Musings

Near the beginning of this #womenwednesday series, we talked about how a lot of people say, “Women have come SO far. Why are they still complaining?”

As it turns out, this kind of perspective is omnipresent not only in terms of how people think about women but also in how women limit themselves. Indeed, it seems like women might be our own worst enemies because we really and truly are never satisfied with ourselves, what we have done, where we are going, or anything else. For example:

A woman with curly hair wants straight hair.

A woman with straight hair wishes she could have curly hair.

Short women wish they were more “statuesque”

Taller women wish they were more “petite and doll-like”

Some women want to be more skinny. Other women lament that they are too skinny and can’t seem to put weight on.

Some women are outspoken and worry they are too aggressive. Other women are soft-spoken and lament that they are shy or “weak”

Can we give ourselves a break? Where does all of this disappointment and frustration come from?

Maybe society is to blame

Are women so hyper-critical of themselves and of other women because society sort of molds us that way? There is certainly plenty of meat to support that argument. Society at large has created a general idea of what the “ideal” woman is like. Certainly she is 100% perfect at balancing work and home. She is gorgeous all of the time (however society defines “gorgeous,” which seems to be synonymous with utterly flawless). Indeed, society’s ideal woman is impossible – not just in a nice way but like, literally impossible. This sets up women for disappointment right from the start.

Another obstacle in the way of female self-esteem might be that we are surrounded by conflicting messages. I think this is particularly true for women starting in Generation X and on into the present. Our grandmothers, for the most part, are traditional women. They bake, they clean, they come of the generation of WWII, where women worked to support the men during the war and then went home to make homes and babies. Martha Stewart has made her fortune based on today’s woman wanting to reach back to get that “domestic goddess” status, right?

Then we have the generation that came after that-our mothers and aunts. They came of age during the tumultuous 60s and 70s, when protests were the norm and women were rebelling against all that had come before.

What do you do when these two modes of life sandwich you? It gets confusing. When I was in high school and was teaching myself how to crochet, a lot of people made fun of me. “Oh, you’re such a grandma,” they said. Then in college and grad school, when I suggested that there was rampant sexism in the Ivory Tower, I got looks of disdain and rolled eyes, as if I was just too radical for my own good. Like many women, I love the idea of being a domestic goddess who not only brings home the bacon but also cooks a delectable dish made of that very same bacon. But that’s extremely difficult. Again, women may set ourselves up to be disappointed.

Is this really just a woman problem?

Of course, if we talk about the fact that women are never satisfied, we must also note that men seldom seem to be satisfied these days, and for similar reasons, I’d venture to say. Look at the difference in messages between, say, Midnight in Paris and Fight Club. On the one hand, men are supposed to be soft and romantic and in-tune with their lady friends. On the other hand, men need to get back in touch with their masculinity and take hold of that old-fashioned machismo. Men, like women, are pressured to excel at work but also take a lot of flack for not spending enough time with the kids. Society seems to naturally set men up for disappointment, too.

Then again…

Blaming society kind of seems like an easy way out, doesn’t it? It’s like blaming the “guvvermet” for all of your personal problems or blaming “the culture” for your drug use. Maybe the answer is a little more complicated. Maybe we all, regardless of gender, set the standards of achievement so high that none of us can reach them, and so we beat the crap out of ourselves. Now why do we do that? Are we lusting after something we can’t have anymore, like a life without electronics? Is exposure to what is going on elsewhere in the world making us feel guilty for any contentment we might experience?

I’m just not satisfied with any answers I’m coming up with.

Why don’t you give it a try?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27534776@N07/2569248372/ via Creative Commons

Something has been bothering me for awhile, and darn it all if I need to get it off my chest. It’s like this. Sometimes, lord knows why, I actually like people. I know. It’s a weakness. I’ve tried electro-shock therapy, a frontal lobotomy…everything you could think of, and yet nothing can break me of the habit. Sometimes I like people because they have a great sense of humor. Sometimes I like people because they are kind and warm and giving. Other times, I like people for too many reasons to really verbalize succinctly.

It’s a problem. I know.

Now, here’s the real problem. Here in the world of social media, people are giving those of us suffering from, oh, what shall we call it…humanness? a bad name. For example, have you ever noticed that a person will talk to you and then suddenly drop you like a hot tamale as soon as a person with a bigger following comes along? Have you watched as kind of wicked people turn their charm up to sugar cookie level once a well-known person pops by?

I know you have. Don’t you even start lying to me now. We’ve been through too much together.

The real bummer is that sometimes I like people who happen to have a lot of Twitter followers. Sometimes I even like people who have written books or have been on the telly-vision. I don’t really set out to like these folks just because. There are literally millions of people who have millions of Twitter followers that I couldn’t give a rat’s poopy about. But sadly, I fear that my desire to reach out to folks in a real and genuine way is getting grouped in with the people whom I lovingly refer to as the social climbers. You know…the people who are nice because it helps them get one more step closer to…Twittervana? I’m not sure what they’re going for. But it helps them, apparently.

This ticks me off.

Let’s set the record straight

I realize that my word is only as good as a grain of salt, and probably not even a big lump of sea salt. But here we go.

If I’m nice to you, it’s probably because I want to be nice to you. I don’t care how many followers or fans or books or boogers you have. Well, maybe that last one could cause some problems, but even so!  I have lived most of my life without Twitter, without Facebook. Heck, I lived more than half my life without computers, period. During those formative offline years, I learned what kinds of people I like and what kinds of people I don’t, and social media has not changed these opinions (if anything, social media has solidified them).

To this point, I’m afraid that even though people may view me cynically or with doubt, I’m going to continue being nice to the people I want to be nice to. If I want to write a smushy post about a friend of mine, I’m going to do it. If I want to promote a person’s blog post, I’m going to do that. If I’m going to talk to them about extremely important issues like the state of the world and the fact that there is a recipe for unicorn poop cookies, I will also do those things. If these people have 2 Twitter followers, I will carry on. If they have 2 million Twitter followers, I will carry on. And if people want to scorn me and think that I am a kiss-up or that I am just after linkbait or whatever, that’s cool.

But I hope that people I like know that I actually like them. I’m a simpleton that way. I just like people. Or I don’t. And you don’t have to do a darned thing about it. Numbers really don’t matter to me where people are involved. I’m not scheming. I’m not strategizing all over ya. I just think you’re fab.

Know what I’m talkin about?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/moffoys/3553322847/ via Creative Commons

Lately, Rush Limbaugh has been in the news for calling a young woman a slut because she testified in front of Congress that she should be allowed access to birth control pills and that it should be covered by her insurance. As The Week nicely recaps, Limbaugh said,  “What does that make her?…It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.”

The really interesting thing, though, is that all of this has inspired Limbaugh to bring back one of his old stand-bys – the word Feminazi.

What is a Feminazi?

Of course, our sage online resource, Wikipedia, offers a detailed definition of this word, which Limbaugh kindly introduced back in 1992:

“Limbaugh also stated that the word refers to unspecified women whose goal is to allow as many abortions as possible, saying at one point that there were fewer than 25 “true feminazis” in the U.S. Limbaugh has used the term to refer to members of the National Center for Women and Policing, the Feminist Majority Foundation, the National Organization for Women, and other organizations at the March for Women’s Lives, a large pro-choice demonstration.

As so often happens with words that are deemed catchy, Feminazi eventually became synonymous with any woman who stood up strongly for equal rights. Women asking for equal pay were, with this one word, placed on an equal plane with Valerie Solanas of SCUM Manifesto fame, who wrote that the male race should be eliminated.

Now, according to a blog written by Malia Litman, Limbaugh said on his show:

“So, Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal: If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. And I’ll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”

Classy. And severely disturbing.

The many, many problems with the word Feminazi

Of course, most people know who the Nazis were. Even the people who claim the Holocaust never happened still have a general idea of what the word “Nazi” means. So, you know that using a word like “Feminazi” is going to carry pretty strong connotations right off the bat. A lot is insinuated. A woman dubbed thusly wants to wipe out all mankind. She is merciless, cruel, heartless, soulless, etc.

Historically, the first problem we have is that the Nazis targeted women during the Holocaust along with so many others, so equating women to the Nazis is historically bunk. But that’s really the least of our problems.

First, the use of the word Feminazi is highly and immediately dismissive. Once a woman is called a Feminazi, it’s going to be difficult for her to get her point across. After all, would you take to heart something said by a person called a Feminazi? The word is a linguistic version of plugging your ears and saying, “I can’t hear you, na na na foo foo.”

Second, the word indicates a sort of infantile view of the world, right? “Oh, you want equal treatment, therefore you hate me.” For most women (I dare say, though I haven’t done a survey) we like men pretty well. Most of ’em, anyway. It’s just, ya know, if we do the same job, we want to get paid the same amount of money. We want to have the ability to live as we want and not have society refer to us as cat ladies or whatever else people come up with. We’d like to be able to voice our opinions and not be called sluts. That would be rad. But that doesn’t mean we hate men. That doesn’t mean that we think men should board a ship headed towards nowhere.

Right?

It’s not just Feminazi

Of course, there are lots of other ways that women get dismissed. “It must be her time of the month” is a common one. “She’s just getting emotional.” You’ve heard these before, I’m sure. The real question though is why this keeps happening, not the what. We know the what, obviously. But why do conversations about equality or, say, the female reproductive system, revert into conversations about how women are being irrational? Is it possible that women sometimes come across as too shrill? Is it possible that too much emotion gets into the conversation because women often are wired that way? Are men really that intimidated?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Speak away!

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cphotos/3181201118/ via Creative Commons

This powerful guest post is by Debbi Morello. Debbi Morello has had an eclectic career path including cause marketing for a little paper that was just getting started called USA Today. Inspired to pursue photojournalism she spent nearly 15 years working for news organizations on several continents and winning international awards. For the last 10 years she has combined her keen eye and storytelling skills as a communications and outreach specialist for humanitarian organizations, U.S. government and UN agencies worldwide. Now she is eager to stay on this side of pond. You can talk to her on Twitter: just look for @debmorello!

Anthony Shadid, center, with residents of Cairo last February. The loss of Anthony Shadid saw the departure of perhaps the finest foreign correspondent of his generation. An inspiration to many, especially younger Arab-American journalists. (Ed Ou for The New York Times)

Recently, the journalism world lost some its most acclaimed giants. Internationally recognized, award-winning, highly respected journalists who helped change the landscape of the conflicts and injustices they covered. But the world not only lost veteran foreign correspondents, we lost many journalists who risked their lives everyday in their own countries where they do not have the freedoms we oftentimes take for granted.

All of these brave journalists lost their lives while doing what they love, their jobs.

I was asked the question, how is it that there is not more awareness about the many journalists, particularly of late, who lost their lives – or why aren’t more people talking about it? I did not have a good answer. I could only speculate with this response – like in any industry, people tend not to pay much attention outside their own industry, or field, of interest.

Changing that would take much more than raising awareness – it would require changing human nature. I won’t try to do that in this little post. But while I have your attention, what I will do is talk about the journalists who lost their lives recently, who despite the risks, were compelled to tell the story about ordinary people living and trying to survive, in a country in conflict.

Stephen Farrell provides a sobering perspective on the work of foreign correspondents, local and citizen journalists, and a retrospective of recent events that have left many in the field asking tough questions. In his in his post Conflict Reporting in the Post-Embed Era  on At War: Notes from the Front Lines in The New York Times, Farrell weighs the costs of working in war zones.

“In recent months there has been a sense of time and chance suddenly catching up with not just a generation of journalists, but some of the most totemic figures within that generation.”

Maybe there will be some insight into why they do what they do. Perhaps the next time you see a headline that you might take for granted, you’ll know a little bit more about what made it happen.

“I don’t think there’s any story worth dying for, but I do think there are stories worth taking risks for.” Anthony Shadid

And all of them did just that, not for fame, or glory – that’s what separated them from the pack, they did it because they believed in bearing witness, in telling the stories that needed to be told.

Shadid collapsed and died a few weeks ago of an apparent asthma attack while leaving Syria under the most difficult of circumstances and unable to get medical attention. Remember, no foreign journalists have been allowed in Syria. The outpouring was tremendous. Remembering Anthony Shadid – The New York Times  To understand just a bit about his legacy and his many contributions it is worth reading this compilation of what made him so special.

Bill Keller, Former Executive Editor of The New York Times said about Shadid:

“First, he understood the basic rule of reporting: always go. He went to places that were inaccessible and dangerous and miserable — not as a daredevil or adrenaline junkie, not recklessly, often reluctantly, always with the most meticulous and careful planning — but he knew you had to be there. You had to see it. It’s nice that people call him a poet, but poets can write around the holes in a story. Anthony was first and foremost a witness — an incomparable, reliable witness.”

Shadid was 43.

Tyler Hicks the award-winning photojournalist with The New York Times, was often on assignment with Shadid and was with him in Syria. Hicks’ searing images and breathtaking account, Bearing Witness in Syria: A Correspondent’s Last Days appeared in The New York Times on March 3.

Marie Colvin, who covered many of the Arab uprisings, died after a round of attacks in Syria. One of the most distinctive figures of her generation with her trademark black eyepatch she wore after she lost her eye after a shrapnel wound in Sri Lanka in 2001. (Ivor Prickett/The Sunday Times, via European Pressphoto Agency)

Within a week of Shadid’s death, another veteran war correspondent was killed while covering the besieged enclave of Babo Amr in Syria. Marie Colvin, an American journalist who worked for The Sunday Times.

Final dispatch from Homs, the battered city – Marie Colvin 1956-2012 

She had just filed this story. The day before she was killed, she spoke to friends and colleagues and gave several interviews about the horror that she, and the other journalists with her, witnessed. Journalist Marie Colvin in Homs: ‘I saw a baby die today’ BBC News 

She was living with other journalists in makeshift media center, a house in Babo Amr. Syrian forces targeting the journalists shelled the house. Award-winning French photojournalist Rémi Ochlik was also killed.

Christian Amanpour said this of her friend and colleague:

“Marie Colvin believed in was bearing witness. The journalist must be the eyes and ears of the readers or viewers. Marie’s legacy lies in her commitment to story telling and doing it the right way. It’s in believing in the people she was reporting on. She shone a spotlight on and gave a voice to those people who have no voice.”

Rami al-Sayed was a key provider of online videos showing the Syrian government’s bombardment of the central city of Homs until his death.

Activists said Rami al-Sayed was fatally wounded when shells struck the opposition stronghold of Baba Amr – 18 days into the siege. He had been trying to help a family flee in a car, witnesses said.  Sayed was described as “one of the most important cameramen and one of our most important journalists in Baba Amr”.

Rami al-Sayed’s last message:

“Baba Amr is facing a genocide right now… I will never forgive you for your silence… You all have just given us your words but we need actions” 

Sayed uploaded 800 videos documenting the situation in the Homs and used Bambuser to broadcast live footage while security forces attacked by firing rockets, mortars and shells as they tried to gain control of districts from the rebel Free Syrian Army .

Bambuser paid tribute Sayed, saying in a statement that he was “one of the bravest and forefront fighters in getting the world’s attention on what’s going on in Homs” “Those live pictures that Rami and his friends have brought to the world are the only live pictures that have come out of Baba Amr over the past two weeks. So I think it’s very important,” Bambuser’s chairman, Hans Eriksson, told the BBC. Syrian authorities have since blocked access to the site.

For now, the suffering of Homs and elsewhere in Syria continues unabated.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists keeps track of journalists killed while doing their jobs – 902 killed so far since 1992. It offers detailed analysis and categorizes the deaths by country, by male or female, by beat – politics, war, corruption, crime, human rights and so on – by medium of reporting, by type of death, in crossfire or in combat, on dangerous assignment, if murdered, whether motive has been confirmed, or remains unconfirmed.

11 Journalists Killed in 2012/Motive Confirmed Terminology explained –
Anas al-Tarsha, Freelance; February 24 in Homs, Syria;

Rémi Ochlik, Freelance, February 22 in Homs, Syria;

Marie Colvin, Sunday Times, February 22 in Homs, Syria;

Rami al-Sayed, Freelance, February 21 in Homs, Syria;

Mario Randolfo Marques Lopes, Vassouras na Net, February 9 in Barra do Piraí, Brazil;

Mazhar Tayyara, Freelance, February 4  in Homs, Syria;

Hassan Osman Abdi, Shabelle Media Network, January 28 in Mogadishu, Somalia;

Enenche Akogwu, Channels TV, January 20 in Kano, Nigeria;

Mukarram Khan Aatif, Freelance, January 17, in Shabqadar, Pakistan;

Wisut “Ae” Tangwittayaporn, Inside Phuket, January 12 in Phuket, Thailand;

Gilles Jacquier, France 2, January 11 in Homs, Syria.

These statistics were published in the Guardian article Shoot the journalists: Syria’s lesson from the Arab spring Feb. 25.

Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin and French photographer Rémi Ochlik died in Homs last week, bringing the death toll of journalists in Syria this year alone to six.

In 2011, at least 66 journalists were killed around the world as a result of their work, a 16% rise on the previous year, with 17 deaths among reporters covering the Arab spring uprisings. Ten deaths in Pakistan marked the heaviest loss in a single country. Libya claimed five lives, including award-winning British photojournalist Tim Hetherington, and al-Jazeera cameraman Ali Hassan al-Jaber.

Putin’s Russia is an increasingly dangerous place for journalists with extreme limits on freedom of expression. Forty-nine have died since 1992, including Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, shot dead in 2006.

The most deadly country for journalists in the past 10 years has been Iraq, where 151 have been killed since 1992. Coming a bloody second is the Philippines, where 72 have been murdered. Covering human rights as a journalist is more deadly than covering crime, war or corruption.

Street protests in other countries such as Greece, Belarus, Uganda, Chile and the US were responsible for a surge in arrests, from 535 in 2010 to 1,044 in 2011, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Ethiopia was criticized last year for jailing two Swedish journalists covering the insurgency on its border with Somalia. The country is causing increasing international concern with its harsh policies towards its own press.

Nine online journalists were killed for their work in 2011, including Mexican reporter MarÍa Elizabeth MacÍas Castro, whose decapitated body was found near Nuevo Laredo, with a note stating she had been murdered for reporting on social media websites. Mexico has at least 11 journalists reported missing, feared dead.

Other journalists will carry on with this necessary work and more will die while doing it – all the while knowing the risks. The world is poorer when we lose dedicated and committed journalists without whom we would not know the horrors that ordinary people suffer at the hands of brutal dictators or hardships and injustices they suffer because of corrupt governments.

Their voices have not been silenced. Their legacies will live on for the difference they made, and the voice they gave to those who otherwise would not have had one.

For centuries, the female body, especially the reproductive part, has mystified men. There was a time when a woman who was in a bad mood was deemed “hysterical.” Do you know what that means? It means people thought her womb was wandering around, causing her to be off-center. The Greeks would put nice-smelling spices between a woman’s legs to lure the womb back to its rightful place, assuming that this would help the woman calm down. Women have been diagnosed as mentally ill when really their problem was a hormonal imbalance or severe PMS syndromes. A woman’s pain has, in fact, for many years, become fuel for dismissal. “She’s just upset because it’s her time of the month.”

Now, even with medical science where it is, women are being told that they don’t really need birth control pills, or if they do need them it’s because they’re sluts. “Put an aspirin between your knees,” we’re being told. This might all be great fodder for conversation but for one super huge problem. It is men who are leading and participating in these conversations. Women are not invited.

Luckily, I have my own blog, and even though I’m just a woman, so far my ability to write seems to go over pretty well, so I thought I would use this real estate to toss a few facts out there. From a female perspective.

It’s all in a name

Much of the conversation going on right now is about “birth control pills” or “contraception.” Did you know that the same pills can also be referred to as hormone replacement therapy or HRT?

The Mayo Clinic defines HRT as follows: “Hormone replacement therapy — medications containing female hormones to replace the ones the body no longer makes after menopause.” The National Institute of Health notes that there are generally two groups of women who use HRT:

Generally, health care providers prescribe HRT for two groups of women:

• Women going through menopause and who had already gone through it (called post-menopausal)—The natural levels of these hormones drop during menopause. This drop can lead to symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness, and sleep disturbances.  HRT may be used to help lessen some of these symptoms
• Women with certain health conditions—In some cases, women’s bodies don’t make normal levels of the hormones because of a medical problems, such as premature ovarian failure.  For these women, HRT replaces the hormones that their bodies should be making.

March 1st began women’s history month, and the timing could not be more appropriate or more fortuitous. It seems like here in the US, women are under attack. The most private and personal aspects of women’s lives are being thrust into the political  platform, with advice like “put aspirin between your legs” becoming the newest soundbyte.

Of course, it’s not just in the US where women are experiencing an overwhelming sense that they are losing their voice and their power. I read a story recently about widows in India whose husbands committed suicide, leaving these women with everything to do on their farms and in their families with no real help from their society. Women continue to struggle for rights and power in countries like Afghanistan and Iran. In fact, I recently read another article about how women in Afghanistan are setting themselves on fire to get out of their abusive marriages.

With all of this bad news, it’s important, perhaps now more than ever, to take note of women that are improving the world, women who have power and are using it for good, and women who are doing their best to help others.

To that end, I’d like to invite you to celebrate Oxfam International’s Women’s Day, which will take place on March 8, 2012. On this day, Oxfam invites you to celebrate women in 1 of 3 ways online.

1. Send an e-greeting card to a woman you care about

2. Present a woman with a personalized online certificate indicating why you appreciate her (these can be saved out as JPGs and posted to Facebook walls, which could be really fun!)

3. Write your own blog post encouraging other people to involve themselves in the first two parts of the campaign

Of course, women (and men) should be honored every day, but sometimes it’s good to take a specific moment in time and say, “Hey, I need to make sure you know I appreciate you.”

Let’s join Oxfam and tell the world about the women we admire. They need to hear it!

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johan-gril/6821594233/ via Creative Commons