Jennifer Baumgardner
Encyclopedia
Jennifer Baumgardner is an author, filmmaker, and third-wave feminist
activist.
and attended Lawrence University
in Appleton
, Wisconsin
, graduating in 1992. While at Lawrence University she helped organize “Guerilla Theater,” a feminist group on campus, and started an alternative newspaper called The Other that focused on issues of women’s liberation. She moved to New York City
after graduation and in 1993 began working as an unpaid intern for Ms. Magazine
. By 1997 she had become the youngest editor in Ms. Magazine history.
While working at Ms. Magazine Baumgardner fell in love with a fellow woman intern by the name of Anastasia. They broke up in 1996, but the relationship inspired her to publish her first novel Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics. In 1997 she began dating Amy Richards
, the couple broke up in 2002 but remained friends and have since co-authored two bestselling books together: ManifestA: Young Women, Feminism and the Future and Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism.
She currently lives in New York with her husband Michael and two sons Skuli and Magnus.
, The Nation
, Babble
, and Maxim
. Her books include Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future, Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism written with Amy Richards
, and Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics. She produced the documentary film
Speak Out: I Had an Abortion, which tells the story of ten women's abortion
experiences from the 1920s to the present. She has written about purity ball
s (rituals celebrating virginity), about Catholic hospitals taking over secular ones and eliminating their reproductive services, and about breastfeeding her friend's son.
Baumgardner's work has been featured on shows from The Oprah Winfrey Show
to NPR
's Talk of the Nation, as well as in the New York Times, BBC
News Hour, Bitch
, and various other venues. She has keynoted at more than 250 universities, organizations, and conferences, including the National Coalition of Abortion Providers
, Amherst College
, Take Back The Night UW-Madison, and the New Jersey Women and Gender Studies Consortium. In 2003, the Commonwealth Club of California
hailed her in their centennial year as one of six “Visionaries for the 21st Century,” commenting that “in her role as author and activist, [Jennifer has] permanently changed the way people think about feminism…and will shape the next 100 years of politics and culture.”
“Consciousness among women is what caused this [change], and consciousness, one's ability to open their (sic) mind to the fact that male domination does affect the women of our generation, is what we need... The presence of feminism in our lives is taken for granted. For our generation, feminism is like fluoride. We scarcely notice we have it—it's simply in the water.”
Throughout the book the authors traces feminism's evolution from the First Wave
suffragette movement to the Third Wave
feminism of today, all the while encouraging readers to continue the feminist fight of previous generations.
In 2007, they devised an innovative of way of "bringing the campus to the speakers" with the creation of Soapbox Feminist Boot Camps. These week-long intensives immerse participants (of all ages and genders) in the practice of feminism and exposes the myriad issues, approaches, organizations, and individuals that are the lifeblood of the movement Currently these boot campus are the largest feminist immersion programs in the country.
—openly speaking about their abortion experiences spanning over seven decades from the years prior to Roe vs. Wade to present day.
In a 2008 interview with Scarleteen Jennifer spoke about the campaign, remarking “The ‘I Was Rape’ Project is a documentary, t-shirt campaign, and resources designed to a) highlight the prevalence of rape in our culture and b) interrupt the silence and shame that surrounds it. The goal of this project is to add nuance to the cultural conversation around rape. The reality of rape is more subtle than the preconceptions suggest. The act of rape—as well as the emotions and reactions of the raped—fall somewhere outside of the black-and-white roles of perpetrator and victim. The current things we have in place for justice are also inadequate, since the vast majority of rape victims don’t want to or choose to press charges. The aim of this documentary is to highlight these issues, as well as to give rape survivors a voice.”
Third-wave feminism
Third-wave feminism is a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study whose exact boundaries in the historiography of feminism are a subject of debate, but often marked as beginning in the 1980s and continuing to the present...
activist.
Early and personal life
Baumgardner grew up in Fargo, North DakotaFargo, North Dakota
Fargo is the largest city in the U.S. state of North Dakota and the county seat of Cass County. In 2010, its population was 105,549, and it had an estimated metropolitan population of 208,777...
and attended Lawrence University
Lawrence University
Lawrence University is a selective, private liberal arts college with a nationally recognized conservatory of music, in Appleton, Wisconsin. Lawrence University is known for its rigorous academic environment. Founded in 1847, the first classes were held on November 12, 1849...
in Appleton
Appleton
-People:* Alistair Appleton, British television presenter* Charles W. Appleton, of GE* Colin Appleton, footballer* Daniel Appleton, American publisher, 1800s founder of D...
, Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...
, graduating in 1992. While at Lawrence University she helped organize “Guerilla Theater,” a feminist group on campus, and started an alternative newspaper called The Other that focused on issues of women’s liberation. She moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
after graduation and in 1993 began working as an unpaid intern for Ms. Magazine
Ms. magazine
Ms. is an American feminist magazine co-founded by American feminist and activist Gloria Steinem and founding editor Letty Cottin Pogrebin together with founding editors Patricia Carbine, Joanne Edgar, Nina Finkelstein, and Mary Peacock, that first appeared in 1971 as an insert in New York magazine...
. By 1997 she had become the youngest editor in Ms. Magazine history.
While working at Ms. Magazine Baumgardner fell in love with a fellow woman intern by the name of Anastasia. They broke up in 1996, but the relationship inspired her to publish her first novel Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics. In 1997 she began dating Amy Richards
Amy Richards
Amy Richards is an United States activist, writer, organizer, feminist and art historian. She graduated from Barnard College in 1992...
, the couple broke up in 2002 but remained friends and have since co-authored two bestselling books together: ManifestA: Young Women, Feminism and the Future and Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism.
She currently lives in New York with her husband Michael and two sons Skuli and Magnus.
Later life
She has since written for numerous magazines, including GlamourGlamour (magazine)
Glamour is a women's magazine published by Condé Nast Publications. Founded in 1939 in the United States, it was originally called Glamour of Hollywood....
, The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, Babble
Babble
Babble is a British internet telephony service. It was one of the first commercialisations of VoIP technology, appearing in 2004 approximately 6 months after the proprietary Skype opened up interest in telephony over the internet...
, and Maxim
Maxim (magazine)
Maxim is an international men's magazine based in the United Kingdom and known for its pictorials featuring popular actresses, singers, and female models, sometimes pictured dressed, often pictured scantily dressed but not fully nude....
. Her books include Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future, Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism written with Amy Richards
Amy Richards
Amy Richards is an United States activist, writer, organizer, feminist and art historian. She graduated from Barnard College in 1992...
, and Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics. She produced the documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
Speak Out: I Had an Abortion, which tells the story of ten women's abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
experiences from the 1920s to the present. She has written about purity ball
Purity Ball
A purity ball is a formal ball dance event attended by fathers and their daughters. Purity balls promote virginity until marriage for teenage girls, and are almost exclusively associated with Evangelical Christian churches in the United States...
s (rituals celebrating virginity), about Catholic hospitals taking over secular ones and eliminating their reproductive services, and about breastfeeding her friend's son.
Baumgardner's work has been featured on shows from The Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show is an American syndicated talk show hosted and produced by its namesake Oprah Winfrey. It ran nationally for 25 seasons beginning in 1986, before concluding in 2011. It is the highest-rated talk show in American television history....
to NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
's Talk of the Nation, as well as in the New York Times, BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
News Hour, Bitch
Bitch
The word "bitch", literally meaning a female dog, is a common slang term in the English language, especially used as a denigrating term applied to a person, commonly a woman...
, and various other venues. She has keynoted at more than 250 universities, organizations, and conferences, including the National Coalition of Abortion Providers
National Coalition of Abortion Providers
The National Coalition of Abortion Providers is trade association which represents independent abortion providers in the United States. Founded in 1990, it is based in Washington, D.C..-Leadership:...
, Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
, Take Back The Night UW-Madison, and the New Jersey Women and Gender Studies Consortium. In 2003, the Commonwealth Club of California
Commonwealth Club of California
The Commonwealth Club of California is a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization based in Northern California. Founded in 1903, it is the oldest and largest public affairs forum in the United States...
hailed her in their centennial year as one of six “Visionaries for the 21st Century,” commenting that “in her role as author and activist, [Jennifer has] permanently changed the way people think about feminism…and will shape the next 100 years of politics and culture.”
ManifestA: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (2000)
On October 4, 2000 Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards published their first co-authored book ManifestA: Young Women, Feminism and the Future. Speaking directly to young third wave feminists, Baumgardner and Richards wrote the book to inspire women of the current generation to consciously embrace the liberation of today while remembering the work of previous feminist generations, writing:“Consciousness among women is what caused this [change], and consciousness, one's ability to open their (sic) mind to the fact that male domination does affect the women of our generation, is what we need... The presence of feminism in our lives is taken for granted. For our generation, feminism is like fluoride. We scarcely notice we have it—it's simply in the water.”
Throughout the book the authors traces feminism's evolution from the First Wave
First Wave
First Wave is a Canadian/American science fiction television series, filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, that aired from 1998 to 2001 on the Sci-Fi Channel. The show was created by Chris Brancato, who co-wrote an early version of the script for the seminal X-Files episode "Eve". Francis...
suffragette movement to the Third Wave
Third Wave
Third wave may refer to:* Third-wave feminism, diverse strains of feminist activity in the early 1990s* Third wave ska, a musical genre* Third Wave of the Holy Spirit, a 1980s expression coined by C...
feminism of today, all the while encouraging readers to continue the feminist fight of previous generations.
Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism (2004)
After the critical success of ManifestA Baumgardner co-authored yet another book with Amy Richards entitled Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism which was published on December 23, 2004. The purpose of the book was to provide a “handbook” for social activism and to help readers answer the social justice question: What can I do? Based on the authors' own experiences, and the stories of both the large number of activists they work with as well as the countless everyday people they have encountered over the years, Grassroots encourages people to move beyond the "generic three" (check writing, contacting congressional representatives, and volunteering) and make a difference with clear guidelines and models for activism. The authors draw heavily on individual stories as examples, inspiring readers to recognize the tools right in front of them--be it the office copier or the family living room--in order to make change. Activism is accessible to all, and Grassroots shows how anyone, no matter how much or little time they have to offer, can create a world that more clearly reflects their values.Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics (2007)
On February 20, 2007 Baumgardner published Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics, the first book she had written without the co-authorship of Amy Richards. In Look Both Ways, Baumgardner takes a close look at the growing visibility of gay and bisexual characters, performers, and issues on the national cultural stage. Despite the prevalence of bisexuality among Generation X and Y women, she finds that it continues to be marginalized by both gay and straight cultures, and dismissed either as a phase or a cop-out. Woven in between her cultural commentary, Baumgardner discusses her own experience as a bisexual, and the struggle she’s undergone to reconcile the privilege she’s garnered as a woman who is perceived as straight and the empowerment and satisfaction she’s derived from her relationships with women.SoapBox Inc. Speakers Who Speak Out
SoapBox Inc. Speakers Who Speak Out is a nonprofit feminist organization started by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards in 2002. Baumgardner and Richard formed the organization with the purpose of providing a national platform for spreading their activist message. Since its creation in 2002 SoapBox Inc. has come to represent dozens of authors, scholars, speakers, and artists at the forefront of feminist politics, and has developed a client base of more than 500 schools and organizations, including Planned Parenthood, St. Thomas University, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, University of Pennsylvania, and Shoreline Community College.In 2007, they devised an innovative of way of "bringing the campus to the speakers" with the creation of Soapbox Feminist Boot Camps. These week-long intensives immerse participants (of all ages and genders) in the practice of feminism and exposes the myriad issues, approaches, organizations, and individuals that are the lifeblood of the movement Currently these boot campus are the largest feminist immersion programs in the country.
I Had an Abortion Project (2004)
In 2004, Baumgardner created the "I Had an Abortion" project to encourage women (and men) to "come out" about their procedures. The campaign included t-shirts that said "I had an abortion," a film documenting women's stories of abortion, a book, and a photo exhibit. The film features ten different women—one of which being famous feminist Gloria SteinemGloria Steinem
Gloria Marie Steinem is an American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader of, and media spokeswoman for, the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970s...
—openly speaking about their abortion experiences spanning over seven decades from the years prior to Roe vs. Wade to present day.
"I Was Raped Project (2008)
After the success of the “I Had an Abortion” campaign Jennifer began spearheading the “I Was Raped” project in 2008. Modeled after the 2004 abortion campaign, the project encouraged men and women to “come out” about their experiences with sexual assault, and included the production and distribution of “I was raped” t-shirts and a film documenting the stories of individuals who had experienced sexual assault in their lifetimes.In a 2008 interview with Scarleteen Jennifer spoke about the campaign, remarking “The ‘I Was Rape’ Project is a documentary, t-shirt campaign, and resources designed to a) highlight the prevalence of rape in our culture and b) interrupt the silence and shame that surrounds it. The goal of this project is to add nuance to the cultural conversation around rape. The reality of rape is more subtle than the preconceptions suggest. The act of rape—as well as the emotions and reactions of the raped—fall somewhere outside of the black-and-white roles of perpetrator and victim. The current things we have in place for justice are also inadequate, since the vast majority of rape victims don’t want to or choose to press charges. The aim of this documentary is to highlight these issues, as well as to give rape survivors a voice.”
See also
- third-wave feminismThird-wave feminismThird-wave feminism is a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study whose exact boundaries in the historiography of feminism are a subject of debate, but often marked as beginning in the 1980s and continuing to the present...
- the left and feminism
- new social movementsNew social movementsThe term new social movements is a theory of social movements that attempts to explain the plethora of new movements that have come up in various western societies roughly since the mid-1960s which are claimed to depart significantly from the conventional social movement paradigm.There are two...
- Amy RichardsAmy RichardsAmy Richards is an United States activist, writer, organizer, feminist and art historian. She graduated from Barnard College in 1992...
External links
- Official website
- The Third Wave Foundation
- Interview with Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards
- Activist Mamas: An Interview With Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards article by Amy Anderson in mamazine published January 15, 2006
- Looking both ways with Jennifer Baumgardner article by Mandy Van Deven in feministing published April 16, 2007
- Look Both Ways: Baumgardner Makes Bisexuality Visible article by Eleanor J. Bader in AlterNetAlterNetAlterNet, a project of the non-profit Independent Media Institute, is a progressive/liberal activist news service. Launched in 1998, AlterNet now claims a readership of over 3 million visitors per month .AlterNet publishes original content as well as journalism from a wide variety of other sources...
published March 7, 2007 - All women are bi like me, journalist says book review by Susan Comninos in the San Francisco ChronicleSan Francisco Chroniclethumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
published March 4, 2007 - Can You Be a Feminist and Anti-Abortion? article by Mandy Van Deven in AlterNetAlterNetAlterNet, a project of the non-profit Independent Media Institute, is a progressive/liberal activist news service. Launched in 1998, AlterNet now claims a readership of over 3 million visitors per month .AlterNet publishes original content as well as journalism from a wide variety of other sources...
published September 25, 2008