters, but our friend’s fall has me grateful they will be here). As the party was dwindling inside, some five or six of them came out to say hello. We laughed and joked and for ten minutes or so, the cottage was the happiest place you can imagine. Jordan (and I) have known these folks since their high school days. All I could think was how lucky I am that all these years later, they still want to come see Juju, share their excitement, show a little love (no hugging—covid lurks). I am blessed, and that’s what I will continue to focus on.

Are you a feminist?

I thought I’d skip the blog tonight. An ordinary day, no news. All I did mostly was work on taxes. Moved ahead a bit on the big redo—the contractor will take the plans to the city this week and the bank verbally approved the loan when I have an estimate. A tech came to fix the alarm system which has persistently insisted that the back door is open when it’s not. Turns out rats have chewed on the wires. Worst part: the wires are under the flat roof, so there’s no way to get to them. The alarm tech has it all solved and will be back to fix it. And that’s how my day went.

Except I’m intrigued about all the sudden buzz about feminism and Hillary’s campaign and Madeleine Albright and someone else telling women they must vote for Hillary. I am really sorry we’re still fighting this battle fifty or more years after Betty Freidan’s breakthrough book. And yet I know we are. Some people are upset because Albright or someone in her camp was described as “scolding” women. The cry was that men never scold—it’s a diminutive applied only to women. On the other hand, Hillary has been criticized for her shrill, harsh voice. How’s the poor girl to win anything?

I like Hillary and will probably vote for her, but I resent being told I have to vote for someone on the grounds of gender. Does that mean if I were Republican I’d have to vote for Fiorina (a horrifying thought in my mind)? I’d like to see a woman as president, especially one as capable and experienced as Hillary, but I still think it’s important to vote for the person best qualified to lead the country. Gender isn’t the great qualifier. And I don’t like that it’s raising such an ugly head in this election. I don't think being a feminist--and I probably am, means I have to vote for a woman.

If we as women want equality, we have to show ourselves as being as capable as men.  I think in many instances women have done that and more. And we’ve come a long way, baby, since the early days of my adulthood and professional life—I know I have. But being female doesn’t make me qualified to be president. Vote your conscience folks, gender aside.

I can’t resist a snarky comment here: one of the main problems I see with the Republican clown car is that they all tend to marginalize women. Not what I want in a leader either.