Reading Women

My main resolution for 2016 was to read more books. Specifically, I wanted to read more books by women. I was inspired in part by #readwomen2014, and the various campaigns that came after it, to look at my own reading habits. (Update: here’s the real story behind #readwomen2014, which started with writer Lilit Marcus.) I had been tracking my reading on Goodreads for a couple of years, and I have to admit I was kind of surprised to realize that almost every book I’d read recently had been written by a man. There is, of course, nothing wrong about books written by men, except that we generally tend to pay more attention to them than books by women. (Don’t believe me? Here’s the most recent VIDA Count, which shows that things are getting more equitable, but women still aren’t proportionally represented in the literary community.) One of my personal concerns about this is the way it limits readers’ exposure to different perspectives. When I realized that my own perspective – one that I thought was so feminist, so progressive! – had been pretty heavily influenced by white male writers for a long time, I thought it was time for a change. And I like a challenge, so I decided that in 2016 I would not read a single book by a man.

And I did it! And it wasn’t that hard. Technically I listened to some of the books – Audible is a subway- and sidewalk-commuter’s friend – but I believe that counts. I read/listened to 18 books this year – 19 if you count re-reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix after the election, which I do, even though the Audible book was read by a man. That’s a big number for me, because I’m a bit of a slow reader and I often get bogged down in magazines and long web articles. I also tried to read more novels this year, but the non-fiction nut in me is pretty persistent. We’ll see what I can do about that in 2017, when I’m taking on an even bigger challenge: Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge. It includes 24 prompts, including comics, romance, and poetry, three types of reading that are pretty far outside my comfort zone. But it’s not called Read Easy, so. I’m looking forward to trying some new things. And yes, I made an effort to include as many women authors as possible on my reading list for 2017, though Book Riot made that easy. They also made it easy to enforce my original 2017 reading goal: more authors of color. Here’s to more new perspectives!

In the meantime, here’s a list of what I read in 2016:

January

Anything That Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture by Dana Goodyear – I love reading non-fiction about food. This was a fun read, but felt like it could have been longer/fleshed out more. I gave it 3 stars on Goodreads.

February

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – She’s truly one of the best writers I’ve ever read. Just beautiful. 4 stars on Goodreads.

March

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx – I read and reviewed this for Uncovered Classics, a project to bring more attention to women writers of the 20th century. I struggled a bit with this book, but I was proud of how the review turned out! 3 stars on Goodreads.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott – I read this at the suggestion of the instructor of a memoir-writing class I took this winter. I appreciated how Lamott tied advice and gallows humor together, and she is a master of the one-liner. 3 stars on Goodreads.

April

The Empathy Exams: Essays by Leslie Jamison – So, when I first heard about/picked up this book, I didn’t see the “Essays” part, and really thought it was going to be a non-fiction book about empathy. Once I adjusted to what it was (and to the fact that I was reading some seriously heavy stuff on my honeymoon) I loved it. And then I decided to write the book I thought it was going to be. 4 stars on Goodreads.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot – Read. This. Right. Now. (But maybe not if you’re on your honeymoon, like I was when I read it. I really could have picked more vacation-appropriate books! Oh well. It was worth it.) 5 stars on Goodreads.

May

The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan – This is an awesome history lesson told through the stories of a group of The Girls. I had some issues with the way the story was structured, and I had a little trouble following it at times, though that may have been because I listened to it rather than reading it. But this is such important history that I never learned in school and that is still very, very relevant to U.S. and global politics and engineering, so I do recommend it. 3 Stars on Goodreads.

June

My Brilliant Friend (The Neapolitan Novels #1) by Elena Ferrante – I loved this for a lot of the same reasons everyone else in the world loved it, plus the fact that it made me imagine my own distant relatives hanging out in Naples in the early 20th century. 4 stars on Goodreads. (If it turns out Elena Ferrante is actually some man in a mansion in the California hills or something, cut me some slack, OK?)

August

Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North by Blair Braverman – The best memoir I’ve read in years, and probably my favorite book from 2016. Just gorgeous. I listened to this on Audible in Blair’s own voice, so that probably contributed to how emotional it made me, but wow. Read this. 5 stars on Goodreads.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald – I liked this, but I didn’t love it. This is probably not considered a legitimate literary critique, but it was too… melancholy? for me. And I never felt as invested in her relationship with the hawk as I felt I was supposed to. 3 stars on Goodreads, primarily for some seriously striking lines that stuck with me.

September

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard – I guess you could call this a “guilty pleasure” read, and it certainly is not that original in a world full of Katniss Everdeens, but I really enjoyed it at a time when I needed something chill to read. And I was actually surprised by a couple of the twists, so I liked it for what it was, even it if was a bit heavy on cliches. 3 stars on Goodreads.

October

The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House by Kate Andersen Brower – Can you tell I was getting into election mode? This had some really interesting nuggets, but it was a bit repetitive. I am glad I read it, but I feel like I learned more about the First Families than the people who worked in the White House, though I guess the fact that she got access to the latter at all is quite a feat. 3 stars on Goodreads.

Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots by Jessica Soffer – I picked this up while on a short vacation in Sag Harbor, Long Island, and while the writing style didn’t appeal to me at first, by the end I absolutely loved it. It’s about food, and grief, and love, and fear, and immigration, and did I mention food? I bought another copy for my mom for Christmas. (Also, props to Harbor Books and the essential oil they spray in there, which stuck to the pages until I was finished reading and made the experience that much nicer!) 4 stars on Goodreads.

November

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach – This book is gross. But I learned SO MUCH about how my body works! I think I didn’t give it more stars because I didn’t love the writing style, and after a while the footnotes got to be a little much. This is not for the weak of stomach, but it is super interesting! 3 stars on Goodreads.

December

First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies by Kate Andersen Brower – This took me a while to finish because I started it before the election and, well, you know. I did like this one more than The Residence, because I found the lives of the First Ladies really fascinating, especially Betty Ford and Hillary Clinton, but it had some of the same problems with repetition. 3 stars on Goodreads.

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West – Another one of the best memoirs I’ve read, but very different from Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube. Lindy’s writing is quick, funny, and she also uses a lot of footnotes which sometimes seem completely unnecessary, but also endearing. I identify so much with Lindy, but I was surprised by the pieces of this book that just stopped me in my tracks and had me tearing up. I also learned a lot from it. Highly recommend. 4 stars on Goodreads.

Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People by Nadia Bolz-Weber – I heard Nadia Bolz-Weber tell a story on The Moth podcast not long ago and, though I’m agnostic, I thought it would be interesting to hear more stories from this “unconventional” Lutheran reverend. I listened to this one on Audible, read by the author, and the recording had some really beautiful church music in it. It was heavier on the religion than I expected, considering what I’ve heard and read from her before, but I couldn’t exactly hold that against a reverend! I think I didn’t give it more stars because it seemed a bit without ending or closure to me. 3 stars on Goodreads.

The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are by Brene Brown – I guess this is my first time reading a self-help book, so I’m not sure what exactly I expected. I wanted more details about what all of Brene’s “research” actually is – she refers to it a lot, but I guess this wasn’t the place to actually explain it. Also, I was again a little surprised by the emphasis on “spirituality.” My point being: I’m not sure I was the right audience for this book, but I did find some gems I could take with me, as someone who is indeed a perfectionist and always working toward a better balance. 3 stars on Goodreads.

(Have you noticed that I never give below 3 stars? I really didn’t feel like anything I read this year was “bad” enough for just 2! I did give something 2 stars once – A Tale of Two Cities! I don’t remember exactly why, but it kind of cracks me up now. Also, I didn’t like Tabloid City by Pete Hamill, which I read for a book club. Just saying. I don’t upvote everything just to be nice!)

OK, see you next year. Happy reading :)

On Being a Wife

I don’t know anything about being a wife yet, so hopefully that headline didn’t fool you into thinking you’d find advice here. Instead, I wanted to share this essay: The Emotional Weight of Being a Wife. With a week left to go before my wedding, it resonated with me, and I think it will resonate with many women who have been in a heterosexual relationship.

I have spent some time over the past 15 months thinking about what it means to be a wife, and more specifically, what it will mean for me. Ultimately, I don’t think much will change about my identity. This will still be kaitlinugolik.com. My bylines won’t change either. I’ll still let dishes pile up in the sink a little too long and go some days without makeup and talk baby talk to my cat until my husband rolls his eyes (and then joins in). I’ll still be a writer and a perfectionist (although I’m working on that one) and an appreciator of all kinds of birds and cheese and books. The main difference, I predict, will be that I will be all of those things, and also part of a new family. That’s how I see what we’re doing, he and I. We’re creating a new family. It may or may not ever include children, and it will certainly include various types and numbers of animals over the years, but it will be a family, a unit of love and support.

Love and support take work, and while my almost-husband is kind and gracious and pulls his weight in many ways, it didn’t come naturally to him to do emotional family work. I don’t think it comes naturally for a lot of men, for various reasons that I won’t get into now but that essentially boil down to conditioning, in my opinion. So when I read the above piece, it was easy to empathize. So many women see the work that needs to be done and try to point it out to their partners, but something gets lost. And it gets tiring to always be the one to point it out. In one conversation I saw about this piece on Facebook, a woman said she told her partner she wanted to set aside time each week to do relationship work – talk about things that are going well and not so well, ask about each other’s needs and whether they’re being met – and he asked her which of his other relationship-related tasks – cooking, doing dishes, etc. – she would like him to skip in order to have time for this talk.

In a way, this may be an issue of mismatched “love languages.” Some people express and best receive love through acts, some through words, some through physical touch, etc. But there does seem to be a major commonality between many relationships in which women feel like they’re the only ones acknowledging the relationship – the family – as its own living, breathing thing that needs attention. Whatever the reason for that, I’m glad it’s being written about, and I hope it inspires a lot of important conversations and self-advocacy from both wives and husbands. And I’m looking forward to continuing to navigate this whole family thing in an official marriage very soon!

Why “female viagra” is not actually viagra, or necessarily a win for women

If you’re new here, I should say first that I am not a doctor or a scientist. I’m just a journalist with a passionate interest in health and science, and relevant to this post in particular, I’m a woman and a feminist. Hopefully that gives me enough credentials to critique the way much of the media has covered the new “female Viagra” known as Addyi just approved by the FDA.

My first reaction when I read about this in my Wall Street Journal iPhone app on the subway was to do a little fist pump. The idea that women’s sexual health was finally getting the same attention as men’s in the pharmaceutical industry was exciting. After further reading I got even more excited because the company that created the new drug, Sprout, is based in Raleigh, North Carolina, where a big part of my heart resides. (I know we are talking about science but I get emotional about Raleigh, deal with it.) But then I read about the side effects, which include drowsiness and nausea and get worse with alcohol, and a red flag popped up, not just because drowsiness and nausea are bad but because they are especially bad if they impair the user’s faculties during a sexual situation. The FDA, despite its approval, is apparently very worried about the side effects too: it is requiring a special label and special handling of the drug.

And here’s the other thing, which wasn’t clear in a lot of the initial reporting about Addyi: it isn’t like Viagra at all. Addyi actually started out as an antidepressant, and it allegedly improves users’ libido by affecting dopamine and serotonin, some of the brain’s “happy chemicals.” In order for it to actually do that, though, you have to take it every day, much like other antidepressants. Viagra, as you probably know, is only taken as needed, and is meant to fix a distinctly physical problem.

Another piece of the puzzle that got lost in the excitable headlines (and I am not calling out the WSJ here, that story was pretty good in my opinion): no one is really sure what Addyi is treating, or if it’s actually effective. Elizabeth Yuko, a bioethicist, addressed this on the Huffington Post today, noting:

In reality, there is no singular norm for sexual desire — in males or females — and this pathologization of women’s sexuality is detrimental to anyone not exhibiting what society deems to be a “normal” libido…

While it is undoubtedly beneficial to have an ongoing dialogue about varying levels of sexual desire, and for women to be able to speak openly about sexual dissatisfaction, it is unfortunate that it had to take place in this context.

It’s important here to take a look at who is behind all this. Many stories about Addyi painted it as a feminist triumph against Big Bad Patriarchal Pharma. The creator of the drug, Sprout, (which is, incidentally, now the subject of a $1 billion buyout bid from pharma company Valeant) put some serious money behind a lobbying group called Even the Score, which says it is aimed at achieving equality for men’s and women’s sexual health. But given the fact that many experts disagree as to the non-physical causes of low libido in women (is it a need for brain chemical adjustment or a different partner or less stressful life?), the concerning side effects, and the fact that Sprout’s husband and wife founders have broken FDA rules about misleading statements before… it’s not clear that this is really a win for anyone but Sprout, and now Valeant and its investors.

I’ve heard the other side of the argument, too: that if this helps even a few women feel better about sex in a world that tells them they should be willing to do it but never like it too much, it should be praised. People on both sides seem to have the same concern: that women still aren’t on equal footing with men when it comes to sexual health. As researchers often like to say when presenting their conclusions… I think more study is needed.

………..

Meanwhile, this whole story is also really interesting to me from a business standpoint. The Sprout/Addyi saga reminds me a lot of that of Axovant and RVT-101, an up-and-coming Alzheimer’s drug that almost didn’t happen because pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline ditched it after disappointing studies. Addyi, too, almost didn’t happen: Boehringer Ingleheim started working on it in 2006, but the FDA rejected it because it didn’t appear to have a significant effect on libido over placebos. Regardless of either drug’s efficacy, it’s interesting to see two blockbuster drugs (Axovant recently had a massive IPO, though it doesn’t yet have FDA approval) making headlines only after start-ups got hold of them. Maybe pharma is the next big industry to attract “disruptors”… and that opens up a whole box of other questions about how the interaction of science, money and lobbying impacts our health. And that’s for another post!

What happens when women gather

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending an all-day conference on gender, race and the media hosted by the NYC chapter of Women, Action & the Media (or WAM! as we like to call it). It was really incredible to be surrounded by so many talented and inspiring women (and a couple of men) all day and to hear from people like Lizz Winstead (co-creator of The Daily Show and Ladyparts Justice) and Alicia Garza (co-creator of the #BlackLivesMatter movement) as well as many journalists who shared their experiences and advice.

Being the social media savvy women that we are, of course we had a hashtag for the event: #WAMNYC (or #WAMnyc). Pretty innocuous, and something you probably wouldn’t even recognize as having anything to do with women unless you were familiar with WAM!, right? Well probably, unless you’re a member of a certain group of men who spends a beautiful Saturday cyber-stalking women in the media with the aim of harassing them. These men are called “trolls,” and while the previous sentence may sound dramatic or paranoid to you if you have not spent much time a A Woman On The Internet, it is all too true.

And yesterday was no exception! One special guy, who spends an inordinate amount of time trolling people form someone who calls himself a journalist, somehow got wind of the fact that about 100 women had gathered in a building on the campus of Barnard College, and even with no knowledge of what we were actually doing there, he decided it was unacceptable. I considered posting screen caps of some of his tweets here, but if you need proof you can find him on Twitter yourself – I’d rather not give him more air time. But he has almost 90,000 followers, and many of them are also trolls, some more willing to “disagree” by using rape and death threats than others. And that’s what they did, all day, as we tweeted quotes and comments and things we learned from the panels and keynotes. Our content was mostly about the best, most ethical way to report on gender and race, the history and creation of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, jokes and inspiring comments from Lizz Winstead and quips about the bagels and cold temperature at the venue. But that’s not allowed, according to some men. Their content was mostly things like #spankafeminist and memes showing grotesque cartoon women crying about being “disagreed with.”

The reason I bring this up at all: We were a small group of women, a few with some level of power by virtue of being editors or producers or New York Times journalists, but most of us were reporters and bloggers and writers of all stripes looking for inspiration and fellowship, not trying to start a war. Just trying to carve out a place where our voices were valued, where we didn’t have to compete with the noise that bombards us all every day, where we could talk frankly with each other about our passions and concerns.

That’s threatening to some people, I know. Trolling isn’t a new concept to me. I’ve written about it before. But many people don’t know the reality of this, and it was the first time I got to see the genesis of a trolling attack in real time. I had long suspected that many of these men (and they are mostly men, though not all) simply noticed that women were talking and took issue with that, regardless of whether they actually read or understood what these women were saying. That was so blatantly obvious in this case that it amazed me; McCain and a few others had literally no idea what WAM stood for (though they had guesses – “Women Against Men???”) and yet they identified it as a threat and called out their dogs, who just want blood, regardless of the fabricated reason.

My point is, it doesn’t matter how many of us there are, or what we say or mean. It’s just the fact that we’re there, especially when we’re tethered to each other by an idea or movement via hashtag, that is deemed worth punishing. They are so afraid of women – especially women who call themselves feminists – that whatever we are saying or doing, it must be stopped, so they smear us and lie about us so others will be afraid too.

Luckily, the “top” tweets on the hashtag are mostly from actual participants in the conference and they are witty, insightful, poignant, and true. This time we weren’t silenced. I highly recommend searching the tag on Twitter to read some of the great things that came out of the day. I personally feel very moved and inspired. I got MUCH more out of this conference than annoyance at trolls, but it seemed worth mentioning here, for those who aren’t aware of just how often this happens. And this was really nothing compared to what trolls are capable of.

But it’s also a reminder that if my mere existence as a Woman With An Opinion Online is so threatening, maybe I can use this power I didn’t even know I had to do something good.

Wedding Wednesday – Congrats or Best Wishes?

Yes, I promised I would not make this a wedding blog and yes, I am sticking to that promise. But, being barely a week into engagement and overwhelmed by well-wishes and questions from family and friends, it’s on my mind right now so it’s going on the blog. [Side note: I think I’ll keep wedding-related posts to Wednesdays (so I can take advantage of #weddingwednesday, obviously) so whether you are excited or repulsed by the idea, keep that in mind!]

After the big question had been asked and answered and our fingers warmed up enough to use our phones (it was really cold that day!) we started to call our family and friends to let them know the good news. We heard all manner of “congratulations!” and when we put the news on Facebook a couple days later, people from our pasts came out of the woodwork to say the same, with varying levels of all-caps and punctuation. It wasn’t until I got back to work on Monday and shared the news that I heard a slightly different response: “best wishes!” I didn’t think anything of it — it’s just another way of saying “congratulations,” right? — until a little later when another coworker spelled it out: “You say ‘congratulations’ to the groom, but ‘best wishes’ to the bride!”

Is this a thing? I had never heard of it before. I wondered if it might be regional, but, although I grew up in the south, my family is from Connecticut and no one among them or my fiancé’s family has brought this up. It doesn’t seem to be a generational thing either, since all of the women in my office seemed to be familiar with it and our ages range across at least three decades. I did some googling, and it seems that more than anything, it’s an etiquette thing.

Here is where I confess that I am not “in to” etiquette. I was taught to say please and thank you and to hold doors for people when they’re coming in behind me and make eye contact when speaking, basic manners stuff. But when it comes to who is “supposed” to say what to whom and when and how…*yawn.* I remember in middle school, in High Point, North Carolina, we had a week-long etiquette lesson for some reason. I don’t remember which class it was part of or if it was required by some Mandatory Southern Etiquette Curriculum or something, but an outside expert came in a few times and taught us what to do with our napkins and forks and not to put our elbows on the table. At the end, we had a lunch — sorry, a luncheon — during which we sat boy-girl-boy-girl and ate little sandwiches without making any crumbs and each boy had to present the girl to his right with a fake rose. My rose boy was one of the most popular boys in school so naturally I was very excited about that part. Unfortunately, he was still a 13-year-old boy, so he wasn’t super enthused. But that moment, when he made eye contact with me for about a quarter of a second and dropped a plastic rose in front of my plate, is my main memory of my etiquette training.

I honestly may not have even thought the word “etiquette” again until this week, when I started going through the many daunting wedding planning lists on The Knot and on Pinterest (most of which direct back to The Knot). Did you know that the bride’s parents are supposed to throw the engagement party?  And that the bridesmaids or either the bride or groom’s mother is supposed to throw the shower? And you have to tell every single person in both families before you tell social media. And don’t even get me started on this “who pays for what” breakdown.

Yes, I know these are not hard and fast rules, but they are common traditions, and almost every day I come across one that I didn’t realize was “a thing” before. Some of them make sense to me based on the history of marriage, and some just for pure organizational purposes. But a lot of it seems somewhat superfluous, and I can’t help but wonder how these lists and “rules” make people with “non-traditional” families feel. In a way, these how-tos end up being “compare-yourself-tos” for even the happiest and healthiest of couples. What about people with little money or strained family relationships? I guess that’s why we have sites like A Practical Wedding, which has already become my favorite destination for posts that will bring me back down to earth and reassure me that yes, it’s OK if I’m not an etiquette queen, and provide advice on how to explain that to questioning friends and relatives.

Which brings me back to the “congrats” vs. “best wishes” debate. Allegedly, it’s rude to congratulate a woman for “landing a man,” because it implies that she had trouble doing so or didn’t have a choice about who to marry. Best wishes is better in that case, while the man can be congratulated for successfully convincing the bride to say yes…

First of all, I hope there aren’t still many couples getting engaged without discussing it first. It baffles me to think that there are still a significant number of men who propose without being pretty confident in the answer. On that same note, marriage is obviously a partnership. I don’t feel lucky that my fiancé picked me, and I don’t think he would use that word to describe his feelings either. We’ve worked on this relationship for almost eight years, and we had many conversations about our commitment to that work going forward. That doesn’t sound sweet and romantic I guess, but it’s real, as is this comment from Miss Manners herself on the “congrats” vs. “best wishes” conundrum:

“[T]oday’s brides hear far worse. Those who are repeatedly told ‘It’s about time!’ and asked ‘Are you pregnant?’ are only too happy to accept kind thoughts, however they are phrased.”

New Year, New Plans, New Goals

Happy New Year! I hope you had a nice break from whatever it is you do with your days and are adjusting to normal life again smoothly. (If not, here’s a cute puppy picture that really helped me today.)

My 2015 has already been pretty exciting – I suddenly find myself getting ready to plan a wedding! Meanwhile, I’m working on a big project at work, along with a few smaller ones, and spinning my wheels on a few exciting freelance ideas.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my plans for this blog. Last year was just about seeing if I could do it. Could I maintain this thing with relative frequency while working full time and training for the marathon? Turns out…kind of! This year I’m going to focus more on quality of posts, and keep things divided into categories. Mainly: health/science stories that interest me and media critique. And yes, there will also be some wedding-related posts. I’m not going to share ring pictures or my Pinterest boards or anything, but if you’re interested in money and sociology and how those things interact and make the world turn, which I am, it’s a hard topic to pass up!

I’ve already noticed a few things that have surprised or annoyed me, and I’ve only been engaged for 5 days! But I’ll save those for another post. For now, I just want to do a mini link dump of a few things I read over the holidays that I think are worth sharing:

A Century of Silence by Raffi Khatchadourian in The New Yorker. This is a long read, but it’s well worth it. It’s a look at the author’s family’s experience with the Armenian genocide, and his own experience returning to his ancestral home in Turkey last year, as the government – or at least more Turks – appears to be slowly coming around to acknowledging the event and atoning for it.

I’m Trying Not To Hate Men by Laura Bogart in Salon. A beautifully written essay in which the author tries to reconcile the violence she has experienced at the hands of men and the seemingly endless stream of stories about such violence with her desire to rise above and live a fearless life.

Before Setting New Goals, Evaluate The Previous Ones by Carl Richards in The New York Times. One of the better New Year’s Resolutions stories I saw floating around this year, this one makes a great point: it doesn’t make much sense to make a bunch of new resolutions if you don’t take a look back at how well you followed your previous ones. If you’re just not great at resolutions…maybe try a different kind of goal-setting?

Would love to hear your thoughts on any/all of these!

Apple & Facebook’s “game changer”

Facebook and Apple have apparently decided to cover egg freezing for female employees. I have some thoughts about this….but first, a small note about my recent absence: I’m currently on vacation back home in North Carolina after finishing up my last couple of weeks of work at Law360. Next Monday, I’ll be starting a new job! It’s an exciting change, and the transition process has had me pretty busy lately. Thankfully I have a week to relax in between, and I’m trying to really do just that, but I couldn’t stay away from this space for long!

OK, down to business. I usually save topics like this for “Feminist Friday,” but every day this week is a basically Friday for me so when I came across this story I thought, why not? From NBC:

Facebook recently began covering egg freezing, and Apple will start in January, spokespeople for the companies told NBC News. The firms appear to be the first major employers to offer this coverage for non-medical reasons.

“Having a high-powered career and children is still a very hard thing to do,” said Brigitte Adams, an egg-freezing advocate and founder of the patient forum Eggsurance.com. By offering this benefit, companies are investing in women, she said, and supporting them in carving out the lives they want.

In a vacuum, this policy seems like it could only be a good thing. If women want or need to freeze their eggs so that they can get pregnant at a later date, it’s great that huge companies like Facebook and Apple want to cover those procedures.

But is this really a “game-changing” perk, as NBC says? And if it is, what does that say about the state of things for women in the corporate and tech world? What does it mean when Facebook and Apple will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to help women freeze their eggs so that they can put off pregnancy in favor of their careers?

With notoriously male-dominated Silicon Valley firms competing to attract top female talent, the coverage may give Apple and Facebook a leg up among the many women who devote key childbearing years to building careers. Covering egg freezing can be viewed as a type of “payback” for women’s commitment, said Philip Chenette, a fertility specialist in San Francisco.

This is probably great news for some women, but is painting it as the way to “attract top female talent” really the statement tech wants to be making? Doesn’t it suggest that career and child-rearing are mutually exclusive, and that the reason women don’t enter the field in the first place, or leave, is because they want to have children? Studies have shown that’s just not true in many cases. More women seem to leave because of the hostile culture of the corporate world, and when they do cite children as the reason, it’s often because of the stubborn patriarchal ideal that the mother should take on the majority of the childcare responsibilities.

Offering to cover the cost of freezing eggs is great, and I’m definitely not suggesting Facebook and Apple reverse course on this. But making such a commitment to what is a relatively uncommon and invasive procedure and suggesting that it’s some kind of solution or salve for the huge “woman problem” in the industry just feels wrong.

What might be better? I have a few ideas:

• Better maternity and paternity leave policies and flexible work schedules
• A campaign to combat the idea that pregnancy and motherhood somehow render women less capable of doing their jobs
• A dedicated effort to addressing the sexism and harassment that is far too common in the tech industry
• An honest, empathetic statement of acknowledgment of the other reasons women may leave the industry and a concerted effort aimed at fixing those problems

I’m happy for the women in tech who really want to freeze their eggs and now will have the support of their employers. But is this a “game-changer” for anyone else? I’d argue no.

feminist friday: #heforshe

As you probably know by now, earlier this week actress Emma Watson, who also holds the title of UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, made a speech at the UN about a new project she is spearheading, known as He For She. It’s a gender equality campaign that focuses on showing men how and why they should be part of the feminist movement.

Watson’s speech was poignant and widely praised, and rightfully so. It’s not often that you hear people – even celebrities – stand up and say out loud that we have a serious gender inequality problem and that men need to step up and help us fix it.

While it was a great step though, it had its share of flaws. Pointing out those flaws isn’t an indictment of Watson, it doesn’t invalidate the good she’s doing. Voices from the communities that she glossed over or didn’t mention speaking out to remind her that they’re here and they’ve been saying what she’s saying for years is not oneupsmanship; it’s accountability.

So in that vein, for this week’s Feminist Friday, I’m linking to a great piece on Black Girl Dangerous that explains why not everyone was so enamored by Watson’s speech. One important point, for example, is that feminists have been trying to convince men to care about gender equality for a long time, and there’s a reason many don’t focus on “what feminism can do for you!”

I’ve seen a lot of interesting conversations since the speech went viral about whether or not this strategy of appealing to men by literally “inviting” them is a good one. I don’t have an answer, but I think the more diverse voices we hear on this the better. So, to balance out all of the media praise, give yourself a dose of critique from Black Girl Dangerous and these other blog posts.

feminist friday: sexual assault in the military

This week, there was one bright example of a positive, important piece of journalism that, while not “happy,” like many of the things I put in these Feminist Friday posts, is definitely worth reading. It’s a story in this month’s issue of GQ that seems to have just started making the rounds online this week, in which Nathaniel Penn delves into the military’s sexual assault problem. It focuses on men, because the men who are raped while serving in our country’s armed forces far outnumber the women who are (though we often hear that the percentage is higher for women), and the culture of the military is far from supportive, and in some ways encouraging of these crimes.

I love this piece because it gets at some clearly very important issues that do not get enough attention, and also because it does so without diminishing issues facing women. It’s not about women, just like articles about sexual assault on college campuses (which overwhelmingly impact women) are not about dismissing male victims. It’s an important statement on the fact that the way we talk about rape – especially in the military – should acknowledge male victims and better define perpetrators and their motives (i.e. power, not sex). Amanda Marcotte wrote a short follow-up for Slate that suggests we be more careful with conflating rape with “violence against women” all the time.

It’s a delicate balance, and it requires a nuance that is context-dependent (are we talking about the general population? The military? College campuses?) that can be difficult to achieve when feeling endangered or attacked, as so many understandably do in discussions about sexual assault.

I can already feel the response thinkpieces coming about how the reason this piece had to be written was because feminists have commandeered the conversation about rape, or because our culture cares too much about women and not enough about men. My hope is that instead, it will serve to bring a greater focus on sexual assault in the military and let male victims who feel invisible or disbelieved know that they are being heard, while also being an example of how the sexual assault crises facing men and women are not — or should not be — in competition.

Feminist Friday roundup

There’s always a lot floating around the internet to elicit eye rolls and rage reads from a feminist, but this week I’ve seen so many great satirical jabs back at the patriarchy that I decided to wrap them all up in one post that I can hopefully come back to in future times when it feels harder to laugh at these things.

First, one of the many amusing responses to the Women Against Feminism Tumblr: 

Then there was the creation of this hilarious Twitter feed:

Do yourself a favor and click that picture and read all of the other gems.

And then, there were these two videos about catcalling that were so spot-on while also being so funny and cathartic that I was briefly reminded of how redeeming the internet can be.

The Smile Bitch Training Camp

And: What Men Are Really Saying When Catcalling Women

Check back next Friday, I will probably make this a weekly feature. It might not always be so lighthearted though, so luckily we have these to look back on. And, who knows, maybe the sudden influx of things like this is a sign that more publications are getting comfortable with this kind of content. Time will tell.