Tamara L. DeGray

Yeah, we’ve all heard that. You express discomfort over something someone has said, a slur, a racist joke, a homophobic comment, and it’s all turned around on you for being offended, for being uncomfortable, for being upset about it. After all, you’re not one of them, why should you be upset? We’re just joking, right. Just a joke.

Well, I’m starting to think that “Just a joke” might be one of the most dangerous phrases in our lexicon right now.

I’m from New Jersey, so the suicide of Tyler Clementi is close to home for me. Literally, actually. It’s on all the local channels, in the local papers, all the appropriate outrage is being felt, all the Rutgers students are wearing black, signing condolence books, and this is fine. It’s great. But how many of those kids are going to go home and laugh when their roommate/friend/sibling/etc. makes a gay joke? A joke about black people? A joke about women? I’m betting a pretty good amount. But why should I care?. They’re just kidding around. No harm, right? It has nothing to do with what happened to Tyler. Tyler killed himself because Dharun Ravi, his roommate, turned on his webcam and broadcast Tyler engaging in a sexual act with another man. That’s way more serious than a harmless joke among friends, right?

Sure. Keep telling yourself that.

Because you know what? Those jokes make it all right. They normalize hate, and bigotry, and fear, and bullying. If you’re laughing, you’re not racist/homophobic/sexist, right? It’s all in fun! No one really means it, after all. Right. Joking in this way makes it “okay,” and for those who say it’s not okay, this culture causes them to feel like they are the ones who are out of line. “Come on, it’s just a joke! don’t take it so seriously!” And then the joke keeps growing, becoming more and more okay, more and more normalized, more and more a part of average discourse, until you say it to or around or about someone who is on the edge, and it pushes them off. And then that poor kid, that poor person who maybe has been a joke for as long as they can remember, who maybe can’t take it anymore, becomes the one who was being “too sensitive,” who took it “too far,” who must have had “other problems.”

Because, after all, it’s “just a joke.” And so it continues.

Those jokes have created an atmosphere that allowed Dharun and his ‘accomplice,’ Molly Wei,…two apparently well-educated, intelligent, and normally well-behaved teenagers… to feel like there was absolutely nothing wrong with making fun of Tyler’s sexual orientation and posting both the teasing and the video of Tyler’s private affairs online. After all, to read Dharun’s Twitter, it’s almost seemed like it was just joke to him. It is a joke.

Just a joke, right?

How many more kids have to kill themselves before this stops being funny?

-Lindsay (guest poster)

The Ho’s Uniform: How Ines Sainz Proves “Victim-Blaming” Isn’t Always a Bad Thing or How The Champ at Very Smart Brothas Proves Victim Blaming is Alive and Thriving.

Here is where I point you toward the concept of victim blaming: “Victim blaming is holding the victims of a crime, an accident, or any type of abusive maltreatment to be entirely or partially responsible for the transgressions committed against them. It is also about holding individuals responsible for their own personal distress or difficulties instead attributing responsibility to the transgressors who caused it.” (Here is also where I tell you that I copied this paragraph word for word from something I wrote less than a month ago. Stop making me weep for humanity, people.)

Today’s victim is Ines Sainz, reporter for TV Azteca who was supposedly sexually harassed by members of the NY Jets players and staff while waiting to conduct a locker room interview with QB Mark Sanchez. The Jets and the League are looking into these allegations and the Association of Women in Sports Media (AWSM) will be holding an educational session for the Jets. Some suggest that Sainz was harassed because of her clothing, jeans, boots, and a button-down, white, short-sleeved shirt. (Photo here, courtesy of Sainz.) This is The Champ’s take on it:

But, I’m also sure she has at least a peripheral understanding of the dynamics involved with sports culture, and I’m certain she’s aware that of all the major American sports, football is widely considered the most hypermasculine. And, when you enter that culture on their territory with an outfit explicitly suggesting your tits and ass are the only parts of you meant to be taken seriously, it shouldn’t be a big surprise when your tits and ass are the only parts of you taken seriously.

What part of Sainz’ outfit suggested that only her tits and ass were meant to be taken seriously? Was it the part you (and the Jets) viewed through your male gaze? You and society may think that Sainz was dressing for your pleasure, but it’s more likely she wasn’t. (Don’t you dare “tight pants” me, young man. Tight pants are not an invitation for you to take ownership of the person wearing them.)

What really disturbs me about this post, and about attitudes that are becoming common today, is the way The Champ tries to make his victim blaming sound logical, even sympathetic toward the victim:

If I get beat up, stabbed, or shot while walking through a known Crip area at night with a Chicago Bulls jersey and two red bandannas around my neck, sure the criminals need to be caught and brought to justice, but that sh*ts on me too. Did I deserve to get assaulted? No. Was my intentionally reckless behavior a major contributor to said assault? Yes. Admitting your personal culpability doesn’t absolve the perpetrators of any blame.

First, you’re conflating gang violence with sexual harassment. Don’t. It’s misleading and it ignores the complexities of both problems. Nice straw man.

Second, putting on a pair of jeans and a shirt is not “intentionally reckless behavior.” No, not even if I plan to wear them in front of a bunch of football players. I am in no way being reckless in expecting adult human beings to behave like adult human beings. Saying I am is taking the blame off of them and placing it squarely onto me. The victim. I wouldn’t have “personal culpability” here and neither does Sainz.

And, finally, the part of the argument where Sainz’s gender is dismissed but she’s still blamed:

You know, the more I think of Sainz’s situation, the more I think this really had little to do with sex. Or, more specifically, it had little to do with her gender. Type-A, alpha male type of men–the type of men found in spades on NFL rosters and staffs–regularly intimidate, ridicule, mock, taunt, and sexually humiliate other men as a way to assert their status (they wouldn’t be alpha males if they didn’t do this), so it’s no surprise they’d treat an outsider, an outsider with attire suggesting they’re weak, whimsical, and irrelevant, that way. Trust me, they would have been just as quick to tease and taunt an inappropriately dressed man, and they probably would have been even meaner.

I feel as though someone should jump in here and scream out “Sexism hurts men, too!” The Champ’s just reduced the entire NFL to a bunch of men who are helpless before things that are “weak, whimsical, and irrelevant” and cannot resist attacking those things. Why, they’re hardly human beings at all, are they? They’re caricatures of men who can’t be held responsible for their own behavior. Wearing jeans in front of them is just like waving a red flag in front of a bull!

Oh, please.

The entire post is one long example of victim blaming. The Champ asked his girlfriend and some of her presumably female friends their take on this situation, (Classic anti-feminist rhetoric, “I have a friend who…”) He says that Sainz “got what she was asking for.” I’m not sure what that was, though I guess she did get an interview with Mark Sanchez for TV Azteca. (“She was asking for it.” Hey, look, another square on the bingo card!)

Then he pulls out the anti-political-correctness card (so popular these days) and says “But, I think we’ve become so PC on the side of ‘a victim is always just a victim’ that we’re reluctant to admit that victim-blaming isn’t always a wrong concept.” And, as the cherry on top of this piece of victim blaming BS he compares Sainz to the “many other attractive female reporters in NFL locker rooms, women treated with respect and courtesy because they dress and act in a serious manner.” Lest you’re confused about what he’s getting at there with his Madonna-Whore dichotomy, he closes by saying Sainz dresses like a prostitute.

Despite The Champ’s assertions, there’s nothing new in this piece of victim blaming and there’s still no reason to blame the victim.

Hooters. Known for wings, beer, and, well, hooters. On February 14th’s Undercover Boss Hooters CEO Coby Brooks went undercover to find out how his company functioned from the bottom up. He went into this thinking of Hooters as a family restaurant, a place where he’d have no problem letting his daughters waitress. Unfortunately, he ended his journey the same way.

I’m disappointed in this episode and in Coby Brooks. He had an opportunity to break through his preconceived notions and to see through his privilege, and he wasted it. Hooters is a business that is built on sexism and exploitation of women and when Coby saw sexism and exploitation of women in action he expressed shock, horror, and surprise. Really, Coby? I mean, seriously? Short-shorts and shirts in “small or extra small,” as two of the waitresses told him, waitresses you refer to as “Hooter Girls,” and a sign in your corporate board room reading “bumps” with two curiously breast-shaped bumps above it, and you are surprised about what takes place in the atmosphere you foster from a corporate level on down?

While undercover, Coby serves under two managers with very different management styles and attitudes toward their waitresses. Marcy, the female manager, has a strong work ethic (we see her mopping up spills, carrying beer, and doing all sorts of odd jobs in addition to standard management) and a certain empathy for her waitresses because she held their job for years before becoming a manager. As Coby says, Marcy “respects the girls and they respect her.” Jimbo, the male manager, has an extremely different style and attitude. He tells Coby that spinning a tray is the key to being a good manager and aside from that we don’t see him doing any other work. But it’s his treatment of the waitresses that sets him apart from everyone else Coby meets.

Before opening, Jimbo “examines” his waitresses. Is their hair styled, their makeup on, their nails done? When one waitress has short, unpolished nails, Jimbo insults her over it, and dismisses her with a snide comment. Coby’s response? “He’s very clear on what the brand is about,” an upset Coby says about Jimbo. However “doesn’t know how to treat it.” When after the lunch rush waitresses are customarily sent home because of lack of work, Jimbo declares that the waitresses will be playing a game to see who gets to leave. “Even if I have school?” one waitress asks. Yes, even if you have other commitments, she’s told. Today Jimbo’s game is a bean-eating contest. The waitress who eats her plate of beans first, without using her hands, will get to go home. “Do they seem to like these sort of things?” Coby asks Jimbo. Judging from their expressions, I’d say they don’t. By this time Coby has broken out in a sweat and closed his eyes. It isn’t long until he’s outside leaving a voicemail message for his district manager saying that Jimbo’s behavior is inappropriate.

Right there, with the sweating and the obvious discomfort, that was Coby’s moment. He could have taken a look at the t-shirts and the bumps sign and realized that the atmosphere his father created and he’s perpetuating is contributing to this behavior. He could have realized that when you market a product based on women’s (oops, I mean “girls’” as Coby insists upon calling them) breasts and legs that you’re going to find many people who take that seriously. You’re selling it Coby, why are you surprised Jimbo’s buying it?

What happens when he gets back to the corporate boardroom? He tells them about Jimbo and how “somehow he has slipped through the cracks.” He and the board, under that bumps sign that is still hanging proudly, talk about how changes need to be made concerning Jimbo and how he needs to be rehabilitated. Not a one of them says a word about how this might be happening elsewhere and how they’re partially at fault for it. No, not even the female board member who looked so horrified over Jimbo’s “reindeer games.” It’s very telling that in this final boardroom scene Jimbo’s rehabilitation is discussed as being necessary from a legal standpoint. It isn’t done because the waitresses are human beings worthy of respect and dignity, it’s done so no one gets sued.

Later, when Coby reveals his identity to Marcy he comments on how tired she is and how she needs time to relax with her husband and children, and he offers her an all-expenses paid vacation so she can recharge and recover. What he doesn’t do is praise her management style of mutual respect, nor does he hold it up to anyone as exemplary, something he should have done. And as for Jimbo, “the way you act with the girls is, frankly, inappropriate,” Coby tells him. Jimbo is told “there’s lines that you don’t cross” and instructed to apologize to his staff. He counters by saying that his way works and he makes profits, but Coby insists, saying he’d be reluctant to let his girls work in Jimbo’s restaurant. Jimbo, we’re told at the end of the show, apologized, and is still working for Hooters. Marcy, upon returning from her vacation, took a less-stressful job with the corporation.

You blew it, Coby. Marcy, the exemplary manager who respected her workers, wasn’t rewarded for that, she was instead pitied because she’s a mom who doesn’t get to spend enough time with her family. While Jimbo, the sexist pig who treated his staff as if they are his personal playthings, had only to apologize and promise never to do it again to keep his job. As you pointed out, Jimbo was “very clear on what the brand [was] about.” He wasn’t operating under a misconception, he was reflecting the attitude toward the brand fostered by you and the company. And all you did was confirm that gender-biased attitude.

Coby Brooks could have used this time to make real changes in his company, starting from him and traveling all the way down through the organization. Instead he closed his eyes to the things he didn’t want to see and took steps to keep himself thinking of Hooters as the family-friendly restaurant of his dreams. PR won’t change reality Coby. Oh, and stop calling your waitresses girls.

See Jimbo’s reindeer games here.

Yesterday the women did something.

Now, stop right there, you’re saying. The women? Just the women? But what about the men?

They weren’t included, and here’s why:

Some fun is going on for breast cancer awareness … just write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color. Nothing else. Send this ONLY to girls. No men. It will be neat to see if this spreads the wings of cancer awareness. It’ll be fun to see how long it takes for the men to wonder why all the girls have a color in their status. Ha!

Oh, I know, I know, men can get breast cancer, too.* I hear that one enough during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October. But this wasn’t about you, this was about us, and we were having fun with it.

I think it’s the fun that’s the problem. A bunch of women spent yesterday giggling over a secret and complimenting or teasing each other about some of the wilder color choices. (Personally, I was inspired to go shopping for some more interesting bras because my basic black paled in comparison to some of my friends.) And maybe some women thought to give themselves an exam in the shower this morning, or remembered to make an appointment for their physical or mammogram. And maybe some women got saved. Wouldn’t that be great?

Today, the men did something.

Not all of them, just the two admins and however many of the 11,692 members of the Facebook group “Women, stop posting colours as your statuses and get back in the kitchen” are also male. And don’t think I’m ignoring the female members of this group, either.

Oh, you have no sense of humor. Can’t you see it’s a joke?

Well, no. I can’t. Not when it comes to photos like this:

Click to view full-size photos.

11,692 people think that sort of thing is funny. They were so bothered by women posting “beige” or “white” or even “zebra” as their status, so left out of the secret, or so disturbed by the idea that women freely discussed their bras, that they struck back with “jokes” that advocate violence and blame the victims of that violence.

So yesterday the women did something. And today someone struck back. How does that make you feel?


*In 2007, 450 men were expected to die from breast cancer in comparison to 40,460 women. Source: Breast Cancer Facts and Figures 2007-2008, American Cancer Society.

Because apparently, to some parts of our society (and most specifically Whoopi Goldberg who came up with this Polanski defense on The View) there’s a difference. Folks, and I say this with great anger and disgust, there is no difference. This isn’t high school, I’m not standing at my locker asking my friend if Bobby likes me or like-likes me, rape is what it is, and what it is, is a horrible act of sexual — and frequently gendered — violence. This is the society we live in, where we come up with childish terms to excuse the behavior of a privileged and powerful white man.

In 1977, Roman Polanski was accused of giving a thirteen-year-old girl champagne and drugs, and then raping her. He was initially indicted on six felony counts, including rape by use of drugs, child molesting and sodomy. He pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse and was sentenced. This is why I call it rape and him a rapist. This is why I don’t use cutesy terms and this is why I don’t defend him.

It was rape.

He is a rapist.

According to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN), 1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime, and 1 out of 33 men. 29% of sexual assault and rape victims are between the ages of 12-17. Only about 6% of rapists ever serve a day in jail, or, to look at it in another way, 15 of 16 rapists walk free.

Roman Polanski walked free. He spent a short period of time under psychiatric evaluation and when he was sentenced to serve the rest of his 90 days he fled the country and for the past thirty years has been living as a free man.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. While you’re angry at Polanski and Goldberg, frustrated with the hundreds of entertainers who demanded Polanski be freed, and furious at the society in which we live that allows for marking a difference between “rape” and “rape-rape,” do your part to prevent rape and sexual violence. Support RAINN and speak out about what rape really is.

Rape-rape. Honestly.

When Caster Semenya won the women’s 800-meter title at August’s world championship in Berlin, people were blown away. She won by 2.45 seconds, finishing the race in 1 minute, 55.45 seconds. In running, those 2.45 seconds are amazing, at the very peak of female performance. (The women’s 800m world record is 1:53.28.) Instead of celebration, Semenya was met with questions. How could a teenaged girl improve so much in so short a time? Was she, gasp, a man?

As a society, we don’t question when male athletes improve rapidly and amazingly. And if we do question, we ask about performance enhancement drugs, we test, life goes on from there. He is innocent or he is guilty, but he is and remains male. Not so for Caster Semenya, whose improvement prompted a series of humiliating demands and displays based on how society thinks women and men should look, act, and achieve. She was tested to prove or disprove gender, and, worse, those supposed results were leaked to the press, putting what should have been a private medical condition on public display. Then was the interview and photo shoot for a South African magazine where Semenya was feminized via clothing, hair, and makeup in order to conform to society’s female norm.

There’s a base assumption here that women cannot achieve or make great leaps in achievement without being male or infringing on male domains. When Caster Semenya approaches the women’s 800m world record she is nearing the peak of what women have achieved–of what we know they can achieve–and her gender is questioned because of it, not because of the achievement, but because it is female achievement.

They say Semenya is intersex, having no ovaries but internal testes. They say this, as well as her voice, her appearance, and her athletic talent make her a man. I say Caster Semenya is whoever she wants to be and that women can achieve and excel just as well and as often as men, and that when they do their gender should never be in question.

The International Association of Athletics Federations will rule on these tests and Semenya’s status in the athletic community in November.

Last week, the Obama administration opened the way for foreign women who are victims of severe domestic violence to receive asylum in the United States. As it stands now, an applicant for asylum in the U.S. must show a “well-founded fear of persecution” because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or “membership in a particular social group” so the inclusion of abused women in this category is a step in the right direction. But is it a big enough step? I don’t think so.

“In addition to meeting other strict conditions for asylum, abused women will need to show that they are treated by their abuser as subordinates and little better than property, according to an immigration court filing by the administration, and that domestic abuse is widely tolerated in their country. They must show that they could not find protection from institutions at home or by moving to another place within their own country.” [Source]

Do you have any idea how hard it’s going to be for a woman to prove any of that? In a culture where domestic violence is widely tolerated it is just that, tolerated. Assumed to exist. Considered to be the norm. Who will speak up for this woman and help her prove she is little better than property? Who will testify that she is subordinate to her husband when in her country that is just how things are? Who will even think they should or could?

I see a few mistakes being made here. One is the assumption that it’s as simple to speak out against your abuse and abuser and get help in other countries as it is in the U.S., and another is that it’s simple to speak out against your abuse and abuser and get help in the U.S.

Abused women lack options. They may not have transportation, money, or access to phone or internet in order to contact someone for help. They may be, and most likely are, ashamed, because their abuser and society have lead them to believe they should be. They may be afraid of retaliation and an escalation of violence if they do seek help. And that’s here, in the U.S. If our shelters and support services asked these women to prove they were subordinate, treated like property, and could find no other help, before we granted them our assistance, how many do you think would even ask?

Abused women in patriarchal countries where abuse is widely tolerated have even fewer options. It isn’t out of line to assume that many women in these countries live below the poverty line and don’t have money to cover costs of transportation, and even if they did their cultures may very well prohibit women from being in public without a male escort. Like abused women here, they are ashamed and fear retaliation should they leave or seek help. And, making matters worse, if they are from a country where abuse is widely tolerated–common, one might say, even accepted–who will speak up for them and help them prove their abuse when to nearly everyone that abuse is accepted as the norm?

It’s nice that the U.S. is making this offer, but it almost seems like a tease to me. I imagine any woman seeking asylum in the U.S. to escape her abuse is doing so in a state of desperation. Asking her to then go on and prove, in some unnamed way, that she was abused in the specific way outlined by the requirements, and that she had nowhere to go for help in her own country, is putting an unfair burden on someone who has already been burdened enough.

You’ll see her wounds. You’ll hear her quiet testimony. You may feel her shame. Let that be enough.

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)

This weekend I finished reading American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, The Birth of the It Girl and the Crime of the Century, by Paula Uruburu. In a way, my response to the book as a whole can be summed up in a response to the title–intriguing topic, presented in a complex and rather confusing manner, and ultimately more than a little awkward.

Evelyn Nesbit was, as the title suggests, one of the early female products of the birth of the mass-celebrity era. At the turn of the twentieth century, she enjoyed a period as a noted beauty who served as a model for numerous significant artists as well as advertisers. Among other iconic images, she was one of Charles Dana Gibson’s “Gibson Girls.” Her career took her from Pittsburgh to New York City, where she began acting as a chorus girl on Broadway. All of this was before she turned eighteen, though that fact was frequently obscured.

She came to the attention of Stanford White, a prominent architect of the time, who assumed a role of father figure, provided for her financially, and eventually drugged her, raped her, and convinced her the safest path from there was to quietly become his mistress. After several years of this, another wealthy man, Harry Thaw, entered the picture, obsessed with the ideas of possessing Evelyn and destroying White. The “crime of the century” comes in when, several more years down the line, Evelyn married Thaw, who proceeded to shoot White and claim it was because White had “ruined [his] wife.”

Both Nesbit’s story and Uruburu’s presentation of it can be analyzed from a variety of angles just in terms of feminism; Evelyn’s rationalization of her rape and abuse by both White and Thaw, Evelyn’s mother’s actions throughout her life in using Evelyn’s beauty and ambitions to support their family, the conflicted fetishization and abhorrance of youthful female sexuality woven throughout the case. What particularly stood out to me, however, is how the model for public consumption of a female celebrity has not changed much if at all in the century-plus since Evelyn Nesbit took the stand in Harry Thaw’s trial and was obliged to recount every detail of her sexual abuse.**

Women who rise to fame on the wings of beauty or performance are expected to provide a tremendous, unceasing output of product for public consumption. This will last an indeterminate period of time, until there is a scandal or a fall–and there must be a fall, a fall is required. Celebrities are placed at a point of intersection between reality and fiction, and the fictional axis demands a narrative arc that ordinary, genuine life does not provide. Therefore, one way or another, one will be created.

In the course of the fall, the woman will be required to perform confessional and repentance, as Nesbit did during Thaw’s trial. She exposed all of her secrets, told her entire story, was judged in the press and public eye. And then she disappeared offstage, her arc complete and her story exhausted. Uruburu’s book devotes a single chapter to Evelyn’s entire life following the end of Thaw’s trial, when she was 22. The rest of her life took place after the narrative had ended, and thus had no reason to exist.

Some celebrities do get second chances, Fitzgerald’s second acts. More men than women, though, and it’s a fiercely uphill battle. Our culture prizes the narrative above all else, a tendancy that has been established for over a century at the least.

** Every detail, that is, except the names of anyone besides herself and White. Names were to be whispered to the stenographer to protect everyone’s reputation–except Evelyn’s, of course.

Fem2.0 Blog Carnival: For Women, the Other Side of Work Is NOT Play… It’s Caregiving: Caregiving is a job for which women usually don’t get or expect monetary compensation. It is a critical aspect of work/life and healthcare issues. How can caregiving be made easier to make our lives easier? What is caregiving in all its shapes and forms? What role does it play in women’s lives? What can be done, or what changes need to happen, to facilitate caregiving?

A dialogue in response to this-

TAMARA: One of the things that immediately came to my mind when I saw this was that one of the biggest dangers I see for myself and my friends when it comes to caregiving is that we neglect to give care to ourselves. We spend our personal–and often our professional–lives caring for others but when it comes to our own needs, those don’t even make the list! We’re lunch-skippers, lack-of-sleepers, and it seems we’re almost always in need of a little self-care.

SAMANTHA: We don’t want to seem selfish. What’s worse than a selfish woman, right? Failure to nurture is a failure at the very center of constructed womanhood; after all, in the cultural lore, childless women need to be the aunt who babysits, or the teacher who surrogate-parents a generation, or at the very least a crazy cat lady who caregives to animals. Taking care of yourself first goes against an extremely powerful cultural impulse, and honestly most of the time it’s just too hard to do that. So who needs sleep, of course instead I’ll volunteer to help out with this other thing.

TAMARA: I’ll admit it, occasionally I’m resentful. I care for others and yet it seems very rarely does anyone care for me or even notice I’m in need of care. I feel guilty about this, of course, because Good Girls don’t ask for anything in return. Maybe that’s my problem, maybe I should ask.

SAMANTHA: Asking is being demanding, though, and that’s very nearly as bad as being selfish. And of course there’s the element of thinking that you shouldn’t have to ask, that people should notice; but of course any good servant (caregiver) is invisible. Wow, I’m exceptionally cynical today.

TAMARA: We don’t expect others to care for us but it would be nice. I rarely ask for it, and when I do, it’s very awkward. Many of my woman friends are like that. Control issues, an inability to step out of our roles as caregivers and into role of cared-for, I don’t know.

SAMANTHA: Control issues, absolutely. And I suspect that we get a little charge of superiority, as well; after all, we’re filling that damn cultural role, and not even getting anything in return! Martyr complex. And the very best women are martyrs, aren’t they? Old-school American Puritanism: your reward is in heaven.

TAMARA: Well, to borrow your cynicism, it isn’t as if we’re going to get rewarded here. Ouch. I don’t do it for a reward but I definitely get a sense of validation when my caregiving is recognized as something valuable. It’s as if it and I are one and the same, as if it’s such an integral part of me that I literally cannot feel right if it is not acknowledged and valued. (NB: There’s a wonderful book of essays called “Women’s Growth in Connection: Writings from the Stone Center” that discusses this and other aspects of women’s development.)

SAMANTHA: Oh, absolutely. Being the one who listens, the friend who always has a shoulder to cry on, that becomes such an important part of my identity. And of course then trying to talk about my stuff, to let someone else fill that role, feels like giving up part of my identity. It’s a scary thing. And around and around we go in a self-reinforcing cycle.

TAMARA: It’s become important in navigating my friendships that a concept of “give and take” is directly stated. Today it’s your turn to need, tomorrow it may be mine… For some reason that makes it easier for both the caregiver and the cared-for.

SAMANTHA: That might be the best way, explicit communication of needs. Because otherwise, I definitely have a tendency to burn myself out. I just run out of sympathy to give. I picked up this term somewhere on the Internet, though I can’t remember where- “compassion fatigue.” You still care, you want to feel bad for your people who are hurting, you want to support them and be there for them, but you just have nothing left. And that makes you a bad person, of course, because why can’t you suck it up and be there for your friends? It’s a vicious, self-punishing thing.

TAMARA: Because of course then you feel worse, they feel worse, and it keeps going until there’s this group of women sitting around in their misery, each one resentful that no one has noticed and guilty she hasn’t done more for her own friends. Why can’t we just be nice to ourselves? We need to stop playing into these societal roles. Maybe we can’t escape them on a grand scale but we can in our own most intimate circles.

SAMANTHA: Sometimes it’s harder to be honest with your nearest and dearest about this than strangers, though. You can cut off a stranger and walk away with relatively little remorse, but not being there for your BFF? What kind of person are you? Still, sucking it up and having the conversation is probably essential to staying sane.

TAMARA: One of my biggest worries heading into a caregiving profession is burnout. But I’ve realized I’m not so much worried about the effects of this burnout on myself but on those I should be helping. Should be, listen to that. Because I want to be helping, I feel as if I can’t stand by and not help, but it’s still somehow programmed into me that helping–caring–is what I should do.

SAMANTHA: It all comes down to drawing boundaries, I think; making sure to fence off a piece of ourselves for ourselves. Easier said than done, but it’s a goal to keep in sight.

In the July issue of Harper’s Bazaar Naomi Wolf writes about “The Power of Angelina (Jolie),” suggesting that women want her and want to be her because she has and does it all. Jolie, she says, transgresses boundaries, rebrands single-motherhood, and even defies the social stigma of “homewrecking.” All of this is because Jolie has “created a life narrative that is not just personal [but] archetypal… [bringing] together almost every aspect of female empowerment and liberation.” Key to Wolf’s argument is how Jolie has apparently defied one of the main forms of social control instituted by the patriarchy, the Madonna-Whore dichotomy. Women can be good but not sexy, they can be sexy but then obviously they are not good, and Jolie is both good and sexy.

Wolf’s argument falls apart, in my opinion, after she declares this and explains just how Jolie changed from “an attention-seeking, slightly Goth upstart” to this archetypal symbol of female empowerment. The turning point, she says, was Jolie’s son, Maddox, and Jolie’s supposed rebranding of single mothers from “society’s pathetic cases” to goodwill ambassadors who care not only for their own children but for all the world’s. Then came her involvement with Brad Pitt, the “ideal masculine counterpoint” for young Maddox, and Jolie’s avoidance of “the scarlet letter” by providing her son with this new father-figure. Apparently all you need to live the life of an empowered female archetype is to be a mother and wife-figure.

Wait.

If Jolie has indeed become an icon of female empowerment because she’s living our dream life (as Wolf suggests) then what does this say about society’s views of what women want? Jolie herself might be actively defying the Madonna-Whore dichotomy but if it took a child and an attractive live-in lover to raise her status in the eyes of the general public–or at least Naomi Wolf–then I don’t think much has changed at all.

Wolf’s glorification of motherhood is writ large in this essay. Jolie is “the ultimate in single-mom chic” and “an übermom [who mothers] on a global scale.” She’s maternally extravagant, with her well-thought-out multiethnic family and “seems, without breaking stride, to care for half a football team of children while the rest of us tread water with our own biological offspring.” Not a word is mentioned about the day-to-day hardships of parenting and how Jolie’s money and fame give her options and advantages other mothers may not have.

In a similar vein, Jolie’s relationship with Pitt is highlighted as Wolf perceives Jolie to “[have taken] for her own pleasure the male seen as the most desired of the tribe.” There’s a nod to Jolie’s supposed “disdain [for the] social constraint” of marriage (this is in reference to Pitt’s to Aniston when he and Jolie began their relationship, not Jolie and Pitt’s unmarried status) but the breakup of that marriage is secondary to Jolie’s ability to take the man who is “always ranked at the top of indexes of male beauty and virility.”

Wolf briefly sets aside this obsession with motherhood and relationships to praise Jolie for her community service, giving us a paragraph on Jolie’s “elegant bone structure” and the clothing she wears while engaging in these charitable acts. Jolie may be doing more than looking pretty but Wolf certainly doesn’t seem to care.

Wolf may think she’s praising Jolie in this essay, but she isn’t, nor is she successfully demonstrating that Jolie has broken any new ground by way of female archetypes. She’s judging Jolie by the children she has and the man she’s with, not by who she is. Sorry, Naomi Wolf, but I just don’t see empowerment and liberation in that.