Chesler Facebook Chronicles
Mar 25, 2014
I begin to understand why people have increasingly shortened their words, going from handwritten letters to computer-driven email to a few sentences on Facebook to a limited number of characters on Twitter. It is very Talmudic--and haiku-like, very much "on the run," both easier and harder to reduce one's thoughts to a few, very carefully chosen words. Pictures also draw people in. But so do worthy causes. So far, what I posted about the upcoming execution of a young Iranian woman has attracted almost 1000 readers who, in turn, may have shared my request to sign a petition on her behalf with many others. Here are some of my recent FB postings.
3/24/14
Surrogacy: The Evisceration of Biological Motherhood?
Is it legal or moral for a woman to sell a child? Or to agree to bear a child so that it might be adopted—even before conception has occurred? Is it somehow more moral and less degrading to women if the fertilized egg is not her own? Is infertility coupled with the desire for children the reason for this booming industry? Why is infertility an increasing problem? I became involved in this issue in 1987 when the Baby M case first broke into public consciousness. It was the first such case in the United States. A high school dropout birthmother was pitted against two scientist parents: the sperm donor and the adoptive mother to be. I organized demonstrations outside the courthouse in New Jersey in 1987 and, in 1988, published a book about this case and the issues it raised: "Sacred Bond: The Legacy of Baby M." (If you watch the video below you will see me twice, once, commandeering my troop of demonstrators, once in a still. I look very serious-in-action. And a bit younger.
While the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that surrogacy was against public policy and illegal, the practice of surrogacy has since flourished with a vengeance. Infertile couples, infertile single parents-to-be, gay parents, celebrity parents who do not want to adopt and do not want the inconvenience of bearing a child for nine months are hiring surrogate mothers, breeders, not only in the United States but in India and around the world. While adoption is problematic both in terms of red tape and post-adoption difficulties, the triumph of genetic narcissism also condemns abandoned children the world over to highly abusive institutions.
This video is a quick summary of the Baby M case, the issues it raises, where the matter of surrogacy stands today. It is a big business. The birthmothers are not getting rich but the surrogacy brokers/pimps certainly are.
3/23/14
SAVE IRANIAN RAPE VICTIM FROM EXECUTION
This young woman was trapped and raped by an Iranian government official. She resisted being sedated, they struggled and she killed him. After torture, she confessed to the crime and has been in prison for seven years. Her execution is imminent. Her name is Rayhaneh Jabbari. Please sign this petition, circulate it among your friends and colleagues, raise an outcry to the high heavens. When will the Iranian people be delivered from their barbaric leadership? When will the world be rid of such a hostile entity in our midst?
3/23/14
Buddhas of Bamian
I never saw them myself but I yearned to do so. When I was in Kabul, I could have seen them but as a "proper Afghan wife" I was not allowed to "act like a tourist." One Buddha stood 174 feet tall, the other was 115 feet tall. Long before Islam conquered the country via the sword, Buddhism (paganism, Zoroastrianism, thrived there. Buddhism has a long history in that place; however, Muslims turn vanquished churches into mosques, desecrate synagogues, and destroy what they view as pagan idols. Thus, over the years, these poor Buddhas lost their jeweled eyes and their arms and legs were pock-marked by bullets and half-dismembered. Then came the Taliban which decided to blow them both up. The empty space where once they stood is a haunting, haunted space. The Taliban blew up—and continue to blow up—living beings. They just did so the other day when they shot point-blank at civilians in Kabul's Serena Hotel. They are death-eaters and no one should consider them reliable diplomatic partners. The West wants to restore these Buddhas but there is a huge controversy about doing so. Do you think Western treasure should be spent on this?
3/20/14
Chesler and Hockenberry Performing Tonight
I am really looking forward to our conversation at the Core Club in Manhattan. It is a classy club and thus, I don't know what to wear. I usually end up wearing the same kind of thing: A black top and pants with a colorful jacket. What more can a busy woman do?
John Hockenberry is a long-time host at NPR and WNYC. His book, "Moving Violations. A Memoir. War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence" is an easy and amazing read, funny, wrenching, heroic. Although wheelchair bound, he covered Khomeini's funeral, joined the Kurdish refugees fleeing the mud and overhead gunship fire in Iraq, visited an Afghan Taliban leader in Pakistan, spent years in Jerusalem and in the treacherous sands of Gaza covering daily life and the permanent Intifada against Israel. Interestingly, many Muslims are solicitous, respectful, enormously helpful towards disabled people. It is true, I have experienced the same thing. Hockenberry's wheelchair was proudly pushed by an Iranian at Khomeini's funeral who all the while kept chanting "Death of America."
One of Hockenberry's NYC cab drivers coincidentally stopped for him twice. Most cabs will not stop for a disabled person whose wheelchair they have to put into the trunk. This particular driver was a very solicitous Muslim—but he, a "student of Islam, and family man," turned out to have been among those who planted the bomb that blew up the World Trade Center in 1993. His name is Mahmoud Abu Holima and he is serving a life sentence.
Many tidbits like this are contained in his book.
3/19/14
Marrying Young is Like Living in a Muslim Country
This title belongs to FOXNEWS.com. It is what Andrea Tantaros titled the interview we taped yesterday. You may watch it below.
Remember the great moment in the film "My Cousin Vinnie" when Marisa Tomei stamps her foot and says to her fiancee Joe Pesci: "My biological clock is ticking?" Well, this subject is well upon us. Today, I appear on FOX discussing "Marry Smart." Look: the author, Susan Patton, is like a worried Jewish mother who sits down with her daughter and tells her to please get married young and start having kids as soon as possible. Patton is no more of an expert than that. Clearly, she has touched a nerve. Female fertility is not the same as male fertility and delayed childbearing has consequences. But so does putting off creating a career.
As I said, I stand with Virginia Woolf who said that every woman needs 500 pounds a year (economic independence) and a room of her own. Especially if that woman plans to marry and have children. Good husbands get sick, lose their jobs, die, or walk out. A woman needs to be able to feed herself and her family. These days, most couples both work because, unless someone has inherited wealth, two incomes are often, not always, essential. And, bitter divorce and custody battles cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Patton has blamed feminists for demeaning stay-at-home mothers or mothers who prize mothering. As Sojourner Truth once said: Am I not a woman...and as I say: "Am I not a feminist? And I have written four books about motherhood, launched campaigns on behalf of mothers and children for more than forty years. I am also a mother myself. One pays a high price for being both a dedicated intellectual and activist AND a mother. The balancing act is a high wire wonder.
Half-Naked Naughty Jewish Boys
A different kind of Jewish calendar indeed! I don't approve—but then, I don't approve of calendars in which women are half naked or fully-naked either. I don't even approve of them when the women are using them to raise money for charity or to proclaim a fiery independence from patriarchal rule. So, here we are. It is 2014 and we have chest-baring Jewish men. Four of these male images are of men wearing kipot (yarmulkes, skull caps), and one has wrapped phylacteries over his left arm and on his forehead. (He also sports a tattoo which, believe it or not, is forbidden to Jews). Here's my question. Why are they using religious props in so tawdry a way? Do they think being Jewish is a joke? Or that chest-baring Jewish men lighting Hannukah candles, holding a Talmud, saying the morning prayer are meant to be on public display? Well, are they at least raising money for children with cancer, for world peace, or for the IDF? C'mon Duncan Pflaster, (the man behind the calendar), at least turn this into a mitzvah, a good deed: give a percentage of your profits to tzedakah.