The World Split Open

by Ruth Rosen

  Efforts to regulate sexuality, ban abortion, and limit the rights of gays and lesbians quickly vaulted to the top of the national political agenda. Conservative women’s groups played an increasingly powerful role in discrediting the achievements of the women’s movement. The extremely religious members of Concerned Women of America, for example, crusaded to outlaw abortion and to restore “Christian values” and women’s traditional domestic role in the family. Serrin Foster of Feminists for Choice tried to persuade young women that feminism had robbed them of the “choice” to have children, but she offered no means for supporting the offspring of these young single mothers. The Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) and The Women’s Freedom Network (WFN), both secular organizations of professional women, dubbed themselves “equality feminists,” by which they meant that self-made women needed no assistance from the government. They based their antifeminism on their hostility to liberalism and on their belief that an unregulated economy would provide prosperity for women. The IWF derided modern feminists as “Dependency Divas”—women who sought government assistance for working families and the poor. These equality feminists also insisted that each woman, as a self-made individual, should pull herself up by the straps of her stiletto heels.2

  The right-wing Republican war against women’s reproductive and sexual choices began on the first day the president took office. Bush restored the Reagan-era global gag rule, which prohibited any international agency from receiving U.S. funds if it performed abortions, lobbied to make abortion legal, or even provided counseling about the procedure. The result was disastrous: women in developing countries had less access to contraception and reproductive health care, which inevitably resulted in hundreds of thousands of unwanted pregnancies and abortions.3

  After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush declared a “war on terror” and pursued a domestic agenda that had less to do with protecting the nation from terrorism than with manipulating fear, expanding executive power, eroding civil rights and civil liberties, and governing in an atmosphere of unprecedented secrecy. The declaration of an endless war provided him with the political opportunity to advance the Religious Right’s political agenda, which had immediate consequences on women’s lives.

  The Bush administration, for example, repeatedly tried to ban abortion by conferring “personhood” on the fetus. “In as many areas as we can, we want to put on the books that the embryo is a person,” boasted Samuel B. Casey, executive director of the Christian Legal Society.4 In 2003, Congress passed the so-called Partial-Birth Act, which restricted late-term abortions; in 2004, it passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, conferring legal personhood on the fetus of an injured pregnant woman. During these years, at least twenty states passed laws designed to restrict access to abortion, by requiring women to submit to advanced counseling, “cooling off” periods, parental notification, and by limiting funds for reproductive health services.5

  Battles over Bush’s nominees for the Supreme Court inevitably turned on whether the candidate would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that had given American women the constitutional right to choose an abortion. In short, former President Bill Clinton’s famous declaration that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare” was replaced by an all-out effort to outlaw abortion within the United States.

  The relentless campaign to impose legal personhood on the fetus soon rippled outward to other areas of American life, including attempts to make emergency contraception inaccessible, to intervene in end-of-life decisions, to halt stem-cell research, and to place restrictions on assisted reproduction.6

  In its efforts to regulate sexual and reproductive choices, the Bush administration politicized science in an unprecedented way. In 2002, for example, the administration appointed physicians opposed to contraception, reproductive rights, and mifepristone (used for medical abortions) to the Reproduction Health Drugs Advisory Committee of the Food and Drug Administration. When vetting scientists for some 250 advisory boards, Bush officials stunned scientists when they asked such inappropriate political questions as “Do you support abortion rights?” “The death penalty for drug kingpins?” “Did you vote for Bush?” Worried about the politicization of science, Donald Kennedy, former president of Stanford University and editor of the prestigious journal Science, wrote, “If you start picking people by their ideology instead of their scientific credentials, you are inevitably reducing the quality of the advisory group.”7

  Ignoring criticism from the scientific community, the Bush administration nevertheless staffed scientific advisory panels with right-wing religious ideologues who disregarded scientific evidence and even posted inaccurate information on government Web sites. In 2002, for example, the National Cancer Institute’s Web site inaccurately described abortion as a possible cause of breast cancer. In the same year, the Centers for Disease Control scrubbed information from its Web site about how condoms can protect teens from HIV infection, pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases. Its new version declared that “more research is needed” and omitted a passage on how to avoid unwanted pregnancies. Ignoring recommendations from its own scientific experts, the Food and Drug Administration repeatedly postponed a decision to permit over-the-counter emergency contraception, known as Plan B. After the Religious Right organized the Pharmacists for Life movement, The Economist magazine reported that “A rising number of pharmacists are refusing to dispense prescriptions [in the United States] for birth control and morning-after pills, saying it is against their beliefs.”8

  Determined to defend “traditional family” values, the Bush administration budgeted millions of dollars to promote marriage for poor women and to teach “abstinence only” courses to teenagers. Teen pregnancy had actually declined to record lows—a drop of 20 percent between 1987 and 1994 and another 27 percent decline between 1994 and 2000. Still, as the nonpartisan Alan Guttmacher Institute reported, “the U.S. teen birthrate is one of the highest in the developed world.”9

  The president’s response to that serious problem was to withdraw funds from any state that offered sex education classes that actually taught about contraception and how to avoid unwanted pregnancies. “Abstinence only” courses, by contrast, only instructed young people to avoid sex until they married. In 2004, a congressional report concluded that two-thirds of these federally funded “abstinence only” courses contained “false, misleading, or distorted information about reproductive health.”10

  Both the president and the Religious Right also sought to prop up the heterosexual “traditional family,” which, by the turn of the twenty-first century, included only 25 percent of American households. Divorce, single parenthood, same-sex parenting, economic distress, and cohabitation had transformed American family life. Even Bush’s born-again religious constituency was just as likely to divorce as traditional Christians, and the divorce rate of both was only 2 percent below that of atheists and agnostics.11

  Gay marriage quite naturally became a symbol of the dramatic changes that had altered American families. Bush not only called for a constitutional ban against same-sex marriage (which failed) but also denounced the growing judicial acceptance of legal civil unions. Critics of the Bush administration argued that social conservatives seemed to care more about containing sexuality within heterosexual marriage than preventing unwanted pregnancies or sanctifying relationships between loving partners, or matching needy children with same-sex adoptive parents.

  GENDER RESISTANCE AND RIGHTS

  But the conservative campaign to regulate sexuality and reproduction and to promote marriage is only part of a far more complicated story. During these very same years, the nation also witnessed major campaigns—by women, gays and lesbians, and transgendered people—to expand reproductive, marital, and sexual rights.

  In April 2004, for example, a million people of all ages and from many ethnic and racial backgrounds marched in the nation’s capitol to defend a woman’s righ
t to reproductive health care and abortion. Organized by a broad coalition of women’s and civil rights groups, “The March for Women’s Lives”—thought to be the largest demonstration in the nation’s history—proved that American women were not willing to concede defeat in the abortion wars.

  This rearguard action to protect women’s reproductive choice and health was accompanied by aggressive movements to expand the right to express any sexual orientation or embrace any gender identity without fear of violence or discrimination.

  After decades of coming out of the closet and fighting for their civil rights, gays and lesbians were hardly strangers to most Americans. Popular culture, including television series and sitcoms, regularly featured at least one gay or lesbian character. When Queer Eye for the Straight Guy debuted on cable television, the five gay men who gave advice on fashion and home decorating to clueless heterosexual men turned the program into a smash hit. In 2005, the feature film Brokeback Mountain, which won an Oscar nomination for best picture, challenged America’s iconic image of masculinity when it explored—with great sensitivity and tenderness—the love and passion that endured between two ranch hands throughout their marriages and adult lives.

  In rapid succession, gays and lesbians also won expanded rights from American courts. In 2003, the Supreme Court reversed itself and ruled that a Texas law against sodomy was unconstitutional, and in 2004, the Massachusetts Supreme Court decided that same-sex couples are entitled to the “protection, benefits, and obligations of civil marriage.” Just days later, Gavin Newsom, San Francisco’s newly elected handsome and heterosexual mayor, stunned the nation when he announced that the city would issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Newsom honored Del Martin, 83, and Phyllis Lyon, 79, pioneering feminists and gay rights activists who had shared their lives for fifty-one years, by having them become the first same-sex couple declared “spouses for life.”

  During the next month, same-sex couples braved the rain and lined up around San Francisco’s City Hall, even sleeping on the sidewalk, hoping to get married before a court injunction closed this historic window of opportunity. It was an unforgettable sight. Beaming faces spread an infectious sense of joy throughout City Hall. Women dressed in stunning white gowns juggled babies and bouquets. Men outfitted in elegant tuxedos, sporting carnations in their lapels, cradled infants, while friends held their paperwork. As couples looked into each other’s eyes, arms wrapped around each other, their friends took snapshots and the national media documented the occasion for the evening news. One burly veteran cameraman was so overwhelmed by the scene that he found himself blinking back tears.

  “What difference will marriage make in your lives?” reporters asked these exuberant couples. Most had already shared their lives for many years and had held commitment ceremonies. Still, they were ecstatic about getting married. One woman said, “I won’t have to call her my partner or girlfriend at a doctor’s office or a hospital. She’s now my spouse.” Another replied, “We want to have children. Someday I can call a child-care center or a school and say that my spouse will be picking up our child. We’ll be viewed as a valid family.” Two men who had lived together for sixteen years rejoiced at the idea of their newfound legitimacy. One said he simply “wanted the respectability accorded married couples.” Even though they rightly suspected that the California courts would later invalidate their licenses, those who married during those days radiated a contagious sense of joy. “It’s a historic milestone,” said one recently married man. “We’re part of history and we know it.” So did the rest of world, as television broadcast images of these couples around the planet.12

  A few months later, in May 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to legally permit same-sex marriage. By the end of 2005, five nations—Belgium, The Netherlands, Canada, Spain, and South Africa—had legalized same-sex marriage, and England and New Zealand had made civil unions legal.

  A backlash was predictable. Same-sex marriage, presumably between two equal partners, challenged the idea of a dominant husband and a submissive wife. Gay marriage quickly turned into a wedge issue during the 2004 presidential election. Although Bush’s call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage failed in Congress, voters in eleven states passed all referenda banning same-sex marriage—placed by the Conservative and Religious Right—in the 2004 election.

  But the attack against gay marriage paradoxically also changed the terms of debate. A growing number of moderate politicians, who once shied away from the subject, now began to embrace “civil unions” as a compromise position that conferred all civil rights, except the legal status of marriage, upon same-sex couples.

  Still beneath the political radar was the rapidly growing transgender movement in the United States, which traced its roots back to large urban communities in the 1990s. The women’s movement had challenged rigid gender roles. Now people who felt trapped inside their bodies began to seek freedom from discrimination and violence. Gradually, the movement gained a few of its goals. By 2005, more than half the states had passed legal protection for transgendered people.

  Still, the transgender movement remained unfamiliar to most Americans until films, literature, and television began to publicize the anguish of those men and women who desperately wanted to change their gender identity, if not necessarily their bodies. In the 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry, actress Hillary Swank played a teenage girl who began living as a young man, with lethal consequences. The highly acclaimed 2002 novel Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, publicized the not-so-rare lives of those born with ambiguous genitalia, known as intersexed. In 2003, the feature film Normal focused on a middle-aged, married man in a conservative western Illinois town, who, after twenty-five years of marriage, stuns his wife, grown children, and church by announcing that he’s always felt trapped inside a male body and now wants to live as a woman. In 2005, the Sundance Channel featured an eight-part documentary series, Transgeneration, which followed four college-aged students for a year as they confronted their desires to dress and live as the opposite sex. The year ended with a riveting feature film, TransAmerica, in which a rather prim transsexual, about to undergo surgery to become a physical woman, discovers that she once fathered a child who is now a teenaged male plying the streets as a prostitute.

  THE NEXT GENERATIONS

  The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender movements were hardly alone in challenging conventional ideas about sexuality or gender. While the Bush administration eagerly promoted abstinence, chastity oaths, and new marriage covenants, some young people were busy celebrating the historic rupture between sexuality and reproduction that had taken place long before they were born. Most visible on liberal college campuses, and in nightclubs or raves, some of these young men and women flaunted their sexuality, paraded their pierced and tattooed bodies, and played with their gender identity through cross-dressing.

  Among this group were some young women, born between 1965 and 1975, who called themselves the Third Wave. They knew that nineteenth-century First Wave feminists had fought for the vote and that 1960s and 1970s Second Wave feminists had tried to transform public and private life. Now, these young Third Wave feminists acknowledged their continuity with those who came before them.

  Third Wave feminism had its roots in both academic life and the punk/grunge rock scene. In the mid-1980s, a group of feminist activists and academics concerned about racism in the women’s movement collaborated on an anthology titled The Third Wave: Feminist Perspectives on Racism.13 Although some young African American feminist activists described themselves as “hip-hop feminists,” their white counterparts committed themselves to building an inclusive, multi-cultural, multi-issue movement, with a focus on women’s multiple racial, class, and sexual identities.

  Third Wave feminism also came out of young women’s collective protests in the alternative rock scene, most notably sparked by the band the Riot Grrrls. “Whereas some second wave feminists fought for equal access to the workplace,” explained essayist Me
lissa Klein, “some third wave feminists fought for equal access to the punk stage.”14 Feminist punk rock musicians inspired a “riot grrrl” movement that rejected the idea of “good” and “bad” girls, and promoted a defiant, sexual female stance on stage, as well as in their own lives. Many of these musicians dressed in gender-bending clothes—short skirts with heavy boots—and wore thick makeup and bleached hair—“for the pleasure of other women, not men,” they said. One fan of the punk rock band Bikini Kill described an unforgettable moment when its founder, Kathleen Hanna, “climbed on-stage in a mini-skirt, lipstick smeared, and sang/screamed about incest or rape or girl-girl desire.”15

  The Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991, at which Anita Hill accused the Supreme Court nominee of sexual harassment, also galvanized some members of this generation. The next year, Rebecca Walker, daughter of the well-known feminist writer Alice Walker, defiantly responded to the New York Times’ seemingly endless campaign to pronounce an era of postfeminism. In Ms. Magazine, she wrote, “I am not a postfeminist feminist. I am the third wave.” With Amy Richards, she cofounded the Third Wave Foundation which, among other activities, mobilized young women to vote. That same year, the youthful Women’s Action Coalition began organizing a series of consciousness-raising public events. On Mother’s Day in 1992, they draped a Grand Central Station board with a pink banner that read, “It’s Mother’s Day: $30 Billion owed in child support.”16