International Women's Day: Headlines Dispute Women's Progress

"You've come a long way, baby."   

A cigarette campaign which became the mantra for the 1970's Movement is starting to sound like a distant dream.    

Today's headlines on International Women's Day should be jubilant.  Instead, we see:

Kansas Abortion Bill Could Raise Taxes On Women Seeking Procedure

The sweeping anti-abortion bill working its way through the Kansas Legislature would levy a sales tax on women seeking abortions, including rape victims.

Women in Texas Losing Options for Health Care in Abortion Fight
Shutdown likely of the Medicaid Women’s Health Program, which serves 130,000 women with grants to many clinics, including those run by Planned Parenthood. Gov. Rick Perry and Republican lawmakers have said they would forgo the $35 million in federal money that finances the women’s health program in order to keep Planned Parenthood from getting any of it.

Utah Passes Anti–Sex Ed Bill

The state’s legislature passed a bill that would ban public schools from teaching contraception as a way of preventing pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.

Why the Attacks on Barnard Women?   

The president’s decision to speak at Barnard has triggered an onslaught of vitriol and name calling against its students that rivals Rush Limbaugh’s 'slut' insult of Sandra Fluke—and often comes from women.

Military Sued Again Over Rape

Ariana Klay’s assignment to Marine Barracks Washington should have been the cherry on top of an already illustrious military and academic career. A National Merit scholar and superstar athlete, Klay was recruited by the Naval Academy, becoming the first member of her family to attend college...Seven months later, she says, a senior Marine officer and his friend came into her home, a block from the base, and gang-raped her.

last but not least,   GOP vs. UTERI  

Have we "...come a long way..." or is it two steps forward one step back?  

Let your elected officials know they are not speaking for you when they are not.

G-L-O-R-I-A

Anybody watch the HBO special "Gloria, In Her Own Words"?   It's a portrayal of Gloria Steinem as a feeling thinking woman who became the iconic public face of the Women's Movement.  The narration is hers.  It's intimate.  The details, in some of her stories, are ordinary and relatable.  For example, she developed her trademark hair coloring of streaky highlighted hair because she loved Audrey Hepburn's hair in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."  She said she identified with Holly Golightly.  (really?)

She believed her looks to be an advantage in the women's movement but she did not want them to get in the way of her seriousness.  Makes sense.  She was the antithesis of how women in the early days of the movement were portrayed in the press.   Many people, women included,  thought of womens' libbers as unattractive, man-hating, angry broads out to destroy the family unit and AMERICA.  Sound familiar?

The Woman's Movement was condemned for having an agenda.  It was a tall order.  Steinem, along with the foremost forward thinking women of her day rallied, marched and worked to ratify the  Equal Rights Amendment and Roe v Wade.  Roe v Wade passed in 1973.  The ERA still hasn't been ratified in all 50 states and it's been in play since 1923.

What particularly stood out in this memoir was the vitriol she faced; how maligned she was and still is.  There is video of a shrill, hateful exchange from a woman caller to "The Larry King Show".  There was an incident of public flogging when some pornographer had a graffiti like portrait of her painted on the wall of her office building.  She's naked, her labia exposed, with hairy penises surrounding her.  She is overwhelmed.  She cries.  She's vulnerable.

Her experiences informed her views, her journalistic talent led her to explore and test those views with her readers.  As founder of Ms. Magazine in 1972, she started the first women's magazine written and published by women for women.  Dismissed and discounted as a flash in the pan, Ms. Magazine is still going strong today.  As is Gloria.