Did You Even Read It All? A Response to the “Having it All” Debates

Feminism

Apparently, this child has been abandoned naked in a briefcase because hir mommy works too much.

When the July/August issue of the Atlantic arrived in my mailbox with its cover photo of a woman carrying a toddler in her briefcase and its sensationalized headline WHY WOMEN STILL CAN’T HAVE IT ALL­­ (not to mention the still more incendiary editorial “summary”, “It’s time to stop fooling ourselves…”) I plopped down in my lawn chair and commenced reading. It looked like another article about the old binary between family and career, and the choice women must make between these two paths in life, unless we are blessed with enough superhuman power to do both, a kind of super-strength we don’t expect from men. But as it turned out this was just the way the article was packaged and framed by the Atlantic. The actual argument that Anne-Marie Slaughter has made, and the point that reactionaries appear to be missing, is that American people of all genders must restructure our economy if we are to achieve anything approximating a work-life balance. And yes, because of the gender gap in careers that persists, work-life balance is harder right now for women to achieve than men, and yes, the author hopes that women leaders will close this gender gap, but Slaughter is arguing for a much greater system overhaul than a choice that only concerns individual women.

I found the article to be something of a relief, because it confirmed a number of facts I knew to be true. I suppose I am one of the young women Slaughter references, who is tired of being told that I too can “have it all”, the kids and spouse and the high-powered career, after seeing so many older women burn out from the pressure without the financial resources to outsource childcare and  housework. What I have learned from observation is that women are always making choices between family and career, and that even in the happiest marriages, they are shouldering most of the responsibilities at home. What I have learned is that my mother supports my decision to finish graduate school and focus on my career before even considering children, because she knows how hard it was for her to go back to school and re-enter the workforce when her youngest daughter was eleven. And I still have to question, as Slaughter argues, this potential fallacy of my mother’s that I can have both as long as I sequence it in the right way. The women of my generation are no fools. We know that education and birth control can help us to shape the futures we really want, and as a result many of my peers and I are choosing careers over marriage and/or children. On the first day of this semester I asked my students, ages seventeen to nineteen, to write about why they came to college. Several of the young women answered that they have come to college so that they can achieve financial independence and never have to be dependent on someone else. Ain’t nobody’s fools.

So I identified with Slaughter’s targeted audience of young, educated women and I agree with her that “having it all” is still not possible. Yet I am disappointed that her aim to promote changes in economic and social policies has been stymied by debates that oversimplify, dismiss, and misread her argument. 

For example, many writers have criticized Anne-Marie Slaughter for speaking from a position of privilege, as a white, upper class, highly educated woman, and therefore make the assumption that her argument is irrelevant to other women. These writers are reacting to her situation without reading her argument closely. To be much more fair, Slaughter acknowledges her privileged position right away and directly addresses the limitations of her own argument. She dedicates enough page space to identifying the educated class of women she is writing to, clarifies her aim to close what she calls a gendered leadership gap by addressing this audience, and acknowledges the many other women who “are worrying not about having it all, but rather about holding on to what they do have” (89).

To critique, then, only what she does not write and who she does not address; that is, to critique this article for not being about women of a different class or race, or for not being “universal” enough, as if having a universal audience is an achievable goal, is to dismiss her argument wholesale and avoid engaging in productive dialogue. The existence of problems facing less privileged women do not make Slaughter’s article irrelevant. She doesn’t claim to speak universal truths. She only writes about her experience of being criticized for her choices, and she makes a very intelligent argument for economic and policy changes that support parents. This argument is necessary and applicable for lower-income women and single parents, and while she chooses not to discuss policies concerning minimum wage, education reform, and health care that could improve the status quo for most women, it’s not that she’s ignorant of these needs. She just has to start the dialogue somewhere. If you want to continue the dialogue by publishing articles about the problems facing working women who are less privileged, then please, please publish them.

Another popular half-baked reaction is to cry out that men never “had it all” either, even though Slaughter’s proposal for change includes both men and women in America, and she never argued that men did “have it all”. E.g., in Linda Hirshman‘s case, repeating arguments about the economy already made by Slaughter in her article as if they are original rebuttals. In her response to all of this criticism, Slaughter acknowledges again that men have some of the same problems, and continues to assert that women are currently the people most likely to make the choice between career and family; therefore she did focus the article primarily on women. And you know what, men? She’s right. While it matters that men also struggle with work-life balance, and also must engage in economic and social reform, it’s clear that American men do not face the same dilemmas regarding childcare and their careers. Falsely accusing Slaughter of failing to acknowledge her male counterparts and their role in the work-life balance issue only distracts from more constructive questions, such as “how can we implement these policies to make life better for both men and women?”

Others read Slaughter as blaming feminism for causing her problems, and I think that is truly the most egregious misreading of the article. Though she aims to put her dilemma in historical perspective and push for further social reform, and yes, question  mainstream feminist goals as her generation knew them, she never asserts that feminism is the reason she felt like she failed at “having it all”. She does assert that the economic and societal structures in America made it impossible for her to simultaneously be with her family and fulfill a very demanding government job. She does assert that while feminists of her generation aimed to “have it all” (to her generation, she says, this meant having a career and a family), it is still not possible within these economic and societal structures. She does not make an argument against feminism.

By framing the article within this narrow definition of a “feminist” (read: for women only) debate about family vs. career, the Atlantic and others have been able to obscure the fact that Slaughter’s cultural critique had a Marxist bent. It seems that many have been reacting to the title and few have been reading the thesis. Slaughter says that she does believe women can “have it all”, and “have it all at the same time”. “But,” she writes, “not today, not with the way America’s economy and society are currently structured. My experiences over the past three years have forced me to confront a number of uncomfortable facts that need to be widely acknowledged­—and quickly changed” (87). In the middle of her article she argues against several prevailing fallacies: that women can have it all if we demonstrate commitment, that we can have it all if our spouses or partners share the family responsibilities, and that we can have it all if we don’t try to have it all at the same time. It’s seven pages in that she starts to propose a set of solutions to restructure our economy and re-value life outside of work, including family life. Here is her ultimate proposal:

  1. Change the economic culture of “time-macho” to one where we have more realistic goals for workers’ time and more flexible schedules.
  2. Change assumptions about working parents and revalue family life outside of work.
  3. Redefine the “arc” of a successful American career according to our current life expectancies and life demands, and change ageist assumptions about older workers.
  4. Rediscover the pursuit of happiness as an American ideal, through the pursuit of work-life balance.
  5. Make space for play, innovation, and imagination at work by allowing employees to integrate their jobs with the rest of their lives.
  6. Include men in the effort to achieve greater work-life balance for Americans.

This is not a proposal for just women. This is not a proposal for just feminists. This is not a proposal for just parents. This is not a proposal for just the 1%. This is not a proposal meant to pit full-time working mothers against full-time at home mothers in some ridiculously oversimplified, sexist and infantilized debate called “the Mommy Wars”. This is a proposal that questions our basic assumptions about happiness, success, and the binaries Americans have created between “work” and “life” or “work” and “family”. Could she have organized the argument more effectively to clarify her thesis? I think so, and she discusses how she might reframe it here, in her response to the debates, titled “The ‘Having it All’ Debate Convinced Me to Stop Saying ‘Having it All’.

      Apparently our assumptions about the economic, temporal and gendered structures of American society are so deeply ingrained that responders have chosen to deflect a well-formed argument for restructuring the economy by returning to our familiar war between the sexes, or the familiar war between “career women” and “family women”. But this kind of reaction, this oversimplification and focus on stale debates, is only another form of dismissal and disengagement. It’s all very passive, very “idk. TLDR!” Three months later, we’re still talking about the article, but we’ve all forgotten what it was really about, if we ever really knew. Wasn’t that the article about how it will always be impossible for women to balance career and family? Wasn’t that the article where the privileged woman failed to acknowledge her own privilege? Wasn’t that the article that only focused on mothers and ignored the problems of fathers in the workplace? No, it wasn’t. Read it again.

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        So we’ve established, and Slaughter has acknowledged, that the article could have been organized more effectively, with more thoughtful rhetoric. Now we need to be asking the more important questions, such as what “having it all” means now and if we (humans, Americans, women, of all income levels and intersections of identity) want or can possibly have “it all”. How might we reframe “having it all” to signify a more achievable goal? I know Rebecca Traister had something to say about that.  Feministe has some intelligent responses to the article here. And this is as good a place as any, too, to discuss Slaughter’s most tragic mistake, one that is actually worth critiquing: her shaky and self-described “dangerous” claim that childcare matters more to women than to men, and that we suffer more emotionally for missing time with our children. On this point, Linda Hirshman, I completely agree with you: there is no place for genetic fallacy in an academic argument. Anne-Marie Slaughter had better retract that claim if she expects to be taken seriously, and quick.

       Gentleladies, time to weigh in.

What do you think about the rhetoric of “having it all”? Is this a goal worth striving for, how might we reframe it, and what does it mean to us now?

How have we as Americans come to establish a division between “work” and “life”, and how can we restore our sense of balance; what would that look like to you?

What is the role of single people in this dialogue?

Other responses, to anything regarding these debates?

Three Women Who Turned Me On to Spoken-Word Poetry

Feminism, Lit

I’m a relative newcomer to the world of spoken word and slam poetry. Spending sleepless nights pouring over Neruda, it never really occurred to me that poetry, when performed out loud, could draw fervent crowds. Discovering the phenomenon of poetry slams was pretty exciting: this thing that I’d always loved in an obscure, solitary way was suddenly resonant to a whole roomful of people. I loved the immediacy of it, the way the reaction to a poem was made palpable. However, I think a lot of people have a misconception of spoken word that it’s something like the hilarious parody on the webseries Misadventures of an Awkward Black Girl (look it up). While there is indeed performance poetry that bad, I think it’s really just as diverse as any other genre. Here are some of ladies whose voices I’m in love with.

Andrea Gibson

… The doctor who stitched me up asked me if I did it for attention.

For the record:

if you have ever done anything for attention

this poem is a tension.

Title it with your name.

It will scour the city bridge every night you spend kicking at your shadow, staring at the river,

it does not want to find your body doing anything but loving what it loves.

My first encounter with spoken word poetry was a prolonged Andrea Gibson youtube binge. My sister recommended her to me the winter of my freshman year of college, when I happened to be struggling with a severe bout of depression. I felt raw and messy, and Andrea was an antidote because she was raw and incisive — it was consoling that someone could be at once so vulnerable and so powerful, both emotive and lucid.

A writing instructor at a workshop I attended said that “to write about sadness is generous.” For me, Andrea Gibson embodies that generosity. That’s not to say she’s melancholic — she can just as easily be funny or wry or angry or ecstatic. But in a culture where “navel-gazing” or “oversharing” seem to be amongst the worst vices a writer — particularly a female writer — can commit, she is a testament to the power of candor, of emotional authenticity.

Stylistically, the most apt description I can come up with for Gibson’s poetry and performance is “effortless lyricism.” For all the nuances of her craft — wordplay, metaphor, her literal voice and inflection — there is always this sense of instinct, of ease. Andrea Gibson’s reality is one where the girls she loves float through her bloodstream and hang on her “monkey-bar” ribcage. She wants to give you glimpses of it.

Lenelle Moïse

… Some thirsty throats cope,

manage dirges in Cajun, in Zydeco

out-of-state kin can’t get through

refugees, refugees

remember ruined homes

a preacher remembers the book of revelations

still, saviors wait to save

and the living wade with the countless dead

while the wealthy president flies overhead, up where brown people look-

up where brown people look like spoiled jumbalaya, stewing from a distance in their down-there distress…

I’d seen her before. She had this warm, full, throaty voice and an electric physical presence. She managed to have full command of the audience’s attention and at the same time engage us naturally in her performance: using call and response, asking questions, and just maintaining an energy and intimacy that’s often inhibited by “the fourth wall.” I was struck by the way she wove her poems seamlessly into her speech — segues from story to story. She was poignant, radical, funny, down-to-earth, and thoroughly innovative onstage. The evening left me with completely new (and frankly more positive) connotations for the term “performance art.” The piece was also, very genuinely, a catalyst for political thought and discussion, though Lenelle never hits you over the head with an an agenda.

A playwright and actress as well as a poet, Moïse merges genres, working vocal jazz, movement, and storytelling techniques into her poetry performance. She writes about growing up Haitian-American, bullies, first crushes, sexuality, hate crime, Hurricane Katrina, gender, language, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. She’s fierce as fuck, and you should hear what she has to say.

Rachel McKibbens

Go with the one who loves you biblically.

The one whose love lifts its head to you despite its broken neck.

Whose body bursts sixteen arms electric to carry you,

gentle, the way

old grief is gentle. Love the love that is messy in all its too much,

the body that rides best your body, whose mouth saddles

the naked salt of your far gone hips,

whose tongue translates the rock

language of

all your elegant scars.

Go with the one who cries out for his tragic sisters as he

chops the winter’s wood, the one whose skin

triggers your heart into a heaven of blood waltzes.

I came across Rachel McKibbens back in April, while participating in the National Poetry Month poem-a-day challenge — she was posting enormously helpful prompts on her blog for every day of the month. The “ex-punk rock chola” has serious spoken word credentials: she was 2009 Women of the World Slam champion, an eight-time National Poetry Slam team member, and a three time NPS finalist. McKibbens is a versatile poet; her dark, spare, and brutally beautiful work is as visceral on the page as it is at the mic, delivered in her distinct, ragged voice. I think that her insights on both “page poetry” and slam poetry are telling. Of spoken word, she says, “[I]t certainly taught me a lot about cadence, rhythm and sound. I’ve been a syllable counter since the day I understood words. Sonics are extremely important to me. And timing. I don’t think you can really learn these things in their entirety unless it’s on a microphone. Reading it aloud to yourself in your home is not the same as knowing how to honor your poem by reading it to an audience properly. Many page poets don’t read their poems correctly. I’ve heard brilliant pieces of writing fall flat because the reader didn’t learn the poem’s voice.” However, she also notes, “I have never played to win… I have only ever played to change the game,” and insists “in slams, I approach a poem exactly as I do at readings. I stand at the mic, and I read my poem. That’s it.”

Rachel McKibbens is acclaimed in both spoken word and “book poet” circles because in her work, the muscle of the language is apparent regardless of what form it takes. While it makes sense to sometimes assess performed and written poetry differently, I think that it’s important to remember that cliques not withstanding, it’s all poetry. I am interested in poetry, period, and at the end of the day I don’t care whether it’s written or spoken just as long as splits my head open.

Meet Hannah!

News, Uncategorized

Here’s Hannah, the third and final conductor on our ship of dreams.  Also, she’s a Best New Poet.  Just saying.

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Hello Broad! peeps, my name is Hannah!  I think I will put an exclamation point after my name, just like Broad! does… perhaps this is not a sustainable goal… 
 
To echo the sentiments of Heather, Brittany, and T.R. , it is my hope to do everything in my power to encourage women’s art and writing, and this seemed like a fabulous venue and opportunity for me to do that.  I really believe that it is important to encourage and highlight quality art from a diverse group of people, and it’s become increasingly more obvious to me that our world is a little lacking in that –particularly the world of publishing.  
 
I live outside of Boston with my wife Melissa and we are busy getting ready for the birth of our first child!  Such exciting stuff!  I also teach writing at Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, and I’m working on a book of poems about the vice presidents of the United States.  It’s an exciting project, but it’s been taking me a long time to complete.  Poetry is one of my favorite things in the world, along with my wife, my family, my teddy bear, Reese’s peanut butter cups (fresh… stale ones are gross), and being with friends.  I also believe in the Oxford comma and smiling as much as possible.  If you want to know more about me, don’t be afraid to ask; I won’t bite!
 
I’m excited to be able to work with the amazing women at Broad! and looking forward to getting things rollin’.
-Hannah

On the infamous Mr. Akin

Politics

It’s my opinion that the majority of (deliberate) bad things in the world occur for one of two reasons: either ignorance or basic lack of regard for other people.

I have a lot of feelings — disbelief, shock, fury — toward Missouri Rep. Todd Akin, who on Sunday claimed that women couldn’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape.”  As well as toward the Republican Party itself, which, while publicly distancing itself from Akin as fast as possible, just approved the official party platform for the current election cycle to exclude any abortion exceptions for rape, incest, or life of the mother.

Preaching to the choir here, but again: someone’s body belongs only to that person.  When you decide against someone’s wishes what can go in or out of his/her/hir body, that is not okay.  That goes for women’s bodies, but also for men’s.  Or genderqueer bodies.  That goes for anyone that wore the “wrong thing” or drank or knew their rapist.  Anyone who got pregnant and didn’t want to be.

I wrote a longer, more well-thought-out post on this last night, but when I clicked the “Publish” button, WordPress promptly decided to malfunction and lose my post.  Apologies for poor WordPress handling and any lack of articulation here.  I have rape fatigue — as I imagine you do as well.

Bottom line: please, please do not vote for someone this year that delegitimizes or flatly dismisses the rights or experiences of others based on ignorance, particularly due to reasons of religion or personal morality.

Thank you.

Hannah named a Best New Poet!

Lit, News

Our own Hannah Baker-Siroty, printed in the Summer 2012 issue of Broad! (readable/downloadable here or here) and now associate editor, has been chosen for this year’s edition of Best New Poets!  Her poem “Beekeeper Outside Escanaba, Michigan” will be published in November.  For the 2012 edition of the annual anthology, poet Matthew Dickman presided as editor.

Basically, Hannah is a brilliant writer and lovely person to boot, so I suggest you check out her work.  (And Matthew Dickman’s, for that matter!  His poem “Slow Dance” felt delicately beautiful enough that I wrote it out and posted it on my wall last year.  And obviously, he has good taste.)

Congratulations, Hannah!

How to Stay in Love with a Broken World

Essay


This essay is my contribution to Molly Templeton’s How-To Issue project, a response to the gender inequality in the New York Times Book Review 2012. You can read about how the How-To Issue started here. You can also read this post over at the Issue.

1. Allow yourself to face the problems. The world is far from perfect. Mitt Romney will run for president and announce an extreme right-wing running mate who thinks Ayn Rand’s economic philosophy is inspirational. A mass murderer will kill twelve people in a movie theater, and another will shoot up a Sikh temple during worship. The New York Times Book Review, in 2012, will act like the feminist movement never happened and only publish two how-to essays by women: “How to Cook a Clam” and “How to Raise Your Kids.”

2. Get angry about these events, and release your anger. Don’t let it seep into your bloodstream and poison you into sullenness; let it out. Rant at the television news anchors, call and vent to a friend, write a journal entry. If you’re going to make empty threats, make them original. Threatening to move to Canada is so 2004.

3. Stop ranting. Transform the sparks of your anger into intelligent, well-argued statements aimed at people of influence, such as voters and congressmen. Make the phone calls; write the letters. That is, if you’re not actually moving to Canada.

4. Remind yourself to look at the beauty. A woman in Afghanistan found a way to get hydroelectric power to her village. A recent college graduate is traveling around the world doing favors for people. A freaking Adele song woke a British girl up from a coma. The American Cancer Society was able to give $5.5 million to Illinois researchers, double what they gave last year.

5. Do not spend too much time questioning the beautiful things. Avoid criticizing them because they are smaller than the seemingly insurmountable problems, or because they could be more beautiful, or because they do not represent a whole and perfect solution. Just acknowledge them, and be grateful.

6. Expect solutions instead of more problems. A cynic expects people to be self-interested, and avoids doing anything out of a philosophy that creating solutions is not worthwhile. Instead, expect people to be generous. They often are. If you sometimes meet with disappointment, you are still bound to have more success than someone who did nothing because she was pre-disappointed.

7. Create more beauty. Don’t be overwhelmed with the idea that you must create perfection, or solve a large and complicated problem with one solution. This is how people grow passive. Just begin with something small: a newspaper article, a piece of art, a favor for a stranger. Meet up with other people who are creating similar beautiful things. Focus on what you’re creating, and on crafting solutions, instead of being at war with the problems. Invite more people, expect their generosity, and be grateful. This is how to stay in love with a world that seems broken: to become the part of it that seeks wholeness.

Meet T.R.!

News
The second of our three new editors, and the second member of our board.
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Hello gentleladies!

I’m T.R. Benedict and I’m really excited to start editing and blogging for Broad! I heard about the magazine from a friend and had a piece published in the Spring 2012 issue. I later applied for the assistant editor position because Broad!’s mission resonates with me: to raise consciousness of unequal representation in the literary world while publishing all kinds of creative work by women. Stories are powerful in all forms, and  I think that we should be critical of whose stories are being heard and how that shapes our attitudes. I think the way that literature is categorized- genre classifications based on gender, ethnicity, or sexuality, for example- are telling as well, and worth discussion. To create platforms for all kinds of writers without creating restrictive or tokenizing categories may be a challenge, but it’s one worth undertaking.

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I tend toward poetry, creative non-fiction, and the occasional flash fiction, but I’m interested in work of all genres (and work that defies genre!) I try to read widely; my latest literary obsessions include Joan Didion and Richard Siken. I also enjoy making art, and I look forward to seeing what kind of visual submissions we receive.

In addition to literary and feminist issues, I hope to explore media, art, queer topics, and more in my blog posts here. This is my first real blogging experience, so input is appreciated. And of course, keep the submissions coming!

Meet Brittany!

News

Hey there!

As you may have noticed, Broad! has gone through a sweeping change in the ranks.  Remember when I posted a while back looking for an assistant editor?  Well, we were lucky enough to land three editors: two to form an editorial board and an associate editor.  Brittany Lynn Goss, T.R. Benedict, and Hannah Baker-Siroty are all pretty amazing women, so get excited.

The other editors and I will begin posting to this blog regularly, a few times a week — book reviews, brief articles, discussions of news events/issues in the literary world, et al.  (If there are topics/issues you would like to see covered on the site, please contact broadzine@gmail.com with “Blog Idea: [Topic]” in the subject line.  We make no promises, but will take it into consideration.)

T.R. and Hannah will be writing posts on this blog to introduce themselves over the next several days.  Meanwhile, here’s the first of our fabulous newbies: Brittany!

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Good evening broads,

My name is Brittany Goss and I’m introducing myself today, in the first Broad! post of what I hope will be many posts to come. A bit about me as a writer: reading and storytelling have been my passions since I was very young, and though I’ve wandered off for brief periods of time (an anthropology major declared freshman year of college; two semesters of teaching for Denver public schools), I’ve always found my way back to a blank piece of paper and a pen. Right now I write mostly fiction, though I also write poetry and similarly strange things. Since it’s in my nature to question boundaries of all forms, I am hyperinterested in how the boundaries between genres dissolve. So hybrid or mixed-genre work is one thing I am playing with at the moment. I’m from Maine and even though I’m currently living in Colorado, most of my stories seem to be set in or around New England, with characters who reflect the spirit of that place.

I recently joined this magazine as a member of the editorial board. Somehow, last year, I found Heather Lefebvre on Twitter and added her to two of my lists: literary magazines and social justice. When the first two issues of Broad! were published, I was so pleased to see that not only was the magazine supporting women writers, but the writing was of high quality, fresh and inspiring. When Heather started looking for some assistant editors, I knew I had to get involved. I’ve been a human rights and feminist activist for some time now, and I am particularly drawn to issues where social justice and literature intersect. Organizations like PEN America, VIDA, Girls Write Now, and the OpEd Project have a special resonance for me. Unfortunately, freedom of speech is not internationally considered an inalienable human right. Writers are persecuted globally by states who are threatened by the dissident literature they produce. I am lucky to live in a country where the government is consitutionally obligated to protect my freedom of speech. And yet, speakers without platforms or audiences cannot be heard by many. This is the case with women in publishing: many of us are speaking, but we have yet to gain the same platform space and audience of our male colleagues. Whether this inequity begins with a lack of opportunities in education and writing, or is a gap maintained primarily by the publishing industry, I can’t say. My educated guess is some of both. And if I’m correct, the solution to this problem lies in increasing literacy and writing opportunities for women, while creating more space for us to publish. I am proud that Broad! has stepped in to create a little more space for women in publishing.

I’ll write more in a couple of weeks. Until then, keep writing and sending it out!

Ch-ch-changes

News

Hey there!

A lot’s been going on behind the scenes of Broad! lately.  Lots of rustling in our pockets to find pens with which to take notes, scores of avocados devoured with lemon juice and pepper when we sat up brainstorming at computers.  Noisettes, Frank Ocean, Anais Mitchell to keep us awake late at night.  Changes are afoot.  But more on that in a few days.

The thing to remember right now is that submissions are open for the Winter 2012 issue.  (!!!) We’d like to read your work, if you let us.  The sub period will run until Saturday, October 13, 2012.  Anything submitted after that date will be considered for the Summer 2013 issue.  Please check out our submission guidelines!  

GO GO GO GO GO.