The Happy Feminist

BLOGGING FOR CHOICE

Today is Blog for Choice Day, sponsored by Bush v. Choice, a pro-choice blog sponsored by NARAL Pro-choice America.  I, along with about 200 other bloggers, have signed up to blog about reproductive choice today.  You can check out all the Blog for Choice links here.

Meanwhile, I will be working on my entry.  This is a toughie for me because I have only become strongly pro-choice with regard to abortion in the last couple of years.  But the more and more I see of the ways that social conservatives want to limit women's control over, access to, and knowledge of contraception at all costs, the more I think that women need to fight for as much control over our reproductive destiny as possible, up to and including the right to abortion.  I'll try to flesh this out more as I work on my entry today, but meanwhile please check out the other links for strong pro-choice voices. 

BRAIN FRIED -- NO BLOGGING TONIGHT

I've been trying to write a coherent post for the last hour but have determined that I am simply too exhausted. 

Everything hit the fan on all my cases at once today, including some rather frightening confusion as to whether I missed a court deadline.  I didn't. The deadline's next month, thank goodness. But the half-hour of stark fear took a lot of energy out of me. 

Must recharge brain.

FEMINISM AND POP CULTURE

Check out the Seventh Carnival of Feminists at Feministe.  It looks fantastic.  It covers a ton of topics, but the theme is feminism and pop culture.

I'M HOOKED ON COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF

I am still faithfully watching "Commander-in-Chief" starring Geena Davis as the President of the United States.  I thought it was going to be a bit heavy-handed on the gender issues at the beginning of the series, but now it's just a drama about a President who happens to be a woman. 

The first time I wrote about this show close to the beginning of the season, I said:

Davis tells the Senate Majority Leader that she is "not interested in power."  Aaaaah!  Why do women heroines always have to not be interested in power?

In the most recent episode, however, Davis resolves a nuclear stand-off with North Korea and then confides in her mother that it was a "rush" during those tense moments to be the most powerful person on the planet.  That's what I want to hear! No more catering to the notion that women don't, or shouldn't, care about power! I am not saying that being power-hungry is a virtue.  Not at all.  But the false but notion that we don't care about money, or prestige, or power has historically been used as an excuse to keep women out of the game. 

Of course, that one great TV moment was too good to be true.   Immediately, her mother laughingly admonishes Davis not to let her husband know that she thought of herself as the most powerful person in the world.  Because we all know that the man should always be more powerful than his wife.  Sigh. 

REFLECTIONS ON POLICEWORK IN GENERAL

A number of random thoughts have been rolling around in my mind since my experience yesterday participating in police training exercises. Some of these thoughts relate to policing in general and others relate to women in policework.  This post will focus just on police work in general (and I will use the male pronoun since the overwhelming majority of officers -- 87% I believe -- are in fact men). 

I doubt that many average people have a sense of how demanding police work really is and how well rounded police officers have to be.  There is SO much that your average police officer has to master in order to be effective.  A police officer should, of course, be physically fit.  He needs to be extremely proficient at the use of the various tools in his arsenal, including his gun, his baton, his pepper spray, his handcuffs, and his taser if he has one, and that proficiency includes a lot of different variables.  For example, you can't just be good at shooting your gun-- you should be good at shooting it at night while holding your flashlight and ducking for cover.  You also need to know how to show restraint at using these tools, and you have to use that restraint in sometimes ominous, unpredictable and fast-moving situations in different settings. 

Of course, these are just the obvious things we think of when we imagine what police officers do.  But there's a lot in addition to all the physical, tough-guy stuff.  Police officers have to have the interpersonal skills to diffuse difficult situations and get information from people.  These interpersonal challenges of police work are a lot more intense than what most people experience just interacting with colleagues at the office. The police may encounter people in varying and often highly dramatic emotional states, people who don't speak English, people of all ages and cultural backgrounds, and people with physical and mental disabilities.  The police need a thorough working knowledge of the criminal law, including the criminal code in their jurisdiction, and the often complex body of law pertaining to the Fourth and Fifth amendments.  They need to be able to write thorough and coherent reports, and to be able to testify effectively in court.  And these are just the basics -- other officers also acquire more specialized skills, such as working on a SWAT team, using police dogs, or collecting fingerprint evidence.  Some officers rise through the ranks and need to exercise leadership and set policy for their departments.  Policing is truly is a fascinating, difficult and potentially rewarding profession. 

In light of all this, I think it's too bad that police work is not considered a suitable profession for the upwardly mobile segments of our society. Most students at the more academically respected four year colleges simply do not consider becoming police officers. I bet you could count on one hand the number of police officers with Ivy League degrees in this country.  Yet it's clearly a field in which having a college degree can be put to good use.  Police officers in many ways are the most powerful people in this country.  It is the police officers who generally make decisions as to who will be investigated, or charged, or arrested.  It is the police officers who have the power to either respect or violate your constitutional rights.   And what police officers do is every bit as valuable to the orderly and safe functioning of our society as law or medicine.

I also think the polarization in the U.S. of public attitudes about police officers is unfortunate.  It seems as though people fall into one of two camps -- either you worship the police and think they can do no wrong, or you believe the police are racist, sexist homophobes who will embellish their reports and violate your constitutional rights if they can get away with it.  I am not really in either camp.  I think that it's a terrible thing when a police officer abuses his power over citizens on the street, whether it's a small-scale or large-scale abuse.  Despite the many frivolous lawsuits I see, I think it is important that citizens have a mechanism to sue the police for constitutional violations and I applaud all the progress that has been made to make police accountable for unlawful actions.  On the other hand, I have been incredibly impressed with the professionalism of the vast majority of officers with whom I have worked. Unfortunately, I think that the hyper-critical mentality of many of us on the left towards the police has helped to create a sometimes resentful "us v. them" mentality among all police officers, not just the bad apples.  This "us v. them" mentality, in turn, can hinder efforts to improve police-community relations and to create a police culture of respect for citizens. 

So to end my ramble, I would propose a more nuanced view of the police in our country.  I would like to see a country where those who respect the police also understand that not every officer is a saint, and that abuse, even of "riff raff" is not okay.  I would also like to see a country where those who are inclined to be harshly critical of police abuses also respect the profession and its potential.  In short, I suppose I would like to see a more constructive discourse about police work than "police good" or "police bad."  I see that discourse occurring in many places internally in the law enforcement community and I sense that there have been massive improvements in many parts of the country over the last 30 to 40 years.  I would, however, like to see more intelligent dialogue about this stuff among the citizenry at large.   

WHAT A DAY

Today I got flattened  by two enormous men who barreled right into me while they were engaged in hand to hand combat.  I participated in a raid of a darkened labyrinthine house filled with unknown enemies.  Later on, I confronted an armed criminal whose bullet grazed my hip as I struggled to yank my gun out of its holster.  Fortunately, I was able to shoot him in the throat before he did any more damage.

Those were some of the highlights of my day observing and participating in simulated training exercises at an urban police department.  I had been invited to attend because the department is one of my firm's clients whom I represent.

The whole day was incredibly groovy. I have spent years of my professional life reading police reports describing confrontations with suspects.  Nonetheless, my experience today gave me a whole new appreciation for what it must  be like to try to remember all of one's training, assess all the relevant variables, and make split second decisions while engaged in a very unpredictable, very dangerous, high adrenaline situation. 

The officers involved were very experienced.  This was just a day of refresher exercises for them.  I was impressed with the sheer number and complexity of different scenarios that they reviewed-- and how fluid the officers seemed during each drill, despite the fact that they don't practice all this stuff every day. 

It started with simple target shooting exercises that became increasingly complicated. They incorporated more and more variables into the exercises as the morning progressed.  They had to practice giving verbal commands ("Put down your weapon"), then taking cover, then shooting.  They had to shoot in the dark while holding a flashlight. Unholstering the gun was part of the exercise too -- and that takes practice because the gun and holster are designed so that's not easy to pull the gun out (as I learned to my consternation in a later exercise).  They had to practice running for cover while reloading, then turning around and shooting.  There was also a simulation room in which the officers responded to unpredictable scenes played out on a video screen, while dodging fake bullets shot at them from a machine controlled by the training officer in the control room.  I got to try some of the simpler exercises too, and was thrilled that I was able to hit the targets (at close range and with some step-by-step coaching).

There were hand-to-hand combat exercises in a padded room.  That's where I got flattened.  I was just observing at that point, but somehow these two guys came kind of flying across the room at me as they were grappling with each other.  I got to practice hitting a guy's hands, and then kneeing him, and then whacking a punching bag with a baton.  I learned and practiced various maneuvers for defending against a suspect trying to pull my gun from its holster, and a suspect who actually had a gun pointed at me. 

The best parts of the day were the simulated building sweeps in a confusing, mazelike apartment.  I found myself marching down an eerie looking hallway with my gun straight ahead of me, shoulder to shoulder with one of the men in the exercise, with another man behind us.  Later there was a staged exercise involving the exhange of shots (with fake bullets) with a suspect/training officer in the building (whom I somehow managed to shoot in the throat when it was my turn).  And at one point, I got to play the part of an unexpected but unarmed person during a simulated raid.  I was supposed to jump out from behind a closed door just as the team of cops was passing by, wave my hands, and yell, "What are you doing in my house?"  Let me tell you it was a very realistic situation and my adrenaline was pumping and my heart was pounding-- but the cops were very professional and put me up against a wall in no time without any shooting.  I wanted a do-over, though, because I don't think I came off as threatening or scary enough.

I have lots to mull over from this experience.  I loved every moment of the day, and even found myself fantasizing about being a police officer during my drive home.  While I doubt that I will be filing an application for employment with the department, I definitely have a newfound appreciation for both the difficulties and the attraction of police work.

(UPDATE:  So far this morning, the day after, three of the officers involved in the training have called to make sure I am okay after having been majorly tackled.  I keep telling that I may be small but I'm sturdy.  Besides, it's not in my best interest to sue my own client.)

LINK ROUND-UP

I am going to be pulling quite a late night catching up on a lot of work that I won't be able to do tomorrow while I'm at a training seminar.  So I don't have time to blog, but fortunately there has been a lot of great blogging done elsewhere, including stories from the women at Mind the Gap as to why they became feminists.  Read them here, here, and here. 

Also, I've been meaning to critique a National Review interview of Kate O'Beirne, author of the delightfully titled  Women Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports. (Hat tip to Mrs. B).  Feministe, however, has beaten me to the punch with a takedown of Ms. O'Beirne's interview with Rebecca Traister in Salon.

Please also check out the commentary in Black Looks on Monday's inauguration of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf as the new President of Liberia and (I believe) the first woman elected president in Africa.  She's got a real challenge ahead of her in light of the serious issues of corruption and nation building in her war torn country. 

And last, but definitely not least, Emma at Gendergeek generously describes (at my request) her experiences when she was a fundamentalist Christian.  As you all know, I have a great deal of interest in but difficulty understanding women who belong to very conservative Christian denominations.  I have read stories of women who have transitioned from a sort of feminism to fundamentalism, but I have not seen too many women write about the opposite transition. 

GLOATING

My husband has mocked my blogging obsession mercilessly ever since I started.  At lunch today, he was idly wondering when we might expect to see a decision in Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood.  Curious as to when exactly the oral argument occurred, he googled "Ayotte oral argument."  This was the result.  I bet we're not laughing quite so hard anymore.

WOMEN'S CONTROL OVER THEIR OWN BODIES LEADS TO CHILD RAPE

24-year old middle school teacher Debra Lafave sleeps with her 14-year old student, and her husband blames . . . feminism. 

Clare at Ink and Incapability shares this lovely quotation from the husband, as found in the U.K.'s Daily Mail:

I also blame the feminist movement. Women are constantly being told that no one has a right to tell them what to do with their bodies.

Of course.  If you tell women that they should have a say in their own sexual and reproductive destiny, they're  gonna run out and rape babies.  I am not sure how this cause-and-effect analysis explains all the men out there who have cheated on their wives and had sex with their 14-year old students, but I am sure feminism is somehow to blame. 

UNUSUAL DEVELOPMENT

The party my husband and I attended on Saturday night was at my in-laws' house.  Most of the people there knew each other from having kids on the same sports teams.  There was a lot of talk about children's soccer and children's lacrosse and children's baseball.  Kids' sports isn't an area where I have a whole lot to say.  But I pride myself on being able to start a conversation with almost anyone.  I had a good time even if it took a little bit of effort to find some common ground or to figure out the right questions to ask.

So imagine my surprise towards the end of the evening when I was introduced to a woman who recently completed a first novel that is going to be published.  Imagine my further surprise when my sister-in-law (who has read it) volunteered me to read the novel too and give feedback.  She told the author that I would be the perfect person to give my perspective on it-- which surprised me to no end. My sister-in-law just dropped off the novel at my house a few minutes ago.

The whole thing is a little bit unusual.  Not in a bad way. First, it was nice of my sister-in-law to think of it.  Usually, she and I just talk about kids and real estate values, so I had no idea that she thought of me as someone who would be worthy to give feedback on someone's book.  Secondly,  I love to read.  Thirdly, as a kid, I fantasized about hobnobbing with writers and discussing books.  On the other hand, I don't know if the author actually wants feedback. Or if she wants feedback from me.  It wasn't her idea at all for me to read this book. And I don't really know what kind of feedback would be useful.  I guess I will read the book and then write her a letter outlining all the things I like about it and offer to have her contact me if she wants to know more. 

I am excited though.  One of the things I miss terribly about New York City was the fact that everyone in New York seemed to be striving for some sort of artistic success.  I used to know a ton of struggling actors and musicians, whereas now I seem to spend most of my spare time with lawyers and realtors.  I like lawyers and realtors quite a lot, but there is something invigorating about being around people who are struggling to produce something creative.