An Interview with a True Feminist: Amy Siskind, Co-Founder of The New Agenda
August 12, 2009
by Jessica Espinoza
|This article is a featured piece on the blog DivineCaroline
Did you ever get that sinking feeling there was just something wrong? Wrong in the sense that what you used believe in just didn’t seem worth it anymore somehow or make sense?
That is how I was beginning to feel about women’s rights. Maybe that might be rhetorical to some, but it is simple just the fact that many women are feeling society today.
Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, Democrat, Republican, Liberal, and Conservative: all words women label themselves as. Could there any more reasons why the women’s movement just felt like it falling apart to some of us? That gap is just getting bigger and bigger. Sexism just getting more and more acceptable by the media, men taking total advantage of the divide between women of different political leanings. Stalling and even setting back any progress that the women’s movement had worked so hard to towards over the years.
I just felt lost.
Then a funny thing happened. I am cooking dinner in the mad dash that many working moms conduct on a daily bases and listening to the constant coverage of the Palin/Letterman battle. A single word nearly slapped me across the face. In between the drone of the pundit’s voice, I hear the word “Non-Partisan” in a female voice. Now over the months we have all heard this word and come to expect it. But this time it is being referenced to a feminist organization. I needed to know more. So I ordered the family a pizza and proceeded to watch an interview with co-founder of The New Agenda, Amy Siskind.
She spoke with such sincerity about the issues that are driving a wedge through the women’s movement and how to unity to resolve it. In disbelief and a renewed sense of excitement for the possibilities I had to hear directly from her what The New Agenda is about and how it came to be.
Here is that conversation …
Interviewer: Tell me, how did you get into Feminist activism?
Amy: Well, I worked on Wall Street for twenty years and in 2006, I took time off to spend time to my kids and my community. At that point, I got involved with Hillary Clinton’s campaign, volunteering during her run for Senate. Hillary was actually my inspiration to get involved in anything political. It was the first time I related to a candidate.
Watching the way that Hillary Clinton and then Sarah Palin got treated during the Presidential campaign was a real eye opener for me. Many women in the country felt that same. We felt we should do something about the sexism that happened in this past election
Interviewer: Was there anything in your personal life that motivated you to create The New Agenda?
Amy: There was an incident about a year ago when my daughter was in the fifth grade. I had picked her and one of her friends up from school one day. Her friend was crying. I had asked her what had happened. So she tells me she had broken up with a boy the day before, and that day she got to school a group of boys had cornered her and started calling her “slut’, “b*tch”, “whore.” I was so upset about it. I also volunteer for a domestic abuse shelter, so I called them and asked them about the situation. They told me, “Yes, this is escalating the early precursors of domestic violence; it is happening at a younger and younger ages the incident you described would be a gang rape in High school.” So a lot of it for me was seeing “wow, we have come a long way”, but think we have stalled and in some ways we are moving backwards. There are some really alarming trends in this country that are not getting enough attention. All of that affected me personally and lead to the decision to start The New Agenda last August.
Interviewer: So can you tell the people who might be reading this a little bit about your organization The New Agenda? What is your mission and how are you going about accomplish that mission?
Amy: What we have started is revolutionary. We thought how can we get women in this country to have better representation? How can we have real power in this country when women allow themselves to be split in half by political party, and split in half again by the issue of choice. It simply doesn’t work. So we decided to take those two issues off the table and focus on the issues that impact all women. Safety. Opportunity. Unity. Leadership.
Interviewer: A little off-topic but you have written three articles about the sexism against Conservative women. And a gentleman out in California made to get it published in a local paper, I believe.
Amy: Yes, he wanted to publish my Huffington Post piece, “Sexism Against Conservative Women is Still Sexism” in Variety and they turned him down.
He was a conservative dad from Hollywood, California. He was concerned about his daughter, and the way that Hollywood content shows women and young girls. So he tried to run a two-page article in Variety and they just wouldn’t run it. So he paid to have it put in the Hollywood Reporter, which is I think the second biggest entertainment paper in Hollywood. That is a great example of dads being concerned about women’s issues. Which is another aspect of our organization by being all inclusive to men as well as women.
Interviewer: How important is it to the feminist movement that we heal this gap between the Right and the Left? And where do you see the women’s rights movement in general going in this country in the future?
Amy: I think our best and only hope for advancement is unity. And I am going to keep preaching that until I am blue in the face. Women in this country need to lay down their arms and learn to work together. There are also plenty of men that will join us in this way forward. Our best chance is to send out a positive message to preach and follow unity.
Our goals are clear—Safety, Opportunity, Unity and Leadership.
Interviewer: I just to thank you Amy for taking the time to do this interview.
Amy: My pleasure.
If only more women included voting as “doing something” about sexism. They don’t. They’ll complain, bitch, blog, whine with their friends … but when the time comes to vote, suddenly they pretend they’re in a perfect little fantasy world filled with rainbows, butterflies, and unicorns and pretend sexism doesn’t exist. They wouldn’t vote for a woman “just because she’s a woman” because in a perfect world, they shouldn’t have to do that.
Yeah, in a perfect world, I shouldn’t have to wear a seat belt, either.
They will blog, bitch, complain, sigh, sulk … do everything but vote based on it. They protest, write letters, boycott, yadda yadda. But when they walk into the voting booth, suddenly they pretend they’re in Utopia where they shouldn’t haaaaaave to vote for a woman just because she’s a woman.
And this, they call a feminist choice.
Sweeties, let me tell your sad asses something: if you don’t VOTE your feminism, your feminism doesn’t count.
Clinton, Palin, and an entire litany of other nameless, faceless b*tches, hos, sluts, c*nts, and other lovely words have been victimized “just because they’re women.” If women are going to pretend none of that happens when they have the ballot in front of them, then feminism is a hobby, not a movement.
“Doing something about it” had better include voting, or else nothing will change. And since women won’t do that, then nothing will change.
Yeah amy, right on Janis
Janis,
The flip side of the feminist voting pattern you advocate, which is essentially women at all costs, is that it will create the reverse dynamic in men, and maybe even some women. Encouraging others to sponsor women simply for their sexuality discourages them from looking further than their sexuality. This is the root of sexism in the first place. Men jumping to unfavorable conclusions about women simply because they are women is no different than women jumping to favorable conclusions about women just because they are women. Instead, I would encourage individuals to do their homework, learn platforms and views, and sponsor who, in their opinion, is the best candidate. In turn this will encourage women interested in political office to really become the change they want to see. This countrie’s politics really need to get beyond the identity level, well reasoned men as well as women can reduce sexism as well as benefit the country in so many ways. If reason, intelligence, and tolerance win the day, we have nothing to fear.
Gosh Andrew, thanks for the worthless lecture. In a world where women are viciously targeted for serial murder “just because they’re women,” the only way to combat it is to support women “just because they’re women.”
Besides, I don’t actualyl support women just because they’re women. I will support ANY candidate who is viciously attacked, has a porn movie made about them, has their heads photoshopped and traded around in the national media onto porn star bodies, is told that they shouldn’t run for office because they have young children, is called filthy, disgusted sexually degrading names, has their sexuality called into question when they answer a question tersely, has their neckline analyzied, has their suits and hair analyzed repeatedly more than their words … sure, I’ll support a male candidate who endures that shit for decades.
Name me one.
Go ahead, take your time.
*crickets*
Thought so.
Still pissed at this. Andrew, it just chaps your balls that I, a woman, consider this sort of intolerable degradation to be so important that I’m willing to vote based on it. Why, you think to yourself, it’s just how women are treated! There’s no point to getting all upset about it! There’s so much more important things in this world, and here this silly, overwrought, selfish girl thinks HER issues are front and center!
Piss off. You’re goddamned right all that shit’s front and center for me. I will vote for a man on the day one runs who is attacked 24/7 for having small children, not being delicate enough, and wearing the wrong shoes.
Wow!
Janis I totally respect your passion for the cause.i feel that so often in my line of work. I have actually worked almost ten years in all male dominated careers.A couple years doing field work and now sitting in a cube with not another female in sight,dealing with men talking to me like I should be getting them coffee and not doing what I do.
I get that.And God bless girl for being the solider that we need.
I do want to say that the reason i sought out The New Agenda to begin with was because it was a non-partisan woman’s grooup that includes men,who want to help their wives,their daughters,etc…So we don’t want to lay out our frustrations from the other dung head’s who have treated us badly.Evfen in today’s modern society.
I kinda agree with Andrew that if we do only vote Woman just to vote woman we could be pulling the whole “eye for an eye” but. So we should be aware of that.Because that is not what equality is about.But we do need to encourage,support, and educate women on Women politicans and opportunites.And make for a better chances that a women will be better represented in political offices.
Oh well,happy birthday The New Agenda!
You gals/guys have a great nite,
Jessica
Thanks Jessica!
Your statement says it all:
Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, Democrat, Republican, Liberal, and Conservative: all words women label themselves as. Could there any more reasons why the women’s movement just felt like it falling apart to some of us?
Unity is the key to safety and opportunity for all women. We are the majority. We can make it happen for ourselves.
Reminds me of the Sojourner Truth quote:
“If women want any rights more than they’s got, why don’t they just take them, and not be talking about it.”
Andrew,
“If reason, intelligence, and tolerance win the day, we have nothing to fear.” True, but irrelevant. Unless a significant number of women challenge both political parties and vote based on gender there will be no gains in gender parity. Underrepresentation of women in government and industry is due to sexism, not a lack of qualified women.
Men vote for men and against women all the time. Men are more likely to vote based on gender than women are. Voting patterns in the primary confirmed this. Not only that, but men who had the power to influence public opinion and outcomes bent over backwards to sabotage women simply because they were women. Women need to realize this and fight back. Let the men like Andrew wag their fingers all they want. Don’t let the guilt-tripping work next time. Men are, and have been for millenia, waging a war against women and women don’t even know (or acknowledge) it. Once women acknowledge this they will be ready to fight back instead of being guilt-tripped into being good little girls.
“I will support ANY candidate who is viciously attacked…”
That’s just plain silly. Then all someone has to do to win your support is to scream bloody murder about how persecuted they are. Not all women who endure some form of sexism are going to have the same policies. Take Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin for example. Hillary is a brilliant woman who knows her policy inside and out, and also works tirelessly on behalf of working families and women everywhere she can. Sarah Palin is literally the creation of the conservative movement and the Republican party; before John McCain picked her I heard a report on NPR about how the GOP saw her as a future candidate because she was unknown and not burdened by their policy failures. But she has since made clear that she accepts their policies wholesale and has been out spreading lies equating Medicare PAYING for voluntary end of life counseling with a “death panel” that will kill her baby. She is beyond the pale of decency, and she’s wrong on the issues.
To equate 2 women like that in terms of which one people should vote for, is not only incredibly sexist in itself but an abandoning of feminist issues altogether.
Likewise, President Obama has included more women in his administration than any in American history. Sonia Sotomayor is now a Supreme Court Justice. We’re electing more women to Congress every day, and rightly so. But just being a woman who happens to claim that she’s been the victim of sexism (and some of it genuinely manufactured or distorted by this public figure) is not enough. There’s a difference between saying some attacks are out of bounds and saying we will vote for you if play the victim and hint around that you’re “one of us.” Issues are what matters.
Leave your Response Want an avatar? Get a gravatar!
Community Room
February 22, 2012 at 11:22 am
February 17, 2012 at 2:39 pm
February 6, 2012 at 4:25 pm
January 30, 2012 at 2:36 pm
January 26, 2012 at 4:38 pm
January 23, 2012 at 1:04 pm
January 15, 2012 at 11:37 am
January 9, 2012 at 6:36 pm
BUILD your NETWORK
Our Network of College Women
Protecting our Teenage Girls
We’re in the Media »
Click to see our latest stories in the media
More Stories »Recent Comments
The Latest from our Blog
Archives
Pioneer Mentors
Blogroll
Find us Online
Subscribe Entries (RSS) | Comments (RSS)
The New Agenda is a 501(c)(4) organization dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls by bringing about systemic change in the media, at the workplace, at school and at home. More...