As you know, the American Values blogger Brad Wilcox suggested that I abandon my feminist positions, based on the remarkable work of "Pioneering neuropsychiatrist" Louann Brizendine in "The Female Brain." Since the Family Scholars blog of the American Values Institute no longer takes comments, I wrote to him to remind him that Mark Liberman had pretty much torn her book into a Million Little Pieces. He was good enough to respond as follows:

"Linda-

Thanks for your "comment." The site is no longer taking comments because they don't have the staff resources at this point to devote to it (takes several hours a day!).

But I have to admit you win this battle. The more I hear about Brizendine the less I like. Too sloppy with the facts. Hey, I like Erma Bombeck but a lot of the claims Brizendine makes are sloppy--like the idea that men think about sex virtually all the time."

On Tuesday, I wrote asking him to retract the attack on me in public, rather than in a private email:

"So when are you going to post this retraction on the Family Scholars Blog? I think it is kind of unfair play to tell me to call my office IN AUGUST and say nothing further when Mark Liberman destroys her patently ridiculous claims every day. I’ll watch and hope that you are faithful to your principles and participate in the retraction fest for this junk, which, I hope, will take less than twenty years this time.

If we did not live in a mass democracy, I’d think this Brizendine business was funny. But any sociologist ought to know enough Tocqueville to know that it’s not funny"

So far, nothing. Exactly which American Value is advanced in using The Female Brain against feminism and then, knowing it to be a bunch of junk, refusing to withdraw the comment. Take it down, Brad. Take it down.

Posted by Linda Hirshman at 04:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Periodically someone tries to pull the teeth on my feminist manifesto by contending that women are not really opting out of the work force to take care of their babies. Every time some Mommy Blogger retails it, I get a bunch of gotcha comments. As if women's participation levelling off at around 50% and women working the second shift forty years after the publication of the Feminine Mystique weren't enough for a feminist manifesto.

Since, unlike some commentators on female politics, I do not get my data from wingnut marriage manuals or from Erma Bombeck, may she rest in peace, I do not normally worry about such junk. But periodically I feel obliged to remind the blogging world that
1. Get To Work reported the opting out behavior of the Times Brides I actually interviewed, 85% of whom actually quit upon marriage or childbirth
2. The census data reflects that the work force participation of mothers with graduate and professional degrees has at least levelled off if not dropped. "On average, then, hightly educated women with small children are working full time at about a fifty percent rate." (GTW, p. 8)
3. "Revolution is probably overstating it, but something is clearly going on." ( GTW, p. 8)

In July the Washington Post summed up a professional survey of the overall data (not broken out as to class and education, so not directly relevant to GTW) as follows:
"Contrary to popular theory, Labor Department data do not show a rising proportion of women dropping out of the workforce to spend time with their families. Indeed, the participation rate has fallen since 2000 for both women with children and women without children.

While nonworking women are still much more likely than men to cite "home responsibilities" as their reason for not holding or seeking a job, that's actually less true now than it was in the past. The share of women aged 25 to 54, considered to be in their "prime" working years, who gave that reason for not seeking employment has shrunk for more than a decade. The share of men citing that reason has edged up over the same period, according to a Labor Department analysis of census survey figures from 1990 to 2003.

The female participation rate peaked below the men's, though, because women still take out more time to care for children and other relatives, analysts say and the data show.

"During soft economic times, women with young children will be more likely to stay home if they can afford not to work. This is not a new trend; it's just common sense," Russell wrote. She added in an interview that the women's participation rate will probably never match the men's rate because of childbearing. "That is the biological gap."

Remind me again about why it is that women with children stay home and men don't? Can't be the Female Brain. That we learned yesterday, right?

Posted by Linda Hirshman at 04:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On the inaccessible [no place for comments that I could find] "Family Scholars Blog" of the "Institute for American Values," Brad Wilcox, who never saw a stay at home mom study he didn't like, advises me to "Call My Office," because, gasp, that pioneering neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine has wrapped it all up in The Female Brain. Here's Brad on the female brain:

"THE FEMALE BRAIN

Linda Hirshman, call your office. A slew of books have been coming out from (mainly female) scholars discussing the way in which sex differences are linked to differences in social behavior and perceptions among men and women, with a big focus on the implications of sex differences for family life. Scholars who deny this biological reality are increasingly coming to look like fundamentalists who deny evolution."

One would think that a tenured or tenure track sociologist at a first rate university like the University of Virginia would be a little careful about comparing The Evolution of Species to a book that relies on Erma Bombeck. Of course Brad did not have the benefit of University of Pennsylvania Professor Mark Liberman's devastating debunking of the Brizendine nonsense. See my post of yesterday, awarding her the First Annual "More Likely to Be Killed By A Terrorist than Marry Retraction" Award for 2006 for the idiotic Female . . . Brain.

Posted by Linda Hirshman at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Announcing The 2006 "More Likely To Be Killed By a Terrorist Than Marry Retraction" Award to Louann Brizendine, for "The Female Brain"

This summer Newsweek Magazine retracted its twenty year old story predicting that educated women over thirty were more likely to be killed by a terrorist than find a man who would marry them. Terry Martin Hekker ("Ever Since Adam and Eve") retracted her 1979 advice that women wrap themselves in Saran and greet their hubbies with a cold martini after her husband left her eligible for food stamps and is now working on a new piece of advice, "Ignore Previous Book." The woman who invented Sequencing ("Sequencing") is now recommending sticking it out. To paraphrase Fiddler On the Roof, "Retractions! Retractions!"

Despite the retractions, terrible methodology and hostility to women's aspirations combine to create an apparently unlimited market for books that punish ambitious women. Every day I turn on my TV and see another such volume or report. So I have decided to create a prize. I will restrain myself to giving it only once a year, although the competition will be keen. It's the "More Likely to Be Killed By a Terrorist Than Marry Retraction" Award for the dumbest, most obviously concocted, damaging suggestion in the area of women's lives, which, after two decades of terrorizing the women it purports to help, is absolutely guaranteed to generate a belated retraction, sort of like pulling out the emptied fang of a spent rattlesnake.

This year's winner is the transparently nonsensical "Female Brain" by self-proclaimed (honest, it's on her book publicity) "pioneering neuropsychiatrist" Louann Brizendine. In The Female Brain, Brizendine, a San Francisco Bay area psychiatrist, who runs a clinic she started to help women who think their mental problems are caused by their hormones, describes the life cycle of a contemporary American educated, neurotic, urban, privileged professional in a culture in which science is just another option, as if she had discovered Lucy, the mother of all mankind. Behavior familiar to many of us only from the wonderful bad Heather literature is presented as hard-"wired" ( the abuse of the term "wired" has already attracted the fury of the neuroscientist, Caltechgirl, not usually known for her liberal opinions, on her blog) into the female brain. Brizendine's description of the hard-"wired" cervix and brain-softening, uncontrollable urge to mate with one's newborn baby, which makes wholesale desertion of the work place is as irresistible as the law of gravity, is the closest thing to soft porn I've seen emerging from the San Francisco Medical Center in a long time. For the many women who would find Brizendine's transparently autobiographical description of the stages of a woman's life almost entirely unfamiliar, the possibility that the book is false seems immediately obvious. If it were true, The Female Brain would be a scary book indeed. But of course it's not.

Insecure readers might coubt their own sanity when reading the thing, because the short book is supplemented by mind-numbing pages of citations to scientific journals. But happily as far as I know the articles Brizendine cites bear essentially no relationship to the propositions in the text of the book. As the only real academic to look at it reveals, she might as well have cited to passages in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." The methodology is the all-too-familiar incredible assertions supported by a Million Little Pieces of unrelated footnotes.

"Science" books with faux citations are a problem. But perhaps a worse problem is that not a single book reviewer in the country took the time to go to the local university library and see whether Brizendine's "sources" actually said what she said they said. Even Robin Marantz Henig, of the staggeringly self-justifying, endlessly publicly edited and allegedly tansparency-seeking New York Times, was content to whimper that the closed sourcing of the scientific journals Brizendine's cites made it impossible for her to check their truthiness (thank you, Stephen). The insurmountable barrier of a (no transfer) subway ride from the Times offices in Times Square to the Columbia University library was apparently too much for this dauntless investigative reporter from the Newspaper of Record.

Blessedly, Mark Liberman, the Trustee Professor of Phonetics, Department of Linguistics and Professor, Department of Computer and Information Science, at the University of Pennsylvania, was intrigued enough by Brizendine's unlikely assertion that "A woman uses about 20,000 words per day while a man uses about 7,000" to try to run down that one building block of her Mars/Venus "neuropsychiatry." He reports on his blog first, that there was absolutely no legitimate source whatsoever for the factoid and speculating that some marriage counselor must have made it up, then, that metasurveys revealed no such thing, and finally, doing his own test found that men use more words than women do!

Alerted to the possibility that Brizendine might have made it all up, and his appetite whetted by the confessed public failure of the avatar of all the news that's fit to print, Liberman rummaged among his books and fired up his online university library system and investigated the citations for Brizendine's assertion that “studies indicate that girls are motivated — on a molecular and a neurological level — to ease and even prevent social conflict.”

Here's what he found:

"My summaries of these articles, in the context of Brizendine's claims [that studies indicate girls are motivated on a molecular and neurologicallevel to ease and even prevent social conflict]:

1. Jasnow 2006: shows that "long-term estrogen treatment in ovariectomized female mice via Silastic capsule implantation [faciliated] both contextual and cued fear conditioning". By "fear conditioning" they mean teaching individual mice to "freeze" in anticipation of electric shocks delivered via a test cage shock floor. Nothing here about social conflict avoidance or preserving relationships or humans of any sex.
2. Bertolino 2005: fMRI of 14 phobic-prone subjects and 14 eating-disorder-prone subjects showed that "phobic prone subjects selectively recruit the amygdala to a larger extent than eating disorders prone subjects". The level of amygdala activity "was also independently predicted by personality style and genotype of the serotonin transporter". In each group of 14, 9 were female and 5 were male, and the results are not differentiated by sex. Nothing here about social conflict or preserving relationships or teenagers of any sex.
3. Hamann 2005: A review article on sex differences in amygdala response. Connects the amygdala to women's "stronger and more vivid memories for emotional events" and to "the greater role that visual stimuli play in male sexual behavior". Male amydala is bigger. Abnormal amygdala response has been observed in depression. Speculates about relation to sex differences in rates of PTSD and voyeurism. Nothing here about social conflict avoidance or preserving relationships or teenagers.
4. Huber 2005: After determining "the distribution of vasopressin and oxytocin receptors in the CeA [central amygdala] using autoradiography on horizontal rat brain sections", they used intracellular recording to "find that vasopressin and oxytocin modulate activity in CeM neurons in opposite ways through the activation of distinct elements of an inhibitory network" and that "can differently affect the integration of distinct afferents to the CeA into a common output to the autonomic nervous system, thus providing a neurophysiological mechanism for their opposite effects on anxiety and fear behavior". Nothing here about sex differences, about social conflict avoidance, about preserving relationships, or about humans of any age or sex.
5. Pezawas 2005: They used "used multimodal neuroimaging in a large sample of healthy human subjects" to explore the basis of "increased anxiety-related temperamental traits, increased amygdala reactivity and elevated risk of depression" in "carriers of the short allele of a functional 5' promoter polymorphism of the serotonin transporter gene". They found "reduced gray matter volume in short-allele carriers in limbic regions critical for processing of negative emotion, particularly perigenual cingulate and amygdala". There were 114 subjects. They don't break their data down by sex, although they correlate genotyping and structural imaging with functional imaging results and also with personality-assessment questionnaires. Nothing here about sex differences, about social conflict avoidance, about preserving relationships, or about teenage girls.
6. Sabatinelli 2005: Looked at "functional activity in the visual cortex and amygdala with fMRI while selected fearful and control participants view a range of neutral, emotionally arousing, and fear-relevant pictures", and found an "individually-sensitive, positive linear relationship between the arousing quality of visual stimuli and activation in amygdala and ventral visual cortex". Subjects were 18 females from an undergrad psych course, half selected for "high snake fear". Stimuli were 60 color pictures showing "complex neutral scenes, neutral people, non-threatening animals, snakes, erotica, and mutilations". You'll never guess: "participants reporting elevated snake fear were more reactive while viewing pictures of snakes than unselected volunteers". Nothing here about sex differences or social conflict avoidance or preserving relationships.
7. Viau 2005: "To explore the nature by which gender differences in HPA [hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal] function emerge we examined in prepubertal (~30-d-old) and postpubertal (~60-d-old) male and female rats HPA activity under basal conditions and in response to 30 min of restraint." They found sex and age differences, and concluded that "gonadal regulation of the HPA axis develops via distinct mechanisms" in male and female rats. Nothing here about social conflict avoidance or about preserving relationships.
8. Wilson 2005: They tested 4 dominant and 3 subordinate female rhesus monkeys, and found that estradiol replacement increased plasma levels of cortisol compared to a placebo and treatment with P4. Because Penn lacks a subscription to this journal, and I was unwilling to pay $30 for a 7-page article, I'm not sure about the details. Unlike the other articles cited, it does have something to do with social interaction, but there's apparently no direct relevance to social conflict avoidance or preserving relationships.
9. Phelps 2004: A review article about how the amygdala and the hippocampal complex interact: "the amygdala can modulate both the encoding and the storage of hippocampal-dependent memories. The hippocampal complex, by forming episodic representations of the emotional significance and interpretation of events, can influence the amygdala response when emotional stimuli are encountered." Discussion of sex differences is interesting but equivocal: "Recent brain imaging studies have suggested that the left and right amygdala could be differentially involved in memory for emotional stimuli depending on the sex of the subject. Specifically, two recent studies have shown that the left amygdala is correlated with later memory for emotional stimuli in female subjects, whereas the right amygdala is correlated with memory for emotional stimuli in male subjects" [...] "However, studies examining emotional memory or physiological responses to emotional stimuli in patients with amygdala damage have failed to find such sex differences. These studies have tended to be consistent with previous studies on hippocampal function showing a material specific involvement of the left and right amygdala for verbal and visual material, respectively." Nothing here about social conflict avoidance or preserving relationships."

Inspired by Liberman, I did a little snooping into the vita of the self-proclaimed UCSF Professor and found that she is in fact not an academic professor, but a clinical professor, running a clinic she herself founded treating women's psychiatric problems from a hormonal standpoint, at $180 a session.

Now clinical professors do good and important work in many institutions, but this does mean that she has not had to undertake and meet the rigorous competition for an academic position at a leading medical school. Just as well. During her fourteen years as a "Professor," prior to the 2006 Terrorist Retraction Prize winning "Female Brain," Brizendine was an author on exactly seven papers, the most recent one published four years ago in 2002. According to PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health, which is cited on Brizendine's own academic bio webpage, she was not even the first named researcher on any of the seven. Just to put her accomplishments in context, her colleague in the psychiatry department at UCSF, Associate Professor Steven P. Hamilton, has published twenty-four papers since 1994, first listed author on eleven.
I guess it depends on what "pioneering neuropsychiatrist" is . . . is.

A quick web search for other Brizendine contributions to medical science turned up report that she told the audience at a fund-raiser that "the World Health Organization has projected that by 2003, depression will be the number one disease in the world, surpassing diabetes, heart disease and others." I guess it depends on what "number one disease" is, but I would be surprised if the WHO thought depression was a worse threat to human well-being than, say, malaria or AIDS.

The book stores are full of loony books that look at first glance like science, so it is probably too much to ask that the publisher withdraw its endorsement of The Female Brain, as publishers did in the cases of the fake memoir "A Thousand Little Pieces" and the plagiarized "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life." But I venture to guess that if a book about anything except why women should behave in old-fashioned and traditional ways contained this staggering percentage of misrepresentation and error, someone beside a blogging linguistics professor would have picked it up long ago.

And so, to Louann Brizendine, that self-described pioneering neuropsychiatrist of no apparently significant academic publications and false or unrelated data points, the First, Annual "More Likely To Be Killed By a Terrorist Retraction Award" for 2006.

Posted by Linda Hirshman at 05:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Inspired by my old friend's concern I have been publishing the letters that come in so readers of GTWM.com would share some of the good stuff I have seen since Get to Work came out in June. So I have been reading the letters more closely than I did before, and I have concluded that even the head swellingly praising ones are starting to be repetitious and that the critical ones have descended to a level unworthy of response.

Accordingly, unless something unusually interesting comes in, this third installment of the weekly letters will be the last. You may safely assume that they are running about three to one in favor. : )

The week opened with on a positive note:

Hi Linda,

Thank you for your article in the Prospect and thank you for your book.

When I read the Prospect article I was a senior at Penn in the Wharton school. At the time I’d begun to realize that if I wanted to have children I was going to have to stay home at some point (better for the kids, my own mother did it, etc). This thought was buried in the back of my mind but I resented it. It made me hesitant in stating my professional goals 10 years hence. Would I still be working? Would circumstances conspire to keep me at home, once I’d had the four kids I so desired? It seemed so unfair, such a waste. Why toil for four years at the world’s best business school only to end up changing diapers? I am the brightest in my family – the most academic. Why would I wind up changing diapers despite all my talents? It all came crashing down around me. Then your article. I was ashamed to see a bit of myself in your condemnation of women fixated on a perfect, idealistic working situation. But I loved every word.

At a fundraiser dinner party I had the opportunity to discuss feminism and workplace inequality with a CFO at Merrill Lynch – the proud wife of a stay-at-home dad. The next day, I emailed her your article. I passed it on to my mother, who stayed home for 14 years to raise my 3 siblings and me. (She returned to work after her divorce and, lacking a college degree, has never come close to achieving her pre “opt-out” earning power). I posted the Prospect link in my AOL Instant messenger profile. I wanted everyone to experience the epiphany you’d given me.

I graduated from Penn in May and am now employed as an analyst at a [identifying details omitted]. It is worth nothing that I am the only female in a firm of [ ] men. I recently bought and devoured your book. I thank you from the depths of heart. Your words changed the course of my life. I still plan to have children. But I now plan to fight for my right to work. Your arguments gave me a moral framework for articulating a position that is so often misunderstood.

When I was in high school, and Britney Spears was just dawning into public consciousness, I heard the words “female empowerment” batted around too often. I knew how I felt watching Britney Spears and it had nothing to do with empowerment. This phrase is now used to describe almost anything in what you call “choice feminism” - from stripping exercise class to staying at home. I thank you for publicly rejecting the idea that because a woman does something it is inherently feminist and empowering. Your words crystallize this point. Although you offer economic prescriptions your moral reasoning is also the perfect framework from which to view the cultural phenomena described in Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs.

A last note on economics – though I consider myself to be a well-read feminist, much of the books, outside the major works, are intuitive fluff or flights of fancy. Too long have feminists failed to offer scholarly works of real relevance. Also, coming from liberal arts and women’s studies backgrounds they often fail to fully grasp scientific and economic disciplines. Thus these books usually provide flawed analyses or shy away from economics and science completely. I greatly respected your book for your thorough understanding and use of economics (my own discipline).

I could go on forever. I respect you immensely and greatly admire your analysis of this topic. I cannot thank you enough.

Sincerely,

***

and continued with

Dear Ms. Hirshman
I want to thank you for your recent articles. I am the mother of a 2 month old daughter and a PhD student in bioengineering at the University of Maryland. I had to laugh at your descriptions of the mommyblogs in your follow-up article. I made the mistake of going to one of those boards seeking information when I was pregnant and was told that I did not care about my daughter if she went to daycare while I went back to school this semester. The truth is, I cannot imagine giving up teaching, working in my lab, attending classes, all while getting paid. Apparently the fact that we use daycare part-time and my husband (gasp!) takes over the child-rearing duties in the evening means that I am Satan incarnate. But somehow my husband is wonderful for changing the diaper of a kid he fathered.
I do have one bone to pick. Why is it that you focus on elite women? My perception of the women whose marriages are in the New York Times is of women with rich husbands and even richer fathers. There are many of us who do not have that same privilege yet are out in the world making a difference. I grew up in a working class neighborhood where all of the moms worked because it never occurred to them not to. Breadwinning and child-rearing were shared. The truth is, it is primarily only elite women who have EVER had the privilege to choose to stay at home. It is not something new! My mother, grandmothers, and most likely great-grandmothers all worked. If you write another piece could you possibly mention those of us who worked our way to enticing careers, not just those who started at the top (meaning lots of money) and never did anything with it?
Thank you,

***
Hi,

I'm really enjoying your book. I'm a Mississippi girl who escaped to England about 18 years ago. My parents never paid attention to my education because I was just going to get married & spent a fortune on trying to turn my brothers into doctors and lawyers. What a joke when it turned out that I was the smartest kid they had & my brothers couldn't make their dreams come true. But by then I was at a liberal arts college, as you could have predicted. It took me years to turn my English degree into something useful -- now I make good money as a technical writer for American multinationals in England. I also freelance -- and have written stuff for the Chicago Tribune -- I laughed when I read you writing about how the Trib could just publish a freelance mom's opinion about Iran in their pages 'cause that's what I've done with them (only I wrote about Iraq).

Anyway, in England they stream kids early based on their intelligence and aptitude so my daughter is on her way to a medical degree at a top university here so at least I have rectified the 'girl goes to liberal arts college' prob for the next generation in my family. :)

I read some American mags over here and noticed the interview with you in More mag. I also noticed that More runs articles on how great it is for women to give up their boring jobs and follow their bliss with what they really want to do like, I don't know, designing baby clothes or something. What's fascinating is how they'll say something like they are almost making what they did before but have no health insurance and no pension plan -- like that's OK. I find it so shocking that this is presented as something positive.

We are all so blind about what is best for our girls but you are helping us to see.

Keep up the good work,
[a reader in]

Reading England

I get wonderful letters from people I feel that I know, to tell me of interesting things out there in the zeitgeist that I would surely miss. Thank you and keep those calls and letters coming!

One sent me to Reason.com: http://www.reason.com/0610/cr.sc.the.shtml

She said, "The writer comes to your conclusion that both the right and left want women home with the kids. "
***
Another wondered flatteringly why Newsweek didn't come to me for their cover story on "Sequencing."
She wrote:
"Did you see the article in this week's Newsweek about moms having trouble going back to work after they've taken time off? If you haven't, here's the link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14869072/site/newsweek/.
I was a bit disappointed that they didn't call you for comment. In any case, what do you think about these companies supposedly responding to the problem? I was quite skeptical when I read it -- sounded like a lot of pie-in-the-sky solutions to me. "

The answer, of course, is that Newsweek didn't want someone debunking their drug dealing offer to women to quit because they could always come back. See my other post, on the More Likely to Be Killed By A Terrorist Award for the most damaging sexist article for more on the Sequencing trap.
***

The critical letters were pretty much as usual.

"Good day,

I have just read your article, "Unleashing the Wrath of Stay-at-Home Moms". You have undoubtedly received responses filled with extreme emotion from both sides of the issue. May I share my thoughts after 6 years of inner reflection on the debate to stay-at-home or work? Then again, why would I ask when my intention was to tell you anyways.

I have no claim to be as highly educated as yourself, and I certainly did not turn my back on any opportunity to run a large corporation. However, I do pride myself on trying to remain open minded.

LH:I WANT TO EMPHASIZE THE WRITER'S REASONING:
"My conclusion is this; mothers should do what makes them happy, because a happy mother is the best mother."
SO IF A DRUG ADDICTED MOTHER WERE THE BEST MOTHER, THAT WOULD BE HER ADVICE? WHATEVER MAKES YOU A GOOD MOTHER, WHETHER IT'S GOOD FOR YOU AS A PERSON OR NOT? WHERE ARE THE FATHERS, EXACTLY?

I am happy staying at home with my children. I don't feel as though I am superior to a working mother just because I stay at home. It shouldn't be a matter of who is superior, it is a matter of who is happier! Children want and need their mothers to be happy. If a mother is not happy staying at home then the child will know and feel it. Doesn't a child deserve a happy mother regardless of what other people think? My children are happy because I am happy, whether that happiness is produced by me staying at home as their primary caretaker or whether I work 40+ hours a week. Apologies in the advance for quoting Dr. Phil, "But if Mamma ain't happy, then nobody's happy."

Why should women continue to bicker amongst themselves over their maternal abilities. We should be supporting each other rather than feeling superior to each other, a superiority that is a front for insecurity. Now that would make a great article!

Mother of two daughters (4yrs and 6 yrs old)
***
Then there are just weird things like the following:

"Question: Dear Linda,
I am currently reading your work, "Get to work." I read your bio and noted that you argued three cases before the US Supreme Court. As a third year law student I was wondering whether you challenged the rule requiring women to wear skirts when arguing before the Supreme Court? I understand that only those who have standing may challenge the rules. If you have not made issue of this rule, why not?

Thank you,
KTe"

What?
***
But the saddest one was the following from a young woman whose name I leave off, because I am hoping that someone else is writing me, as Mark Twain famously said, and signing her name. She purports to be a third year law student, and this is how she writes [bracketed material mine]:

"dear ms. hirschman: [She misspells my name, a ridiculously careless error. I hope she does not do this when she addresses, say, a judge.]
as [Apparently, her computer does not have a shift key, as there is no capitalization anywhere in the document. In Don Marquis' immortal Archy and Mehitabel, the diarist, a cockroach, used "i" for "I" because a cockroach cannot type and hold down the shift key at the same time. It was adorable, but in human communication, it seems a little strange.] a 3rd year female law student on the brink [Brink? It's a fall of some sort?] of graduation, i was deeply offended by your article. to even suggest that women, such as myself, would put in three years of blood, sweat and tears [Law school is not fun, but I doubt it can be compared to the British experience in World War II. Repeat after me: the first person to invoke Hitler loses the argument] in order to get a "MRS" degree is ludicrous. my interest in becoming a lawyer was never motivated [passive voice] by "the dating game" - in fact, i cannot think of one of my female classmates who was. and [Beginning a sentence with "and" is very tricky and should never be done unless the writer is deliberately trying to be folksy] to suggest that leaving the workforce in 10 years in order to perpetuate the human race should force women to give back any scholarship tuition they may have received is a slap in the face to motherhood and femininity. [I am thinking that "scholarship tuition" wasn't all that well spent if "slapping femininity" is what passes for a powerful argument against my point.]

how dare you [Here's the second powerful argument]? don't you think that as more women enter the field in positions of power, the entire system will accomodate [accommodate?] our needs? instead, you think if we want to get married and have children 10 years down the line, we should have to give up the financial assistance we received? where is the logic in that? how about the men who years after law school decide that the law career is no longer suitable for them? i know a former lawyer who gave up a law career to become a high school english teacher when he had a family. should we ask him to give back his scholarship money? or does he fall outside of your proposal because he is incapable of bearing children? [apparently the writer did not actually read my article, which says explicitly that penalizing only females is not only probably unconstitutional but bad public policy]

i am not so disillusioned to think that balancing a law career and family will be simple. but changing my career 10 years down the line to accomodate [accommodate?] any family i should have is not something for which i should be punished. [So the writer apparently does plan to go to law school and, within ten years, change her career] shame on you for suggesting otherwise.

This is silly. I don't want to spend my time on this stuff, and I bet you don't either. It was bad enough when it was just erupting from the blogosphere, but these writers purport to be LAW STUDENTS. I hope they are not, but I'm certainly not going to spend more time on this stuff.

To end the letters on a happier note, here's my favorite subject matter line from this week's mail:

You are right right right right RIGHT!

I hope my friends are now reassured, and we can turn our attention to more important matters. Tomorrow, the first annual "More Likely to Be Killed By a Terrorist than Marry" Retraction award for a transparently false, yet damaging publication on women.

Posted by Linda Hirshman at 03:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For those of you interested in following the debate over my call to women to get to work, here are some of the letters that came in this week. You will see I am not culling for criticism or support, but to paint a picture of the kinds of arguments that constitute the current state of the debate, at least among people who bother to write.

Ladies Who Law School engendered a clear subset of the letters, so I will set them out separately.

LADIES WHO LAW SCHOOL

One "Murphy," who calls himself "Journalist Dad," writes:
"Has it occurred to you that perhaps you don't understand your critics? You're assuming they don't understand you.

Maybe your book is "hard" because you didn't write it clearly. I know few lawyers who would get any sympathy arguing that the jury simply failed to understand them. It's a lawyer's job to make them understand.

Maybe the successful lawyers writing angry letters to you have a sense of empathy for their peers who have opted out, and they're simply citing their own job status to say, "Hey, I'm a successful female partner sticking with this profession, and I STILL think you're wrong!"

And maybe your way of thinking here is predicated on the false notion that education is failing if the number of people staying in a narrowly defined field 10 years down the road is anything less than 100 percent. No system of education or apprenticeship sees every student or apprentice stick with the job for life.

And why 10 years? Why not 20? If a woman pays a refund at 10 years, then goes back into legal practice five years later with a renewed sense of purpose she would not have had without her break, can she get her money back?

I could go on and on, but I'll limit myself to one more -- what about women who START law school at age 40? Should they pay the state for the 15 years of lost productivity from age 25 to 40?"

* * *

So, is journalist Dad correct that I don't write clearly enough for lawyers to understand my arguments?

Here are the other letters that came in this week about my proposal that law school graduates who aren't using their professional education refund the cost of their education that is not covered by tuition (whether tuition is paid outright or by loans).

One Jewell Allston writes:

"What would be interesting is if you in fact are married, have or has raised children while actually working in your profession. Maybe you didn't make the cut in "the very inefficient" program called THE DATING GAME and are miffed. Maybe you didn't get your MRS degree because no MR's were interested. Unless these ladies you are dissin' went to school for free they have paid their debts...it's called repaying student loans. Since you want to be a social voice for the tax payer you can start by paying my tuition to law school. I plan on using whatever money I can find and go to whatever school accepts me (public or private). You needn't worry about wasting your money because my kids are almost grown and I will not be having anymore. I hope you didn't take time off of work or use the firms computer to write any of this. What would the tax payers say then? I would say get your misguided behind back to work and get a life. If men are paying attention/sleeping with you now it's because the balls you think you have are still called tits and ass.

From what I've researched, women still have a harder time getting the pay and the recognition for doing the same and even better job than their male counterparts. You've made a choice to practice law and write this article. Some women made a choice to have children after law school. Whose to say who made the better choice?

I am looking forward to reading your book but you get no real points...sell out.

Jewell"

From this I would conclude that Jewell Allston is not only incapable of reading my books or articles, she cannot even digest the elementary biographical material on the website to which she wrote, which says:

"I have had two husbands, including the present one, a biological daughter and two stepdaughters and one standard poodle, Alexis de Tocqueville. The three daughters have, among them, four graduate degrees and three jobs."

ditto with a practicing lawyer, Nancy Gergenheimer, who asked "By the way, are you practicing law with your J.D. from the University of Chicago."

Again, from the website, "After college (Cornell University, B.A. with honors) and law school (University of Chicago, J.D.), I practiced law for fifteen years, representing working men and women in their labor unions in all sorts of litigation, helping them to keep their jobs, to hang onto their collective bargaining rights and to earn legal overtime pay. As a union side labor lawyer, I participated in three cases in the United States Supreme Court: one win, one loss and one tie. When it became clear in the early eighties that organized labor was beginning its precipitous decline, I took some time out of practicing to teach law school and do some writing on behalf of less powerful people, including an essay on why the abortion movement needs to use moral language to justify its claims, “Bronte, Bloom and Bork: An Essay on the Moral Education of Judges,” published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the first of many articles on behalf of women in situations of need. While teaching law school, I won a national prize for scholarship from the Bar Association and a prize for teaching while visiting at Northwestern."

I leave it up to you, gentle readers, to decide if Journalist Dad is right or if the prose on the website is capable of conveying the information Jewell Allston and Nancy Gegenheimer needed in order to answer their questions without writing to me.

On subjects other than legal education, people wrote:

Linda,

I first saw your name on the cover of the latest edition of "Brain, Child." Then I was on a parenting blog because I work for an organization that provides parenting materials on the first five years and we had a story appearing on the site. I write all that because I don't have much time for reading blogs. "What is the big deal about this Linda Hirshman," I thought. I read a summary of your book and want to thank you for finally giving me a voice.

I have two children under 4, and my youngest is developmentally delayed, likely disabled. I asked my husband to quit his business of 10 years earlier this year to stay home with our youngest and let us cutback on the childcare costs for our oldest. What I didn't spell out specifically for him was the fact that for years my salary has been 4 to 6 times greater than what he's earned running his own small business. Boy did I feel guilty. I was emasculating him, telling him he was a failure. I had already moved to a nonprofit job from the business world to reduce my commute and had taken a $35,000 pay cut for that move but I was still apologetic. None of that grief came from my husband, it all came from my sense that the real option, the best option would be for me to stay at home.

But why would I ? Wouldn't my daughter be better off seeing a working mother? Wouldn't my education, my experience, my creative skills be better used beyond the day-to-day childrearing, especially since we had the means to afford quality 1:1 childcare. I work and I work at home. I am still the primary meal maker and grocery-shopper. I'm the medical manager for my sons special needs, tracking insurance coverage, payments and appointments. I'm the driver on our financial and investment decisions. I'm the primary source of parenting ideas. My husband is a wonderful man and a good father but lawdy-lawdy it would be nice if he was a bit more clued in. Your book starts the dialogue necessary to get more men clued in. I don't scorn stay-at-home moms but I do find it shocking that someone who's put in so much time, effort and money into obtaining a good education and a good job would give it up. There's no easy way back into the workforce. I see that with my friends who did opt-out.

I'm barely a baby boomer. With a 1964 birth date, I boomer by definition but have often been perplexed that the attitudes and values assigned to boomers rarely fit. But I am a feminist. I'm old enough to know that my mother couldn't have achieved what I've achieved. I'm smart enough to recognize equality is still too far away. Unless there's a massive shift on the way, with all those stay at home moms moving back into the workforce and right into senior management, the changes needed to support moms and dads won't take place. Shared jobs, part time work that's valid and valued, honest-to-god maternity and paternity leave, medical insurance that's not tied to the workplace. Those are all the challenges still to overcome.

I'm ranting. I just feel so relieved to be able to put to voice those thoughts I've had for years but didn't have a way to discuss. I'm a working mother and I'm not alone.

and

Question: Dear Linda,
I don't have a question...just comments. I couldn't contact you via the e-mail. I want to thank you for 'Get To Work". I read it in about two hours today (as I allowed my son to watch television...feeling completely guilt free about not entertaining my son ) I can't believe how GOOD your book made me feel.

I am the married mother of a five year old boy. When I became pregnant I was working at a local affiliate for one of the major networks. After my son was born I decided to stay home with him...taking a buyout from my company, I did this partially because I wanted to "raise my own child"...was concerned about child care, thought it didn't make sense to pay so much for a sitter...so much of the stuff you mention in your book. It was also easy to quit my job because I was so dissatisfied at work I had this romanticized notion that staying at home would be more fullfilling. When I told my bosses that I was taking the buyout to raise my son I received praise from them. I was told that I was doing the right thing--after all that's what their wives had done. During the past five years I have worked in my field part-time...including with my former employer. But now I was a part-timer...not to be taken seriously because I left to be a "mommy". I am now desperately trying to get a full time job in my field and see how much harder it is having left to work part-time. I lost my seniority...and the possibility of moving up. I think if your book was out years ago or if some one had talked to me about what happens when you "opt out" I may have made different choices. Or perhaps not...but I just wanted to say that I "get" what you're saying. Thank you...your book is really what I needed at this time in my life.

and

I don't know how you get through the e-mails from women who insist on turning this important debate into childish, ignorant, back-and-forth attacks. I get so frustrated and disillusioned reading these ridiculous comments from women who obviously either have only skimmed your fantastic essay and book or have no reading comprehension skills to speak of!!! Good for you for always doing your research and taking the high road of reason, humor and thoughtful debate.
I am, sort of, one of those mothers of which you speak and write. I graduated from a non-elite college, but I did "choose" to go part-time because that's what I thought I needed to do to be a good mother. It was really just a cop out. I think that's why women get so angry at what you're saying. They're afraid to admit that ugly truth. I'm still on staff at the newspaper where I work, but I cut my hours in half, thereby cutting benefits completely and shrinking my 401K contributions. There are many other downsides -- like feeling invisible at work, understimulated and irrelevant. (Thank God I didn't try to do the "freelance" thing. I would not have had the self-discipline and motivation to do it! I would've become one of those "freelance writers" that you Google, only to learn they've written one article in five years.) I really did it for all the wrong reasons -- the pressure to stay at home is huge in the small town where I live. Plus, I couldn't handle trying to "do it all." Now, thanks to you, I realize I don't have to try to do it all if I insist on a just and fair household. That I'm being unfair to myself and my family to try and do it all. That I can still be a great mom to my kids and work fulltime.
I'm in the process of jockeying to go back fulltime, BTW. Fortunately, I'm married to a great guy who will totally support me. With a little incentive (like no longer knowing where the butter is) I have no doubt our household will quickly evolve into an equal arrangement.
I'm just so glad someone is finally saying what I was thinking all along but was too scared to say it out loud. Your message is so important to the women's movement and the fate of American women. Let me know if there is anything supporters like me can do to help (besides personal accountability).
Rock on, Linda!

My personal favorite:

I've bought two extra copies of your book and sent them to two friends who have just gotten married. They were both enthralled!
Best,

just in:

...thank you, thank you and thank you again. A million times over.

I just finished the book. It's 11:15 p.m. because, as a full-time working mom of two, I read when I get the chance--usually late at night. Such is life.

Your book has changed how I feel about myself as a working mom. I feel empowered. I feel validated. I feel triumphant. And I feel successful. Most important, I feel that my life as a working mom has value outside myself and my family. I feel that what I'm doing as a mom/professional has social significance. For the first time, I feel that I can say out loud to anyone that I'm proud to be a working mom. And for a long time, I've felt mostly ashamed.

I'm 38. Married. Two boys, 8 and 2 (slipped up on that one-child rule!). English degree with honors from the University of Washington. And I am a writer. I started working for the [deleted] 15 years ago, before marriage, before kids. I started out low on the ladder, making $14,000 a year clearing copy machine jams and answering phones. Now, 15 years later, I'm the senior of only two copywriters/technical writers/editors in Marketing Communications for one of the biggest [companies in its field] in the country. I provide my family's health coverage. I make more than my husband. My job has kept us in the Pacific Northwest, through recessions, personal crises and family pressure to move. Whenever my husband suggested moving, my response was, "And what about my job?" That always shut him up. My job supported us during his college years and unemployment. It put him through rehab. It was my rock and sometimes our sole financial support. As a result, I have power.

True, he doesn't do his fair share of the housework or child care. But it's a heady thing to tell him, "Got to go to Idaho for work." Boy, does he snap to. Takes care of the kids, packs the lunches, gets them to school/daycare, etc. Despite his own success, he respects--and envies--me. For the money, for the respect, perks and prestige I have at the office, for the freedom my job gives me. Five years into recovery, he's much better than he used to be, but it's still tough to know that I pull in a lot more money but am still expected to handle the house and the kids most of the time.

I remember clearly walking down a sidewalk in downtown Seattle during a lunch break when it hit me: Feminism got us only so far. It got us into colleges and into the workplace. It got us jobs and opportunities. What it didn't give us was equal partners. Our roles changed, but our husbands' roles didn't. My mother's feminism did only half the work. It's up to my generation, somehow, to finish the job. Up until now, I could only feel the problem, without hope for a solution.

In some cases, I'm the exception that proves your rules. My company offers subsidized (barely) on-site child care. Excellent child care. Montessori-trained professional teachers right across the hall from my office. I was able to work and nurse my babies. I go on field trips with ease. I could dash over to see my sleeping baby or play for a half hour. I can be there in 60 seconds in case of illness or injury. It's the best possible scenario. My oldest was in that daycare for five years. He's a bright, creative, insightful boy. "School" was wonderful for him and for me. I know I'm very fortunate. But if more companies would provide that kind of resource, how wonderful would that be?

I am also fortunate to have a job--and profession--that allows me to work from home when children are sick or schools are closed. I have flexible hours that I can customize to fit my family's schedule and my commute. I can put my eight-year-old on the bus every morning, and twice a week I'm there when it drops him off. I manage all that while also securing promotions, merit raises and respect among my peers and management. It's not easy, but it's possible. Some combination of employer flexibility and personal dedication makes it work well. I wish more women could have it so good.

I know that many don't. I live in an upper-middle-class neighborhood of mostly SAHMs. I have felt defensive most of the time. Very few of us work, and I think I'm the only one who commutes the 30 miles to the city. I don't volunteer in the schools (but I edit and design the PTSA newsletter, so shouldn’t I get points for that?). I don't have playdates. I show up at the bus stop looking less put-together for the office than the SAHMs do for their post-bus trip to the health club. I can't socialize with them because I'm at work during their coffee hour, and our answering machine picks up when little boys call during a summer afternoon to see if my oldest can play. I'm a "working" mom, so I'm on the social fringe here. They look at me with what I think is disdain as I tear out of here every morning on my way to the office. Sometimes--in my weak moments--I feel inferior to them. But in my moments of clarity and of truth, I know that it's more likely that they're envious of me. Of my power, my freedom, my self-sufficiency. They envy my lunchtime shopping trips in the city. My work friendships. My exposure to arts, culture, politics and life in the city. I'm not sucked into the minutiae of suburban life. I have a bigger life outside. And they know it. I tell myself that's why they shun me. I'm different from them. I have a flourishing life.

I mentioned before, however, that I have often felt ashamed for being a working mom. People ask me, "When are you going to quit working and stay home with those beautiful boys?" They ask my husband, "When are you going to let her stay home?" We both get angry. My husband gets angry because he likes that I work! More money for him. He knows I'm happy working. He feels that we're financial partners at least (if not always domestically). In the past, I've felt equal parts guilt and outrage. People assume I don't want to work, and I DO like to work. But the message in our society is that moms belong at home. So although I like to work, I feel like I have to defend my decision to do so. My satisfaction with work, my confidence that my boys are healthy, smart and thriving "despite" daycare, and the power I get from my career have been diluted by this tsk-tsk-tsking from others. I don't think I'll feel any of the guilt anymore, thanks to having read your book. I can see the source of that opinion, and I neither trust nor respect it.

I'm the only full-time working mom in my family who uses professional child care. Sisters and cousins have stay-at-home husbands, part-time jobs, family-provided child care or no job at all. Working mom friends have been quitting or embracing their lay-offs in droves. I didn't understand it. Now I do. And I want to work to reverse the trend. Now I feel justified in saying to myself and to others that it's okay to like working. It's not only okay, it's GREAT to like working.

I'm a writer. When I chose to have children, I didn't choose to stop being me. I get personal satisfaction out of writing for a living. It's why I went to college for in the first place. I'm thrilled to be making a living doing something that I enjoy, that others appreciate, and that uses a talent I was born with. It's cosmically right. To quit and stay home would defy who I am. I enjoy the power my position gives me at the office and at home. I've grown immensely in my career, professionally and personally. It's insulting when people flat out tell me that my family and I would be better off with me at home.

Thank you for writing that book. Thank for you what I call "The Working Mommy's Manifesto." Thank you for putting into words the feelings I've been struggling with for years. And thank you for giving me a new purpose--to help other working moms. Whether it's giving them, as their manager, the job flexibility they need to balance work with family; serving as a mentor to other working women; or just standing up and being a proud working mom in the face of my neighbors, I've promised myself that I will do what I can to help my generation take feminism to the next step.

And if I can manage to show my husband where the dishwasher and the butter are, I'll be a raging success.

With gratitude,

If I didn't receive letters like this every day I'd think they came from a sock puppet ("Lee Siegel is the most brilliant, dashing, funny, etc."). If you ever see letters signed from "Betty Friedan, somewhere in heaven," you'll know I could not resist creating a sock puppet. But otherwise, this is just the business I have chosen.

Posted by Linda Hirshman at 02:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

One "L," who blogs at Homesickhome.com, wrote to ask why I wasn't posting her comments. "Do you post comments on this blog? If not, why not just turn the comment function off?"
Good question. Answer: I have been splogged or whatever you call it, and there is so much Spam coming in that we could not even find the comments in the mess. Although I know a lot of places to get cheap Viagra and many stocks that are about to skyrocket, to say nothing about millions in Nigerian banks, I could live without this aspect of the modern world. If only the Nigerian refugees would spend their millions on Viagra and leave us legit commentators alone. I just reviewed and posted the "lost" comments, except the ones that are too boring or repetitious of other comments to bother with.
PLEASE CONTINUE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE GET TO WORK ENTERPRISE. We're dancing as fast as we can.

Posted by Linda Hirshman at 03:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

this just in

I am thrilled you are helping women's lib for women who are paid for their job, what I don't understand is why you had to put me and others like me down.

From the beginning to end of each article you write, you seem to want to push women up the corporate latter by stepping on stay at home mothers heads. Why?

I am what I am, that is what matters to me. What you say about me normally I really would not care because I have self esteem but since you are doing it on a National level it seems to bother me. Whether or not a mom stays at home or goes to a paid job, it is her choice and not yours to convince her one way or another. A philosopher you might be but you sound more like an angry old women who is too narrow minded to understand both sides of the fence (hense I said you "sounded").
Please feel free to look at Canada's opinion on stay at home mom's and you tell me as a feminist that you are happy with the discrimination the Canadian government is doing to keep women in poverty because they choose to be at home.

Your facts are there, but reality is no daycare worker can do what I can do with my children. Reason is on my side, but I won't force that on anyone, these are my choices for my children and my family. Feel free to debate why you think women should be in the paid workforce just stop shoving it down our throat, or unless you like being the most hated woman in North America.


Sara Landriault
stay at home childcare advocate
spokesperson for "care of the child" Coalition
"Fund the Child" Movement

http://choiceforchildcare.blogspot.com
http://fundthechild.blogspot.com

Posted by Linda Hirshman at 02:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Inspired by all the writing about law firms trying to retain their opting out female employees, I recently wrote a piece in the National Law Journal suggesting that an awful lot of women I interviewed had gone to law school with seemingly little understanding of what it meant to work in the legal profession. Not surprisingly, many more women leave the profession than men do. Since taxpayers fund state schools and deductible contributions support private schools, I suggested that this was sort of a poor allocation of social resources. Instead I proposed the following:

"Men and women should get the same access to law school-same tuition, same scholarships, etc. If, however, 10 years after graduation, the law school graduate is not working full-time at some job for which law school is a reasonable preparation, he, or more likely, she, will have to give the school back the money that it spent educating him or her over and above whatever was paid in tuition. The refunds would be put in a fund for scholarships for law students who could not otherwise afford to go to law school.

I'd even go further and say that at private law schools, which are allowed to discriminate by sex, the funds should go to women who could not otherwise afford to go to law school. Women are still disproportionately poorer than men are, and families are still more willing to pay to educate their sons than their daughters. I'd be willing to bet that women otherwise too poor to go to law school wouldn't be so quick to quit."

I am now getting a handful of angry (as well as some supportive) letters from women lawyers working in firms or other law related enterprises. The angry ones are a mystery to me, as the writers are the very ones I am holding up as a model of what SHOULD be done with a legal education. Here's an example:

"I am a woman who has been practicing law for 20 years. I went to a private law school. I paid all my student loans back with 12% and 9% interest rates. I have made quite a good living and have paid an enormous amount of taxes on my income for 20 years. Have you considered these contributions to our economy? Have you done any sort of economic evaluation of your proposition that women law students are costing tax payers money. I don’t think you have. Women have contributed huge amounts to our tax base and our economy through their tuition payments, their loan payments and their income and property taxes."

and another:

"as a female partner in a law firm, with two school age children, i find your article irresponsible, superficial with no real analysis as to why females leave the profession."

I cannot help wondering if they actually read the article.

As to the first, I said nothing about contributions to the economy through tuition payments, although I have no idea why the economic impact of tuition would be any different from expenditures on Manolos. But contributions to the tax base is exactly what I am talking about. Going to a subsidized law school and then becoming a stay at home mom consumes more tax resources than it creates. The weird thing is that the writer herself did do precisely what I advocate and did create tax revenue in the process. So she is making my point exactly
.
As to the second, I wasn't writing the umpteenth article about why females leave the profession. I wasn't writing about why you should not wear white shoes after Labor Day. There are many articles I was not writing. I mentioned, of course, that the hours are long and that the most rewarding work is usually not available to those unwilling to work the long hours and that, as I cannot reiterate too often, the engine driving the problem is that women bear the overwhelming majority of the household labor. So, although I do not know what constitutes "real analysis" in the writer's mind, I did not neglect the issue. But my point was that it is dreamy and foolish for women to go to law school unless they are willing to face the realities of what work will be available to them, unless there is a tidal wave of social change, which they are going to have to generate themselves. Of course, maybe if they thought they had to give the expense of subsidizing their training back, they'd be a little more demanding of such change at home -- or at work.

If the letter writers, who are authentic (each of them signed the letter and included the name of her firm), did read the article, it is a little scary to think that practicing lawyers can read this or any text and so completely misunderstand its content.

Here's a voice from the other side, also just in:

"I just wanted to write in to say that I just read "Get to Work" and loved it. As a single, happily child-free partner in a large law firm in San Francisco I am watching with dismay as the 50% of lawyers graduating from the nation's top law schools that are women dwindles down to the 15% of large firm partnerships that are women. I also watch with horror as my girlfriends from college all give up their careers, all potentially serious and thriving careers, to become 'stay at home moms.' "

But here's the scary part. The writer goes on to criticize the book because it's too hard:

"I have one disappointment about "Get to Work" and it is regarding form, not substance. It's not an easy read. A large percentage of the women who most need to read this manifesto are women whose minds have been turned to mush after years or even months of Barney, birthday parties, and play dates. They probably couldn't get through the first chapter of your book without going "huh?" and putting it down, never to be picked up again. They are already going to be resistant to what the manifesto has to say, so they need something that is much more predigested, maybe in comic book form or at least with a few pictures? I'm half joking but mostly serious. I'd love to give the book to my sister (who sits at the precipice, she has a great job as an accountant with Deloitte Touche and is living with her boyfriend but they haven't yet made the jump to marriage and children), but I can't imagine her taking the time to muddle through the difficult language. (She almost never reads non-fiction.)"

I read these letters and wonder whether next time I go for legal advice I might get a lawyer unable to understand a simple opinion piece or, if this last writer is telling the truth, an accountant who cannot read the opening paragraphs of Get to Work or, indeed, any non-fiction.

Posted by Linda Hirshman at 05:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

An old friend of mine called yesterday, and, as we were catching up, she asked me how I felt about my "public image." Just great, I told her. After listening to the backlashers make feminism into a dirty word for twenty years, I am proud to be the one to say, after the immortal Joseph Welch, "Have you no shame, Senator, at long last? Have you no sense of decency, sir?"
And anyway, I told her, I get incredibly supportive emails every single day.
But that she would ask the question tells me that maybe private emails of support and public calumny in the mommy blogs isn't the best balance. So I hereby share with you just the last week's emails, identifying information deleted for the writers' sakes, so anyone interested in the fate of Get to Work regardless of my personal fate, can see what the reaction feels like from where I sit.
No sock puppets here; just a complete sample of just what came in last week, which was a slow week, actually. I have almost 2000 similar letters in my database. If I had Tim Russert's chutzpah, I'd try to publish another book, just telling the stories of the women out there trying to make a life for themselves while a backlash society rains down opprobrium on their heads. And how grateful they were that someone stood up for the value of their lives.

Linda,

I love it, keep 'em coming!

Amy
(citing)
Linda Hirshman's Manifesto For Women
By Mindy Farabee, LA CityBeat
Posted on September 5, 2006, http://www.alternet.org/story/41176/

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Linda,

I just came across your name in the Saturday's Globe & Mail (Globe Focus, Sex -- the ultimate act of freeloading, by Ian Brown). Ian called you "the most radical and readable feminist to have appeared in decades", so I had to google.

Thank you. While not a Times bride, I guess I am the Canadian version. I completely agree with you...I have believed that for the last nine years I have "chosen" not to work, but that really isn't true. Thank you for empowering me to use the skills and abilities that I have to make a difference in the world.

________________________________________

Sent: Monday, September 04, 2006 10:37 PM
To: linda@gettoworkmanifesto.com
Subject:

I feel sorry for your children that grew up with a "part-time" mother. You cannot "have it all". Because you were selfish and choose to work for your own selfish reasons, don't attempt to brain-wash other women into your way of thinking. The only hope for this world is the loving mothers who put their children above all. That is the path least traveled.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Linda: Greetings! I have been meaning to email you for several weeks since I saw you on The Colbert Report. You were magnificent! Honestly, I think that Colbert's style throws many of his guests, even his fans, but you were right there with him, being funny while persuasively making your case. Bravo!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Dr. Hirshman - I loved your book and wished it had been available when I was a medical student. I passed my copy on to my daughter, who is starting college this year. When I got accepted into medical school, a male classmate told me I took a spot from a man. Things are better now, but the discrimination has gone underground and we still have a way to go. As an aside, I doubt many of the women who walk away from advanced training have educational loans. I finally paid off my student loans at age 42. Even without the need to pay off the loans, I love my profession and I am glad to have stayed with it.

As a pediatrician, I see families where the mother is also home-schooling. I worry about the fallout to the kids. I can see two possibilities - the mother is too exhausted and over-extended to meet the kids' emotional needs or; more likely, she is such a controlling and narcissistic super-mother that there is no room for the kids' needs and the kids are expected to worship her extraordinary gift to them.

Thanks again, I've also enjoyed reading the interviews with you.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Dr. Hirshman,
You are sensational! As I lie in bed at 9 P. M. listening to my radio and Hew Hewett, you were being so called interviewed for your book GET TO WORK. I was so impressed how you countered him. Excitement overwhelmed me. I could not wait until morning when I called the Youngstown, Ohio Library to order your book. It took several days; but I finally got it. I could not put it down until I finished it. The book is excitingly/interestly well written. All my life I have been very independent which has driven people wild. I never got into the 1960 revolution which I truly regret. A year ago I just read The Feminine Mystique followed by The Second Sex and a few others. If I can be of any assistance to this new revolution please contact me. I am a 76 years youthful/single, a Registered Nurse, retired after 50+ years from United Airlines as a flight attendant, belong to Toastmasters, and I now have a small new and used clothing business plus other interests because I love to work.
Again, you are brilliant. If I can be of any revolutionary help please do notify me.

Posted by Linda Hirshman at 05:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Get to workers may remember that one Lee Siegel from the New Republic posted the amazingly banal column castigating feminism for not solving the problem of the lefties' favorite icon, the minimum wage Wal Mart cashier (which all other progressive movements had solved long ago, right). When I notified him that I had posted a response here (see, "The Really, Truly Needy" below), I got an email telling me he was too busy with his (second) wife's maternity leave to read my blog, revealing, therein, that he had, of course, read it. Turns out that Siegel not only falsely contends he doesn't read his reviews, as he did to me, he also created a fake blogger, known as a "sock puppet," to defend himself when others criticize him. And someone caught him at it. Here's the story from Kos.

Lee Siegel is no more
by kos
Fri Sep 01, 2006 at 07:14:05 PM PDT

Another Friday news dump:

An Apology to Our Readers

After an investigation, The New Republic has determined that the comments in our Talkback section defending Lee Siegel's articles and blog under the username "sprezzatura" were produced with Siegel's participation. We deeply regret misleading our readers. Lee Siegel's blog will no longer be published by TNR, and he has been suspended from writing for the magazine.

Franklin Foer
Editor, The New Republic

It's not like TNR isn't a target-rich environment. But none was more mockable than Lee Siegel. From "blogofascim", to the terrors of wearing baseball caps, to psychoanalyzing my childhood, to wishing he had screwed a 16-year-old Uma Thurman, none illustrated the irrelevance of the New Republic more than their so-called "culture" writer.

He will be missed, even if I do have a huge-ass smile on my face right now.

Update: People in the comments are digging up some choice comments by Siegel's sockpuppet. This one is my favorite thus far (from here):

How angry people get when a powerful critic says he doesn't like their favorite show! Like little babies. Such fragile egos. Siegel accuses Stewart of a "pandering puerility" and he gets an onslaught of puerile responses from the insecure herd of independent minds. I'm well within Stewart's target group, and I think he's about as funny as a wet towel in a locker room. Siegel is brave, brilliant, and wittier than Stewart will ever be. Take that, you bunch of immature, abusive sheep.

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Tags: New Republic, Media, Lee Siegel (all tags)

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Posted by Linda Hirshman at 03:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)