Intents AND purposes? Purposes are not intensive.

I am very surprised that William and no one else on this board reacted to this as blatant, raw sexism.

Ok, I’ll just make this one last comment and excuse myself because the atmosphere is getting rather toxic and Cara doesn’t need me to defend her.

Joni, allow me to be perfectly clear. I wasn’t accusing Cara of sexism or reacting to what I perceived as sexism. I attempted to use my own experience to highlight why your husband might be facing criticism. The idea was that perhaps he ought to think about what he was doing, as a privileged member of the dominant group, to garner the criticism coming his way. The comments he has made, as well as a great many comments in your posts, sound to me a lot like the kinds of things I said early in my development when I was trying to excuse my own fuck ups. I thought that was pretty clear, apparently it wasn’t. I thank your husband for his contributions, he seems to have good manifest intentions (although I still questions some of his assumptions and unconscious motives), and perhaps he is even a very good man (I don’t know him so I can’t make that call). At the same time -now please try to manage the ambiguity with me for a second- at the same time both he and you seem to say and do things which strike others as obnoxious. That doesn’t negate what you’ve done, but it isn’t kicking you out of the club (as if there was a monolithic feminism) for someone to reflect their emotional reaction.

I’ll omitt any potential cookies in this post.

I do take great offense to your saying that I am somehow silencing dissent. The remarks made by people on this board are based on assumptions, projection and gross generalizations not backed up with documentation. By my challenging that I don’t see how you interpret it as silencing dissent but ok.

No one seemed to question Cara to any great extent which led to my feeling I needed to say my piece as you have pointed out does no harm on this board.

The very fact that Cara said she had not heard of Bill says a lot. I have no doubt in my mind after 11 years of perusing our extensive archives, that he was deliberately and intentionally written out of history by feminists (the first wave moreso). Had he been a woman, he would have been hailed as a great heroin (I can hear the brains ticking – “see see he wants to be idolized!”)

First Cara said: “Throughout all of it he was refused the help of reproductive rights organizations, and publicly mocked and condemned not only by them but by prominent feminists such as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem.” Yet these are the same groups and people she later admonishes Bill for not asking “WW GD – What would Gloria Do?”

She also says that Bill is “in a word, eccentric” and calls him “outlandish” but doesn’t say why she thinks that as though just her assertion should be enough to make this character assassination.

Cara also seemed annoyed about the “34-page packets of news clippings” These became necessary because at past speeches he was challenged on his statements and now he documents what he says – (in fact Cara referred to those documents in her post to document what she wrote. It seems she feels its ok for her to utilize them in such a way but not Bill.)

She stated that the opposition Bill faced from his allies was wrong and understood why he is angry but then seemed to go in reverse.

Cara expressed distress that Bill asked the audience how they would feel having the threat of rape nightly but has no sensitivity about stating, “Baird thinks that his penis is the reason that he was kept out of the movement…”

And William you seemed to have been speaking expressly to me to keep an open mind however Cara wrote, “Of course, anyone who starts railing about sexism against men and “equalism” instantly gets on my bad side. As I said, the more he went on, the less there was to like.” Sounds like a wall that flew up instantly to me.

What confused me is that she then wrote, “This is the case even though I don’t doubt that it’s at least partially true that his maleness kept him out of the movement’s good graces.” Maybe I’m taking crazy pills but that sounds like bigotry to me.

What are the other (majority) parts? Well, that’s where it starts to get interesting.

Cara wrote, “According to the articles provided, many think that Baird’s seeming extremism made feminists wary that he was an interloper attempting to make their cause look ridiculous (Betty Friedan insinuated that he was a C.I.A. agent). ”

Betty Friedan founded NARAL with Bill, Lonny Myers and others. She knew Bill very well and knew that he began the pro choice movement in 1963. She called him a CIA agent in order to invalidate him and she continued to do so up until her death and in her book Life So Far. Feminist back during the formation of NOW were pretty extreme themselves so I don’t think anything Bill did even compared. Flo Kennedy picketed once with a large picket sign that looked like a telephone dial that said “Dail a F***” Perhaps to Planned Parenthood he was not board room straight enough but Bill did nothing outlandish at all. His “tactics” were picketing, media and lecturing to challenge laws. He was however very much against reform of abortion laws and for total repeal.

Cara also erroneously states that Bill saw himself as a “one man show” not consulting with women doing the same thing he was. The entire reason why Bill gave up his extremely lucrative career in the pharmaceutical field was because there was no one doing anything at that time. No women were challenging anti-birth control and abortion laws at all in 1963. Who should he have consulted? That’s why they call people like that pioneers. There was no NOW or NARAL. Once there was he had many allies in those organizations who were women. And when Cara said he didn’t work with women of color – that is not true either. It’s important to document what you say. That is why I’m responding to this board. Flo Kennedy, attorney for the Black Panthers, was a very close friend of Bills up until her death.

And the truth – I know it’s not popular here with regards to this issue – is that Bill DID want to sit at the table with feminist – they rejected HIM – not the other way around.

The women who worked with Bill at his clinic and those in the movement who had clinics and worked with Bill all respected him very much. I’ve never met anyone so open to suggestions and who doesn’t come off as a boss but a co-worker. For years he would say to people at speeches – Don’t stand behind me stand beside me – in his way encouraging that all of us need to lead.

Cara wrote, “In short, his tone when discussing these issues struck me as arrogant.”
Lest I silence dissent, I feel this is a projection.

Cara also wrote, “And he struck me as clueless about how feminism should be a women’s movement. ”

I am very surprised that William and no one else on this board reacted to this as blatant, raw sexism. But it seems Cara is “clueless” and so is everyone else. And please all you men out there – please don’t think this is representative of how all women feel because it isn’t. Just like I don’t feel that women should not become physicians and perform vasectomies.

Based on the standing ovation Bill received at the Rochester speech and the thousands he has gotten for four decades, I think most women would agree with me.

She took yet another smack at Bill stating “there is a problem” when “men start wanting the spotlight and all the credit.” Sounds like that bible quote, “Women be silent obey thy man” in reverse. Can’t we all share credit? Isn’t there room at the table for all of us to have validation or is that something only women need?

She wrote, “Baird expressed absolutely no appreciation for the work of women before him or after him.” Bill had 45 minutes to speak and based on that Cara made a blanket statement about whether or not he appreciates other feminists. That is her perception based on one speech. As I said before perception is not the truth.

Bill is not looking for credit for the entire reproductive rights movement. But because he is a stickler for documenting the truth, he resents the revisionism of his work. A feminist author, Prof. Sylvia Bashevkin, wrote in her book Women On The Defensive that it wasn’t Bill who challenged the law in Baird v. Eisenstadt it was Planned Parenthood. Feminist have omitted him from history books as if he never existed. There is a lot of skullduggery that many honest feminists are now trying to correct. These examples are too numerous to list.

Cara wrote, “Baird said at one point during the evening that “you may not like how I did it but I did it the only way I knew how and as effectively as I could.” And I thought: “did you ever once think to ask those already doing this work how you could have been most effective?”

I think three U.S. Supreme Court victories is pretty effective. I think risking life and limb for over 40 years and providing free medical care to the poor etc. etc. etc. is pretty effective. And I refuse to think that these feminists that Cara feels were ignored by Bill are victims.

In fact, Marcia Pappas the New York State President of NOW and others have compared Bill to Margaret Sanger, Susan B. Anthony and Dr. Martin Luther King. Newsday listed him as one of the 100 most influential people in the past 100 years. So his legacy is beyond reproach. This is will soon aired on the History Channel as was done on VH1 and Sundance Channel last year.

I am responding to this thread of posts because I have no doubt that if Cara and others were accused of something that wasn’t true they would do the same. It is their right to do so and my right to counter what I deem as sexism as I continue to do if women are discriminated against too.