Feminist Leader Trashes Other Feminist Leaders

Ms. Magazine published the article ‘Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood’ in 1976.

More than 40 years later, former National Organization for Women (NOW) vice president Gilda Yazzi filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against NOW and national NOW President Toni Van Pelt for race discrimination, hostile work environment, and retaliation. NOW filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Part of the lawsuit was dismissed, but the motion to dismiss all counts was denied. The lawsuit is moving forward.

Other NOW staff members and interns accused Van Pelt of discrimination: “illegal, morally reprehensible, dishonest, destructive, and frankly toxic behavior.”

Trashing to create intentional inequality is a feminist leader tradition.

Fortunately, NOW includes state chapter leaders and national board members who do want equality. They called for Van Pelt to leave NOW. Van Pelt resigned, citing health reasons.

NOW has yet to create equality between its own staff and members. How can it possibly create equality between women and men?

“‘Don’t Forget the White Women!’: Members Say Racism Ran Rampant at NOW”
Emily Shugerman
The Daily Beast
August 12, 2020

“President of Now steps down amid racism allegations at feminist group”
Miranda Bryant
The Guardian
August 17, 2020

“Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood”
Joreen
Ms. Magazine
1976, pages 49 to 51 and 92 to 98.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As an American, I have freedom of speech.

As a woman, I have the right to express my opinion about anything the National Organization for Women claims to do for women.

In 2016, I started adding the section below to all of my new Feminist Leader blog posts. I also added it to all posts published before 2016.

The National Organization For Women
Silences Women

National NOW has blocked me on its Facebook page. I wrote comments based on my blog posts. All of my blog posts are based on a wide variety of evidence. Much of the evidence comes from National NOW’s website, emails and posts from NOW presidents, and emails from NOW staff members. I use no hostile language, no slurs, no profanity. I do use the phrase “glory addicts” in reference to NOW leaders. I also use “glory addiction”, “glory fixes”, and “a dedicated network of glory addicts”. Dr. Marsha Vanderford (Doyle) identified the glory needs of pro-choice leaders in her 1982 dissertation.

Feminist leaders have been silencing women for decades. bell hooks, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf got together for a conversation that was published in Ms. Magazine in 1993. The discussion included why women choose not to call themselves feminists. Did these four feminist leaders working for women’s equality ask women who choose not to call themselves feminist to speak for themselves? Of course not! The four feminist leaders silenced millions of women by speaking for them without first requesting permission to speak for them.

Imagine a group of women who choose not to call themselves feminists getting together for a conversation to be published in a magazine about why some women call themselves feminists. Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree with nonfeminist women denying them the opportunity to speak for themselves? Of course not! Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree that nonfeminist women had the right to speak for feminist women without their permission? Of course not!

hooks, Steinem Vaid, and Wolf could have created equality between women. They could have provided a platform for women who choose not to call themselves feminist to explain their choice in their own words.

My feminist leader blog posts provide evidence that feminist leaders still create glory for themselves while relegating supporters to “secondary importance”. Dr. Vanderford used the words “relegated” and “secondary importance” in her dissertation. Eoin Harnett of University College Cork in Ireland used the same “secondary importance” phrase:

“Throughout the ages, women were frequently characterised
and treated as inferior and of secondary importance to men.”

NOW leaders even relegated two of their supporters to secondary importance. The supporters responded to my last two comments on National NOW’s Facebook page with comments supporting NOW. NOW leaders silenced those supporters by removing their comments along with my comments. Instead of creating equality, NOW leaders treat other women the same way patriarchal men treat women, as inferior and of secondary importance.

In-House Rhetoric of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Special Interest Groups in Minnesota: Motivation and Alienation
Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1982
Marsha Vanderford Doyle, Ph.D.
(Now Marsha Vanderford)
Quoted words on page 350.

“Let’s Get Real about Feminism: The Backlash, the Myths, the Movement.”
hooks, bell, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf.
Ms. Magazine.
Vol 4(2) September/October 1993: pages 34-43.

“Multitext Project in Irish History: Movements for Political & Social Reform, 1870-1914”
Eoin Hartnett
University College Cork, Ireland
No date
This project is no longer available online.

~~~~~

Paula M. Kramer
© 2015 to the present.
All rights reserved.

Posts on this blog alternate with posts at the link below. Posts for both blogs are published on Wednesdays as they are ready to be published. Time between posts could be weeks or months.

blog.smilessparksuccess.com

Resource Websites

speakingfromtriumph.com

smilessparksuccess.com

Soft Skill Power Strategies For Attracting Unimagined Success

softskillstrategycourses.com

Facebook Page

Women Speaking Equality

Standards For Success Posters

Girl Grit

Girl Goodwill

Business Directory

betterplanetbusiness.com

Positive Identity Directory For People With Mugshots

myrecordnow.com

Should You Believe The National Organization For Women (NOW)? NOW Chapters

Equality between men and women will follow equality between:
white women and women of color,
upper class women, middle class women, and lower class women,
feminist women and non-feminist women,
feminist leaders and feminist followers.

Update: Since I wrote this blog post, NOW has removed chapter information from its website and done some rewriting. You no longer have the ability to see which chapters are active or how active they are. NOW leaders prefer keeping secrets. Just look at the “NOW Leaders” page for proof. Reread the above statement about equality. NOW is nowhere near creating equality between women and men. (NOW has removed the NOW Leaders page. This only means they are no longer announcing that NOW leaders keep secrets. NOW leaders still keep secrets. They keep their “activist” training secret from the women who pay for the training.)

~~~~~

In 2008, I started paying attention to the website for the National Organization for Women (NOW). For all of those years, NOW has made this sort of claim on the About page of its website.

NOW has hundreds of chapters and hundreds of thousands of
members and activists in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

After a few years, I started checking those claims. Never once did I find chapters in all 50 states. I always found “Sorry, no chapters found” for several states. Other states listed the name of a chapter, but the chapters had no website or social media.

Also, when I first started paying attention, NOW claimed to have more than 500,000 members. After I started writing blog posts about feminist leaders, that number changed. You’ll note that NOW currently claims, “hundreds of thousands of members and activists”. Note that being a member apparently does not make one an activist.

At the end of February 2017, I did detailed research into NOW chapters for every single state. This is my research on NOW Chapters. As of my detailed research, NOW still did not have chapters in all 50 states. Of the “hundreds of chapters”, only 132 were active. Since the total number of chapters was 228, fewer than 60 percent of all chapters were active.

When I posted the PDF files to each active NOW chapter, several of them reported me to Facebook for spam. Facebook banned me from making comments anywhere. I contacted Facebook and explained that I was informing an activist organization about effective strategies for change. Facebook lifted the ban within hours. Heaven forbid that NOW chapters be as effective as Srdja Popovic, a leader of the student movement that helped topple Serbian president Slobodan Milošević.

I can give you my perspective on why NOW chapters are inactive. I spent one year as a member of a no longer existing chapter. Booooorrrrring. Lots of sitting around listening to the local president read information from the national organization. I remember being one of three people at many meetings. That was decades ago, but if more than 40% of NOW chapters are currently inactive, being a NOW member is still not an exhilarating experience.

As I publish this post, NOW still has states with “Sorry, no chapters found”.

Should you believe what NOW claims about its chapters? You decide.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Paula M. Kramer
Copyright 2015
All rights reserved.

Posts on this blog alternate with posts at the link below. Posts for both blogs are published on Wednesdays as they are ready to be published. Time between posts could be weeks or months.

blog.smilessparksuccess.com

Standards For Success Posters

Girl Grit

Girl Goodwill

Resource Websites

speakingfromtriumph.com

smilessparksuccess.com

Business Directory

betterplanetbusiness.com

Reputation Management Directory

myrecordnow.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As an American, I have freedom of speech.

As a woman, I have the right to express my opinion about anything the National Organization for Women claims to do for women.

In 2016, I started adding the section below to all of my new Feminist Leader blog posts. I also added it to all posts published before 2016.

The National Organization For Women
Silences Women

National NOW has blocked me on its Facebook page. I wrote comments based on my blog posts. All of my blog posts are based on a wide variety of evidence. Much of the evidence comes from National NOW’s website, emails and posts from NOW presidents, and emails from NOW staff members. I use no hostile language, no slurs, no profanity. I do use the phrase “glory addicts” in reference to NOW leaders. I also use “glory addiction”, “glory fixes”, and “a dedicated network of glory addicts”. Dr. Marsha Vanderford (Doyle) identified the glory needs of pro-choice leaders in her 1982 dissertation.

Feminist leaders have been silencing women for decades. bell hooks, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf got together for a conversation that was published in Ms. Magazine in 1993. The discussion included why women choose not to call themselves feminists. Did these four feminist leaders working for women’s equality ask women who choose not to call themselves feminist to speak for themselves? Of course not! The four feminist leaders silenced millions of women by speaking for them without first requesting permission to speak for them.

Imagine a group of women who choose not to call themselves feminists getting together for a conversation to be published in a magazine about why some women call themselves feminists. Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree with nonfeminist women denying them the opportunity to speak for themselves? Of course not! Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree that nonfeminist women had the right to speak for feminist women without their permission? Of course not!

hooks, Steinem Vaid, and Wolf could have created equality between women. They could have provided a platform for women who choose not to call themselves feminist to explain their choice in their own words.

My feminist leader blog posts provide evidence that feminist leaders still create glory for themselves while relegating supporters to “secondary importance”. Dr. Vanderford used the words “relegated” and “secondary importance” in her dissertation. Eoin Harnett of University College Cork in Ireland used the same “secondary importance” phrase:

“Throughout the ages, women were frequently characterised
and treated as inferior and of secondary importance to men.”

NOW leaders even relegated two of their supporters to secondary importance. The supporters responded to my last two comments on National NOW’s Facebook page with comments supporting NOW. NOW leaders silenced those supporters by removing their comments along with my comments. Instead of creating equality, NOW leaders treat other women the same way patriarchal men treat women, as inferior and of secondary importance.

In-House Rhetoric of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Special Interest Groups in Minnesota: Motivation and Alienation
Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1982
Marsha Vanderford Doyle, Ph.D.
(Now Marsha Vanderford)
Quoted words on page 350.

“Let’s Get Real about Feminism: The Backlash, the Myths, the Movement.”
hooks, bell, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf.
Ms. Magazine.
Vol 4(2) September/October 1993: pages 34-43.

“Multitext Project in Irish History: Movements for Political & Social Reform, 1870-1914”
Eoin Hartnett
University College Cork, Ireland
No date
This project is no longer available online.

~~~~~

Paula M. Kramer
© 2015 to the present.
All rights reserved.

Posts on this blog alternate with posts at the link below. Posts for both blogs are published on Wednesdays as they are ready to be published. Time between posts could be weeks or months.

blog.smilessparksuccess.com

Resource Websites

speakingfromtriumph.com

smilessparksuccess.com

Soft Skill Power Strategies For Attracting Unimagined Success

softskillstrategycourses.com

Facebook Page

Women Speaking Equality

Standards For Success Posters

Girl Grit

Girl Goodwill

Business Directory

betterplanetbusiness.com

Positive Identity Directory For People With Mugshots

myrecordnow.com

Victims On The Left, Victims On The Right

Validation: to make valid; substantiate; confirm

Some people enjoy being victims. People seem to express their enjoyment of being victims by publicly announcing that they are victims. Public announcements provide what I call victim validation. Victim validation gives people feelings of importance as validated victims. Validated victims expect other people to pay attention to their victim needs and take care of their victim needs. Because they feel that publicly announcing their victimhood makes their needs more important than anyone else’s, validated victims feel entitled to ignore everyone else’s needs.

Validated victims blame other people for all of their problems and complain about other people hurting them. Unfortunately, validated victims are everywhere, including the political left and the political right.

Victims on the Left

One example from the political left is Terry O’Neill, President of the National Organization for Women since 2009. I am not a member of the National Organization for Women, but I did sign up for emails. NOW President Terry O’Neill sends out emails to “hundreds of thousands of contributing members and more than 500 local and campus affiliates in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.” I disproved those membership claims, so we don’t know how many people receive the emails. NOW’s claim about the number of members has changed since I disproved its claim of more than 500,000 members.

This email from O’Neill perfectly illustrates victim validation:

Subject Line: Haterade
September 13, 2014
Terry O’Neill, NOW via mail.salsalabs.net

10:53 AM (1 hour ago)

to me

Dear Paula,

 I’m sure you’ve heard by now, but this week NOW called on NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to resign his post. Since we released that statement, it has been a whirlwind of press and action.

You might have seen or heard me on MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC or ESPN – or any of a dozen other media outlets. But if you saw me, that means the trolls did too; all week, we’ve been getting barraged with hateful comments via phone, email and on Facebook and Twitter.

Nestled in there — often hidden in the muck — are voices of solidarity. These voices wish us luck in our endeavor, many identify as football fans or activists working in their communities – all agree that we must end the epidemic of violence against women.

Contribute and help us continue our work!

Sure, some of the trolls use the old quip of demanding that I “make them a sandwich” – not the first time I’ve heard that one! I’ve been accused of being “off my rocker”.

The truth is, though, almost all of these comments have been outright and aggressively misogynistic.

 Since I became president of NOW, I’ve received a regular stream of hate mail. Sadly, it just comes with the job. But knowing I have your support makes all the difference.

So a warning to the trolls: We will not deviate from this path. I know that we can change our culture – which is so permissive of violence against women — and change our laws, simultaneously.

How do I know that? Because we’re the National Organization for Women and this what we do – especially with supporters like you.

Thank you for all you do,
Terry O’Neill
President, National Organization for Women

P.S. Thousands of you have already shown your support by signing our petition demanding that Roger Goodell resign. Can I count on your continued support with a contribution today?

Blaming and complaining over and over again, just in this one email. O’Neill clearly feels sorrier for herself than she feels for women who live with domestic violence. She never acknowledges the men who live with domestic violence. She does acknowledge that hate mail “just comes with the job.” Though she made the choice to take a job that comes with hate mail, O’Neill still feels more victimized than women who are victims of domestic violence. Never mind the male victims.

Did O’Neill validate her victimhood on ”MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC or ESPN — or any of a dozen other media outlets”? I don’t know. I have better things to do than watch the President of the National Organization for Women demonstrate the fine art of validating victimhood.

Victims on the Right

One example from the political right is a commenter to online articles in local newspapers. This is a much smaller audience than O’Neill’s audience. The commenter and I both live in Wisconsin. She is a Republican. I am a Democrat.

I exchanged comments with this commenter in several discussions. Two discussions illustrate her desire to be a validated victim. Both were political discussions. Several newspapers have written articles about how Wisconsin is doing worse under Governor Scott Walker. For one discussion, I provided this list of online article titles for everyone reading the comments to see:

“Surprise! ‘Pro-business’ policies hurt state economic growth”
Michael Hitzik
Los Angeles Times
May 6, 2014

“State Employment Trends: Does a Low Tax/Right-to-Work/Low Minimum Wage Regime Correlate to Growth?”
Bruce Hall
Econbrowser
April 22, 2014

“Declining Private Employment in Wisconsin, Sideways Trending in Kansas”
Menzie Chinn
Econbrowser
July 17, 2014

“Revised and Updated Data Indicate Minnesota-Wisconsin Economic Activity Gap Increases”
Menzie Chinn
Econbrowser
April 1, 2014

“Right vs. Left in the Midwest”
Lawrence R. Jacobs
The New York Times
November 23, 2013

The commenter wrote these two comments to me:

“California is a disaster. You should quit posting.”

“Yes, Paula Kramer. You should quit posting when you say CA is doing better than WI.”

She included the link below with her second comment:

“California’s Economic Collision Course: Immigration and Water”
Thomas Del Beccaro
Forbes Magazine
August 19, 2014

This article was the only evidence she presented in response to me during the discussion.

Because of these two comments, I gave this commenter a nickname: Stop-Thinking-You’re-Equal-To-Me.

In another discussion, I wrote a comment about how Walker’s policies had made life worse for all Wisconsin residents. I included this list of links to online articles:

“Wisconsin ‘right-to-work” critic will expand company in Minnesota
Tad Vezner
St. Paul Pioneer Press
March 10, 2015

“Wisconsin and Minnesota: A One-Sided Political Competition”
Steve Benen
The Rachel Maddow Show/The MaddowBlog
March 5, 2015

“Scott Walker has failed Wisconsin and Minnesota is the proof”
Jimmy Anderson
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
October 22, 2014

“Minnesota economy beats Wisconsin: 7 charts, 1 table”
Paul Tosto
Minnesota Public Radio NewsCut
January 26, 2015

“A Fiscal Tale of Two States: Minnesota vs. Wisconsin”
Menzie Chinn
Econobrowser
September 30, 2014

“Our view: Minnesota is winning this border battle”
ScottRada
LaCrosse Tribune
January 4, 2015

“Walker vs. Dayton smackdown: Which governor has the better economy?”
Louis O. Johnson
MinnPost
February 7, 2013

“Minnesota making our state look bad”
Tom Clementi
Post-Crescent
January 15, 2015

The January 15, 2015 Post Crescent article includes these statements:

“Despite Walker’s claim that we’re “open for business,” Forbes magazine ranks Wisconsin 31st for business; Minnesota ranks ninth. This despite the fact that the American Legislative Exchange Council, the powerful organization that drafts legislation for conservative politicians and is funded, in part, by Exxon-Mobil and the Koch brothers, places Minnesota in the lowest tier of “ALEC-friendly” states and touts Wisconsin as No. 1 for taxes in 2014.

But that number is countered by reality. The median income for a Wisconsin family is some $8,000 less per year than in Minnesota. Forbes places our Minnesota seventh for economic climate and Wisconsin 27th. Forbes also ranks Minnesota second in quality of life and Wisconsin 17th.

Those numbers make ALEC’s numbers a little suspect and raise the question of exactly who benefits from Wisconsin’s No. 1 ALEC tax rating? Obviously, it’s not the ordinary Wisconsin citizen.”

This was the response from Stop-Thinking-You’re-Equal-To-Me:

“Hey Paula: Obama made me give up my Dr. so it’s best to stop talking about what is taken away from you.”

In response to a list of articles about the effect of state government policies on all Wisconsin residents, Stop-Thinking-You’re-Equal-To-Me wrote about herself. She created inequality for me again by telling me to “stop talking”.

Blaming and complaining, Stop-Thinking-You’re-Equal-To-Me validated herself as a victim. She expects other people to be responsible for her needs while she ignores the needs of everyone else. Why should she pay attention to the needs of people she considers her inferiors?

To make sure she knew I would quote her comments, I sent Stop-Thinking-You’re-Equal-To-Me a private Facebook message. I assured her I would keep her anonymous. I also wrote this:

“It’s sad that you don’t see equality as the benefit it is. It’s sad that you don’t understand that creating inequality for someone else means inviting other people to create inequality for you. You and I are equal, ——-. You deserve the same respect I deserve. I deserve the same respect you deserve. You deserve the same respect from other people that I receive from other people. That is why I hope you stop inviting other people to create inequality for you.”

This is part of her response:

“Now I remember, Paula. Your mother tried to kill you twice and you write about it and have trouble still dealing with it. I had a brother that beheaded himself, an alcoholic husband that became a ward of the state, a family member that embezzled, incidents in childhood that may make you shudder.”

For the record, I write about my mother trying to kill me only when I am participating in discussions about abortion, which might be two or three times a year. I do not write about my mother trying to kill me when it has nothing to do with the discussion.

Stop-Thinking-You’re-Equal-To-Me, however, inserted her personal pain into a discussion that was not about personal pain. Perhaps Stop-Thinking-You’re-Equal-To-Me thought those four examples would force me to see her for the validated victim she believes she is. As a validated victim, no one should expect anything of her, including treating other people with respect and equality. Instead, we should tolerate Stop-Thinking-You’re-Equal-To-Me’s blaming and complaining and take responsibility for easing her pain while expecting nothing in return.

What to Do about Validated Victims?

You could tolerate the victims who share your political views, though you shouldn’t expect them to treat you with respect or equality. You could ignore validated victims on both the right and the left. Or, you could use one or more of these four techniques:

Use the term validated victim to them.

Repeat, “Blaming and complaining again?” each time they do it.

Let them know how many times they made the same statement.

Ask, “What are you doing to change the situation?”

I’ve tried the last two techniques with just one person. After one friend made the exact same complaint five times in a row, I told her she had made the exact same statement five times in a row. I told her I needed to hear it only once. Then I asked her what she was going to do about the situation. She told me she might need to say it five times in a row. I told her she could find someone else to say it to. She no longer calls me to blame and complain about anything.

If we all use similar strategies with the people in our lives, maybe we could gradually convince everyone that victim validation is a waste of everyone’s time. Maybe pointing out the common ground between validated victims on the political left and validated victims on the political right would cause enough healthy embarrassment to stop the blaming and complaining. Something along the lines of:

“You sound just like…”

I’m ready to try.

“Processes Explaining the Concealment and Distortion of Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence”
Murray A. Strauss
European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research
July 14, 2007

Ms. Magazine published the article ‘Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood’ in 1976.

More than 40 years later, former National Organization for Women (NOW) vice president Gilda Yazzi filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against NOW and national NOW President Toni Van Pelt for race discrimination, hostile work environment, and retaliation. NOW filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Part of the lawsuit was dismissed, but the motion to dismiss all counts was denied. The lawsuit is moving forward.

Other NOW staff members and interns accused Van Pelt of discrimination: “illegal, morally reprehensible, dishonest, destructive, and frankly toxic behavior.”

Trashing to create intentional inequality is a feminist leader tradition.

Fortunately, NOW includes state chapter leaders and national board members who do want equality. They called for Van Pelt to leave NOW. Van Pelt resigned, citing health reasons.

NOW has yet to create equality between its own staff and members. How can it possibly create equality between women and men?

“‘Don’t Forget the White Women!’: Members Say Racism Ran Rampant at NOW”
Emily Shugerman
The Daily Beast
August 12, 2020

“President of Now steps down amid racism allegations at feminist group”
Miranda Bryant
The Guardian
August 17, 2020

“Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood”
Joreen
Ms. Magazine
1976, pages 49 to 51 and 92 to 98.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As an American, I have freedom of speech.

As a woman, I have the right to express my opinion about anything the National Organization for Women claims to do for women.

In 2016, I started adding the section below to all of my new Feminist Leader blog posts. I also added it to all posts published before 2016.

The National Organization For Women
Silences Women

National NOW has blocked me on its Facebook page. I wrote comments based on my blog posts. All of my blog posts are based on a wide variety of evidence. Much of the evidence comes from National NOW’s website, emails and posts from NOW presidents, and emails from NOW staff members. I use no hostile language, no slurs, no profanity. I do use the phrase “glory addicts” in reference to NOW leaders. I also use “glory addiction”, “glory fixes”, and “a dedicated network of glory addicts”. Dr. Marsha Vanderford (Doyle) identified the glory needs of pro-choice leaders in her 1982 dissertation.

Feminist leaders have been silencing women for decades. bell hooks, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf got together for a conversation that was published in Ms. Magazine in 1993. The discussion included why women choose not to call themselves feminists. Did these four feminist leaders working for women’s equality ask women who choose not to call themselves feminist to speak for themselves? Of course not! The four feminist leaders silenced millions of women by speaking for them without first requesting permission to speak for them.

Imagine a group of women who choose not to call themselves feminists getting together for a conversation to be published in a magazine about why some women call themselves feminists. Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree with nonfeminist women denying them the opportunity to speak for themselves? Of course not! Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree that nonfeminist women had the right to speak for feminist women without their permission? Of course not!

hooks, Steinem Vaid, and Wolf could have created equality between women. They could have provided a platform for women who choose not to call themselves feminist to explain their choice in their own words.

My feminist leader blog posts provide evidence that feminist leaders still create glory for themselves while relegating supporters to “secondary importance”. Dr. Vanderford used the words “relegated” and “secondary importance” in her dissertation. Eoin Harnett of University College Cork in Ireland used the same “secondary importance” phrase:

“Throughout the ages, women were frequently characterised
and treated as inferior and of secondary importance to men.”

NOW leaders even relegated two of their supporters to secondary importance. The supporters responded to my last two comments on National NOW’s Facebook page with comments supporting NOW. NOW leaders silenced those supporters by removing their comments along with my comments. Instead of creating equality, NOW leaders treat other women the same way patriarchal men treat women, as inferior and of secondary importance.

In-House Rhetoric of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Special Interest Groups in Minnesota: Motivation and Alienation
Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1982
Marsha Vanderford Doyle, Ph.D.
(Now Marsha Vanderford)
Quoted words on page 350.

“Let’s Get Real about Feminism: The Backlash, the Myths, the Movement.”
hooks, bell, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf.
Ms. Magazine.
Vol 4(2) September/October 1993: pages 34-43.

“Multitext Project in Irish History: Movements for Political & Social Reform, 1870-1914”
Eoin Hartnett
University College Cork, Ireland
No date
This project is no longer available online.

~~~~~

Paula M. Kramer
© 2015 to the present.
All rights reserved.

Posts on this blog alternate with posts at the link below. Posts for both blogs are published on Wednesdays as they are ready to be published. Time between posts could be weeks or months.

blog.smilessparksuccess.com

Resource Websites

speakingfromtriumph.com

smilessparksuccess.com

Soft Skill Power Strategies For Attracting Unimagined Success

softskillstrategycourses.com

Facebook Page

Women Speaking Equality

Standards For Success Posters

Girl Grit

Girl Goodwill

Business Directory

betterplanetbusiness.com

Positive Identity Directory For People With Mugshots

myrecordnow.com

Pro-Life Strategies Leave Pro-Choice Strategies In The Dust

For one seminar in grad school, I had to purchase and read a dissertation of my choice. The dissertation I chose changed my understanding of feminist leaders, the cumulative power of small steps, and the importance of trusting the talents and energy of ordinary people. Marsha Vanderford focused on strategies the leaders of one pro-life organization and the leaders of one pro-choice organization used to motivate their supporters, then showed the results of those strategies. I summarized Vanderford’s findings below.

In-House Rhetoric of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Special Interest Groups in Minnesota: Motivation and Alienation
Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1982
Marsha Vanderford Doyle, Ph.D.
(Now Marsha Vanderford)

Dr. Vanderford used research material from the 1970s. Keep that in mind as you read some of the motivational strategies below.

Minnesota Citizens Concerned
for Life

Pro-Life Motivational Situation
Difficulty & Threat

Definition of the Problem

Abortion is murder, genocide, and
dehumanization. Abortion is against
women’s role, American values,
individual rights, and the judicial
system. Abortion advocates are a
powerful, immoral, merciless minority
that wants to protect their own power
and wealth.

Abortion Rights Council
of Minnesota

Pro-Choice Motivational Situation
Threat

Definition of the Problem

Illegal abortion is brutal, filthy, and
dangerous because it is done with
knitting needles, butcher knives, and
coat hangers. The pro-life side is an
underhanded, irrational, hypocritical,
and unreasonable minority that wants
to oppress women, restrict sexuality,
and discriminate against the poor.
The  pro-life side ignores the needs of
women in trouble and in poor health.

Results of the Problem Continuing

Legal abortion would soon lead to
more babies dying, euthanasia,
nuclear war, threats to every individual,
and threats to the entire nation.
(Present dangers)

Results of the Problem Continuing

A return to illegal abortion would mean
putting the government in the hands of
a few religious men to the harm of the
entire country, especially the loss of
individual rights for women.
(Future dangers)

Benefits of Solving the Problem

Protecting motherhood, protecting
society, and protecting America.

Benefits of Solving the Problem

Preserving women’s right to choose,
preserving a medical technique for
relieving mental or physical suffering,
ensuring safety, and keeping a cure for
teen pregnancy.

Justification for Taking Action

God is on our side.

Justification for Taking Action

We are upholding American laws
and American institutions.

Identifying the Problem Solvers

Pro-life leaders told pro-life supporters
to take simple actions in their daily lives.
Individual and small repetitive actions
would add up to powerful results. Pro-life
leaders gave credit for every success to
every pro-life supporter. Winning
depended on the individual actions
of every pro-life supporter.

Identifying the Problem Solvers

Pro-choice legal and medical
professionals gave glory to themselves
for taking action in legislatures and
courts. Pro-choice leaders
occasionally gave credit to  pro-choice
supporters who performed simple
organizational tasks (mailings,
organizing members), staffed
information booths at fairs, sponsored
advertisements, and spoke to interested
groups. Winning depended on the
willingness of pro-choice supporters to
keep sending money to support the
actions of the legal and medical
professionals.

Steps to Success

Small repetitive actions that added
together would lead to success,
including garage sales, sponsored
dances, bake sales, cookbook sales,
Santa Claus breakfasts, collections
of scrap newspaper, card parties,
Christmas boutiques, craft boutiques,
babysitting for people attending pro-life
demonstrations, staffing county fair
booths. Pro-life leaders provided
detailed instructions on what
to write to federal, state, and local
legislators, whom to call for help
before lobbying, what to read to be
informed. All tasks could be performed
in or near the home as part of everyday life.

Steps to Success

Success would come from legal experts
making court challenges to abortion
bans and from lobbying efforts by
medical and legal professionals.
Pro-choice leaders expected supporters
to continually send money to pro-choice
organizations so professionals could
continue their important work.
Supporters should also write lawmakers
when professionals asked them to.

Continual Reminders

Abortion is a danger to norms
and values. Each pro-choice legal
victory is a reminder of a continuing
threat. Pro-life leaders sent out frequent
newsletters with lists of small actions to
take and steps for taking those actions.
Pro-life leaders linked each pro-life
success to individual actions. Pro-life
leaders emphasized past successes.

Continual Reminders

Pro-choice leaders increasingly focused on
pro-life successes. They gave few suggestions
for concrete actions pro-choice supporters
could take in their daily lives, provided little
information for how to take actions, made
no links between individual actions and
success, and made few links between
pro-choice actions and concrete successes.
Pro-choice leaders continually asked for
money. Pro-choice leaders glorified
themselves for sacrificing their lives
and time and for overcoming obstacles.
Pro-choice leaders placed the blame for
pro-life successes on pro-choice followers.

Results of Motivational Strategies

Pro-life supporters felt a measure of
control and personal success. They
also had frequent and continual
opportunities to socialize and have fun
with each other while working for the cause.

Results of Motivational Strategies

Pro-choice supporters felt little control,
little if any personal success, loss of
confidence in pro-choice power because
of increased perceptions about pro-life
power. Pro-choice supporters grew tired
of sending money to professionals who
glorified themselves. Pro-choice supporters
felt isolated from each other except for
occasional pro-choice functions.

Important Considerations

Pro-life leaders had the benefit of a
current threat affecting everyone and
could appeal to religious as well as
patriotic feelings. Pro-life leaders told
individual pro-life supporters that they
were the source of pro-life power and linked
all pro-life successes to individual actions.

Important Considerations

Pro-choice leaders had the disadvantage
of only a future threat that would affect
fewer values and fewer people. Pro-choice
leaders gave individual pro-choice supporters
no personal power and did not link successes
to individual actions. A change in tactics
from lobbying to single issue politics
confused pro-choice supporters.

Dr. Marsha Vanderford identified the glory needs of feminist leaders in the 1970s. My blog posts about feminist leaders prove they are still glory addicts today. Pro-Life leaders elevated pro-life supporters as the the reason for all pro-life success. Pro-choice leaders “relegated” pro-choice supporters to “secondary importance”. The “secondary importance” is evidence that feminist leaders have been creating inequality between women since at least the 1970s.

Pro-life strategy has left pro-choice strategy in the dust. It does not matter that abortion is legal to women who cannot get abortions because of state restrictions put in place through the small, repetitive actions of individual pro-life supporters.

In-House Rhetoric of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Special Interest Groups in Minnesota: Motivation and Alienation
Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1982
Marsha Vanderford Doyle, Ph.D.
(Now Marsha Vanderford)
Quoted words on page 350.

“Let’s Get Real about Feminism: The Backlash, the Myths, the Movement.”
hooks, bell, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf.
Ms. Magazine.
Vol 4(2) September/October 1993: pages 34-43.

“Multitext Project in Irish History: Movements for Political & Social Reform, 1870-1914”
Eoin Hartnett
University College Cork, Ireland
No date
This project is no longer available online.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As an American, I have freedom of speech.

As a woman, I have the right to express my opinion about anything the National Organization for Women claims to do for women.

In 2016, I started adding the section below to all of my new Feminist Leader blog posts. I also added it to all posts published before 2016.

The National Organization For Women
Silences Women

National NOW has blocked me on its Facebook page. I wrote comments based on my blog posts. All of my blog posts are based on a wide variety of evidence. Much of the evidence comes from National NOW’s website, emails and posts from NOW presidents, and emails from NOW staff members. I use no hostile language, no slurs, no profanity. I do use the phrase “glory addicts” in reference to NOW leaders. I also use “glory addiction”, “glory fixes”, and “a dedicated network of glory addicts”. Dr. Marsha Vanderford (Doyle) identified the glory needs of pro-choice leaders in her 1982 dissertation.

Feminist leaders have been silencing women for decades. bell hooks, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf got together for a conversation that was published in Ms. Magazine in 1993. The discussion included why women choose not to call themselves feminists. Did these four feminist leaders working for women’s equality ask women who choose not to call themselves feminist to speak for themselves? Of course not! The four feminist leaders silenced millions of women by speaking for them without first requesting permission to speak for them.

Imagine a group of women who choose not to call themselves feminists getting together for a conversation to be published in a magazine about why some women call themselves feminists. Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree with nonfeminist women denying them the opportunity to speak for themselves? Of course not! Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree that nonfeminist women had the right to speak for feminist women without their permission? Of course not!

hooks, Steinem Vaid, and Wolf could have created equality between women. They could have provided a platform for women who choose not to call themselves feminist to explain their choice in their own words.

My feminist leader blog posts provide evidence that feminist leaders still create glory for themselves while relegating supporters to “secondary importance”. Dr. Vanderford used the words “relegated” and “secondary importance” in her dissertation. Eoin Harnett of University College Cork in Ireland used the same “secondary importance” phrase:

“Throughout the ages, women were frequently characterised
and treated as inferior and of secondary importance to men.”

NOW leaders even relegated two of their supporters to secondary importance. The supporters responded to my last two comments on National NOW’s Facebook page with comments supporting NOW. NOW leaders silenced those supporters by removing their comments along with my comments. Instead of creating equality, NOW leaders treat other women the same way patriarchal men treat women, as inferior and of secondary importance.

In-House Rhetoric of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Special Interest Groups in Minnesota: Motivation and Alienation
Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1982
Marsha Vanderford Doyle, Ph.D.
(Now Marsha Vanderford)
Quoted words on page 350.

“Let’s Get Real about Feminism: The Backlash, the Myths, the Movement.”
hooks, bell, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf.
Ms. Magazine.
Vol 4(2) September/October 1993: pages 34-43.

“Multitext Project in Irish History: Movements for Political & Social Reform, 1870-1914”
Eoin Hartnett
University College Cork, Ireland
No date
This project is no longer available online.

~~~~~

Paula M. Kramer
© 2015 to the present.
All rights reserved.

Posts on this blog alternate with posts at the link below. Posts for both blogs are published on Wednesdays as they are ready to be published. Time between posts could be weeks or months.

blog.smilessparksuccess.com

Resource Websites

speakingfromtriumph.com

smilessparksuccess.com

Soft Skill Power Strategies For Attracting Unimagined Success

softskillstrategycourses.com

Facebook Page

Women Speaking Equality

Standards For Success Posters

Girl Grit

Girl Goodwill

Business Directory

betterplanetbusiness.com

Positive Identity Directory For People With Mugshots

myrecordnow.com

Memo To Feminist Leaders: Actions Speak Louder Than Words

About a year ago,  I notified the National Organization for Women (NOW) that I had written a blog post about the arrogance of feminist leaders. The response I received is below. It is the only response I have received from NOW leaders since I first started writing to them in 2010.

RE: comments concerning New feminist leader blog post 1/8/14
From: “NOW” <now@now.org>

Dear Paula,

Thank you for your email. NOW is the largest feminist organization in the US, with more than 500,000 contributing members from different gender, sex, age, race, sexual orientation, religious, socioeconomic, and political groups. NOW has more than 500 local and campus affiliates in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. These affiliates include chapters and Campus Action Networks.

We are a grassroots organization because our members, who meet yearly in regional and national conferences, are the supreme governing body of NOW. NOW draws its broad grassroots strength from a nationwide network of local chapters, which are chartered by national NOW and which engage in a wide variety of action programs in their communities. State organizations serve to develop chapters, coordinate statewide activities and provide resources to the chapters. There are nine regions which, in Conference, elect members to the National Board of Directors, the body which governs the organization between national conferences. The national level of the organization is led by three elected national officers, by the national Board of Directors, and by national issues committees. These national leaders are responsible for implementing policy as formulated by the annual National Conference, for coordinating national actions, and for providing membership services.

As you can see, we are very much a bottom-up organization.

Best,

– NOW

Note that the email writer remained anonymous.

September 21, 2015 Update

NOW’s website has changed its membership claim to “hundreds of thousands of contributing members”. Note that NOW is providing less information about its contributing membership total than it did before.

 

NOW’s Claims of Being a “Bottom-up Organization”

Let’s start with a definition of governing body:

“Governing body means a body of persons or officers
having ultimate control.”

Now let’s test the anonymous NOW writer’s claim that NOW is “very much a bottom-up organization.”

In the paragraph explaining what makes NOW a “grassroots organization”, the anonymous NOW writer mentions “our members” once. It is the only mention of “our members” in the entire email.

Next, let’s count how many times the anonymous NOW writer mentions different levels in NOW’s hierarchy and what the different levels do.

1.   National NOW charters chapters.

2.   State organizations develop chapters, coordinate statewide activities, and provide resources to chapters.

3.   Nine regions elect members to the National Board of Directors in Conference.

4.   The National Board of Directors governs the organization between national conferences.

5.   Three elected national officers, the national Board of Directors, and national issues committees lead the national level of the organization.

6.   National leaders implement policy formulated by the annual National Conference, coordinate national actions, and provide membership services.

Are NOW members equal to NOW’s levels of hierarchy? Hardly. I illustrate the imbalance below.

“Our Members”

National NOW

Nine regions

State organizations

Chapters

National Board of Directors

National officers

National leaders

Do you see any evidence that “our members” have ultimate control of anything?

 

NOW Membership Numbers

As for the claims of “more than 500 local and campus affiliates in all 50 states and the District of Columbia” as well as the “more than 500,000 contributing members”, you can read my findings, then do some research of your own. As of this writing, at least 5 states still have “No chapters found.”

Since I have proven that NOW continually claims the existence of chapters that do not exist, I can only assume that the claim of “more than 500,000 contributing members” is inflated as well.

 

NOW Members Formulating Policy

How many members do you suppose have the time, money, and opportunity to travel to the National Conference each year to act as the supreme governing body of the National Organization for Women? More than 500,000? 100,000? 2,000? Several hundred?

Let’s be generous and say 2,000 members have the time, money, and opportunity to travel to each National Conference to be members of the grassroots supreme governing body. That’s less than 1 percent of the claimed 500,000 contributing members. Do NOW leaders know the meaning of the word “grassroots”?

 

Questions for NOW

The email from NOW raises more questions than it answers. If “our members” are the supreme governing body of NOW, then I should be able to ask the supreme governing body my questions. But even if I were a member, NOW does not give “our members” any way to contact each other. I’ll have to settle for someone else. Therefore, I challenge NOW President Terry O’Neill to answer these questions:

How do I contact NOW’s supreme governing body?

Where is the financial report showing the supreme governing body how you spend every penny of membership fees and donations?

Why don’t you explain to the supreme governing body how you choose members of the “dedicated network of grassroots activists”?

Why do you deny training and socializing to members of the supreme governing body?

Why does now.org have a password protected “NOW Leaders Page” that says “Protected: NOW Leader Docs”?
(NOW has removed the NOW Leaders page. This only means they are no longer announcing that NOW leaders
keep secrets. NOW leaders still keep secrets. They keep their “activist” training secret from the women who pay
for the training.)

What are you protecting and why do you need to protect it from the supreme governing body?

Why are you keeping secrets from the supreme governing body?

 

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Do you think NOW President Terry O’Neill will answer my questions? Of course not. O’Neill cannot justify calling NOW members the “supreme governing body” while keeping secrets with her “Protected: NOW Leader Docs”.

NOW President Terry O’Neill keeps secrets because she is a glory addict. O’Neill and other feminist leaders need glory fixes so they can feel important and meaningful. Pretending to work for gender equality is their cover. Unfortunately, their cover creates inequality between women and makes equality between genders unlikely. Why would men in power want to give equal power to women who say one thing but do another?

Actions speak louder than words, even for feminist leaders.

See more evidence that NOW leaders have continuing glory addictions:

“If Feminist Leaders Want Equality, Why Do They Create Inequality?”

“Feminist Leaders, Unsophisticated Women, & The Least Effective Way To Communicate With Politicians”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As an American, I have freedom of speech.

As a woman, I have the right to express my opinion about anything the National Organization for Women claims to do for women.

In 2016, I started adding the section below to all of my new Feminist Leader blog posts. I also added it to all posts published before 2016.

The National Organization For Women
Silences Women

National NOW has blocked me on its Facebook page. I wrote comments based on my blog posts. All of my blog posts are based on a wide variety of evidence. Much of the evidence comes from National NOW’s website, emails and posts from NOW presidents, and emails from NOW staff members. I use no hostile language, no slurs, no profanity. I do use the phrase “glory addicts” in reference to NOW leaders. I also use “glory addiction”, “glory fixes”, and “a dedicated network of glory addicts”. Dr. Marsha Vanderford (Doyle) identified the glory needs of pro-choice leaders in her 1982 dissertation.

Feminist leaders have been silencing women for decades. bell hooks, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf got together for a conversation that was published in Ms. Magazine in 1993. The discussion included why women choose not to call themselves feminists. Did these four feminist leaders working for women’s equality ask women who choose not to call themselves feminist to speak for themselves? Of course not! The four feminist leaders silenced millions of women by speaking for them without first requesting permission to speak for them.

Imagine a group of women who choose not to call themselves feminists getting together for a conversation to be published in a magazine about why some women call themselves feminists. Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree with nonfeminist women denying them the opportunity to speak for themselves? Of course not! Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree that nonfeminist women had the right to speak for feminist women without their permission? Of course not!

hooks, Steinem Vaid, and Wolf could have created equality between women. They could have provided a platform for women who choose not to call themselves feminist to explain their choice in their own words.

My feminist leader blog posts provide evidence that feminist leaders still create glory for themselves while relegating supporters to “secondary importance”. Dr. Vanderford used the words “relegated” and “secondary importance” in her dissertation. Eoin Harnett of University College Cork in Ireland used the same “secondary importance” phrase:

“Throughout the ages, women were frequently characterised
and treated as inferior and of secondary importance to men.”

NOW leaders even relegated two of their supporters to secondary importance. The supporters responded to my last two comments on National NOW’s Facebook page with comments supporting NOW. NOW leaders silenced those supporters by removing their comments along with my comments. Instead of creating equality, NOW leaders treat other women the same way patriarchal men treat women, as inferior and of secondary importance.

In-House Rhetoric of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Special Interest Groups in Minnesota: Motivation and Alienation
Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1982
Marsha Vanderford Doyle, Ph.D.
(Now Marsha Vanderford)
Quoted words on page 350.

“Let’s Get Real about Feminism: The Backlash, the Myths, the Movement.”
hooks, bell, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf.
Ms. Magazine.
Vol 4(2) September/October 1993: pages 34-43.

“Multitext Project in Irish History: Movements for Political & Social Reform, 1870-1914”
Eoin Hartnett
University College Cork, Ireland
No date
This project is no longer available online.

~~~~~

Paula M. Kramer
© 2015 to the present.
All rights reserved.

Posts on this blog alternate with posts at the link below. Posts for both blogs are published on Wednesdays as they are ready to be published. Time between posts could be weeks or months.

blog.smilessparksuccess.com

Resource Websites

speakingfromtriumph.com

smilessparksuccess.com

Soft Skill Power Strategies For Attracting Unimagined Success

softskillstrategycourses.com

Facebook Page

Women Speaking Equality

Standards For Success Posters

Girl Grit

Girl Goodwill

Business Directory

betterplanetbusiness.com

Positive Identity Directory For People With Mugshots

myrecordnow.com

Feminist Leader Ineffectiveness: Proof In Numbers

According to the Guttmacher Institute, state restrictions on abortions increased by:

92 in 2011
43 in 2012
70 in 2013

Both pro-choice and pro-life groups know these facts, as revealed by this PolitiFact quote:

Patty Murray:

“In the past three years, state legislatures have “enacted
more of these restrictions (on abortion) than in the previous
10 years combined.”

Both abortion-rights advocates and anti-abortion advocates told PolitiFact that they concurred with Murray, a Democratic senator from Washington state. Murray was basing her claim on data from a Guttmacher Institute report that counted 205 restrictions from 2011 to 2013, compared to 189 from the previous decade.

During all those increases in abortion restrictions, the National Organization for Women (NOW) continued to send out emails asking supporters to donate money.

Your support for NOW is essential to keep us moving in the
right direction.

With your support, the NOW Foundation can mobilize our
vast network of allies and activists and help get the word out
to improve — and not eliminate — social and reproductive
rights and economic programs that keep millions of women
and their families out of poverty and healthy.

Your monthly gift of $15 can provide consistent and
reliable funding to allow us to dedicate more
resources to defending women’s rights at the
state level. Becoming a member of the Feminist Action
Network is easy, and you can change your donation amount
or cancel at any time. I urge you to become a member of the
Feminist Action Network today and fuel direct action for
women’s rights.

With activists in hundreds of chapters across the
country, NOW knows how to fight back. But we
need your support. Can I count on you?

As investigative reporter Bill Lueders pointed out in an article, Wisconsin pro-choice groups lost even when they outspent Wisconsin pro-life groups.

Feminist leaders have not:

moved in the right direction

improved reproductive rights

defended women’s rights at the state level

The numbers — 205 more state restrictions on abortion in 3 years — prove that the National Organization for Women does not know how to fight back.

 

Changing Strategy To Change Results

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting different results.”
Albert Einstein

The title of Bill Lueder’s article reveals why pro-choice groups are ineffective even with they outspend pro-life groups: “Abortion foes — big clout, little cash”. Pro-life groups spent less money in Wisconsin than pro-choice groups, but still won in the legislature because they have “clout” — influence and power. To have influence and power in state legislatures, feminist leaders need to stop doing the same thing over and over again. To change results, feminist leaders need to change strategies. They need to meet pro-life groups at their right to life message.

If babies have the right to life before birth, then they have the right to life after birth. The right to life after birth means every baby has the right to be born to parents who want him or her. Children deserve lives free of neglect, abuse, and murder at the hands of their parents.

The feminist message should be pro-child, not pro-choice. Protecting the lives of children would have more influence and power than protecting women’s right to choose. The pro-child movement could challenge the pro-life movement as only pro-birth, not pro-life. Pro-child supporters could ask pro-birth legislators to explain why they’re not pro-child. Pro-child supporters could ask pro-birth groups what they are doing to protect the lives of breathing children.

These tactics would create influence and power because they would not only include the pro-life message of right to life, but carry the right to life message further than pro-birth groups have. For children to be born only to parents who want them, both females and males must have their basic needs satisfied. If birth control is one of those basic needs, then birth control must be provided. This strategy needs a slogan that focuses on children, such as:

Children deserve parents who want them.

If you like the pro-child strategy, don’t wait for feminist leaders to jump on that bandwagon. Start talking and writing in your own life about every child’s right to be born to parents who want him or her. If enough of us talk about it, we might be able to reduce the pain of children who already live with parents who do not want them.

 

Update

Since writing this post, I came across an example illustrating how focusing on children creates gender equity between men and women. Because Finland believes children have the right to spend time with both parents, the government offers nine weeks of paternity leave at 70% salary. Combined with other support from the government focused on satisfying children’s needs, this has led to Finnish fathers spending more time with their children than mothers, eight minutes a day.

What other sorts of equity could come out of focusing on children’s rights? We won’t find out from feminist leaders focused on finding fixes their glory addictions.

“Abortion foes — big clout, little cash”
Bill Lueders
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
July 24, 2013

“Finland: the only country where fathers spend more time with kids than mothers”
Alexandra Topping
The Guardian
December 5, 2017

“Laws Affecting Reproductive Health and Rights: 2013 State Policy Review”
Elizabeth Nash, Rachel Benson Gold, Andrea Rowan, Gwendolyn Rathbun, and Yana Vierboom
Guttmacher Institute State Center

“More state abortion restrictions were enacted in the last 3 years than previous decade, Sen. Patty Murray says”
Julie Kliegman
Politifact
January 24, 2014

A Surge of State Abortion Restrictions Puts Providers—and the Women They Serve—in the Crosshairs
Heather D. Boonstra and Elizabeth Nash
Guttmacher Policy Review
Winter 2014, Volume 17, Number 1

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As an American, I have freedom of speech.

As a woman, I have the right to express my opinion about anything the National Organization for Women claims to do for women.

In 2016, I started adding the section below to all of my new Feminist Leader blog posts. I also added it to all posts published before 2016.

The National Organization For Women
Silences Women

National NOW has blocked me on its Facebook page. I wrote comments based on my blog posts. All of my blog posts are based on a wide variety of evidence. Much of the evidence comes from National NOW’s website, emails and posts from NOW presidents, and emails from NOW staff members. I use no hostile language, no slurs, no profanity. I do use the phrase “glory addicts” in reference to NOW leaders. I also use “glory addiction”, “glory fixes”, and “a dedicated network of glory addicts”. Dr. Marsha Vanderford (Doyle) identified the glory needs of pro-choice leaders in her 1982 dissertation.

Feminist leaders have been silencing women for decades. bell hooks, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf got together for a conversation that was published in Ms. Magazine in 1993. The discussion included why women choose not to call themselves feminists. Did these four feminist leaders working for women’s equality ask women who choose not to call themselves feminist to speak for themselves? Of course not! The four feminist leaders silenced millions of women by speaking for them without first requesting permission to speak for them.

Imagine a group of women who choose not to call themselves feminists getting together for a conversation to be published in a magazine about why some women call themselves feminists. Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree with nonfeminist women denying them the opportunity to speak for themselves? Of course not! Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree that nonfeminist women had the right to speak for feminist women without their permission? Of course not!

hooks, Steinem Vaid, and Wolf could have created equality between women. They could have provided a platform for women who choose not to call themselves feminist to explain their choice in their own words.

My feminist leader blog posts provide evidence that feminist leaders still create glory for themselves while relegating supporters to “secondary importance”. Dr. Vanderford used the words “relegated” and “secondary importance” in her dissertation. Eoin Harnett of University College Cork in Ireland used the same “secondary importance” phrase:

“Throughout the ages, women were frequently characterised
and treated as inferior and of secondary importance to men.”

NOW leaders even relegated two of their supporters to secondary importance. The supporters responded to my last two comments on National NOW’s Facebook page with comments supporting NOW. NOW leaders silenced those supporters by removing their comments along with my comments. Instead of creating equality, NOW leaders treat other women the same way patriarchal men treat women, as inferior and of secondary importance.

In-House Rhetoric of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Special Interest Groups in Minnesota: Motivation and Alienation
Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1982
Marsha Vanderford Doyle, Ph.D.
(Now Marsha Vanderford)
Quoted words on page 350.

“Let’s Get Real about Feminism: The Backlash, the Myths, the Movement.”
hooks, bell, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf.
Ms. Magazine.
Vol 4(2) September/October 1993: pages 34-43.

“Multitext Project in Irish History: Movements for Political & Social Reform, 1870-1914”
Eoin Hartnett
University College Cork, Ireland
No date
This project is no longer available online.

~~~~~

Paula M. Kramer
© 2015 to the present.
All rights reserved.

Posts on this blog alternate with posts at the link below. Posts for both blogs are published on Wednesdays as they are ready to be published. Time between posts could be weeks or months.

blog.smilessparksuccess.com

Resource Websites

speakingfromtriumph.com

smilessparksuccess.com

Soft Skill Power Strategies For Attracting Unimagined Success

softskillstrategycourses.com

Facebook Page

Women Speaking Equality

Standards For Success Posters

Girl Grit

Girl Goodwill

Business Directory

betterplanetbusiness.com

Positive Identity Directory For People With Mugshots

myrecordnow.com

NOW President Terry O’Neill Is “…sure you’ve heard by now…”

On September 13, 2014, I received the email message below from Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women. To make O’Neill’s glory addiction clear, I have separated her statements into two categories. Below the email I identify the meanings I saw as I read the email.

Statements that are about                                                   All other statements
O’Neill and NOW or include
we, us, and our in reference
to O’Neill or NOW

Email subject line: Haterade

I’m sure you’ve heard by now, but this
week NOW called on NFL Commissioner
Roger Goodell to resign his post.

Since we released that statement, it
has been a whirlwind of press and action.

You might have seen or heard me on MSNBC,
CBS, ABC, NBC, or ESPN – or any of a
dozen other media outlets.

But if you saw me, that means the trolls
did, too; all week, we’ve been getting
barraged with hateful comments via phone,
email and on Facebook and Twitter.

Nestled in there –
often hidden in the muck –
are voices of solidarity.

These voices wish us luck in our
endeavor, many identify as football
fans or activists working in their
communities – all agree that we
must end the epidemic of violence
against women.

Contribute and help
us continue our work!

Sure, some of the trolls use the
old quip of demanding that I
“make them a sandwich” –
not the first time I’ve heard
that one!

I’ve been accused of being
“off my rocker”.

The truth is, that almost all
of these comments have
been outright and aggressively
misogynistic.

Since I became president of NOW,
I’ve received a regular stream of
hate mail.

Sadly, it just comes with the job.

But knowing I have your support
makes all the difference.

So a warning to the trolls:
We will not deviate from this
path.

I know that we can change our
culture – which is so permissive of
violence against women – and
change our laws simultaneously.

How do I know that?

Because we’re the National
Organization for Women and
this is what we do – especially
with supporters like you.

Thank you for all you do,

Terry O’Neill
President, National Organization
for Women

P.S. Thousands of you have
already shown your support
by signing our petition demanding
that Roger Goodell resign.

Can I count on your continued support
with a contribution today?

 

The Meaning Behind O’Neill’s Statements

Email subject line: Haterade

The focus of this email is not violence against women.

I’m sure you’ve heard by now, but this
week NOW called on NFL Commissioner
Roger Goodell to resign his post.

O’Neill expects NOW members to be always focused on the words and actions of NOW. It is particularly important for NOW supporters to stay focused on the words and actions of NOW President Terry O’Neill.

Since we released that statement, it
has been a whirlwind of press and action.

NOW is very important.

You might have seen or heard me on MSNBC,
CBS, ABC, NBC, or ESPN – or any of a
dozen other media outlets.

Terry O’Neill is very important.

But if you saw me, that means the trolls
did, too; all week, we’ve been getting
barraged with hateful comments via phone,
email and on Facebook and Twitter.

The haterade has nothing to do with victims of domestic violence.

Nestled in there –
often hidden in the muck –
are voices of solidarity.

The voices are showing solidarity with poor, barraged Terry O’Neill and NOW, not for victims of domestic violence.

These voices wish us luck in our
endeavor, many identify as football
fans or activists working in their
communities – all agree that we
must end the epidemic of violence
against women.

The focus is supposed to remain on what NOW does.

Contribute and help
us continue our work!

NOW members should give money to NOW so Terry O’Neill can continue to feel important rather than give money to shelters so victims of domestic violence can feel safe.

Sure, some of the trolls use the
old quip of demanding that I
“make them a sandwich” –
not the first time I’ve heard
that one!

You should feel sorry for what Terry O’Neill has to endure because it is far worse than what victims of domestic violence endure.

I’ve been accused of being
“off my rocker”.

Another reason to feel sorry for what Terry O’Neill has to endure.

The truth is, that almost all
of these comments have
been outright and aggressively
misogynistic.

Misogynistic comments are far worse than real violence, especially when they are aggressive.

Since I became president of NOW,
I’ve received a regular stream of
hate mail.

You must always remember how important and brave Terry O’Neill is.

Sadly, it just comes with the job.

Terry O’Neill took the job knowing she would receive hate mail. I doubt any woman enters a romantic relationship with a man expecting to be beaten. It is obviously far sadder for O’Neill to endure the hate mail she knew would be coming than for women to find themselves beaten by men who said, “I love you.”

But knowing I have your support
makes all the difference.

Terry O’Neill needs your support more than victims of domestic violence do.

So a warning to the trolls:
We will not deviate from this
path.

Terry O’Neill and NOW will not deviate from anything that makes them feel important.

I know that we can change our
culture – which is so permissive of
violence against women – and
change our laws simultaneously.

Terry O’Neill wants you to believe that she and NOW are powerful.

How do I know that?

Terry O’Neill wants you to believe that she knows more than you do.

Because we’re the National
Organization for Women and
this is what we do – especially
with supporters like you.

The National Organization is important and requires your support because it is important.

Thank you for all you do,

Compared to what Terry O’Neill and NOW do, what you actually do is too unimportant to mention in detail.

Terry O’Neill
President, National Organization
for Women

P.S. Thousands of you have
already shown your support
by signing our petition demanding
that Roger Goodell resign.

Thousands? I’m supposed to be impressed that thousands of people have signed the petition for Roger Goodell to resign? According to its FAQS page, NOW has “more than 500,000 contributing members” in “more than 500 local and campus affiliates in all 50 states and the District of Columbia”.

NOW has more than 500,000 contributing members but only thousands signed the petition?

(September 21, 2015 update: NOW’s website has changed its contributing membership numbers to “hundreds of thousands”. Thousands of people signing the petition is still pitiful for an organization O’Neill claims has the ability to “change our culture”.)

If Terry O’Neill is using the word “thousands”, I have to assume that the total number of signers is well below 10,000. Otherwise, O’Neill would claim that “close to 10,000 of you have already shown your support by signing our petition…”

Thousands means that less than 2% of NOW’s membership have responded to NOW President Terry O’Neill’s call to action. O’Neill is apparently too unsophisticated to realize that she again provided evidence of her ineffectiveness as a leader.

Can I count on your continued support
with a contribution today?

You are supposed to support Terry O’Neill, not victims of domestic violence.

This email has nothing to do with violence against women. It is all about Terry O’Neill and her glory addiction. NOW President Terry O’Neill probably does not know how to write anything that is really about ending domestic violence. Roger Goodell’s resignation would do little to change our culture and laws. For some victims, the violence would probably increase if Goodell resigned. Abusers who felt anger at Goodell’s resignation would take their anger out on the women they already beat regularly.

Terry O’Neill used female victims of domestic violence to create glory fixes for herself. This is just one way that Terry O’Neill and the National Organization for Women create inequality between women.

 

NOW’s Spin To Keep You Donating Money

If you want equality, if you are a member of NOW, if you want feminist leaders to be effective, you need to know how NOW spins reality. In other words, NOW uses propaganda to persuade you to believe that they know what they’re doing and deserve your money.

NOW claims “affiliates in all 50 states”. During the years I’ve been tracking NOW’s ineffectiveness, I have repeatedly researched NOW’s website to see if NOW does indeed have chapters or affiliates in all 50 states. I have always found states that do not have NOW chapters or affiliates.

Check this out for yourself. Go to now.org. Use the search link under “Find Your Chapter”. You will find “Sorry, no chapters found” for several states. As of September 15, 2015, these are the states that have “Sorry, no chapters found” notifications.

Hawaii

Maine

New Hampshire

North Dakota

West Virginia

Also, chapters in several states seem to be doing little if anything at all. I’ll give you several examples. You can look up your own state to discover how far its reality differs from NOW’s claims.

If it is still listed, click on the Facebook link for Mat-Su NOW in Alaska and you will go to the page of an individual, not of a NOW chapter.

When I first wrote this blog post, NOW listed 6 chapters for Alabama chapters. Now it lists 5. Tennessee Valley NOW shows no chapter activity at all. Click on the Facebook page for Montgomery NOW in Alabama and you will go to the page of an individual, not of a NOW chapter.

The most recent post for Indianapolis NOW is August 31, 2011.

NOW lists Kentucky NOW, the only chapter in Kentucky, but the page for Kentucky NOW has only a Yahoo email address, nothing else.

My state of Wisconsin lists 5 chapters.

The home page for Wisconsin NOW shows a calendar with only holidays on it, no chapter activity.

Milwaukee NOW has neither a web page nor a link to an individual’s Facebook page.

W Suburban Milwaukee NOW has neither a web page nor a link to an individual’s Facebook page.

Madison NOW shares the same holiday calendar as Wisconsin NOW.

Fox Cities NOW has neither a web page nor a link to an individual’s Facebook page.

Does NOW count “chapters” without web pages, Facebook pages, or chapter activities among the “more than 500 local and campus affiliates in all 50 states and the District of Columbia”?

Look at what NOW lists for your state to see if a real chapter exists in your state.

The next question is, how did NOW count its “more than 500,000 contributing members”? If they can’t count the number of states with chapters accurately, why trust them to count contributing members accurately?

The truth is, almost all of Terry O’Neill’s comments in this email are outright and persistently egotistical. Why should Terry O’Neill let a few facts get in the way of her glory addiction? She is the president of the National Organization for Women, and satisfying her glory addiction is what she does.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, state restrictions on abortions increased by:

92 in 2011
43 in 2012
70 in 2013

Both pro-choice and pro-life groups know these facts, as revealed by this PolitiFact quote:

Patty Murray:

“In the past three years, state legislatures have “enacted
more of these restrictions (on abortion) than in the previous
10 years combined.”

Both abortion-rights advocates and anti-abortion advocates told PolitiFact that they concurred with Murray, a Democratic senator from Washington state. Murray was basing her claim on data from a Guttmacher Institute report that counted 205 restrictions from 2011 to 2013, compared to 189 from the previous decade.

During all those increases in abortion restrictions, the National Organization for Women (NOW) continued to send out emails asking supporters to donate money.

Your support for NOW is essential to keep us moving in the
right direction.

With your support, the NOW Foundation can mobilize our
vast network of allies and activists and help get the word out
to improve — and not eliminate — social and reproductive
rights and economic programs that keep millions of women
and their families out of poverty and healthy.

Your monthly gift of $15 can provide consistent and
reliable funding to allow us to dedicate more
resources to defending women’s rights at the
state level. Becoming a member of the Feminist Action
Network is easy, and you can change your donation amount
or cancel at any time. I urge you to become a member of the
Feminist Action Network today and fuel direct action for
women’s rights.

With activists in hundreds of chapters across the
country, NOW knows how to fight back. But we
need your support. Can I count on you?

As investigative reporter Bill Lueders pointed out in an article, Wisconsin pro-choice groups lost even when they outspent Wisconsin pro-life groups.

Feminist leaders have not:

moved in the right direction

improved reproductive rights

defended women’s rights at the state level

The numbers — 205 more state restrictions on abortion in 3 years — prove that the National Organization for Women does not know how to fight back.

 

Changing Strategy To Change Results

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting different results.”
Albert Einstein

The title of Bill Lueder’s article reveals why pro-choice groups are ineffective even with they outspend pro-life groups: “Abortion foes — big clout, little cash”. Pro-life groups spent less money in Wisconsin than pro-choice groups, but still won in the legislature because they have “clout” — influence and power. To have influence and power in state legislatures, feminist leaders need to stop doing the same thing over and over again. To change results, feminist leaders need to change strategies. They need to meet pro-life groups at their right to life message.

If babies have the right to life before birth, then they have the right to life after birth. The right to life after birth means every baby has the right to be born to parents who want him or her. Children deserve lives free of neglect, abuse, and murder at the hands of their parents.

The feminist message should be pro-child, not pro-choice. Protecting the lives of children would have more influence and power than protecting women’s right to choose. The pro-child movement could challenge the pro-life movement as only pro-birth, not pro-life. Pro-child supporters could ask pro-birth legislators to explain why they’re not pro-child. Pro-child supporters could ask pro-birth groups what they are doing to protect the lives of breathing children.

These tactics would create influence and power because they would not only include the pro-life message of right to life, but carry the right to life message further than pro-birth groups have. For children to be born only to parents who want them, both females and males must have their basic needs satisfied. If birth control is one of those basic needs, then birth control must be provided. This strategy needs a slogan that focuses on children, such as:

Children deserve parents who want them.

If you like the pro-child strategy, don’t wait for feminist leaders to jump on that bandwagon. Start talking and writing in your own life about every child’s right to be born to parents who want him or her. If enough of us talk about it, we might be able to reduce the pain of children who already live with parents who do not want them.

 

Update

Since writing this post, I came across an example illustrating how focusing on children creates gender equity between men and women. Because Finland believes children have the right to spend time with both parents, the government offers nine weeks of paternity leave at 70% salary. Combined with other support from the government focused on satisfying children’s needs, this has led to Finnish fathers spending more time with their children than mothers, eight minutes a day.

What other sorts of equity could come out of focusing on children’s rights? We won’t find out from feminist leaders focused on finding fixes their glory addictions.

“Abortion foes — big clout, little cash”
Bill Lueders
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
July 24, 2013

“Finland: the only country where fathers spend more time with kids than mothers”
Alexandra Topping
The Guardian
December 5, 2017

“Laws Affecting Reproductive Health and Rights: 2013 State Policy Review”
Elizabeth Nash, Rachel Benson Gold, Andrea Rowan, Gwendolyn Rathbun, and Yana Vierboom
Guttmacher Institute State Center

“More state abortion restrictions were enacted in the last 3 years than previous decade, Sen. Patty Murray says”
Julie Kliegman
Politifact
January 24, 2014

A Surge of State Abortion Restrictions Puts Providers—and the Women They Serve—in the Crosshairs
Heather D. Boonstra and Elizabeth Nash
Guttmacher Policy Review
Winter 2014, Volume 17, Number 1

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As an American, I have freedom of speech.

As a woman, I have the right to express my opinion about anything the National Organization for Women claims to do for women.

In 2016, I started adding the section below to all of my new Feminist Leader blog posts. I also added it to all posts published before 2016.

The National Organization For Women
Silences Women

National NOW has blocked me on its Facebook page. I wrote comments based on my blog posts. All of my blog posts are based on a wide variety of evidence. Much of the evidence comes from National NOW’s website, emails and posts from NOW presidents, and emails from NOW staff members. I use no hostile language, no slurs, no profanity. I do use the phrase “glory addicts” in reference to NOW leaders. I also use “glory addiction”, “glory fixes”, and “a dedicated network of glory addicts”. Dr. Marsha Vanderford (Doyle) identified the glory needs of pro-choice leaders in her 1982 dissertation.

Feminist leaders have been silencing women for decades. bell hooks, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf got together for a conversation that was published in Ms. Magazine in 1993. The discussion included why women choose not to call themselves feminists. Did these four feminist leaders working for women’s equality ask women who choose not to call themselves feminist to speak for themselves? Of course not! The four feminist leaders silenced millions of women by speaking for them without first requesting permission to speak for them.

Imagine a group of women who choose not to call themselves feminists getting together for a conversation to be published in a magazine about why some women call themselves feminists. Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree with nonfeminist women denying them the opportunity to speak for themselves? Of course not! Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree that nonfeminist women had the right to speak for feminist women without their permission? Of course not!

hooks, Steinem Vaid, and Wolf could have created equality between women. They could have provided a platform for women who choose not to call themselves feminist to explain their choice in their own words.

My feminist leader blog posts provide evidence that feminist leaders still create glory for themselves while relegating supporters to “secondary importance”. Dr. Vanderford used the words “relegated” and “secondary importance” in her dissertation. Eoin Harnett of University College Cork in Ireland used the same “secondary importance” phrase:

“Throughout the ages, women were frequently characterised
and treated as inferior and of secondary importance to men.”

NOW leaders even relegated two of their supporters to secondary importance. The supporters responded to my last two comments on National NOW’s Facebook page with comments supporting NOW. NOW leaders silenced those supporters by removing their comments along with my comments. Instead of creating equality, NOW leaders treat other women the same way patriarchal men treat women, as inferior and of secondary importance.

In-House Rhetoric of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Special Interest Groups in Minnesota: Motivation and Alienation
Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1982
Marsha Vanderford Doyle, Ph.D.
(Now Marsha Vanderford)
Quoted words on page 350.

“Let’s Get Real about Feminism: The Backlash, the Myths, the Movement.”
hooks, bell, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf.
Ms. Magazine.
Vol 4(2) September/October 1993: pages 34-43.

“Multitext Project in Irish History: Movements for Political & Social Reform, 1870-1914”
Eoin Hartnett
University College Cork, Ireland
No date
This project is no longer available online.

~~~~~

Paula M. Kramer
© 2015 to the present.
All rights reserved.

Posts on this blog alternate with posts at the link below. Posts for both blogs are published on Wednesdays as they are ready to be published. Time between posts could be weeks or months.

blog.smilessparksuccess.com

Resource Websites

speakingfromtriumph.com

smilessparksuccess.com

Soft Skill Power Strategies For Attracting Unimagined Success

softskillstrategycourses.com

Facebook Page

Women Speaking Equality

Standards For Success Posters

Girl Grit

Girl Goodwill

Business Directory

betterplanetbusiness.com

Positive Identity Directory For People With Mugshots

myrecordnow.com

Feminist Leaders, Unsophisticated Women, & The Least Effective Way To Communicate With Politicians

Note: NOW has removed the NOW Leaders page. This only means they are no longer announcing that NOW leaders keep secrets. NOW leaders still keep secrets. They keep their “activist” training secret from the women who pay for the training.

For years, I have written about how the National Organization For Women (NOW) misuses the word grassroots, the glory addiction of feminist leaders, and the feminist leader view that most women are too unsophisticated to understand abortion. I have also written that NOW keeps asking for money so it can send it’s “dedicated network of grassroots activists” around the country for socializing and training that is denied to the women who pay the bills through donations.

An August 12, 2014 email from NOW, President Terry O’Neill kept up the inequality between the women who pay the bills and the “dedicated network of grassroots activists”. She wrote that:

“NOW’s supporters and activists are already stepping up and
working to send the extremist politicians in Congress, state
legislatures, and the U.S. Supreme Court packing.”

How does O’Neill intend to do this?

“To achieve these goals, we must first prevent a right-wing
takeover of the U.S. Senate in November. It also means we must
send more women’s rights supporters to the U.S. house of
Representatives and state legislatures across the country.”

Why “must” NOW “send more women’s rights supporters to the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures across the country?” Are the women who live in states across the country too unsophisticated to speak to their own state legislatures?

Feminist leaders like NOW President Terry O’Neill must see ordinary supporters of feminism as unsophisticated because they keep everything about the “dedicated network of grassroots activists” secret. I have asked NOW more than once about the activists and how they are chosen. I want to know if the network has enough diversity to represent all women in the United States. The only response I received was that NOW would not give out contact information. I did not ask for contact information. This was the third time a woman in power accused me of asking for something I did not ask for.

Take a moment to think about NOW’s one response to my many questions. The ‘dedicated network of grassroots activists’ needs to be protected from the supporters who donate money? I want equality with the “dedicated network of grassroots activists”. What is dangerous about that?

NOW President Terry O’Neill refuses to reveal how many women are traveling around the country and socializing with each other, who they are, how she picked them, or even what they say when they go out as “activists” in the name of the women who pay for their travel and socializing.

The truth is, NOW “must” send more women’s rights supporters around the country so they can get fixes for their glory addictions. The activists who keep other women silent and passive get to feel all the glory of being the heroines of the modern feminist movement. NOW “must” send more women’s rights supporters around the country to prevent ordinary women from speaking their own words and taking their own actions. It is too risky to let ordinary women speak for themselves because they might forget to give glory to the feminist leaders who ignore them.

I understand addiction. I was a compulsive overeater for 25 years. Instead of making my addiction to food more important than anything else, I continually looked for ways to end it. My wish to end my eating disorder came true in an unexpected way because I spoke my own words and took my own actions.

On August 24, 2014, I received an email from BoldProgressives.org. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) holds free P100 training sessions across the country for people who want to work on campaigns. As of that email, PCCC had trained 600 candidates and staffers in 16 states on campaign skills. They intend to train more. In the email’s first two paragraphs, PCCC proved that it did not have a glory addiction and that it understood the need to train as many people as possible to be effective on their own.

Unfortunately for ordinary feminists, glory addiction makes feminist leaders ineffective as leaders. In “The Arrogance of Feminist Leaders”, I quoted a female feminist professor who wrote about the “vast wasteland of obedient women” in the pro-life movement. From what I see, it’s the feminist leaders who expect obedience, as in obediently donating money and obediently clicking to forward “Your Letter” to politicians. According to several online sources:

“Email is by far the least effective way” to contact politicians and some politicians “do not even read email”.

“An influx of email” tells the politician “that someone has a good network”. This would be especially true when NOW inserts, “as a supporter of the National Organization For Women” in “Your Letter”.

“Copying standard letters is relatively ineffective.”

“Mass emailing politicians can overload mail servers and be blocked like spam”.

Perhaps out of frustration, some politicians will decide that “the sender probably just cut and pasted what someone else said.”

One “Never” for contacting politicians is to “Fail to include your name and address, even in email letters”.

NOW has never asked me to include my name and address on a NOW form email. As you might have guessed, I have never forwarded an ineffective NOW form email.

I did find advice for writing effective letters to politicians. For people who are not used to writing letters, below is a suggested template. In general, people affected by the issue should include:

A description of who they are – single working mother, person with a disability, job training participant, ex-Marine.

The fact that they’re residents of the official’s district, or participants in a program in his district.

What they want the official to do.

Their connection to the issue – program participant, staff person, community volunteer, parent of a child with disabilities.

This template is the opposite of what NOW leaders expect NOW members to obediently forward to politicians who will decide to ignore emails that say little and represent no real people.

Lets’ go back to NOW’s “dedicated network of grassroots activists” for a moment and consider its effectiveness.

If politicians can dismiss emails for having the same words, then they can dismiss demonstrations for having the same faces. The only evidence NOW presents about demonstrations is that the same people keep showing up and saying the same words. Why should politicians pay any attention to the same faces saying the same words over and over again? Why should any politician assume that millions of women want anything only a few women are demanding? (We don’t know how many NOW activist faces there are, remember, because that’s a secret.)

Feminist leaders need to feed their glory addictions. They need to travel around the country and share their glory addictions with other glory addicts. They need to convince themselves that they deserve the glory because ordinary women are only capable of forwarding form emails and sending money. They need to keep secrets from those unsophisticated ordinary women to protect their special status as “dedicated grassroots activists”. Why would feminist leaders keep choosing to be ineffective?

Perhaps they are intentionally ineffective to hide their glory
addictions.

Perhaps the power to keep secrets that give them control has
altered their brains.

Perhaps they are too unsophisticated to recognize the differences
between effectiveness and ineffectiveness.

Keeping secrets is a way to control supporters while pretending to work for the good of supporters. It’s also a good way to hide the leader attitude that supporters are too unsophisticated to be vocal and active on their own. If NOW supporters don’t know what the “dedicated network of grassroots activists” do, they’ll never figure out that they could do or already are doing all of the same things themselves. NOW President Terry O’Neill likes keeping secrets so much that she flaunts her power to keep secrets on NOW’s website.

I once used my website to make personal photographs available to someone in a different part of the country. I did not want to risk losing the photographs because they were irreplaceable to both of us. I created a hidden web page, uploaded the photographs to that page, and sent the page URL to the other person. The other person was able to get their own copies of the photographs without anyone else knowing.

Are NOW leaders so unsophisticated that they don’t know how to create hidden pages for passing information meant only for a certain few? Or are they purposely announcing their secrets as a way of satisfying their glory addictions?

If you want effectiveness in gaining anything for women, write your own letter about the details of your life and how a policy would affect you. Sign your name and give your address. Save your money for your own trip to a demonstration. Your individual words and your different face will have more of an impact than anything feminist leaders do with their form emails and form demonstrations. If you want to donate money, donate it to Boldprogressives.org so they can continue their training sessions around the country.

Early today, August 27, 2014, I received an email from PCCC listing the progressive candidates they had helped win primary elections:

Ruben Gallego, Arizona

Won his election for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Bonnie Watson Coleman, New Jersey

Won her election for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Pat Murphy, Iowa

Mike Honda, California

Won his election for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Senator Brian Schatz, Hawaii

Won his re-election for the U.S. Senate

PCCC obviously knows how to be effective with its training on “cutting-edge” political campaigns. Their effectiveness proves that they deserve your money, not ineffective NOW.

Also, take advantage of any opportunity in your life to help other women succeed. The more successful any woman is, the more opportunities for success and equality all women will have, including feminist leaders.

 

August 29, 2014 Update

On August 28, 2014, I received an email from NOW with the subject line “Breaking: Terry arrested”.

Dear Paula,

I just got back from the White House and I wanted our supporters
to be the first to hear about this: Terry has participated in an act
of civil disobedience in support of immigration reform that is fair
to women.

Terry’s just been arrested. Share this graphic and help us spread
word that we need immigration reform that respects women
and families.

Further down the email says this:

Show your support for keeping families together — and stand
with Terry — by sharing our graphic with your loved ones.

The graphic is a photograph of Terry O’Neill being arrested.

Note that the author of this email, Chita Panjabi, starts her message by making herself look important:

“I just got back from the White House…”

Panjabi is well-versed in the art of creating glory fixes.

What does a graphic about Terry O’Neill getting arrested show about the need for immigration reform? Nothing.

Someone took the time to superimpose a quote from Terry O’Neill on top of the graphic:

“Immigration reform that respects women and families is a
feminist issue.”

The graphic does not represent “breaking” news.

O’Neill is wearing a red shirt with the NOW logo. She looks like she is talking into a microphone. Across the road in the background is a large crowd. If there are immigrant women and families in the graphic, they are in the crowd in the background. They are invisible, which makes them unimportant. Terry O’Neill is in the foreground, which makes her visible and important.

NOW President Terry O’Neill wants us to see for ourselves that she stands out from the crowd. The graphic is about Terry O’Neill and the National Organization for Women. It is not about immigration reform or immigrant families.

Which action is more effective in bringing about immigration reform?

Sharing the graphic of Terry O’Neill getting arrested while
wearing a shirt with a NOW logo?

Training progressive candidates to run effective campaigns
that win primary elections and general elections?

The graphic is yet another example of NOW President Terry O’Neill’s glory addiction and the lengths she will go to get a glory fix.

“HOW TO: Contacting your elected representatives”
thehighroad.org
February 23, 2006

“How to Get Politicians’ Attention”
Electronic Frontiers Australia
September 20, 2004

“How to Write Effective Letters to Congress: Real Letters Are Still the Best Way to Be Heard by Lawmakers”
Robert Longley
About.com

“Protect Helena and Aurora Range (Bungalbin): Letter-writing guide & Example Letter.”
The Wilderness Society
October 2014

“When Power Goes To Your Head, It May Shut Out Your Heart”
Chris Benderev
August 10, 2013
National Public Radio

“Writing Letters to Elected Officials”
Community Tool Box
ctb.ku.edu

“Writing to the media and politicians”
MohammedAmin.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As an American, I have freedom of speech.

As a woman, I have the right to express my opinion about anything the National Organization for Women claims to do for women.

In 2016, I started adding the section below to all of my new Feminist Leader blog posts. I also added it to all posts published before 2016.

The National Organization For Women
Silences Women

National NOW has blocked me on its Facebook page. I wrote comments based on my blog posts. All of my blog posts are based on a wide variety of evidence. Much of the evidence comes from National NOW’s website, emails and posts from NOW presidents, and emails from NOW staff members. I use no hostile language, no slurs, no profanity. I do use the phrase “glory addicts” in reference to NOW leaders. I also use “glory addiction”, “glory fixes”, and “a dedicated network of glory addicts”. Dr. Marsha Vanderford (Doyle) identified the glory needs of pro-choice leaders in her 1982 dissertation.

Feminist leaders have been silencing women for decades. bell hooks, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf got together for a conversation that was published in Ms. Magazine in 1993. The discussion included why women choose not to call themselves feminists. Did these four feminist leaders working for women’s equality ask women who choose not to call themselves feminist to speak for themselves? Of course not! The four feminist leaders silenced millions of women by speaking for them without first requesting permission to speak for them.

Imagine a group of women who choose not to call themselves feminists getting together for a conversation to be published in a magazine about why some women call themselves feminists. Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree with nonfeminist women denying them the opportunity to speak for themselves? Of course not! Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree that nonfeminist women had the right to speak for feminist women without their permission? Of course not!

hooks, Steinem Vaid, and Wolf could have created equality between women. They could have provided a platform for women who choose not to call themselves feminist to explain their choice in their own words.

My feminist leader blog posts provide evidence that feminist leaders still create glory for themselves while relegating supporters to “secondary importance”. Dr. Vanderford used the words “relegated” and “secondary importance” in her dissertation. Eoin Harnett of University College Cork in Ireland used the same “secondary importance” phrase:

“Throughout the ages, women were frequently characterised
and treated as inferior and of secondary importance to men.”

NOW leaders even relegated two of their supporters to secondary importance. The supporters responded to my last two comments on National NOW’s Facebook page with comments supporting NOW. NOW leaders silenced those supporters by removing their comments along with my comments. Instead of creating equality, NOW leaders treat other women the same way patriarchal men treat women, as inferior and of secondary importance.

In-House Rhetoric of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Special Interest Groups in Minnesota: Motivation and Alienation
Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1982
Marsha Vanderford Doyle, Ph.D.
(Now Marsha Vanderford)
Quoted words on page 350.

“Let’s Get Real about Feminism: The Backlash, the Myths, the Movement.”
hooks, bell, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf.
Ms. Magazine.
Vol 4(2) September/October 1993: pages 34-43.

“Multitext Project in Irish History: Movements for Political & Social Reform, 1870-1914”
Eoin Hartnett
University College Cork, Ireland
No date
This project is no longer available online.

~~~~~

Paula M. Kramer
© 2015 to the present.
All rights reserved.

Posts on this blog alternate with posts at the link below. Posts for both blogs are published on Wednesdays as they are ready to be published. Time between posts could be weeks or months.

blog.smilessparksuccess.com

Resource Websites

speakingfromtriumph.com

smilessparksuccess.com

Soft Skill Power Strategies For Attracting Unimagined Success

softskillstrategycourses.com

Facebook Page

Women Speaking Equality

Standards For Success Posters

Girl Grit

Girl Goodwill

Business Directory

betterplanetbusiness.com

Positive Identity Directory For People With Mugshots

myrecordnow.com

What Do Feminist Leaders Have In Common With Outlaw Bikers, Hierarchical Leaders, Donald Rumsfeld, & The Old Guard Of The Catholic Church?

People can have many things in common, including behaviors and attitudes.

 

Outlaw Bikers

Feminist leaders share two commonalities with outlaw bikers.

Commonality #1

Expecting women to remain silent and passive, doing what they are told to do, when to do it, and what to say

The documentary, Biker Chicks: Leather and Lace, chronicles the story of Jennifer Chaffin, founder and president of the largest all female motorcycle club in the world, Leather and Lace. Chaffin married her first outlaw biker husband as a teenager. She quickly learned that as an outlaw biker wife, her role was to “be quiet” and “stay in the background”. Besides sex, outlaw bikers expect biker chicks to provide money.

Feminist Leader Example #1

Eleanor Smeal is a former president of the National Organization for Women and the founder of the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF). Around 1990, Smeal sent out a letter requesting donations. In exchange for completing an Abortion Rights Questionnaire and sending a “generous contribution”, Smeal promised that:

“at least four times a year we’ll notify you of pending actions
nationally and locally and let you know what action steps you
can take.

Smeal emphasized the importance of providing money, then staying quietly in the background by underlining each word separately. At least four times a year, Smeal let pro-choice supporters know what she would allow them to say and do.

Feminist Leader Example #2

The National Organization for Women (NOW) sends out action alerts. The “action” usually means clicking a button to send “Your Letter” to politicians. NOW does not encourage women to use their own words. When NOW feels like indulging in glory for itself, it will include this sort of phrase in “Your Letter”:

“As a supporter of the National Organization for Women…”

Both outlaw bikers and feminist leaders expect women to provide money, then stay quietly in the background.

Commonality #2

Expecting women to provide income without any say in how the money is used, and using the money in ways that do not benefit the women who earn it

The current president of the National Organization for Women is Terry O’Neill. O’Neill frequently sends out emails asking for money. I signed up to receive emails in 2007 or 2008. Frustrated that NOW never felt I deserved an explanation for how they would use my money if I donated, I wrote NOW, asking how it uses donations. I received no direct response. Once in awhile the emails will give some information, but mostly the emails just ask for money. They often include phrases like, “with your help, we can” and “show your support” and “your donation today will help us”. Send money, but stay in the background. Send money but don’t expect to have any say in how the money is used. Send money but don’t ask how we spend the money.

NOW President Terry O’Neill probably does not reveal how she spends the money because she is not spending it for the benefit of the women who donate it. An article printed in several Wisconsin newspapers titled “Abortion foes — big clout, little cash” provided me with some of the details NOW refused to give me. It explained the differences in spending between Wisconsin pro-life groups and Wisconsin pro-choice groups during the 2011-2012 legislative session. Below is information from the article:

Pro-life groups’ spending on lobbying
Wisconsin Right to Life                                                             $  43,730
Pro-Life Wisconsin                                                                     $   63,113

Pro-choice groups’ spending on lobbying
Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin                       $241,309

Pro-life groups’ spending on political campaigns
Wisconsin Right to Life & Pro-Life Wisconsin                      $150,000

Pro-choice groups’ spending on political campaigns
Planned Parenthood                                                                $1,300,000

Despite the massive amount of money pro-choice groups spent, they lost in the Wisconsin legislature. Despite the smaller amount of money pro-life groups spent, they won in the Wisconsin legislature. Pro-choice groups had no clout despite their massive spending. Pro-life groups had plenty of clout despite their limited spending. Feminist leaders continually ask for money but spend the money in ways that do not give clout to the women who donate the money. To give the women who donate money clout, feminist leaders would have to change their message.

If babies have the right to life before birth, then they have the right to life after birth. The right to life after birth means children deserve parents who want them. Children deserve lives free of neglect, abuse, and murder at the hands of their parents. The feminist message should be pro-child. Protecting the lives of children would have more clout than protecting women’s right to choose. The pro-child movement could challenge the pro-life movement as only pro-birth, not pro-life. Pro-child supporters could ask pro-birth legislators to explain why they’re not pro-child. Pro-child supporters could ask pro-birth groups what they are doing to protect the lives of children. These tactics would create clout because they would be meeting pro-birth groups at their message that every baby has the right to be born.

I contacted NOW with this suggestion. Since ignoring the women who provide money is what they do, NOW leaders ignored me. Both outlaw bikers and feminist leaders expect women to provide money without any say in how the money is used.

 

Leaders in Hierarchical Work Environments

In the book, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries, author Peter Sims writes about the fallacy known at Google and other companies as HIPPO, a belief in the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. The fallacy is that “the most experienced or senior person in the group will have the answers.” Sims wrote that a “dominant hierarchical work environment supports the fallacy.” Feminist organizations like FMF and NOW duplicate dominant hierarchical work environments. My evidence comes from a female feminist professor from my grad school days.

When I was  in grad school in the early 1990s, a male professor who considered himself a feminist told me I should write a paper about some of the ideas I had brought up in class. I wrote a paper comparing the words and actions of pro-life leaders and pro-choice leaders. After the male feminist professor read my paper, I asked a female feminist professor to read it. In my paper I described how pro-life leaders told supporters that it was their obligation to take action in their daily lives, an action of their choosing. Pro-choice leaders, on the other hand, made all the choices, telling supporters what to do and when to do it. The female feminist wrote this comment:

“Might those choices be the crucial ones?”

The female feminist professor also wrote:

“You ignore the fact that it takes a certain intellectual sophistication to be pro-choice whereas the anti’s have that vast wasteland of obedient women with time on their hands who are given something to do — however ineffectual it is.”

Feminist leaders live the HIPPO fallacy. They insist on making the “crucial choices” about words, actions, and donations because they believe only they have the “intellectual sophistication” to do so. Pro-choice supporters who remain loyal to pro-choice leaders wait for pro-choice leaders to tell them what to do.

Pro-life leaders believe their supporters have the intellectual sophistication to make decisions about how to participate in the pro-life movement. The “vast wasteland of obedient women” accepted their obligation to take action in their daily lives and continued taking actions. More than 20 years after I wrote my paper, abortion is mostly unavailable and severely restricted where it is available. It does not matter that abortion is legal for women who have no access to abortion services.

 

Donald Rumsfeld

As Secretary of Defense under President George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld was responsible for planning the invasion of Iraq. He sent too few troops to secure the country after the invasion.

NOW puts too few people into the field as activists. NOW trains state and national leaders to be activists. Maybe they also train other people they handpick. NOW has never answered my questions about how they pick activists or who those activists are. In a press release about a training weekend, NOW wrote that:

“Eleven of the new state presidents, coordinators and executive
directors” plus “33 activists from 14 states braved the chill of an
extended Washington, D.C. winter for intensive training in the
area of their choice.”

That amounts to 44 activists from 25 states, if the 11 were from different states. My guess is that ordinary NOW members paid for the transportation and lodging that allowed these brave people (an extended Washington D.C. winter requires bravery?) to socialize together.

The NOW press release also said,

“Activists from four additional states met during the weekend
to plan reorganizing and revitalizing their state organizations,
which had lately been inactive.”

 Did former NOW members in those states grow tired of  the “be quiet” and “stay in the background” expectations of NOW leaders?

Contrast those 44 leaders and activists from half the country against the millions of pro-life supporters speaking their own words and taking their own actions in their daily lives. Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL) organizes a fall tour every year. MCCL trainers travel around the state offering training to anyone who wants to take it. Attendees can then take action everyday in the course of their daily lives. Pro-life activists in one state far outnumber NOW’s pro-choice activists for the entire country, because MCCL also trains children to be activists. Since they learn to be activists as children, they will likely continue to be activists as adults.

Donald Rumsfeld and feminist leaders share an ineffective strategy of putting too few people in the field to be effective.

 

Old Guard of the Catholic Church

A U.S. News & World Report article about the Catholic Church’s attempts to recover from its sex scandals revealed that lay Catholics are unhappy with the way bishops handled the crisis. Lay Catholics are also unhappy with the bishops themselves. Suzanne Morse, spokeswoman for Boston-based Voice of the Faithful said, “We see an old guard that is unwilling to give up a lot of the power and authority they’ve had for years and years.”

In a Time magazine article about abortion, reporter Kate Pickert wrote that the older feminists are “reluctant to pass the torch” of power and authority to younger women.

The old guard of the Catholic Church and the old guard of feminist organizations continue to hold onto the power they’ve had for years and years.

 

Same Old, Same Old

As you can see, feminist leaders have too much in common with patriarchal male leaders to be anything other than same old, same old. So much for their claims of creating equality for women. Some of the same old includes being less than honest (patriarchal fathers, husbands, bosses, politicians, etc.) and hiding information (patriarchal father, husbands, bosses, politicians, etc.).

 

The Not Quite National Organization for Women

NOW is not quite the national organization it would like people to believe it is. Before NOW revamped its website, it was easy to see which states did not have any chapters at all. Once when I checked, five states did not have chapters. That’s 10% of the states. And remember, the press release about the activist training weekend included this statement:

“Activists from four additional states met during the weekend to plan reorganizing and revitalizing their state organizations, which had lately been inactive.”

The revamped website makes identifying states with “inactive” chapters (real meaning: no chapters) more difficult. NOW doesn’t want you to know that it’s not always — if it ever was — a national organization.

 

Feminist Leaders Keep Secrets

Beware of NOW emails and blog posts and anything it says in its press releases. NOW has repeatedly proved that it hides facts. It has hidden facts about:

Procedures for choosing activists

Whom they choose to be activists

How it spends donations

Big spending failures

Number of states without chapters

What else is NOW hiding? Is it hiding information because it expects its supporters to be a “vast wasteland of obedient women” who are too intellectually unsophisticated to understand the reasoning behind the crucial choices made by the intellectually sophisticated leaders of NOW?

Is NOW also hiding information so they can continue to hold onto the power and authority they refuse to pass to younger women?

Plus, there is the issue of titles. Until I pointed this out in blog posts, NOW President Terry O’Neill did not like being caught without her title. I actually saw just “Terry O’Neil” somewhere once, probably in an email. This title need seems to be a common trait for NOW presidents. I once counted “NOW President Kim Gandy” eight times on NOW’s home page. Apparently, NOW members and website visitors are too intellectually unsophisticated to remember who the current president of NOW is without constant reminders.

“NOW President Terry O’Neill” reduced her name count on the old NOW website. O’Neill, however, found a way to remind every visitor of just how important she and other NOW leaders are at the new now.org. A choice at the top of the NOW’s home page is “NOW LEADERS”. (The Protected: NOW Leader Docs page disappeared after I wrote this blog post.) It opens a page that says:

Protected: NOW Leader Docs

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below.
(NOW has removed the NOW Leaders page. This only means they are no longer announcing that
NOW leaders keep secrets. NOW leaders still keep secrets. They keep their “activist” training secret
from the women who pay for the training.)

Why did NOW make this logon page public rather than private? It’s a public announcement that NOW leaders are intellectually sophisticated people who need to hide (protect!) information from the intellectually unsophisticated members of NOW.

In case website visitors fail to understand just how important Terry O’Neill is, NOW used to say this at the top of the “NOW PAC” page:

“NOW/PAC Chair Terry O’Neill announced…”

Why does Terry O’Neill need to keep thinking up ways to put a title in front of her name?

Same old, same old.

 

Comparison/Contrast

Visit mccl.org for a comparison/contrast to now.org. You won’t see any
obsession with power and authority, and you will find all kinds of information. Click on MCCL’s “Visit Out PAC Site” and you will read about political issues. Click on “Student Commons” and you will see how MCCL is passing power and authority to high school and college students while involving elementary school students. MCCL tells members how it spends money and makes 990 forms for the IRS available on request. MCCL has 240 chapters within Minnesota alone.

If you visit the site, I dare you to find a name with a title in front of it. I finally found a title in a press release, but the title came after the name: “Scott Fishbach, Executive Director of MCCL GO”. The press release quotes Fishbach several times, but his title appears only once. Apparently, MCCL believes its members have enough intellectual sophistication to remember who Fishbach is.

Do you have a better understanding of why abortion is legal but mostly unavailable and severely restricted where it is available?

 

For the Record

With a B.A. in Women’s Studies/Writing, I used to call myself a feminist. Now I call myself an equality advocate. I advocate for equality between women, between men, and between men and women.

I used to call myself pro-choice. Now I call myself pro-child. Children deserve parents who want them.

 

Update on May 29, 2014

I received an email entitled, “What’s Happening NOW – May Edition” from NOW. The email included a list several items.

Under Can’t Take It No More was information about an independent documentary film “featuring Terry O’Neill”. The documentary is about Walmart workers around the world standing up “for respect, fair pay and economic justice”.

The information that Terry O’Neill is “featured” in the documentary comes before any mention of the Walmart workers. NOW wanted all of its supporters to know that the most important thing about this documentary is that it “features” Terry O’Neill. Visit the Kickstarter funding page for Can’t Take It No More and see if you can find Terry O’Neill’s name anywhere on the front page. The page mentions Walmart workers, Walmart associates, and Walmart strikers. Not a single mention of Terry O’Neill. O’Neill has no time for respecting Walmart workers, associates, or strikers when she sees an opportunity for a glory fix.

Same old, same old.

“Abortion foes — big clout, little cash”
Bill Lueders
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
July 24, 2013

Biker Chicks: Leather and Lace
Documentary
January 20, 2010

Can’t Take It No More!
Citizen Blain Productions

“The General who Understood Iraq from the Start”
Nicolaus Mills
Dissent Magazine
April 25, 2008

“Struggling to keep the faith”
Bret Schulte
US News & World ReportDecember 27, 2004

“What Choice?”
Kate Pickert
Time Magazine
January 14, 2013

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As an American, I have freedom of speech.

As a woman, I have the right to express my opinion about anything the National Organization for Women claims to do for women.

In 2016, I started adding the section below to all of my new Feminist Leader blog posts. I also added it to all posts published before 2016.

The National Organization For Women
Silences Women

National NOW has blocked me on its Facebook page. I wrote comments based on my blog posts. All of my blog posts are based on a wide variety of evidence. Much of the evidence comes from National NOW’s website, emails and posts from NOW presidents, and emails from NOW staff members. I use no hostile language, no slurs, no profanity. I do use the phrase “glory addicts” in reference to NOW leaders. I also use “glory addiction”, “glory fixes”, and “a dedicated network of glory addicts”. Dr. Marsha Vanderford (Doyle) identified the glory needs of pro-choice leaders in her 1982 dissertation.

Feminist leaders have been silencing women for decades. bell hooks, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf got together for a conversation that was published in Ms. Magazine in 1993. The discussion included why women choose not to call themselves feminists. Did these four feminist leaders working for women’s equality ask women who choose not to call themselves feminist to speak for themselves? Of course not! The four feminist leaders silenced millions of women by speaking for them without first requesting permission to speak for them.

Imagine a group of women who choose not to call themselves feminists getting together for a conversation to be published in a magazine about why some women call themselves feminists. Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree with nonfeminist women denying them the opportunity to speak for themselves? Of course not! Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree that nonfeminist women had the right to speak for feminist women without their permission? Of course not!

hooks, Steinem Vaid, and Wolf could have created equality between women. They could have provided a platform for women who choose not to call themselves feminist to explain their choice in their own words.

My feminist leader blog posts provide evidence that feminist leaders still create glory for themselves while relegating supporters to “secondary importance”. Dr. Vanderford used the words “relegated” and “secondary importance” in her dissertation. Eoin Harnett of University College Cork in Ireland used the same “secondary importance” phrase:

“Throughout the ages, women were frequently characterised
and treated as inferior and of secondary importance to men.”

NOW leaders even relegated two of their supporters to secondary importance. The supporters responded to my last two comments on National NOW’s Facebook page with comments supporting NOW. NOW leaders silenced those supporters by removing their comments along with my comments. Instead of creating equality, NOW leaders treat other women the same way patriarchal men treat women, as inferior and of secondary importance.

In-House Rhetoric of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Special Interest Groups in Minnesota: Motivation and Alienation
Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1982
Marsha Vanderford Doyle, Ph.D.
(Now Marsha Vanderford)
Quoted words on page 350.

“Let’s Get Real about Feminism: The Backlash, the Myths, the Movement.”
hooks, bell, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf.
Ms. Magazine.
Vol 4(2) September/October 1993: pages 34-43.

“Multitext Project in Irish History: Movements for Political & Social Reform, 1870-1914”
Eoin Hartnett
University College Cork, Ireland
No date
This project is no longer available online.

~~~~~

Paula M. Kramer
© 2015 to the present.
All rights reserved.

Posts on this blog alternate with posts at the link below. Posts for both blogs are published on Wednesdays as they are ready to be published. Time between posts could be weeks or months.

blog.smilessparksuccess.com

Resource Websites

speakingfromtriumph.com

smilessparksuccess.com

Soft Skill Power Strategies For Attracting Unimagined Success

softskillstrategycourses.com

Facebook Page

Women Speaking Equality

Standards For Success Posters

Girl Grit

Girl Goodwill

Business Directory

betterplanetbusiness.com

Positive Identity Directory For People With Mugshots

myrecordnow.com

 

The Arrogance Of Feminist Leaders

Arrogance

“an insulting way of thinking or behaving that comes
from believing that you are better, smarter,
or more important than other people”

Since the late 1980s, I have become more and more dissatisfied with the words and actions of feminist leaders. Recently, I was going through old files and found a paper I had written in grad school about the differences between pro-choice leaders and pro-life leaders. I wrote this paper at the encouragement of a male professor who considered himself a feminist. While the male feminist professor found some faults in my paper, he also found good points.

I showed my paper to a female feminist professor, who wrote her own comments. I had forgotten how shocking her comments were. Her comments reveal feminist leader arrogance. Below are two excerpts from my paper, the comments from both professors, and my responses to the female feminist professor’s comments. Also below is the female feminist professor’s final overall comment with my responses to each revealing statement in her final comment.

I gave one copy of my paper to both professors. The female feminist professor read the male feminist professor’s comments as she read my paper.

In my paper I cited research from a PhD dissertation by Marsha Vanderford Doyle, now Marsha Vanderford. Vanderford compared the words and actions of pro-life organizations and pro-choice organizations. It is one of the most revealing works I have ever read. I still have the copy I bought for my grad course. I also included excerpts from fundraising letters sent by Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women (NOW).

My paper is not dated, but I must have written it in the early 1990s because that’s when I was in grad school.

 

First Excerpt From My Paper
(Based on Vanderford’s Research)

“It is easily apparent that activists in the pro-choice movement are still the organizations and their officers. Individual pro-choice supporters are not encouraged to take any initiative, to perform any action on their own, or to give their own opinion of what could be done to keep abortion legal.”

Male Feminist Professor’s Comment

“Good”

Female Feminist Professor’s Comment

“Did anyone prevent you from writing them a letter?”

My Response

I did write Ms. Magazine three times in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I have written the National Organization for Women several times in recent years. I emailed a question to a Minnesota NOW chapter. When the Minnesota chapter’s response proved that I had not written my question clearly, I sent another email. I did not receive another response. Then I sent emails to every single NOW chapter in the country. Despite the use of “National” in it’s title, NOW does not have chapters in every state. I exchanged two or three emails with the president of one state chapter. She decided that since she was satisfied with her experience in NOW, nothing I wrote about my experience could be true.

 

Second Excerpt From My Paper

“In reading Vanderford’s dissertation and the mailings from Planned Parenthood and NOW, I was struck by some ironies — each group encourages behavior in its supporters that is the opposite of its approach to reproductive rights.

The pro-life side wants to severely restrict women’s reproductive choices, but in terms of pro-life activism, pro-life leaders encourage individual choice of action. The pro-choice side wants to guarantee a full range of reproductive choices for women, but the pro-choice leaders gave supporters few choices of action.”

Male Feminist Professor’s Comment

“Good”

Female Feminist Professor’s Comment

“Might those choices be the crucial ones?”

My Response

If the choices feminist leaders gave pro-choice supporters for activism were indeed the “crucial ones”, then abortion services would be available around the country. Instead, abortion services were available in 13% of all counties in the country the last time I saw a statistic. Plus, where abortion services are available, restrictions make getting an abortion extremely difficult. It does not matter that abortion is legal to women who cannot get an abortion.

On December 12, 2013, I received a mass email from NOW President Terry O’Neill asking for an end of the year donation. This was her first paragraph:

2013 was a hard year on reproductive rights; states passed nearly
100 restrictions on abortion and 11 states enacted outright abortion
bans that directly violate Roe v. Wade.

If the choices feminist leaders make are the “crucial ones”, why did those choices fail to stop nearly 100 new restrictions in several states and new bans in 11 states?

NOW President Terry O’Neill sent another email on December 16, 2013 to provide even more evidence of how ineffective NOW’s “crucial” choices are:

Conservative extremists spent most of 2013 attacking access to
abortion all over the country. And it’s only going to get worse in 2014.

All year we’ve seen Tea Party ideologues systematically undermine our
constitutionally protected right to abortion. This means that:

•  States passed nearly 100 anti-choice laws in 2013, on top of
hundreds more passed in 2012 and 2011.

•  23 states have passed restrictions on private insurance coverage
for abortion.

•  55% of women of reproductive age live in one of the 26 states that
are hostile to abortion rights.

•  87% of counties don’t have an abortion provider.

•  9 out of 10 abortion clinics experience harassment.

The pro-life side keeps winning because feminist leaders do not know how to make the crucial choices and do not learn from their failures.

This would be a good time for NOW President Terry O’Neill to pause and consider this saying from Albert Einstein:

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting different results.”

Female Feminist Professor’s Final Comments

“You don’t make your case at all. You seem unfamiliar with such publications as Conscience or even Ms.

You ignore the fact that it takes a certain intellectual sophistication to be pro-choice whereas the anti’s have that vast wasteland of obedient women with time on their hands who are given something to do — however ineffectual it is. The anti-abortionists haven’t won because they’ve won the support of vast numbers of people. They’ve won because Reagan and Bush packed the Supreme Court — and Reagan and Bush won because they’ve vast sums of money from the super rich whose empires they serve — and which they’ve spent on racist appeals. They are anti-abortion only because that brings them vast sums from the Catholic Bishops Conference and about 10% of the vote. If the terrorists in the hierarchy abandoned their position that 10% would be gone in a minute.

How the fundamentalists vote has nothing to do with all the busy work they’re given to do and their leaders know it. It’s the keys of the kingdom notion that bullies them into being anti-abortion. The pro-choice leaders don’t insult us with the busy-work encouragement. Their request is honest and straightforward. I’ve lived through the history of the movement and know the organizations grew and were formed by women’s views that are always in process of reshaping themselves through a whole raft of publications. There’s been no repression at all. There is none now — you can correspond with any of them. You can join NOW and create local “actions”. NOW has encouraged its members to do so at every level. The problem is that the Vanderford study is far too narrow to have said anything meaningful about either side. The rhetoric of the pro-choice side should not be defined by letters requesting money. We don’t have access to the fortunes that Reagan and Bush have had.”

My Responses

Female feminist professor’s comment:

“…that vast wasteland of obedient women with time on their hands who are given something to do — however ineffectual it is.”

My Response

If what pro-life women do is so ineffectual, how did they succeed at imposing nearly 100 new restrictions on abortions in several states and new abortion bans in 11 states?

Note that the feminist professor ignores the pro-life men who take action. Vanderford wrote about men and in my paper I quoted one of her references to male pro-life activists.

Plus, feminist organizations like NOW are not reshaping. Older, white feminist leaders are refusing to include or pass power to younger women and women of color.

Female Feminist Professor’s Comment

“You seem unfamiliar with…Ms.

My Responses

I subscribed to Ms. Magazine for more than 10 years. I wrote my first letter to Ms. with coworkers at a women’s resource center to protest an ad for Absolut vodka. The ad showed a woman who was obviously wearing only a tee shirt. The label of an Absolut bottle was reproduced on the tee shirt. The woman stood with her feet wide apart and her mouth open as she pulled the shirt down to just barely cover her crotch. It was a woman-as-sex-object full-page ad in the leading feminist magazine. I made a copy of the ad and still have it.

I wrote my second letter to Ms. Magazine to protest a 1988 article, “The Women (and Men) Who Made Us Laugh, Cheer, Cry, and Cringe in 1988”. Under the heading “Women We’ve Seen Quite Enough Of”, feminist writers Nina Combs and Mary Suh insulted the following women:

Brigitte Nielsen (insinuated she was a dog)

Tammy Faye Bakker (made fun of her makeup)

Jessica Hahn (rehashed the incident with Jim Bakker)

Robin Givens, who divorced boxer Mike Tyson after he physically
abused her (asked if she married Tyson for his money)

Elvira (for showing cleavage)

Other insultees included Ivana Trump, Imelda Marcos, Leona Helmsley,
and Nancy Reagan.

Combs and Suh could write this article only because Ms. editors gave the two feminist writers permission to insult other women.

I wrote my third letter to Ms. Magazine after reading an article which quoted Gloria Steinem as saying. “The only alternative to feminism is masochism.” I later heard her repeat that statement in a television interview. I thought feminism was about giving women choices, but Gloria Steinem repeatedly tells women that their only choice is to accept her definition of the world. I stopped my subscription to Ms. and stopped calling myself a feminist. Now I define myself as an equality advocate. I advocate for equality between women, between men, and between men and women.

I never received any response from anyone at Ms. Magazine.

Female Feminist Professor’s Comment

“You ignore the fact that it takes a certain intellectual sophistication to be pro-choice…”

My Response

Apparently, feminist leaders did not condescend to respond to my letters and emails because I was too intellectually unsophisticated to recognize their intellectual sophistication.

Female Feminist Professor’s Comment

“…that vast wasteland of obedient women with time on their hands…”

My Response

I hope I do not have to explain how incredibly insulting this statement is. A good friend of mine is pro-life. She has never had time on her hands. Her “wasteland” is the same university where the female feminist professor taught until her retirement. She was raised Lutheran, not Catholic.

Female Feminist Professor’s Comment

“How the fundamentalists vote has nothing to do with all the busy work they’re given to do…”

My Response

The female feminist professor shows her arrogance in assuming she knows why pro-life women (and the pro-life men she refuses to recognize) vote pro-life. As for “busy work”, Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL) told its supporters to take action in their daily lives. Supporters chose what to do. In her dissertation, Marsha Vanderford wrote that pro-life leaders encouraged supporters to use:

“…the best of their abilities in their own special circumstances for the cause. Art teachers were reported designing Christmas cards to be sold for the benefit of the cause. Individuals wrote pro-life poetry and songs which were published in local newspapers and played on local radio stations. Housewives crocheted “for life” and contributed their products to craft sales benefiting the state office… From baking cookies to advising the governor, pro-lifers were working on many fronts to defeat the enemy.”

“The variety of acts described as connected to success for the cause allowed a wide range of individuals with many interests and abilities to weave pro-life action into their daily lives.”

These quotes were in my paper. Do you see the “busy work” the female feminist professor saw?

Vanderford pointed out that pro-choice leaders limited actions to courts and legislatures. It’s much easier to define supporters as intellectually inferior when you take action where they have little or no experience. It’s also easier to define anything other than courtroom or legislative tactics as “busy work”. For pro-choice leaders, it’s all about controlling what supporters say and do so leaders can satisfy their own desires. Pro-life leaders obviously have no need to control their supporters. They encourage true grassroots action: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Pro-life supporters did what they could, with what they had, where they were. Their small actions added up to big limitations on abortion access around the country. Pro-life supporters are still doing what they can, with what they have, where they are. Their small actions will continue adding up to big limitations on abortion access around the country.

Female Feminist Professor’s Comment

“I’ve lived through the history of the movement and know the organizations grew and were formed by women’s views that are always in process of reshaping themselves through a whole raft of publications.”

My Response

I’ve lived through verbal and emotional abuse from a different feminist professor as well as from two directors and two co-directors at a women’s resource center. I have talked to other women who endured abuse from directors of women’s resource centers. I hope that not all directors of such centers are abusive. However, my experience tells me that women who want power for themselves see the director position as a way to get power. Since their concern is their own personal power rather than equality for all women, they verbally and emotionally abuse women who threaten their power by expecting equality. I endured the worst abuse from a women’s resource center director when another staffer and I tried to create equality within the resource center.

And who is writing for the “raft of publications”? Feminists like Nina Combs and Mary Suh?

Female Feminist Professor’s Comment

“You can join NOW and create local “actions. NOW has encouraged its members to do so at every level.”

My Response

I was a member of NOW for one year when I still considered myself a feminist. Monthly meetings were dictated by the national office. I remember being bored.

I started regularly visiting NOW’s website in 2003. I signed up for emails from NOW in 2008. The emails have never encouraged me to take action. They have never defined me as an activist. After receiving an email asking for money to train “up and coming activists”, I sent an email asking how someone became an activist. I received no response. I could find nothing on their website about becoming an activist. NOW has a secret means of choosing activists to be part of their “dedicated network of grassroots activists”.

Almost every email I receive from NOW asks for money. I receive more fundraising emails from NOW than from any other nonprofit that has my email address. It seems that a high percentage of the money NOW raises goes to training activists, who travel around the country for their training. When they spend training weekends together they socialize with each other. NOW denies that training and socializing to the women who pay the bills.

In contrast, MCCL organizes a “Fall Tour” that “delivers pro-life education in abortion, health care, legislation and other issues throughout Minnesota.” MCCl also describes their Fall Tour as “pro-life education direct to you”. Anyone can attend. And during the 2012 presidential campaign, the conservative group Smart Girl Politics offered several levels of free online activist training for anyone who wanted to take it.

Female Feminist Professor’s Comment

“The problem is that the Vanderford study is far too narrow to have said anything meaningful about either side.”

My Response

Time proves that the female feminist professor also insulted Marsha Vanderford. The Quarterly Journal of Speech published an article Vanderford wrote based on her dissertation. Also, the magazine Psychology Today hosts a Birth of Wisdom blog. In 2011, the blog published a post that cited Vanderford’s article.

Women who lead feminist organizations (the Women’s Resource Center of my experience, Ms., NOW) and women who believe in the leaders of feminist organizations (the female feminist professor) tend to see themselves as intellectually superior to other women. They see their perspective as the only valid perspective. They use insults and emotional abuse to prove their superiority and protect their superior positions.

Feminist leaders also use exclusion. Do the female feminist professor’s comments indicate that she wants equality for the “vast wasteland of obedient” pro-life women? Do the insults in Ms. Magazine indicate that Ms. editors and writers want equality for the women they insulted? Does NOW’s practice of excluding ordinary NOW members from the training and socializing they pay for suggest that NOW wants equality for ordinary NOW members?

Camille Paglia has a different perspective on feminism than Gloria Steinem has. Steinem said about Paglia, “We don’t give a shit what she thinks!” Does Steinem’s comment suggest that she wants equality for Paglia?

I don’t agree with everything feminist leaders say and do, but I know that all of them deserve equality with other women as women and that other women deserve equality with them as women.

Feminist leaders reveal their arrogance with their feelings of intellectual sophistication. Their arrogance creates inequality for every woman they consider their intellectual inferior. Arrogant feminist leaders create inequality between women while they claim to be creating equality between men and women. Gloria Steinem arrogantly claims that “The only alternative to feminism is masochism.” I see another alternative — freedom from the insults and abuse arrogant feminist leaders use to create and maintain inequality between women.

Fundraising emails from feminist leaders also reveal their arrogance by letting supporters know they are too intellectually inferior to do much more than send money. NOW President Terry O’Neill is fond of writing things like:

“With your support, the NOW Foundation can mobilize our vast
network of allies and activists…”
December 31, 2012

“With your generous support, we can ramp up our state-by-state
initiatives…”
August 27, 2013

“Your donation today will help us…”
October 29, 2013

“In just the past two years, you have helped us defeat anti-abortion
ballot measures…”
November 14, 2013

“With your support, the NOW Foundation can mobilize our network
of allies and activists…”
December 29, 2013

NOW is so suspicious of its supporters’ intellectual capacity, that it decided it had to make sure supporters could remember where they were on the Internet when they visited NOW’s website. The website has fewer identifiers since I wrote the blog post counting the number of identifiers at now.org. NOW also apparently thinks supporters are too intellectually inferior to remember who the current president of NOW is. NOW President Terry O’Neill does not like to be caught without her title, even at the NOW website. When Kim Gandy was president of NOW, she made sure “NOW President Kim Gandy” appeared frequently on NOW’s home page. I once counted “NOW President Kim Gandy” eight times on the home page. Since I started writing about this title glorification, “NOW President Terry O’Neill” appears less often on NOW’s home page and I have seen just “Terry O’Neill” once, but now I don’t remember where.

Other feminist leaders are just as arrogant. In a fundraising letter from about 1990, Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) founder Eleanor Smeal went so far as to underline the intellectual inferiority of pro-choice supporters:

at least four times a year we’ll notify you of pending actions nationally
and locally and let you know what action steps you can take.

Equality between men and women will follow equality between women. Either those intellectually sophisticated feminist leaders keep missing that, or they are seeking equality only for intellectually sophisticated women like themselves.

To say it another way, either feminist leaders are not as intellectually sophisticated as they think they are, or they consider large numbers of women too intellectually unsophisticated to deserve equality.

The only way feminist leaders can prove they are not arrogant is to create equality between themselves and every other woman on the planet. Nina Combs, Mary Suh, and the editors of Ms. Magazine could begin by making both personal and public apologies to the women they insulted. NOW President Terry O’Neill could begin by asking ordinary women who have been successfully active in their own communities to set up free online training courses through NOW for any woman who wants to take them. Eleanor Smeal could begin by asking women to do what they can, with what they’ve got, where they are. Gloria Steinem could begin by acknowledging that feminists have been abusing other women since the 1960s. Note that abuse between feminists even has its own word — “trashing”. Steinem could also demonstrate what equality between women means by looking for areas of agreement with Camille Paglia and engaging in a respectful discussion. If Paglia is not respectful to Steinem, she will only reveal that she creates inequality between women.

What justification do any of these feminists leaders have for not taking these steps? Maybe they’ll make excuses the way the female feminist professor did when she wrote that the pro-choice side doesn’t “have access” to “fortunes”. Writing poems for newspapers or songs for the radio requires fortunes? The pro-life side had more money because pro-life leaders encouraged their members to take their own actions (designing Christmas cards, making crafts, baking cookies) to raise money for the cause.

Marsha Vanderford found that when pro-choice tactics did not succeed, pro-choice leaders blamed the supporters they kept silent and passive until the leaders wanted support.  Pro-choice leaders blamed failures on ordinary pro-choice supporters who did not send enough money, who failed to be persistent (which mostly meant failing to write the letters pro-choice leaders told them to write), or who stopped believing in success. Watch for those excuses in any response from the feminist leaders I wrote about here.

I sent emails to FMF, Ms., and NOW to let them know the title and publication date of this post. Only the national NOW office responded to me. It was the first time they responded after years of my attempts to contact them. Their response gave me more evidence to use against them, and they don’t even know what they gave me.

So much for that intellectual sophistication.

Cliquish, tunnel-vision intolerance afflicts too many feminists”
Deborah Coughlin
Teri’s Hearstrongs
July 14, 2014

“The complexities of abortion”
Bertha Alvarez Manninen
Psychology Today” The Birth of Wisdom Blog
June 9, 2011

*In-House Rhetoric of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Special Interest Group
in Minnesota: Motivation and Alienation
Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1982
Marsha Vanderford Doyle, Ph.D.
Quotes on 208-209 and 244
Leaders blaming pro-choice supporters on 327

“Feminist “OMG!!” Moment: Meeting Gloria Steinem”
Williams Women’s Center: Bringing Feminism to the Purple Bubble
October 24, 2010

“Let’s Get Real about Feminism: The Backlash, the Myths, the Movement.”
hooks, bell, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf.
Ms. Magazine.
Vol 4(2) September/October 1993: pages 34-43.

“TRASHING: The Dark Side of Sisterhood”
Joreen
Ms. Magazine
April 1976: pages 49-51 and 92-98

“Vilification and social movements: A case study of pro-life and pro-choice rhetoric”
Marsha L. Vanderford
Quarterly Journal of Speech
Volume 75, Issue 2, 1989

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As an American, I have freedom of speech.

As a woman, I have the right to express my opinion about anything the National Organization for Women claims to do for women.

In 2016, I started adding the section below to all of my new Feminist Leader blog posts. I also added it to all posts published before 2016.

The National Organization For Women
Silences Women

National NOW has blocked me on its Facebook page. I wrote comments based on my blog posts. All of my blog posts are based on a wide variety of evidence. Much of the evidence comes from National NOW’s website, emails and posts from NOW presidents, and emails from NOW staff members. I use no hostile language, no slurs, no profanity. I do use the phrase “glory addicts” in reference to NOW leaders. I also use “glory addiction”, “glory fixes”, and “a dedicated network of glory addicts”. Dr. Marsha Vanderford (Doyle) identified the glory needs of pro-choice leaders in her 1982 dissertation.

Feminist leaders have been silencing women for decades. bell hooks, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf got together for a conversation that was published in Ms. Magazine in 1993. The discussion included why women choose not to call themselves feminists. Did these four feminist leaders working for women’s equality ask women who choose not to call themselves feminist to speak for themselves? Of course not! The four feminist leaders silenced millions of women by speaking for them without first requesting permission to speak for them.

Imagine a group of women who choose not to call themselves feminists getting together for a conversation to be published in a magazine about why some women call themselves feminists. Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree with nonfeminist women denying them the opportunity to speak for themselves? Of course not! Would hooks, Steinem, Vaid, Wolf, or Ms. Magazine agree that nonfeminist women had the right to speak for feminist women without their permission? Of course not!

hooks, Steinem Vaid, and Wolf could have created equality between women. They could have provided a platform for women who choose not to call themselves feminist to explain their choice in their own words.

My feminist leader blog posts provide evidence that feminist leaders still create glory for themselves while relegating supporters to “secondary importance”. Dr. Vanderford used the words “relegated” and “secondary importance” in her dissertation. Eoin Harnett of University College Cork in Ireland used the same “secondary importance” phrase:

“Throughout the ages, women were frequently characterised
and treated as inferior and of secondary importance to men.”

NOW leaders even relegated two of their supporters to secondary importance. The supporters responded to my last two comments on National NOW’s Facebook page with comments supporting NOW. NOW leaders silenced those supporters by removing their comments along with my comments. Instead of creating equality, NOW leaders treat other women the same way patriarchal men treat women, as inferior and of secondary importance.

In-House Rhetoric of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Special Interest Groups in Minnesota: Motivation and Alienation
Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1982
Marsha Vanderford Doyle, Ph.D.
(Now Marsha Vanderford)
Quoted words on page 350.

“Let’s Get Real about Feminism: The Backlash, the Myths, the Movement.”
hooks, bell, Gloria Steinem, Urvashi Vaid, and Naomi Wolf.
Ms. Magazine.
Vol 4(2) September/October 1993: pages 34-43.

“Multitext Project in Irish History: Movements for Political & Social Reform, 1870-1914”
Eoin Hartnett
University College Cork, Ireland
No date
This project is no longer available online.

~~~~~

Paula M. Kramer
© 2015 to the present.
All rights reserved.

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