Elissa Strauss is right to note that VIDA’s third annual count of male vs. female bylines in “thought leader magazines” created a reaction that, at first, amounted to a giant shrug. Over the past few years many writers, Elissa most notable among them, have asked editors to respond to “The Count.” Most did not take action. The pie charts showing bylines by gender at major publications haven’t really budged.
Now, the question is: How do we make them change? This widely-circulated interview with editors from Tin House and Granta, two publications that have shifted their “counts,” indicates that it’s actually not that hard. Spend more energy focusing on asking women to submit. Check in on your numbers periodically. As Tin House editor Rob Spillman noted, “These are all simple solutions. What I found interesting was that we had all assumed that we were gender balanced, when in fact we weren’t. Now, with a concerted effort, we know that we are.”
It’s been diverting this past week to join in the Popewatch brouhaha — who doesn’t like secretive meetings, signals and intrigue, not to mention red Prada shoes? But now that it’s over, the white smoke has risen, the habeus papams have been uttered and Francis has been chosen, let’s talk about a less-discussed but no less important story out of the Vatican this week.
That would be the Vatican’s decision to use its status as a sovereign entity to join with Iran, Russia, U.S. conservatives and other retrograde nations to try to quash a UN resolution condemning violence against women.
Yep, the Vatican is the equivalent of those few far-right legislators who tried to stymie the Violence Against Women Act in the U.S. legislative process ‘til the bitter end — except while that effort eventually failed, this might actually be successful.
The 2013 VIDA Count — a survey of the gender breakdown of bylines, book reviewers and authors reviewed at major publications — is out, and the numbers aren’t pretty. The vast majority of book reviewers and authors reviewed at publications like the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books and Harper’s are men, as are the bylines.
Perhaps more depressing than this finding is the fact this year’s numbers don’t show much in the way of improvement from three years ago, when the first Count was released. For example, in 2010 the New York Times Book Review reviewed 283 books by women and 524 books by men. In 2012 they looked at 237 books by women and 488 books by men. Meanwhile, the New York Review of Books reviewed 59 female authors and 306 male authors in 2010 and 89 female authors and 316 male authors in 2013.
When VIDA began counting, the thinking was that editors would feel so embarrassed by their obvious preference for male writers, be it conscious or subconscious, that they would be prompted to change. Now we see that shaming them is not a viable solution. Is collective action next?
Last week, the New York Observer published a cover story on Logan, a 30-year-old Orthodox fourth-year medical student with “boyish” good looks. He’s searching for his bashert and describes himself “as a mensch at heart.” Sounds like a catch, right? Well, before you beat a trail to his probably adorable Upper West Side bachelor pad and mentally compose your engagement announcement for OnlySimchas.com, you should know one thing: Logan is a complete and utter chauvinistic fraud.
Of course, Logan is not his real name, but rather a nom de plume he uses on his falsified dating profiles to (for lack of a more tactful expression) bang as many ladies in the New York City area as possible. He doesn’t lie about being a doctor. He doesn’t lie about being Jewish (though he fails to mention he is Orthodox). He just fibs a few years funding start-ups in the Silicon Valley and adds a couple of millions (three to five) to his net worth. He then seduces women through creative truth-telling on secular dating sites like PlentyofFish.com and purports to finance them in a sugar daddy-sugar baby scenario on SeekingArrangement.com.
To be fair, he only resorted to such tactics after too many finicky Jewesses shot him down. Much to Logan’s complete shock and dismay, Jewish girls didn’t immediately drop to their knees with awe and open their mouths upon meeting a doctor. In comparison, the girls he met on the other sites “really appreciated a professional guy” and, not to mention, are “much easier to bang on the first date.”
Jeez, what’s wrong with us snobby Jewish ice queens who don’t know to immediately put out for a doctor of the tribe?
Right now, the women behind Women of the Wall are concerned about more than the chance of being arrested for wearing a tallit at the kotel on Tuesday. As they prepare to come out in large numbers for Rosh Hodesh Nissan, both at the Kotel itself and at solidarity rallies in New York and other American cities, they are also worried about what appears to be a possible incitement to violence against them.
This past weekend, pashkevilim, or traditional black and white text-only wall notices, were found posted in Haredi neighborhoods in Jerusalem. They called on people to “Save the Western Wall from trampling and desecration at the hands of a group that calls itself of “Women of the Wall.” Male and female worshipers were encouraged to go to the Kotel at 7 a.m. on Rosh Hodesh (the time for which the Women of the Wall service has been called) to protest against Women of the Wall. “Whoever cares about the place from which the divine presence never shifts, should come and protest and cry out!”
Women of the Wall responded Sunday to these posters in a press release. “Though there were no rabbis signed or taking responsibility for this call, as is customary on pashkevillim, it would seem that someone anonymous has an interest in opposing Women of the Wall’s prayer, despite the relative quiet of the last few months,” the statement said. “Aside from police detainments (43 detainments of women in six months), the prayers at the Kotel have gone undisturbed lately, and the Purim celebrations proved that without violent opposition or police intervention, the Jews present are quite capable of tolerance and sharing the holy space.”
I don’t even remember how I came across Christopher Scanlon’s piece about the social barriers between men and children, but reading it has made me feel all kinds of angry things. In it, Scanlon describes a situation in which he sees a little girl dangling precariously from some monkey bars, but doesn’t attempt to help her. Why? He explains:
I don’t want to put myself in a position where I could be perceived as predatory or a pervert, or make a child, or its parents feel threatened. I’ve internalized this fear so much so that even though I only wanted to help, I would have felt creepy.
When I was 10 or 11 years old, I had a male dance teacher. I can’t recall thinking it was weird, just that dancing was fun and being in class made me happy. I do remember my mother being really freaked out about it, though, and asking a lot of questions about how our teacher behaved towards us. He behaved … like someone teaching a dance class? It was stressful, being asked these questions. I felt like I was supposed to say something that wasn’t true, because the truth didn’t seem to be what she was after. The veil of suspicion never seemed to lift. I don’t remember when I left that dance class, but it was sooner than I had wanted.
In Jaclyn Friedman’s weekly podcast, “F—ing While Feminist,” Friedman first chats with a guest about the latest political and cultural salvos around sexuality. Then she and the guest answer intimate questions from listeners seeking advice. As the show’s bold name suggests, its hostess is no stranger to the combination of sex talk and activism: Friedman is also the co-editor, with Jessica Valenti, of the anthology “Yes Means Yes! Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape.” The book emphasizes the idea of “enthusiastic consent” — a hoped-for paradigm in which sex exists not as something one partner asks for, but as an activity wholeheartedly embarked upon by both. As Friedman, also the executive director of gender justice in media group Women, Action & the Media, told the Forward’s Sarah Seltzer, her approach gets her called both a “slut” and a “prude” by confused critics, exploding the virgin-whore dichotomy.
No shrinking violet on the toughest of issues, Friedman has recently spoken up about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying it’s her duty as an American Jew to wade into the discourse. She chatted with the Forward about Jewish mothers, rape culture, enthusiastic consent and taking away Israel’s car keys.
The thing about youth web culture is that kids of every background will appropriate trends to fit their own lifestyles. It’s not so easy for fashion, music or even food. But a social media meme? It’ll tear across the Internet, equally amusing to young netizens regardless of gender, race or class. And if Internet access is allowed in the home, it will even find its way to the Orthodox.
Consider the animated GIF. It’s a retro image file type from way back in the early days of blogs — a low-resolution, quick burst of video. Though the technology was popular circa 1998, it’s making a comeback 15 years later. GIFs are usually used to comedic effect. The most popular sort is the “reaction GIF,” in which one posts a video snippet of a funny facial expression (usually a pop-culture reference) to convey an exaggerated form of one’s emotional response to news. The reaction GIF trend snowballed into a series of Tumblr “microblogs” that detail the joys, disappointments and idiosyncrasies of various youth sub-cultures and lifestyles: law school, fraternities, raves, summer camps and so on.
The Tel Aviv Labor Court recently ruled that an Israeli religious school cannot fire an unmarried teacher for becoming pregnant by in-vitro fertilization. The decision has sparked a lot of discussion. For me, it highlights the contradictory expectations put on Jewish women, especially those who choose to live and work in Orthodox communities.
The court ruled that it was illegal for the ulplana (religious girls’ high school), where the teacher had worked for eight years, to fire her for not upholding the school’s values by exposing the students to alternative family models. “The right to be a parent, the freedom to work and human dignity and liberty” are superseding, according to the court’s decision.
The court ordered the school to pay the teacher, who was dismissed in 2009, NIS 250,000 ($67,500) in compensation.
To be clear, the school had no halachic objection to a single woman becoming pregnant by IVF (there are rabbinic rulings in favor of it), but rather to the supposedly unacceptable example the teacher would set for her students. The rabbinic authority consulted by the school declared that while teachers who are divorced or “spinsters” are not optimal role models, they are merely unfortunate and have done nothing negative. However, a single woman who becomes pregnant does “contravene our Torah outlook,” according to the rabbi.
International Women’s Day began as a socialist holiday in the United States, a day in solidarity with working women who’d gone on strike from their garment factories after the deadly Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. As anyone who knows her Jewish history can tell you, a good deal of these pioneering workers — both the victims and the labor agitators — were Jewish. In the ensuing decade, the holiday spread worldwide along with the movement. It was, for instance, the occasion for men and women to protest involvement in World War I in Russia: a “bread and peace” strike on the eve of the revolution.
Today, the day no longer smacks of revolution. In fact, even the most ardent capitalists embrace the cause: one prominent International Women’s Day website is sponsored by BP, the oil company responsible for devastation on the Gulf Coast, plus a bunch of banks and financial institutions too. Even the UN, which has carried the IWD banner for decades, uses mainstream language like “investing in women and girls” to promote the day.
Here’s the sometimes uncomfortable truth: Women’s equality is (no pun intended) a broad category, and the equality movement is perhaps more liable than most to get its fabric snagged in the back-and-forth tug of the class struggle. Because women’s oppression takes place at home and in the workplace — and that workplace can be a factory, a boardroom, someone else’s nursery or kitchen, or the front lines of the military — discrimination against women varies as much as it sadly persists.
Increasingly, over the past several weeks, I have found the follow question intruding into my thoughts: When, please, will someone make Lena Dunham go away?
It’s not that I have anything personal or professional against Dunham herself. I have never seen her breakout film “Tiny Furniture” or her angst-inducing HBO show “Girls.” (Okay, I have seen two clips from “Girls” on YouTube, and I found the acting wooden and the dialogue, though neither realistic nor dramatic, entirely predictable. But that’s fine; I am old. Despite Twitter insisting I follow her, I am not Dunham’s audience.) My complaint is not about Dunham, but rather the incessant coverage of her, her work, her privilege, her boyfriend, her weirdly-fitting dresses, her outrageous book deal, and her TV character’s every partially-clothed move.
I should point out that I do not, for the most part, follow pop culture on purpose. Non-stop dissection of all things Dunham is simply what I get from trying to be reasonably aware and informed about the world around me, especially when it comes to content by and about women and Jews.
The cacophony reached what felt like unprecedented loudness over the past few weeks with the airing of the second season of Girls and Dunham’s Purimspeil at the Jewish Museum in New York. (I did read the text, which was, I’m sorry to say, not particularly special.) Even last week it was as if the only famous people in the world were Dunham and the Pope. The Pope, however, went away.
I’ve always wanted to know what goes on during a kallah class, in which observant Jewish brides learn about niddah, the laws of ritual purity, as well as issues of sexuality. I would have gone so far as to borrow an engagement ring to do so, but fortunately, I got to talk to Rori Picker Neiss instead.
Neiss teaches private classes to brides and couples and is a student at Yeshivat Maharat, a pioneering institution training Orthodox Jewish women to be spiritual leaders and halakhic authorities. In addition to founding and running an independent minyan in Brooklyn, she serves as the Rabbinic Intern at the Beit Chaverim Synagogue of Westport/Norwalk and the Hillels at NYU and CUNY’s Hunter College.
I’ve always wanted to know what goes on during a kallah class, in which observant Jewish brides learn about niddah, the laws of ritual purity, as well as issues of sexuality. I would have gone so far as to borrow an engagement ring to do so, but fortunately, I got to talk to Rori Picker Neiss instead.
Neiss teaches private classes to brides and couples and is a student at Yeshivat Maharat, a pioneering institution training Orthodox Jewish women to be spiritual leaders and halakhic authorities. In addition to founding and running an independent minyan in Brooklyn, she serves as the Rabbinic Intern at the Beit Chaverim Synagogue of Westport/Norwalk and the Hillels at NYU and CUNY’s Hunter College.
Former IDF officer Yityish (Titi) Aynaw, 21, was crowned Miss Israel 2013 last Wednesday night. Besides from earning the title of a beauty queen, Aynaw also made history by becoming the first Ethiopian-born woman to ever win the beauty pageant. Yet the confetti had barely finished landing on the floor of the fancy stage when social networks started buzzing with comments about whether or Aynaw was, in fact, the most beautiful women in the pageant.
“I think it is really great that an Ethiopian-born woman won our national beauty pageant, I really do. If she were also beautiful it would have been even better,” wrote an Israeli journalist on his Facebook page. Someone left the following comment in reaction to an article about her victory on the Israeli news website Mako: “It may sound racist, but it is really not— I am certain they did not pick her for her beauty. She is not that beautiful. They could have at least choose someone more beautiful than her.”
(It is worth noting that most of the reactions about her beauty had nothing to do with the color of her skin. But racism is a sad phenomenon that represents a minority opinion among ignorant people.)
Some said Aynaw was chosen in advance so that Israel could show to the world its pluralism (the Israeli Apartheid Week is at its peak worldwide). Some said that she was very beautiful, and that it was the photo of her in the newspapers which wasn’t doing justice with her, while still others argued that “beauty” is subjective. I say that beauty is more than meets the eye. After 64 years of national beauty pageants, I would expect everyone to realize that in order to become the most beautiful woman in a given country, especially in a place like Israel, you must have far more than outer beauty.
I never really paid close attention to the street signs in Jerusalem until a couple of years ago, when I missed an important turn onto Golda Meir Blvd. I missed the turn because the local Haredim had erased the print on the sign. They were obviously far more concerned about removing a woman’s name — let alone her image — from a sign than about drivers such as myself getting lost.
So I am sensitive about matters having to do with Jerusalem street signs, especially when feminist issues are involved. It’s no surprise, then, that I took note of a story Jerusalem councilmember Rachel Azaria posted on her Facebook page about a group of high school students who took it upon themselves to address the fact that signs for streets named after female biblical figures identify the women only by their relationship to men. Meanwhile, the signs for the male characters include full-blown descriptions of their significance to the biblical narrative and the Jewish people.
Why does Jewish preschool cost so much? In the new episode of The Jewish Channel series “The Salon,” panelist Jordana Horn of the parenting website Kveller argues that philanthropists should invest in Jewish preschool — “Birthright closer to birth” — and Rabbi Robyn Fryer Bodzin makes the case for paying early childhood teachers well.
The panelists also chat about the two different feminist strategies presented by Purim heroines Esther and Vashti.
The minute I saw that new MK Merav Michaeli’s inaugural (some call it “maiden,” but I prefer “inaugural”) speech to the Knesset on Wednesday had gone online, I immediately remembered a Sisterhood post I wrote prior to the recent Israeli elections about Ha’aretz political writer Yossi Verter’s sexism.
In a piece on the Labor Party list, Verter had made fun of a particular feminist trait of Michaeli, a successful journalist: “One thing she is going to have to cure herself of immediately is her silly and childish habit of speaking in the feminine gender. If she chooses to speak in the legislature and committees like that, she will quickly become the laughing stock of the 19th Knesset.”
In her unmistakably feminist speech, the newly minted MK Michaeli did speak using the feminine gender (she actually used both feminine and masculine genders, always mentioning the feminine first). And guess what? No one laughed. Rather, her fellow MKs all sat and listened to her with rapt attention.
Can we all please give Sheryl Sandberg a break? I mean, come on. She is hardly the worst thing to happen to intelligent women since the “Real Housewives” franchise, and yet, for some reason, we are treating her like she is public enemy number one.
Her new book and media campaign “Lean In,” written to help empower women to “achieve their full potential” at work, have been met with contempt by both Jodi Kantor and Maureen Dowd in the New York Times, Jessica Grose over at Slate, Melissa Gira Grant in the Washington Post, and here on the Sisterhood by Renee Ghert-Zand. There is even a mostly media-manufactured catfight between Sandberg and Anne-Marie Slaughter (you can read about it in the Kantor piece), author of the Atlantic article on work/life balance heard round the world, who believes we should be putting pressure on institutions to change.
The conclusion is that Sandberg is an elitist who blames women for their lack of success. That because of her money and power she has no idea what it feels like to make choices between work and family. And that because she wants women to grab a hold of the clutch means that she is letting everyone and everything else off the hook.
Like almost anyone who is involved with women’s issues, I spent my Tuesday night watching PBS’s MAKERS documentary, a three-hour look at the women’s movement with nods to its detractors both from within (lesbians, women of color, working-class women) and without (Phyllis Schlafly). The film has started a rich discussion about the lens with which we view the “women’s libbers” of yesterday and today.
Overall, the footage and interviews and almost cheesy but not quite soundtrack made for a particularly satisfying night of television. I had planned to tune in and out while I ate dinner, but found myself riveted for much of the evening, even as I at times felt the documentary’s perspective or focus was lacking.
And yet, like many other viewers, when it came to the section on feminism today I was sorely disappointed.
On Wednesday, 21-year-old Yityish Aynaw was crowned Miss Israel for 2013. The occasion marked the first time an Ethiopian Israeli had won the national beauty pageant.
Despite the landmark moment, I have to be honest: I was more excited when Pnina Tamano-Shata, a lawyer and member of the Yesh Atid party, was recently elected the first female Ethiopian Member of Knesset.
I am obviously far more into brains than beauty. But not everyone is, and rather than hate on this breakthrough moment for Israeli women of color, it would be far more productive to look at the positives associated with Aynaw’s achievement.
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