This panel began by observing a minute of silence for silenced women all over the world. Over the past couple of days we have been able to hear from many women - articulate, with much to say. There will be three questions, and then we'll open the floor.
The first question is: "Who are you?" "Why do you feel you are being silenced?" "What are you doing to break the silence?"
Let's make some noise!
Katherine Stone writes PostPartum Progress. She experienced post-partum OCD in 2001-2 after the birth of her son. She wrote a piece about it in Newsweek in 2004, which got a lot of nice respoinse. There are 450,000-600,000 women in the USA alone who experience post-partum mood disorders. We are silenced for three reasons: Women don't get or delay treatement because of myth of motherhood and because of stigma of mental illness in general.
She referenced Lisa Nowak, the NASA astronaut. The media called her the "Astronut". If you're a woman experiencing a disorder and see this laughed about, will you call somebody when you're having a problem if you see these kinds of stories? The second reason is the media often portrays postpartum mood disorders with pictures of women who are sobbing and out of control, or stories of infanticide. They never show strong, competent recovered mothers.It drives her crazy. Yes, there is a lot of crying that goes on, but we are strong people.
There are more untrained ob/gyns and psychiatrists than you would ever think. I can't tell you how many women reach out to her and have been told, "you'll get over it," and "if you just go back on the pill, you'll be fine." Women are getting horrible information that's making them suffer longer. Her blog is the most widely read in the U.S.
Jennifer Hogg, member of Iraq Veterans Against the War . Being silenced in the military and even the anti-war movement is multifold. The opinion you have of yourself in the military, you gotta be tough. The lack of speaking about your own situation is a problem, whether it's PTSD, or traumatic brain injury, etc. It's macho but the women do it too. You had to earn respect as a woman in the military. If you complain, it looks bad. Being a woman and gay in the anti-war moment adds to being silenced. People are blogging from the war, now. There are YouTube videos of the war. Information is blocked. Alot of this has to do with your own view of yourself and what you're allowed and not allowed to say in the military. If you're not on duty, not in uniform, you can mostly say what you want. Certain comments against the President or advocating violence are not allowed, but other things are fine.
They do a lot of recruiting in the military, they meet with soldiers to help them get past the hurdle of people who agree with them but aren't willing to put themselves out there. She is in the organization working with other veterans trying to organize women within to speak louder, make sure we bond together, if a woman is silenced by her organization or outside to bond together and help her. It's good to do this in the veteran's community. She is involved in the Service Women (SWAN) led by women of color.
Liz Henry is a contributing editor for world and is a literary translator and a poet, she translates from Spanish to English, poetry and blogs. From a translator's point of view she thinks of the issue of speaking for other people. That can have other issues as a white person from the US with a ton of privilege. She also writes on various personal, anonymous and real name blogs about disability. Now she's really talking about it a lot, not hiding it, because people want to here. She's talks about being bisexual, gender queer, polyamorous. It's not like she talks about having a hot night last night, she'll just reference other partners. By being open about some of these identities that you're supposed to keep silent, other people have reactions. She thinks there are a lot of commonalities in the way the media can choose to frame people they don't understand. They want to ascribe that one "thing" to you, to simplify and reduce, whereas we're all complicated and multi-dimensional community.
Broken Clay is a great journal, the Art of Intermittent Disability. Wheelchair Dancer is another really great blog.
Beth Aguilera: How do you sensitively give a voice to a silenced community of which you are not a part?
Liz: Quote directly, identify your sources, give your positions...that's what I do, and I don't know if that's enough, but that's where I start. A couple years ago she started reading APRacism on LIveJournal to start learning, she doesn't comment, she reads. She doesn't need those people to have to read her processing her "whiteness". I can do that somewhere else. Listening to anti-racist movement has been interesting. If I'm going to talk about black bloggers, I'm going to look at black weblog awards, and that community's judgment of it's own stuff.
Shelly Risma, outing herself as a visually impaired person, although she doesn't blog as such. She thinks she will start. She keeps being visually impaired to herself because there's so much baggage in how people relate to her. People in the visually impaired/blind community talk well among themselves. Since she's in the larger community, she struggles with how she lives in both worlds. How can you "polish up" disability so you have people relate to it but don't make it boring.
Liz: there's pressure to be a diplomat if you move between worlds, and that's hard.
Katherine: Most people don't understand. She was perfectly sane her entire life for whatever that means, until she had that experience. To tell her friends who know her as a CEO that she just thought about smothering her son with a burp cloth, it's a tough discussion. Even the people who love her the most would have that glint of "I don't know about this" in their eyes. If you haven't had that expderience of being in a wheelchair, etc., it's extremely difficult, almost impossible, to explain. It's best to be honest. It's good to use analogies: "What would you do if you woke up and fell to the floor, and before you could walk." She used to be in charge of her thoughts and one day she wasn't. She's asked psychiatrists how she could explain. Why do people who lose their minds have such negative thoughts? Why couldn't she have had thoughts of romping through fields of daisies? No one can explain it. It's something that happens, and you deal with it.
Jen: A certain point where she couldn't even talk to her parents. When she told them her thoughts they said that she couldn't be against the war. Both of them now subscribe to the same thoughts. She has a great job and she can talk to her boss. But having to self-censor it's hard. She could never change. She could not not be against this war. She feels like she has to do it.
Liz: Yet there are real world repercussions for her job.
Jen: Same thing with being gay. Still can't talk about it with her mom, but we've moved forward on the war thing so that's okay.
Audience: What was their best and worst moment as a blogger?
Katherine: Has her own email on the blog. Women email her from all over. They'll tell her she saved their life. It's not just her - it's a large group helping - but there's nothing like it. She thinks her worst moments are yet to come. She worries about her son. How will he react. Also, men often make comments about how they are all silly, simpering women who can't deal with the hard work of being a mother. Delete. Delete. Thank God for the delete button. She is there to help these women. A personal injury lawyer recently posted. Delete.
Jen: When she blogs it's on her organization's Website or her MySpace, and leaving comments on other blogs. There's a movie coming out by Robert Greenwald, an impeach Cheney one. The ad for a movie was a woman with her mouth duct-taped, legs open. She thought, "That doesn't have anything to do with impeachment." She blogged about it, others did...the ad was gone the next day. Her director asked if they wanted to sign on endorsing the movie. "Not with that ad," she said. Worst is they have a message board, negative posts. She's had to learn not to get caught up in them, take control to delete.
Liz: Bad moments, that same thing: you just go, "That strikes me personally as sexist." There are professional repercussions. Just by speaking up, people will say, "We don't really want her working for us because she'll make trouble." Having disapproval from other women who she looks to for solidarity tell her to keep her mouth shut. It just makes her "rocket into existenial despair." There's a book by Joanne Russ, "How to Suppress Women's Writing." She can look at every horrible moment and think it had to do with trying to silence her, either she shouldn't write it or if she DID write it, something terrible would happen. She has to look at the power of being honest and open. The volume will help. Friendships and relationships have happened. People send her books. Some of her best friends become even closer because we all blog together. So all the really good things have come from personal relationships.
Katherine: She doesn't want to create the sense that she's the Nazi on her blog, suppressing dissent. Disagreement is fine. People with an agenda who just want to sell their services, those people she has no time for - go find someplace else.
Audience: When your blog is a success, you sometimes lose your integrity. You come to a point where if you say the right things, it's going to be more popular, and if you keep your integrity, it might not. She's trying to stay a central course but she struggles with that. She wouldn't feel good about it.
Liz: She doesn't think she has a successful blog, but she has felt that pressure. If she does the things they say you should do, blog in short bursts, don't cause controversy - but she decided not to do that. She'd rather be not so successful and do that.
Jen: Before she was on the board of directors, it was what needed to be said but also conscious of not stepping on a whole lot of toes.
Katherine: When she started there really wasn't another blog related to mood disorders. It became number one blog in her community. She works with PostPartum International, number one organization for these women. If she got on their board or became a state organizer, she would have to run her posts and comments by their communications team. She's not going to do that. There are two bills in Congress to do a screening at six months of whether a woman might be suffering. They've been discussing this for years. One person started bringing it into the abortion issue. What an ass. And I can say, "He's an ass."
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