Recently in Generational Analysis Category

Dear Gail,

What were you thinking when you penned this letter to young American women? After listing the various obstacles facing women today -- discrimination, sexual harassment, violence, oppression -- you say:

What with all that, it looks like there's plenty on your plate. And if you don't feel like dwelling on the non-problems, if you automatically assume that a woman has as much right to have a terrific career and exciting adventures as any guy, that's great. For the entire history of recorded civilization, people had ideas about women's limitations, and their proper (domestic) place in the world. That all changed in my lifetime -- came crumbling down. The fact that I got to see it, in the tiny sliver of history I inhabit, just knocks me out. You taking it for granted knocks me out.

On one hand, I kinda get it. This column (along with your new book) is a victory dance for feminist progress. The ability of young women to take inequality for granted ... touchdown??? Thanks for the pat on the head, Gail. I am frankly a little appalled at your framing that young women need feminism like chimpanzees need water buffalo when in fact there are swaths of women in every demographic who have been skeptical about the movement.

Maybe I'm jaded, Gail. But this prototypical young woman you are writing to -- the one who couldn't care less about gender discrimination, who stumbles upon it at her first job in complete shock -- is the biggest myth you have perpetuated since you tried to call the Black man in the presidential race "disturbingly Ivy League." I am not going to front. I don't have the regression analysis on young women and attitudes around gender. But when campus activity fairs roll around and there are tables for a dozen gender-based orgs, one can't deny that the movement for gender equality is alive -- and that many young women are active participants. Yeah, many may not even call it (gasp!) feminism. But I hear young women speak their truths about gender marginalization every day, whether it is anorexia, race, violence against women, economic justice, health care discrimination, sex education, breast cancer or many other issues of interest. Wish you could hear them, too.

I am getting tired of having the work of young women rendered invisible in one fell swoop by a few older feminists who clearly don't take the time to talk to listen to them. I would love to have more inter-generational dialogues about feminism with women like you, Gail. But it's difficult to know where to begin, when your book bears the title When Everything Changed. Everything has far from changed, Gail. You needn't look any farther than the publication you write for, the New York Times, to know that the more things change, the more things stay the same:

The 20 top occupations of women last year [2007] were the same as half a century ago: secretary, nurse, grade school teacher, sales clerk, maid, hairdresser, cook and so on.

Further, the same article notes:

The proportion of female state legislators has been stuck in the low 20 percent range for 15 years; women's share of state elective executive offices has fallen consistently since 2000, and is now under 25 percent. The American political pipeline is 86 percent male.

I haven't even begun to break down how women of color have had varied experiences when measuring progress from the '60s. I'll just say that my own mother and grandmother could have cared less about girdles and flight attendant jobs. Race discrimination and the right to care for one's own children while serving in a domestic capacity for your white employer are some forms of sexism that saddled their lives decades ago and today. A narrative that takes into consideration some of these complexities don't seem to be apparent in your letter to young women like me.

Mainly, Gail, I want you to know one thing: You can't call it even yet. No matter how much "progress" you observe, now is the time to shed light on disparate treatment of women and girls. As a young feminist of color in the movement, the only thing that knocks me out is the tendency some feminists have to say the fight is over, when battle lines have been clearly drawn and the true victory has yet to be won.

In Sisterhood,
Rose S. Afriyie

Check out this guest post from author and activist Gail Straub, who will be at the Omega Institute's intergenerational conference that we'll be at this fall.

This past May in celebration of my sixtieth birthday I returned to Paris where I had studied Marxism at the Sorbonne as a twenty year old college student. I thought I was returning to Paris because I loved everything about the City of Lights including her museums, churches, cafes, concerts, wine, patisseries, parks, and yes, the stubborn proud Parisians too. All this was still true as I fell head over heels in love with Paris just like I had forty years ago. But something else, something unexpected, was waiting for me in Paris. I turned into a twenty-year old young woman again.

As I revisited my old neighborhood haunts my whole being seem to lighten. I felt open, excited, as if everything were new and possible. I had the energy of four people and my imagination was on fire. Studying at the Sorbonne in the aftermath of the historic student revolution of 1968, I returned to those streets where we had protested and I sensed a quickening in my old bones, my passion to change the world fully reignited. Unselfconscious about my miserable French accent, I engaged in myriad of lively dialogs about Obama and Chirac, arts and culture, with every imaginable sort of Parisian. I could even eat like a horse gaining not a single ounce as had been true four decades ago. Oh the joy to be in Paris and eat anything I wanted, whenever I wanted!

Alas coming back to my mountain home in the Hudson River Valley, once again I turned into my sixty-year old self; overly responsible, stuck in old habits and patterns, working too hard, longing for more energy, caring too much about what others think, and a bit arrogant. But fortunately my awesome "Parisian internal intergenerational dialog" had lodged in my heart and wasn't about to let go. My brief return to the energy and spirit of my twenties was one of the greatest gifts of turning sixty. It was a crucial reminder that in order to stay vibrant, creative, engaged, passionate about changing the world, willing to take unabashed wild actions, I simply must have my younger sisters teaching, inspiring, and lightening me up.

And this brings me to Omega's Women and Power Connecting Across the Generations Conference. What a wonderful invitation to laugh and cry and sing about the issues that we all care about as women. What a rare opportunity for a focused discussion among generations about important things like power, voice, and feminism; men, family, and relationships; work, creativity, and spirituality. All these central issues mean something quite different to me as a Boomer informed by the era of the sixties than they do to a Millennial shaped by very different times. What if we put together our understanding, our confusion, and our heart's longing? What if we co-mentor each other? As an older I really do need to learn about the true benefits of a blog. And exactly how is it that you younger sisters are transcending the old boundaries of race and gender? As a younger woman you could be intrigued with my experience of how compassion deepens with the passing decades and how the presence of death becomes a precious advisor. And I bet you might be interested to know what I learned as a young woman during the student revolution in the streets of Paris forty years ago.

Bio after the jump.

If you're in the Brooklyn area, don't miss our intergenerational conversation in honor of Father's Day where we'll be exploring questions like:

• How were your ideas about men and masculinity formed while growing up?
• How did men shape your thinking about your own identity as a woman?
• What is the role for men in the contemporary and future feminist movement?

It's really meant to be a dialogue, so the more folks we can pack in for their perspective, the richer the learning. Best of all, it's basically free (voluntary donation on the way in).

Deets:
Brooklyn Museum of Art
Saturday, June 20th, 2-4pm
Courtney Martin, Gloria Feldt, Deborah Siegel, and Kristal Brent Zook

And for those of you who liked Spy vs. Spy, the DJs that started the anniversary bash out right, consider ending the day lovely at Underwater Lounge in D.U.M.B.O. Brooklyn (no cover). They claim that if you show up in summer gear, they'll buy you a drink?!

I'm going to let my friend Laura Leischner, the Prevention Specialist at The Collins Center, blog this one out...

It's a pretty informal setting with people finishing their lunch, but the caucus is going to be moderated by Kyla Bender-Baird and Lisa Rast, both of NCRW. Everyone went around and introduced themselves. There are a wide range of women in the room, from freelancers, college students to attorneys.

Lisa talks about how one of her favorite quotes is by Madeleine Albright, "There's a special place in hell for women that don't support other women." She poses the question, "How can we support other women while looking out for ourselves?" A tough one indeed.

A NCRW intern Shirley raises the point that she appreciates the quote, but doesn't like how it focuses on the individual. Sisterhood is powerful.

Another participant transitions and talks about corporations and the lack of support that they give women here in the US (especially with maternity leave) as opposed to other countries. She explains we are taught here to compete with men.

Lisa raises the point that in New York, in all sectors of business, the norm is leaving the office at 7pm. This point alone shows the importance we place on work as our livelihood and in turn how it's becoming our whole life.

Someone brings up the point about women's organizations and how there is an internal glass ceiling there. She says that If the older women don't get out of the way, how can we as young women get a move on and take the reins? It's a constant struggle for us as young feminists and something time and time again we end up talking about.

Check out this interesting guest post by Dr. Ana Nogales, a health and human rights advocate, on the power of women's stories, as understood through her own mother. This is one more voice to our continued exploration of generational issues, leading up to the conference this fall at the Omega Institute. We are publishing a series of guest posts as a fun way of initiating some of the speakers--who are generally new to blogging--into our exciting online community. Please make them feel welcome.

My mother never told me her whole story. She relayed pieces of it here and there, but I could tell that her pain was much greater than her measured words revealed. After marrying my father in a quasi-arranged marriage just before World War II, the two of them left Poland for South America. My mother never saw her parents again. She talked about the love she had for her father but said almost nothing about her mother. I gathered from the little she told me that her mother, my grandmother, was neglected as a child and never had a voice in her family. In our family, my mother had a voice but most of the time it was a voice of negativity. I believe that the reason for this was that my mother was never able to overcome her family's tragedy.

It was only in the last few months of her life that my mom was able to speak from her heart. She spoke of how it was in her family when she was growing up--that girls and women knew their place and couldn't deviate from that--and how the attitudes of her elders were passed on to her. She also opened up about my Jewish family's ordeal in Poland and how painful it had been for her to leave her family behind. I had known the outlines of her story but not her feelings about all that had happened. It was so important for me to finally receive the missing pieces of that story, because it was part of my own history as well.

Today, sadly, there are too many women whose voices are silenced due to discrimination and violence against women. Sometimes we keep our stories to ourselves because we don't want to burden our children with the pain of the past. But such silence doesn't allow the younger generation to learn from what their elders went through--and to strive to create change. This is why it is so crucial for grandmothers and mothers to reach out to the younger generations and share their stories, however painful they may be, so that our personal and cultural histories are not lost. And it is equally important for younger women to keep asking their mothers and grandmothers to relay the stories of their lives. As we engage in this process of intergenerational dialogue, we can begin to connect to each other at the soul level--and work together toward the goal of women's empowerment.

Bio after the jump.

Don't sleep on Katha Pollitt's great piece in the Nation on intergenerational feminism:

Media commentators love to reduce everything about women to catfights about sex, so it's not surprising that this belittling and historically inaccurate way of looking at the women's movement--angry prudes versus drunken sluts--has recently taken on new life, including among feminists....

The wave structure, I'm trying to say, looks historical, but actually it is used to misrepresent history by evoking ancient tropes about repressive mothers and rebellious daughters. Second wave: anti-porn; third wave: anything goes! But second wave was never all anti-porn--think of Ellen Willis, for heaven's sake. It even gave us the propaganda term "pro-sex." The ACLU is jampacked with feminist lawyers of a certain age. In fact, feminists in the '70s and '80s had the same conflicts over pornography that are playing out today among young women over raunch and sex work. You wouldn't know it from the media, but there are plenty of young feminists who do not see pole-dancing as "empowering" and do not aspire to star in a Girls Gone Wild video. Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs sold very well on campus. These women don't fit the wave story line, however, so nobody interviews them.

It was so gratifying to see Pollit sum up the misconceptions and spuriously simple tropes of second and third wave here. And got me thinking more personally about my journey with intergenerational analysis...

As a younger writer, I was sometimes guilty of peddling in second wave stereotypes; it was a reaction, I think, that stemmed from (1) my sense of powerlessness and (2) my hunch that to be a writer of note, one had to be salacious and even a bit mean (see Linda Hirshman school of commentary).

With regard to the former, taking aim at the old guard allowed me to feel some sense of power, when I was otherwise relegated to making copies and pitching magazines like crazy with little to no response. It seems like part of our generational divide in print and online is directly rooted to our lack of forums and systems by which younger women can feel heard and seen (exactly what feministing strives to counter).

With regard to the latter, I don't ascribe to that theory on getting literary attention. While I do try to make fresh arguments, and sometimes aim for a little provocation, I am deeply committed to not caricaturing people in my writing. I don't think it makes any of us smarter or the world any more just.

I try to avoid over-generalizations these days, even as I attempt to sometimes analyze generational trends within the feminist movement. What's hard for me, and it would be interesting to hear Pollitt's take on this, is that there are generational differences that I'd like to address, but there is sometimes a fine line between addressing difference and reinforcing generalizations. For example, I do believe that older feminists tend to take a fairly myopic view when it comes to what constitutes a feminist issue. Does this mean that every young feminist identifies with intersectionality or every older feminist doesn't? Certainly not. But there is an important, largely historically-shaped trend there that warrants exploration. By doing so, I don't want to be seen as someone who reinforces stereotypes.

Ultimately, the proof is in the pudding with this kind of analysis. With thoughtful writing, good editing, and clear intentions I think we can do intergenerational analysis without stereotyping whole groups of people, but it takes care and a certain sense of efficacy not to grasp for the cheap shots, but to strive for the transformational conclusions.

Check out this interesting guest post by Carla Goldstein, the director of the Women's Institute at Omega, on the feminist progress within her own family. This is one more voice to our continued exploration of generational issues, leading up to the conference this fall at the Omega Institute. We are publishing a series of guest posts as a fun way of initiating some of the speakers--who are generally new to blogging--into our exciting online community. Please make them feel welcome. And don't forget to turn in your scholarship applications! They're due June 1st.

My day began with bringing my pouting 8-year-old daughter to school, mad because we were late again. I felt sympathetic, remembering what it was like to always be the last kid at drop off and pick up. My mom, who was a single parent in the 1960s and 70s, was constantly juggling work and caretaking.

As I drove home I remembered that I had nothing in the fridge to feed my mother, now 70 and visiting from Florida for my daughters' dance recital. I made a quick detour to the supermarket. Walking into the store, I realized I was still wearing pajama bottoms. After a moment of panic, I decided whatever! I shopped anyway. Back in the car, I felt a well of gratitude towards my mother for her "whatever!" attitude that mortified me as a child, and turns out to be an essential source of my strength as an adult.

While unpacking groceries, I asked my mom what messages her mother had given her about being a woman. She had trouble finding something on point. Then out came a sequence of two short memories. The first was about her mother (my grandmother) who grew up in an orthodox Jewish family in the East Bronx during the early 1900s. When my grandmother had been a little girl, her mother (my great grandmother) had insisted she get a pair of roller skates because all children should have skates, not just the boys!

My mother's second memory was about her father refusing to let her take driver's ed in high school. He believed women had no need to drive. My grandmother tried to persuade him, but lost the argument. Years later, at age 55, my grandmother taught herself to drive and then helped my mother learn to drive who was then 35 years old.

Upon hearing these two stories, I had a new way of understanding my matrilineal heritage. Until this telling, I had always attributed my adolescent hobby of roller skating to be a happy accident and my early driving as a necessity. It never occurred to me that my mother's enthusiasm for my skating or her permission to drive as soon as I hit the age limit was connected to a family through-line of liberation. The personal stories that connect to the history of women's mobility reminded me that social change is an ever intertwined process moving between our private, day-to-day lives and larger political forces.

Over the past century, women's lives have changed so radically -- and unevenly! Some women still have no freedom of mobility, and even worse are stuck in slavery, violence and racking poverty. The promise now, aided by a global communications network, is that we can share information, knowledge, inspiration, and resources, as we build stronger coalitions to take the next leap in liberation for ourselves and the planet so desperately in need of women's leadership.

At this year's Women and Power conference at Omega Institute we will be talking across the generations to reflect on and celebrate how far we have traveled, to examine things left undone, and to inspire each other to take the next leap forward in building a world where women's dreams are valued and realized.

We are hungry to hear your intergenerational stories -- online at feministing, and in September at Omega in Rhinebeck, New York.

With love, Carla Goldstein

Carla Goldstein's complete bio is after the jump.

Check out this awesome ongoing blog dialogue between Letha Dawson Scanzoni, 72, and Kimberly B. George, 27--thus the snazzy name of the blog, 72-27. They are both self-identified Christian feminists and discuss everything from labor division in the home to violence in Pakistan to chickens. Don't miss it. A long excerpt from super smart Kimberley:

I wanted to begin this letter by letting you know that I have been thinking a great deal about that first article you linked in your last post (the BBC article that talked about women reportedly confessing the sin of pride more than men). It so happened that when I got your letter I was reading Feminist Theory and Christian Theology by Serene Jones. (Dr. Jones used to be a professor at Yale Divinity School, and now she is at Union Theological Seminary.) Her book gave me a news lens for seeing some of the important issues in Reformed theology, particularly the weighty idea of "pride equals sin" within that tradition.

Jones explains that Calvin, similar to many preachers today, focused on pride as being one of the most damaging aspects of the human condition. Pride was a brazen, over-inflation of self that offended God, or so Calvin and others have said. It was the essence of sin and to be avoided at all cost for a healthy spiritual life.

Dr. Jones questions where women--and other marginalized people--fit in this tradition. It is one thing for the most powerful people in society to promote these ideas around pride: perhaps Calvin's deepest struggle really was this grandiosity of self that he describes. Certainly, many of the preachers I have listened to seem to struggle with pride a great deal, so it makes sense to me that they would define sin in terms of over-inflation of self.

And yet these preachers and theologians are often white heterosexual men with tremendous spiritual authority who are at the top of the power structures in society. Of course they struggle with pride. They are simply reading the Bible and writing their theology out of their lived experience. They are being honest with what they know-- they just are not seeing from the vantage points of those not sharing their pedestal. Perhaps they have no idea of the "view from below" or have no sense of what it means to hold the kind of power that they have. (Indeed, they might even deny that a power structure exists, so far are they from understanding marginalization)

So, what happens when all those messages about the sin of "pride" are communicated from a position of power to those who are disempowered and marginalized? What happens when the promoters of this theology are in an entirely different position of status and voice than those "below" them?

This blogs represents just the kind of dialogue that I hope will be happening in person at the upcoming Omega Institute conference next fall, Women & Power: Connecting Across the Generations. Don't forget to get those scholarships in.

Full bios for Letha and Kimberley after the jump.

Check out this interesting guest post by artist and yogini Maya Breuer on her own history as it relates to feminism through the generations, a topic we will continue to explore leading up to the conference this fall at the Omega Institute. We will be publishing a series of guest posts as a fun way of initiating some of the speakers--who are generally new to blogging--into our exciting online community. Please make them feel welcome.

Back in the 60's I did not fit the typical description of a feminist. When Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan founded the Women's Political Caucus, I was enmeshed in the politics of economic inequality. I attended the '72 Democratic National Convention, as a representative from the National Welfare Rights Organization, protesting cutbacks in federal assistance to poor families.

Following that convention, I did community action work in equal employment and affirmative action. I was also a young black mother attempting to find my voice, which was becoming tinged with overtones from inspiring women like Angela Davis and Sonya Sanchez.

I was also in an abusive marriage. After one particular beating from my husband, I went to the local police station seeking protection. I registered my complaint. The officer asked, "Isn't he that news reporter from Channel __?" "Yes, I replied, he is."

He then asked me to have a seat. When he returned he said, "Mrs.___, we'll take you home, and have a conversation with him. Then he added, "He's a good guy, we'll talk with him."

The police escorted me home, spoke with my husband, but nothing happened. I was struck with the reality that there was no protection for me or my children. True, I was a black woman, but now I felt the need to align myself with other women, and to figure out how I fit in to the feminist movement. Was there a place for black women in the feminist movement? If I joined would it somehow diminish my commitment to racial equality?

I joined a consciousness raising group. We met regularly, we laughed, we talked, we cried, we pondered and discussed events of the day in the feminist and the civil rights movements. We talked about how restrictive marriage could be, that women had no personal reproductive rights, the need for legal protection and safe haven for women being abused, and sitting on the floor we even looked at our own vaginas with speculum-like mirrors.

I read The Feminine Mystique, lauded Shirley Chisholm's run for the Presidency and celebrated the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, all the while trying to figure out where I stood. Was I a feminist?

Since the 90's my work as a yoga instructor and director of the yoga retreat for women of color has led me to recognize the value in an evolving and growing feminist perspective. I have worked primarily with women of all ethnicities, socio economic backgrounds and generations. Our intergenerational dialogues have encouraged many to find their own voice and vision for personal growth. The need to be part of a collective feminist consciousness is as essential today as ever.

This September, women of all colors and generations are coming together at Omega for the Women and Power Conference to dialogue about feminism, health, art, body, mind and spirit. I look forward to sharing my voice and experiencing the collective voices and wisdoms of others. Perhaps our intergenerational dialogues at Omega will begin an evolution into the next wave of global woman spirit and the feminist movement.

See Maya's full bio after the jump.

Some of the take-aways from last night's intergenerational discussion on feminism, work, and the economy at 92Y Tribeca:

• There is an opportunity, this economic downturn, for all sorts of gender shake-up. When we're forced to recognize that old styles of leadership and assumptions about gender roles are no longer valid, we can get even the most reluctant folks to try a more enlightened, equal approach. The media coverage of this phenomenon has been totally unsatisfying (dads who cook! women who work! what a revelation!), but in truth, there is something interesting going on.


• American workplaces won't change--in policy or culture--until men take this on as their own issue just as women have for years. If they can't do it under this big tent movement called feminism, maybe they can invent their own way of owning the issues. I recommend John DeGraff's Take Back Your Time organization as one way for men to test the waters.


• When older women are happy with younger women, they refer to them as empowered. When they're irritated, they call us entitled. The real meaning of entitlement is "a belief that one is deserving of certain privileges or rights." Sounds like what feminism had in mind all along, no?


• The word "choice," as you might imagine, came up an awful lot. Gloria Feldt, who is part of the ungeneration and has been through a lot of life, gets irritated when women lament how difficult it is to have so many choices. Debbie Siegel, 40-years-old and facing lay off woes with her husband, talked about men being in a unique position to choose how they want to remake masculinity in this age of uncertainty. Elizabeth Hines, in her early 30s and 9 months pregnant, talked about how it never seemed like there was a "choice" to be had in her family. Women worked through motherhood, no question about it. I am really interested in the idea that feminism is too often cast as heroism instead of self-respect. In other words, it's been perverted to meant that you choose yes on everything, rather than carefully choosing autonomy, health, fulfillment, and yes, family, if that's what you want. I think our outlandish expectations for ourselves mixed with that sense so many women have that only they can make the dinner, have the talk with their teenage daughter, clean up the living room etc. well enough, perpetuates this sense of never being enough, either in work or family.

This is just a fraction of what we explored, but I thought I'd share a little for those who couldn't attend. Check out Elisabeth Garber-Paul's take on the panel over at RH Reality Check.

There's going to be another intergenerational pow-wow, Unfinished Business--Women's Vision for the Nation: What's It Going to Take?, this weekend at the Brooklyn Museum of Art for anyone that's interested. Deets here.

The Omega Women's Institute is holding an intergenerational women's conference for some thought-provoking panels and inspirational dialogue this coming fall, and we are incredibly stoked about it. So stoked, in fact, that we're teaming up with them to help spark some discussion in the blogosphere pre-conference as well as liveblog the actual conference for Feministing readers (and feminists worldwide!) to enjoy.

The unique thing about Women and Power: Connecting Across the Generations is that it will be coming out of the Omega Institute, which is one of the longest running centers on spiritual growth in this country. It was co-founded by feminist Elizabeth Lesser in 1977 and, as such, it has continuously been at the forefront of linking the personal and the political. We're excited to see the ways in which the Omega approach infuses the often disappointing dialogue on intergenerational feminism with the depth and complexity it deserves.

From now until the conference, the Institute and ourselves will be bringing you guest posts and other updates to foster some pre-conference discussion and give you more of an idea of what to expect on the conference weekend, September 11-13th. In the meantime, check out more info here and you can find all Omega-related updates on Feministing here.

Ta-Nehisi highlights the following comment from his blog:

When it comes to Palin, there's an intersection of sexism and age that the Republicans don't understand (which is why they keep crying sexism and wonder why it's not working).

For many Boomer women, the primary sexist experience of their lives is: "Those men gave the job to that guy instead of me, even though I am more qualified and/or have more seniority."

For many Gen X women like myself (and Palin is Gen X) the primary sexist experience is: "Those men gave the job to that clueless chick instead of me, because the boss thinks she's hot and/or will be a yes-man with no ideas of her own."

If, for some Boomer women, Obama's win over Hillary represents the guy they lost the promotion to, Palin's selection plays the same role for Gen X women. We've seen it: first the incompetent yet babelicious woman is promoted over her head, then the boss orders the attention of the entire team/department/etc. to focus on ensuring that "we" shield her from "mistakes" (or worse, we get blamed for her mistakes). Palin reminds us of when we got screwed by this sort of bullshit. And it shows in voters' response to her.

Generalizations like this are tricky business. But it's undeniable that there are generational differences (just as there are differences based on race, class, etc.) in how women experience sexism. What do you all think? Do you agree with the generational distinctions in the quote above?

I've expanded my thoughts over at Alternet about this whole Rebecca/Alice clash. Check it out.

I am so deeply saddened by Rebecca Walker's recent expose on her childhood as Alice Walker's allegedly neglected daughter and the ways in which it scarred her. The two have been publicly nipping at one another for years, but this seems like the nail in the coffin of their doomed relationship.

I'm sad, first and foremost, for Rebecca--a third wave icon and clearly reflective and evolving leader of the movement. Whether everything she alleges (that her mother never went to her school functions, didn't spend time with her or money on her necessities etc.) is true or not, it is the emotional truth of what she experienced.

But I'm sad, on a larger scale, that she would (1) equate feminism with this experience and (2) not see the gray areas in between her mother's relationship to mothering and her own.

In terms of the former, she acts like our feminist legacy is explicitly anti-mothering. She writes: "Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness. It is devastating." This is so NOT my experience in the world or at home, where I was raised by a prototypical feminist mother (though not a famous one). Many, many of the second-wavers that I know and love are passionate about being mothers, while they recognize that there are dangers in it and many issues that arise from its all-consuming nature. Any biological confusion that women have is not a direct product of feminism; it's a complicated biproduct of the time we are living in, feminist successes included.

In terms of the latter, Rebecca seems to have swung the pendulum so violently in the other direction that she won't even acknowledge the ways in which mothering is problematic for independent women in a sexist world. She writes, "I am my own woman and I have discovered what really matters - a happy family. "I, for one, am freaked out to be a mom (though I know I want to), not because I think it is impossible not to lose myself, but because I think it is easy to. I want to find a middle ground between helicopter parent and can't be bothered, between stay-at-home and workaholic, between mother as identity and mother as irrelevant role.

Isn't that what so many of us are striving for? Isn't that what Amy Richards' new book is about? Why isn't this acknowledged in Rebecca's vicious take down of her own mother?

Your thoughts?

Some readers have asked us to devote a post to Robin Morgan's recent essay on Hillary Clinton. I think we've actually addressed in previous posts a lot of the issues Morgan raises. But there's one section in particular I wanted to respond to:

Goodbye to a misrepresented generational divide . . .

Goodbye to the so-called spontaneous “Obama Girl� flaunting her bikini-clad ass online—then confessing Oh yeah it wasn’t her idea after all, some guys got her to do it and dictated the clothes, which she said “made me feel like a dork.�

Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by showing they’re not feminists (at least not the kind who actually threaten the status quo), who can’t identify with a woman candidate because she is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky power, who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if they say something good about her. Goodbye to women of any age again feeling unworthy, sulking “what if she’s not electable?� or “maybe it’s post-feminism and whoooosh we’re already free.� Let a statement by the magnificent Harriet Tubman stand as reply. When asked how she managed to save hundreds of enslaved African Americans via the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, she replied bitterly, “I could have saved thousands—if only I’d been able to convince them they were slaves.�

This is all incredibly offensive to me -- not because of who I support in the presidential primary, but because of who I am. A younger woman. A younger feminist woman.

The above section of Morgan's essay is incredibly condescending. It completely fails to recognize that there are a variety of valid reasons younger women might decide to support Obama. Not because they think the "Obama Girl" video is empowering. (Uh, to the contrary.) Not because their boyfriends told them it wasn't cool to vote for Hillary. Not because they're "post-feminist." Not because they are in denial about the existence of sexism. Because they've taken a look at his position on the issues and decided that he would make the best president.

This crap is merely annoying when it comes from the mainstream media. It's really disappointing and hurtful when it comes from within the women's movement.

I know there are feminists of all ages who are Clinton supporters who don't feel this way about their fellow feminists who have chosen to support Obama. They realize that voting for Obama does not mean turning your back on the astounding, amazing, hard-won battles fought by feminists in previous decades. And they know that, as Hillary Clinton said, “Women’s rights are human rights. Among those rights are the right to speak freely -- and the right to be heard.� Even if certain feminist leaders don't like what you have to say.

We've been called apathetic. We've been called selfish. We've been called cheaters. We've been called petty. We've been called appearance obsessed. We've been called Generation Y, Millenials, Echo Boomers, the Look at Me Generation, and now, well, it's all been boiled down to simply Generation Me.

I'm, frankly, a little sick of the whole thing. The New York Times just ran a story about a new study that puts into question the previous wisdom on our generation--namely that MySpace, Oprah, and Free To Be You and Me has made us all narcissistic. The article explains:

Kali H. Trzesniewski, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario...along with colleagues at the University of California, Davis, and Michigan State University, will publish research in the journal Psychological Science next month showing there have been very few changes in the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of youth over the last 30 years. In other words, the minute-by-minute Twitter broadcasts of today are the navel-gazing est seminars of 1978.

The study was done, in part, as a response to the work of Jean M. Twenge who wrote Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before. Twenge is already at work on another book, this one with an even more damning title, The Narcissism Epidemic (by the by, could we all agree on a definition for what constitutes an epidemic? It's getting a little ridiculous).

I appreciate this Yale fella's response:

Richard P. Eibach, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale, has found that exaggerated beliefs in social decline are widespread — largely because people tend to mistake changes in themselves for changes in the external world. “Our automatic assumption is something real has changed,� Mr. Eibach said. “It takes extra thought to realize that something about your own perspective or the information you’re receiving may have changed.�

Is it really us, people, or might it just be a little bit about you? Are older folks projecting their own unmet needs on an entire generation? Now that's narcissism.