Photo: Glamour

July 28, 2010

In the United States today, job discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or age is prohibited. However, none of these stipulations address weight. In the fashion industry, plus-size models (sizes 14+) fight for photo shoots and runway time. Gary Dakin, who runs the plus-size division of Ford Models, said, “It’s been a struggle, for a long time. Not so long ago people were dismissive. Nobody wanted to shoot the bigger girls.” Often, these women are relegated to special issues or sections of magazines and websites–which, as Jezebel.com blogger Tasha Fierce pointed out, is reminiscent of “separate but equal.” This phrase in turn highlights some of the racial undertones surrounding plus-size models: though the relationship is murky, a stereotype linking curvy women and black women is very real, and like plus-size models, women of color are traditionally under-represented in the fashion industry. In October 2007, nine magazines (Elle, Lucky, Allure, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, W, and Marie Claire) collectively had a dismally low 54 black models in their advertisements, 18 of whom were celebrities.

The history of plus-size and non-white models in the fashion industry share remarkable parallels. Both groups of women have faced and continue to face resistance, despite limited indications of progress. Supermodel Naomi Campbell said, “My girls stood up for me to so many designers who didn’t want to use black models. They were like, ‘If you don’t put Naomi in, we’re not doing the show, either.’” On the curvy front, influential French blogger Garance Doré (her site receives ~50,000 hits a day, multiple designers save Doré front-row seats at Fashion Week, and she contributes to Vogue Paris) recently said, “It’s not such a good thing to show plus-size, because it’s not really physically healthy and not always flattering to fashion.”

Even signs of progress are marked by resistance. When Lane Bryant tried to air a lingerie ad featuring plus-size model Ashley Graham, ABC restricted its airtime, while FOX demanded numerous reedits. Vogue Italia’s July “Black Issue” became the only magazine in Condé Nast’s (the company publishes 30 magazines including GQ, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker) history to be reprinted to satisfy demand. Though advertising was up 30% for the issue, the advertisements were still dominated by white models. Photographer Steven Meisel, who shot the cover story, said, “I’ve asked my advertising clients so many times, ‘Can we use a black girl?’ They say no. Advertisers say black models don’t sell.”

Though the issue was labeled by London’s Telegraph as a “statement against discrimination in the fashion world,” the overwhelmingly white advertisements and the need for the issue in the first place are disconcerting. V magazine’s “Size” issue and Vogue Italia’s “Vogue Curvy” website are plus-size examples of the same phenomenon, whereby these women are relegated to their own, separate media outlets. These isolated channels support the idea that plus-size models and black models are used for their shock value.

Despite these parallels, the link between women of color and curvy women is not necessarily accurate. A Google image search of “plus size models” brings up one  black woman out of 21 photos; black women are both curvy and slim (compare Beyoncé with Kelly Rowlands or Michelle Williams). Though some models undoubtedly fit into both categories, and though both modeling groups face similar challenges, the stereotype is prey to far too many exceptions and thus limiting. This is not to dismiss the women who fit into the double-minority category of being both black and curvacious. Indeed, the two cannot be discussed–or addressed–independently of each other, and it will require a social transformation of the existent fashion institutions.

Thus, if the stereotype has any strength, it is that it highlights the fashion industry’s desperate need to reflect more women: slim, curvy, pale, dark, and everything in between. Ideally, fashion will reflect and celebrate all women, equally. Yet equality in the workplace will not be handed to plus-size and non-white models. Like other historically disadvantaged groups, these women and their allies will have to claim equality inch by inch, show by show, cover by cover.

Victoria Sanchez is a sophomore in Yale College. She is a staff writer for Broad Recognition.

Photo courtesy of Myra Trivellas

By ANNIE ATURA

April 29, 2010

It’s hardly surprising that George W. Bush’s tactics to de-fang Title IX failed to attract the media coverage they deserved. Bush was at the helm of a smorgasbord of treacherous projects, and those gruesome endeavors were the proper focus of public outrage. True, war crimes warrant more attention than women’s sports, but the Bush Administration managed to weaken equity in our school system while we were all staring, open-mouthed, at the most egregious offenses. Luckily, Obama took note of the smaller sins of his predecessor and is now taking steps to undo Bush’s damage. This week, one such reversal was announced.

Title IX, which outlaws gender discrimination within federally financed education programs, is most popularly known for its equalizing effect on women’s athletics in public schools. Under Title IX, women are guaranteed access to the same sports programs as men. The provision, passed on June 23, 1972 as an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was intended primarily as a means of protecting women against hiring discrimination; only in its implementation did the bill’s focus shift to extracurricular programs.

Cohen v. Brown, filed in 1992 and decided in 1995, determined the test of adherence to Title IX in the sports arena. The case was brought against Brown by a group of female athletes after the school cut the volleyball and gymnastics teams for fiscal reasons. In their decision, the court effectively established three systems of criteria to determine appropriate representation of female athletes: schools must either show 1) that their athletic enrollment by gender is proportional to their general enrollment by gender; 2) that they are in a process of continual expansion of sports programs for the underrepresented sex; or 3) that the school fully and effectively accommodates the interest and ability of the underrepresented sex. The first test proved the most common and effective method of demonstrating true equality of opportunity.

Bush significantly curtailed the power of Title IX by reforming the method of its institution. Prior to 2005, schools generally tested their compliance with Title IX by employing the proportionality test. But in 2005, the Office of Civil Rights declared a ‘clarification’ of the three-prong test, claiming that schools could demonstrate student interest by conducting online surveys.

This system proved detrimental to the gender equality of athletic education for two reasons. First, it allowed schools to interpret a lack of student response as a lack of interest. Second, it neglected the obvious confusion of cause and effect – students interested in a particular sport would elect to go to a school that offered that sport, whether or not the school was desirable for other reasons. Thus, students that would otherwise be interested in a thriving team might be unaware of their own abilities in the sport, not having been exposed to it, and those already aware of their ability might have chosen not to attend at all.

The Obama reform, announced April 20, still allows schools to employ the third prong of the judicial test, but requires that schools wishing to do so supplement their internet surveys with other tests, including analysis of the athletic compositions of feeder high schools and tracking of club teams’ petitions to become varsity sports.

Luckily, the Obama reform isn’t really changing business as usual — just ideology as represented by the books. The Bush system was so execrable that even the NCAA opposed it, and it wasn’t ever commonly implemented for precisely that reason: the NCAA advised schools under its jurisdiction to employ the proportionality test instead. Advocates of under-enrolled men’s sports (like wrestling), which are the first to go when schools equitably distribute limited funds, were the only vocal defenders of Bush’s system.

More funding for schools is always preferable to less funding, but it’s hardly fair to favor men in distributing those funds currently available to athletic departments. To quote Joe Biden, “Making Title IX as strong as possible is a no-brainer. What we’re doing here today will better ensure equal opportunity in athletics, and allowing women to realize their potential — so this nation can realize its potential.”

April 21, 2010

Wilma Mankiller was not unaware of the satirical possibilities of her surname. In a 1993 speech at Sweet Briar College, she quipped, “I told [my driver] it was a nickname, and I’d earned it. So I’m sure there’s some yuppie somewhere still wondering what I did to earn my last name.” It takes a certain kind of person to ironically repeat the stereotypes about one’s own race and gender, and then take no special pains to be politically correct oneself, about the “yuppie” bourgeoisie. Mankiller was intrepid.

The first female chieftain of the Cherokee nation, Wilma Mankiller died on April 6, still stoutheartedly engaging with – and amiably mocking – the assumptions made about her gender, culture, and social values. She served as Chief from 1985 to 1995, when serious health problems forced her into retirement. Perhaps because of her self-imposed outsider status, Mankiller made no bones about her sense of humor. And perhaps because she refused to take her own history too seriously, she succeeded in convincing the overwhelming majority of Cherokee constituents that a complicated past would not adversely affect her leadership capabilities.

Mankiller’s recent death reminds us of the complicated stance that victims are forced to assume in light of their collective setbacks. Mankiller assumed control of her tribe while it was in the midst of serious internal issues, and she dealt with those issues by both recognizing their historical basis and insisting that they be actively addressed. Her sense of humor echoed that double sensibility: she played on racial and sexual undertones while refusing to admit the legitimacy of prejudice.

The origin of “Mankiller” is not as far from its intuitive meaning as one might think: the name denotes her ancestor’s tribal position as a soldier of sorts, the man responsible for the physical protection of the tribe on a daily basis. Ms. Mankiller explained, “When we lived here in the Southeast, we lived in semi-autonomous villages, and there was someone who watched over the village, who had the title of ‘mankiller.’” It is appropriate, then, that she herself should assume a protective role for her tribe.

Despite her promising last name, however, Mankiller’s suitability for a tribal leadership position was not particularly apparent during the first 35 years of her life. Her mother, Clara Irene Sitton, was a Dutch and Irish woman who had chosen to integrate herself into the Cherokee community, and Mankiller was the sixth of her eleven children. When Mankiller was eleven, the family moved from its plot of allotment lands in Oklahoma to a house in San Francisco under the Indian Relocation Program. Mankiller completed her high school education there and married at seventeen. She had two daughters with her husband, Hugo Olaya, a student from Ecuador. They moved to Oakland, and Mankiller decided to attend junior college at what was then San Francisco State College. She became involved with the San Francisco Indian Center. As an active member of that organization, she participated in the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969, in which Native Americans took over the former prison, claiming that its status as surplus federal property rendered it properly Native Americans’ under the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. The occupation lasted for a full 19 months before it was forcibly quelled by the federal government.

Mankiller divorced Olaya in 1977 and moved back to Oklahoma with her two daughters in hopes of reconnecting with her tribe. She remarried to a staunch Cherokee traditionalist, Charlie Lee Soap, in 1986. The two moved back to Mankiller’s ancestral lands. She was elected as Deputy Chief for Ross Swimmer. When he chose to step down to become head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1985, she assumed the position of Chief. She was elected in her own right in 1987, and was reelected in 1991, when she received 83% of the popular vote. Though Mankiller received death threats and tire slashings during her campaign, there is no evidence that Mankiller’s personal life actively affected her judgment; her two-time landslide election seems to indicate that the Cherokee citizens also believed that to be the case.

At the heart of Mankiller’s political philosophy lay the conviction that a community should take responsibility for itself. After moving back to Oklahoma and taking on a low-level job in the Cherokee government, she began a project to bring fresh water to the community. The Bell Water and Housing Project put every participating family in charge of funding and installing one mile of water pipeline. Its success contributed to the choice to elect her as Deputy and, in time, Chief. The project was in keeping with her general philosophy: that Native Americans should, as she often said, “solve their own economic problems.” Mankiller made good on those words. In 1990, she signed a bill that placed the Cherokee Nation in charge of national funds previously administered on their behalf by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. She also improved the infrastructure of the community by improving the judicial, criminal, taxation, and education systems. In a statement honoring her memory, Obama praised Mankiller’s improvement of the “Nation-to-Nation relationship between the Cherokee Nation and the Federal Government.” Mankiller championed the full agency of Native Americans, and of all women, by demonstrating their ability to care for themselves.

Despite her personal experience with racism and predatory governmental policy, Mankiller eschewed unsympathetic attacks on the oppressor. Instead, she focused her energies on active education. In her editor’s note in The Reader’s Companion to U.S. Women’s History she writes, “Even the most committed feminist scholars knew little about contemporary Native American women or our history. But then who can blame them when Native American people, women in particular, are not even a blip on the national screen? Because there is so little accurate information about Native American women in either educational institutions or the popular culture, stereotypes are pervasive.”

Mankiller was aware of her unique role in history. “Prior to my election, young Cherokee girls would never have thought that they might grow up and become chief,” she proudly asserted. But she was also aware of the ways in which she constituted a perfectly unremarkable continuation of the Cherokee tradition. “In some tribes women have held and still hold powerful leadership positions,” she wrote in The Reader’s Companion. Mankiller described how the Cherokee had sent tutors to Mount Holyoke to prepare them for educating girls at home after an Indian relocation in 1839, establishing education for Native American women even as it was denied to white ones.

Mankiller did not shy away from her past or identity any more than she cited it as the foundation of her perspicacity. She did not represent herself in a masculine or gender-neutral light; rather she embraced her gender heritage only when appropriate, as when she described the process of writing a book with other women to “weaving a communal basket.”

She was unafraid of appearing weak. She prized none of the trappings of chiefdom that related to ritualized hierarchy. “At home I can think of very, very few people who call me ‘Chief;’ most people just call me Wilma, and that’s how I ask people to address me,” she said. She attributed a great deal of her own fearlessness to her extraordinary health hurdles. In 1979, she was in a near-fatal car accident, and she suffered myasthenia gravis, kidney problems (which led to a transplant), breast cancer, and lymphoma.

The Cherokee only achieved the right to elect their own chief in 1971 – prior to that time the Chief was a US government appointee chosen for his amenability to federal interests. It is telling that one of the tribe’s first self-appointed leaders was a woman, who had described the powerful Indian Center in San Francisco as a place for “sort of refugees,” and who had taught herself to work as a paralegal even though nobody she knew went to college. It was only “[a]bsolute faith and confidence in our own people and our own ability to solve our own problems” that accounted for her interest in government, and that same innate drive for improvement– rather than for victimization– led to her political success.

Annie Atura is a junior in Yale College. She is a staff writer for Broad Recognition.

By HANNAH ZEAVIN

April 19, 2010

In the year of the 40th anniversaries of coeducation and African American studies, and the 30th anniversary of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality studies at Yale College, The Student Body tries to render the history of gender and sexuality at Yale in a film with a running time of 70 minutes.  The Student Body is successful in acknowledging a series of histories throughout Yale’s long history.  Opening with a discussion of men and their prostitutes on the late 19^th century Old Campus, and ending with a series of vignettes pertaining to early 21^st century hook-up culture, The Student Body covers all its bases.

The running time, however, prevented this serious project from attending to all that it took on.  Each of the pieces were in place for an effective undressing of the standard Yale history lesson of gender and sexuality and its evolution.  This occurred to the film’s best advantage in the scene in which Raphael Shapiro plays a freshman forced to be photographed naked, in keeping with a Yale policy that documented student’s bodies for the school’s “files.”  Shapiro is a stand-in for the thousands of Yale students (and those at peer universities) who had their nude bodies photographed in this way between the 1940’s and the 1960’s.  I was not aware of this practice, called the “Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal” by the New York Times in the first article on the subject in 1995.

Sections pertaining to some periods of history ran too long, while other sections only acknowledged a historical moment.   This most surprisingly happened in The Student Body’s discussion of coeducation at Yale.  This historical milestone was portrayed only through a documentary montage, whereas most milestone moments were addressed with both historical and fictional footage.  There have been at least two excellent documentaries on the subject: Coeducation: The Year They Liberated Yale and Boola Boola … Yale Goes Coed. So I was somewhat disappointed that there was no fictional component to the re-hashing of documentary footage of which this film made use.  It would have been wonderful to watch actors Cordelia Istel and Liz Sutton-Stone discuss classroom politics circa 1970.

Considering that it was a swiftly filmed student production, The Student Body was technically fabulous.  Editors Simon Swartzman and Sophia Janowitz did a remarkable job fusing the documentary and fiction excerpts into a cohesive style.  The cast members should be commended for their ability to commit to such a breadth of performances; each were charged with loaded roles and scenes to act, and did so very well.  The adaptation from stage to screen was similarly successful.  The film leaves its audience, however, with little more than a run-down of sexual movements and histories at Yale.  While discussing sex workers and bused-in women from Smith, The Student Body has seemingly forgotten bodies of color, a non-parodied representation of transgendered bodies, and the body of the openly gay man.  It is a lovely picture nonetheless, but one that doesn’t quite match reality.

Hannah Zeavin is a sophomore in Yale College. She is a staff writer for Broad Recognition.

Photo Illustration: Pippa Bianco

By VICTORIA SANCHEZ

April 18, 2010

Under the best of circumstances the Yale community has poor perceptions of the Panhellenic sororities. This January, however, was a particularly low point. After the conclusion of the rush process, Pi Beta Phi and Kappa Alpha Theta uploaded their rush videos to YouTube and drama ensued. Gawker referred to Yale’s “silly and misguided videos,” while IvyGate blogged, “OH SWEET MOTHER OF GOD THEY’RE CONJURING MAGIC ENERGY BALLS AND SHOOTING THEM AT AN EVIL COW!” Some of the user comments were positively vicious:

That’s it. I’m returning my degree. Dear Yale, where should I send it?

Yale has proved through video this year that they really are the worst fucking place ever.

Holy f**k. that was both embarrassing and retarded. I didn’t know who the f**k pi phi were before, but thanks to that video, I know they’re the worst sorority out there.

When two self-identified sorority members defended themselves, arguing that the videos were satirical, another user responded, “You chose to be in a sorority at an Ivy League school, you have set yourself up endlessly ridiculed, you deserve it, stfu [sic] and take it.”

Compounding these perceptions, the wider community is rarely privy to the inner workings of sororities, and concerns over bad press make sororities reluctant to give interviews (the national Kappa Kappa Gamma organization would not let me interview their members for this article). However Pi Phi’s Christine Levy ’10 said, “I think a little too often sororities are judged by individual personalities instead of the group as a whole…people single out a few people they know in a sorority, or maybe the most visible ones are seen to be representative of the whole group when a lot of times that isn’t true.”

Many students arrive at Yale with preconceived, negative notions of sororities that are often based on movies or sororities at state schools. Levy said that these notions are then perpetuated by single individuals (or, in this case, humorous videos released with questionable judgment). One student who wished to remain anonymous said that each Panhellenic has a distinct reputation on campus: Kappa takes nice, but sometimes “weird,” girls; Theta is the “party” sorority; Pi Phi is full of athletes. These stereotypes change over the years.

The sororities see themselves very differently. Lauren Ritz ’11, president of Theta, said that unlike sororities at the bigger Southern or California schools, Yale’s sororities are “more sisterhood-oriented and not necessarily socially oriented.” According to Ritz, Yale sororities seek to promote bonds between women, which are then harnessed to support them in their efforts to achieve on the athletic fields, in academia, and elsewhere. Theta member Victoria Buhler ’13 said, “I decided to rush a sorority because I wanted to expand my group of friends by meeting people that I didn’t already know through other activities. The sorority offers me a support network of older girls who can help with everything from summer internships to course advice.”

Though the Panhellenic sororities are structurally very similar, each emphasizes the diversity of its membership. As a result, sororities are usually reluctant to speak with the press: because they claim to be open to many viewpoints and backgrounds, they do not want to align themselves politically or socially. This reluctance was tested last year, when Zeta Psi pledges held a sign in front of the Women’s Center reading, “We love Yale Sluts.” The incident brought gender relations—and Greek life— to the forefront of campus thought, and placed pressure on the sororities to speak out. Levy said, “Female groups in general were forced into taking positions on it and I think there’s a resistance because of the different individuals within a sorority… We talked about it within our sorority but didn’t want to politicize or dramatize it, so we just didn’t comment on it.” The sororities’ silence invited unflattering interpretations of their brand of feminism.

Despite these negative perceptions, sororities see themselves as a force for female empowerment in the wider community. They claim to promote female independence, confidence, and strength through charity events and intra-sorority mentorship. Ritz said, “Sororities give the girls leadership opportunities that can be translated into the real world.” Girls from the Panhellenic societies are involved in many aspects of campus life: they compete on varsity teams, act, and volunteer. Among their many activities, sorority members can be found in Model United Nations, writing for the Yale Daily News, and serving as Peer Liaisons. There is also a fair amount of membership overlap between sororities and other female-oriented organizations, such as the Women’s Center residence groups and the Women’s Leadership Initiative.

Perhaps the most important factor in sororities’ perceived feminism, however, is their relationship to Yale’s fraternities. On the one hand, Yale’s sororities and fraternities sometimes team up to host charity events; on the other hand, Yale’s sorority sisters also prance around at Baywatch-themed mixers with the frats. When sorority members, whether individually or as a group, engage in this type of behavior, the larger community will make negative judgments. Ana Grajales ’13 said, “Yes, women can be sexy and whatever, wear those small outfits, but when does it become a social message?” (Ana rushed the sororities and turned down Kappa’s offer). Chase Olivarius-McAllister ’10 said, “I think that women in the context of our campus, which is sexist, need sometimes to be in all-female structures. I think that in practice they tend to legitimate the institutions of fraternities, and the sexism created and sustained by fraternities… The existence of sororities at Yale makes it seem unnecessary to abolish fraternities at Yale for women to obtain social equality.”

Although the sororities provide leadership opportunities, and though some individual sorority members see themselves as feminist, the sororities don’t consider themselves to be feminist groups– and neither does the greater community.

Photo: ARTstor

By ALICE BUTTRICK

April 14, 2010

Last Tuesday at the Law School, Professor Reva Siegel and famed legal journalist Linda Greenhouse presented on their latest collaboration, a collected history of pre-Roe politics and materials. Addressing the two major popular narratives surrounding the Roe decision—depicted as a total legal bombshell on the one hand, or as the culmination of sweeping reforms on the other—their project looks mainly at the decade leading up to the Roe decision and finds both narratives to be ‘hysterically false.’ Instead, this book, a work of historical record rather than advocacy although both authors are adamantly pro-choice, shows a picture of a nation in conversation. Greenhouse herself remembered writing about the debate in 1970, still unsure of what was at stake.

Siegel and Greenhouse drew attention to some of the key fallacies surrounding the decision both in their introduction and during a slightly pointed question and answer session (the event, jointly sponsored by Yale Law Students for Choice and Yale Law Students for Life, had a mixed crowd). Crucially, the language of Roe argues for the rights of doctors to perform a procedure, not of women to choose it; this medical right arises from the fact that abortion access was not initially seen as a feminist issue but rather one of class. The impetus for national abortion reform, according to the authors’ research, originated with public health advocates who recognized that poor women were disproportionately harmed by barriers to access. Rich women could always drive, fly, or simply pay for services, but poor ones were dying in the back alleys of lore. The Roe decision was part of a push to repeal criminal laws so that doctors could prevent the injury and death often resulting from illegal abortions.

When the feminist movement took up the cause, it was under an umbrella of general concerns around equal employment opportunities; in particular, NOW added the right to an abortion to a litany of concerns around salary, workplace treatment, and child care provision after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission failed to address sexual harassment law in the late sixties. The feminists reframed abortion access as a sign of women’s social standing writ large.

Simultaneously, Siegel and Greenhouse’s collection traces the origins of anti-abortion rhetoric, from religious communities adopting human rights frames, to a later attack on the ‘selfishness’ of the feminist movement. Trends such as the ‘woman-protective’ arguments advocating for the end of abortion as a means of ‘saving’ women from its harms, a favorite subject for Siegel, were not yet present. Instead, the anti-abortion community wished to minimize the role of religion in their reasoning in an effort to universalize their reasoning. In public debates over state reform, we can see the seeds of discussions about fetal viability and doctrinal framing. And the public, squeamish on the issue, made sure that even when abortion was permitted, publically discussing it certainly was not.

I had the unique pleasure of proofreading a section of the manuscript this past January. My portion included population controllers, religious figures and, surprisingly, Yale College (very small spoiler ahead). Apparently, when Yale went co-ed forty years ago, they the college administrators realized that they had in place a medical system aimed to serve a large body of young men. There were limited ob-gyn services and little else related to the working parts of female biology. So in response, Yale began a comprehensive sex and intimacy overhaul—they Yale bulked up its health department, instituted a Sex Counseling Service within the Mental Hygiene Department, and offered lectures that were oversubscribed even with 500 available slots. The culmination of this work was the ‘Sex and the Yale Student’ booklet (yes, the precursor to the sex@yale initiative currently underway at the Dean’s Office).

Unlike any material I have seen since arriving here, the booklet dealt frankly with pregnancy and its consequences. Printed before the Roe decision, ‘Sex and the Yale Student’ addressed the problems surrounding abortion head on. “YOU DO NOT HAVE TO HAVE AN ILLEGAL ABORTION. Repeat. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO LOOK FOR A CRIMINAL ABORTIONIST,” the pamphlet cried. There was no question of counseling the woman out of her choice. There was no pretension that abortions were illegal and therefore did not occur. Yale, like many other institutions, was worried about the safety, comfort, and well-being of its students more than it was concerned about the political implications of openly admitting to illegal activities, or of picking a side in the abortion debate. Looking realistically at the concerns their student body, Yale was able to recognize that the health of women was of the utmost importance.

Few people know that Roe was actually argued twice. The first set of presentations centered on public health concerns, and the second around cultural and civil rights. This transformation mirrored how the abortion debate would change after it left the courts. People on the far ends of the spectrum on this issue generally do not predicate their arguments on abortion as a medical procedure—pro-choice activists demand the control over their bodies while anti-abortion groups wave a moral/religious flag. Today, after a decade of legislation slowly prying abortion access from our hands, we recognize ugly symmetry at work. The first to lose access are those who were the last to gain it—poor women, unable to muster the resources to overcome even the smallest obstacles. The Hyde Amendment in 1997, which curtailed use of federal funds for abortion, laid the groundwork for the Stupak Amendment looming over today’s health care debate, and both aim squarely at low-income women’s right to make choices without constraint. Anti-abortion groups have gone back to their human rights frame, albeit now in theory aimed at the well-being of mother and fetus alike Medical opinion, once used to support the increased autonomy of women, is now being used to suggest that women don’t have the expertise to merit this freedom.

But here at Yale, we know our rights are safe no matter what CLAY threatens on the op-ed pages. The University, and our future elite status, will always provide a way for us to make whatever choices we desire. Close to the end of the discussion, Siegel questioned whether democratizing the abortion struggle was harmful to the movement at large. In so doing, those voices most able to push for their rights—those in a position of social power—were assuaged and quieted down without making sure that more disadvantaged perspectives were properly addressed. Few people at Yale worry about their access, even though we live amongst women in New Haven who are losing valuable resources all the time. Instead, those who are still agitating for secure rights are written off for beating what many view to be a dead horse. Judging from the tepid collaboration between the Women’s Center and CLAY, we will not be seeing our reproductive rights championed in all-caps on this campus any time soon.

Moscow Metrow bomber Dzhennet Abdullayeva poses with her husband Umalat Magomedov, before his death.

By ANNIE ATURA

April 6, 2010

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is panicking over the female suicide bombers who killed 38 and injured more than 60 on March 29. The authorities are troubled by the realization that the bombers belong to a movement: the “Black Widows, ” who have terrorized Chechnya for a decade. So named for the assumption that they are acting to avenge brothers, husbands, fathers and sons killed by Russian troops, the Black Widows have become a symbol of both independence and subservience, strength and weakness in a country that perceives its own destiny to be in the hands of unsympathetic foreigners.

Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova, one of the individuals responsible for the March 29 bombing, was the 17-year-old widow of a militant leader killed last year. Her accomplice at press time is thought to be Markha Ustarkhanova, 20 years old, and also a widow.

Nearly every month for the past two years, a Chechen has gone through with a suicide bombing. The recent subway bombing in Moscow is only the latest in a string of similar attacks – and, as with Chechen suicide bombings, Russian authorities have tried to chalk up the acts of desperation to Islam.

Yet the evidence suggests otherwise. There were 27 attacks from June 2000 to November 2004, and no attacks between then and October 2007. The 18 attacks that have taken place since then have been driven by the Russian effort to stamp out the remaining militants altogether via a counterterrorism offensive. This effort has exacerbated the problem. Russian authorities have abducted and imprisoned suspects and inspired support for their activities. Forced confessions have been rumored; suspects’ family houses have been burned. In February 2009, The New York Times reported extensive use of torture and execution in Russia’s counter-terrorism efforts.

Women play an unusually active role in the conflict. Since 2000, 43 different suicide bombings have been undertaken in the name of Chechnya’s liberation, involving 63 individuals – 40 percent of whom were female. Of the 43 people whose birthplaces are known, 38 were native to the Caucasus. The most deadly attack by a Black Widow to date was the coordinated bombing of two passenger flights in August 2004, which took 90 lives. Until the Russians’ counterterrorism offensive, the extremism of such attacks had diminished public support for the suicide bombers. The 2004 Beslan school massacre undertaken by Chechan extremists left hundreds of Russian children dead, to the detriment of the Chechan separatist cause. As a separatist spokesman said, “A bigger blow could not have been dealt on us. People around the world will think that Chechens are beasts and monsters if they could attack children.”

The desperation that led to the suicide bombings began in 1999, when the Russians invaded Chechnya and killed 30,000 to 40,000 civilians of a population of about a million. The first suicide attack took place in 2000 – and its perpetrators were female. On June 7, Khava Barayeva and Luiza Magomadova drove into a Russian Special Forces unit with a truck laden with explosives.

Women tend to be more effective than men in Chechnyan suicide bombings, killing an average of 21 people per attack, compared to 13 for males, according to The New York Times. They also tend to assume more risky missions; they travel inconspicuously to their targets, according to a July 2003 investigative report by the Russian magazine Kommersant-Vlast. Chechen women have carried out 8 of the 10 suicide attacks in Moscow.

Yet women’s assumption of the role of suicide bomber has not necessarily corresponded with a shift in opinion surrounding gender roles. Barayeva couched the reasoning behind her attack in gendered language – but she did not by any stretch of the imagination speak from a feminist perspective. In her martyr video, she exhorted Chechen men to “not take the woman’s role by staying at home.”

Another Chechnyan fighter, named Rosa, described her embarrassment about taking on the trappings of a male fighter: “At first, when the commander told me to put on fatigues I couldn’t do it. Then I obeyed him but put a skirt over the trousers,” she said, according to a report by The Toronto Star.

Any misdirected feminism at work beneath the surface of the bombings has been further subverted by popular assumptions regarding the attacks’ motivation. Despite clear evidence of unrest within Chechnya, the Kremlin has been quick to claim that the women were being actively exploited by (male) terrorists from abroad: “This is absolutely not characteristic of Chechens,” said Aslanbek Aslakhanov, a member of the Russian parliament. “Men never send their women to fight in wars. There is no religious aspect to this – it’s psychological … terrorists exploiting the misfortune of these women.” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has called the male coordinators who planned the most recent bombings “beasts,” and announced, “We will find and destroy them all.”  Responsibility, however, may be difficult to allocate.

The Russians are deeply threatened by the idea that women are being drawn into the fight. The presence of females in the separatist movement seems to prove that the Russians’ control of Chechnya isn’t so beneficent, after all: if even women are fighting, the assumption goes, then Russian violence has permeated the home. This is not a characterization that the Russians are eager to assume, and it’s only natural that officials would attempt to shift attention back to the public sphere by claiming that the Black Widows are merely unconscious pawns in a political game.

By their very epithet, the Black Widows are defined by their male loved ones’ deaths and political intentions. Some feminists might insist that these women were independent actors,  and reject any reassignment of responsibility. It’s unclear how the women themselves saw it– whether their desperation was a peculiarly “feminine” one, whether they were proud of their unusual role as female militants (as suggested by a photo of Dzhennet Abdullayeva in which she poses defiantly with her husband and her gun), or whether their terrorism was, to them, ultimately genderless. Imagining these terrorists’ perspectives is an uncomfortable exercise– no more uncomfortable, though, than Russia’s pat dismissal of their crimes.

Annie Atura is a junior in Yale College. She is a staff writer for Broad Recognition.

April 5, 2010

In 2007, the first time Choose Life At Yale (CLAY) applied to be a residence group of the Women’s Center, I was on the Women’s Center’s Board.

At the time, Peter Johnston ’09 was the president of CLAY and quickly becoming influential in the conservative movement at Yale. Intellectually, I had grown to know him well, due to the fact that we both took Directed Studies and were in nearly every section together, a proof that God, if existent, is not without an exquisite sense of irony.

CLAY was founded in 2003, a few years before Johnston took it over. The public relations problem confronting it was typical of those faced by other “pro-life” organizations, though, of course, harder to solve at Yale. Ronald Reagan and David Reardon first realized in the 1980s that the “pro-life” movement was damaged by the growing perception that it did not care about women. This perception was compounded by the most visible pro-life campaigns of the 1990s, which often portrayed women who’d had abortions as “baby-killers,” and, perhaps, by a spate of clinic bombings. To detoxify their political brand, “pro-life” organizations rephrased their argument in a feminist cadence. Women, as opposed to the unborn, became abortion’s primary victim.

I was very impressed by Johnston’s decision to apply to be a Women’s Center resident group: It was smart politics. Still, the Board voted unanimously to reject its request, on the grounds that the Women’s Center was pro-choice.

Shortly afterward, I ran into Johnston. Ever cordial, he asked how I was, and I asked how he was; briefly, we discussed the Board’s decision. He expressed feeling some disappointment, but no surprise. I told him I thought the political strategy he had tried out was extremely clever, fearfully so.

We were both earnest believers. But what I always enjoyed about Johnston was that our conversations on such matters were professional: there was no pretense that we were anything but partisan students of America’s abortion debate.

Johnston’s application to the Women’s Center was a bet; I respected it. It didn’t cost CLAY anything to place. Though it lost, he, I thought shrewdly, chose not to publicly whine about it.

CLAY’s current leadership apparently lacks Johnston’s acuity.

Last week, Isabel Marin ’12, CLAY’s “Women’s Outreach Coordinator,” authored a column that argues CLAY should be “supported under the Women’s Center umbrella” (“A place at the Center,” March 31). It goes so far as to attack the Women’s Center’s repeated rejections of CLAY’s application as unworthy of its name and contrary to “the spirit of feminism.”

Marin’s column is riddled with distortions. For instance, Marin quotes abstract, carefully selected sections of the Women’s Center’s constitution, choosing to omit the clause that declares the Women’s Center to be a pro-choice organization. Furthermore, Marin’s attempt to ally CLAY with Yale Men Against Rape under the category of “non-stereotypical feminist groups” is disingenuous. The goals of Yale Men Against Rape are feminist in the most conventional sense of the word and the movement; it is she who is doing the stereotyping.

Marin argues that the Women’s Center should unhesitatingly grant CLAY “the appellation ‘feminist.’” Unfortunately, the word “feminist” means something, both to the Women’s Center and apart from it.

The central failing of the column is Marin’s willful misapprehension of this fact. Feminism is an ideology; the women and men who subscribed to it are those who won women the vote, the right to own property, access to education, protection from sexual harassment and legal abortion. Feminism is definitively pro-choice; it defines abortion as a civil right and insists that the withholding of abortion is discrimination. This is the position of the Yale Women’s Center, National Organization of Women and every major 20th-century feminist thinker.

More offensive than Marin’s indifference to history is that the role that she proposes for CLAY — providing pregnant women with help — is already played by a Women’s Center group. The Reproductive Rights Action League, has long labored to address all aspects of sexuality and family.

Marin is right that “the pro-life women in CLAY face glass ceilings and tough choices as do all women.” The Women’s Center merrily fights for all women, including pro-life women. It is possible to be both pro-life and a feminist; pro-life women have certainly made serious contributions on many feminist fronts; I am sure that Marin holds many feminist opinions with which I passionately agree. But the pro-life ideology seeks to limit women’s choices, is opposed to women’s freedom, is itself anti-woman and will always be anti-feminist.

In denying CLAY its support, the Women Center did not imperil the future of feminism, or its relevance, but rescued its life. Feminism is an authorizing legacy. In invoking feminism, pro-life organizations — even pro-life women — seek to steal feminism from its history, and, wittingly or not, reduce it to a meaningless term.

For the pro-life movement, that’s smart politics. Peter Johnston would have known that. Perhaps that’s why I miss him.

Chase Olivarius-McAllister is a senior in Yale College.

April 1, 2010

This past week illuminated yet another instance of the health care system’s unsavory influence on women’s health decisions: on Tuesday, the National Center for Health Statistics released a report detailing the inappropriate increase in Caesarean sections over the past decade, due in no small part to hospital policy. The New York Times has reported that medical corporations’ fear of malpractice suits has encouraged these lengthy – and expensive – procedures, despite evidence that suggests that Caesarean sections often favor the baby’s health at the expense of its mother’s. The increase has affected all racial and ethnic groups, in all ages of mothers, in every state.

The latest report from the National Center for Health Statistics (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db35.pdf) found that in 2007 (the most recent year data is available), 32% of babies were delivered via Caesarean section. That statistic is a high-water mark for surgical deliveries in the United States, and makes C-sections the most common surgical procedure performed in American hospitals. The report found that the highest rates of Caesarean births occurred in New Jersey and Florida, and the lowest in Utah and Alaska.

We often consider surgical births to be less painful or dangerous than vaginal births, and in many cases C-sections do indeed save mothers and babies alike. But according to the World Health Organization, about half of the C-sections currently performed in the United States are inappropriate. The organization has estimated that surgery is proper in only about 15% of deliveries.

The spike in C-sections has been spurred in no small part by the fear that the uteruses of mothers who have already undergone a Caesarean will rupture under the pressure of a vaginal birth, particularly around the seam of the incision. Fewer than 10% of mothers who have previously had a C-section deliver vaginally, and their surgeries account for 40% of the total of C-sections in the United States. Some hospitals even mandate C-sections for such women. Yet a panel convened by the National Institutes of Health found earlier this month that such barriers were unjustified by medical concerns, and suggested that hospitals publish their rates of vaginal births so that women would know the institution’s policy on mandated C-sections. Women could then weigh the risk of a ruptured uterus against an increased likelihood of complications.

Some blame the unprecedented popularity of surgery on the increasing median age of pregnancy, or on the likelihood of a mother having already undergone a Caesarean. Surprisingly, however, the largest proportional increase in surgical births has been found in mothers under the age of 25. C-sections can subject these younger women to a litany of future problems, including ruptures during future pregnancies and an increased risk of abnormalities in the placenta, which leads to hemorrhaging and potential hysterectomy. Complications occur more frequently during surgery than during vaginal births, and women who undergo surgery during delivery are more likely to remain in the hospital with such complications. In problem cases, C-sections may make it difficult or impossible for women to choose to have large families.

Why, then, do doctors choose to operate twice as often as they should? Cynics will notice that C-sections generally cost twice as much as vaginal births. The World Health Organization has been quick point out that the profitability of C-sections may be the cause of the ridiculously high rate of surgical birth in China, where half of mothers undergo surgery. The same logic may apply here in the States.

The increase might also be attributed to a fear of malpractice lawsuits; the scientific journal Obstetrics and Gynecology published a study last month that found that 29% of its polled members reported performing more C-sections to avoid being sued when a vaginal birth went wrong. 8% of OB/GYNs had chosen to stop delivering babies, and a third of that portion said they had done so because of liability issues.

In other cases, inductions are at fault – mothers induced into labor (i.e. given drugs that prematurely begin the process of labor) are more likely to have C-sections. Obstetricians have reported the advent of “social inductions,” when mothers effectively chose their date of labor for reasons unrelated to their health. This poses a whole new set of issues; women may feel pressure to subject themselves to unnecessary risk in order to deliver on weekends or in the presence of family.

In the debate over the effect that politics and insurers have on women’s access to abortion, we might also cast a critical eye on institutional impacts on women’s health decisions at large. In the case of Caesareans, both a reform in policy and a raise in awareness are in order. Women may not realize the more questionable aspects of this surgical procedure, which is currently performed at twice the recommended rate – and which is growing more popular still.

Annie Atura is a junior in Yale College. She is a staff writer for Broad Recognition.

February 24, 2010

According to Rupert Murdoch, arbiter of our times, La Huff is a thief, a parasite, a content kleptomaniac.  But speaking at the Yale Law School on Monday, Arianna Huffington appeared quite capable of propelling herself entirely on her own momentum, oozing self-confidence on the day she announced the launch of HuffPost College. This latest section of Huffington’s eponymous news website will collate material written by students on “issues that matter to students,” culling its finds from the websites of college newspapers across the US.

It is this very pursuit of “aggregation” that so angers Huffington’s rivals.  It was little surprise, then, that in Huffington’s talk on “net neutrality,” she argued that aggregation plays a key role in opening up the internet, and encouraging citizen journalists. Echoing Hilary Clinton’s suggestion last month that “freedom to connect” be added to FDR’s basic four freedoms, Huffington defined “freedom to connect” as “freedom of assembly…in cyberspace.” Aggregation, therefore, facilitates assembly. It was in the same vein that she praised the power of citizen journalists, arguing that it is easier for governments to dupe or bribe a few reporters than it is for a whole nation of on-the-spot reporters to be so swayed. Apparently Ms. Huffington was not familiar with the phrase “Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

Huffington’s celebration of citizen journalists, however, stems from a sound understanding of the weakness of the professional journalist. Huffington is keen to circulate the term “journalistic capture,” a new understanding of the ways in which journalists can become sucked into the world of those on whom they report– and end up colluding in the practice of covering up for the establishment. Huffington likens the process to “regulatory capture” on Wall Street, in which regulators develop vested interests in maintaining the financial institutions around which they operate. Keen to advance the web as a tool for journalistic and political emancipation, Huffington also called on the government to prioritize an increase in broadband access–currently only 60% of Americans have access to broadband. At the same time, however, she called for an end to the culture of anonymity on the internet– again, in the interests of transparency. Huffington also insisted that the age of pay-per-view content is over. In a heavy accent, she reminded the audience of her Greek heritage, invoking “my favorite Greek philosopher, Heraclitus” in her assertion that “we cannot step into the same river twice.”

Such appeals to her Greek roots form a key element of Arianna Huffington’s glamorous image, an image to which feminists have responded with mixed feelings. Certainly Huffington cares about female enterprise: two years ago she was standing at the same platform to open the Women’s Leadership Initiative conference, when she talked with feeling about the need for female role models and mentoring. Yet she has been accused throughout her career of using highly traditional, invidious forms of female power. As a college student, she invited British intellectual Bernard Levin to give a speech at Cambridge, seduced him, and spent her twenties being introduced to literary London on his arm. When the relationship ended, she left for America and married a billionaire, produced his children, and later divorced him, receiving a settlement that has funded her political projects ever since. According to the narrative of her detractors, even her constant references to her Greek allegiances serve to confirm her role as the exotic feminine. Three different contemporaries of hers at Cambridge have told me that “she arrived at Cambridge speaking English with a slight Greek accent– by the time she left, the accent had become overwhelming, because she discovered that men liked it.”

Huffington’s defenders argue that such carping comes from those jealous of her success– and she has indeed been successful. It is the fact of this success that most discredits those who would seek to dismiss her as someone who has charmed her way to the top: the extraordinary success story that is the Huffington Post was created when Huffington was a single mother, and is fueled entirely by her own creativity. The fact of her power in the world of the internet strikes a blow for women in the masculine culture of the technological industries. One blast of her phenomenal energy is enough to convince even the most skeptical observer that she is quite capable of earning her own success. The very accusations against her entail such traditional misogyny that it is hard to tell whether they are valid critiques of Huffington for conforming to misogynist expectations, or merely expressions of entrenched prejudices.

Kate Maltby is a senior in Yale College. She is a staff writer for Broad Recognition.