We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Source of book: Borrowed from the library. 

Every March for the past 7 years, I have read a selection for Women’s History Month. I have generally chosen works connected with Feminism. Although demonized by the Cultural Fundamentalist circles I was raised in (and sadly by an increasingly reactionary and fundamentalist Evangelicalism as well), it really shouldn’t be controversial. Feminism is simply this:

The Cultural, Political, and Economic Equality of men and women.

Of course, the problem with this for many is that this idea is anathema to them. Their worldview depends on a structural inequality of the sexes, one where men control the institutions of power and the money we use as a means of exchange. In order to justify this, they cling to ideas of a congenital inferiority of women (whatever euphemisms they use to deny this), whereby women are unfit for leadership, or even control of their own lives and destinies.

Here are my selections for previous years:

Are Women Human? By Dorothy Sayers (2014)

A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft (2015)

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (2016)

Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz by Barbara Babcock (2017)

The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (2018)

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (2019) 

***

 

For this year, I decided to read Adichie’s short book - pamphlet really - adapted from her marvelous TED talk. I was already pretty familiar with it, but wanted to check and see if it was something that I would put on my list to recommend. 

The thing that rings the most true about Adichie’s experiences as detailed in the book is the way that “Feminism” is used as an epithet. It certainly was in my family, sadly. The ironic thing is that my dad is actually a feminist in practice, most of the time: he has never believed certain things were “women’s work,” he vigorously enforced policies against sexual harassment when he was a supervisor, and I have never known him to do anything inappropriate toward a woman. So it really was disheartening to hear him, even recently, complain that feminism had ruined everything. Sigh. 

I used to believe kind of the same thing, because I bought the Fundie/Conservative bullshit about what Feminism was really about. You know, man hating, humorless, whatever. And also, it was easier to believe that most (secretly all) women wanted to be stay at home mothers rather than work, because biology, when the women closest to me said that was what they wanted. 

The thing is, having strong women as music teachers kind of made that seem silly. And then, once I got into law, well, the whole thing fell apart. And that was before I met my wife…

Anyway, here are some highlights. 

But I remember that as I argued and argued, Okoloma looked at me and said, “You know, you’re a feminist.”

It was not a complement. I could tell from his tone -- the same tone with which a person would say, “You’re a supporter of terrorism.” 

Unfortunately, this is still a problem. I am now an open feminist, but that means that I am looked on like a serial killer in certain circles. Usually, this is because of the lies about feminism which are believed as (literally) gospel truth. I love this bit in the book:

Anyway, since feminism was un-African, I decided I would now call myself a Happy African Feminist. Then a dear friend told me that calling myself a feminist meant that I hated men. So I decided I would now be a Happy African Feminist Who Does Not Hate Men. At some point I was a Happy African Feminist Who Does Not Hate Men And Who Likes To Wear Lip Gloss And High Heels For Herself And Not For Men. 

Of course much of this was tongue-in-cheek, but what it shows is how that word feminist is so heavy with baggage, negative baggage: you hate men, you hate bras, you hate African culture, you think women should always be in charge, you don’t wear make-up, you don’t shave, you’re always angry, you don’t have a sense of humour, you don’t use deodorant. 

In my case, instead of “African,” use “Christian.” Because in those circles, gender roles and gender essentialism have become core beliefs of the religion. 

Another bit that really stood out was this one. 

We spend too much time teaching girls to worry about what boys think of them. But the reverse is not the case. We don’t teach boys to care about being likeable. We spend too much time telling girls that they cannot be angry or aggressive or tough, which is bad enough, but then we turn around and either praise or excuse men for the same reasons. All over the world, there are so many magazine articles and books telling women what to do, how to be and not to be, in order to attract or please men. There are far fewer guides for men about pleasing women. 

True story: before my wife and I were dating, she visited us, riding with a family member who stopped by a neighbor’s briefly. We heard later that she (who was my grandmother’s age) told my mom, “she seemed really sweet until she opened her mouth.” And that is kind of how it has been. Amanda is not concerned about making men like her. She isn’t interested in playing the femininity game. She doesn’t dress based on what men think, and doesn’t particularly care about “likeability.” This has, alas, caused unnecessary friction with my family. As has this one:

I know a woman who hates domestic work, but she pretends she likes it, because she has been taught that to be ‘good wife material’, she has to be -- to use that Nigerian word -- homely. And then she got married. And her husband’s family began to complain that she had changed. Actually, she had not changed. She just got tired of pretending to be what she was not. 

Not that Amanda ever pretended, but there is this expectation that women pretend that their greatest joy in life is childcare and housework. She refused to pretend to be who she was not. Like Dorothy Sayers, Adichie homes in on the core issue:

The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations. 

And that is exactly what feminism is about. 

Adichie also notes that sexism also hurts men, who are taught to be hard, violent, and so on, so they are “not like a woman.” I also loved that she noted the connection between masculinity and money. A man’s worth is measured by his paycheck, which leaves lower income males seeking to prove their manliness through other, less beneficial means. 

I also recognized Amanda in another passage. 

A Nigerian acquaintance once asked me if I was worried that men would be intimidated by me.

I was not worried at all -- it had not even occurred to me to be worried, because a man who would be intimidated by me is exactly the kind of man I would have no interest in. 

This is one hundred percent Amanda. One reason she liked me was that I am not intimidated by strong women. Actually, I rather like strong women. I like working with them, because they don’t play stupid manipulative games. I like competence. Just saying. 

One final bit that struck me was this one. 

Some people ask, ‘Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?’ Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general -- but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women. That the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human. For centuries, the world divided human beings into two groups and then proceeded to exclude and oppress one group. It is only fair that the solution to the problem should acknowledge that.

And that is the crux of the problem with the denialism so trendy in right wing circles right now. On a related note, the “all lives matter” bullshit didn’t arise until “black lives matter.” This nonsense about being concerned for all rights is just a deflection whenever an excluded group protests. 

Adichie is right: we should all be feminists. And we should be clear what it means to not be a feminist as well. It is nothing less than opposition to social, economic, and political equality for women. 

***

As I write this, much of our state is being shut down to try to slow the spread of the Covid-19 virus. The effect on our family will be that Amanda (who is an ICU nurse) will likely be working a lot of extra shifts to keep our healthcare system functioning. I, on the other hand, will essentially lose a couple months of income. That means that our roles (which are already more egalitarian than most) will have to shift. She will be the primary breadwinner, and I will have to take over most of the household duties. Not a big deal for us, because I don’t measure my worth in dollars, or believe housework is beneath me. And she knows that I respect her career and will support her 100% through this crisis.

The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Source of book: I own this.

Every March for the past 5 years, I have read a selection for Women’s History Month. I have generally chosen works connected with Feminism. Although demonized by the Cultural Fundamentalist circles I was raised in (and sadly by an increasingly reactionary and fundamentalist Evangelicalism as well), it really shouldn’t be controversial. Feminism is simply this:

The Cultural, Political, and Economic Equality of men and women.

Of course, the problem with this for many is that this idea is anathema to them. Their worldview depends on a structural inequality of the sexes, one where men control the institutions of power and the money we use as a means of exchange. In order to justify this, they cling to ideas of a congenital inferiority of women (whatever euphemisms they use to deny this), whereby women are unfit for leadership, or even control of their own lives and destinies.

Here are my selections for previous years:

Are Women Human? By Dorothy Sayers (2014)

A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft (2015)

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (2016)

Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz by Barbara Babcock (2017)

***

This is a book my wife suggested I read. She read it a few years back, and realized that it in many ways describes our own marriage.

The plot is pretty simple. Evangeline and Lester are the parents of three children. The family is, shall we say, deeply unhappy. Lester works in finance at a department store, and absolutely hates his job. He dropped out of college to marry Evangeline, and never did get to be the English teacher he probably should have been. In any case, he likes poetry and children, and hates commerce and capitalistic striving. Evangeline is razor-sharp, type A, driven, and is being driven insane by her domestic duties. The children are in varying states of dysfunction as well. Henry’s digestion is wrecked by stress, Helen suffers debilitating lack of confidence, and Stephen obliterates rules with a savage ferocity.

Lester is passed over for a promotion in favor of a younger man, then loses his job altogether. He considers suicide, and has his opportunity when he is asked to help with a neighbor’s chimney repair. But he can’t even succeed at this: he ends up paralyzed from the waist down instead.

Since the family must be fed, Evangeline takes things into her own hands, and scores a sales job at the store. She is thoroughly suited for it, and quickly rises into management. Lester, in the meantime, finds his own calling as a “homemaker.” Sure, he can’t scrub the floors into oblivion like Eva did, but he is a natural with the children, and a little paid help on the most physical tasks takes care of that.

In short, the reversal of gender roles makes everyone happy. Well, except for all the judgy neighbors and relatives who are sure that this is all in defiance of the Way Things Should Be™ - and Divine Command™.

The Home-Maker was published in...wait for it...1926. That’s pretty darn close to 100 years ago. To be sure, it was ahead of its time. But it is also, in my opinion and experience, ahead of OUR time too, in many ways.

Before I get to that, let me mention some of the most perceptive passages in this book. First is one where the ladies guild (essentially the gossip gals) talk about Eva.

“Poor thing. She has so many burdens to bear. Mrs. Prouty often says that in these days it is wonderful to see a woman so devoted to her duty as a home-maker. She simply gives up her whole life to her family! Absolutely!”

And it is true. Eva focuses all her energy on her home and family. Which means her house is spotless, and her kids are so micromanaged that they are falling to pieces as a result. The thing is, this IS the expectation placed on Fundie women. I know. I have seen it. My wife lived it in many ways as a teen. (She was excommunicated from the cultic group when she went to college. Her parents have always supported her in this, but she lost what few relationships she had with her peers in that group over her refusal to be a home-maker only.)  I wish I could say this is limited to the cultic fringe. But it isn’t. Women are to a significant degree expected to give up their entire lives and personhoods to their families, both in our culture at large (although less than before) and particularly in an increasingly fundamentalist Evangelicalism. Pretty much universally, a woman’s worth will be judged by her status as a mother and as a home-maker, rather than her other qualities. (Okay, and her adherence to cultural beauty and modesty standards.) She will never get full credit for breadwinning like a man will.

Another thing to mention in this context: I do believe there is a significant correlation between helicopter parenting (and specifically women who take their entire identity from their mothering and have no other outlet) and sickly children. Let me be clear: obviously this isn’t the whole story. I was sickly and that is why I ended up homeschooled - which required my mom to stay home. Likewise, I know plenty of parents whose children have legitimate medical issues, from birth defects to diabetes. I get it. Not all illness is caused by stress and overparenting. But there is enough of a correlation that I do believe that a significant proportion of it is connected. A woman needing an outlet for her energies will find it. If there isn’t one outside the home, chances are, she will find one inside it, and this is rarely healthy, in my experience. I blame a lot of the shift toward cultural separation that plagues the American (white) church on this. Mothers who had to work to support the family would have little time to obsess about every detail of what their children are exposed to, bacterially or culturally.

Another passage in which Fisher absolutely nails it is this: Lester is perceptive enough to notice that his children are suffering. But he also knows that he has absolutely no right to say anything. Why not? Because he is a financial failure.

Well, he was bound and gagged to complete helplessness about everything in his life and his children’s lives, bound and gagged by his inability to make money. Only men who made money had any right to say how things should go in their homes. A man who couldn’t make money had no rights of any kind which a white man was bound to respect - nor a white woman either. Especially a white woman. The opinion of a man who couldn’t make money was of no value, on any subject, in anybody’s eyes.

 This is exactly the point. Anyone passingly familiar with history is aware that brown-skinned women (and immigrants, and low income women in general) have ALWAYS been expected to work. And work hard, grueling jobs for long hours. Being a “home-maker” has always been a privilege of upper-class (and eventually middle class) white women. It is a signal of privilege and wealth - but spun into a “virtue” like everything else connected with money in this country.

In fact, Fisher makes the other point here that male “virtue” has always been spelled “m-o-n-e-y.” This is one of the key explanations for how a morally appalling man can be excused - and elected to a high position. He has money. And that is evidence of his virtue. And, in contrast, a man without money lacks virtue. He has failed in his only truly important task, which is to make money. That this also justifies contempt for the poor and for those (say, African Americans) who are systematically excluded from economic opportunity is a feature of this system. It really is about signaling virtue and privilege.

Moving on to the next one, there is a great scene when Aunt Mattie shows up. She quizzes Helen and Henry about how they are getting on. Helen (happy in their new life) carefully explains that ALL of them do the cooking now. Lester reads the cookbook, and they learn more each day about how to do that task.

Aunt Mattie’s face instantly smoothed into comprehension of everything. She had wondered how they managed without a woman to keep house for them. Now she knew. They didn’t manage.

I would have been so tempted to slap that nasty woman right then and there. Fortunately, this particular bit of sexism is less common today. My late grandfather came of age in the 1940s, and he was always a fine cook. (An Army cook, to be exact, with a well-earned reputation of making anything edible.) All the men on my dad’s side of the family cook. Most of us quite well. We are expected to - it’s family pride at stake. I am no exception. I started cooking when I had to use a chair to reach the stove. As a teen, I cooked once a week. When my brother and I were batching it, we were fully capable of feeding visitors on a minute’s notice. My wife and I split the cooking since we were married (although the kids cook more these days - they have mad skills too.) Come to our house, and I’ll show you “not managing,” thank you very much!

So yeah, a little touchy about that one. Men in my family can also do laundry, ironing, dishes - the whole works. Because we take pride in our domestic skills. 

 Just one meal from earlier this month: 

Tabbouleh, hummus, grilled tomatoes, and lamb kebabs (plus pita from our local middle eastern grocery.) 

I can cook a little. 

On a related note…

Later in the visit, Lester, who has made a remarkable progression from a beaten-down man to confident father and home-maker, finally has had enough, and puts the smack down on Mattie, after she expresses horror that he is darning socks.

“Eva darned them a good many years, and did the housework. Why shouldn’t I? Do you know what you are saying to me, Mattie Farnham? You are telling me that you really think that home-making is a poor, mean, cheap job beneath the dignity of anybody who can do anything else.”

EXACTLY! I have had discussions with Fundie sorts who lament that home-making is somehow disrespected. (Of course, they think it is because women choose to do other things…) But my thought is, no shit! Anything that is relegated to the category of “women’s work” will be disrespected, just as women are. Home-making will get respected just fine when men embrace it. (And honestly, there is a huge generation gap here. Few of my grandparents’ generation had men who cared for infants. Pretty much every 30ish man I know is fully capable of caring for an infant overnight without issue. And cooking dinner too.)

The final bit which I found fascinating was Lester’s thoughts on capitalism and materialism. It is particularly interesting because Eva seems perfectly comfortable with a life of selling possessions to others. Lester, though, is not so sure. He pretty much rejects the whole consumerist system outright.

He knew now what it decreed: that men are in the world to get possessions, to create material things, to sell them, to buy them, above all to stimulate to fever-heat the desire for them in all human beings. It decreed that men are of worth in so far as they achieve that sort of material success, and worthless if they do not.

…

For an instant he understood why Tradition was so intolerant of the slightest infraction of the respect due to it, why it was ready to tear him and all his into a thousand pieces rather than permit even one variation from its standard. It was because the variation he had conceived ran counter to the prestige of sacred possessions. Not only was it beneath the dignity of any able-bodied brave to try to show young human beings how to create rich, deep, happy lives without great material possessions, but it was subversive of the whole-hearted worship due to possessions. It was heresy. It must be stopped at all costs.  

Yep. Possessions make the man, and consumerism fuels our economy. And a male who defies that will be punished. (And a woman who defies the system by stepping out of her place will be punished too.)

Okay, let’s talk about the present.

On the one hand, having experienced Fundie culture, I can say that within that subculture, nothing has changed since 1926. (Or, more correctly, since the Antebellum South.) Women are still expected to pour their lives and their selves into their assigned role. And to forgo a career. More personally, much unnecessary friction was created with my own family when my wife went back to work three months after each of our kids was born. (I, like Lester, love kids - particularly mine - and wouldn’t trade those long nights of feedings and snugglings for anything.) My wife paid dearly for her choices, and some relationships will probably never be whole as a result.

On the other hand, in general, these days women in the workforce are embraced. My wife is respected in her profession (unlike in the Evangelical church, I might add) and outside of the Fundie/Evangelical subculture, few bat an eye at the idea that she has a career.

But the reverse isn’t true, at least yet. I have the best of both worlds. As a lawyer, I have a prestigious career. I don’t have a lot of wealth, though. Lawyers make less than most people assume (particularly in smaller towns), and I have chosen reasonable hours over a high income. Because of this, my wife makes more than I do. But, I don’t really pay the price for this, because people know I am a lawyer. As a result, I actually get brownie points for being domestic, and yet don’t suffer the contempt of being a low-income male.

However, if I were to quit my job and stay home full time, there is absolutely no doubt that I would suffer every bit the contempt as Lester would. It was only his catastrophic injury that saved him from being viewed as lower than low - an un-man, so to speak. While feminism has enabled (middle class, white) women to enter the workforce, it hasn’t changed the basic cultural dynamic that insists that men bring home the bacon, and women clean the house and care for children.

I do blame some of this on a deliberate and egregious mistranslation of Scripture, by the way. In the original, I Timothy 5:8 is NOT gendered. The idea is that expecting a relative to be cared for by limited church funds was a big sin. All should care for their own if possible. It certainly did NOT mean that only males had the responsibility of breadwinning. Fortunately, some modern translations have rectified this error. (And often been castigated by Fundies for it.)

On an even more personal note, let me return to what my wife saw in this book. From the beginning of our relationship, she understood that we would not have a “traditional” marriage. She was committed to a career - and really didn’t expect to marry. That I came along and she fell in love was a good thing for both of us. But we also had no illusions that we would now fit the cultural template. She was going to work, kids or not, and I wasn’t going to do the 100 hour weeks that making partner requires. It just fit BOTH of our personalities better. So I essentially “mommy tracked” my career, and she focused on hers. We both split the household and child care duties in a mutually workable manner - and we change it as circumstances change. The key point here is that we are BOTH happier this way. It took a while for me to adjust to it, I suppose, because I worried that her love for me was dependent on my being the primary breadwinner. But that wasn’t the case, actually. It was just my cultural insecurities - and the residual belief that my work is tied up in my paycheck.

I do not want to appear to be dissing female home-makers here. My mom stayed home during our childhood (although she loves her post-kid career too), and given the circumstances, she made a fully defensible choice. Every family is different. I get that. I also get that for those outside the middle class economic status, these choices aren’t available. What I do want to say, however, is that gender roles of this sort are NOT (contrary to Fundie doctrine) a matter of morality, but a matter of circumstance and choice. And personality and gifting.

There is a lot of insight in this book. However, I would not say that the writing is spectacular. It isn’t bad, but from time to time, Fisher tells rather than shows, and she can tend to moralize. The book is pretty short, too, so many of the personalities do not have time to be fleshed out fully. The focus in the first half is split, while the second half is mostly about Lester. At that point, Eva becomes kind of a super saleswoman, but her internal life is left mostly unsaid.

Likewise, the book leaves some things unexplored. After all, Lester is happy in his role as a parent, but what of the future? It is harder to see him fulfilled after the kids depart and he is left as a (more or less) cripple at home with little to do. An astute reader will ask the obvious question here as well: what about a woman in the same situation? True enough. Which is why I think that the very worst busybodies are women who have no job whose kids have grown up. (If we were honest about the meaning of some of Saint Paul’s teachings on this, we might realize that “rule one’s own household” means in 21st Century language, “get off your lazy ass and get a job.”) I can think of more than a few women who really should take this to heart. If you have time to tell everyone else what to do, maybe you should polish your resume a bit…

I also wished the book had explored the relationship between Eva and Lester a bit more. (Again, short book, limited space.) Clearly, they had something going before kids. And yes, circumstances damaged their marriage a lot. But what of things after the change? One almost gets the impression that Eva is so busy with her career she doesn’t have time for the marriage. At least, she doesn’t have time to micromanage the household, which is good. But what of the relationship? I know ours: while there are some adjustments we had to make, like all married couples, I think we both respect each other more as a result of our choices. We are partners, and respect each other more, if anything, because of our strengths, whether they fit gender roles or not. It would have been interesting to see that dynamic at work in this book. In my view, this is as much of the story as the facts of the gender reversal. It is obvious what the response of society would be. Less obvious is how Eva and Lester negotiated the significant change in the dynamics of the family.

I haven’t gone into too much detail regarding how Lester and Eva reflect Amanda and myself. But there are a lot more parallels which anyone who knows us personally can undoubtedly recognize.

Even more interesting, perhaps, is how Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s own marriage mirrored this book. Her husband too was secondary to her economically. He did spend World War I as an ambulance driver, and eventually served in Congress. But she was the primary breadwinner, while he managed the household. By all accounts, it was a happy marriage.

This book is both fascinating and uneven. It’s a quick read, and one well worth exploring. It is thought provoking as to how much has changed - and how much really hasn’t.

***

Our edition is from Persephone Classics. This British press has been re-releasing books by female authors, mostly from the years between the World Wars. I also read and reviewed Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day by Winifred Watson. There are some intriguing titles here, and I expect I will explore more of them in the future.

Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz by Barbara Babcock

Source of book: I own this.

This book was my official selection for Women’s History Month (March). Here are my past selections:

Are Women Human? By Dorothy Sayers (2014)

A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft (2015)

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (2016)

Woman Lawyer tells the story of Clara Shortridge Foltz, the first female lawyer in California. She wasn’t the first female lawyer in the United States, but she was one of the first, a true pioneer. Furthermore, she was instrumental in eventually bringing women’s suffrage to California - and eventually the entire nation. But perhaps her greatest accomplishment was founding the movement to establish Public Defenders.

Barbara Babcock is herself a lawyer as well as a writer. She came and spoke to our local bar association several years back, when the book came out. Unfortunately, I had a schedule conflict and was unable to attend - I really wish I had. Babcock admits outright that she cannot be an unbiased biographer. As a female lawyer and a feminist, she naturally sympathizes with Foltz. That said, she scrupulously tells the bad with the good, Clara’s faults and failures along with her virtues and triumphs. As Babcock puts it, she aimed to “mix the hag with the hagiography.” What results is a compellingly human portrayal of Foltz. She comes alive on the page because she has depth. She is a heroine but not a superhero. 

One interesting bit in this regard is that Foltz lacked a certain amount of business sense. On the other hand, she was a genius at crafting her image. She got fantastic press coverage in large part because she sold herself really well. 

Clara Foltz had an interesting start to her life. Her father was originally a lawyer himself, but then turned to preaching. Her brothers would go on to a mild degree of renown themselves, as newspaper editors, congressmen, lawyers, and writers. However, her father recognized that Clara showed potential from a young age. “Ah, if only you had been a boy, then I would have trained you for the law.” Clara was not amused at this. Her mother didn’t think it was funny either. “One of these days she will take it into her head to study law, and if she does, nobody on earth can stop her.”

Clara was academically inclined, and mastered subjects easily. However, her education was interrupted at age 15, when she eloped with Jeremiah Foltz, a soldier a decade her senior. She would bear five children, and move first to Oregon, then to California with him.

Jeremiah wasn’t a particularly good husband by any standard. He was continually in debt, was away from home for weeks at a time, and eventually deserted her for a woman in Oregon.

And thus, Clara was left to fend for herself in her mid-20s, with five kids, and only the help of her parents, who didn’t have much themselves.

Clara Foltz then decided to study law, and become a lawyer. And, as her mother predicted, nobody could stop her. Back then, law schools were unusual - and for people already admitted to practice. She found a lawyer who would apprentice her (although he was far from prestigious), and challenged the rule forbidding women to practice law. It took some tries, including eventually lobbying for passage of a law. Then, for several decades, the law in California (and quite a few other states) allowed women to practice law...but not vote or serve on juries.

This is obviously making a long story very short indeed. The book tells the tale in thrilling detail, including all the dirty politics and open misogyny that Foltz had to overcome.

But the admission to the bar was only the first part of the story. Even with the right to practice, Foltz struggled to make a living. The more lucrative areas of practice were dominated by men, who had no intention of sharing. She ended up doing a lot of indigent defense, and smaller cases that didn’t pay that well.

Thus, she turned to public speaking to supplement her income - and this was quite successful. Apparently, she was a brilliant speaker, and in demand by both political parties for her skills. (She switched a couple of times, depending mostly on who was more sympathetic to Women’s Rights at the time.)

This book of necessity also tells of many other feminist icons who collaborated with Foltz or who were active at the same time. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (one of whose great-something grand-nieces is a friend of mine) figures in the story as a major luminary in the movement for suffrage, and her lifetime overlapped Foltz’s for several decades. The one who gets the most words in this book, though, is Laura Gordon, who was California’s second lawyer, and was a close friend and collaborator with Foltz. The two of them worked together on many projects throughout their lives, and without their mutual support, neither would have been admitted to the practice of law. One of the fascinating stories in the book is the case where they went up against each other.

Like Foltz, Gordon was also divorced - the grounds were her husband’s adultery, which was interesting because California was one of the few states that allowed the wife to get a divorce on those grounds. Most other places - and throughout most of history - a woman had no recourse if her husband slept around. Both Foltz and Gordon, however, claimed to have been widowed. It was considered to be a sign of the woman’s poor character to be divorced, and both knew that under the sloppy ethical standards of the day, opposing counsel would be sure to drag their divorces into their closing arguments. (Seriously, the most shocking thing about this book is the obvious flagrant misconduct lawyers - particularly prosecutors - got away with in the late 1800s. Good grief!)

Later, however, Foltz defended the right to a divorce. As she put it,

“When love is slain, the civil contract is but the husk and shell of marriage. Long before a divorce is sought love has ceased. All that is sacred is dead, and a civil court in a judgment of divorce only gives legal sanction to a decree that nature has already entered in their hearts.”

I have said something to the same effect (although not as poetically) when asked how I can practice family law, and end marriages.

One of the cases that Foltz tried was one involving such a marriage. Actually, the facts are shocking and horrifying. It started when the husband sued his wife to reverse the gift of some real estate he had made to her. He had become paranoid that she was (allegedly) seeing another man. In the course of the trial, it came out that he treated her like a slave. In 23 years, she had been pregnant an incredible 21 times. Only three children survived. Eight had been miscarriages, and there was strong evidence that they were caused by his insisting she overwork herself - and his refusal to get her prenatal care. He apparently didn’t even bother to attend the funerals of his infants.

The most horrifying bit, though, was that the court refused to grant her a divorce! I’m not kidding. Abuse and neglect were not enough to get a woman a divorce. Since she couldn’t prove he cheated on her - and he couldn’t prove she had either - no divorce. She was stuck with a man who treated her like a slave, and was slowly killing her with overwork and pregnancy. I am so glad I live in the 21st Century.

Foltz never did remarry. Perhaps her vision of marriage as egalitarian was a bit of a turnoff. And, there is no doubt that she would never have consented to give up her career for a man. In her speeches, she would quote a Tennyson poem to the effect that man and woman must become more alike in order to form a perfect union.

“[If] husband and wife would blend in the harmony of a complete union they must pursue some common theme. In marriage, as in mathematics, only parallel lines keep close together.”

Foltz therefore encouraged women to study - particularly law, of course - so that they would be the intellectual equals of men, and therefore form better relationships. I could not agree more. Marrying my intellectual equal (or better…) has been the best decision I could make. I am grateful that I have a partner, not a subordinate.

Gordon and Foltz, though, did not merely struggle against gender roles in marriage. They faced shockingly obvious misogyny. There are far, far too many infuriating quotes - many from legislative sessions and closing arguments in cases - these are public record - than I have room to quote. Let me just mention the one when Foltz was still seeking admission to the bar. A man compared women to dogs and horses, which can be trained to perform certain acts, but who could obviously not do them of their own talent. Gah!

Even at the turn of the century, when the Suffragist movement was gaining steam, opponents of feminism claimed - as they do now - that feminist men were “weak and effeminate” while suffragist women were “aggressive and unsexed.” Here we are, in 2017, and we are still having this same freaking argument. Here, in 2017, I still hear people saying that feminist women are all ugly and are feminist because they couldn’t catch a man. (Hey, I have, like, several million women I could list as proof to the contrary - including my wife - but, hey, never let the facts get in the way of prejudice, right?

It is not surprising, then, that Belva Lockwood, who would run for president on a third party ticket in 1884 and 1888 - 35 years before women would get the national vote - had the following to say about women’s rights:

“We shall never have equal rights until we take them, nor respect until we command it.”

The Civil Rights Movement decades later would echo the same sentiment.

Alas, the road would be long and hard. As Boss Buckley is quoted in this book as saying about why his party lost an election, “I don’t know, but I think they didn’t get enough votes.” Of course, kind of hard when half the population can’t vote - the very same people whose rights are at stake…

Speaking of delightful political quotes, how about this one by Robert Ingersoll, which seems fitting for our recent election as well:

“Each side would have been glad to defeat the other if it could do so without electing its own candidate.”

Moving on to the next section, this book spends a good bit of time on the legal accomplishments of Foltz. While she never got rich, she was well respected as a trial lawyer, competent and persuasive. Between her cases and her advocacy, she actually ended up accomplishing a great deal of good in the world - she just didn’t manage to profit from it much. Here are some examples.

We now assume the existence of an orderly system of parole. But it was not always so. Sentences for minor crimes could be decades, and the only way to get out early was a pardon, and these were given out erratically, and often to the politically connected, denying the poor and obscure equal justice.

While Foltz’s bill she presented to the legislature failed, it formed the basis of a bill that passed a couple of years later. So here in California, she can be considered one of the founders of the parole system.

Foltz and Gordon did win on the issue of allowing women to be executors of estates - a major victory in an era when a male executor could bleed an estate to the detriment of the widow.

Although she lost the court case, her advocacy in a case where an elderly person was evicted from a home for the aged resulted in major changes to the law. In fact, when I, early in my career, defended several residents of nursing homes from eviction, I was following in her footsteps - and benefiting from her legacy.

Foltz also wrote several influential law review articles. The idea of the Public Defender was the topic of a few, but she also wrote on some other interesting topics. One was entitled “Should Women Be Executed.” In this article, she took issue with some other feminist thinkers who claimed that since women couldn’t serve on juries, they shouldn’t be executed. Mind you, Foltz opposed the death penalty entirely. However, she didn’t think that women should be treated any differently. As she put it:

“The law should acknowledge no difference between the sexes as to moral perceptions, reason, passions, volition, or self control.”

This is in line with Mary Wollstonecraft’s argument that women had equal moral volition, and thus should be educated and treated equally. I agree. Perhaps one of the most frustrating experiences in my childhood was seeing females get away with atrocious behavior and yet get off with lighter punishment than a male would in the same circumstances. With equal power comes equal responsibility - and most feminists these days would agree with that.

Foltz also noted that this idea that women should get off easily (particularly in a famous case at the time) because of the discovery of adultery was actually rooted in a belief of male ownership of female bodies. In the old days, so to speak, a man was essentially entitled to kill his wife’s lover - and her too - if he caught them in adultery. Foltz objected to the idea that either sex should have the right of vigilante justice of this kind.

The book has an interesting summary and discussion of the high profile murder cases of the time that Foltz obliquely references in her article. It is interesting to see some of the dated arguments that were made. One is straight out of Rape Culture. The prosecutor made the claim in his argument that no woman could be forced into sexual intimacy she didn’t desire. (Oh wait, we still have people like that around…)

The other article which really fascinated me was one on the role of the legislature. Then as now, there was a tension between those who pushed for legislative solutions, and those who sought court relief. More or less the same way we now debate whether progress should come through court decisions or through statutory law. While reducing this to a liberal versus conservative issue is oversimplification, there is a degree to which the sides have switched in the last 100 years. The conservatives at one point wanted the law to progress through Common Law style decisions, while progressives (in the Theodore Roosevelt mold) preferred legislation. Foltz herself made a few interesting observations and suggestions in her article. First, she noted that the courts tend to take a stronger role when the legislature fails to do the right thing. Hey, in our own day, Congress has abysmal ratings. I wonder why? Might possibly have something to do with the fact that they only rarely are able to work together to write legislation that actually helps people. (It’s another discussion, but there seems to be a fundamental disagreement between the parties right now as to goals, not just means. Not how to make life better for the poor, etc., but whether we should at all.)

Foltz also had an interesting - and influential - suggestion. Since legislators often lack expertise, they need help. She suggested that legislators needed to work with experts regarding their legislation - people who actually knew the fields - scientific and so on - so that silly mistakes could be avoided. (She cited a coyote control measure which backfired - because it sounded good only to those who had no knowledge of the science involved in coyote reproduction.) To a large degree, Foltz’s vision did come to pass for a time. Much of the progress of the 20th Century owed a lot to the assistance of experts in designing legislation. And to the fact that the parties worked together enough to come up with solutions, not just ways of stopping the other. Of course, now, there is a backlash against the “elites,” and - at least in certain circles - “alternative facts” and militant ignorance is celebrated as superior to science and knowledge.

As a final note, I want to return to what is probably Foltz’s keystone accomplishment: the Public Defender.

When she started practice, it was acknowledged - to a point - that the indigent needed counsel. But rather than pay attorneys, judges would order one to represent - free of charge. It was rarely the prominent, connected ones that got the call. Rather, it was the bottom feeders - and women like Foltz, who then had to either make a poor defense (and on short notice) or devote weeks at a time to free labor. (Foltz fell into the latter category.)

Foltz’s vision was that instead, the defense would be paid and equipped the same way as the prosecution. Both sides should be equal, and a defendant - presumed innocent - should not fail to get justice simply because of his poverty.

“For every public prosecutor there should be a public defender chosen in the same way and paid out of the same fund.”

There isn’t space in this post to get into the whole vision - it is impressive and well thought out - and has only partially been realized. (Defendants still end up having to pay if they can afford it, which Foltz thought was unfair.) But it is amazing just how much did come to pass. We tend to take the right to counsel for granted, but Foltz played a key role in making that right more than an illusion, something only the wealthy could truly enjoy.

There is so much more in this book. It isn’t short, but neither is the story. Foltz lived during interesting times. Exciting, fascinating, frustrating, and never boring. We modern Americans tend to forget just how much has changed for the better in the last 200 years, but we should never forget that they didn’t just happen. People made them happen. People like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Laura Gordon. And, we should never forget, Clara Foltz. She never made her fortune, but she did, in many ways, make the fortune of millions of women who came after her, from the many outstanding lawyers and judges I work with in my practice, to my wife, who can put her leadership skills to good use at her workplace, to my daughters, who are growing up in a world where a man who would claim that females are just trained animals would rightly be laughed out of town - even in conservative circles.

I highly recommend this book - particularly for those with an interest in law, politics, or history - but really for everyone. Barbara Babcock tells a great story, the writing is compelling, and the details and research are outstanding. 

***

The Criminal Courts Building - aka the Clara Shortridge Foltz Courthouse. 

If it looks familiar, it should, as this is where the O.J. Simpson trial was held. 

Foltz herself tended to side with the defense, and she probably would have enjoyed the trial antics.