Whatever...Love Is Love (13 page)

The first was wise advice about breaking bread with others.
When you have only one slice of bread and ten people come to your home, you butter it with the best butter and cut it into ten pieces. No matter what!

When the milkman came to pick up his payment for the week on Saturday mornings, my Babci put her wisdom into action. She would buy challah bread and smoked fish every Friday night for dinner. But she always saved some for the milkman the next morning. And every Saturday, the milkman sat down with Babci and her family to share their little bit of bread.

The second lesson I learned the hard way. I was once helping Babci clean up the kitchen when I was seven years old and she caught me sweeping dust under a carpet. She grabbed my arm, spun me around, and with a stern, yet knowing look said, “Maria, never sweep things under the rug. It makes it harder to clean later.”

While Babci wasn't out campaigning with the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union for equal pay, she
was
a role model for my mother. She taught her that women could be strong and compassionate. And she taught her that women could not only take care of their families, they could take care of business, too. She was the first feminist I ever knew.

But to me, my mom is the ultimate feminist.

Mom thinks it was because she was raised mostly with my Babci and a clan of Bernardine nuns. My mom loved the nuns at St. Mary's, her school. She didn't see the nuns as subservient to the priests or the monsignor. She saw them as strong women who had made the choice to serve God. She knew the very moment that she met those nuns in grade school that she was supposed to serve God, too. She was like the heroine of
The Song of Bernadette,
the popular Hollywood film about the girl who saw the Virgin Mary in Lourdes, France. She decided she, too, would take the black veil with white trim, a long black dress, and “sensible” black shoes. She would become a bride of Christ.

Then she met Joe Bello. He was a year ahead of her in school, and the rest is history. When he ran away to join the army at 17, my mom concentrated on her studies. Most women of her generation didn't focus on their schoolwork because they weren't expected to go to college. Mom was different. She studied hard and became the only girl in her school to qualify for the National Honor Society. But Father Paul, the priest in charge of her high school, denied her admission. She learned that it was because of my dad. Apparently, Dad had done something really awful to piss off that priest. Sister Bernadette, Mom's 11th grade teacher, was outraged when she heard. She went to the priest to fight his irrational decision. Sister Bernadette couldn't understand how the priest could deny Mom her rightful place in the Honor Society just because of who her boyfriend was. It was as though Father Paul did not see my mother as her own person. Instead, she was just Joe's girlfriend. In the end, Father Paul won, but my mother never forgot the courageous nun who bravely fought for her. After high school, Mom had her “choice” of one of three professions acceptable to women of her generation: nurse, teacher, or secretary. Mom chose nurse, though she really wanted to be a doctor. She filled out her own applications and figured out how to apply to nursing school. Neither of her parents had graduated from high school, and they had no idea how to do such things.

She became a nurse at the Norristown, Pennsylvania, hospital where I was born a few years later. She was an ER nurse. (She was very helpful to me during my time on
ER.
)

By all accounts, she was a saint. She would never say this about herself, but in truth, given all she experienced in that hospital, she comes as close to a saint as anyone you'll ever meet.

There are a few experiences from her time in the ER that she will never forget. They shaped her worldview and pushed her to understand that she was indeed a feminist. There were many women who came in after botched abortions. They were too poor to pay a doctor to perform the then illegal operation. They either swallowed bleach or used knitting needles to end their pregnancies. Some had been raped. Others were too young to become parents. And many were forbidden to use birth control for religious reasons, had become pregnant with their seventh or eighth child, and simply could not afford another mouth to feed.

There was very little the doctors and nurses could do for these women. Many would leave the hospital never able to have children, and still others died from complications and infection. Though my mother was (and still is) a devout Catholic, and according to her faith women are not supposed to have abortions, Mom knew reality. Women would have abortions no matter what and they needed to have them safely. It was the poor women who suffered most. These women needed the power to choose what to do with their bodies.

My siblings and I, because we were raised in a household where our mother supported us with the help of my dad's disability pension, never considered that women were not equal to men. My mother never told my sister and me that we couldn't do something because we were women. She supported our decisions whatever they were. She raised two boys who are also feminists. My siblings and I have all raised our children to think the same way.

I've been dying to get my mom and Gloria Steinem together. I know they would love each other. They are on the same happy train. As Gloria says, “I've recently learned that laughter is the only free emotion.” Mom certainly lives by this rule.

I'VE DECIDED THAT EVERY TWO AND A HALF MINUTES A NEW FEMINIST
is born somewhere in the world. Okay, while I can't attribute this to a study by the Clinton Global Initiative or even
Ms
. magazine, my woman's intuition and my personal experience tell me it has to be true.

But really, what else would explain the growing global feminist movement around the common needs, aspirations, and desires of so many women from vastly different cultures?

That budding feminist could be a boy or a girl. He or she could be born in New York or Sudan. And yet many of these children could grow up not knowing they are feminists until some defining moment brings them face-to-face with that label.

I've been lucky enough to travel around the world meeting women from countries and cultures vastly different from my own: Bosnia, Haiti, Kenya, Nicaragua, and many others. I always make it a point to see what we have in common. I've rarely met a woman who doesn't believe that she doesn't deserve social, political, and economic equality. And while we often start with very serious topics, usually we end up laughing about the stuff of everyday life. Some women proudly identify themselves as feminists. Some don't know they are feminists. But all of them support their families in some way: by working in fields, carrying their babies on their backs for 14 hours a day, or creating a safe space for their children and husbands in very challenging circumstances.

On one of my trips to Kenya, with Jackson and five of my female friends, I sat in a hut with seven Masai women dressed in traditional garb. The mother of a friend of ours had married a Masai warrior and had arranged for us to meet these women. They all had earlobes down to their shoulders, and shaved heads. We were wary of each other at first, asking only serious questions of each other about our daily lives. “Are you allowed to work?” “Do you have a say in your household and community?” “Are you paid the same as a man for the same work?” “Have you ever been physically or sexually abused?”

After sharing our more serious similar experiences, many of us were in tears. Then we became a giggling coven, talking about . . . what else? Sex. The Masai women even passed around a rolled-up napkin to show their preferred size of man. We traded more secrets as the conversation wore on. They said that in their culture, they each had a lover
and
a husband. They were shocked and saddened to hear that only one of us was married, until we explained that in our culture we were able to have many lovers, and it's called dating. The Masai women never did catch on to that concept, which is understandable since many of us in Western cultures have a hard time figuring it out and we've been dating for a long time.

In Bosnia at a refugee camp, I spent time with women who had seen horrific things during the war. In one moment, we were sharing experiences of violence and loss of husbands and lovers. And in another, we were sharing small acts of kindness, such as giving each other manicures and pedicures in our makeshift barracks. Women find ways to bond no matter what our circumstances. The more we know each other, the more we can support each other in standing up for our rights.

Feminism is a global movement defined and fueled by these common connections: our children, our faith in deep compassion, and our desire for equal opportunities economically, socially, and politically. I saw this everywhere I traveled and I felt it with every woman I talked to.

And it's through technology that we are discovering our common connections at an ever-increasing pace. Technology enables people, particularly women, who may never meet face-to-face, to share the surprising common threads of their lives—their struggles, their joys, and their hopes and dreams. Technology helps rapidly spread the reality that women are no longer victims, that women are becoming full participants in global policy. My organization, We Advance, helps women to connect all over Haiti. Soon perhaps women all over the world will have the same opportunity.

Twenty-seven years ago, when I was studying peace and justice education and women's rights at Villanova and working at the women's law project in Philadelphia, I read a passage that defines feminism in a way that is relevant to our lives today. It is from one of my favorite books,
Out of Africa
.

Karen Blixen, the author we know as Isak Dinesen and who was so beautifully portrayed in the film adaptation by Meryl Streep, had raised an orphaned bushbuck. She named her Lulu. Karen bottle-fed her, and for years Lulu roamed around her home as if she were Karen's own child. But as Lulu turned into a teenager, she disrupted the household tremendously: acting up, breaking furniture, and constantly trying to leave that secure place where she had always lived. And then one day Lulu disappeared. Karen was devastated.

Years later, Karen was doing the dishes at the kitchen sink and when she looked out of the window, she saw a magnificent creature standing before her at the edge of the woods. She knew instantly that it was Lulu. She wrote, “Lulu of the woods was a superior independent being. A change of heart had come upon her. She was in possession. She was now the complete Lulu, the spirit of offensive had gone from her. For whom and why should she attack? She was standing quietly in her own divine rights.”

The truth is that right now about half of the world's population is on the precipice of standing in our own divine rights and saying to the world, “You do not have to include us. We are including ourselves. We are empowering ourselves. And whether you like it or not, because of our common connections, we will succeed in joining to make our world a better place for our children in the future. We are not asking to sit at your table. We are saying you'd be lucky to have us.”

We may still be fighting for and fighting against, but women all over the world are finding a new power, a new sense of themselves. We are advancing. Look at Malala Yousafzai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. She almost lost her life fighting to be educated. But instead of shrinking away, she stepped further into her power by inspiring others.

And I am not excluding all of the smart and compassionate men out there. I have a son who is an incredible human being. When I told him that some girls in the world were not allowed to go to school and that women in America made less money than men for the same job, he couldn't believe it. Though gender roles exist and maybe always will, there is a new consciousness in this generation of kids, and not only in America. When a young woman in India was raped and killed on a bus, the population rallied. Men and women of many generations stood side by side to protest the violence against women in their country. Sociologist Michael Kimmel is a great example of a man whose life mission is to create gender equality. He is considered one of the top feminists in our country.

I believe the new feminism is not about gender. The new feminism is an energy. It is a principle that men and women both possess. It is a trait that is defined by gentleness, compassion, and the heart. We are stronger together than we are alone, and we are moving into an age where these values can and must take the lead in all of our decisions.

The new feminism isn't about fighting against or for something; it's about standing in your own divine right. That's the woman I choose to be.

11

AM I LGBT OR W?

W
hen I first wrote that Modern Love column in the
New York Times,
blogs, magazines, and tabloids made a big deal of my supposed confession. The headlines were predictable: “Maria Bello Comes Out as Gay,” “Reveals She's a Lesbian in
New York Times
Piece,” and “Comes Out as Bisexual.” But in reducing my story to those terms, they missed the point. As the writer Mary Elizabeth Williams wisely put it in her article “Maria Bello's Great ‘Whatever' Coming Out” in the online magazine Salon, the “big deal,” for people like me, “isn't the gender of the person they're happy with; it's the happiness itself.” She agrees, along with many others who have written to me over the past year, that people can change their sexual preferences throughout a lifetime or in a minute. As she said, “Maybe it makes for less simplistic headlines, but it's a lot more accurate.”