Cheers for Feminists in their 80s...

 

We have now lost Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, two of my favorite feminists in their 80s.  Gloria Steinem, b. 1934, and my friend Letha Dawson Scanzoni, b. 1935, remain. 

Born in 1933, Ruth was a year younger than Virginia, born in 1932.  Ruth died on September 18, then Virginia on Sept. 25.  In this 2015 photo (right) from a NYT interview, Ruth and Gloria discuss the long battle for women's rights.

My friend Letha Dawson Scanzoni, author of books on Christian feminism and on same-sex marriage blessed by God, celebrates her 85th birthday today, October 9. 

These women are irreplaceable.  Their courage and leadership changed the world.

They were born into a world where white women had been able to vote for only 12-16 years, and most black women and men encountered voter suppression if they tried to vote.  

Most women didn't have access to birth control, yet the nation was in the midst of the Great Depression.  Desperately poor women resorted to DIY abortions, like the ones described in Ch. 14 of my book, Abortion--My Choice, God's Grace.  

Each of these four women had only one sibling.  The parents of both Ruth and Virginia sent their son to college but not their daughter.  The girl child had to fight and work for the opportunity to get higher education.  Gloria was one of two girls, and Letha had just one brother.

Thank you to each of these four women.  You gave me the rights that I sometimes take for granted.  

Letha and Virginia gave me confidence that God wants equality for women and men, that Jesus and even the apostle Paul did not separate gender roles into men's and women's categories. "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all are one in Christ Jesus" (Letter to the Galatians 3:28)

Ruth and Gloria gave me the news that women and men are not treated equally in societies today, that we need to work for change.  That news changed my life.

Cheers for RBG and Gloria Steinem

Three cheers for feminist leaders in their 80s--Gloria Steinem (b. 1934), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (b. 1933), Virginia Ramey Mollenkott (b. 1932), and Letha Dawson Scanzoni (b. 1935), for starters.

Read the great interview with Gloria and Ruth, who have been friends since the 1970s.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/fashion/ruth-bader-ginsburg-and-gloria-steinem-on-the-unending-fight-for-womens-rights.html

In the 1950s, the Harvard Law School dean met with the 9 women in a class of 500 beginning law students (including RBG) and asked them, "How do you justify taking a spot from a qualified man?"

Gloria Steinem, meanwhile, was interviewing Saul Bellow for an article when Gay Talese, also present, commented, "Every year a pretty girl comes to New York and pretends to be a writer.  This year, it's Gloria."

"The Fights of Their Lives" is the title of this fascinating interview by Philip Galanes.  Photo by Hilary Swift, taken in RBG's private chambers at the Supreme Court.  

Here are seven striking  quotations taken from the interview: 
 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/16/fashion/Inspiring-Ruth-Bader-Ginsburg-and-Gloria-Steinem-Quotes.html?action=click&contentCollection=Style&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

Gloria's new memoir, My Life on the Road (Random House), prompted this interview.  See this review by Ann Friedman: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/books/review/gloria-steinems-my-life-on-the-road.html

Friedman faults GS for three things: not valuing online dialogue enough, including only her professional and intellectual life in the memoir, and not explaining her current decision to focus on nesting as well as traveling.

The charge about not including her emotional and relational life is not fair.  GS has already written seven other books, including Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983) and Doing Sixty and Seventy (2006).  When one sets out to write a memoir, one has to choose what to include and what to leave out.  The current book is already 276 pages, without her personal life.  

Is Friedman wishing the book were twice as long?  Of course the love/family vs. career conflict is a prime topic in most women's lives today, and we would like to know what suffering GS encountered in the choices she made.

However, that's not what she chose to write about.  The central metaphor of this book is the road--a life centered on travel.  Let's respect her choice--choice--and not demand discussion of the home vs. work issue that men are rarely asked about, until they decide to retire "for family reasons."

As for not explaining her decision to seek a balance between nesting and travel in her eighties, please!  The woman is 81 years old.  She has already addressed the subject of aging in her previous book, Doing Sixty and Seventy.

Perhaps Friedman's core quibble here is that GS "assures readers that we don't have to give up the journey in order to have a home, and vice versa." I will have to read the memoir to find out whether I agree that GS asks too much of women in a you-can-do-it-all-have-it-all mode.

That problem--not being able to balance work and home adequately--is the subject of the memoir I am working on.

Happy Birthday, Joyce!

Thank you to Mary Hunt for sharing this scene of Joyce Ride's 90th birthday on the Water Voices blog.  It's fun to see Gloria Steinem in the photo.

http://watervoicesblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/happy-90th-birthday-joyce-ride.html

Joyce is a truly generous soul and the mother of astronaut Sally Ride, who died in 2012.

Ministry to persons in prison is Joyce's passion.  She came to the 2004 EEWC conference in Claremont to present on this topic.

More and more of my friends are entering their 90s.  

In 2012 I attended three 90th birthday parties: Rizz Arthur Dean (my mother-in-law) in Locust Valley, NY; Virginia Johnson (an EEWC friend) in Benecia, CA; and Ada Marie Grell (a PEO sister) in Santa Monica.

 I'm in my 60s and hope someday to become a nonagenarian!.