Say ring to these women, and they fight

The problem is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human potential. Women are human beings, not stuffed dolls. – Betty Friedan in “The Feminine Mystique.”

I reread Betty Friedan’s 1963 classic this week, returning to the sacred feminist text because I’d experienced a crisis of faith in the women’s liberation department. The crisis began when I saw the photo of the Idaho Army National Guard woman cuddling her 7-month-old baby girl before leaving for Iraq. I did not want that woman to go off to war. This hypocrisy on my part was too difficult to explore. So I focused on a different arena of feminist discomfort: women’s boxing.

Tom Keefe called me a few weeks ago. The Spokane lawyer is an amateur boxing aficionado because his son Kevin has excelled in it. He thought I’d like to know that about 100 women boxers are coming to the Spokane County Fair and Expo Center Tuesday through Saturday for the U.S. Women’s National Boxing Championship.

Man, I hate boxing. I have never been able to watch more than two minutes of it on television. I explained this to Tom. He listened patiently, then said, “Talk to some of the women boxers.”

So I met up with Andrea Kallas at a boxing ring in the basement of the Eagles Lodge in north Spokane. Andrea is 25. The former Central Valley High School basketball star stepped into the ring to spar with Kevin Keefe.

Up close, boxing is less violent than it appears on TV. Andrea and Kevin looked as if they were involved in a graceful, athletic dance. Amateur fighters are judged on technique, rather than knock-out blows. Andrea later told me that boxing for the Spokane Eagles Boxing Club rescued her from a post-high school funk. She’ll be boxing next week.

Every girl who finishes her M.A. or Ph.D. and goes on to use it, helps others move on. Every woman who fights the remaining barriers to full equality makes it easier for the next woman. – Betty Friedan

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to meet Allison Porter when she came to town Monday. She’s boxing next week in the championships, too. Her resume: Harvard University graduate, degrees in astronomy and astrophysics. Admitted to medical school at University of Washington. Plans on hold as she fulfills duties as Miss Washington. Will compete in Miss America contest in September. Co-author of the textbook “Immunogenetics of Autoimmune Disease.”

She’s brilliant. She’s beautiful. She boxes. Her resume reads like a women’s liberation parody. It’s not.

A baked potato is not as big as the world, and vacuuming the living room floor – with or without makeup – is not work that takes enough thought to challenge any woman’s full capacity. – Betty Friedan

I next talked to Marcey Monohan. She’s part of the host committee for next week’s boxing championship. She works as a manager for a Spokane construction trade association. She’s 34. It might seem quaint, I told her, that women of my generation, and the generations above me, once fought to liberate women from housework and other constricting roles.

Then she told me her story. Marcey was raised in a small town, a town where the expectation remained that a woman’s primary roles were as wife and mother. One modern concession: The women could go to college first. Marcey did. Then she married and had kids. Loved the kids but missed her own identity. She once played college basketball – well. She took up boxing to lose weight after her third child. She got hooked and competed for five years.

“It was a confidence builder,” Marcey said. “It’s not a sport of violence. It’s a sport of technical skills.”

The women boxers opened my eyes and my mind. They are living Friedan’s hope, expressed 40 years ago, that someday women would be free to use their talents beyond the home. And if that happens to be in a boxing ring, OK.

But those women soldiers leaving their babies behind to fight in Iraq? Sorry, Ms. Friedan, I’m still conflicted.