Author Archive

Young Women In Office Part Deux

Friday, October 24th, 2008

For my first Crucial Minutiae post, I looked at the lack of young women in public office across the United States, and the reasons women tend to wait until later in life to enter the political arena. For my final (better late than never?) post, I thought it would be interesting to dig a little deeper into all of this and ask young women for their opinions. I tried to cast as wide a net as possible, and got a lot of great feedback. The responses definitely bear out what the experts say: Young women often need a push from a mentor or a personal connection to an issue to motivate them to run. And they are frequently hesitant to run in their twenties or early thirties because of family responsibilities, or simply because they feel unprepared.

Two additional points: A lot of the women I talked to were really turned off by the nastiness of elections. Likewise, they weren’t into the need for capitulation that so often goes hand-in-hand with governing, but instead felt that their goals could be better accomplished through more direct action. (Is this unwillingness to compromise specific to women or just young idealistic people in general?) Here’s a sampling of quotes from the respondents to my little survey:

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Posted in Gender, General, Politics | 1 Comment »

Bother Voting.

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

A while back, I started writing for someecards.com. It’s been a great way to get in touch with my inner frat boy, a part of me I never knew existed. It’s also a fun topic at parties, since some people seem to have actually memorized every card, and can spend a whole lotta time asking “Did you write the one about how blowjobs are like flowers for men?” (No.) “The one about getting drunk on patios?” (Yes.) “The one that says you’re dead to me unless you ask me out again, in which case I love you?” (Maybe.) My mother still calls and asks me whether she can find a nice card on the site that says something simple, like “Thanks so much for the lovely dinner party.” (Actual example.) The answer to that is, unequivocally, no.

I think it’s safe to say that someecards is mostly appreciated by the young, and to that end I’m very proud of a new endeavor we’re a part of called BotherVoting.org, that’s aiming to get more young people to vote. The BotherVoting homepage puts it simply: “Do you know someone who may be too busy, unmotivated, skeptical, disillusioned, or sleepy to bother voting? Then put a minimal effort into changing their minds! Send them an ecard, put an ad on your website, or just send them to Bothervoting.org for inspiration and directions to their polling place.”

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Posted in Politics, Pop Culture | 1 Comment »

Good News For Victims of Sexual Exploitation in NY

Friday, September 26th, 2008

Over the past few years, I have spent a lot of time interviewing and learning about prostituted minors. Commercial sexual exploitation is a topic I’ve researched extensively in my day job; it’s a theme in my forthcoming novel, Commencement; and it’s an issue about which I am generally obsessed.

Much like domestic violence before it, the anti-sex trafficking movement (which covers women who have been coerced and transported across national borders, as well as American minors) has been carried along largely by women, but in order to see real, substantive change, laws and male behavior need to shift too. In recent years, many experts in the field have started looking more carefully at the demand side of the equation: Who are the men who buy sex from underage girls? What are their attitudes about prostitutes and about women in general?

Last spring, a fifteen-year-old prostitute in Harlem told me that one of her regular customers was a suburban dad who would often show her pictures of his wife and kids. That’s when it dawned on me that a lot of these guys might be what we’d consider average, maybe even upstanding (see also: Eliot Spitzer.)

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Posted in Gender, In The News | Comments Off

A Dearth of Young Women in Office

Friday, September 19th, 2008

Hi there everyone. I am thrilled to be guest-blogging this month, and hope to focus mostly on women’s issues while I’m here. Since I have a tendency to be long-winded when it comes to these matters, I am just going to jump right in…

Since Palin-palooza first took hold three weeks back, I have been thinking a lot about how this country desperately needs more female candidates at every level. In part, so that a woman running for office is not an anomaly; so that as a nation we stop treating female candidates as if they were interchangeable, like Barbie dolls whose heads you can snap off of one torso and right onto another. (As a feminist, I never thought I’d see the day when Republicans resistant to equal pay for equal work would pander to women voters by referring to the glass ceiling, but that’s another post entirely.)

It seems to me that each election season brings with it a handful of smart, ambitious male candidates in their twenties and early thirties: Last week, in my home district in Brooklyn, 28-year-old Daniel Squadron beat a 30-year-veteran of the New York State Senate. Squadron’s victory and others like it are exciting and admirable, but they make me curious: Where are all the young women?

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Posted in Gender, Politics | 6 Comments »