I don't know who you think you are, but before July is through, I wanna talk equal rights with you!

"I ought to post something about this", I remember telling my mom after she finished reading a piece on it being high time to honor our foremothers and pass the Equal Rights Amendment by Newsday opinion columnist Janus Adams to me over the phone on the Friday before the 4th of July.

By the time we got on the phone, the crickets were already humming in the grass and the sun had dipped low on the horizon. I was hurried, getting ready to take off for a trip upstate to the Lake George area to spend the long weekend with my in-laws. I knew we had to shove off in about two hours or so, and my mind was preoccupied.

Stomping around in the cramped confines of my laundry room with the phone balanced precariously on my shoulder, I was rooting through piles of folded wash for enough clean underwear to pack for the next three days and thinking about how best to avoid the crush of holiday traffic when Mom asked if I had time to hear an article she planned to tape to the fridge.

She does that, you know. A lot. Taping stuff to the fridge, that is. Her refrigerator is like a veritable billboard; gone are the scribbles and macaroni mosaics that decorated it when we were kids, replaced by political cartoons clipped from the paper, magnets that share the varied causes and ideas she supports, and lovely artwork accompanied by philosophical or spiritual mantras reminding her - and us - of who she is and what she believes. It's like a personal - or family, really, mission statement.

The apple hasn't fallen far from the tree - you should see my fridge! But I digress...

Mom wanted to read me something she planned to include as part of the rotating exhibit of refrigerator wisdom in the hopes of sparking a family conversation around the gendered politics of Independence Day that weekend, and I knew it behooved me to listen.

She had me at the first sentence, "As we celebrate our Declaration of Independence this holiday weekend, a triumph of history, let's pause to consider our herstory" [emphasis mine].

Also the author of Sister Days: 365 Inspired Moments in African-American Women's History, Adams highlighted Democratic NYS Rep. Carolyn Maloney's efforts to reintroduce the Equal Rights Amendment. It's been four decades since Congress passed this constitutional amendment enshrining the equality of rights under the law not to be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of gender - and three decades since its defeat, three states shy of the 38 needed to ratify it within 10 years.

The struggle for women's rights in the U.S. has been long and hard. Adams traced its history to March of 1776, when another female Adams - Abigail - chided her husband John to "remember the Ladies", following it through to the present day and the recent Supreme Court dismissal of a massive class-action gender discrimination suit against retail giant Walmart. In this context, she asked, "What of the rights of women?".

According to Adams, we here in 2011 are far from 1848 (the year of the Women's Rights Convention and its platform, "A Declaration of Sentiments," that exposed "a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman."). But not far enough.

Invoking the liberatory legacy of the Seneca Falls convention the Female Anti-Slavery Society, of Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and of the unsung women - black and white - who defied slavery and refused to be silenced or deterred by white abolitionist men who thought they had no place in the movement, Adams called for the passing of the ERA.

Here’s the True Blood connection: the as-yet unratified Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is the capstone for the gender-blind laws liberal feminism has historically fought for which, according to the eminent Professor of Social Work Mimi Abramovitz (1996), include the right to vote, to enter the market, the receive an education, to own property, and to control their own bodies, to earn equal wages, etc.

As we wrote on our Feminism-With-A-Twist! page, the ERA (along with other equal rights and civil rights legislation of the past) seems to serve as the model for True Blood's Vampire Rights Amendment (VRA); the campaign for which has come recently to a highly contentious and divisive head with the string of reactionary anti-vampire terrorism touched off after King Russell Edgington "went Medieval" on TV.

By ripping out the spine of a news anchor and speechifying about the evils of humanity and the "true face of Vampire" before a television audience of millions, the King of Mississippi virtually nuked the American Vampire League's, as he called it, "precious VRA".

Check out this hilarious (yet educational!) AVL "children's outreach program" video promoting the VRA:



According to the True Blood Wiki, the VRA is a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that if approved and ratified would extend equal rights to vampires, creating parity with humans. The American Vampire League is the main supporter of the bill; there is also some support in the Senate.

Did you know there was a pro-VRA rally in D.C. in 2008?




Yes, it was part of the viral marketing campaign launched on the website BloodCopy, but it did more than generate interest for the show; it actually helps set its sociopolitical tone.

The Wiki continues that the VRA has received strong opposition from freshman "Congressman David Finch" (remember him from S1, smoking weed with Lafayette after their paid-for "date"?) and other conservative elected officials and organizations such as the Fellowship of the Sun. The main fear of the opposition is that recognizing equal rights for vampires would lead to the "vampirization" of America.

Under the law as it presently stands, vampires do have certain rights:

• Vampires are able to own not only their own homes, but open-to-the-public businesses as well; for example, Eric & Pam own Fangtasia
• They can marry IN SOME STATES ONLY, paralleling the limitations for under the Defense of Marriage Act

Vampires also have their own hotels, such as the Hotel Carmilla in Dallas, which caters to vampires, as well as their own airline, Anubis Air, equipped with specialty coffins for flight. Remember these from Season 2? While these niche busineses necessarily provide for the special needs of vampires, they also raise the spectre of "separate but equal".

Now, anti-vampire sentiment seems at an all-time high. I remember seeing some tell-tale graffiti scrawled across a brick wall in an early Season 4 episode, "Save a friend, kill a vampire". In her Newsday piece Adams recalls that in 1838, so opposed were pro-slavers to the activities of the Female Anti-Slavery Society (started by black woman and, by that time, joined by white abolitionist women) that rioters - emboldened by the blind eye of the police - torched the group's Pennsylvania Hall convention site and stoned the fleeing women. A similar fate for vampires seems possible in light of the threat posed by Marnie, possessed as she is by the spirit of a 17^th century witch who was burned at the stake and is seeking retribution against the undead for her torment at the hands of a few of their numbers centuries ago.

Would there be public outcry if she caused scores of vampires to walk into the sun? Or would the public feel that the uppity undead - audacious in their quest for equal rights with humans - had gotten what they deserved; the true death? 

True Blood's VRA plot line acknowledges the inequality and stratification of contemporary U.S. society as well as the challenges of partisan politics (hello, debt ceiling talks) and making social and political change. We’ll see if Nan Flanagan can muster a political solution or if the legislation – and the AVL - are dead in the water. 

Tears of resonance are moistening my eyes; writing this post (like gazing at Mom's refrigerator) been an exercise in remembering what really matters, what's important, and what we must continue to fight for. I feel reinvigorated in my commitment to anti-oppression work and ever grateful to my mom for sowing its seeds in me - and for being there to water, fertilize, prune, and trellis my plant of social justice as it's grown and matured, branching out in many directions.

Thanks, Mom.

And Vive la Fridge!

~ Rachel

References

Abramovitz, M. (1996). Regulating the lives of women: Social welfare policy from colonial times to the present. Boston, MA: South End Press.    

"I'll trade you the red one for the blonde one"...Russell Edgington shows his true misogynist colors

In the mood for a little vintage True Blood? We're going deep, deep down into the wine cellar for this one, dear friends...all the way back to Season 3 ;-)


Remember the Episode 8 showdown between Russell and Bill in front of Sookie's house? Here's a quick recap.


Bill and Jessica had gone over to defend Sookie from Debbie and her werewolves. It was looking pretty good - vamps: 1, weres: 0 - when, before Bill could stop her, Jessica chased a fleeing wolf out the door and onto the front lawn where the King of Mississippi was waiting. Of course, he couldn't enter a human's residence; instead, he waited in stealth mode for an opportunity such as the one that had presented itself when Jessica ran straight into his evil clutches.


Bill - who was on the way up the stairs to give aid to Sookie - wavered for a moment before stepping out onto the porch in defense of his progeny. Challenging Russell, Bill asked the king if he was a coward or just plain lazy; hiding behind werewolves and the struggling baby vamp he was about to  sink his fangs into. "How about you and I settle this amongst men", Bill growled.


This next part is rich. Russell - in almost the same breath as he derided Bill for his sexism ("How very sexist of you, Bill. When it comes to killing, I've always been an equal opportunist.") - suggested, "I'll trade you the red one for the blond one". S3E8 Night On The Sun


Smacks of some of the essentialist concepts laid out in my post You Smell Like Dinner, i.e. women are not real subjects, complex and distinct but “infinitely substitutable beings”; objects branded with the “mark of the plural” (Rivera, 2003, p. 145 & 147), huh?


Me thinks King Russell hath shown his true [misogynist] colors!


And let's not forget some of his other most revealing gems, several of which were uttered in the Titanic-esque, patriarchal king-of-the-world plantation manor setting of 9 Crimes (S3E4) - complete with blood brandy and cigars...

...like the Rudyard Kipling quote he worked into his conversation with Bill; "A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke." 

Or this lovely sentiment - apparently all his own in the sense that it wasn't lifted from a late 19th & early 20th century literary figure who celebrated British imperialism - although likely not foreign to the worldviews of many other men; "Tug on her purse strings, and you'll find a lady's heart".

It seems to me that these patronizing, dismissive attitudes would have been right at home in the dark wood paneled and opulently furnished retreats of Gilded Age wealthy men. Places where they could bathe in their power and the arrogance of their lording over their women, children, and servants shone through their masks of etiquette like the sun through clouds. Havens where their positions of authority both in the home and in the world of business were reinforced; their sexism [and other "isms"] likely met with a wink and a smile.

It is this type of Edwardian gentleman's parlour atmosphere that Russell seems to have tried to recreate, driven perhaps by his snobbish desperation to project an air of both affluent civility and unquestioned authoritarian power.             

Has the [white] male ruling class not changed that much since the time of first class crossings on the White Star Line? It seems such elitist fantasies have not gone down with the ship. 

Thoughts? We'd love to hear them.

~ Rachel

References

Rivera, R. Z. (2003). New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone. New York: Palgrave