While most feminist writers these days are busily taking sides re: Sheryl Sandberg v. Maureen Dowd, I’ve been mulling a completely different front in the ongoing debate over “Who’s More Empowering Than Whom.”*

My Women’s Press editors are putting out an issue in April dedicated to music, and I get to weigh in.  I love pop culture, and I love pop music.  I also love feminism, and most of all I love my daughter, and these latter loves rarely peacefully coexist with the former.

I could have written a PhD thesis on single-monikered popstresses , but my column is too short to take on more than two.

In this corner, Her Royal Madgesty, the Queen of Pop: MADONNA!

In this corner, the tough young upstart, the Barbadian Babe, and the star whom my children vastly prefer: RIHANNA!

Who’s More Empowering Than Whom, faithful feminist fans?

I grew up with Madonna, so to me this isn’t a fair fight.  I also stacked the deck for the Queen with a song that’s among the top girl power anthems of all time.  And though I try not to pass judgment on women who remain with their abusers, for myriad reasons, still….eeeruygh.

This is not to say that a Madonna obsession is not problematic.  Would it be nicer if she weren’t prone to ridiculous publicity stunts, many of which involve her crotch & boobs?  Could she have a lighter hand with the plastic surgery and/or upper body weights?  The Malawi “orphans” with living parents?

This would be easier if I liked Ani DiFranco.

And I’ve tried.  Really tried.  I went to a hippy-dippy liberal arts college that brought her to campus as part of Take Back the Night festivities, but I lasted only a song or two before heading home to play THIS:

My kids’ reaction to anything remotely Riot Grrrrlish?  ”THIS HURTS MY EARS, MOM! TURN IT OFF!”

Your picks are welcome in the comments.

Have Madonna, RiRi, Ani and/or Kathleen gone on the record about “Lean In”?  Since Madonna and Ani are mothers as well as artists and business owners, it’s probably only a matter of time.

*This is what we do instead of March Madness.  Pass the popcorn & wine!

During January in Minnesota, no one feels big.  The excitement and energy of the holiday season has worn off and we’ve awakened to darkness, cold, and existential despair, which has a way of making you feel very small indeed.

My street looks just like this every January 1st, darn it!

So it is with some shyness and anxiety that I accepted a challenge from my friend Sonya Huber to participate in a little blog-go-round called Next Big Things.  Sonya, herself the author of two great creative nonfiction books (Opa Nobody and Cover Me), completed these questions at the behest of another author, then she tagged me to do the same.  I, in turn, have to tag some up-and-comers who will complete the circle of Next Big Thinginess.  Look for their names at the end of the post.

What is the title of your book?

The Radical Housewife: Redefining Family Values for the 21st Century, but you knew that. I’ve officially resolved to have the editing done and the book in your hot little hands by the end of this year, even if it means I have to step over dead bodies in the snow in my haste to deliver edits to my publisher.  Marge would understand.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

One day my husband said, “Why are you driving yourself nuts writing novels when you are already writing really interesting stuff about your life as the anti-Schlafly?  Why not publish all of that?”  I mulled this over and realized that writing fictionalized versions of my life was quite a lot of work–all those pseudonyms to remember, the hair and eye colors to change!  The essays I was writing for the Minnesota Women’s Press and for my old MySpace blog would be my jumping-off point for a full-length book about the adventures of this feminist activist parent.

In hindsight, I probably should have stuck to just changing all my novel’s characters to vampires and been done with it.

What genre does your book fall under?

One that I invented: Political Momoir.  I thought this was very clever, but industry professionals did not.  How well I remember the exasperation of the editors and agents! “Sometimes it reads like a memoir, sometimes like a polemic,” they’d say.  ”BUT I’M A FEMINIST WHO REJECTS THE RIGIDITY OF BINARIES!” I’d splutter in my politely middle-aged Minnesotan way.

In hindsight, I should have already become famous before I attempted to do anything interesting.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Janeane Garafalo, patron saint of bespectacled white nerd girls everywhere, as The Radical Housewife!

Jemaine Clement as the handsome and heavily-Kiwi-accented Radical Hubby!

Bart & Lisa Simpson as the children!

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

The Radical Housewife documents ten years in the life of a feminist stay-at-home-mom determined to upend the myth of American “family values” one dirty diaper, clinic picket, and PTA meeting at a time.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Working off a framework provided my blog posts & MWP essays, only about six months for the first bloated draft.  I offered a few chapters up to my friends, who made valuable suggestions, one of which was “you probably shouldn’t curse so much.”  Duly fucking noted.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Remember Matt’s naïve suggestion that I write about my own life for public consumption?  IT’S ALL HIS FAULT.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Ah, the dreaded request for “comp titles.”  From my exhaustive proposal, I came up with PAGES and PAGES of books by  Third Wave feminists, mommybloggers, women’s studies academicians, even jokey lefty books by Al Franken, but no single genre fit me. I saw this as proof beyond a doubt that I am the specialest snowflake in the world and ought to get a contract with a hefty up-front advance.  Didn’t happen.

I think the closest comp titles out there are probably Ariel Gore’s HipMama books: personal, confessional, funny, frustrated, and always aware of how our individual stories and larger political movements are interconnected.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

I love the word “pique.” It isn’t used enough.  Neither is “kerfuffle.”

I do think that I present a pretty compelling argument for feminists being more actively concerned with the needs of American families and children than the conservatives who claim to have a monopoly on the subject.  I also have some pretty interesting run-ins with psycho anti-choicers who try to shove fetus photos at my kids, parents at my kids’ school who troll me online because of my political views, and Michele Bachmann BEFORE she became MICHELE BACHMANN!

Who will represent your book?

A wild warrior woman in California with a big heart, a sweet tooth, and snakes where her hair should be: Medusa’s Muse.

In hindsight, signing with her was a great thing to do.  No regrets whatsoever.

Who are your Next Big Things? 

Zoe Ann Nicholson, “The Engaged Heart: An Activist’s Life”

Avital Norman Nathman, “Deconstructing the Myth of the Good Mother”

Robin Marty & Jessica Mason Pieklo, “Crow After Roe”

Erin Matson, who will deny that she is writing a book BUT I KNOW BETTER

Onward to a Big 2013!

Before I dig into this post, can I hear from Audre Lorde again, please?  I know it’s a meme we’ve all seen a few different times, including this post from October, but it’s just too good not to repeat.

Thank you, Audre, wherever you are.

So it’s the holidaze again, and in anticipation, my clever editors at the Minnesota Women’s Press organized the November issue around the theme of SURVIVAL.  For those who feel sorry for themselves that they have to grit their teeth through a meal with relatives who, like Karl Rove, still don’t quite believe that Mitt Romney lost the election, there is a great article about a woman born in a federal women’s prison who is now an advocate for prison reform.  That is some serious surviving.

The cover of the issue is also brilliant, featuring a photograph by Nicole Houff of a glamorous but dead-eyed vintage Barbie in her candy-colored kitchen, holding aloft a beautifully trussed turkey:

Despite great gains for women outside the home, what happens inside the home is another story.  I bet that the record twenty women in the United States Senate are still expected to get a damned turkey on the family table next Thursday.  Whether they cook it themselves or grab it from the deli at Whole Foods, it’s still considered a lady’s business to get that shit taken care of.

In case you’re curious: NO, I am not hosting T-day this year. Let’s leave it at that and move on.

My contribution to the November ish is a column called “My Feminist Survival Kit.”  I bare my soul in this one, folks–that is, if there’s one reader out there who would be surprised by the fact that I prefer Sharon Needles and Snooki to Don Draper and Walter White.

While I declare in the column that “burnout is painful but entirely preventable if we have the courage to make our frustrations known,” I regret that I am still more likely to cook you a fabulous turkey feast than tell you what’s really whirling around in my addled mind.  I remain my own harshest critic, unable to extend to myself the compassionate understanding I so willingly offer others.

But it was ever thus, especially when we approach mid-November.  Here in Minnesota, where the sun dips beyond the horizon at 4:30 in the afternoon, everyone is feeling dark.  One e-mail I opened last week revealed that a woman was leaving her husband, perhaps permanently.  Blogs I follow overflow with spilled secrets, deeply felt pain, suicidal ideation.

Allow myself to quote….myself: “as my Internet speed improves, the cacophony amplifies and multiplies, until it threatens to drown everything else in my head. I’m learning that I can write an angry blog post about Todd Akin tomorrow. Today, however, I can turn the computer off.”

Why, I think I’ll do that.

One of the great things about working for a feminist media outlet is being assigned stories that are actually a pleasure to research and write.  In fact, I regularly get hipped to people, places, and things that make me kick myself and think “why the hell didn’t I know about this?”  In the last year alone I’ve learned about the fab musical “My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding,” the wildly talented pop-funk singer-songwriter Mayda, and now, the photography project Of Scars.

You can read my full-length feature for the Minnesota Women’s Press here.  It contains the who, what, where, when, why and how of the project, which in their words “explores all the facets of living with the emotional and physical scars of breast cancer through photography, education, networking and community outreach.”

On my blog, however, I can be as opinionated and decidedly non-newsy as I please.  I can tell you about how I’ve been thinking about Of Scars nearly every day since Kate and Elli allowed me into their studio to take a peek at the pictures.

I’m a feminist, but I hate my body.  As I’ve written here before, I am a feminist because I hate my body–I recognize that patriarchal capitalism wants me to hate my body, and I’m fighting that shit every time I look in the mirror.  Self-acceptance is a truly radical act, and one I’m striving towards every day.

Most of the time I fail.

In my Women’s Press piece, I make reference to a “smiling model who posed topless in a Wonder Woman costume” (above, she appears in the SFW version from the Of Scars website). Here in my blog I can add that her smile was one of the fiercest, most kickass things I’ve ever seen.  As I held her photograph in my hands, I wondered what it would take for me to feel the same fearlessness about myself.  Here was my genuine, unedited, terrifying thought:

Would my body need to be mutilated for me to appreciate it?  Would it need to be pulled back from the brink of death to be loved unconditionally?  

Several days ago, Lady Gaga responded to criticism about gaining 25 pounds by posting pictures of herself in a bikini on her website.  She looks fabulous, as shapely and delicious as Marilyn Monroe in her prime.  As much as I appreciate the gesture, as well as Gaga’s admission of eating disorders and her hope to “BREED some m$therf*cking COMPASSION” by doing it, I couldn’t help experiencing another genuine, unedited, terrifying thought:

Are you kidding me? This gorgeous young woman is supposed to be the face of “bravery” and “body acceptance”?!  Give me a break.  Where are HER scars?  If she truly was bulimic, she has ‘em–bite marks on the fingers she used to make herself puke.  I want to see THOSE.  

These decidedly NON-compassionate thoughts are my scars on display.  These scars have covered decades of cuts, some big (“outta my way, fat bitch!) and some small (“you need foundation to cover up that splotchy skin of yours”).

Kate told me in her studio that breast cancer magnifies and multiplies everything women feel about their bodies and by extension, themselves.   I think she’s right.  I’m grateful that she and Elli are using their art and their studio to begin this important conversation.  We all have scars to share with each other, and ways we can learn from one another, no matter what the demon we’re battling.

If you’re in the Twin Cities on September 29, you can view Of Scars, the photography exhibition, for yourself.  I’d like to know what you see.

All photos of non-internationally famous pop stars by Of Scars and are used with permission.

Sigh.

Yes, that’s me, tippity-tap-tapping away at my dented Compaq for your reading enjoyment.  I do my writing on the dining room table, though.  Who can type on a couch?  Here’s a small sampling of what I’ve had published lately.  Interpret according to your identity politics*:

Global patriarchy back in business. Minnesota Women’s Press, September 2012.

Periods of great national stress tend to demand scapegoats, even ones as unlikely as Sandra Fluke, the law school student at Georgetown who was called a slut and a prostitute after testifying before a Congressional committee in favor of legislation supporting birth control. The control of women and their bodies is a political imperative in cultures around the world and in eras throughout human history, and nothing brings out misogyny more than global recession, prolonged war and environmental catastrophe. Women are the canaries in this ever-deepening coal mine. 

Lawn signs have their place, but shouldn’t neighbors be talking too?  Minnesota Public Radio News, September 12, 2012.

She wouldn’t have learned much from me, but she might have learned something from other neighbors at National Night Out. Neighbors like the gay couple across the alley and the lesbian couple several doors down. Lest she think that all GLBT people in the area are in a mad dash to the altar, she could also have met the singleton known to mingle in Palm Springs at Dinah Shore Weekend.

And these were just the folks who were out; untold others could be B (bisexual), or T (transgender), or part of the rainbow of difference in countless other ways. At our block’s annual event last month, there were elderly neighbors, toddler neighbors, surly teenage neighbors, neighbors of color, white neighbors, a neighbor in a wheelchair, a neighbor with multiple disabilities, gluten-free neighbors who avoided the brownies and vegetarian neighbors who avoided the hot dogs.

“An Atheist Grieves.” Atheist Voices of Minnesota. Edited by Bill Lehto.  Freethought House, 2012.
(enter to win your own signed copy of the book HERE!)

My son and daughter, ages 11 and 6 respectively, have never attended a funeral. By the time I was Elliott’s age I’d lost both of my Greatest Generation-era grandfathers; Elliott and Miriam’s four grandparents are Baby Boomers who are reaping the benefits of the late 20^th century’s scientific advances, including the once-mocked theory that smoking cigarettes is a bad idea.  My kids are lucky, though they don’t know it.

The nearest my children have come to the reality of death occurred in November of 2007, when my very dear friend Liz succumbed to colon cancer when she was only 35.  Her death was painful, but foreseeable; during the final year of her life she was seriously ill, with more surgeries and hospital visits than I could count.  I visited her as often as I could, but for my Minneapolis-based children her death outside Boston happened offstage, not unlike the lead character’s mother in Bambi.  Instead of an echoing gunshot, my children heard the telephone ring at an hour too early for good news and the dull thud of my body as I slumped to the floor.

Finally, we have something that I didn’t write, but it’s too hilarious not to repost here.  It’s in reference to a comment I made in support of a piece by fellow MPR scribe Haddayr Copley-Woods:

How, HOW, did this young lady** discover my secret?  For years I’ve endeavored to hide my liberalism, my feminism, my atheism, and my socialist tendencies from the world!   Sure, the masthead photos on this website feature the word “abortion” twice, but doesn’t everybody’s?

Doesn’t it?

*my parents are under no illusions whatsoever about me working in an office. They know my all-time favorite job (other than child-rearing of course! derp) was selling used CDs at Cheapo.  Gotta aim big, you guys!

**yes, Nicole, I know how to do Google searches too.  In fact, it took me just a few clicks to discover that your boyfriend of nearly six years still hasn’t proposed, much to your family & friends’ chagrin.  My “liberal/feminist/atheist and occupy supporter” advice would be to propose to him yourself, but you probably wouldn’t listen.  If you’re truly as antifeminist as you claim, you ought to ask your Facebook pal Rush Limbaugh for his opinion, which I’m guessing would be: “stop putting out, you dirty tramp.”

Minnesota Public Radio News recently published an essay of mine called “Racism in the neighborhood.” I began work on the piece in October 2011, just after the community event that I mention in the first paragraph.  Like a lot of things in my life, it languished as my fall careened towards disaster and my winter proved no better.  And my spring?  Meh. Now I’m not suggesting that I’m in the midst of what Camus would call an invincible summer, but I’m starting to get a few things back on track.  I certainly aim to post here more often, gentle readers.  I appreciate your patience.

Below is the complete text of the essay, accompanied by a photo of Miriam and Megan playing in the backyard of Michele Norris’s house.  The Grace of Silence is a wonderful read, and I highly recommend it.  Elliott promises me that he will get started on it soon–after he finishes memorizing every character in The Halo Encyclopedia, of course.

Last fall, I attended an event sponsored by Building Bridges, a community organization that, according to its mission statement, “seeks to understand how race and racism impact our communities and to build the future of our neighborhoods together.” The group’s name reflects the yawning gap exposed when south Minneapolis neighbors clashed over a proposal to create an off-leash dog area in a park named for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. It’s also a literal reference to the east-west divide created when Interstate Hwy. 35W was built in the 1950s.

Held in Minneapolis’ Field neighborhood, the event featured remarks from Minneapolis native Michele Norris, former co-host of NPR’s All Things Considered and author of the 2010 memoir The Grace of Silence. Norris grew up in a two-story Tudor on a corner lot only three blocks away from where we feted her, and her book describes not only her Minneapolis childhood but also the painful legacy of racism in the silence and secrets carried by members of her family and, by extension, members of her hometown and nation.

Here in Field our discussions over the book are personal, indeed — Norris spent her childhood on the same street where my children Elliott and Miriam are spending theirs. The corner house where Norris lived with her parents Belvin and Betty is where my kids and their friends alight from the bus every afternoon.

My kids were thrilled when they learned that “the lady on the radio” once lived on the block. But their joy turned to confusion when I shared that Norris’ white neighbors put their homes up for sale as soon as the block’s first black family moved in. Next door, Norris wrote, “the forlorn For Sale sign sat in front of the house for weeks. At one point, someone attached a flyer that read BEWARE NEGRO NEIGHBORS.”

When he heard that, Elliott looked stricken, as if he’d bit into an apple and tasted a worm. To a young white child in the Midwest of the 21st century, racism is not unfamiliar, but it is too easily categorized as the distant past, or something that occurred in the South. His school did a terrific job teaching about the horrors of the Middle Passage as part of a unit on colonial history, and the work of Dr. King is recalled throughout the year, not just around his birthday. But racism, here? In this bucolic backyard, where friends of many different colors like to play with one another?

His reaction was immediate: “that’s awful,” he said, adding quickly: “We can’t tell Kelcy and Megan about this.” Like the Norris sisters, these two dear friends are African-American.

“Why? I asked.

He looked at me like I was insane. “It would hurt them,” he said.

I couldn’t blame Elliott for automatically defaulting to silence. As Norris writes, “the mere mention of the word race can make some people apopleptic or pious or frozen by anxiety, only to beat a hasty retreat to their comfort zone: grim taciturnity.” Norris acknowledged that even she and her husband struggle with how much they care to expose their own kids to what she writes is “a four-hundred-year-old cancerous social disease.”

Though the discussion that evening was fascinating, heartfelt and honest, I had to admit later that I had attended in hopes it would immediately thaw my own anxiety about discussing the thorny issues of race with my children and their friends. It’s melting, but like most parents, I am impatient; I want to fix ugliness for them now.

On June 26, 2012, 5-year-old Nizzel George was killed when gang members fired into the north Minneapolis home where he slept. We heard the story reported on public radio as we drove to summer swimming lessons.

“Could that happen to me?” Elliott asked anxiously.

“No,” I replied.

Nizzel may have lived in the same city, but he inhabited a different world. The north side might as well be on another planet, racked by poverty, unemployment, violence and the painful legacy of racial quarantining — the same separate but unequal attitudes that confronted the Norrises when they were among the first to integrate the south side. How could I begin to untangle all this for a confused 12-year-old, a kid who wanted answers now?

Our human response to discomfort is fight or flight, anger or withdrawal, seething or silence. Rarely do we allow ourselves the opportunity to grapple with nuance, yet this is where the real transformations occur. Building Bridges and The Grace of Silence are essential tools as we tread that middle path — and I’m happy to say that the book is now on my son’s nightstand.

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.