On September 13, 2014, I received the email message below from Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women. To make O’Neill’s glory addiction clear, I have separated her statements into two categories. Below the email I identify the meanings I saw as I read the email.

Statements that are about                                                   All other statements
O’Neill and NOW or include
we, us, and our in reference
to O’Neill or NOW

Email subject line: Haterade

I’m sure you’ve heard by now, but this
week NOW called on NFL Commissioner
Roger Goodell to resign his post.

Since we released that statement, it
has been a whirlwind of press and action.

You might have seen or heard me on MSNBC,
CBS, ABC, NBC, or ESPN – or any of a
dozen other media outlets.

But if you saw me, that means the trolls
did, too; all week, we’ve been getting
barraged with hateful comments via phone,
email and on Facebook and Twitter.

Nestled in there –
often hidden in the muck –
are voices of solidarity.

These voices wish us luck in our
endeavor, many identify as football
fans or activists working in their
communities – all agree that we
must end the epidemic of violence
against women.

Contribute and help
us continue our work!

Sure, some of the trolls use the
old quip of demanding that I
“make them a sandwich” –
not the first time I’ve heard
that one!

I’ve been accused of being
“off my rocker”.

The truth is, that almost all
of these comments have
been outright and aggressively
misogynistic.

Since I became president of NOW,
I’ve received a regular stream of
hate mail.

Sadly, it just comes with the job.

But knowing I have your support
makes all the difference.

So a warning to the trolls:
We will not deviate from this
path.

I know that we can change our
culture – which is so permissive of
violence against women – and
change our laws simultaneously.

How do I know that?

Because we’re the National
Organization for Women and
this is what we do – especially
with supporters like you.

Thank you for all you do,

Terry O’Neill
President, National Organization
for Women

P.S. Thousands of you have
already shown your support
by signing our petition demanding
that Roger Goodell resign.

Can I count on your continued support
with a contribution today?

 

The Meaning Behind O’Neill’s Statements

Email subject line: Haterade

The focus of this email is not violence against women.

I’m sure you’ve heard by now, but this
week NOW called on NFL Commissioner
Roger Goodell to resign his post.

O’Neill expects NOW members to be always focused on the words and actions of NOW. It is particularly important for NOW supporters to stay focused on the words and actions of NOW President Terry O’Neill.

Since we released that statement, it
has been a whirlwind of press and action.

NOW is very important.

You might have seen or heard me on MSNBC,
CBS, ABC, NBC, or ESPN – or any of a
dozen other media outlets.

Terry O’Neill is very important.

But if you saw me, that means the trolls
did, too; all week, we’ve been getting
barraged with hateful comments via phone,
email and on Facebook and Twitter.

The haterade has nothing to do with victims of domestic violence.

Nestled in there –
often hidden in the muck –
are voices of solidarity.

The voices are showing solidarity with poor, barraged Terry O’Neill and NOW, not for victims of domestic violence.

These voices wish us luck in our
endeavor, many identify as football
fans or activists working in their
communities – all agree that we
must end the epidemic of violence
against women.

The focus is supposed to remain on what NOW does.

Contribute and help
us continue our work!

NOW members should give money to NOW so Terry O’Neill can continue to feel important rather than give money to shelters so victims of domestic violence can feel safe.

Sure, some of the trolls use the
old quip of demanding that I
“make them a sandwich” –
not the first time I’ve heard
that one!

You should feel sorry for what Terry O’Neill has to endure because it is far worse than what victims of domestic violence endure.

I’ve been accused of being
“off my rocker”.

Another reason to feel sorry for what Terry O’Neill has to endure.

The truth is, that almost all
of these comments have
been outright and aggressively
misogynistic.

Misogynistic comments are far worse than real violence, especially when they are aggressive.

Since I became president of NOW,
I’ve received a regular stream of
hate mail.

You must always remember how important and brave Terry O’Neill is.

Sadly, it just comes with the job.

Terry O’Neill took the job knowing she would receive hate mail. I doubt any woman enters a romantic relationship with a man expecting to be beaten. It is obviously far sadder for O’Neill to endure the hate mail she knew would be coming than for women to find themselves beaten by men who said, “I love you.”

But knowing I have your support
makes all the difference.

Terry O’Neill needs your support more than victims of domestic violence do.

So a warning to the trolls:
We will not deviate from this
path.

Terry O’Neill and NOW will not deviate from anything that makes them feel important.

I know that we can change our
culture – which is so permissive of
violence against women – and
change our laws simultaneously.

Terry O’Neill wants you to believe that she and NOW are powerful.

How do I know that?

Terry O’Neill wants you to believe that she knows more than you do.

Because we’re the National
Organization for Women and
this is what we do – especially
with supporters like you.

The National Organization is important and requires your support because it is important.

Thank you for all you do,

Compared to what Terry O’Neill and NOW do, what you actually do is too unimportant to mention in detail.

Terry O’Neill
President, National Organization
for Women

P.S. Thousands of you have
already shown your support
by signing our petition demanding
that Roger Goodell resign.

Thousands? I’m supposed to be impressed that thousands of people have signed the petition for Roger Goodell to resign? According to its FAQS page, NOW has “more than 500,000 contributing members” in “more than 500 local and campus affiliates in all 50 states and the District of Columbia”.

NOW has more than 500,000 contributing members but only thousands signed the petition?

(September 21, 2015 update: NOW’s website has changed its contributing membership numbers to “hundreds of thousands”. Thousands of people signing the petition is still pitiful for an organization O’Neill claims has the ability to “change our culture”.)

If Terry O’Neill is using the word “thousands”, I have to assume that the total number of signers is well below 10,000. Otherwise, O’Neill would claim that “close to 10,000 of you have already shown your support by signing our petition…”

Thousands means that less than 2% of NOW’s membership have responded to NOW President Terry O’Neill’s call to action. O’Neill is apparently too unsophisticated to realize that she again provided evidence of her ineffectiveness as a leader.

Can I count on your continued support
with a contribution today?

You are supposed to support Terry O’Neill, not victims of domestic violence.

This email has nothing to do with violence against women. It is all about Terry O’Neill and her glory addiction. NOW President Terry O’Neill probably does not know how to write anything that is really about ending domestic violence. Roger Goodell’s resignation would do little to change our culture and laws. For some victims, the violence would probably increase if Goodell resigned. Abusers who felt anger at Goodell’s resignation would take their anger out on the women they already beat regularly.

Terry O’Neill used female victims of domestic violence to create glory fixes for herself. This is just one way that Terry O’Neill and the National Organization for Women create inequality between women.

 

NOW’s Spin To Keep You Donating Money

If you want equality, if you are a member of NOW, if you want feminist leaders to be effective, you need to know how NOW spins reality. In other words, NOW uses propaganda to persuade you to believe that they know what they’re doing and deserve your money.

NOW claims “affiliates in all 50 states”. During the years I’ve been tracking NOW’s ineffectiveness, I have repeatedly researched NOW’s website to see if NOW does indeed have chapters or affiliates in all 50 states. I have always found states that do not have NOW chapters or affiliates.

Check this out for yourself. Go to now.org. Use the search link under “Find Your Chapter”. You will find “Sorry, no chapters found” for several states. As of September 15, 2015, these are the states that have “Sorry, no chapters found” notifications.

Hawaii

Maine

New Hampshire

North Dakota

West Virginia

Also, chapters in several states seem to be doing little if anything at all. I’ll give you several examples. You can look up your own state to discover how far its reality differs from NOW’s claims.

If it is still listed, click on the Facebook link for Mat-Su NOW in Alaska and you will go to the page of an individual, not of a NOW chapter.

When I first wrote this blog post, NOW listed 6 chapters for Alabama chapters. Now it lists 5. Tennessee Valley NOW shows no chapter activity at all. Click on the Facebook page for Montgomery NOW in Alabama and you will go to the page of an individual, not of a NOW chapter.

The most recent post for Indianapolis NOW is August 31, 2011.

NOW lists Kentucky NOW, the only chapter in Kentucky, but the page for Kentucky NOW has only a Yahoo email address, nothing else.

My state of Wisconsin lists 5 chapters.

The home page for Wisconsin NOW shows a calendar with only holidays on it, no chapter activity.

Milwaukee NOW has neither a web page nor a link to an individual’s Facebook page.

W Suburban Milwaukee NOW has neither a web page nor a link to an individual’s Facebook page.

Madison NOW shares the same holiday calendar as Wisconsin NOW.

Fox Cities NOW has neither a web page nor a link to an individual’s Facebook page.

Does NOW count “chapters” without web pages, Facebook pages, or chapter activities among the “more than 500 local and campus affiliates in all 50 states and the District of Columbia”?

Look at what NOW lists for your state to see if a real chapter exists in your state.

The next question is, how did NOW count its “more than 500,000 contributing members”? If they can’t count the number of states with chapters accurately, why trust them to count contributing members accurately?

The truth is, almost all of Terry O’Neill’s comments in this email are outright and persistently egotistical. Why should Terry O’Neill let a few facts get in the way of her glory addiction? She is the president of the National Organization for Women, and satisfying her glory addiction is what she does.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, state restrictions on abortions increased by:

92 in 2011
43 in 2012
70 in 2013

Both pro-choice and pro-life groups know these facts, as revealed by this PolitiFact quote:

Patty Murray:

“In the past three years, state legislatures have “enacted
more of these restrictions (on abortion) than in the previous
10 years combined.”

Both abortion-rights advocates and anti-abortion advocates told PolitiFact that they concurred with Murray, a Democratic senator from Washington state. Murray was basing her claim on data from a Guttmacher Institute report that counted 205 restrictions from 2011 to 2013, compared to 189 from the previous decade.

During all those increases in abortion restrictions, the National Organization for Women (NOW) continued to send out emails asking supporters to donate money.

Your support for NOW is essential to keep us moving in the
right direction.

With your support, the NOW Foundation can mobilize our
vast network of allies and activists and help get the word out
to improve — and not eliminate — social and reproductive
rights and economic programs that keep millions of women
and their families out of poverty and healthy.

Your monthly gift of $15 can provide consistent and
reliable funding to allow us to dedicate more
resources to defending women’s rights at the
state level. Becoming a member of the Feminist Action
Network is easy, and you can change your donation amount
or cancel at any time. I urge you to become a member of the
Feminist Action Network today and fuel direct action for
women’s rights.

With activists in hundreds of chapters across the
country, NOW knows how to fight back. But we
need your support. Can I count on you?

As investigative reporter Bill Lueders pointed out in an article, Wisconsin pro-choice groups lost even when they outspent Wisconsin pro-life groups.

Feminist leaders have not:

moved in the right direction

improved reproductive rights

defended women’s rights at the state level

The numbers — 205 more state restrictions on abortion in 3 years — prove that the National Organization for Women does not know how to fight back.

 

Changing Strategy To Change Results

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting different results.”
Albert Einstein

The title of Bill Lueder’s article reveals why pro-choice groups are ineffective even with they outspend pro-life groups: “Abortion foes — big clout, little cash”. Pro-life groups spent less money in Wisconsin than pro-choice groups, but still won in the legislature because they have “clout” — influence and power. To have influence and power in state legislatures, feminist leaders need to stop doing the same thing over and over again. To change results, feminist leaders need to change strategies. They need to meet pro-life groups at their right to life message.

If babies have the right to life before birth, then they have the right to life after birth. The right to life after birth means every baby has the right to be born to parents who want him or her. Children deserve lives free of neglect, abuse, and murder at the hands of their parents.

The feminist message should be pro-child, not pro-choice. Protecting the lives of children would have more influence and power than protecting women’s right to choose. The pro-child movement could challenge the pro-life movement as only pro-birth, not pro-life. Pro-child supporters could ask pro-birth legislators to explain why they’re not pro-child. Pro-child supporters could ask pro-birth groups what they are doing to protect the lives of breathing children.

These tactics would create influence and power because they would not only include the pro-life message of right to life, but carry the right to life message further than pro-birth groups have. For children to be born only to parents who want them, both females and males must have their basic needs satisfied. If birth control is one of those basic needs, then birth control must be provided. This strategy needs a slogan that focuses on children, such as:

Children deserve parents who want them.

If you like the pro-child strategy, don’t wait for feminist leaders to jump on that bandwagon. Start talking and writing in your own life about every child’s right to be born to parents who want him or her. If enough of us talk about it, we might be able to reduce the pain of children who already live with parents who do not want them.

 

Update

Since writing this post, I came across an example illustrating how focusing on children creates gender equity between men and women. Because Finland believes children have the right to spend time with both parents, the government offers nine weeks of paternity leave at 70% salary. Combined with other support from the government focused on satisfying children’s needs, this has led to Finnish fathers spending more time with their children than mothers, eight minutes a day.

What other sorts of equity could come out of focusing on children’s rights? We won’t find out from feminist leaders focused on finding fixes their glory addictions.

“Abortion foes — big clout, little cash”
Bill Lueders
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
July 24, 2013

“Finland: the only country where fathers spend more time with kids than mothers”
Alexandra Topping
The Guardian
December 5, 2017

“Laws Affecting Reproductive Health and Rights: 2013 State Policy Review”
Elizabeth Nash, Rachel Benson Gold, Andrea Rowan, Gwendolyn Rathbun, and Yana Vierboom
Guttmacher Institute State Center

“More state abortion restrictions were enacted in the last 3 years than previous decade, Sen. Patty Murray says”
Julie Kliegman
Politifact
January 24, 2014

“A Surge of State Abortion Restrictions Puts Providers—and the Women They Serve—in the Crosshairs“
Heather D. Boonstra and Elizabeth Nash
Guttmacher Policy Review
Winter 2014, Volume 17, Number 1