Male Menace

Surprise, surprise: a man just called me a “fucking bitch” on the street today.

We were both on bicycles. I was going across the street, and he was going perpendicular to me; but we were both on the curb at the same time. I was headed down the little curb-cut across the street, but I was in his way and he wanted to go across my path. He had to swerve. So he yelled, “Up yours, you fucking bitch.”

Wow, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and I have this in common, too.

I’m sure any other woman and I have this in common, too.

I just finished reading Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. We may all know the big ones (drugs not tested on female subjects, female prescriptions not covered by health insurance, etc.) but Caroline Criado Perez uncovers hundreds more. Glaring examples of how science, government, and corporations cater to the Default Male.

In one section, she looks at all the behaviors that men do that “make – and are often calculated to make – [women] feel uncomfortable … that add up to a feeling of sexual menace.” Mostly, these don’t happen when women are accompanied by men, “So men who didn’t do it and didn’t experience it simply didn’t know it was going on. … Another gender data gap.”

So, for example, you can use Google maps to get directions that are the fastest, that use the least mileage; but can you get one that shows the “safest” route? Men don’t see it, don’t collect it, don’t care to make that information useful to women. It took women to create Safecity, which crowd-sources personal stories of sexual harassment in public spaces to create a map indicating trends at a local level, mostly in India, but around the world.

A couple weeks ago, before Anchorage had a mask mandate, Tim and I went to Baskin Robbins for ice cream. Baskin Robbins has plexiglass to keep the staff separate and decals on the floor to keep the customers separate. It’s hard when everyone wants to look at the ice creams to see the selection, so I stayed way back, waiting my turn. I was the only one in a mask. (Tim was in the car, still futzing with trying to tie his on.)

One unmasked man kept moving over towards me. We weren’t near the counter, so there was no reason to. I moved away. He moved closer. I moved away. Finally, I told him, “I keep moving away, you keep moving closer. Please keep your distance.” He walked right up to me, stood in front of me, swelled his body, and STARED. I stared back and walked out.

I passed a now-masked Tim just coming in and told him we were leaving.

Yes, yes, Covid-19 has added a new agenda to the world, but he was an asshole looking for an excuse. And yes, I’m a reasonably assertive woman who can hold her own. And no, I don’t think I attract any particular negative energy in the universe. And no, I’m not a “victim.” And no, I was not going to get the young, teenaged, ice cream scooping staff involved in this. And yes, I’ve gone through multiple after-the-fact responses I could have made but didn’t and wish I had.

So this is what I’m doing. I’m reporting these instances of female-targeted male aggression to my husband. To my brother. To men around me. They’re all nice men, men who treat women with dignity, but I don’t think they know how common “fucking bitch” behavior is. And they need to know this. Not to protect me, but to know.

Actually, I experience it less often during Covid-19 because I’m not near other people, but obviously, it still lurks.

I don’t even have to ask any woman: you know what I’m talking about. I will take any and all suggestions for responses. Ones that illuminate, educate, humiliate preferred.

It's MY Body

My grandmother was left to die on an illegal abortionist’s table. She pulled herself up, dragged herself home, and raised her five kids.

It was the Depression, and she couldn’t afford another mouth to feed. Eventually, my grandfather left her, and she raised the five kids. She’d also marched down Fifth Avenue as a Bloomer Girl for the vote for women. She is the matriarch of our family, and my daughter is named for her.

When I told this story to a long-ago boyfriend, he was shocked. Then his grandmother spoke up, “I had an abortion, too. How do you think I kept from having too many children?”

So how do we think women made do before effective birth control? How do we think they made sure their already-born children had enough to eat? Did you ask your grandmothers? Those women did what they had to do to raise that Greatest Generation, and they had abortions.

I know women who, after being fitted professionally for cervical caps, became pregnant. I know women who consented to abortion should in vitro fertilization yield multiple embryos. I know women who were told they were carrying fetuses with genetic abnormalities. I know women who became pregnant in college and would lose scholarships if they had to leave school. I even know a girl pregnant by her father.

These women – all these women, all of us – had control of our own bodies and had a legal option: abortion.

We women in our Third Third know these stories; we know that legal abortion saves lives – the lives women want to have that an unplanned pregnancy would disrupt.

I’ll say that again:

I’m going to stop here before I march down my fury road. I’m going to stop here before I go on about poorly-funded budgets to work with hungry children, abused children, and homeless children. Before I go on about slaps on the wrists for rapists, for unfunded birth control, for de-funded childcare.

I’m stopping here just to stick with that one thought: many of us have the lives we have because brave and desperate grandmothers or mothers faced illegal abortionists so there’d be enough food in the mouths of their children.

The lives I want to save are the potential lives of the young women with dreams. Dreams to go to school, dreams to get out of an abusive relationship, dreams for their futures. Who is anyone to say they deserve less, that their lives get deferred?

So some law wants to force a vulnerable 14-year-old to a nine-month sentence of prolonged occupation of her body while rapists are still getting slaps on the wrist? These are the same people who covered Viagra with health insurance, but not birth control. These are the same people who want to eliminate maternity care from lower-cost health insurance.

I know people who stretch poorly-funded budgets to work with hungry children, abused children, and homeless children. Low-income women have to find jobs, but childcare is de-funded. I know people who work with rape survivors, women suffering domestic violence, women sold into sexual slavery. Indigenous women just “disappear,” rape kits get lost, and yet the big issue is what’s in a woman’s uterus? My own uterus – which is no business of yours.

As I march down my fury road, I start inventing scenarios. I imagine some rich and powerful guy – maybe a legislator or a judge – a guy who “can do anything” – having an extramarital affair. Many of them do. What would he do if that other woman got pregnant? I am pretty sure he’d locate a quiet and confidential abortionist. What do you think?

I am in my Third Third and pregnancy fears are long behind me, but they’re always present for a new generation of women. I am in my Third Third, and I cannot believe women still have to argue for control of our own bodies. I am in my Third Third and this is my body.

These are dangerous times, and I’m marching down my fury road because abortions save lives.

I'm with her.

I am so proud of my town I could burst! In a huge snowstorm, with temperatures just emerging from days below zero, with snow sitting two feet deep and roads barely plowed; 2,000 women and men tromped through the snow to march for human rights.

Thank you, Anchorage.

Oh, friends and I had traveled the “What’s the use?” path, the “I hate marches” groan, even the “What if it’s 9° below?” complaint. But ultimately, it was the “Stand up and be counted” refrain that spoke to us all.

So I pulled out the paints, brushes, and butcher paper, my supplies for all the signs and banners I’ve made over the years. Mostly, they’ve been “Congratulations!” or “Happy Birthday,” but this time, I wanted to say everything important. I wanted my sign to speak loudly, to put my heart and mind out there. To make visible all the hopes I’ve had for our world, and how devastated I am at these steps backward.

I didn’t want to be negative. I didn’t want to be trite. I wanted to cover a lot. How could I fit in my fears about climate change? About reproductive rights? Even about public school funding! In the end, I just ended up being boring, but I was colorful!

Do you know what it feels like to be in a crowd of 2,000 people who all wish each other life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness no matter whom they love, what color they are, and where they came from? In this country where we battle discrimination and harassment for all those things – and the likelihood the battle will only get uglier – this was a friendly, welcoming gathering. A warm oasis in two feet of snow.

How do I know I’m in my Third Third?

This one moved me because my daughter was out marching, too. And my sisters and my brother in all their cities around the world. My mother – Another Mother for Peace – would have been proud.

I can’t remember the exact wording of this sign, but it looked just like this and was one of my favorites:

But then I realized this march wasn’t only about fear and anger; it was about camaraderie and support and standing together:

That’s really it. So I’m sending this blog post to my senators and congressman because they have to know we’re here and we’re numerous and we’re motivated. I’m with her and her … and her and her. And we’re not giving up.

Visits from a Newly-adult Daughter

You know you’re in your Third Third when your daughter says she’d like to come for visits … and she buys the plane tickets!

You know your daughter’s still in her First Third when her visits are for Thanksgiving and Hanukkah; she still hasn’t created traditions and commitments of her own for those holidays.

But this is a visit from a newly-adult daughter, and it’s fraught with transition. One friend described her planned visit to her daughter. The daughter told Mom that the visit would be too long; Mom would have to move on after several days. Mom knew this was true – guests and fish go bad after three days – but Mom had held out hope that she wasn’t one of those “other mothers,” the ones who have to leave. (sigh) So do we all.

So when we go to the movies, and I lean over to ask something of the adult daughter, and she glowers at me because “You don’t talk in movies!” I wonder if she never lets peers talk to her in movies. It’s not like I’m chatting; I just have a question. And I know that very particular form of mother-daughter irritation, and it shatters the visions of the wonderful, mutually-approving, adult mother-daughter interaction I’ve been hoping for.

But I really admire this newly-adult daughter. She makes New Year’s resolutions that she keeps. She’d decided to read 52 books, to travel monthly, to do more daytime social activities (which I learned was meant to pose an alternative to night clubbing). And she’d done them all … but still had four books to read over vacation.

I had heard about the new book Feminist Fight Club which might shed light on some issues in office politics the newly-adult daughter was confronting. I borrowed it from the library for her. First trip, she tossed it aside. Another mother dud. Second trip, I renewed it and prodded a little more. (By my Third Third, I know how to prod.)

Victory! I went up MANY notches on the Big Mother Scale. Not only did I give her a book that spoke to her issues, but she completed her 52-book resolution with it! I had done something right!

It colored the whole rest of our trip and our conversations. Somehow I was now a person who’d learned something worth sharing. I’d grappled with professional life, faced my own workplace trials in my Second Third. In my Third Third, I had perspective.

Meanwhile, she taught me about making New Year’s resolutions. I told her I’d given up, that when I set a goal of working out three times a week, I’d miss one week and then have to catch up, and I never knew how I was doing. And she said I had to do it differently; that if I said I’d run 500 miles in 2017, it was cumulative. I could see my progress, not the times I missed.

Brilliant! I’ll do it.

I think coming home for the newly-adult daughter is a time to decompress, to give herself the space to cocoon. We save up some interesting things to share, we play lots of Five Crowns, do a jig saw puzzle. We make sure we do winter; she sees old friends. The rhythm of my Third Third makes all this easier.

And of course, she helps me put Find My Mac on my laptop and create a master password and look for a blouse at Nordstrom.

I invite her into the kitchen to make a simple avocado dish I’ve discovered. She loves it, asks for the recipe. I just glow and glow.

This is the first time she’s been here for Hanukkah in a long time. She pulls out the menorah – her favorite – and is  in charge of lighting the candles all week. The candles just glow and glow, too, and we are a family.

It's rape, dammit!

It’s my Third Third, and I’m pissed as shit. That is just how angry I am.

I went to Stanford University. I was part of a collective of women activists, and we created a survival guide for women. We talked about rape. I taught a non-academic, political women’s studies class. I had a newspaper headline displayed in my room: “Victim slays rapist,” about a woman who killed her rapist with a nearby ice pick.

My sister went to Stanford, too. She and her friends made a film about rape.

And now it’s 40+ years later and a Stanford rapist gets a measly light sentence for what his father calls “20 minutes of action.” The judge says, “A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him.”

How many Thirds do I have to live before men stop excusing other men for their violence against women?!? I am running out of Thirds before women can expect to live in safety from men. It is 2016, and we are still putting rape victims on trial?!? When she was unconscious, beaten up, and only saved by two passersby?

In this whole horrible episode, there is a story of astounding heroism: the victim’s. Her statement to the court and her rapist is eloquent, blistering, and too very truthful. My heart breaks for her but sings for her strength.

Recently, a friend’s daughter complained that she has more controls placed on her than her older brother had. Her parents’ answer: “It’s not about fairness; it’s about reality.” I have actually practiced (to myself) how to helpfully respond to my daughter in the event any violence were committed against her, how to help her maintain her identity and self-esteem.

I have a rape whistle on each set of keys.

No, I am not a weird little scaredy cat. I am a woman living in 21st century America.

Yes, I know we have too many people in jails in the U.S. That was an issue 40+ years ago, too. But we also have too many men making excuses for violence against women. This isn’t just one case; I’ve read Jon Krakauer’s Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town – hell, I read the newspaper!

There is injustice everywhere, and I try to speak out wherever I can, but this one has just inflamed me. There are so many fights for justice that are won and so many that suffer setbacks, but that a student athlete – on the campus where I fought to raise awareness – still thinks he can attack a woman, hire a fancy lawyer, and get off easy just puts me over the top. That the judge agreed with him – that the judge said he was more valuable than she – means my First and Second Thirds blew away like dust in the wind.

I am probably too angry to even write this right now.

Granted, Stanford University quickly barred the rapist from campus. And the twelve jurors unanimously convicted him. And people all over the world are outraged.

Are those “positive” signs enough?

Not for her. Not for me. Not for any woman.

Second Wave Feminist Meets Riot Grrrls

While in Portland, I went to a curators’ walk-through of an exhibit titled “Alien She,” a look at the art and artists of women who’d been involved with Riot Grrrl in the ’90s. I didn’t know anything about Riot Grrrl except that it was sort of punk feminism, which puts it right up my alley.

A giant banner of the “Riot Grrrl Manifesto” talked about women fighting violence, sexism, homophobia, negative body image, and labeling; reaffirming their value as women with the power to express themselves and make change. It sounded like me in a real out-loud way. I liked it.

The exhibit was full of wonderful art: a giant pink knitted barbed wire cage, women-created videos, lots of zines of print-it-ourselves writing. When it was all done, the curators asked if we had any questions. I raised my hand.

“I’m part of that old ‘second wave’ of feminism, and I really notice how much we agree here, especially about violence, but I’ve looked all over and don’t see anything about reproductive rights here, about a woman’s control of her own body. In the ’90s, did women think that battle was won? Now it’s under assault even worse, but was that not the feeling then?”

A few heads nodded, but one young woman spoke up: “That’s because the second wave of feminism was all about white, heterosexual, middle-class women from the suburbs. Poor women and women of color have other issues and reproductive rights don’t affect them. It’s not their issue.”

Disclaimer: I was so blown away by her remarks that I can’t guarantee that I’ve got it down exactly right. I gaped at her. She was a young woman of mixed race, I’d guess, and I wasn’t going to say anything in that moment.

The curators said they remembered workshops held at Riot Grrrl conventions teaching women how to do abortions in case a woman couldn’t get one. That there’s a Hot Pantz zine, Do it Yourself Gynecology, that’s included.

“Thank you,” I said. “That’s what I was hoping might be the case. I just hadn’t seen it.”

Afterwards, three older people approached me (including two women of color) to say they appreciated my remark. One liked the way I “deflected that response” I’d received.

So what exactly is so unsettling about all this?

1. I moved to Alaska from San Francisco partly thinking it was time to live in mainstream America again, to know what was going on in the rest of the world.


2. After 30 years, I am tiring of the “real” America. In Alaska, for instance, the response to my question could have been “Here we go, another baby killer shows up.” Okay, this is not fair, but the main thing is, I’m used to attacks from the Right, not the Left.


3. I have been an active feminist since I was a teenager. I have worked in a health clinic and taught women how to do pelvic self-exams, staffed a Women’s Center, co-wrote a women’s guide for survival resources, worked in D.C. for Bella Abzug, mentored other women, written plays about women’s experiences. I believe in women and a world women can make possible.

4. When I first moved to Alaska, I found it startling that there were only two genders here. In San Francisco, gender is sort of … fluid. We all pass in and out along the spectrum. I embrace this.


5. I believe that in America, class and race are the main issues, the usually-denied but horrible underpinnings to inequality. Racism is part of America’s fabric.


6. Yes, I know that Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was about the “click” that suburban housewives felt when they realized they were sidelined in life.

Why am I saying all this? Is this some sort of “radical cred” I feel I have to put out there? Why did I find the remark so disturbing?

Because I felt discredited. Maybe that woman didn’t mean this personally towards me, but I felt repudiated. Like, “you old women got it all wrong.” I admired Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony; we’ve stood on the shoulders of pioneering women. They didn’t do it all, but they got us the vote. We women of the ’70s made mistakes and failed miserably to get it all done, but does that make us Bad Guys?

My friend Shirley, who is Black, said when she participated in a reproductive rights event, protesters yelled at her “Black babies are being killed,” and she turned to them and said, “How many Black babies are in your home? What are you doing to take care of the ones born?” (Yay, Shirley!) But Shirley also said “control over your own body” is a larger issue for Black women, going all the way back to slavery. That it’s way more than reproductive rights. I get that.

If my Third Third is anything about a legacy, I like to think my work on behalf of women will be part of what I leave behind. And here it was so sneeringly put down – by someone I thought might have called herself a sister.

Maybe it’s a stage in her personal evolution. Maybe she’ll grow older and wiser. Maybe I look like her mother. Maybe she’s just a negative person. It’s no use. I’m not old enough or wise enough to stop stewing over it.