November » 2009 » Danine N. Spencer

Feminists Give Thanks

What are feminists thankful for this year, besides turkey, stuffing and fabulous shoes? A few friends and I got together and took stock of our cornucopia of blessings, thanks to the hard work of many who have come before us. Read as these fab feminists give thanks and take time to reflect on how you have benefited from feminism. Feel free to leave a comment!

The Undomestic Goddess:

In an imperfect world where there’s still much hate, and at a time in our nation where we’re very much divided, I can still be thankful for the overwhelming amount of people who do good, and who mobilize to protect the rights of other human beings. I’m also thankful for Twitter, for connecting me with some pretty fabulous feminists, and for teaching me that I’m not alone.

DancingGrapes (the consequences of a naked foot):

I’m thankful for strong women. Women that raised me, those I work with, women that inspire me every day. There’s something about the company of women that goes so beyond the pragmatic. I’m so thankful every time I’m in the presence of magnificent women.

Shelby Knox:

In 1972, Pat Schroeder was elected to Congress from a Denver district and given a coveted seat on the Armed Services Committee. This so peeved Chairman F. Edward Hébert, who was in his 31^st year in Congress and a vehement opponent of desegregation, that he ordered the freshman Congresswoman and a black second-term member to literally share a chair because each was worth half a “regular” member. In 2008, Senator Hillary Clinton logged those 16 million votes for the presidency and Barack Obama currently sits in the White House.

I’m grateful to the women and men who paved the way for young men of color and women of all hues to imagine ourselves as “Congressman” or “Governor” or “Madame President.” Victoria Woodhull. Frederick Douglass. Jeannette Rankin. Shirley Chisholm. Patsy Mink. Carol Moseley-Braun. Wilma Mankiller. (And many more whose names we’ve forgotten but on whose shoulders we stand.)

And yes, I’m even grateful this blessing extends to one rogue former Alaska governor. In the words of Bella Abzug, a woman to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude, “Women have been and are prejudiced, narrow-minded, reactionary, even violent. Some women. They, of course, have a right to vote and a right to run for office. I will defend that right, but I will not support them or vote for them.”

As for me….

I am thankful for all the women who paved the way for me to get a degree in computer science. I am thankful to Sally Ride and Christa McAuliffe for being two high profile female astronauts and scientists during my formative years.

I am thankful to Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman for being CEOs at HP and eBay, respectively, while I was in college, proving that women can break the glass ceiling in the IT world. (Why do they have to be Republican? Argh.)

I am thankful to the AAUW for their work in increasing the number of women and girls in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

Most of all, I am thankful to Anita Borg, who started the Systers email list for women in computer science and technology. Without Systers and the knowledge that there were thousands of other smart, savvy technical women out there, I would never have made it through college.

Thank you!

Medicaid Is NOT A "Medical Ghetto", Senator Alexander

During Saturday’s debate on the cloture vote, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said the proposed health care reform bill is:

“arrogant in its dumping of 15 million low-income Americans into a medical ghetto called Medicaid that none of us or any of our families would ever want to be a part of for our health care.”

Here’s the video:

I have Medicaid. It is not a “medical ghetto”. Without Medicaid, I would not be walking or talking today. I would not be typing this sentence. I would not be able to swallow food or get dressed by myself.

Medicaid is a good program. It paid for two more weeks of inpatient rehabilitation at the Spinal Cord Injury Center at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee, WI, than United HealthCare would have. Those extra two weeks are the reason I’m walking today.

Medicaid paid for as much outpatient physical, occupational and acquatic therapy as I needed when I got home. United HealthCare would have only paid for twenty sessions each per year. Without Medicaid, I would not have been able to go to physical therapy 2-3 times a week for eleven months, occupational therapy 2 times a week for six months and aquatic therapy once a week for five months.

Medicaid has paid for all of my doctors’ appointments. I have been able to see all of the specialists I needed, no questions asked.

Medicaid has kept me alive and put me back on the road to recovery. It is not a “medical ghetto”. It is a vitally important (and yes, imperfect) safety net for millions of Americans.

Senator Alexander, you would be lucky to have Medicaid.

SheWrites Day of Action

Today is the SheWrites Day of Action to protest the complete exclusion of women on Publishers Weekly’s Top Ten Best Books of 2009 list. One of the suggested ways to make the day is the create your own list of “Top Ten Best Books of 2009″.

I went through a long period of not reading for about a year and finally started reading again this summer so I don’t have a list of ten books actually published in 2009. (I have read more than ten books this year but they weren’t all published in 2009.) As a result, I only have seven books to recommend. However, I’m also going to recommend three books from 2009 that I still hope to read yet this year.

Without any further ado, here we go:

Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan
A Short History of Women: A Novel by KateWalbert
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence by Rachel Simmons
When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins
Feminista by Erica Kennedy
Girldrive: Criss-Crossing America, Redefining Feminism by Emma Bee Bernstein and Nona Willis-Aronowitz

3 Books I Plan on Buying Soon

Notes from the Cracked Ceiling: Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and What It Will Take for a Woman to Win by Anne E. Kornblut
Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box by Madeleine Albright
Picking Bones from Ash: A Novel by Marie Mutsuki Mockett

All images courtesy of IndieBound.org except Notes from the Cracked Ceiling, which is from Powells.com

Dr. Nancy Thinks Female Athletes Are Too Agressive

On Tuesday morning, I had the Dr. Nancy Show on MSNBC on in the background when this segment on “aggressive” female athletes came on:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Dr. Nancy’s comments on the rising “aggression” in girls’ and women’s sports particularly annoyed me, like when she said this:

Title IX has meant that we really are looking at women’s sports so differently than we did just a generation ago. You want women out there, aggressive, smart, nuanced…. How do you take them up to that spot and not sort of, um, I want to say, let girls be girls, but push them to the sort of stuff you would expect out of men’s sports, but perhaps an inch or two shy of that?

Why do women have to be an “inch or two” less aggressive than men when they play sports? Is that not lady-like? Does Dr. Nancy think they shouldn’t sweat, either? What happens if they break a nail?

I am not advocating violence in sports, whether it’s men’s or women’s sports. However, every Sunday men suffer injuries on football fields that they will have to deal with the rest of their lives. There are many sports that are, by their very nature, aggressive and violent (football, rugby, etc.) There are also rules and codes of honor for every sport that both men and women should be held to. As long as both male and female athletes are following the rules, they can be as “aggressive” as they want.

Anything else is an offensive double standard.

Veterans Day: No Longer Just A "Man's Holiday"

I’ve got a new post up at Women’s Rights | Change.org : Veterans Day: No Longer Just A “Man’s Holiday”. Here’s an excerpt:

Today is Veterans’ Day in the United States, a day when we pause to recognize those who have served in our nation’s armed services. Veterans’ Day is traditionally a man’s holiday, where we honor the men who have fought and died in our nation’s wars. However, the number of female veterans has doubled over the last twenty years, from 4% in 1988 to 8% this year. This number will only continue to grow as our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan continues.

It is important to pay tribute to all veterans, including female veterans. According to the IAVA, more than 212, 000 female service members have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, making up 11% of the force over there. More than 600 have been wounded in the combined wars and more than 120 women have died, including Staff Sgt. Amy C. Tirador of Albany, New York, who died November 4 in Kirkush, Iraq.

Keep reading at Womens Rights | Change.org

Photo credit: kevindooley on Flickr

Women on Medicaid Are Being Forgotten in Stupak Outrage

On Saturday night, my joy and relief at the health care reform bill being passed in the House of Representatives was quickly wiped out by the fury being expressed on Twitter and elsewhere by feminists and progressives over the Stupak amendment. According to the Feminist Majority Foundation, the amendment “bans abortion coverage even if women pay for it with their own money in the public option or private plans in the insurance exchange.”

This is obviously a big deal. In a press release, FMF’s president Ellie Smeal said:

“Millions of poor and middle class women will be denied abortion coverage. Millions more may lose abortion coverage because currently some 85% of private plans now have such coverage.”

I agree the Stupak amendment is terribly, terribly wrong. It is, as Ms. Smeal said, “an unacceptable, giant step backward for women.” Still, abortion cannot be allowed to derail health care reform. This is far too important to me and millions of other women – and men. Health care reform is about life and death. Out-of-control premiums and medical bills are forcing families to choose between buying groceries for their kids, paying the mortgage or obtaining life-saving medical treatment and prescription drugs.

Health care reform is not about abortion. Bart Stupak and the other “pro-life” members of Congress should be ashamed of themselves for hijacking what may be the most important piece of legislation of our time. This is truly a matter of life and death.

Abortion cannot be allowed to derail health care reform. Still, there is another issue that has been overlooked in the outrage over the Stupak amendment. According to the Kaiser Foundation, 9.5 million women are currently on Medicaid. The federal standard for Medicaid requires abortion coverage only in situations where the mother’s life is in danger or in the case of rape or incest. Thirty-two states and the District of Columbia only provide this level of coverage while seventeen states exceed federal requirements, funding “all or most medically necessary abortions”.

If abortion doesn’t derail the bill and we actually get health care reform passed, Medicaid’s ranks will expand to include 150% of the Federal Poverty Level, including millions more women.

What about poor women? Don’t we deserve abortion coverage as part of our reproductive rights? Where is the outrage for us? It seems like the feminist movement has simply forgotten about the poorest and sickest of women, those who are most likely to be in need of abortion services. Indeed, many women enroll in Medicaid because they are pregnant and uninsured. Our society has created a safety net for low-income women when they get pregnant but that safety net is full of knots and hard to break free of.

Medicaid’s income limits keep women mired in poverty. StateHealthFacts.org reports that 52.3% of non-elderly families receiving Medicaid have at least one full-time worker, which means that worker is working full-time but doesn’t have health insurance through their job. In order to keep their Medicaid, they cannot earn more than the FPL eligibility limits for their state. If they do earn more than the limits, they risk losing their health insurance.

Furthermore, 47.8% of the non-elderly on Medicaid work part-time or not at all. These people are not eligible for employer-sponsored plans and will probably be unable to afford any plans in the new insurance exchange. They will be stuck on Medicaid. Without abortion coverage.

It has been extremely frustrating and infuriating to watch the uproar over the Stupak amendment. It feels like the feminist movement has forgotten about the poor, sick and disabled women who are on Medicaid and only have access to abortion services under the Hyde Amendment.

Those of us on Medicaid deserve the same reproductive rights that everyone else is entitled to. We are not second-class citizens. We’re women.

I Am Not a Pre-Existing Condition

In addition to yesterday’s post on the New Office of Women’s Health in House Health Care Bill, I have another National Women’s Day of Action for Health Care Reform postup at the AAUW Dialog blog entitled I Am Not a Pre-Existing Condition. here’s an excerpt:

I have a long list of pre-existing medical conditions, so I have a lot invested in health care and health insurance reform. But even if I didn’t have this crazy, messed-up body with all its injuries, conditions, and surgeries listed in my medical chart, I could still be denied health insurance. At the very least, I would probably have to pay more than a man would.

Why, you ask? The answer is simple. I’m a woman.
Keep reading…

Also, a little National Women’s Day of Action for Health Care Reform link love:

The Undomestic Goddess takes stock of women’s health care in the U.S. in her post Women’s Day of Action for Health Care Reform
Criss Writes… has an unbelievably important post on the need to include transgendered women’s health issues as part of any conversation on women’s health in her post The Choice Movement and [Trans] Women’s Health
The Frisky explains why abortion might derail health care reform in What All Women Need To Know About Health Care Reform And Abortion

So… have you called or emailed your representative and senators to ask them to vote for health care reform? Do it now!

New Office of Women's Health in House Health Care Bill

Note: This post is part of the National Women’s Day of Action for Health Care Reform. Learn more at A Woman Is Not A Pre-Existing Condition

Being a glutton for punishment, I decided to embrace my masochistic tendencies and try to tackle the (Democratic) House health care bill yesterday. I was searching for information on new regulations that will prohibit insurance companies from using gender ratings to discriminate against women when I came across Sec. 2588 on pg. 1609.

What is Sec. 2588? I’m so glad you asked. Sec. 2588 (under Division C – Public Health and Workforce Development > Title V – Other Provisions > Subtitle E – Miscellaneous) will establish an Office of Women’s Health (OWH) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Yes, you read that right. There will be an entire division of the federal government devoted to women’s health.

Among other things, OWH will establish short & long-term goals for HHS and other agencies for women’s health: disease prevention, health promotion, service delivery, research, and public and health care professional education. OWH will be headed up by a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, which is an appointed position. (Sec. 229, pg. 1609)

The Deputy Assistant Secretary, who I’ll just refer to as the Secretary to make my life a lot simpler, will establish and chair the HHS Coordinating Committee on Women’s Health. It will be composed of senior-level representatives from each of the federal agencies. Although the bill doesn’t explicitly lay out the functions of the Coordinating Committee, I assume it will be a lot like the White House on Women and Girls, only for health issues.

OWH will coordinate efforts to promote women’s health initiatives in private sector. Additionally, it will set up a National Women’s Health Information Center. This office will serve as a clearinghouse for women’s health information to the public and private sector.

There will also be an Office of Women’s Health established at the Center for Disease Control (CDC). This office will monitor will monitor women’s health initiatives within the CDC and establish short and long-term goals for the CDC relating to women’s health. In other words, this mini-OWH will be in charge of making sure the CDC is researching women’s health – what a concept! (Sec. 310A, pg. 1614)

There will also be an Office of Women’s Health and Gender-Based Research within HHS. This office will keep tabs on the current status of research, identify areas of need for research on women’s health and make short and long term goals for research on women’s health.

There will be an Office of Women’s Health within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Again, what a concept. This office will monitor and report on women’s participation and outcomes in FDA clinical trials. It will establish short and long term goals for “adequate inclusion of women and analysis of data by sex in Administration protocols and policies”. In regular person talk, that means they’ll actually have to make sure to include women in their studies and reports. It will provide information to women and health care providers on differences between men and women in FDA studies and trials. Unfortunately, this mini-OWH at the FDA will not have any new regulatory authority. I’m not sure what the possible ramifications are but this seems bothersome. (Sec. 911)

All in all, I am extremely impressed with this new Office of Women’s Health. It appears that it will coordinate women’s health services across all the federal agencies and work to improve women’s health by conducting research, disseminating data to consumers and institutions, promoting prevention and wellness and more. Of course, this will be a brand-new bureaucracy so it will never work perfectly. Still, what excites me the most is the research OWH and its affiliates will conduct. For so long, medical research has been done on men and the results were assumed to be the same for women. This would be long overdue.

There is one very large BUT here. The provision to create an Office of Women’s Health is only in the Democratic House bill. It is not in the Senate bill or the Republican House bill. The House is tentatively set to vote on this bill as early as Saturday. I’m not sure if Sen. Reid is allowing amendments to the Senate bill anymore but if he is, we need to urge our senators to include a similar provision. That way, it will have a better chance of being in the conference bill.

Read the House bill here. The Office of Women’s Health provision starts on p. 1609, Sec. 2588. Make your life simple and use the search function to find it. Oh, and if you notice I read or summarized the bill incorrectly, please let me know: danine@danine.net. Thanks!

Wisconsin Healthy Youth Act (Comprehensive Sex Ed)

The following is an email I wrote to my state representative, Rep. Dan Meyer (R-Eagle River), asking him to vote for the Healthy Youth Act, which will fund comprehensive sex education in Wisconsin. More information is available from NARAL Wisconsin here.

Dear Rep. Meyer:
Please vote YES to pass the Healthy Youth Act. I know it will be an unpopular thing to do with your conservative base, but it’s the right thing to do for the youth of the Northwoods. Teenagers need comprehensive sex education in order to make good choices. I grew up in Eau Claire, where I learned about birth control, STDs, condoms and abstinence in my freshman health class. With all of those tools in my “knowledge” toolbox, I was savvy and self-aware enough to know that sex was an important decision. When I was ready, I knew enough to use protection so I didn’t get pregnant or an STD or HIV.

Please vote YES on AB 458. It’s so vitally important for teenagers to make informed decisions about their health.

Thank you,
Danine Spencer

I posted this because I wanted to demonstrate that it takes very little to write a note to your representatives and senators. I could’ve even used the link that NARAL Wisconsin provided above but I hoped that if I personalized my message it might have a bigger impact. It’s pretty easy to find your representatives both at the state and national level. Congress.org has a great tool that finds both your representatives in the state legislature and in Congress. Check it out here.

Earlier this year, I wrote a very short, two or three line email to my state senator, Jim Holperin, asking him to support the amendment to the state budget that legalized domestic partnerships in Wisconsin. I received a personally signed letter from Sen. Holperin thanking me for my email. It makes a difference if you contact your representatives and it’s easy to do so do it.

Book Review: The Curse of the Good Girl

I recently read Rachel Simmons’ The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence, which sheds a revealing light on girls’ emotional and social intelligence. Simmons posits that The Curse of the Good Girl is to be in eternal pursuit of a destructive yet highly desirable social norm that squelches girls’ individuality, self-esteem, ambition and interpersonal skills. I couldn’t agree more.

According to Simmons, Good Girls lack emotional intelligence. They aren’t aware of their feelings and don’t know how to express them appropriately. If they’re angry, sad or depressed, they deny it, even to themselves. They often believe they are not even entitled to their feelings.

Good Girls define themselves by their relationships, Simmons says. Their identity is intertwined in their relationships with their friends, parents, teachers, coaches, etc. When conflict arises in a Good Girl’s relationship, chaos ensues. Most girls simply haven’t learned the tools to handle conflict, including negative feedback, appropriately.

I was, and probably still am in some ways, the classic Good Girl. In seventh grade, my best friend since first grade grew apart from me. I thought she was mad at me and had no idea what I had done. Like many of the girls involved in misunderstandings that Simmons described, I never asked my friend what happened. We barely spoke a word to each other straight through to our high school graduation. I called her the “B” word and hated her, which was tough because we still shared the same circle of friends. It took me years to understand that she had simply grown away from me and our friendship, which was a natural part of adolescence. If we had been able to talk about it, perhaps we could have found some common ground on which to continue our friendship and not a war.

My lack of emotional intelligence carried over into other areas as well. Like many of the Good Girls that Simmons describes, I needed to be the straight-A student that always received glowing reviews from my teachers and other adults in my life. Receiving criticism implied I was a bad person, somehow. I’ll never forget the first time I got really reprimanded at my first job (I was a cashier at a supermarket). As soon as I was dismissed, I rushed to the break room in tears. I still have trouble taking criticism, but I’m getting better at it.

I felt like I was reading my own psychological profile as I read this book. I am amazed that so many other girls have had similar experiences. Simmons does a great job of explaining the problems girls face today and how to solve them.

Buy the book!

Photo Credit: Rachel Simmons. I was no compensated in any way for this review, okay, FTC?