Category Archives: Women’s Studies

Could we have some civility in the feminist blogosphere, please?

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via Bitch Magazine, which summarizes the feminist blogosphere’s response to the hiring Olivia Munn as the latest “correspondent” at “The Daily Show.”  I’m arriving really late in the game so I’m not going to comment on Munn (also I only have very basic cable so no longer watch TDS).  Instead, I’m going to focus on an observation made by one of the commentators to Emily Gould’s article in Slate:

“Thank you. I also have been trying for a while to get on board with Jezebel, but I have been deeply turned off by the “more correctly feminist than thou” tone, both in the articles and in the increasingly ridiculous comments section where I have had 22 year olds quote women’s studies textbooks at me about the definition of feminism. Seriously? It’s like a parody male fantasy of what ball-breaking feminazis are like, the irony being that all this venom is directed at other women posters as well as female subjects of articles.”

Now, I agree with many of the Slate commentators that much of Gould’s article is the pot calling the kettle black.  Yet, I’ve encountered this “more feminist than thou” perspective in my exchange with Amanda Marcotte at RH Reality Check.  Here is her reply to my post:

“Someone’s right to have “diverse experiences”, and certainly anyone can go off the pill if she likes. But Eldridge goes way beyond that. She hides behind “just asking questions” to spread paranoia about the pill, and then when called on it, denies that’s what she’s doing. It’s really irresponsible, and not based in science. For instance, this all came up in the context of a discussion about means to expand access by making the pill over the counter, which you were against. It’s really bad faith to suggest that you’re on the “it’s all good team” when you pop up only to argue against any measure that would make it easier for women to use the pill if they choose.”

Off course, that’s not what I said. Here is my reply to her comment:

“‘I’m not suggesting banning anything.  I also think that the argument in favor of an OTC switch has merit (which I said in my first comment on Amanda’s original article).  My point — which may have been lost in the harsh language of my post above — is that there are multiple issues at work here, not just a battle between science and conservative politics.  For example, how will the OTC switch affect the cost of oral contraceptives?  Using the case of the OTC switch for emergency contraception (which I strongly support), the cost went up considerably and because it was an OTC product, was not included in prescription drug coverage.  Although I agree that some people (conservatives especially) exaggerate the dangers of oral contraceptives, there are also some serious risks for some women that should not be ignored. ”

[Dear readers:  as further proof of my position, see my endorsement of the Oral Contraceptive Over-the-Counter Working Group].

Will Marcotte be satisfied with this, or will she continue to see me as part of the anti-science “feminist woo” crowd?  We’ll see.

The Pill: Can We Expand Access While Respecting Diverse Experiences?

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x-post from RHRealityCheck.org.

I’m writing in reply to Amanda Marcotte’s article, “The Pill: A Counter to ‘Over-the-Counter.’” As I observed on my own blog, this is not the first time that the Pill has been considered for a switch from prescription only (Rx) to over-the-counter (OTC). The first time this issue was raised was in the early 1990s.  Historically, the arguments in favor of OTC status for oral contraceptives have tended to come from public health experts who, like Marcotte, see the prescription as paternalistic and an unnecessary barrier to timely access. While I think this is a legitimate point, I also think it’s unfair to characterize the work of Laura Eldrige as simply “freaking out about the pill.” I also think that Marcotte’s claim that complaints of side effects and criticisms of the Pill itself are due to our culture’s “sex panic” is a simplistic analysis of the situation and overlooks a long history of feminist activism on behalf of women consumers.

For example, the work of Barbara Seaman and the National Women’s Health Network in the 1970s and 1980s exposed serious ethical lapses in human subjects research involving women, especially women of color, and that the possible health risks of various forms of contraception — including the Pill, the Dalkon shield IUD, Depo Provera, and Norplant, were underplayed at the expense of women’s health.

In my opinion, Marcotte’s claim that women’s symptoms while on oral contraceptives are merely the result of “sex panic-driven fears” is just as paternalistic as saying women need a prescription for the Pill.   This same argument was made in the 1960s when the first serious side effects from the Pill were reported, i.e. that women who reported problems were just “hysterical” and subconsciously felt guilty about taking the Pill.

I think Laura Eldridge follows in the same tradition as her mentor Barbara Seaman and other founding members of the feminist health movement such as the authors of Our Bodies, Ourselves.  In my opinion, providing women with accurate information about the benefits AND risks of various contraceptive methods is an important way to empower women to make their own reproductive health choices.  We can have a balanced discussion about this without feeding into “right-wing misinformation.” Indeed, I think a nuanced evaluation of the historical and scientific arguments in favor and against various methods of contraception can help combat conservative opposition.  I also think we should respect women’s choices about contraceptive methods, even if they aren’t what we would choose for ourselves.

P.S. Speaking of choices — here’s a top ten list of contraceptive options from Ms. Magazine Blog.

Happy Belated Birthday to Griswold v. Connecticut

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Last week I was so buried in my writing that I plumb forgot to honor the 45h  anniversary of  the U.S. Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut (June 7, 1965).   So, here’s some history (based on information from contemporary newspaper accounts, as well as  David J. Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality:  The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1998) and John W. Johnson, Griswold v. Connecticut:  Birth Control and the Constitutional Right of Privacy (Lawrence:  University of Kansas Press, 2005) ).

Yale New-Haven Hospital was at the center of birth control politics in both the state of Connecticut and the nation. In 1958, Dr. C. Lee Buxton, chair of the department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale Medical School, along with three of his patients, filed a lawsuit claiming that the state’s laws prohibiting the sale, distribution, and use of contraceptive drugs and devices were unconstitutional. The suit reached the U.S. Supreme Court in June of 1961, but the Court dismissed the case since no state laws had been violated. Yet, the court opinion that accompanied the decision also declared Connecticut laws were “dead words and harmless, empty shadows.” On November 1 of that year, the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, led by Buxton and PPLC Executive Director Estelle Griswold, decided to test the validity of the court’s opinion, and opened a birth control clinic in New Haven. Nine days later Buxton and Griswold were arrested for violating state laws outlawing contraception. The defendants appealed their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court culminating in the court’s decision in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) declaring “Connecticut’s birth-control law unconstitutionally intrudes upon the right of marital privacy.”

Immediately following the Griswold decision, the Connecticut Birth Control League opened the New Haven Planned Parenthood clinic. Initially, league officials reported an “uphill fight” in gaining acceptance, due to a lingering “moral stigma” against family planning among some individuals. By 1967, “unbelievable change” had occurred, and “birth control is booming in the Elm City” — especially among female graduate students at Yale University (this is before the undergraduate college admitted women).

Unmarried women in other states were not necessarily so fortunate: in Massachusetts, Bill Baird was arrested for “crimes against chastity” for giving contraceptive foam to an unmarried teenage girl following a lecture at Boston University in 1967.  His conviction was overturned in the decision Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), in which the Supreme Court rule  “If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted government intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.”

As a recent editorial in the Roanoke Times observes, these rights to privacy still “remain suspect”.   So, go out and enjoy them while you still have them!

Sexism in Science, or Why There was no Alberta Einstein

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via NYTimes.com.  Oh boy, here we go again. John Tierney tackles another controversial topic by “daring” to side with the tired sexist conventional wisdom  that the reason there are fewer women in science than men is because of innate differences in intelligence.  Various replies in the comments section have nicely addressed the various studies that have demonstrated persistent social barriers to women in science, starting with social conditioning in childhood (e.g. boys are given trucks and tools, girls dolls and dresses.  Boys are praised for being smart, girls for being pretty).  For a great round-up of how women in STEM are addressing sexism in science, see the blog Geek Feminism.

Since I’m a historian, I’m going to limit myself to addressing this  one of the nearly 300 comments:

“When the Summers controversy erupted, I wondered why there was no Alberta Einstein and no Roberta Fisher. Solitary study of physics or chess doesn’t require much more than obsessive dedication, a piece of paper and a pencil or a chess board. Albert Einstein didn’t need an expensive lab, nor did Bobby Fisher. Both were clearly extreme in many ways. Equally extreme women could have duplicated their efforts, but not one did. Where are the extreme women?”

As an homage to Virginia Woolf’s reflections on what would have happened if Shakespeare had had an equally talented sister name Judith. here are my thoughts on why there was no Alberta Einstein. In this case, I don’t have to make up a fictional talented sister.  There is already a real-life example of  a woman of this era who equaled or even surpassed Einstein in terms of ability and performance as measured by professional accolades:  that would be double Nobel laureate Marie Curie.

First, let’s deflate the myth that Einstein was a lone genius scribbling out his theories in pencil while laboring in a Swiss patent office.  While Einstein did face the not insignificant social barrier of Antisemitism, he was well-connected to the academic and scientific institutions of the era.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of Zurich in 1905 and in less than a decade was a full professor at the University of Prague.  In 1921, Einstein received the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the photoelectric effect. He was forced to flee German during the Nazi era, and spent the rest of his life at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.

Here’s a summary of Marie Curie’s career.  Curie was fortunate enough to have a family who supported her educational aspirations.  She attended a prestigious gymnasium for girls in her native Poland, and later studied at the Sorbonne in Paris where she met her future husband Pierre.   Despite her academic achievements, she was denied a position at Krachow University solely because she was a woman.  Instead, she married Pierre and together they did the groundbreaking scientific research that led to them being awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903.  Eight years later, Marie received a second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry, “in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element.”   Despite being the only person, male or female, to be awarded two Nobel prizes by that time, she was denied entry to the French Academy of Sciences, again, solely because she was a woman.  She never received an academic appointment but did manage to get funding from the French government and private sources to run her own laboratory.

So, this is what happened to the most talented female scientists of Einstein’s generation.  For numerous other examples of women scientists from this period and beyond, see the excellent and exhaustive work of Margaret Rossiter.

That’s So Twentieth Century: Women’s History and Web 2.0

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In my last post, I reproduced an announcement from the women’s studies journal  Frontiers about a new “interactive” column by Eileen Boris, in which she will cook up a “gumbo” of emailed responses, “mixing, seasoning, and throwing in her own ingredients, as she enables us to engage in feminist dialectic.”

As Pennamite observed in the comments section, “Isn’t that gumbo going to be a bit old, if the deadline for submissions is over a year away…? Seems like an awkward way to shoehorn social media into a paper journal format.”

Right on, Pennamite!  So this post is a response to Penny’s observation and a contribution to a new venture that Dan Cohen and  Tom Scheinfeldt started cooking up at ThatCamp this past weekend. They propose writing an edited book entitled Hacking the Academy:

“Let’s write it together, starting at THATCamp this weekend. And let’s do it in one week.

Here’s my question — can we do better than use a twentieth-century technology (email) to create an interactive feminist discussion?  To steal Pennamite’s motto — you betcha!

In fact, I would argue that the call from Frontiers is barely twentieth century (even if the announcement was posted on Facebook)– one could easily imagine this being done with old fashioned snail mail.  It’s not even as  technologically sophisticated as H-Women, which, while moderated, at least allows for give and take between subscribers.

Speaking of which, I have a great fondness for the good old days of H-Women, i.e. the 1990s, when I served as an editor.   Some of the original H-Net folks and I discussed how to make H-Net Web 2.0  at an H-Net reception at the AHA a few years ago — how to bring H-Net into the Web 2.0 era.  One can now “subscribe” to the discussion lists through RSS feeds instead of by email.   However, there’s not a lot of activity in terms of scholarly exchange — most of the content consists of CFP, queries, and announcements of various kinds.

Other experiments –organizers of the last  Berkshire Conference of Women’s Historians, more specifically Historiann,  put together a blog right before the most recent Big Berks meeting (this was   So, you can find a number of women’s historians who blog.  In October 2008, I was on a panel for the little Berks meeting with Tenured Radical and Clio Bluestocking. The Journal of Women’s History commissioned TR to coordinate a roundtable on the relationship between feminist history blogging and the professional world of feminist history. However, this roundtable will appear in a subscription-only traditional publication (although available electronically as well as in print).  Where’s the 2.0?  Will there be opportunities for readers to respond in an online forum?

Maybe I shouldn’t be such a smart-ass — after all, I’m a relative newcomer to digital history, and was lucky enough to get money from my university to build up my skills in this area.  Many people aren’t so fortunate. How do we get more women’s historians and feminist scholars on the Web 2.0 bandwagon?  Is this a worthwhile endeavor?  I await your answers.

Frontiers wants to hear from feminist community

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We at Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies are delighted to introduce our readers to a new interactive column, “Feminist Currents,” by Eileen Boris, Hull Professor and chair of the Women’s Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In the paragraph below Boris poses a question to our readers and all interested feminists, whether they find this column in Frontiers or on any number of postings in cyber space. All are invited to e-mail Frontiers their answers, which Boris will edit by synthesizing and summarizing. Her intent is to cook up a gumbo out of our responses: mixing, seasoning, and throwing in her own ingredients, as she enables us to engage in feminist dialectic.  Boris’s response will appear in our next spring issue along with another question posed by her. We see this exchange as a way to strengthen and enrich our feminist community. Or, in Boris’s words, “‘Feminist Currents’ is a place for feminists to debate pressing and not so pressing (sometimes whimsical but hopefully compelling) issues of the day, to share perspectives and thoughts, develop strategies, and connect scholarship and teaching to social justice.”

A Question:
As I write this question, the fate of health care reform is still up for grabs. We do not know what the final bill will look like or what the outcome will be—or whether getting the people’s business done will trump the misinformation and noise of this summer. What stakes do women have as women in the politics of health care? While scholars have uncovered the workings of gender in the shaping of medical research and delivery, here we want to collect personal experiences and prescriptions for change from feminist perspectives.

Replies:
You can respond in two different ways. You can give your answer on the Frontiers Facebook page . Or you can email your reflections, from 30 to 300 words, to frontiers@asu.edu no later than September 1, 2011. In your subject line please type “Feminist Currents.” Unless you notify us otherwise in your email, your response signifies that we may paraphrase your thoughts, quote directly from them, and use your name and affiliation.

FRONTIERS: A Journal of Women Studies
Arizona State University
PO Box 874302
Tempe, AZ 85287-4302
http://shprs.clas.asu.edu/frontiers

This reproductive health article needs a Reality Check

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via RHReality Check.  In an article entitled “A Natural Alternative to the Pill?” a “social media professional/Twitter lover” who goes by the name “jaz” expresses some healthy skepticism about the outpouring of praise surrounding the 50th anniversary of the Pill.

Unfortunately, the article contains a lot of misinformation as well.  So, here’s a reality check.

First, Jaz claims that  “With the Pill off the table, we are left with very few options besides condoms (or diaphragms and cervical caps which are essentially out of existence and have lower effectiveness rates), or more permanent solutions like the IUD and sterilization which do not make sense for younger women or women who want to have children in the next few years.”

According to this table, male condoms have a 2% failure rate if used “perfectly” — i.e. every time a couple has intercourse, and the condom doesn’t break or fall off.  Diaphragms have a 6% failure rate.  IUDS are not the same as sterilization either.

Second, the article tries to suggest that herbal contraceptives are effective. Jaz discusses an herb called wild carrot (aka Queen Anne’s Lace) and mentions the work of Robin Rose Bennett which “has been surrounded by controversy and naysayers in her efforts to bring this to American women.”  Well, count me in as one of the naysayers.  Even Bennett says that her study was unscientific, i.e. was not a controlled clinical trial.  Her sample was also very small — only 13 women — and three of them became pregnant.  So far, not a good alternative to barrier methods.

Jaz implies that this natural remedy is safer than oral contraceptives.  According to Bennett, wild carrot is an estrogenic herb — in other words, it contains the same chemical as many birth control pills.  So, the same contraindications for use of oral contraceptives would apply to wild carrot.

The underlying assumption of the article is that natural remedies are safe because, hey, they’re natural.  Well, those who are looking to try this method on their own better be sure they can tell the difference between wild carrot and poison hemlock.  Even jaz says she’s “a little wary of making my own contraception, since it’s more serious than making a smoothie or a mojito, though I do want to experiment with my inner alchemist and my green thumb!”

She should be just as wary of herbal treatments prepared by so-called experts.  Since herbal remedies are considered dietary supplements,  they not regulated by the FDA as are drugs.  This means no one is checking to make sure the health claims are valid.  Also, there is no national system of licensure or certification for herbalists.  This means that anyone can hang out a shingle and call her/himself an herbalist.

[NB: if you take St. John’s Wort be aware that it can interfere with the effectiveness of oral contraceptives].

So, while I agree with jaz that “women deserve to have a wide range of options readily available to make the ideal decisions for their bodies and sexual health,” they also need accurate and reliable health information.  RHReality Check usually does this and gives guides on how to detect inaccurate information.  In their section, “Fact v. Fiction,” the editors write:

“One trademark of the far right is misinformation. They make ideology sound like fact, belief sound like scientific data. We bring you the most widely circulated fictions about reproductive health, and the facts and resources to dispute them. If you are confused about how to determine if a study is real, this primer provides you with a great framework to evaluate any research study you read.”

Too bad the editors of the site didn’t apply these same criteria to misinformation from the left.  Women deserve better.

Added later:  RHRealityCheck has reposted this entry on their website.  Please join the discussion.

Discloser: My research is funded by the National Library of Medicine and the Connecticut State University American Association of University Professors Research Grant.  I have no financial ties to pharmaceutical companies of any kind.

The Alternative History of the Pill

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In an article at  RHRealityCheck.org, Bianca Laureano of LatinoSexuality.com states why she will not be participating in the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Pill:

“Excuse me if I do not partake in all of the celebration of The 50th Anniversary of The Pill because from my perspective it is still very much a reminder of the exploitation and violation of human rights among Puerto Ricans (and Haitians, and working class women in general) that continues today. Ignoring this reality is easy. Yet, it is a part of my, our history that I can’t simply forget or overlook. If I choose to ignore this history I also choose to ignore the history of activism by members of my community that has helped to create change at an institutional level. Ignoring this reality and history also perpetuates the ideas that historically oppressed communities are not important in the work we do today. . . On anniversaries such as these, I ask that we all take a moment and think about the people who have been directly impacted negatively during trials, especially when historically discussions are not comprehensive and exclude us. Also think about how pharmaceutical companies are still engaging in some questionable actions and continue to purchase land in Puerto Rico, which does bring jobs to the island, yet those jobs are not always permanent.”

Excellent points and a reminder that not all women viewed this technology as “liberating.”  For more on this issue, see the work of Loretta Ross and SisterSong.

The Society for Menstrual Cycle Research has another alternative take on the history of the pill, this one from a white woman who raises significant safety issues.

Ms. Magazine Gets it Wrong

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Last week, our Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program celebrated its 20th anniversary with a fabulous research conference (see poster at left).  One of the highlights was a screening of the film “Very Young Girls” and a keynote address by Rachel Lloyd, founder and Executive Director of GEMS, an organization in New York to serve girls and young women who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking. Ms. Magazine selected Lloyd as one of “50 women who change the world.”

So, I was rather disappointed when I saw this article on sex-trafficking, “Babes in Scandal Land,” on the Ms. Magazine blog. The article discusses a “sexual double standard” in “reports that a rabidly anti-gay, self-righteous Christian crusader spent a 10-day European vacation with a paid companion he found on rentboy.com.” She compares the relatively mild accounts, compared with the “tsunami” of outrage in cases of female sex workers such as Ashley Alexandra Dupre, “the woman Eliot Spitzer retained from a high-class escort service for sexual trysts in a Washington hotel room.” She asks where is the moral outrage “following revelations that anti-gay leader George Rekers’ consort was not one of “those innumerable girls,” but rather, a rented boy? It’s not that I think the boy in question, Jo-Vanni Roman, a.k.a. Lucien/Geo, needs Kristof—or anyone else—to save him. . .What I am concerned about is a sexist double standard which regards female sex workers by definition as vulnerable victims in need of rescue, while male sex workers are simply guys who have sex for money.”

Although I agree with the suggestion “to stop assuming that men are always sexual agents and women are always sexual victims,” the author fails to make a distinction between adult behavior (the “boy” in question) and the sexual exploitation of girls under the age of consent.  Furthermore, notions that underage girls are sexual “agents” have been used to trivialize cases of human trafficking involving girls and young women.  For example,  this  article on sex trafficking and the Lawrence Taylor case observes that

“responses to one Internet report showed 3,000 views and 2,000 comments.  An oft-repeated question asked, “Was he supposed to ask for the birth certificate of a prostitute?” Another recommended, “Write him a ticket and let him go.”  Only a few observers engaged with the issue of human trafficking.  There were numerous calls to legalize prostitution, but few reflections on where the culpability of customers and traffickers fits into the equation.

This is a conversation that goes far deeper than Lawrence Taylor’s personal actions.  It’s time for the media to take responsibility for how the language used in telling such a narrative, adds to the lack of awareness about the ramifications of human trafficking. In the struggle to eradicate the exploitation of girls and women, this would be an excellent first step.”

Ms. Magazine, are you listening?

More on the History of the Pill

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via – NYTimes.com.  This is an editorial by University of Minnesota Professor Elaine Tyler May, whose new book America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation (pictured at left) was just released.   I’m glad to see that May deflates the truism that the Pill caused the sexual revolution — as Kinsey observed, the sexual revolution was well underway before 1960.  Furthermore, as said in my previous post, the Pill wasn’t available to many women when first released.  Even married women in the state of Connecticut could not legally obtain the Pill until 1965 and it took another seven years for the “right to privacy” to be extended to unmarried women as well.

Since Knitting Clio never misses an opportunity to plug her own work, I’ll mention that the Pill is the subject of my paper at the upcoming annual meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine .   The title is “Safer Than Aspirin: The Campaign for Over-the-Counter Oral Contraceptives.” A longer version of the paper will appear in The Prescription in Perspective: Therapeutic Authority in Late 20th Century America. Edited by Jeremy A. Greene and Elizabeth Siegel Watkins, under contract with Johns Hopkins University Press.

Here’s the abstract:

On January 21, 1993 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced in the Federal Register that the agency’s Fertility and Maternal Health Drugs Advisory Committee would hold an open public hearing to discuss issues related to providing oral contraceptives without prescription. Philip A. Corfman, director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, stated the agency’s reasoning for this hearing:”I think the pill is safer than aspirin and aspirin is available over the counter.”

One week after the posted Federal Register notice of the open hearing, FDA officials canceled the session. The reasons for this abrupt move, and subsequent failures to make oral contraceptives available over-the-counter, are the subject of this paper. I will use the discussion about nonprescription status for oral contraceptives as a case study in the history of the switch from prescription to over-the-counter drugs. This paper will highlight the conflicting positions of the various stakeholders invested in restricting or promoting consumers’ direct access to their medications.