‘father’

Hey, Bill O’Reilly, Tune In!

8.12.10 | 3 Comments »

Photo via Fox News.

Jennifer Aniston’s new film, “Switch,” is a tale with a provocative beginning: a turkey baster. Her character in the movie uses artificial insemination to have a child alone. That’s right – alone. No boyfriend, no, girlfriend, no partner, no husband, no wife.

“Switch” is about a single mother (and, even though it is a love story, attempts to encompass the theme of choosing to be a mother, alone). For real. And that’s why Aniston did it. In a recent interview, she said:

“Love is love and family is what is around you and who is in your immediate sphere. That is what I love about this movie. It is saying it is not the traditional sort of stereotype of what we have been taught as a society of what family is.”

It’s important that we realize, firstly, that pregnancy, motherhood, and sexuality are closely related. The same gender injustices that plague the openly sexual, the sexually “deviant,” and those affected by sexual violence also impact our understanding and cultural perception of pregnant and parenting women.

And single mothers are always under attack: reports each day, month, and year blame children’s drug addictions, killing habits, and gang violence on single-parent families; the government is constantly snipping away at the economic security of women who aren’t dependent on men, but do need assistance (and recently cut diapers from the Food Stamps list); and now, Bill O’Reilly has some choice words for Aniston and “Switch.” According to ABC News, he thinks Aniston’s film is to blame for destroying the “American Family.”

In O’Reilly’s eyes, Aniston’s comments make her a threat to the American family.

“She’s throwing a message out to 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds that ‘Hey, you don’t need a guy. You don’t need a dad.’ That is destructive to our society,” he said on Tuesday’s “O’Reilly Factor.”

Fox News contributor Margaret Hoover and Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson chimed in on the topic, agreeing with O’Reilly that teens and tweens can’t understand the difference between a mature woman raising a child on her own (Aniston is 41) and a teen having a baby.

“She is glamorizing single parenthood,” Carlson said.

As usual, I’m going to break this down for you: Bill O’Reilly, a conservative white dude from who-cares-where America with a talk show and a sexual harassment suit under his belt, thinks that the film “Switch,” a light-hearted piece about single parenthood starring a fully adult woman, is going to destroy the American family, encourage teen pregnancy, and diminish the importance of fatherhood. He also asserted this while giving single moms about .05 percent of that screen time, filling it with lip service about how “abandoned” mothers do great things every day (presumably, like finding new husbands).

To that, I have much to say.

I was raised by a single mother from the age of four on. This has made me appreciate the importance of love in families, of close-knit and open families, of talking and of appreciating the ones you’re with. I am hardworking because my mother was hardworking, and how: she works a  humble job and sent my brother and I to immensely prestigious private colleges, all with relatively no money or power to ease our growth. We grew up simple and humble. We studied hard and we had a lot of support and a strong sense of values. We are ambitious and intelligent. We stand head-and-shoulders above many of our peers from married families.

My father, on the other hand, is about as in-tune with my family as Bill O’Reilly himself. Normally, this isn’t something I talk about or throw out there, but it’s necessary now. Right now. Right when movies are finally being made that don’t show single mothers shooting drugs and fucking up their lives. Right when actresses who are single adults are unafraid to admit that they will still pursue families. Right when the stigma and shame of being a single parent remains threatened by people like Bill O’Reilly- by straight, white dudes who treat women like shit and want to ensure that all families make room for men, no matter how violent or unloving those men are.

Bill O’Reilly said that single mothers do great things. He was right. Single parents, and especially single mothers, do great things every day. But Bill O’Reilly doesn’t mean it, and he should. I’m interested in how many of the following things O’Reilly knows: that single mothers on welfare complete their Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees, JD’s and Ph.D.’s every day; that single mothers feed entire families while working full-time jobs, often without a hitch; and that when there are hitches, single moms everywhere have proven, year after year and budget cuts after budget cuts, that they have no time to wait on anyone else, and that they will accomplish what they need to – no matter what the time spent, effort involved, or obstacles thrown.

As someone who has been working to empower women in her local communities for some time (not a long time, but certainly longer than Bill O’Reilly), it is hard for me to watch anyone incorrectly summarize what empowerment looks like. There are many routes to empowering women – especially single mothers, who are caught at many intersections of oppression.

For example, single mothers are going to be more likely to be poor than married women, no matter how many children those married women have. Why? The wage gap. If women are already paid less than men, how can women without men in their lives even dream of competing on equal footing? So we need economic empowerment: financial literacy, equal pay, flex-time, and family-friendly workplaces that do not punish working parents.

Similarly, teen mothers (who, unbeknownst to panelists on the O’Reilly Factor, become adult women in no time) face hurdles in completing their educations, and therefore often slip into poverty. So we need educational empowerment: equal access to educational resources, increased scholarships, outreach to women in non-traditional fields of interest, and networking opportunities for everyone in the working world.

Lastly, single mothers also need supports that all women, regardless of familial status, need: cultural equality, healthy and non-violent relationships, workplaces that embrace female leadership, and full equality under the law.

It is hard to believe that “Switch” will actually destroy the American Family, but it may change some minds. It is giving single mothers a voice, and it may alter the way we, as a culture, perceive women who raise children by themselves. It may help us understand their unique situations and it will finally give people everywhere the chance to applaud their accomplishments. And that, I daresay, is not dangerous. Rather, I think it is very important.

It is also hard to believe that “Switch” is going to convince anyone that fatherhood is unimportant. It is hard to believe women at any time in our current economic and cultural state will choose to embark on a road of discrimination and oppression that is known as “single parenthood.” But it is just as hard to imagine that the problems women face have a solution called “fathers” or “husbands.” The solution is empowerment, and the ability to be heard.

Bill O’Reilly may work for a television network, but he’s tuned out to the realities of single motherhood – and it’s offensive.

Scared & Powerful

4.21.10 | 4 Comments »

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In 2002, I decided to take an IMPACT self-defense class because I needed to feel physically powerful, capable of stopping a person who tried to attack me.  I needed to know I could do something about my father’s too tight hugs and grabs and yelling.  On a mat in a gym in a simulated rape scenario which began with me crying and ended with me kicking a would-be assailant harder than I ever knew I could, I learned the beauty of being scared and powerful at the same time.

I found strength in my hips, power in my arms and legs, the precision in my fingertips. I learned that I didn’t need any special athletic talent—only training—to find the holes in what an abuser says about how he intends to hurt me. Like every human body, the words abusers use to scare their intended victims are full of weak places. When I find the weak place I find the opportunity to change the story. But I don’t change it to a story of how good I am at hurting another person, because that wouldn’t change anything.

I am in a rape scenario, lying down on the mat, crying. The instructor, playing the role of a perpetrator, pins my arms. I don’t have to fight arms with arms. This is not a contest. Instead I take the tension out of my arms and wait for a flaw in his body’s logic. I know my hips and lower body will throw him off if he gets on top of me and if he doesn’t, there is a limit to how much he can hurt me with so much of his body occupied restraining my arms. The minute he moves, I move. He has to let go of my arms to proceed and when he does, I will find a vulnerable part of his body to strike.

Learning self-defense means not having to live on the terms of anyone who has hurt me. It’s story of the intelligence a woman’s body finds when she finally believes that not every man can overpower her just by virtue of being a man.  The story is more than that, though, because before that class I was working to get distance from my father, but still enduring his hugs. Feeling my stomach in the back of my throat and wanting to turn my skin inside out to get away from him.

My sister’s college graduation fell between the third and fourth weeks of class and when I saw my father, my body found the posture I had learned to use at the sign of threat. Feet shoulder with apart, strong leg half a step back, hands in front of my body saying “stop.” When my father moved toward me for a hug, I said,

I’m not in a hugging mood

I hadn’t planned to do this, my body responded automatically.

What?

he said, and started coughing or laughing, I wasn’t sure.

I’m not in a hugging mood

I reiterated

But I’m your father

He tried to move around me. He tried to talk me out of the line I’d drawn. I was scared, yet proud of how loud and decisive my voice remained. I looked at his eyes and saw vulnerability. Literally, because the eyes are a common target used in self-defense, but even more than that. Abusers are not all-powerful.  They too are scared. They have lost kindness or empathy and want what they want so desperately that hurting other people to get it becomes increasingly possible. If they want someone close to them, they take away the choice to leave. Knowing how to apply strength to the vulnerable targets of someone’s body gives choice back to me.

It isn’t true to say that I stopped being scared of my father. I would no more stop being afraid of erupting volcanoes or falling rock. The change is this: after the class I became scared of my father the way a capable adult is scared of a driver speeding down the wrong side of a busy street. I was no longer afraid that I didn’t pacify him he would yell and his rageful words would obliterate me.

In the months that followed that class he yelled a lot—insistent phone calls demanding that I hear his version of the events that led my mother to seek an order of protection.  I learned to hang up. I learned to erase messages. I learned to be steady and confident, not to give in every time he yelled, and eventually he yelled less.

I need to resist the temptation to declare myself the winner of some contest because the minute I do that I stop advocating for safety and start defending my ego. This is not about beating my father or anyone else. It’s about having a life that is not diminished by abuse.

The hours I spent in that basement gym elbowing the duct-taped helmeted instructor who was playing the role of a perpetrator gave me the confidence to know that I am every bit as capable when I’m afraid as I am when I’m calm. There is beauty in the ability to advocate for safety—first our own, then someone else’s—when we’re feeling fear because we feel fear when we stretch ourselves. We feel fear when we maintain integrity in the face of someone trying to undermine us. This is what it means to say, “stop” and “yes” at the same time.

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