However..among other problems...the organization's blog, suzyb.org, does not appear to be a place where cries for justice for anyone but the unborn and their conservative white female defenders are well-received. Indeed, on at least three different recent occasions, such expressions of valid anger were dismissed as gratuitous, ridiculous, mere products of a "chip on the shoulder."
--The blog effuses uncritically over Sarah Palin's profession of advocacy for the disabled. But when I questioned what that meant for the lives of disabled Americans generally, and pointed out that the ideology of "government waste" often amounted to treating us as disposable humans (hint, hint, like the unborn), I was told by a commenter, "Gee, Marysia, I think you need to knock that chip off your shoulder".
--The blog mocks National Organization for Women members for being "angry" and "spiteful" feminists and wearing it on their t shirts...no mention of what might be behind that purportedly gratuitous rage. You know, stuff like, oh, violence against women, and unequal pay for equal work.
--The blog exults in Michelle Obama's recent lack of public visibility in her husband's campaign. A commenter says outright what the post does not in so many words: "Voters have recognized that she is a woman with a 'black' chip on her shoulder, and her harshness was not going over well. I think they're hiding her!" Was this commenter perhaps the same Anonymous who told me to get the chip off my shoulder? Whether it was the same person or not...same diminishing and silencing technique applied to "troublemakers."
But such dismissive stereotyping of people who challenge the powers that be is nothing new. Indeed, it can be found in the very same herstory that the Susan B. Anthony List lays claim to in its very own choice of name.
As Lynn Sherr documents in her wonderfully eye-opening Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words
, Susan B. Anthony was routinely dismissed as a "vinegar-visaged virago," "stiff," "cold," "aggressive," "constantly howling," "laboring under strong feelings of hatred towards men.” Yet, as Sherr points out abundantly, Anthony was actually "selfless, diplomatic, elegant, charming, generous, friendly, determined, polite, curious, open, amusing, self-possessed, and, once again, selfless."I don't know if Anthony's era actually talked in so many words of chips on shoulder, but it's clear that they had the concept, and deployed it for the same minimizing purposes. The book behind Nonviolent Choice, ProLife Feminism Yesterday and Today, Second Expanded Edition
, substantially documents the awfully familiar-sounding stereotypes levelled against early feminists in general...as well as Anthony's own stance against abortion.I would like to ask the SBA List and its supporters: did Anthony and her peers have chips on their shoulders?
