Hear Them Roar
Sommers, Christina
Hear Them Roar by Christina Sommers Helen Reddy warbled her signature song "I Am Woman" in lieu of the national anthem as 3,000 of her gender gathered in Washington to join Gloria Steinem, Molly...
...Foundation...
...The AAUW was founded in 1881 to foster excellence in women's education...
...One victory was already chalked up...
...It's to articulate the women's agenda for the 1996 election...
...Lest Steinem seem too militaristic, Frances Fox Piven of the City University of New York later assured the audience that "the 50 percent cut in the military was just the first stage toward total demilitarization...
...According to Ms., "Mathai-Davis did not initially see it as an activist organization...
...They are not overly fond of Bill Clinton, but he can confidently depend on their loyalty and zealotry...
...According to Michelman, the Democrats won support from between 20,000 and 25,000 pro-choice Republican and independent women her group had influenced...
...Bryant told the assembled feminists how the AAUW acted on this finding by forming an umbrella group called the Women's Network for Change...
...A group called FairTest reported significant progress in its fight against the Educational Testing Service...
...Now, the YWCA has joined the AAUW's political network, and Mathai-Davis herself is heading the campaign to save affirmative action in California...
...It's to get out the vote...
...But if you have a reputation for being involved with flowers or music, you can get through the door...
...Each group is charged with getting the alerts to as many women as possible...
...I lost everything...
...Expo '96 is an object lesson on how successful the feminist activists have been at politicizing women's organizations whose leaders have hitherto been moderate and politically nonpartisan...
...Their kind of "voter education campaign" cannot be allowed to go unanswered...
...No, she said quickly...
...Mathai-Davis, along with Candace Gingrich (Newt's gay half-sister) and Susan Sarandon, has just been honored as a Ms...
...Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), claimed that in the recent Oregon Senate election won by Democrat Ron Wyden, her group deployed "five hundred volunteers . . . trained in sophisticated voter recruitment...
...More recently, AAUW has initiated a Voter Education Campaign whose goal is "to build broad networks of women's communities by providing concrete nonpartisan information about congressional action that will affect their lives...
...Steinem, who was at the podium, shouted, "This woman deserves a national medal...
...The leaders and troops of Expo '96 are aggressive, very well organized, ideologically committed, and, so far, not seriously challenged...
...Among the member groups are feminist activist organizations such as NOW, Planned Parenthood, and the Ms...
...Anne Bryant, executive director of the American Association of University Women, talked about the association's new approach to political action...
...The younger women in the audience were enraged but not surprised at this example of patriarchal injustice...
...The YWCA is the nation's oldest and largest women's organization, and its leadership has recently changed from mainstream to activist...
...My house was burned down twice, once by an enraged ex-husband...
...In a session called "Funding Feminism for Tomorrow" a woman from the Philadelphia Main Line dispensed tips on how to get donations from wealthy conservative women: "They regard women's causes as kooky...
...When one participant plaintively objected to the unprecedented dearth of lesbian workshops, a speaker gently explained that it was her understanding that lesbian workshops would have been a distraction: "What I was told by the people who were organizers is that the primary purpose of this conference is political...
...Prema Mathai-Davis became the YWCA's national executive director less than two years ago...
...With its 150,000 members and a multimillion-dollar budget, the association has proved itself to be a past master of nonpartisan partisanship...
...President Clinton sent a welcoming letter to the conference participants in which he alluded to the role the Expo '96 feminists were expected to play in November...
...But the AAUW has attracted more mainstream organizations, such as Girls Inc., the American Jewish Congress, and-the AAUW's most prized acquisition-the YWCA of the USA...
...Christina Sommers is a professor of philosophy at Clark University and author of Who Stole Feminism...
...You will never find it...
...And so it went, seemingly just another gathering of the kind of feminists who believe that women are under siege in our "hetero-patriarchal" society...
...Hear Them Roar by Christina Sommers Helen Reddy warbled her signature song "I Am Woman" in lieu of the national anthem as 3,000 of her gender gathered in Washington to join Gloria Steinem, Molly Yard, Bella Abzug, and Patricia Ireland at "Feminist Expo '96 for Women's Empowerment...
...Professor Ronnie Steinberg from Temple University offered herself as proof that patriarchal tests are useless for measuring women's intelligence: "I did very poorly on the SAT and even worse on the GREs, and I am a professor of Women's Studies...
...The man who forced me to sign the form is dead...
...The NARAL volunteers did not merely make sure people were registered, they made up to five follow-up calls to make sure people sent in their ballots...
...Two years ago, it successfully lobbied Congress to pass the Gender Equity Act, which provides millions of dollars to deal with a "national tragedy" the AAUW had uncovered-the tragedy of our demoralized, "shortchanged" schoolgirls, who need federal protection from gender bias in the schools...
...I later asked this woman if she still had a copy of the agreement she had been forced to sign...
...You do have to be a little sneaky...
...In a sense, Expo '96 was a gigantic workshop on how the 299 sponsoring feminist tax-exempt "nonprofits" could remain nonpartisan while putting the resources of their organizations to work for the Democratic party...
...At one session, a middle-aged woman stood up and told the audience that when she was a medical student at Wayne State University in the 1960s, she had been forced to sign an agreement promising she would never get married and would never have children...
...Don't even try...
...panel called for abolishing college entrance tests because examinations like the SATs are sexist, classist, racist-and, as one participant observed, "tests impact negatively on self-esteem...
...How Women Have Betrayed Women...
...she spoke at Expo '96, manifesting the right feminist consciousness and drawing nodding agreement when she said, "Men have shown us that they do not know how to be inclusive...
...The medical school does not have a copy because when bureaucracies change, they purge all the records...
...Several women on the "Let's Change the Rules...
...The network is a coalition of some 40 women's groups, which, among other activities, disseminates information "alerts" on congressional action and "women's issues...
...magazine Woman of the Year...
...Officially, Expo '96 was intended to celebrate feminist achievement and "visualiz[e] a feminist future for the new millennium...
...No," she said...
...Reddy's appearance was not the only unintentional comedy of the Expo...
...I think it would be great if you considered writing a book...
...Women voters do not trust politicians, Bryant proudly announced: "They trust other women...
...Repeating the word "empowerment" four times in a single page, Clinton praised the conference's attention to "voter mobilization...
...The more immediate vision the organizers have in mind is defeating Republicans in the 1996 elections...
...Bryant reported on studies on why women vote and whom they trust for reliable information on the issues...
...I would be happy to help you to find a publisher...
...Was there anyone at Wayne State who might have a copy...
...In recent years, however, its leadership has pushed a hard-line feminist agenda...
...There was Steinem, always good for a laugh, calling for the overthrow of the "jock-ocracy" by cutting the military budget 50 percent immediately: "We don't have enemies anymore," she declared, except, perhaps, for jocks...
Vol. 1 • February 1996 • No. 22
