Women’s History Month: A Matter of Standing

Standing: status, rank, position, station, level, footing, reputation, estimation, stature, eminence, prominence, prestige, esteem, illustriousness, importance, consequence, influence, distinction, noteworthiness, validity, sway, clout

The women of new congress

Women’s History Month isn’t an anniversary I typically celebrate or to which I pay much attention. Early in my career, in fact, like so many of us, I worked hard not to differentiate. Making an issue of being a woman in the workplace seemed to underline the very differences I was trying to equate. However, as I type this, I admit to feeling ashamed of myself and that—though I’m dying to meet Gloria Steinem in real life—I hope she doesn’t inquire about the details of my feminist record. It’s there, but in my younger years I did work harder for what seemed more immediate, achievable goals, like ending the Vietnam War. I would say I don’t feel tragically ashamed, more like the descendant of a suffragette being admonished by her ancestors: “Do you realize what we went through?” I’ve always been on the right side—but not raging. I wanted my career and achievements to speak for, not themselves, but for me. I had earned that standing, regardless of gender, I felt. Looking back, after learning how hard it was to be heard, even when you did everything right—even way beyond right—I wonder what on earth I was thinking about. Why did I feel I had to prove anything?

Standing: That Which Is Assumed for Others Often Needs to Be Earned or Proven for Women

Lori Lightfoot (right) and Toni Preckwinkle, run-off candidates for mayor of Chicago

Shame is certainly not the word I apply to this past year. This is a shout-it-from-the-rooftops time. From the speak-up success of #MeToo to the feminism of Congress (I love saying that) to the fact that in my city of Chicago, we are going to have an African-American woman as mayor. She might even be a lesbian. Those aren’t the reasons I’d vote for a mayor, but it’s all pretty cool to see that the field is feminine, so the choice is gender neutral. I’m hoping the campaign will be civil and issues-oriented. The road is rocky ahead, as we can already see from snide comments about these remarkable women. Yet, to be standing tall on this road is significant.

The Issue Is Long-Standing

The extraordinary and hard-earned events of the year aren’t, however, why the standing of women has been on my mind. I launched a novel in the fall, The Fourteenth of September, a woman’s story of Vietnam. I’ve been talking about it across the country and answering continuing questions about why I would write a book about that war from a woman’s point of view: What was my intention? Why would it matter? How could there be a story if women weren’t even in the war? Their lives weren’t on the line, were they? These aren’t judgmental questions, they come from a point of genuine curiosity, and an eventual thrill that there even is a story about women during that war.

The discussions have been like peeling an onion. The first comments are usually from men, sharing their experiences of the Draft Lottery, but then, slowly but surely, the women’s questions begin. They have stories of experiences as well—of impact, not combat. As the queries deepen, so do my answers, and I find myself going back to my childhood where issues of inequity began for so many of us. Mine was a bit unusual, so the disconnect was clearer.

Both my parents were in World War II. My mother actually saw much more action than my father (I’ve always loved saying that). She was a nurse, a first lieutenant, overseas for three years. My father was sent to Panama, out of the war, and came to Europe after D-Day but in time for the Battle of the Bulge. I don’t want to compare their experiences and assess which one had it worse, since that will undermine my whole point, but the details are significant to set up the issue.

Edith Finnemann Hoey, 1st Lt., Army Nurse Corps

My mother had stories (and scrapbooks) that we pried out of her years later that were amazing: in Patton’s army, helping perform meatball surgery in twenty-hour shifts in a tent on the front, dipping her cup into a tub of cold coffee to keep awake before rotating behind the lines for a little rest before it would start all over again; part of a team on VE day that liberated Stalag 11 in Heidenheim, Germany. As the daughter of Danish immigrants she could understand German, and when the captured men smiled and called the Americans names—just like in the movies—she giggled that she could wait for the killer moment, then answer back in their own language, showing she had understood all along, stunning them that this twenty-six-year-old farm girl could smack them back in place. It was cold in Heidenheim, and the prisoners had little clothing. They were huddled in the fetal position to keep warm . . . for years. Her job, as head of triage, was to take their limbs and try to pull them apart to see if there was any range of motion, any hope for life. Just take a moment to imagine what that would be like. But she didn’t want to talk about it. Not, we thought, because most vets didn’t, but because she had found that “no one wanted to hear it.”

When conversations began, she was usually shut down with “but you were just a nurse.” It was my father who was the sanctioned target of a bullet that could kill him, so his stories were the real war stories. My mother didn’t have the necessary standing to be taken as seriously, so she went silent. Eventually she began to agree—maybe what she’d been through hadn’t been that important after all. Maybe her contribution hadn’t been that significant.

Even as a child I remember thinking it so odd that the war experiences of my parents would be assessed and weighed differently. It didn’t make sense. They were equally brave and patriotic. What they went through was equally dangerous and horrific. Why would a scale be applied? Though my mother’s life could also have been lost, it wasn’t technically on the line. She didn’t have standing. Therefore, she didn’t have respect. And yet, though I could imagine my father shooting someone, I couldn’t picture him having the patience and compassion to slowly coax frozen limbs away from bony rib cages and out into the light.

Do We Need Standing for Respect?

When it came to Vietnam, the war of my generation, I was surprised to see similar circumstances happen firsthand. In the antiwar movement, where so many women were involved, despite early feminism it was often very hard to be taken seriously. In the depths of the terror over the Draft Lottery, you could participate, organize, empathize, comfort, but—as you could be told in a snap—you could never really understand what the guys were going through because you would never face a bullet or wonder if you could kill someone. We were often marginalized, just at the point when we felt we were breaking through with our own contributions. We didn’t have the standing to be taken seriously.

The Fourteenth of September is a story of those women. My intention was to pose a female dilemma with the same gravitas and emotional intensity as the decision the men had to make about going to Vietnam to die or to Canada, another kind of death. I call it a Coming of Conscience novel. I wanted to explore how a woman would approach the decision of integrity trumping consequences, how she’d weigh the same factors of duty, security, future, and conscience. It’s as close as I could come. I wanted to give my character Judy the standing she deserved, and, I suppose, however little and late, my mother.

Before my mother died, she talked about how disappointed she was. She’d felt her daughters would fare so much better without the many restrictions of her time. Though there’d been a lot of change, she thought that in her long ninety-year lifetime, we’d have settled this issue of standing.

Standing Tall

My mother has been gone for over a decade but would have been gratified about the achievements of women in this year, celebrated in this Women’s History Month. We’re far from settled, but we are certainly standing taller and perhaps, at some point, we’ll naturally loom so large we won’t have to think of it at all. And someday Women’s History will just be History.

In the interim, I won’t let it pass. I’ve scheduled posts and Facebook ads on the issues I’m writing about, and I’m celebrating. Today, I totally assume standing for my story, for my “record,” and I’m standing up—just like Mom.

My mother, sometime in the 1940’s, standing tall and fearless. I have no doubt she’d pull that trigger.

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Fifty Years Ago Today: When the Whole World Finally Started Watching

They always say that Vietnam was the first war we saw in our living rooms as we watched the nightly TV news. I don’t recall those images as much as I should have, but I absolutely remember the night I watched the war at home—as I sat on the ’60s-splashed orange-flowered couch in the living room—when the police jumped out of the paddy wagon and began beating young people. This was happening in my hometown, only an hour from the suburb where I lived. And I was watching it with my mother—a World War II veteran. It was when the generation gap disappeared for us for a brief moment. It was the first time we agreed in months, and the last time we’d agree, for a long, long time. This was inexcusable. This was not America.

Another Golden Anniversary from the Year that Turned the World on Its End

It was fifty years ago today that the Democratic Convention in Chicago was held, finishing off a long reign of the Democratic Party that began with the great hope of John Kennedy and ended in tragedy—with major achievements undermined by an inability to end the Vietnam War. It also shattered the image of Chicago as the City that Worked, super-charged the antiwar effort, and polarized the nation.

Until the violent images appeared on television, I remember that, though the war was heavy on our minds, it was hard to get really engaged around the convention. It seemed the country’s leaders were offstage or running out of gas just when we needed them the most. The two candidates of hope were gone or fading. Bobby Kennedy had just been assassinated, and after that, Gene McCarthy seemed to have lost heart and energy.  We were left with Hubert Humphrey, the VP of a president that by this time was so reviled and exhausted he gave up and didn’t even try running for another term—and Nixon. I was too young to vote, but I knew that whatever happened, it would be my age group the next administration would be putting on the line.

Meanwhile the Vietnam War was Raging

There’s a lot of coverage that will be coming out today, talking about the specifics of what happened here in Chicago during that time, and why. There’s already been pretty heavy examination. The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern just finished a remarkable series on “The Media Legacy of Chicago ’68,” that reminded us that this is where the phrase “The Whole World Is Watching” began. The convention was also the first instance of politicians claiming what we now call “fake news” and vilifying the media. It was the event that caused police to be trained ever after in crowd control and, significantly, it was the first time raw footage went right to broadcast: No editing, no editorializing—YOU WERE THERE. Twenty seconds of film of cops jumping out of a paddy wagon and clubs doing what they shouldn’t be doing, and more and more after that. We’d see worse soon enough at Kent State. But this was first. This got the attention of the world. This was a police state in Chicago: Vietnam on Michigan Avenue.

We Were Already Pretty Spooked

By the time of the convention, we were in the eighth month of a year that every quarter had brought us a new horror—from the Tet Offensive to two assassinations. We weren’t numb yet; your faith that regular life would—had to—prevail was still pretty strong. You felt like if you just kept your head down... you could duck until it all settled back into rationality.

I’d just graduated from high school and made a bargain with myself to get the thing I most wanted—the future promised by a college education—but from the military, the entity that was involved in what was to become the greatest tragedy of my generation. A year later, the "deal" seemed almost Faustian to my teenaged self. But at the time I was trying to make it work. My induction ceremony had taken place only a few weeks earlier.

My mother had encouraged/pushed the move (it’s what she’d done), and she wasn’t broaching any second thoughts. Both my parents were vets from “The Good War” and couldn’t really see that you couldn’t say that about this war... until we saw the paddy wagon pull up.

I remember my mother covered her mouth with her hand and held it there, long after the clip played—this woman who had weathered twenty-hour surgery shifts in field hospitals on the front and the liberation of a prison camp.  We were both stunned, both grasping for a comment that would encompass the horror of the moment. When her hand came down, she couldn’t look at me—her gaze was still fixed on the screen. There was just a deep, long sigh. I joined her. We sighed and nodded. Words wouldn’t bridge the gap, but this did.

My Coming of Age

I think it happened in that moment, quick and profound. I spent the rest of the summer winnowing the piles of what I was planning to bring to my new dorm, from clothes to record albums. I fixated on those, for some reason. I knew the Beatles had to come with me, but I was going to college, maybe I should listen to more grown-up music—maybe it was time to give up childish things.

I chose a Johnny Mathis album, one of Sinatra’s, and gave The Association Greatest Hits to my ten-year-old brother.

Nothing actually changed between my mother and me, but when we argued in the future we were both aware we knew better. We were aware that way down deep we agreed at least on this one fact—“my” war was nothing like “her” war.

Eventually, I gave up my military scholarship and took back my Association album. My brother called me an Indian-giver, and I bought him a new one. We both still have them.

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Hell No, Never Again. We Are All In The Shot Together.

Watching the news on Valentine’s Day about the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, my mind raced back ten years—Valentine’s Day 2008. That year, too, broadcasts broke a story of horror mid-day, shattering a holiday celebrating love. A young man with a shotgun and two pistols had killed five students, injured seventeen and shot himself at my alma mater, Northern Illinois University, in a lecture hall where a few decades earlier I had taken many classes. More than one student in my preferred section of seating didn’t make it. At any random stroke of time one of those casualties could have been me, could have been one of my friends, could have been my second cousin who was a senior at NIU at the time. I wasn’t there, but I was. I was in the shot. It goes without saying the 2008 shooter was mentally unstable. You don’t kill kids if you’re fine. But nine years after Columbine, all I could think of was how did he GET THOSE GUNS? Why did we in a modern society HAVE THOSE GUNS?  From then on I voted with my anger. A pro-gun stance by a candidate was no longer just “on the list,” it was enough to reprioritize a lot of other issues. As an adult, I had standing—the power of a vote. I’d waited a long time for that standing, thought it was enough. Thought, as we said back in the day, the system would work if we were just part of it. Alas…

Hell No, We Won’t Go

Back in 2018, I put down the remote, and my mind raced again, back farther to a time when I didn’t have that power, to a time when, like the Florida kids, I didn’t have standing. Those issues of that era propel the characters in my novel, The Fourteenth of September. The details were different, but the essence was the same—a complex issue standing in the way of life for children. In the time of the Vietnam War, another generation were teenagers. The average age of draftees was nineteen; voting age was twenty-one. Life expectancy under fire was measured in seconds. We were being killed, and those who should have protected us—our government, our institution—were mired in what ifs and, as we said, were “part of the problem, not the solution.” Our WWII-era parents were upset but not so much that they were mobilizing to successfully vote out the hawks. At Kent State, legal guns were turned on us. No, not the same as mass school shootings, but we knew what dead kids dropping around us felt like. We knew how the endless series of more and more dead bodies terrified us, whether in a jungle far away or in a school demonstration gone bad. Yep. Got that. It could be me. Or, you right next to me. We were in the shot. Remember?

THIS IS BS! … but in good way

Emma Gonzalez: presidential potential some day?

Today, Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg, and a generation of other young people are also without standing and very much in the shot. Gonzalez, a wonderfully outspoken girl from Marjory Stoneman Douglas called it like she saw it, and she’s right. She cuts through the crap of all the “why not” reasons—"The Domino Theories” of gun control—and gets to the core of how it should be seen—as bullshit!—and I finally feel that real change has a chance. The response of these amazing, angry kids from Florida is so tragically familiar, and wondrously hopeful. 

For the first time in a long time, all the ingredients for real action are in place.

Fear—they’re targets and they’re being killed. Anger—they aren’t being protected by the government and institutions that are there FOR THAT REASON. Disappointment—many parents are trying to vote out the gun guys, but the lobbies are strong and multi-issue voting hasn’t worked. Outrage—those of us with influence have had enough time and sufficient opportunities to do something, and we haven’t. Lack of power—they don’t have the vote. And, it’s personal. They are in the shot.

Abbie Hoffman & david hogg: too good at this? must be Professional instigators or actors really?

These are the factors that in my day stopped a war. These are the factors that ended racist Jim Crow laws in the South. Today, these are the same factors that can stop guns. These kids are making us understand, with fury and social media, and more than a few tricks from our day. I smiled in solidarity as they walked out on March 14th, and plan to do it again every 14th, just like our Moratoriums Against the War.

Things are already starting to turn. There’s even talk of moving the voting age to sixteen. As Laurence Steinberg said in the New York Times on March 2, “The proposal to lower the voting age is motivated by today’s outrage that those most vulnerable to school shootings have no say in how such atrocities are best prevented.” Sound familiar?

 

 

Wild in the Streets or Protesting at the Polls? Our Choice

In 1968 a popular movie  came out called Wild in the Streets. Kids took over. The new President was only twenty-five. People who hit thirty were dosed with LSD, draped in white togas and left to wander through the forest. It was a cautionary tale. Things can get pretty outrageous when you aren’t being listened to. No BS.

I don’t think we should get rid of everyone over thirty, nor am I ready to say the voting age should be sixteen without a lot more thought. But I am here to say that we—the anti-war generation—knows how to do this, and we can help by marching with and voting for these kids, in their place, on their behalf and in every sense of the word.

We Can Still Change the World

This all means we can STILL change the world. That rallying call was the obligation of my generation—our noblesse oblige, if you will, for being the first generation living in enough freedom to follow our passion. We knew how to do it—we stopped a war. We lowered the voting age to eighteen. We didn’t think we could do it, but we did.

These kids can stop the mass shooting war raging around them. But without standing, they need our help. This is a time for marching and voting.

Be their proxy. This week and beyond vote for candidates who know where guns belong—and where they don’t. Join the students in the streets on March 24th. Join them anytime on social media. With all of us standing for and beside them, even the NRA can stand down. And the world will change.

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