March 13, 2009

Young Feminist Does Not Equal Pole Dancer

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Some of the “young chicks” over at Feministing.com and RH Reality Check got fired up about Debra Dickerson’s post on abortion providers, and weren’t afraid to let us know. Check out the comments here and here. In the original post, Dickerson points out a New York Times article about the declining number of abortion providers. It’s asserted that young feminists (male and female) are not making abortion services a priority, and as a result, abortion access in the future is endangered.

Firstly, I always take a New York Times trend piece with a rather huge grain of salt. These are the folks, after all, who brought us the Opt-Out Revolution and Dating A Banker Anonymous. Secondly, I think where Dickerson goes astray is when she suggests that young feminists today enjoy “pole-dancing, walking around half-naked, posting drunk photos on Facebook, and blogging about your sex lives” rather than working for reproductive rights. And thirdly, not all feminists are female.

As our commenters have pointed out, young feminists actually do lots of abortion-related work, whether it’s protesting on the streets or volunteering for organizations. Living in San Francisco, I know a LOT of feminists, and none of them post drunk pictures of themselves online, or pole-dance, or walk around half-naked. Or at least, none of them have let me in on it. As for myself, I’m definitely a feminist, and youngish (30). I’ve cold-called for NARAL, donated to NOW, and marched in rallies, but have yet to walk around half-naked unless I’m changing at the gym.

Part of what I think rankled the Feministing crowd (and tell me if I’m wrong) is that Dickerson paints young feminists with a wide, LiLo-train-wreck colored brush. There’s a big difference between what young feminists do today, and what the media depicts them as doing. The media publishes stories about 16-year-olds with racy MySpace profiles and sex-positive pole-dancers because they get a response. I think the best response to Dickerson’s post, aside from pointing out the many achievements of young feminists, is a little bit of humor. As my co-worker and copy editor extrordinaire Nicole McClelland told me, putting all young feminists in the category of drunken strippers is a dramatic overgeneralization at best. “I didn’t know that that’s what the current generation of feminists thinks feminism is,” said Nicole. “Now that I do, though, I’m totally going to call some and ask them if they want to party.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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