The three jabs in quick succession—male, chauvinist, pig—are part of a larger feminist history.

• JULIE WILLETT
•  

It would be hard to deny today that the male chauvinist pig is still alive and kicking, running amok in his own filth. The election of Donald Trump and his “grab ’em by the pussy” regime mixed misogyny, mockery, and race privilege with delight. Andrew Cuomo’s domineering behavior in politics echoed his sexually belittling actions in private. Both were proud of being jerks, personally and professionally, and both got called “male chauvinist pigs.”

Calling someone a male chauvinist pig offers sweet revenge, a chance to dehumanize those who dehumanized you. But the insult contains more than a laugh. The three jabs in quick succession—male, chauvinist, pig—are part of feminist attempts to place men’s sexism within a broader American political milieu. The phrase is also a prime example of how men respond to being called sexist: They think it’s funny.

Named after the (probably apocryphal) French soldier Nicolas Chauvin, who kept trumpeting Napoleon’s greatness no matter the ill treatment doled out to him, the term stands for jingoism coded as false honor.

Within the American Communist Party in the early 20th century, chauvinism was a common insult. It called out a tribal attachment—to one’s race, gender, or nationality—that distracted from class solidarity. Questions of how identity intersected with class played out among chauvinisms. Purges to rid the party of racists were discussed as ending “white chauvinism.” In complaining about sexism to Vivian Gornick in her book on American communism, one woman wondered how “not one goddamned Communist was ever thrown out for male chauvinism.” In the 1960s, as feminists—many of them red-diaper babies—created their own networks, they adopted the language to name patriarchy.

Pig was an obvious addition, an old insult for those holding corrupt power. Its historical links to racialized policing perhaps led to “pig” as a moniker for white police terror. In the post-Reconstruction South, Black Codes in some states included “pig laws,” which attempted to turn former slaves into captive laborers by penalizing minor infractions—like stealing a $3 pig—with long terms of incarceration. But Huey Newton of the Black Panther Party said it was simpler: “Pig” was chosen to show “grotesque qualities” and create a “detestable” picture “that takes away the image of omnipotence” of the white power structure.

The male chauvinist pig thus captured feminist fury as intertwined with other movements on the left: against nationalism, against racism, against capitalism, and against cops. As activist Robin Morgan explained in the underground newspaper Rat in 1968, women wanted to target “all the good old American values.” The insult did just that.

Still, there were limits to such a moniker. As feminists “quickly adopted slogans and symbols of the Black liberation movement like ‘Right On!’ and the clenched fist,” wrote Helen H. King in Ebony magazine at the time, “pig” was another battle cry that felt like appropriation. And rather than shy away from it, men began to embrace the MCP epithet as a badge of honor. Wasn’t it funny they were such assholes?

This joke’s-on-you position could be private. “You know, you’re a male chauvinist pig,” President Richard Nixon joked to his attorney general, John Mitchell, in 1971, in a secret tape, as discussions of how to nominate a woman to the Supreme Court drifted into casual sexism. Or it could be public. Like the buffoonery of tennis champ Bobby Riggs, whose iconic battle of the sexes with Billie Jean King pitted a fun-loving playboy against the all-too-serious feminist: “I don’t mind being called a male chauvinist pig,” Riggs said, “as long as I’m the No. 1 male chauvinist pig.” This embrace of what was meant to be derogatory rendered the real complaints of women unserious. By the 1990s, Rush Limbaugh proudly called himself a pig. He could take a joke; why couldn’t the women he called “feminazis”?

Cuomo similarly dismissed his female accusers as humorless, allowing him to frame his own actions as benign. Cuomo’s political demise may indicate that this tactic no longer works, that the chauvinist pig has been put in his place. But then again, they say Trump could run in 2024.

Julie Willett is a professor of history at Texas Tech University and author of The Male Chauvinist Pig: A History.

Mother Jones Magazine   November-December 2021 Issue

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A piece of history that, perhaps should be revived, given the current assault on women’s rights.

Stephanie Ortoleva is an accomplished human rights lawyer and prominent feminist leader, scholar and activist, and herself a woman with a disability, who established Women Enabled International (WEI), in 2012 the first and still only international organization dedicated to advancing human rights at the intersection of gender and disability.

Prior to founding WEI in 2012, Stephanie served as an attorney and human rights officer at the U.S. Department of State, where she was honored with the prestigious Franklin Award in 2009 in recognition of her outstanding achievements. Additional awards for her prolific contributions to civil rights and social justice include Hofstra University School of Law ‘Outstanding Women in Law’ awardee in 2017, and Women’s E-News recognition in 2016 as a leader for women’s rights for the 21st Century.

Stephanie is the former founding Co-Chair of the American Society of International Law’s International Disability Rights Interest Group, served on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Disability Rights, is a member of the Board of Directors of Disability Rights International and the U.S. International Council on Disability. She graduated from Hofstra University School of Law with outstanding honors.

Her ground-breaking research and writings framed the core intersectional human rights issues that define WEI’s ongoing work and have influenced scholars and activists around the world to explore gender and disability and related intersections. Those prominent papers addressed issues such as violence against women with disabilities, access to justice, women with disabilities in conflict and humanitarian settings and peacebuilding processes.

The following is the introduction to an interview of Ortoleva by Mekiya Walters for ABILITY Magazine.  The interview is well worth reading. See for yourself at   https://abilitymagazine.com/stephanie-ortoleva/

With a resume spanning decades, Stephanie Ortoleva, Esq. has founded, headed or sat on the boards of more groups and organizations than one could hope to shake the proverbial stick at. A civil rights attorney and scholar by training, she served in the US Department of State from 2004 to 2009 as a Human Rights Officer and as the Disability Coordinator. During that time, she represented the US government at the negotiations of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), worked in partnership with the UN and the Organization of American States, and advanced the participation of women and persons with disabilities in areas including peace-building and post-conflict resolution, economic development, violence prevention, environmental preservation and fighting infectious disease. In 2009, she received the prestigious Franklin Award for her work on human rights and was the State Department’s featured employee for Women’s History Month. And yet, as far as Stephanie was concerned, she was only getting started. Frustrated by the absence of intersectional initiatives for women with disabilities, she founded her own organization.  Women Enabled International (WEI), incorporated in 2011, partners with grassroots organizations around the world to provide support and resources to women with disabilities and arm them with international expertise and legal tools. After serving for 10 years as WEI’s executive director and heading up projects around the globe, in 2021 Stephanie decided the time had come to pass the torch to the next generation.  ABILITY Magazine’s Mekiya Walters spoke with her about making the world a little bit better for women with disabilities than it was the day before.

stephanieortoleva.com

CLAUDIA L. GORDON  (1972 - )

Claudia Gordon is Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) in the Department of Labor. Her responsibility: to ensure that contractors doing business with the Federal government don’t discriminate on the basis of color, gender, religion or nonbelief, age, race, ethnic background, national origin, disability, or veteran’s status, and so forth.

She personally experienced the worst sort of discrimination during her early years, but also had a strong foundation of love and support that enabled her to withstand it. She was born in rural Jamaica. Her mother, who had only an eighth-grade education, worked as a domestic servant and laundress to support her three children. She immigrated to the South Bronx so she could earn a better living, and planned to reunite with the children as soon as she could. They were left in the capable care of her eldest sister, Mildred Taylor, a schoolteacher.

When Claudia was 8, she suddenly developed severe pain in her middle ears—possibly otitis media. Mildred took her to a small clinic; there were no hospitals nearby, and, in the clinic, no doctor on duty. The nurse on duty couldn’t figure out what was wrong, only that Claudia was going deaf. Otitis media is treated with antibiotics for the infection and analgesics for the pain. She didn’t receive any treatment.

As she later told a reporter, “My life changed overnight.” Although she had been “the brightest and most outgoing kid in my class,” she was pulled out of school, lost her friends, stayed home, and became an object of ridicule.“I thought I was the only deaf person in the world.” In Jamaica, deaf and disabled persons are stigmatized. Gordon recalls that a deaf woman who lived in the area was called “dummy,” and that the children threw stones at her. Later, she recognized that “the life of this woman . . . almost became my own but for my mother’s triumph in successfully bringing me to America by the time I was 11 years old.”

Freer a frustrating start in public school, she was transferred to Lexington School for the Deaf, learned sign language, participated in sports, and became a top student—valedictorian of her junior-high and senior-high classes. By the time she reached her junior year in high school, she knew that she wanted to become a lawyer. She was strong enough to shrug off those who doubted that she could do it, or considered it an impossible goal.

She earned a degree in Political Science at Howard University, and studied disability-rights law and policy at American University’s Washington College of Law. When she graduated in 2000, she became the first known deaf African-American woman to earn a Juris Doctor (law degree).

She then won a Skadden Fellowship (which has been described as the “legal Peace Corps”) for 2000-2002, and worked as a staff attorney at the NAD Law and Advocacy Center and a consulting attorney with the National Council on Disability. Working with impoverished and minority deaf people, she became intrigued by the prospect of working in a Federal office. Passing legislation to safeguard the rights of disabled persons was one thing. Implementing these laws was a different challenge entirely. She wanted to have direct involvement in the enforcement of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the American with Disabilities Act of 1990, combating “the blatant discrimination that people with disabilities continue to face.”

Gordon has been actively involved with the National Black Deaf Advocates. She was Miss Black Deaf America in 1990, and NBDA Vice President from 2002 to 2005.

She participated in the Ralph Lauren Polo Jeans G.I.V.E. (“Get Involved, Volunteer, Exceed”) ad campaign promoting volunteerism, launched in 2003. She was featured on posters in malls across the country, including one opposite Macy’s on 34th Street in Manhattan, making an ILY sign, beaming, confident, and beautiful. The NBDA was a beneficiary of this campaign.

In 2004, she became Senior Policy Advisor for the Department of Homeland Security, Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. She assisted in the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities in Emergency Preparedness, monitoring how Federal agencies worked together to ensure that deaf and disabled persons were included in emergency-preparedness plans.

The Obama Administration appointed her to her current post at the OFCCP. Even though “it’s not as well-known as its sister agencies like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, OFCCP has powerful investigative and regulatory authorities for protecting workers, promoting diversity, and enforcing the law.” She enjoys the challenges of working with OFCCP Director Patricia Shiu, her colleagues, and a nationwide staff of “nearly 750 dedicated public servants.” She doesn’t have much of a personal life, but does credit the love and support she’s received from her family.

“I am motivated by knowing that although progress is being made towards inclusion and access, there is still a great deal more work to be done.”

February 9, 2022 Independence Now

Official Federal Photograph of Claudia Gordon

Information for this post was collected by Independence Now Board Member, Sandra Sermons, and originally appeared on www.DeafPeople.com, a site that “celebrates the achievements of deaf people in history, and those who are still active in their careers.” Each month, they highlight a contemporary newsmaker.

SENATOR TAMMY DUCKWORTH  (1968 - )

Serving as the junior U.S. Senator from Illinois since 2017, Tammy Duckworth has made a name for herself with a number of firsts: She was the first female helicopter pilot to lead a combat mission and the first female double amputee of the Iraq war.  The first Thai-American woman and the first woman with a disability elected to Congress, she was also the first U.S. Senator to give birth while in office.  She is currently running for reelection.

Lada Tammy Duckworth was born in Bangkok, Thailand, March 12, 1968, the daughter of Franklin Duckworth and Lamai Sompornpairin.   Although born outside the United States, Duckworth is a natural-born citizen because her father was an American citizen.  Her father, who died in 2005, was a veteran of the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps who traced his family's American roots to the American Revolutionary War.   Her mother is Thai Chinese and originally from Chiang Mai. Because her father worked with the United Nations and international companies in refugee, housing, and development programs, the family moved around Southeast Asia.  As a result Duckworth became fluent in Thai and Indonesian, in addition to English.

Duckworth attended Singapore American School, the International School Bangkok, and the Jakarta International School.  When Duckworth was 16, the family moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, where she attended Honolulu's McKinley High School, and participated in track and field, graduating in 1985.  She was a Girl Scout, and earned her First Class, now called the Gold Award.

In 1989 she graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa with a Bachelor of Arts in political science.  In 1992, she received a Master of Arts in international affairs from George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. She began a PhD program at Northern Illinois University, which was interrupted by her war service   She completed a PhD in human services at Capella University in March 2015

Duckworth joined the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps  in 1990 as a graduate student at George Washington University.   She became a commissioned officer in the United States Army Reserve in 1992 and chose to fly helicopters because it was one of the few combat jobs open to women at that time.   As a member of the Army Reserve, she went to flight school, later transferring to the Army National Guard and in 1996 entering the Illinois Army National Guard Duckworth also worked as a staff supervisor at Rotary International headquarters in Evanston, Illinois and was the coordinator of the Center for Nursing Research at Northern Illinois University.

She was deployed to Iraq in 2004.  She lost her right leg near the hip and her left leg below the knee from injuries sustained on November 12, 2004, when the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter she was co-piloting was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents.  The explosion severely broke her right arm and tore tissue from it, necessitating major surgery to repair it.

Duckworth received a Purple Heart on December 3 and was promoted to Major on December 21 at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where she was presented with an Air Medal and Army Commendation Medal.  She retired from the Illinois Army National Guard in October 2014 as a lieutenant colonel.

On November 21, 2006, several weeks after losing her first congressional campaign, Duckworth was appointed director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs by Governor Rod Blagojevich. She served in that position until February 8, 2009. While director, she was credited with starting a program to help veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and veterans with brain injuries.

On February 3, 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Duckworth to be the Assistant Secretary of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the United States Senate confirmed her for the position on April 22.   As Assistant Secretary, she coordinated a joint initiative with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help end Veteran homelessness, worked to address the unique challenges faced by female as well as Native American Veterans and created the Office of Online Communications to improve the VA's accessibility, especially among young Veterans.   Duckworth resigned her position in June 2011 in order to launch her campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives in Illinois's 8th congressional district.

Duckworth was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016 after representing Illinois’s Eighth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives for two terms.

Duckworth has been married to Bryan Bowlsbey since 1993 They met during Duckworth's participation in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps and later served together in the Illinois Army National Guard. Bowlsbey, a Signal Corps officer, is also a veteran of the Iraq War and is now retired from the armed forces.  Senator Duckworth and her husband are the proud parents of two daughters, Abigail and Maile.

Editors Note:  REELECT SENATOR TAMMY DUCKWORTH

If supposedly corporations are suffering from inflation the same way all of us are, why then are they getting richer by the minute?