Jane Fonda’s Speech at the National Women’s Leadership Summit
[Interesting analysis and development. -Thomas]
Please take a few minutes to read this and
then send it on to the people you care about.
Jane Fonda’s Speech at the National Women’s Leadership Summit
Washington, D.C. June 12, 2003
Before I turned sixty I thought I was a feminist. I was in a way - I
worked to register women to vote, I supported women getting
elected. I brought gender issues into my movie roles, I encouraged
women to get strong and healthy, I read the books we’ve all read. I
had it in my head and partly in my heart, yet I didn’t fully get it.
See, although I’ve always been financially independent, and
professionally and socially successful, behind the closed doors of my
personal life I was still turning myself in a pretzel so I’d be loved
by an alpha male. I thought if I didn’t become whatever he wanted me
to be, I’d be alone, and then, I wouldn’t exist.
There is not the time nor is this the place to explain why this was
true, or why it is such a common theme for so many otherwise
strong, independent women. Nor is it the time to tell you how I got
over it (I’m writing my memoirs, and all will be revealed). What’s
important is that I did get over it. Early on in my third act I found
my voice and, in the process, I have ended up alone but not really. You
see, I’m with myself and this has enabled me to see feminism more
clearly. It’s hard to see clearly when you’re a pretzel.
So I want to tell you briefly some of what I have learned in this first
part of my third act and how it relates to what, I think, needs to
happen in terms of a revolution.
Because we can’t just talk about women being at the table - it’s too late
for that - we have to think in terms of the shape of the table. Is it
hierarchical or circular (metaphorically speaking)? We have to think
about the quality of the men who are with us at the table, the culture
that is hovering over the table that governs how things are decided
and in whose interests. This is not just about glass ceilings or politics
as usual. This is about revolution, and I have finally gotten to where I
can say that word and know what I mean by it and feel good about it
because I see, now, how the future of the earth and everything on it
including men and boys depends on this happening.
Let me say something about men: obviously, I’ve had to do a lot of
thinking about men, especially the ones who’ve been important in
my life, and what I’ve come to realize is how damaging patriarchy has
been for them. And all of them are smart, good men who want to be
considered the “good guys.” But the Male Belief System, that
compartmentalized, hierarchical, ejaculatory, and centric power
structure that is Patriarchy, is fatal to the hearts of men, to empathy
and relationship.
Yes, men and boys receive privilege and status from patriarchy, but it
is a poisoned privilege for which they pay a heavy price. If
traditional, patriarchal socialization takes aim at girls’ voices, it takes
aim at
boys’ hearts - makes them lose the deepest, most sensitive and empathic
parts of themselves. Men aren’t even allowed to be depressed, which
is why they engage so often in various forms of self-numbing, from
sex to alcohol and drugs to gambling and workaholism. Patriarchy
strikes a Faustian bargain with men.
Patriarchy sustains itself by breaking relationship. I’m referring here
to real relationship, the showing-up kind, not the “I’ll stay with him
cause he pays the bills, or because of the kids, or because if I don’t I
will cease to exist,” but relationship where you, the woman, can
acknowledge your partner’s needs while simultaneously
acknowledging and tending to your own. I work with young girls and
I can tell you there’s a whole generation who has not learned what a
relationship is supposed to feel like - that it’s not about leaving
themselves behind.
Now, every group that’s been oppressed has its share of Uncle Toms,
and we have our Aunt Toms. I call them ventriloquists for the
patriarchy. I won’t name names but we all know them. They are
women in whom the toxic aspects of masculinity hold sway. It should
neither surprise nor discourage us. We need to understand it and be
able to explain it to others, but it means, I think, that we should be
just about getting a woman into this position or that. We need to
look at “is that woman intact emotionally,” has she had to forfeit her
empathy gene somewhere along the way for whatever reason?
And then, of course, there are what Eve Ensler calls Vagina-Friendly
men, who choose to remain emotionally literate. It’s not easy for
them - look at the names they get called: wimp, pansy, pussy, soft,
limp, momma’s boy. Men don’t like to be considered “soft” on
anything, which is why more don’t choose to join us in the circle.
Actually, most don’t have the choice to make. You know why?
Because when they are real little (I learned this from Carol Gilligan),
like five years or younger, boys internalize the message of what it
takes to be a “real man.” Sometimes it comes through their fathers
who beat it into them. Sometimes it comes because no one around
them knows how to connect with their emotions (This is a
generational thing). Sometimes it comes because our culture rips boys
from their mothers before they are developmentally ready.
Sometimes it comes because boys are teased at school for crying.
Sometimes it’s the subliminal messages from teachers and the media.
It can be a specific trauma that shuts them down. But, I can assure
you, it is true to some extent of many if not most men, and when the
extreme version of it manifests itself in our nation’s leaders, beware!
Another thing that I’ve learned is that there is a fundamental
contradiction not just between patriarchy and relationship, but
between patriarchy and Democracy. Patriarchy masquerades as
Democracy, but it’s an anathema. How can it be democracy when
someone has to always be above someone else, when women, who
are a majority, live within a social construct that discriminates
against them, keeps them from having their full human rights?
But just because Patriarchy has ruled for 10,000 years since the
beginning of agriculture, doesn’t make it inevitable.
Maybe at some earlier stage in human evolution, Patriarchy was what
was needed just for the species to survive. But today, there’s nothing
threatening the human species but humans. We’ve conquered our
predators, we’ve subdued nature almost to extinction, and there are
no more frontiers to conquer or to escape into so as to avoid having
to deal with the mess we’ve left behind. Frontiers have always given
capitalism, Patriarchy’s economic face, a way to avoid dealing with its
shortcomings. Well, we’re having to face them now in this post-
frontier era and inevitably - especially when we have leaders who
suffer from toxic masculinity - that leads to war, the conquering of
new markets, and the destruction of the earth.
However, it is altogether possible, that we are on the verge of a
tectonic shift in paradigms - that what we are seeing happening today
are the paroxysms, the final terrible death throes of the old, no
longer workable, no longer justifiable system. Look at it this way: it’s
Patriarchy’s third act and we have to make sure it’s its last.
It’s possible that the extreme, neo-conservative version of Patriarchy
which makes up our current Executive branch will over-play its hand
and cause the house of cards to collapse. We know that this new
“preventive war” doctrine will put us on a permanent war footing.
We know there can’t be guns and butter, right? We learned with Vietnam.
We know that a Pandora’s box has been opened in the Middle East
and that the administration is not prepared for the
complexities that are emerging. We know that friends are becoming
foes and angry young Muslims with no connection to AlQaeda are
becoming terrorists in greater numbers. We know that with the new
tax plan the rich will be better off and the rest will be poorer. We
know what happens when poor young men and women can only get
jobs by joining the military and what happens when they come home
and discover that the day after Congress passed the “Support Our
Troops” Resolution, $25 billion was cut from the VA budget. We
know that already, families of servicemen have to go on welfare and
are angry about it.
So, as Eve Ensler says, we have to change the verbs from obliterate,
dominate, humiliate, to liberate, appreciate, celebrate. We have to
make sure that head and heart can be reunited in the body politic, and
relationship and democracy can be restored.
We need to really understand the depth and breadth of what a shift to
a new, feminine paradigm would mean, how fundamentally central
it is to every single other thing in the world. We win, everything
wins, including boys, men, and the earth. We have to really
understand this and be able to make it concrete for others so they will
be able to see what Feminism really is and see themselves in it.
So our challenge is to commit ourselves to creating the tipping point
and the turning point. The time is ripe to launch a unified national
movement, a campaign, a tidal wave, built around issues and values,
not candidates.
That’s why V-Day, The White House Project and their many allies are
partnering to hold a national women’s convention somewhere in the
heartland, next June of 2004. Its purpose will be to inspire and
mobilize women and vagina-friendly men around the 2004 elections
and to build a new movement that will coalesce our energies and
forces around a politic of caring.
The convention will put forward a fresh, clear, and concise platform
of issues, and build the spirit, energy and power base to hold the
candidates accountable for them. There will be a diversity of women
from across the country who will participate in the mobilization.
There will be a special focus on involving young women. There will
be a variety of performers and artists acknowledging that culture
plays a powerful role in political action. There will be a concurrent
internet mobilization. Women’s organizations will be asked to sign
on and send representatives to the convention.
There will be a caravan, a rolling tour across the country, of diverse
women leaders, celebrities and activists who will work with local
organizers to build momentum, sign people up, register them to
vote, get them organized and leave behind a tool kit for further
mobilization through the election and beyond.
This movement will be a volcano that will erupt in a flow of soft,
hot, empathic, breathing, authentic, vagina-friendly, relational lava
that will encircle patriarchy and smother it. We will be the flood and
we’ll be Noah’s ark.
Please copy this and paste it and send it to all the women you know.
What we have been envisioning for decades is upon us. The time is here.
