Phyllis Schlafly: Many of these laws, such as alimony and the exemption of women from the military draft, were Transgender Hero originally designed with the intent to give women Elisabeth Wilder special benefits and protections. Reintroduced in Eastern Mennonite University 1972, the ERA was passed by the House, Senate, and President of the United States and was The woman who is widely credited as the seemingly on its way to being ratified; then Schlafly successful champion of the anti-Equal Rights stepped in. On July 7, 1972, Phyllis Schlafly began Amendment campaign in the 1970s is the hero that an uphill national campaign against the ERA— the transgender community needs. Yes, Phyllis twenty-eight of the thirty-eight states needed to ratify the amendment had already voted to support Schlafly, conservative Republican activist and 4 founder of the Eagle Forum and STOP-ERA it. Just two months after launching her anti-ERA movement, has inadvertently articulated the campaign, Schlafly’s movement gained traction. In importance of transgender rights through her many St. Louis on September 26, 1972 one hundred years as a gender privilege activist. Ultimately, prominent women gathered from across the country Schlafly and transgender activists have been saying to discuss anti-ERA strategies, which gave birth to the Stop Taking Our Privileges (STOP-ERA) the same thing for years: men and women deserve 5 the legal right to be celebrated and validated in their movement. gender category. The main distinction between Schlafly’s STOP-ERA movement, primarily these two parties, however, is a different composed of middle-aged religious housewives, interpretation of gender and what it means to be focused and led a serious backlash against the ERA. male or female. The STOP-ERA movement insisted that ratification of the ERA would lead to homosexual marriage and A novice Republican politician and radio 6 commentator during the 1950s and 1960s, taxpayer-funded abortions. The core of the STOP- Schlafly’s political career and advocacy for gender ERA movement, though, was that gender privileges privilege truly began with her STOP-ERA for women would cease to exist upon ratification of movement during the 1970s.1 Originally written by the amendment. Ratification, Schlafly argued, Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman and introduced to would lead to women in combat, unisex bathrooms, Congress in 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment elimination of social security benefits for widows, (ERA) proposed ending laws that excluded women and would have drastic consequences for housewives as they lacked skills necessary for the from legal opportunities, rights, and 7 responsibilities.2 The three sections of the ERA working world. state: By using what would today be defined as Section 1. Equality of rights under the law traditional gender symbols, such as women cooking shall not be denied or abridged by the and cleaning, Schlafly was able to rally support for United States or by any state on account of her anti-ERA movement. Her supporters were sex. known for taking homemade goods to state Section 2. The Congress shall have the legislators and using slogans such as “Preserve us from a congressional jam; Vote against the ERA power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, 8 provisions of this article. sham” and “I am for Mom and apple pie. ” Section 3. This amendment shall take effect Ultimately, Schlafly’s ‘womanly’ rhetoric was two years after the date of ratification. 3 successful. The ERA died in 1982 ten years after the House, Senate, and President of the United 4 Critchlow, Grassroots Conservatism, 215-216, 219. 1 5 Donald T. Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Ibid. Woman’s Crusade (New Jersey: Princeton, 2005), 4. 6 2 Rosalind Rosenberg, Divided Lives: American Women in the Twentieth Graham Noble, "The Rise and Fall of the Equal Rights Amendment." Century. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), 225-229. History Review no. 72 (March 2012), 30-33. Critchlow, Grassroots Conservatism, 218. 3 7 Barbara Brown and Thomas Emerson. “The Equal Rights Amendment: A Carol Felsenthal, The sweetheart of the silent majority: the biography of Constitutional Basis for Equal Rights for Women.” The Law Yale Journal 80, Phyllis Schlafly (Doubleday, 1981), 243-245. 8 no. 5 (1971), 871-985. Critchlow, Grassroots Conservatism, 224-225. Rosenburg, Divided Lives, 225. States had passed it. Even though the deadline for social response to one’s identity, which is the view ratifying the amendment had been extended an widely accepted today in the United States.14 additional three years and 63% of Americans were In essence, Money and most other gender in support of the amendment, Schlafly’s arguments researchers agree that sex is something that we are and charm proved too compelling.9 To this day the while gender is something that we do.15 Individuals ERA has yet to be passed, even though it has been are born with male or female genitalia, but to truly reintroduced to Congress several times. become a man or a woman, they must achieve that Pro-ERA groups such as the National gender status. Gender roles, a term coined by Organization for Women (NOW) couldn’t Money himself, are our own response to sex and withstand Schlafly’s army of mobilized housewives. identity. Gender, too, is not choosing Barbie dolls Schlafly enticed women to join her movement by over trucks or pink over blue. We are constantly turning the ERA, which was truly a battle about doing gender; we are responding to an innate desire economic inequality surrounding women, into a to be identified as we see ourselves. As Simone de battle over womanhood and what it means to be a Beauvoir, an influential contributor to the second woman. The women who were the most vocal wave of feminism, wrote in her book, The Second leaders of the pro-ERA movement, though from all Sex, “One is not born, but rather becomes, different socioeconomic backgrounds, were woman.”16 predominantly single, career women, making them John Money’s research on the distinction targetable to the STOP-ERA women who were between sex and gender was pushed out even primarily married housewives.10 STOP-ERA further during the 1960s by the work of sexologist demonized the pro-ERA movement by Harry Benjamin, who was one of the first to study extrapolating what had been traditionally associated transsexualism in depth. Benjamin’s book The with womanhood, being a wife and mother, and Transsexual Phenomenon, published in 1966, portraying the ERA and its supporters as the farthest popularized the term “transsexual.”17 Transsexual thing from these values. The heart of Schlafly’s during the 1960s was synonymous for what is today arguments can be summed up in her commentary on defined as transgender, referring to people whose the Today Show in 1977, “(The ERA) would treat gender is not identical to their sex.18 The term women exactly the same as men, and women don’t transgender also became popular during the 1960s want to be treated exactly the same as men.”11 as psychiatrist John F. Oliven, who coined the term, What Schlafly defined as ‘woman’ during noted that sexuality did not necessarily dictate the 1970s and 1980s and what is defined as gender.19 It wasn’t until the 1970s when the term ‘woman’ today is not totally congruent, though. became more mainstream thanks to Virginia Prince, ‘Woman’ during the 1970s and early 1980s would a transgender woman herself. 20 have generally only referred to one’s sex as opposed Today, as opposed to what was happening to one’s gender. Until the 1950s, gender and sex during the major push for the ERA, there are two were synonymous terms that both referred to one’s 12 biological being. It was psychologist and 14 Rebecca F. Plante, Doing Gender Diversity: Readings in Theory and Real- sexologist, John Money, who first suggested that World Experience. (Boulder: Westview 2010), 5-8. sex referred to one’s biology and that gender Janet Saltzman Chafetz, Masculine, Feminine or Human? An Overview of the Sociology of Sex Roles. (Itasca, IL: F.E. Peacock Publishers, 1974), 2-15. referred to one’s emotional identity. In his journal Sarah L. Crawley, Lara J. Foley, and Constance L. Shehan. Gendering Bodies. (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 1-25. articles published in the 1950s, Money explored the 15 Ibid. biology of gender and sex based on his research on 16 13 Simone De. Beauvoir, The Second Sex. (New York: Knopf, Reprint 2010), Hermaphroditism. Gender, Money argued, is a 283. 17 Charles L Ihlenfeld, "Harry Benjamin and Psychiatrists," Journal Of Gay 9 & Lesbian Psychotherapy 8, no. 1/2 (January 2004): 147-152. Marlee Richards, America in the 1970s. (Minneapolis, MN: Twenty-First Century Books, 2010), 63. 18 10 Jack Drescher, “Queer Diagnoses: Parallels and Contrasts in History of Critchlow, Grassroots Conservatism, 221. 11 Homosexuality, Gender Variance, and the Diagnostic and Statistical "Phyllis Schlafly and the ERA" NBC Today Show (TV show), New Manual,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 39, no. 2 (September 2009): 427-260. 19 York, NY: NBC Universal, (August 8, 1977.) John Oliven, "Book Reviews and Notices: Sexual Hygiene and 12 Vern L. Bullough, "The Contributions of John Money: A Personal View," Pathology". American Journal of the Medical Sciences 250, no. 2 (August Journal Of Sex Research 40, no. 3 (August 2003): 230-236. 1965): 235. 13 20 Ibid. Drescher, Archives of Sexual Behavior, 435-436. primary and well-known classifications of people in The influence of in-group and out-group regard to sex/gender categories. Transgender, as dynamics reinforce the importance and significance previously mentioned, refers to one who has a of gender privilege as a means of validation of gender that is not the same as their sex.