Choice
Delivered by Rev. Deane Oliva
Unitarian Universalist Church of Evansville
May 9, 2009
I had a good friend
in high school. Her name was Janine.
One day as we were going through the lunch line, Janine began to
cry. Startled and
concerned, I asked her what had upset her. Through her tears she
replied, “Tomorrow is my birthday.”
“Well, congratulations. Happy Birthday.” “You don’t understand.
I’ll be sixteen tomorrow.” She was really getting worked up.
“I’ll be 16! And I am not married yet.”
Janine was about to become a failure, an outcast, worthless,
the first girl in a long line of generations who had not married
by age sixteen and then become pregnant. She was devastated, without any
view of who else she might become.
I’m not sure that
it would have done any good to tell Janine that she was a pioneer, that
she was going to have more choices than any other female had had in her
family. In fact, she already had forged a new milestone. She was in the
eleventh grade and still in school.
How many choices did Janine have in this process?
She was so bound to her culture that she could not see beyond the
traditions that held her captive.
I too was in that
position. About to enter junior high, I asked my parents if I could
attend Catholic school which I assumed was much better academically than
the public schools. “No,”
my parents answered. “We will not spend money for catholic school for a
girl. You are just going to get married when you graduate from high
school.” Not too surprised,
I weakly protested, “Darn, that’s not fair,” and returned to my
activities. And that was
that. I did not give it another moment’s thought, because I simply did
what my parent’s told me to do. Listen to your parents. Don’t speak to
an adult unless spoken to. Always show respect, not curiosity.
Then how did I get
to college you might ask?
Thank goodness for “Mr. Mazz.”
Mr. Mazzerotti was my high school chemistry teacher. One day he
called my parents into his office and asked them about college.
When he noted their hesitation, he waggled his finger at them and
firmly said, “You will send her to college.”
First generation Americans, my parents dutifully shook their
heads at him and said, “Yes sir.”
This was definitely a change of attitude for my parents and when
they returned home and confronted me with this life altering fact, I
made a pact with them. I
told them that I had little interest in college but that I would apply
to one school and, should I get in, I would attend, but if I did not get
in, they would have to support my decision to be a roller derby skater.
They agreed and even bought me a roller skate for my charm
bracelet to seal the deal.
A roller derby
skater! What was I thinking!
Well, arguably it was the most exciting job I could think of.
It certainly beat being a secretary or a sales clerk neither or
which I thought I would be good at.
I didn’t have the training to be a teacher or a nurse. What else
was there? In a world
constrained by a limiting culture, how much choice did I have?
That was a long
time ago, just before the second wave of feminism.
The first wave of
feminism began in 1789 when Olympe de Gouges published a
Declaration of the Rights of
Woman to protest the French Revolutionists’ failure to mention women
in their Declaration of the
Rights of Man. This was
followed by Judith Sargent Murray wife of John Murray, father of
Universalism, and Mary Wollstonecraft’s enlightenment theory, advocating
liberation and education of women, and then a cadre of feminist leaders
in the 1800’s including Sojourner Truth who delivered the famous
Ain’t I a Woman speech in Akron
Ohio as well as Unitarians Margaret Fuller who wrote
Woman in the Nineteenth Century
which argued that development was severely limited when people’s roles
were defined according to their sex, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton who
believed further that organized religion would have to be abolished
before true emancipation for women could be achieved. The first wave of
feminism was said to have ended when the Nineteenth Amendment, granting
women the right to vote became law in 1919.
However, lest we focus too much on
the right to vote, let us remember that women had very few rights up
until that time and other victories were won along the way. Our
neighboring state of
Kentucky,
for example, in 1890 was the
last state to re-consider women as chattel property, who could
not own the clothes they wore. Until the 1800’s women were denied many
basic rights. A man virtually
owned his wife and children as he did his material possessions. If a
poor man chose to send his children to the poorhouse, the mother was
legally defenseless to object.
This was not too different than the
status of women in the era of the Roman republic in which all women were
under the control of male guardians. And yet, like the suffragettes and
abolitionists the Roman women were able to stand up for themselves when
the stakes were high enough.
Early Christianity perpetuated the Roman and Greek ideology.
Women are good for conception, for motherhood, as a helper, not
as an equal. Male children were preferred.
In the seventh
century came the first large crack in this patriarchal system. Islamic
women were granted personhood, female infanticide was banned, and
polygamy became legally controlled. Women were given inheritance rights,
the dowry became a wedding gift, part of the bride’s personal property.
These basic rights given to women were not to be realized in Western
cultures until, as we have seen, many centuries later.
Motherhood the
biological and social role of the woman has always been regarded as her
primary purpose. A woman’s place is in the home is a stereotype that
many of us have struggled with.
The second wave of feminism directly attacked this target.
Heralded by Betty Friedan’s 1963 work,
The Feminine Mystique, these
feminists decried the fact that women were defined by their relationship
to their husbands and children, thus denying them their own personal
identity. Housewifes were
termed “parasites.”
Traditional families must go. Sexual mores must be changed to allow
women the same rights as men.
The rhetoric was strong, pointed, ruthless.
The pushback was similar, loud, pointed, ruthless. Sexual
politics became central to the debate.
In the latter 19th
century a wide variety of contraceptive methods were available at local
pharmacies. The
accessibility of these devices provoked many. In 1873 a bill prohibiting
the distribution of these devices across state lines or through the mail
was passed in Congress. The Comstock laws, as they were called, also
prohibited distributing any information about abortion.
The first US Birth
Control Clinic was opened in 1916 by Unitarian, Margaret Sanger who also
founded Planned Parenthood. Although Planned Parenthood today is viewed
as a premier health care giver and sex information provider, its early
days had a decided eugenics structure.
Margaret Sanger,
one of eleven children born to a mother who had 18 pregnancies, was an
avowed believer in eugenics.
She is quoted as saying, "The most merciful thing that a large
family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.[1]" and
“The purpose in promoting birth control was ‘to create a race of
thoroughbreds.[2]’”
Yet, her own decision to start a birth control clinic was formed by her
work with the poor in New York
City. There she found women literally dying to
learn how to stop unwanted pregnancies. It became her passion to stop
this unnecessary death.
The advent of the
birth control pill in 1960 coincided with the feminists’ fight for
sexual reproduction rights. Women’s liberation was a key buzzword and
became both a rallying point and a phrase of ill repute as women aligned
with the feminist goals or resisted a headlong thrust into new roles.
Although at that time women perceived themselves as having more
choices, the era led to the super-woman profile composed of hard working
career women who also attempted to be the perfect mothers and wives. As
families went from Ozzie and Harriet to the Huxtables, economic changes
which at first reinforced the two parent household with extra
discretionary income, soon came to be the albatross of necessity, as
more and more families could no longer live on one income.
Soon, what once was a small window of choice, became a necessity
of survival.
Tests made in the
1960s showed that the scholastic achievement of girls was higher in the
early grades than in high school. The major reason given was that the
girls' own expectations declined because neither their families nor
their teachers expected them to prepare for a future other than that of
marriage and motherhood. That trend is reversing. Thus, today we see
more and more women advancing educationally.
According to the
U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics,
in the early 1900s about 19 percent of undergraduate degrees went
to women. By 1984 the number was 49 percent and now, at 58%, women
obtain more bachelor degrees then men.
Masters’ degrees are obtained decidedly more by women than men.
In 2006 women earned over 356 thousand
master’s degrees, compared to 237 thousand for men.
Interestingly, in the first year of college the sexes are
approximately equal. It is hypothesized that more men drop out of school
because they are offered higher paying jobs in fields such as
construction which are traditionally not open to women.
I
am glad to see the numbers advance.
I remember when the common sense was that women were deemed
generally inferior to men intellectually and specifically in the math
and sciences. Then, a
wonderful Kettering
study showed that when primary students – primary students – were given
the same math problems but with different objects, they scored
differently. For example,
Pat
wanted to bake three chocolate cakes.
Pat needed four cups of flour and two cups of sugar to make one
chocolate cake. How much flour and sugar did Pat need to make three
chocolate cakes?
Fran wanted to build three model airplanes.
Fran needed four sticks of glue and two tubes of paint to build
one model airplane. How
many sticks and tubes did Fran need to build three model airplanes?
Sure enough the girls could answer the baking question, but did not do
as well on the building question.
Just how constrained we are by our tradition and cultural milieu is
often not even considered as we make our daily decisions.
A husband who shoots his wife commits a “passion shooting.” A
wife who shoots her husband commits murder.
It was as late as 1968 that Pennysylvania voided a state law
which required that any woman convicted of a felony be sentenced to the
maximum punishment prescribed by law.
Prostitution laws are enforced almost exclusively against women.
Although women
comprise approximately 45 percent of the labor force they hold very few
decision making jobs. They
continue to be paid less for doing the same job as a male. We might
immediately jump to the conclusion of gender based wage bias.
Yet, an article by
Shankar Vedantam suggests that our cultural heritage may be the culprit.
Approximately 12 years ago a group of female
Carnegie Mellon graduate students lodged a complaint with their
economics professor Linda Babcock. : All their male counterparts in the
university's PhD program were teaching courses on their own, whereas the
women were working only as teaching assistants. When Babcock took the
complaint to her boss, she learned there was a simple explanation: "The
dean said each of the guys had come to him and said, 'I want to teach a
course,' and none of the women had done that," she said. "The female
students had expected someone to send around an e-mail saying, 'Who
wants to teach?' " The incident prompted Babcock to start systematically
studying gender differences when it comes to asking for pay raises,
resources or promotions. And what she found was that men and women are
indeed often different when it comes to opening negotiations. These
differences, Babcock and other researchers have concluded, may partially
explain the persistent gender gap in salaries, as well as other
disparities in how people rise to the top of organizations.
Women
working full time who have never taken time off to have children earn
about 11 percent less than men with equivalent education and experience.
In
one early study, Babcock brought 74 volunteers into a laboratory to play
a word game called Boggle. The volunteers were told they would be paid
anywhere from $3 to $10 for their time. After playing the game, each
student was given $3 and asked if the sum was OK. Eight times more men
than women asked for more money. Babcock then ran the experiment a
different way. She told a new set of 153 volunteers that they would be
paid $3 to $10 but explicitly added that the sum was negotiable. Many
more now asked for more money, but the gender gap remained substantial:
58 percent of the women, but 83 percent of the men, asked for more.
Another study quizzed graduating master's degree students who had
received job offers about whether they had simply accepted the offered
starting salary or had tried to negotiate for more. Four times as many
men — 51 percent of the men vs. 12.5 percent of the women — said they
had pushed for a better deal. Not surprisingly, those who negotiated
tended to be rewarded — they got 7.4 percent more, on average — compared
with those who did not negotiate.
[3]
These
findings suggest that we make choices based on how we have been led to
think of ourselves. Although women in the United States have made impressive
legal gains over the past 50 years, they have not yet culturally
absorbed these gains into their psyche, their traditions, or their views
of themselves. Perhaps that
is because these gains are not being reinforced in the culture.
Perhaps as our Unitarian sister Elizabeth Cady Stanton states,
religion must be abolished in order to achieve true emancipation.
Certainly there are religious groups that continue to preach that women
are the mere help-mate of man, subject to his rule, properly placed in
the home, tending to the children. These values are not isolated in this
community. Although we went through a period of yellow and green outfits
for babies, once again we are back to pink and blue, to boy toys and
girl toys, to boys activities and girls activities.
When will we learn how limiting these categories are!
How they stilt the child’s imagination, impoverish their grasp,
and weaken their choice making.
I chose
to talk about choice today because motherhood is a choice. It is a
choice that was first polarized by the feminist movement, further
fractionated by economic necessity, and lately reinvigorated by a media
driven, substantively bereft political system. I am appalled by the
reaction to President Obama’s invitation to speak at Notre Dame, to the
misplaced passion of those who have a conviction that they flaunt above
all others. Let us be truthful.
Procreation is no longer the major reason for sexual intercourse.
Once that fact is appreciated for the truth that it is, one must then
consider whether or not every sexual act should potentially produce a
child. If not, then the question of birth control, including abortion is
necessarily on the table.
As much as one might like to be, one cannot be in denial about this
incontrovertible fact. My
heart cries every time I listen to these debates. Is the fetus a baby?
Do we have words that reflect a viable life form and differentiate that
from human baby? When is a baby a baby?
Whose life is to be protected? Who makes the decisions?
Does the woman have the right to decide upon the life or death of
the fetus? Where does the father fit in?
Can you be pro choice and against abortion? Can you be pro life
and for abortion?
I
believe that these legalistic arguments have dominated the arena for far
too long. Let us not dwell
on the timing of the abortion, the legality of an abortion, not even the
rights of the woman to decide.
In the end, the woman will decide.
I pray that she not make a legal decision.
I pray that she not make a convenient choice.
I pray that she make a sacred choice.
No matter how it is framed, a human potential is formed at
conception. Whether it is
conceived in joy, error, or violence, a human potential is formed.
The woman who bears this potential must make a decision, one
which she deems in the best interest, - for whom, one might ask, in the
best interest as she knows it.
I pray that she not linger over the legalistic rhetoric, the
polarized preaching, or the preconceived notions of her friends and
family. A baby is forming
and she must make a decision. May she turn inward during this time and
find her higher self, that which will guide her through this process.
When the choice is made to bring a baby to term, let it be a
promise for the future to love, nurture and provide for the baby to the
best of one’s ability. When the choice is made to terminate a pregnancy,
let it be with an appreciation of a life denied. May the mother grieve
as she also affirms her choice.
May she not trivialize the event.
Let us
affirm that the right of a woman to control what happens to her body,
bears with it a responsibility, one to take steps not to become pregnant
if one does not want a child. A woman who decides not to use birth
control in these circumstances, one who has unprotected sex with
abandon, is as morally wrong as the person who drinks and drives.
There are lives at stake. Today, I argue here not for a pro life
or a pro choice-pro abortion stance. I argue here for a pro reverence
stance. I argue to take the decision back where it belongs. It is a
sacred choice.
William
Ellery Channing challenges us in his work “The Free Mind” that to be
free, one must recognize its own reality and greatness, one must not be
content with a passive acceptance of tradition, nor be framed by outward
circumstances. One must resist the bondage of habit and not mechanically
copy the past or live on its old virtues.
To make enlightened choices every woman must have thrown off the
yoke of servitude, the oppression of inferiority, and the fear of
retribution. They must
appreciate their unique gifts and be ready to express them to their
fullest extent.
In this
culture, in this congregation, we have many strong women who exercise
their gifts in a free and thoughtful manner.
They are role models for others less sure of their own gifts.
By their behavior, by the openness of their hearts and minds, by
their transparent process they have the opportunity to offer themselves
as choice making models for those who need to see this behavior, in our
congregation and in our larger community. May we not fear to take the
risk. May we accept setbacks and mistakes as the new opportunities that
they are. Most of all, may
you make the choices which affirm who you are.
May it be so.
[3]
Vedantam, Shankar “Pay
differential is complex: Researchers conclude that
there's more than meets the eye when it comes to salary, gender
and the social cost of haggling”
http://www.roguecc.edu/csi/assets/PDF/Pay_differential_article.pdf