From the November 2001 issue of the Minnesota Women’s Press:

Show up … more than once

“Showing up is hard-that’s why so few people do it. Even fewer show up the second time, or the third.” by Shannon Drury Somewhere in the bleak midwinter of 2003, I wandered into a squat brick building in the shadow of our state Capitol. In a spare conference room in the building’s basement, I found a room decorated with familiar round signs that I’d seen in rally photos from the late ’60s forward. I noticed a skinny young woman at one end of the table slapping a nametag marked ERIN onto her Riot Grrrl T-shirt. I was in the right place: an open house for new members of Minnesota NOW (National Organization for Women). There is always a tendency to romanticize, in hindsight, those moments that set major life changes in motion. I wax nostalgic about this two-hour event in St. Paul often, not only as a neat starting point for my activist career, but for introducing me to Erin Matson, current executive vice president of National NOW and a very dear friend. When I remember what it felt like to show up that day, I forget the stomach-flipping anxiety that I almost certainly endured. Showing up is hard-that’s why so few people do it. Even fewer show up the second time, or the third. Also present at that Activist Open House were several other women whom I never saw again. Where did they go? To political campaigns that could afford to brew Starbucks, not Folgers? To organizations with a different focus? Back to families, jobs, bills-in short, the minutia of everyday life? In these pages I’ll admit what no one but my husband knows: There have been more than a few times I’ve returned from meetings determined to quit. Instead of volunteering for Minnesota NOW, I reasoned, I could learn to crochet, to speak Italian, to prepare every recipe in the “Moosewood Cookbook.” The most tragic outcome would be a scorched pan or a tangle of yarn, not the disappointment of my peers, or worse, the frustration of an entire movement. I suspect the latter might be what prevents so many from volunteering for issues-based organizations like mine-the suspicion that one needs the otherworldly determination of Susan B. Anthony or Rosa Parks to feel like you’re actually getting anywhere. Showing up isn’t easy no matter what coffee is brewing. It’s certainly more convenient to direct cranky and accusatory emails at the person listed online as the organization’s leader, for this can be done in one’s pajamas. No American feminist organization carries more historical baggage than NOW, for good or ill, and the demands to do more, be more, and say more can be exhausting. All the work I’ve done for NOW has been unpaid, a fact which often surprises those who have yet to show up. When I reply to these electronic brickbats, my initial inquiry is always the same: Are you a member? Only rarely is the answer affirmative. I remind these folks that filling out a membership form is as easy as Googling my name; I do acknowledge, however, that the substantive changes they seek will only occur when they decide to show up. These changes might not be as world-shaking as the ones wrought by women named Susan and Rosa, but I doubt those two were half as fun at a conference as my friend Erin. Or my friend Barbra, my friend Kristi, my friends Beth (there are two!), my friend Mary Ann, and all those who still, day after day, year after year, show up. Shannon Drury is the president of Minnesota NOW. She lives in Minneapolis with her family and is a self-described radical housewife. FFI: Minnesota NOW (National Organization for Women) www.mnnow.org

This month’s theme in the Minnesota Women’s Press was “Picking Up Your Power,” so my thoughts naturally turned to a fellow activist mom of two, Kimberia Sherva, who is the brains (and enormous heart) behind SlutWalk Minneapolis.  Below is the text of my column, complete with information about how you can sign up to walk with us on October 1st.

If you object to the title of the walk, please don’t tell me about it.  Get a blog of your own and parse out the meanings of “slut,” “bitch,” and “cunt” until your Google PhD in Women’s Studies is complete, for I lack the energy to debate you.

A walk towards power

by Shannon Drury

Kimberia Sherva is a smart, funny and energetic mom of two, a woman who not only picked up her own power, she grabbed it, wrestled with it when it became unruly, and absolutely refused to let it go. She is the force behind the upcoming SlutWalk Minneapolis.

A brief primer on the SlutWalk movement: In January of 2011, a Toronto police officer, Michael Sanguinetti, told a group of college students that “women should avoid looking like sluts in order not to be victimized.” What began as a grassroots plan to protest the police attracted widespread attention (due in no small part to the action’s purposely confrontational name), and an estimated 1,500 people gathered on April 3, 2011 to raise awareness of sexual stereotypes and the persistence of victim-blaming in Canadian society. Since then, SlutWalks have been replicated in London, Stockholm, and Sao Paulo, with walks in the works in Mexico City, Johannesburg, and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Sherva thought our Twin Cities community needed a SlutWalk of its own, and she took on the challenge of planning it. In addition to raising her two sons, Sherva is a full-time student with a work-study job, and she’s neither an event planner nor a political activist by training. She’s learning the ropes one social media account at a time.

When I told her about the “pick up your power” theme of this month’s Minnesota Women’s Press, she admitted, “It’s hard to pick up personal power. It’s hard, and it’s scary, and [women have] been conditioned to play nice.” So why do it? For one thing, Sherva said, “I have always believed that the women of today stand on the shoulders of the women of yesterday,” and organizing a local SlutWalk could repay that feminist debt. But she had another, even more important reason: “This SlutWalk isn’t just about tearing down the word slut, it isn’t just about fighting against victim blaming and society’s messages about rape,” Sherva wrote on the event’s Tumblr blog. “It’s about being able to say, ‘I was raped,’ ‘I was sexually assaulted.’ And being believed.”

Sherva continued: “I know exactly why women walk in the SlutWalks. I know how they feel. And I know that when our event happens, it’s going to be cathartic … it’s going to give a voice to the rage and the hurt and the bewilderment of being blamed for my rape, of not being believed, of jumping through the hoops of the legal system, and being told that I wasn’t raped. … I’ve been questioned, I’ve been asked ‘What did you do?’ and I’ve been flat out and out called a liar.”

The process has been just as hard and scary as Sherva predicted. As of this writing there have been hangups with the Minneapolis permit process, resulting in the date for the SlutWalk being shuffled around the calendar; glitches in the official Facebook invitation, which went haywire once the event received over 4,000 RSVPs; objections from feminist allies who hate the use of the word “slut” in any context, even an anti-rape one; and worse still, an outpouring of hurtful comments from trolls who reaffirmed Constable Sanguinetti’s opinion in no uncertain terms (Sanguinetti has since apologized). The stress has been enormous, but not overwhelming-Sherva has faced each obstacle with grace and determination, gathering her power as she goes. During SlutWalk Minneapolis I’ll be by her side, making my own voice for equality and freedom heard.

For as Sherva told me, “We ALL have the power to change the status quo.”

Shannon Drury lives in Minneapolis with her family and is a self-described radical housewife.

IFYOUGO
What: SlutWalk Minneapolis
When: Oct. 1, 2 p.m.
Where: Hennepin Island Park, Minneapolis
Register online: www.slutwalkminneapolis.org/register-to-walk.html
FFI: www.slutwalkminneapolis.org

I’m number two!

I mean that figuratively, for the weeks of the Circle of Moms Top 25 Political Mom Blogs contest coincided with what is always the crappiest (ha) time of year: the dead zone between the last days of school and the first days of afternoon camp.

My children, who thrive on predictability almost as much as I do, go batshit crazy for ten days every June. For an avowed pessimist, it’s odd that I’m never prepared for this. As school winds down early in the month, I find myself irrationally anticipating sleeping in late, heading out to Lake Harriet for a swim, and doing all the “fun” things that we’re not able to do because we have a school schedule keeping us on the straight and narrow. On May 31, I should be calling the pharmacy to bump up all of our meds, but I don’t until it’s past Father’s Day and the damage has been done, to our psyches and bedroom walls alike.

Indeed, the whole mess has taken a large toll on my (admittedly lame) career as a Political Mom, as I found myself utterly unable to juggle personal and professional responsibilities. Not only do I feel like a steaming pile of number two, I have the stamina of an actual two-year-old. Several months ago, I reflected on how my shy temperament complicates my life, in a piece called “The Trials of an Introverted Activist” that is finally seeing print in the current issue of the Minnesota Women’s Press. Sadly, the piece did little to exorcise the anxious, Piglet-like aspects of my personality; I remain a Very Small Animal, unconvinced of my ability to remain steadfast against the two Heffalumps screaming “I HATE YOU!” to me and to each other all day long. I just hope they care enough to publish The Radical Housewife after I’m dead, for that looks to be my smartest publishing strategy right now.

But things are looking up. I fell in love with Jersey Shore. Camp started rough (it’s never good to be phoned on the first day), but it did start. And did I mention that for a moment, I was a real number two?

Let’s back up a bit, to Monday, June 13, when the Circle of Moms contest officially closed, with the conservative Political Mommentator in first, followed by Veronica Arreola’s Viva La Feminista, Gina Crosley-Corcoran’s The Feminist Breeder, and yours truly, The Radical Housewife. It was suggested that it was really too bad that the Mommentator’s legions voted out of their concern, expressed by the Tator’s husband, that the “feminazi” Crosley-Corcoran might win instead.

Yeah, he went there.

Women on the right, I beg you: please do not tolerate the use of this slur. Ever. Do not allow the men in your lives to defend you by calling other women “bitches.” DON’T DO IT. Disagree with us about politics all you want. Call us loony, call us dumb, call us late for dinner if you want, but don’t put up with sexist stereotypes. They’re bad karma in addition to bad form. Circle of Moms agreed and disqualified Mommentator from the contest.

Then, inexplicably, Crosley-Corcoran posted on the TFB Facebook page that she was dropped from the contest herself, for somehow not being “political” enough. I don’t think they read her older posts, about raising her kids gender-neutral or her take on feminism and pornography, instead focusing on her recent posts about attachment parenting her VBAC newborn Jolene. What’s not political about that? In my confusion, I realized that with TFB out I was literally NUMBER TWO. Whoa.

But I don’t want to be, either literally or figuratively. All cliches aside, I am honored just being in the company of some of my favorite online writers, including the two mentioned above, as well as Joanne Bamberger, Katie Allison Granju, Gloria Feldt, the collectives behind MOMocrats and Moms Rising, and many others whose writing I would not have discovered without this peculiar competition. Feminist mom writers are one hell of a group. I’m very happy to be in their company, and I’m grateful to all of my readers who buzzed over to the CoM site for the votes. Feminists are one hell of a group.

A group that includes Crosley-Corcoran, of course! In good news, it turned out that she wasn’t dropped from the contest after all. In bad news, it’s because she has a psycho stalker. * Isn’t that just the way with moms? A little good, a lot of bad, all in the service of the toughest job you’ll ever love and sometimes really hate.

*though I would like concrete proof that the stalker isn’t a RWNJ. I’m conspiracy-minded like that.

Ah, the 1990s! I may be been a child in the ’70s and endured adolescence in the ’80s, but the ’90s is when I really grew up. I spent the first twenty years of my life being what was expected of me: a fine student, an exemplary daughter, a sidekick to my dominant friends. If an unsettling rage occasionally bubbled to the surface, it was my fault for not playing my role appropriately. Girls weren’t angry–girls were good. I identified strongly with fucked-up boy-men like Holden Caulfield and Paul Westerberg, though my cis-gendered hetero-normative temperament prevented me from imagining myself as anything but a grunge god’s loyal girlfriend. I had no seething female role models save Sylvia Plath, whose example was not one I cared to follow.

Postscript: I’ve just learned that there are THREE different covers for the issue, featuring red, blue & black vinyl records. I got the black one in the mail, so I’m off to True Colors for the other two. My granddaughters, of the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s and beyond, need to have them all!

LITERARY MAMA:

I am so damned annoyed that Sonya Huber and I never met while we attended Carleton together. Happily, MySpace succeeded where Sayles-Hill failed, and I was able to interview her about her 2010 book Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir. Sonya not only gave birth to Ivan and changed his diapers, she managed to write a great book about class warfare that has a half-naked person on the cover. You should buy it.

MINNESOTA PUBLIC RADIO NEWS:

Idiots in my legislature, most (but not all!) of them male, inspired this commentary piece: Concern for the unborn, not so much for the born but homeless. Even my 11-year-old knows that “pro-life” doesn’t include all life–especially not life that’s kinda yucky looking.

ELEVATE DIFFERENCE:

In my review of Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life by Claudia Welch, I reveal that, like the glamorous lady pictured above, I have lost my hormones and do not know where to find them. Welch thinks they might be hiding in some Ayurvedic herbal concoctions, but I’m not so sure. I’ll just have to keep looking.

I’m usually a cynic about “awareness” campaigns, due in large part to my tendency to vomit every time I see a product made of cancer-producing chemicals painted pink to raise “awareness” of the cancer that everyone seems to be getting from all the chemicals in the environment. Indeed, “awareness” failed to keep cancer from killing one of my dearest friends, so in my truly dark moments I lash out at “awareness” for falling down on the job.

But this cause is different–in this case, “awareness” is what kept another of my dearest friends alive. National Eating Disorders Week is February 20-26 this year, and though it’s officially ending tomorrow, there’s hope that the new Let’s Talk About It campaign, sponsored in part by the National NOW Foundation, will continue changing (and saving) lives.

From the NEDA website: “Our aim is to ultimately prevent eating disorders and body image issues while reducing the stigma surrounding eating disorders and improving access to treatment. Eating disorders are serious, life-threatening illnesses–not choices–and it’s important to recognize the pressures, attitudes and behaviors that shape the disorder.” One of those talking about her recovery from an eating disorder is that dear friend, Erin Matson. Anorexia came close to ending her life while she was in her teens, years before she and I were introduced at our first Minnesota NOW meeting. The fact that it didn’t is something I should never take for granted.

In the spirit of talking about body image, I’m reprinting “The Stories Bodies Tell,” a column that appeared in the June 2009 issue of the Minnesota Women’s Press. It refers to an essay for HipMama from March of that same year, and to another MWP column from the summer of 2007. All of the body anxiety I wrote about then remains with me. I struggle EVERY DAY to hold back the negativity that bubbles to my lips when I look at myself in the mirror lest I speak them aloud to Miriam, who still thinks that every lump in her mom’s body is just fantastic. “Your tummy is big because it used to be my home,” she says, patting me lovingly. Below is a 2005 photo of her brother kissing that home–the one that used to be his.

And now, that column:

Last April, HipMama.com published an essay of mine inspired by a childhood memory of hugging my mother’s soft tummy. Sharing that memory with her twenty years later ended in disappointment, I wrote, for her reaction was shame, not tenderness. To her, the belly fat that gave her child comfort was a source of embarrassment, one so deep she couldn’t fight past it to remember her daughter’s love.

I don’t blame her. I’ve put on weight lately, and now my young daughter has a soft playground of her own. She enjoys a good stomach squish whenever she can, and it takes a superhuman effort to allow her explorations, to fight the urge to push her loving hands away from my own source of shame. I’m no longer the same size as when I wrote the column “Perfect Diet,” published in these pages in July 2007. These last two years have tested my sanity like no others, with estrangement, serious illness, and death all part of my reality. My body tells this story to anyone willing to hear it.

Ironically, that 2007 column challenged the assumption that a thinner frame equaled health; everyone told me I looked fabulous when devastating jaw pain meant I couldn’t eat. Nowadays, I look for refuge from stress in the snacks I munch while streaming “30 Rock” on Hulu. My balance is off, I realize, but my body itself is fighting my efforts to right it: these 37-year-old knees aren’t as excited about step class as they used to be. I remind myself that a certain amount of softness can’t be that bad, but I don’t believe myself any more than my mother did.

The chasm between the child’s adoration of her mother’s softness and that same mother’s hatred of her own flesh provided the spark for the HipMama piece. If bodies tell stories, my own could speak to the way I was raised, and the different way I want to raise my children. I don’t blame my parents, or their parents for that matter, for the accidents of genetics that left the family tree touched by chronic anxiety and depression. Even without this hurdle, no one can live free of powerful cultural messages about our bodies, embedded as they are in every aspect of American life. These struggles will own us if we resist naming them.

I write my columns at my desk, in a pose identical to the one I held in my fourth grade classroom, the first time I remember sucking in my gut for acceptance. Today, my belly bumps up against the cherry wood beneath my computer and is significantly larger than the one I was teased about. Do I hate myself more or less? At 37, I have the twin gifts of wisdom and perspective, yet I also have 27 more years of Madison Avenue programming. When I don’t fit into my 2007 pants, I listen to the judgments of the magazines before I honor the story my body tells of my emotional pain.

Making things worse is the fad of the “Yummy Mummy.” Today, 50 is the new 40, is the new 30, and so on. Once upon a time, a woman up to her elbows in the work of raising little kids could reap at least one reward—a ticket off the body hate treadmill. No more. Valerie Bertinelli claimed that Weight Watchers got her bikini ready for People magazine, but in the accompanying article she admitted to starving herself in the seven days before the shoot, just in case. Valerie is 48, thirty years past what was once considered the anorexia danger zone. Her flat tummy even sports a perky little belly ring, driving home the message that to be the mother of an 18-year-old, you need to look like one.

It’s hard enough to worry about your body in fourth grade, but age used to provide an exit strategy. In hindsight, I was naïve to think that my mother would welcome a memory based upon the roundness of her body, when voices so much louder than mine shout that her abs should be as tight as Madonna’s. When I shared this memory with my mother, I wished to affirm our connection. As a mother myself, I have her softened shape to offer my own children. Instead, my mother affirmed a different connection—the sisterhood of shame. Both are inheritances we pass on to my daughter Miriam, a girl who has just turned four.

It’s a burden far heavier, pound for pound, than anything physical.

It’s safely after Valentine’s Day, so you know I’m not posting about L-O-V-E in hopes that a certain Radical Husband buys me cupid-branded chocolate and teddy bears (the fact that the only stuffed toys we’ve ever purchased for each other were Terrance and Phillip dolls tells you all you need to know about our relationship). No, my essay on my weird sexual history was written long ago, timed for publication in the Sin issue of the fabulous Skirt! magazine, whose crack designers came up with the logo above. I wish that the print version of the mag were available up here in the frozen tundra–why should our sisters in the southeastern USA enjoy warm weather AND a beautifully designed publication of their own??

“You should never just read for ‘enjoyment.’ Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends’ insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick ‘hard books.’ Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for God’s sake, don’t let me ever hear you say, ‘I can’t read fiction. I only have time for the truth.’ Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of ‘literature’? That means fiction, too, stupid.”