1. Dr. Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, New York: Bantam Books, 1982, pp. 9–10.
2. Judith Briles, The Confidence Factor: How Self-Esteem Can Change Your Life, New York: MasterMedia Limited, 1990, p. 199. A compilation of a nationwide survey completed in 1988.
3. The Current Digest of the Soviet Press, volume XLI, number 8, 1989, pp. 5 and 24.
4. “Estonia,” produced by William McClure, 60 Minutes, New York: CBS News, August 6, 1989, p. 11.
5. Speech by Gabriela Bocec, vice president of the newly formed Family Planning Association of Romania, for Voters for Choice, Los Angeles, August 7, 1990.
6. For instance, when college students were divided into two groups labeled “alphas” and “betas,” individuals with high self-esteem rated the other group and their own more highly than low self-esteem participants, who had a negative view of both. For a report on this experiment by Jennifer Crocker from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Ian Schwartz, a student at Northwestern University, see “Effects of Self-Esteem on Prejudice and Ingroup Favoritism in a Minimal Intergroup Situation,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, volume XI, number 4, 1985.
1. The 1971–72 Virginia Slims Poll, the first national survey of women’s opinions on women’s issues. Designed by Carolyn Setlow, Louis Harris and Associates, 630 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York.
2. Ryszard Kapuscinski, “Revolution,” translated from the Polish by William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mcoczkowska-Brand, The New Yorker, March 4 and March 11, 1985.
3. For a summary of Task Force research, see The Social Importance of Self-Esteem, Andrew M. Mecca, Neil J. Smelser, and John Vasconcellos, editors, Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1989.
For ongoing activities and conferences nationwide, contact the private group that took over from the Task Force: National Council for Self-Esteem, P.O. Box 277877, Sacramento, California, 95827-7877, (916) 455-6273.
4. This quote, and those from the Upanishads, are from A Source Book in Indian Philosophy, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore, editors, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1957, pp. 38 and 45.
5. Gloria Steinem, Marilyn: Norma Jeane, New York: Henry Holt, 1986.
6. W. Hugh Missildine, Your Inner Child of the Past, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963, pp. 222 and 224.
7. Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich, Transforming Knowledge, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990, pp. 37–38.
8. Marilyn Murphy, Are You Girls Travelling Alone?, Los Angeles: Clothespin Fever Press, 1991, p. 20. For her current columns, write to The Lesbian News, P.O. Box 1430, Twenty-nine Palms, California 92277.
9. For Gandhi’s quotations and descriptions of his life though 1921, see An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth by M. K. Gandhi, translated from the Gujarati by Mahadev Desai, Ahmedabad, India: Navajivan Publishing House, 1982.
For later references, see Gandhi the Man by Eknath Easwaran, Petaluma, California: Nilgiri Press, 1983; and Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World by Louis Fischer, New York: A Signet Key Book/New American Library, 1954.
References to the Indian Women’s Movement are from interviews with Devaki Jain, Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi, India, March 1978.
10. For a full story of SEWA, see Where Women Are Leaders: The SEWA Movement in India, Kalima Rose, Beverly Hills, New Delhi, London: Sage Publications, 1991.
For information on women’s economic empowerment projects in the United States, contact the Ms. Foundation for Women, 141 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010.
11. Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, New York: Random House, 1989, p. 124.
1. Those usually pointed to are tribal and indigenous cultures. For instance, Paul Shepard points out in Nature and Madness, “There have been and are societies in which a demonstrable affection for children is manifest in loving concern and a benign strategy of appropriate, age-grade care that fosters growth toward maturity and the capacity for wisdom and mentorship. Some examples are the Manus of New Guinea, the Crow and Comanche of North America, the Aranda of Australia, and the !Kung San of Africa.” (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1982, p. xii.) But of course, there are also many such examples within modern industrial societies; they are just not yet strong or numerous enough to be the mainstream.
2. Narcissism is generally defined as an inability to know one’s own emotions or to empathize with those of others, grandiosity, an equation of oneself with the world and vice versa, intense ambition, conscious or unconscious exploitation of others, and an excessive need to be admired—all covers for an inner emptiness and terror of abandonment due to the underdevelopment of a true self. The narcissist greets losses with anger instead of sadness, for anger puts one in the right, and sadness or depression would be an admission of vulnerability. Because such behavior is culturally more masculine, it’s assumed that this personality disorder is more common among men, though the reluctance of the narcissist to seek or remain in treatment means there are no reliable statistics. For a general discussion, see James F. Masterson, The Search for the Real Self, New York: The Free Press/Macmillan, 1988. For its societal expression, see Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism, New York: W. W. Norton, 1979. For its historical construction as male dominance, see Marilyn French, Beyond Power: On Women, Men, and Morals, chapter 2, New York: Summit Books, 1985.
3. In the United States and in most Western societies, twice as many women as men report major depressive symptoms and are diagnosed with depression. See studies and analysis in Silencing the Self: Women and Depression by Dana Crowley Jack, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991.
4. D. W. Winnicott, “Ego Integration in Child Development,” The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, New York: International Universities Press, 1962, pp. 56–63.
5. Quoted in The Self-Respecting Child by Alison Stallibrass, London: Thames and Hudson, 1977, p. 201.
6. Linda T. Sanford, Strong at the Broken Places, New York: Random House, 1990, p. 14.
7. For the first in-depth study of randomly selected women, see Diana E. H. Russell, The Secret Trauma: Incest in the Lives of Girls and Women, New York: Basic Books, 1986.
8. Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Childrearing and the Roots of Violence, New York: The Noonday Press, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990, pp. 59–60.
9. Gloria Steinem, “If Hitler Were Alive, Whose Side Would He Be On?” Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, pp. 305–326.
10. Miller, For Your Own Good, p. 142.
11. Ibid., pp. 160–161.
12. Ibid., p. 168.
13. Ibid., p. 156.
14. Peter Z. Malkin and Harry Stein, Eichmann in My Hands, New York: Warner Books, 1990, pp. 206–207.
15. For two studies showing children’s charges to be fabricated in less than 2 and 4 percent of cases, see By Silence Betrayed: Sexual Abuse of Children in America, by John Crewdson, Boston: Little, Brown, 1988, p. 169. For an analysis of specific child abuse cases, see “Child Sexual Abuse: An Analysis of Case Processing,” March 27, 1987, Criminal Justice Section, American Bar Association, 1800 M Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
16. Sylvia Fraser, My Father’s House: A Memoir of Incest and of Healing, New York: Perennial Library, 1987, p. 12.
17. W. Hugh Missildine, M. D., Your Inner Child of the Past, New York: Pocket Books, p. 67.
18. Sanford, Strong at the Broken Places, pp. 9–10.
19. Carol Gilligan, Nona P. Lyons, and Trudy J. Hanmer, editors, Making Connections: The Relational Worlds of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990, pp. 2–5. For information on programs based on the insights of Gilligan’s research and aimed at strengthening healthy rebellion in little girls, contact the National Girls Initiative, Ms. Foundation for Women, 141 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010.
20. Carolyn Heilbrun, Writing a Woman’s Life, New York: Ballantine Books, 1989, p. 130.
21. Bryan E. Robinson, Work Addiction, Deerfield Beach, Florida: Health Communications, 1989, pp. 1–21.
22. Carol Burnett, A Memoir: One More Time, New York: Avon Books, 1987.
23. National Foundation for the Children of Alcoholics, 555 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022.
24. For the problems of families and family policy in the United States—and what to do about them—see Family Politics: Love and Power on an Intimate Frontier by Letty Cottin Pogrebin, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983.
25. For more information, write Cherokee Nations Communications, P.O. Box 948, Tahlequah, Oklahoma 74465.
26. Alice Miller, Pictures of a Childhood: Sixty-six Watercolors and an Essay, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986, pp. 4–5.
27. Ibid., p. 11.
28. Ibid., p. 5.
29. Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth, New York: Dutton, 1991, pp. 9–12.
30. J. Konrad Stettbacher, Making Sense of Suffering: The Healing Confrontation with Your Own Past, New York: Dutton, 1991.
31. Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child, New York: Basic Books, 1987, new preface, pp. vii–viii.
1. An interview with Joan Erikson, wife of the psychologist Erik Erikson, New York Times, June 14, 1988. If her name is not as familiar as his, that’s part of the problem of education. For more than forty years, she has been coauthor and editor of his many books on psychology and the human life cycle. Wisdom, she explained, is “not what comes from reading great books. When it comes to understanding life, experiential learning is the only worthwhile kind; everything else is hearsay.”
2. “College Reunion,” Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983, pp. 119–128.
3. Reported in “If Only We Had Learned Differently: The Impact of Formal Schooling,” Linda T. Sanford and Mary Ellen Donovan, Women and Self-Esteem, New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1984, pp. 177–196.
4. Reported by Sharon E. Epperson, “Studies Link Subtle Sex Bias in Schools With Women’s Behavior in the Workplace,” Wall Street Journal, September 16, 1988, p. 19.
5. Myra Pollack Sadker and David Miller Sadker, Beyond Pictures and Pronouns: Sexism in Teacher Education Textbooks, U.S. Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare, Office of Education, Women’s Educational Equity Act Program, 1980, p. 25.
6. Sadker and Sadker, “Sexism in the Schoolroom of the 80’s,” Psychology Today, March 1985, p. 54.
7. United Press International, “Study of Black Females Cites Role of Praise,” New York Times, June 25, 1985.
8. “Short-changing Girls, Short-changing America,” American Association of University Women, 1111 16th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
9. Herbert Kohl, I Won’t Learn from You! The Role of Assent in Learning, Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, Thistle Series, 1991, p. 25.
10. Carol Gilligan, Nona P. Lyons, and Trudy J. Hanmer, Making Connections: The Relational Worlds of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990.
11. From press release for AAUW’s “Short-changing Girls, Shortchanging America.”
12. Marcia C. Linn, Tina De Benedictis, Kevin Delucchi, Abigail Harris, and Elizabeth Stage, “Gender Differences in National Assessment of Educational Progress Science Items: What Does ‘I Don’t Know’ Really Mean?” Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, vol. 24, no. 3, 1987, pp. 267–278.
13. John D. Miller and Robert Suchner, “Longitudinal Study of American Youth,” cited in The SAT Gender Gap: Identifying the Causes by Phyllis Rosser, Washington, D.C: Center for Women Policy Studies, April 1989, p. 64.
14. Bernice Sandler, “The Classroom Climate: A Chilly One for Women?,” a 1982 report of the Project on the Status and Education of Women, Association of American Colleges, 1818 R Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009. To receive “About Women on Campus,” a newsletter by Bernice Sandler begun in the fall of 1991 to cover issues of higher education for women, contact Bernice Sandler, Center for Women Policy Studies, 2000 P Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
15. Alexander W. Astin, Four Critical Years, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1988, pp. 232–233.
For additional studies, contact the Women’s College Coalition, 1090 Vermont Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005.
16. Mary Conroy, “Where Have All the Smart Girls Gone?” Psychology Today, April 1989, p. 20.
17. Astin, Four Critical Years, p. 216. See also pp. 213–233.
18. Karen D. Arnold, “Values and Vocations: The Career Aspirations of Academically Gifted Females in the First Five Years After High School,” College of Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1987, p. 5.
19. Karen D. Arnold and Terry Denny, “The Lives of Academic Achievers,” Bureau of Educational Research, College of Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1985, p. 16.
20. Arnold, “Values and Vocations,” pp. 94–95.
21. Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986, p. 225. This is volume I of a two-volume history of Western Civilization.
22. Carter G. Woodson, Miseducation of the Negro, Washington D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1933, pp. xiii, 5, 38. The use of man may have been Carter’s own unconscious evidence of miseducation, since many African cultures and languages are more inclusive of women than are European ones.
23. E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie, New York: Collier Books, 1962, p. 112.
24. Lerner, Creation, p. 3.
25. Reported by Jawanza Kunjufu, Developing Positive Self-Images and Discipline in Black Children, Chicago: African-American Images, 1984, p. 9.
26. Quoted by Carol Steinberg, “How ‘Magic Circles’ Build Self-Esteem,” New York Times, February 18, 1990.
27. L. Perry Curtis, Jr., Apes and Angels, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1971. (With thanks to its editor, my cousin Louise Heskett.)
28. Sigmund Freud, “Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction Between the Sexes” (1925), Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, James Strachey, translator and editor, London: Hogarth Press, 1961, XIX, pp. 257–258.
29. See Margaret Murray, God of the Witches, London: Oxford University Press, 1970; Margaret Murray, Witch Cults in Western Europe, London: Oxford University Press, 1962; C. L’Estrange Ewan, Witch Hunting and Witch Trials, London: Kegan Paul, 1929; Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, Malleus Malificarum, New York: Dover, 1971. Also see works by Gerald Gardner, Pennthorne Hughes, Robin Morgan.
30. Ruth Bleier, Science and Gender, New York: Pergamon Press, 1984, pp. 48–50.
31. Ibid., p. 49.
32. Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, New York: W. W. Norton, 1981, p. 104.
33. Elizabeth Fee, “Nineteenth-Century Craniology: The Study of the Female Skull,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, The American Association for the History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins Institute for the History of Medicine, volume 53, number 3, Fall 1979, pp. 430–431. Fee’s careful analysis and research of quotes from the day make clear that these scientists were often well aware of and responding to arguments for equality.
34. Tom Wicker, “An Elusive Dream,” New York Times, November 10, 1989.
35. “Stalin’s Brain,” New York Times, September 16, 1991.
36. Gould, Mismeasure of Man, p. 28.
37. Quoted by Stephanie A. Shields, “The Variability Hypothesis: The History of a Biological Model of Sex Differences in Intelligence,” Sex and Scientific Inquiry, Sandra Harding and Jean F. Barr, editors, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987, p. 191.
38. C. A. Dwyer, “The Role of Tests and Their Construction in Producing Apparent Sex-Related Differences,” Sex-Related Differences in Cognitive Functioning, Wittig and Petersen, editors, New York: Academic Press, 1971, p. 342.
39. Marilyn French, Beyond Power, New York: Summit Books, 1985, p. 385.
40. Gould, Mismeasure of Man, p. 233.
41. New York Times, February 4, 1989. See Rosser (note 13) appendix I, for the complete court ruling.
42. For one state’s experiment, see Karen De Witt, “Vermont Gauges Learning by What’s in Portfolio,” New York Times, April 24, 1991.
43. Rosser, SAT Gender Gap, p. 36.
44. Interview, David White, September 9, 1991.
45. Robert Williams, Black Pride, Academic Relevance and Individual Achievement, St. Louis: Robert Williams and Associates, undated, pp. 2–3.
46. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, New York: Oxford University Press, 1976, p. 158; Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1978, p. 125; W. D. Hamilton, Biosocial Anthropology, New York: John Wiley, 1975, p. 134; Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox, The Imperial Animal, New York: Holt, 1989, p. 21.
47. Natalie Angier, “The Biology of What It Means to Be Gay,” New York Times, September 7, 1991.
48. Rita Arditti, “Feminism and Science,” Science and Liberation, Rita Arditti, Pat Brennan, and Steve Caviak, editors, Boston: South End Press, 1979, pp. 366–367.
1. See the findings of the Pioneer Health Center in Peckham, England, a family research group that became internationally known in the 1930s and ’40s, and personal observations from two decades of running an experimental playgroup, by Alison Stallibrass, in The Self-Respecting Child, New York: Warner Books, 1979.
2. Marilyn French, Beyond Power, New York: Summit Books, 1985, p. 498.
3. René Dubos, The Dreams of Reason: Science and Utopias, New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 116.
4. Alix Kates Shulman, Red Emma Speaks: Selected Writings and Speeches of Emma Goldman, New York: Random House, 1972, p. 133.
5. Michael Murphy and Steven Donovan, The Physical and Physiological Effects of Meditation, Big Sur, California: The Esalen Institute, 1989. Their massive survey is skewed toward “beginner’s experiences,” since they are more often studied. As Murphy says, it “maps the foothills of meditation, with a few glances at the peaks.”
6. Nancy J. Napier, Recreating Your Self: Help for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families, New York: W. W. Norton, 1990, p. 139.
7. John Bradshaw, an “adult child” of an alcoholic father, developed these techniques in his own life and now teaches them widely. His television series for the Public Broadcast System are available by writing Bradshaw Cassettes, P.O. Box 980547, Houston, Texas 77098. It is also in book form as Bradshaw On: The Family, A Revolutionary Way of Self-Discovery, Deerfield Beach, Florida: Health Communications, 1988. Also see John Bradshaw, Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child, New York: Bantam Books, 1990.
8. Louise De Salvo, Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work, New York: Ballantine Books, 1989.
9. From interviews with Judy Collins, June 1991. For one of her watercolors, see the cover of her album “Sanity and Grace,” Gold Castle Records, 1987.
10. See African Canvas: The Art of West African Women, photographs and text by Margaret Courtney-Clarke, foreword by Maya Angelou, New York: Rizzoli, 1990.
11. Lucy R. Lippard, Mixed Blessings: New Art in Multicultural America, New York: Pantheon Books, 1990.
12. David Feinstein and Peg Elliott Mayo, Rituals for Living and Dying: How We Can Turn Loss and the Fear of Death into an Affirmation of Life, San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1990.
13. Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit: African & African-American Art & Philosophy, New York: Random House, 1983; Vintage Books, 1984.
14. For an overview of such studies and his experiences, see Norman Cousins, Head First: The Biology of Hope, New York: Dutton, 1989.
15. For information, write Paul Winter, Earth Music, P.O. Box 68, Litchfield, Connecticut 06759.
16. For information, send a $5 mailing fee to: UCAN Confidence Clinic, 308 S.E. Jackson Street, Roseburg, Oregon 97470. The clinic also needs funds for programs that government funds will not support. Contributions are tax deductible.
17. As a result of visiting the Cherokee Nation in 1885, Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts wrote: “There was not a pauper in that nation, and the nation did not owe a dollar … the defect of their system was apparent. They have got as far as they can go, because they own their land in common … there is no enterprise to make your home any better than your neighbors. There is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilization.” (Quoted in Mankiller: An Autobiography by Wilma P. Mankiller with Robert J. Conley, unpublished manuscript.) For the Cherokee Nation’s path back to the autonomy Dawes described, see “Leaders as Guides of Return” in chapter 2.
18. Letty Cottin Pogrebin, “Anti-Semitism in the Women’s Movement,” Ms., June 1982. Reprinted in Deborah, Golda, and Me by Letty Cottin Pogrebin, New York: Crown Publishers, 1991, pp. 208–209.
19. To value the work of production, human maintenance, and reproduction done by women, and to value the environment, see a recommendation on restructuring the National System of Accounts in Marilyn Waring, If Women Counted, New York: Harper & Row, 1989.
20. Alfie Kohn, No Contest: The Case Against Competition, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986, pp. 46–47, 99.
1. Dean Ornish, M.D., Program for Reversing Heart Disease, New York: Random House, 1990.
2. Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness, New York: Bantam Books, 1981, pp. 49–69; also Head First: The Biology of Hope, New York: Dutton, 1989, pp. 229–242. The force of physical response unleashed by belief is so strong that, even when a real medication is given, its logical effect can be reversed; for instance, a nausea-inducing drug can cure nausea.
3. Deepak Chopra, Quantum Healing: Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine, New York: Bantam Books, 1989, p. 33.
4. “Survey: Sex and Self-Esteem,” Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality, vol. 17, no. 5, May 1983, pp. 202–203. The key is choice: the survey also noted that some people are “intentionally and happily celibate.”
5. Laura Lederer, editor, Take Back the Night: Women on Pornography, New York: William Morrow, 1980.
For a compendium of studies on the impact of pornography, also see Franklin Mark Osanka and Sara Lee Johann, editors, Sourcebook on Pornography, Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1989.
6. Susan Saegert and Roger Hart, “The Development of Environmental Competence in Girls and Boys,” Michael A. Salter, editor, Play: Anthropological Perspectives, West Point, New York: Leisure Press, 1977, pp. 157–175.
7. Alison Stallibrass, The Self-Respecting Child, New York: Warner Books, 1979, p. 206.
8. Study by D. Laura Ann Petitto, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, reported by Natalie Angier, New York Times, March 22, 1991.
9. For the origin of this insight—and the sort of book women give each other as an inspiring gift—see Writing a Woman’s Life by Carolyn Heilbrun, New York: W. W. Norton, 1988.
10. “‘They respected what I said on the same level that they talked to their friends,’ said one gifted girl. ‘My parents always talked to me as if I were an adult,’ said another.” From a study of gifted children reported by Phyllis Rosser, “How to Help Your Gifted Daughter,” Gifted Children Newsletter, September 1990, p. 14. Also see Teresa M. Amabile, Growing Up Creative: Nurturing a Lifetime of Creativity, New York: Crown, 1989.
11. Jane Howard, Margaret Mead: A Life, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984, p. 22.
12. Jean Houston, “The Mind of Margaret Mead,” Quest, July/August 1977, p. 25.
13. Houston, “Consider the Stradivarius …,” Dromenon, 1977, p. 40.
14. Houston, “The Mind of Margaret Mead,” p. 24.
15. Ibid., p. 26.
16. Houston, “Consider the Stradivarius …,” p. 41.
17. In 1947, psychologists Kenneth B. and Mamie Clark conducted a classic study of black children ages three to seven in Massachusetts and Arkansas. Two thirds of them picked white dolls when given a choice of four, two black and two white. It was such poignant evidence of low self-esteem among black children that it was cited in the 1954 Supreme Court decision mandating school desegregation. Forty years later, however, a Connecticut study using Cabbage Patch dolls, identical except for color, produced the same sad result—65 percent of black children chose white dolls—as did another study in Trinidad. As one of these two later studies found, only when self-esteem was bolstered by praising children who selected the black doll was the preference for the white dolls reversed. See proceedings of the American Psychological Association meeting, New York City, 1987. Also reported in Time, September 14, 1987, p. 74.
18. Study in Pediatrics as reported in New York Times, February 11, 1988.
19. Cathy Meredig, a Minneapolis engineer, has created the Happy To Be Me doll, with realistic measurements, as an alternative fantasy/fashion doll. “I want to offer girls a healthier body image,” as she explained in August 1991 about her Self-Esteem Toy Corporation. At this writing, it’s too soon to know whether her entry can compete with the giant Mattel Corporation, which manufactures Barbie.
20. This insight is developed by Naomi Wolf in The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women, New York, William Morrow, 1991, p. 17.
21. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988, p. 3.
22. Wolf, The Beauty Myth, p. 182. Wolf’s anger at the ignoring of this problem that is destroying some of the most talented women of her generation has produced an effective chapter, “Hunger,” that anyone who doubts the seriousness of eating disorders should read; pp. 179–217.
23. Dr. Elizabeth Morgan, the Washington, D.C., plastic surgeon best known for having gone to jail rather than disclose her daughter’s whereabouts to a sexually abusing father, had previously done research showing that women addicted to multiple plastic surgeries were also often trying to punish their bodies for “attracting” incestuous abuse.
24. Gloria Steinem, “Men and Women Talking,” Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983, pp. 176–190.
25. For one account of the life of Stephen Biko and the messages of the Black Consciousness Movement, see Biko by Donald Woods, New York: Henry Holt, 1987.
26. Clitoridectomies and often infibulation—the removal of the entire clitoris and the labia, plus joining the scraped sides of the vulva so they grow together in a chastity belt of flesh that must be ripped open and resewn for every insemination and birth—are practiced in large areas of the Middle East, Africa, and some other parts of the world by some groups of Moslems, Coptic Christians, indigenous tribal religions, Catholics and Protestants, and Fellasha, an Ethiopian Jewish sect. In England and in the United States, clitoridectomies were sometimes performed as treatment for masturbation, sexual “deviance,” or prostitution. Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem, “The International Crime of Genital Mutilation,” Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, pp. 292–300.
27. R. Harding, “Gay Youth Six Times More Likely to Commit Suicide,” The Washington Blade, May 16, 1986, p. 1. For information on gay adolescents, both problems and helpful programs, contact The Hetrick-Martin Institute, 401 West Street, New York, New York 10014.
28. The highest medical estimate of males who need circumcision due to the tightness of the foreskin is 10 percent. No increased cleanliness has been proved, and there is considerable testimony that circumcision toughens the tip of the penis and reduces sexual pleasure. It seems to be largely a symbolic testimony of allegiance to a patriarchal god.
29. Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, New York: Viking Press, 1992. The first of two volumes.
30. Vincent Bozzi, “The Body in Question,” Psychology Today, February 1988, p. 10. (For the entire study, see the International Journal of Eating Disorders, vol. 6.)
31. Rita Freedman, Bodylove: Learning to Like Our Looks—and Ourselves, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, pp. 21–25.
32. Wolf, The Beauty Myth, p. 94.
33. Ibid., pp. 49 and 95.
34. Linda Tschirhart Sanford and Mary Ellen Donovan, Women and Self-Esteem, New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1984, pp. 370 and 369.
35. Freedman, Bodylove, pp. 168-169 and 241.
36. Elaine Hatfield and Susan Sprecher, Mirror, Mirror, New York: State University of New York Press, 1988.
37. “Self-Esteem,” The Lancet, October 22, 1988, p. 943.
38. Freedman, Bodylove, pp. 28–29.
39Vogue, August 1988, p. 250.
40. Freedman, Bodylove, p. 82; Wolf, The Beauty Myth, pp. 185–187.
41. With thanks to Carolyn Heilbrun who used this Márquez line in a more positive way when told she looked young: “No, not young, I am an older woman with pizazz, which is not the same thing.” “Naming a New Rite of Passage,” Smith Alumnae Quarterly, Summer 1991, p. 28.
42. Thomas D. Rees, M.D., Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, vol. II, Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1980, pp. 19–39.
43. Wolf, The Beauty Myth, p. 290.
44. John B. McKinlay and Sonja M. McKinlay, “Depression in Middle-Aged Women: Social Circumstances versus Estrogen Deficiency,” The Psychology of Women, Mary Walsh, editor, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987, pp. 158–159.
45. Bettyann Kevles, “Hot Flash,” Moxie, April 1990, pp. 26 and 118.
For Yewoubdar Beyenne’s research, see Menarche to Menopause: Reproductive Lives in Peasant Women of Two Cultures, New York: State University of New York Press, 1989.
46. Study conducted by James Pennebaker at Southern Methodist University, as reported in New Age Journal, July/August 1990, p. 32.
47. Robin Morgan, “Network of the Imaginary Mother,” Upstairs in the Garden, New York: W. W. Norton, 1990, p. 93.
1 G. D. Klingopulos, “The Novel as Dramatic Poem,” quoted in Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, New York: Random House, Modern Library Edition, 1978, p. xvii.
2. Royal A. Gettmann, “Introduction,” Wuthering Heights, p. ix.
3. Charlotte Brontë, “Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell,” Wuthering Heights, pp. xxv–xxvi.
4. Ibid., pp. xxv, xx, and xxiv–xxv.
5. Adrienne Rich, “Jane Eyre: The Temptations of a Motherless Woman,” On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, New York: W. W. Norton, 1979, p. 90.
6. “Survey: Sex and Self-Esteem,” Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality, volume 17, number 5, May 1983, pp. 197–211.
7. Helen Handley, editor, The Lovers’ Quotation Book, Wainscott, New York: Pushcart Press, 1986, p. 63.
8. Linda Sanford and Mary Ellen Donovan, Women and Self-Esteem, New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1984, p. 123.
9. Virginia Goldner, Peggy Penn, Marcia Sheinberg, Gillian Walker, “Love and Violence: Gender Paradoxes in Volatile Attachments,” Family Process, December 1990, volume 20, number 4, p. 343.
10. Handley, Lovers’ Quotation Book, p. 45.
11. Charlotte Davis Kasl, Women, Sex, and Addiction: A Search for Love and Power, New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1989, p. 130.
12. Frank Pittman, Private Lies, New York: W. W. Norton, 1989, p. 183.
13. Q. D. Leavis, “Introduction,” Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, London and New York: Penguin Books, 1966, p. 11.
14. Rich, “Jane Eyre,” p. 96.
15. Ibid.
16. For a critical look at measures of masculinity and androgyny, see Joseph Pleck, The Myth of Masculinity, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1983.
17. For conditions of creativity in our children and ourselves, see Teresa M. Amabile, Growing Up Creative: Nurturing a Lifetime of Creativity, New York: Crown, 1989.
18. For more about the case for and tradition of androgyny, see Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Toward a Recognition of Androgyny, New York: Harper Colophon Books, Harper & Row, 1974.
19. Barbara Risman, “Intimate Relationships from a Microstructural Perspective: Men Who Mother,” Gender and Society, vol. I, 1987, pp. 6–32.
20. Marilyn French, “Self-respect: A Female Perspective,” The Humanist, November/December 1986, p. 22.
21. Alice Walker, Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973, p. 66.
1. Marilyn French, Beyond Power, New York: Summit Books, 1985, p. 458.
2. Jean Liedloff, The Continuum Concept: Allowing Human Nature to Work Successfully, Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1991, pp. 4–8.
3. Interview with Vandana Shiva by Ann Spanel, “Indian Women and the Chipko Movement,” Woman of Power, Spring 1988, pp. 26–31. For direct information, write to: Chipko Information Center, P.O. Silyara via Ghansali, Tehri Garwhal, U.O. India 249 155.
4. Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses, New York: Random House, 1990, p. 255.
5. Ibid., p. 256.
6. From an 1854 speech given in Duwamish by Chief Seattle (also known as Chief Sealth) at an assembly of tribal nations in the Pacific Northwest and translated by Dr. Henry Smith in the style of the day. Writer Ted Perry reconstructed it from Smith’s notes in 1970, and it has been used with some modifications by Native American and environmental groups since then. For the original Smith notes, see W. C. Vanderwerth, Indian Oratory: Famous Speeches by Noted Indian Chieftains, New York: Ballantine Books, circa 1887, pp. 97–102. For Perry’s version, see John Seed et al., Thinking Like a Mountain, Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1988, pp. 68–73.
7. Ackerman, Natural History, p. 147.
8. Paul Delaney, “El Toro Fights Go On, But ‘Olés!’ Are Fewer,” New York Times, August 6, 1988.
9. Sam Keen, Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man, New York: Bantam Books, 1991, p. 139.
10. Beth W. McLeod, “Someone to Care For,” Christian Science Monitor, February 13, 1989.
11. “Loving Paws, Helping Hands,” New York Times, May 16, 1991.
12. McLeod, “Someone to Care For.”
13. Francine Patterson, “Conversations with a Gorilla,” National Geographic, October 1978, 154:438–65. To become a member of the Gorilla Foundation dedicated to the protection, preservation, and propagation of threatened and endangered gorillas and great apes, send $25 to the Gorilla Foundation, P.O. Box 620-530, Woodside, California 94062.
14. Quoted by John P. Briggs and F. David Peat, Looking Glass Universe: The Emerging Science of Wholeness, New York: A Touchstone Book, Simon and Schuster, 1984, p. 276.
1. Some of the details in the following stories are disguised, since I did not ask permission to publish them while they were being told.
2. Carol Sternhell, “Sic transit Gloria,” The Women’s Review of Books, volume 9, number 9, June 1992.
3. Lead-in text for Naomi Wolf, “Fear & Loathing Deconstructed: A Long View of Gloria Steinem’s New Book,” On the Issues, fall 1992.
4. Mary Daly, “The Spiritual Dimension of Women’s Liberation,” Radical Feminism, Koedt, Levine, and Rapone, editors, New York: Quadrangle/New York Times Books, 1973, p. 259. (This 1971 article first appeared in Notes from the Third Year.)
5. James Gleick, “New Appreciation of the Complexity in a Flock of Birds,” New York Times, November 24, 1987.
6. Nancy Gibbs, “The War Against Feminism,” Joelle Attinger, “Steinem: Tying Politics to the Personal,” Time, March 9, 1992, pp. 50, 51, and 55.
7. Commissioned by the Ms. Foundation for Women and the Center for Policy Alternatives. For information, write Women’s Voices, Ms. Foundation for Women, 141 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010.
8. Judith Lewis Herman, M.D., Trauma and Recovery, New York: Basic Books, 1992, pp. 235–236.
9. Marge Piercy, “The low road,” The Moon Is Always Female, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980. Reprinted in Cries of the Spirit: A Celebration of Women’s Spirituality, Marilyn Sewell, editor, Boston: Beacon Press, 1991, pp. 170–171.