People can have many things in common, including behaviors and attitudes.

Outlaw Bikers

Feminist leaders share two commonalities with outlaw bikers.

Commonality #1

Expecting women to remain silent and passive, doing what they are told to do, when to do it, and what to say

The documentary, Biker Chicks: Leather and Lace, chronicles the story of Jennifer Chaffin, founder and president of the largest all female motorcycle club in the world, Leather and Lace. Chaffin married her first outlaw biker husband as a teenager. She quickly learned that as an outlaw biker wife, her role was to “be quiet” and “stay in the background”. Besides sex, outlaw bikers expect biker chicks to provide money.

Feminist Leader Example #1

Eleanor Smeal is a former president of the National Organization for Women and the founder of the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF). Around 1990, Smeal sent out a letter requesting donations. In exchange for completing an Abortion Rights Questionnaire and sending a “generous contribution”, Smeal promised that:

“at least four times a year we’ll notify you of pending actions
nationally and locally and let you know what action steps you
can take.”

Smeal emphasized the importance of providing money, then staying quietly in the background by underlining each word separately. At least four times a year, Smeal let pro-choice supporters know what she would allow them to say and do.

Feminist Leader Example #2

The National Organization for Women (NOW) sends out action alerts. The “action” usually means clicking a button to send “Your Letter” to politicians. NOW does not encourage women to use their own words. When NOW feels like indulging in glory for itself, it will include this sort of phrase in “Your Letter”:

“As a supporter of the National Organization for Women…”

Both outlaw bikers and feminist leaders expect women to provide money, then stay quietly in the background.

Commonality #2

Expecting women to provide income without any say in how the money is used, and using the money in ways that do not benefit the women who earn it

The current president of the National Organization for Women is Terry O’Neill. O’Neill frequently sends out emails asking for money. I signed up to receive emails in 2007 or 2008. Frustrated that NOW never felt I deserved an explanation for how they would use my money if I donated, I wrote NOW, asking how it uses donations. I received no direct response. Once in awhile the emails will give some information, but mostly the emails just ask for money. They often include phrases like, “with your help, we can” and “show your support” and “your donation today will help us”. Send money, but stay in the background. Send money but don’t expect to have any say in how the money is used. Send money but don’t ask how we spend the money.

NOW President Terry O’Neill probably does not reveal how she spends the money because she is not spending it for the benefit of the women who donate it. An article printed in several Wisconsin newspapers titled “Abortion foes — big clout, little cash” provided me with some of the details NOW refused to give me. It explained the differences in spending between Wisconsin pro-life groups and Wisconsin pro-choice groups during the 2011-2012 legislative session. Below is information from the article:

Pro-life groups’ spending on lobbying
Wisconsin Right to Life                                                             $  43,730
Pro-Life Wisconsin                                                                     $   63,113

Pro-choice groups’ spending on lobbying
Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin                       $241,309

Pro-life groups’ spending on political campaigns
Wisconsin Right to Life & Pro-Life Wisconsin                      $150,000

Pro-choice groups’ spending on political campaigns
Planned Parenthood                                                                $1,300,000

Despite the massive amount of money pro-choice groups spent, they lost in the Wisconsin legislature. Despite the smaller amount of money pro-life groups spent, they won in the Wisconsin legislature. Pro-choice groups had no clout despite their massive spending. Pro-life groups had plenty of clout despite their limited spending. Feminist leaders continually ask for money but spend the money in ways that do not give clout to the women who donate the money. To give the women who donate money clout, feminist leaders would have to change their 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 children deserve parents who want them. Children deserve lives free of neglect, abuse, and murder at the hands of their parents. The feminist message should be pro-child. Protecting the lives of children would have more clout 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 children. These tactics would create clout because they would be meeting pro-birth groups at their message that every baby has the right to be born.

I contacted NOW with this suggestion. Since ignoring the women who provide money is what they do, NOW leaders ignored me. Both outlaw bikers and feminist leaders expect women to provide money without any say in how the money is used.

Leaders in Hierarchical Work Environments

In the book, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries, author Peter Sims writes about the fallacy known at Google and other companies as HIPPO, a belief in the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. The fallacy is that “the most experienced or senior person in the group will have the answers.” Sims wrote that a “dominant hierarchical work environment supports the fallacy.” Feminist organizations like FMF and NOW duplicate dominant hierarchical work environments. My evidence comes from a female feminist professor from my grad school days.

When I was  in grad school in the early 1990s, a male professor who considered himself a feminist told me I should write a paper about some of the ideas I had brought up in class. I wrote a paper comparing the words and actions of pro-life leaders and pro-choice leaders. After the male feminist professor read my paper, I asked a female feminist professor to read it. In my paper I described how pro-life leaders told supporters that it was their obligation to take action in their daily lives, an action of their choosing. Pro-choice leaders, on the other hand, made all the choices, telling supporters what to do and when to do it. The female feminist wrote this comment:

“Might those choices be the crucial ones?”

The female feminist professor also wrote:

“You ignore the fact that it takes a certain intellectual sophistication to be pro-choice whereas the anti’s have that vast wasteland of obedient women with time on their hands who are given something to do — however ineffectual it is.”

Feminist leaders live the HIPPO fallacy. They insist on making the “crucial choices” about words, actions, and donations because they believe only they have the “intellectual sophistication” to do so. Pro-choice supporters who remain loyal to pro-choice leaders wait for pro-choice leaders to tell them what to do.

Pro-life leaders believe their supporters have the intellectual sophistication to make decisions about how to participate in the pro-life movement. The “vast wasteland of obedient women” accepted their obligation to take action in their daily lives and continued taking actions. More than 20 years after I wrote my paper, abortion is mostly unavailable and severely restricted where it is available. It does not matter that abortion is legal for women who have no access to abortion services.

Donald Rumsfeld

As Secretary of Defense under President George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld was responsible for planning the invasion of Iraq. He sent too few troops to secure the country after the invasion.

NOW puts too few people into the field as activists. NOW trains state and national leaders to be activists. Maybe they also train other people they handpick. NOW has never answered my questions about how they pick activists or who those activists are. In a press release about a training weekend, NOW wrote that:

“Eleven of the new state presidents, coordinators and executive
directors” plus “33 activists from 14 states braved the chill of an
extended Washington, D.C. winter for intensive training in the
area of their choice.”

That amounts to 44 activists from 25 states, if the 11 were from different states. My guess is that ordinary NOW members paid for the transportation and lodging that allowed these brave people (an extended Washington D.C. winter requires bravery?) to socialize together.

The NOW press release also said,

“Activists from four additional states met during the weekend
to plan reorganizing and revitalizing their state organizations,
which had lately been inactive.”

 Did former NOW members in those states grow tired of  the “be quiet” and “stay in the background” expectations of NOW leaders?

Contrast those 44 leaders and activists from half the country against the millions of pro-life supporters speaking their own words and taking their own actions in their daily lives. Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL) organizes a fall tour every year. MCCL trainers travel around the state offering training to anyone who wants to take it. Attendees can then take action everyday in the course of their daily lives. Pro-life activists in one state far outnumber NOW’s pro-choice activists for the entire country, because MCCL also trains children to be activists. Since they learn to be activists as children, they will likely continue to be activists as adults.

Donald Rumsfeld and feminist leaders share an ineffective strategy of putting too few people in the field to be effective.

Old Guard of the Catholic Church

A U.S. News & World Report article about the Catholic Church’s attempts to recover from its sex scandals revealed that lay Catholics are unhappy with the way bishops handled the crisis. Lay Catholics are also unhappy with the bishops themselves. Suzanne Morse, spokeswoman for Boston-based Voice of the Faithful said, “We see an old guard that is unwilling to give up a lot of the power and authority they’ve had for years and years.”

In a Time magazine article about abortion, reporter Kate Pickert wrote that the older feminists are “reluctant to pass the torch” of power and authority to younger women.

The old guard of the Catholic Church and the old guard of feminist organizations continue to hold onto the power they’ve had for years and years.

Same Old, Same Old

As you can see, feminist leaders have too much in common with patriarchal male leaders to be anything other than same old, same old. So much for their claims of creating equality for women. Some of the same old includes being less than honest (patriarchal fathers, husbands, bosses, politicians, etc.) and hiding information (patriarchal father, husbands, bosses, politicians, etc.).

The Not Quite National Organization for Women

NOW is not quite the national organization it would like people to believe it is. Before NOW revamped its website, it was easy to see which states did not have any chapters at all. Once when I checked, five states did not have chapters. That’s 10% of the states. And remember, the press release about the activist training weekend included this statement:

“Activists from four additional states met during the weekend to plan reorganizing and revitalizing their state organizations, which had lately been inactive.”

The revamped website makes identifying states with “inactive” chapters (real meaning: no chapters) more difficult. NOW doesn’t want you to know that it’s not always — if it ever was — a national organization.

Feminist Leaders Keep Secrets

Beware of NOW emails and blog posts and anything it says in its press releases. NOW has repeatedly proved that it hides facts. It has hidden facts about:

Procedures for choosing activists

Whom they choose to be activists

How it spends donations

Big spending failures

Number of states without chapters

What else is NOW hiding? Is it hiding information because it expects its supporters to be a “vast wasteland of obedient women” who are too intellectually unsophisticated to understand the reasoning behind the crucial choices made by the intellectually sophisticated leaders of NOW?

Is NOW also hiding information so they can continue to hold onto the power and authority they refuse to pass to younger women?

Plus, there is the issue of titles. Until I pointed this out in blog posts, NOW President Terry O’Neill did not like being caught without her title. I actually saw just “Terry O’Neil” somewhere once, probably in an email. This title need seems to be a common trait for NOW presidents. I once counted “NOW President Kim Gandy” eight times on NOW’s home page. Apparently, NOW members and website visitors are too intellectually unsophisticated to remember who the current president of NOW is without constant reminders.

“NOW President Terry O’Neill” reduced her name count on the old NOW website. O’Neill, however, found a way to remind every visitor of just how important she and other NOW leaders are at the new now.org. A choice at the top of the NOW’s home page is “NOW LEADERS”. (The Protected: NOW Leader Docs page disappeared after I wrote this blog post.) It opens a page that says:

Protected: NOW Leader Docs

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below.
(NOW has removed the NOW Leaders page. This only means they are no longer announcing that
NOW leaders keep secrets. NOW leaders still keep secrets. They keep their “activist” training secret
from the women who pay for the training.)

Why did NOW make this logon page public rather than private? It’s a public announcement that NOW leaders are intellectually sophisticated people who need to hide (protect!) information from the intellectually unsophisticated members of NOW.

In case website visitors fail to understand just how important Terry O’Neill is, NOW used to say this at the top of the “NOW PAC” page:

“NOW/PAC Chair Terry O’Neill announced…”

Why does Terry O’Neill need to keep thinking up ways to put a title in front of her name?

Same old, same old.

Comparison/Contrast

Visit mccl.org for a comparison/contrast to now.org. You won’t see any
obsession with power and authority, and you will find all kinds of information. Click on MCCL’s “Visit Out PAC Site” and you will read about political issues. Click on “Student Commons” and you will see how MCCL is passing power and authority to high school and college students while involving elementary school students. MCCL tells members how it spends money and makes 990 forms for the IRS available on request. MCCL has 240 chapters within Minnesota alone.

If you visit the site, I dare you to find a name with a title in front of it. I finally found a title in a press release, but the title came after the name: “Scott Fishbach, Executive Director of MCCL GO”. The press release quotes Fishbach several times, but his title appears only once. Apparently, MCCL believes its members have enough intellectual sophistication to remember who Fishbach is.

Do you have a better understanding of why abortion is legal but mostly unavailable and severely restricted where it is available?

For the Record

With a B.A. in Women’s Studies/Writing, I used to call myself a feminist. Now I call myself an equality advocate. I advocate for equality between women, between men, and between men and women.

I used to call myself pro-choice. Now I call myself pro-child. Children deserve parents who want them.

Update on May 29, 2014

I received an email entitled, “What’s Happening NOW – May Edition” from NOW. The email included a list several items.

Under Can’t Take It No More was information about an independent documentary film “featuring Terry O’Neill”. The documentary is about Walmart workers around the world standing up “for respect, fair pay and economic justice”.

The information that Terry O’Neill is “featured” in the documentary comes before any mention of the Walmart workers. NOW wanted all of its supporters to know that the most important thing about this documentary is that it “features” Terry O’Neill. Visit the Kickstarter funding page for Can’t Take It No More and see if you can find Terry O’Neill’s name anywhere on the front page. The page mentions Walmart workers, Walmart associates, and Walmart strikers. Not a single mention of Terry O’Neill. O’Neill has no time for respecting Walmart workers, associates, or strikers when she sees an opportunity for a glory fix.

Same old, same old.

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

Biker Chicks: Leather and Lace
Documentary
January 20, 2010

Can’t Take It No More!
Citizen Blain Productions

“The General who Understood Iraq from the Start”
Nicolaus Mills
Dissent Magazine
April 25, 2008

“Struggling to keep the faith”
Bret Schulte
US News & World ReportDecember 27, 2004

“What Choice?”
Kate Pickert
Time Magazine
January 14, 2013