Pink Chaddi

It's time for the annual hubbub over Valentine's Day in India. I'll be wearing my pink knickers on the 14th and hoisting a pint for "hoydenish" women everywhere, how about you?

Barred from the Barroom

Admittedly, this article of mine took a long time to come out.




But out it is and I'm tickled by the write-up it got in the intro for Feminist Studies' special issue on the 1970s:

"Many of the younger feminists writing and working today cannot personally remember a time when women were barred from public spaces and accommodations, which is what makes Georgina Hickey's article, "Barred from the Barroom: Second Wave Feminists and Public Accommodations in U.S. Cities," such an important piece of scholarship and reflection. Hickey makes it possible for us to remember -- or perhaps encounter for the first time -- what it was like to "do feminism" during an era when an unescorted woman could not enter or be served at many restaurants, cafes, and drinking establishments. She reviews not only the multitude of strategies used by feminist activists -- some liberal and some radical -- to open up these spaces but also the mind-boggling array of reactions these feminist activists got from the resistant patriarchal public. This article provides an opportunity for older feminists to review how far we've come and for younger feminists to reflect upon some of the most concrete and undeniable accomplishments of the Second Wave in spite of its many documented shortcomings."

Squandered Opportunities

He is back. I suppose he never really went away, I have just been doing my best to ignore him.

The self-appointed defender of "men's rights" against the tryanny of "feminazis", is now suing Columbia University for offering Women's Studies courses.

Sure, why not. He's sued everybody else from his ex-wife, to his neighbors, to night club owners.

What truly irks me about this guy is that, I essentially think he is (legally and ethically) right when it comes to his suit over the allegedly discriminatory practice of 'Ladies Night' -- that decades-old and for some reason still-holding-on practice of letting women into clubs for free or a reduced cover charge. He and I certainly diverge on why this practice is wrong (he doesn't like that it costs men more, I don't like that it treats women as a commodity to attract "paying customers" akin to a good sound system or drink specials), but, damn, he filed the suit that feminists should have filed years ago. It should have followed on the heels of feminist-sponsored suits and legislation to remove gender segregation from bars and restaurants in the 1970s, but it didn't.

When I interviewed Karen DeCrow a few years ago (former NOW president and leading feminist lawyer pushing for gender equality in public space... including both ending restrictions against unescorted women in bars and adding baby changing stations to men's restrooms in public buildings), I asked her about Ladies Night. She agreed it was discriminatory toward men and only furthered second-class status for women. She said she would absolutely file suit on it, if a male plaintiff approached her. I remember her having hopes for a nice young college man from nearby Syracuse University... she had talked to a few about it even... but the men feared that they would look ridiculous for making a fuss. So nothing happened... except that opponents of feminism, namely a person who seems to have no grasp about the ways in which feminism is about non-discrimination and equality for many (not just women) and not about empowering women through disempowering men, have taken control of the issue for their own anti-feminist crusade.