Information about Wendy Kaminer

Wendy Kaminer (born 1950) is a lawyer and feminist writer. She has written several books on contemporary social issues, including A Fearful Freedom: Women's Flight From Equality, about the conflict between egalitarian and protectionist feminism; I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional, about the self-help movement; and Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials : The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety.

Biography

Kaminer graduated from Smith College in 1971. She earned her law degree from Boston University Law School and practiced law as a staff attorney in the New York Legal Aid Society and the office of the Mayor of New York City.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Kaminer was a member of Women Against Pornography and wrote several articles on possible legal approaches to combatting pornography, including a chapter to the seminal anti-pornography anthology, Take Back the Night. By the mid-1980s, though still a member of WAP, she had come to feel that the legislative approach to fighting pornography, as exemplified by the work of Catherine MacKinnon, was a mistake. By 1990 she had come to view the "protectionist" feminism of MacKinnon and WAP, as well as the "difference" feminism of Carol Gilligan as fundamentally wrong-headed approaches to the question of women's rights. Kaminer's 1990 book A Fearful Freedom was a critique of these approaches.

In 1992, in response to the proposed Pornography Victims Compensation Act before the United States Senate, she was among the founding members of Feminists for Free Expression, along with Nadine Strossen and Marcia Pally.

Kaminer has written extensively about the intersection of religion and politics in America. Her latest book is Free for All: Defending Liberty in America Today. A former Guggenheim Fellow, she is the author of six previous books: Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials, I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional, A Fearful Freedom; True Love Waits: Essays and Criticism; It’s All the Rage: Crime and Culture; and Women Volunteering: the Pleasure, Pain, & Politics of Unpaid Work.

Kaminer has been an ardent critic of "institutionalized whining" and protectionist forms of feminism. She's also criticized the self-help movement and the criminal justice system, including the death penalty.

On November 17, 2001 Kaminer married longtime companion Woody Kaplan. Kaplan, a former real estate developer, founded the Civil Liberties List (a political action committee) and is a full-time political and civil liberties activist. Kaplan is president of the First Amendment Foundation and a very active advisory board member of the Secular Coalition for America.

Kaminer was a member of the board of the American Civil Liberties Union until her term expired in June 2006 and she chose not to run for re-election. She has written a number of articles criticizing the ACLU's recent proposal (which was discussed but never adopted) that would limit public criticism of the organization's staff by its board members, and is an active opponent of ACLU executive director Anthony Romero and assistant director Nadine Strossen. [1]

Kaminer is an advisory board member of the Secular Student Alliance as well as the Secular Coalition for America.

Selected Wendy Kaminer Quotations

• Only people who die very young learn all they really need to know in kindergarten.

• I'm better at criticism than social engineering, so I always have a hard time answering good practical questions like "what can the average person do?"

• Interactivity has the virtue of democracy, conferring upon everyone with access to a computer the right and opportunity to be heard, but it's also saddled with democracy's vice -- a tendency to assume that everyone who has a right to be heard has something to say that's worth hearing.

• Give the FBI unchecked domestic spying powers and instead of focusing on preventing terrorism, it will revert to doing what it does best -- monitoring, harassing, and intimidating political dissidents and thousands of harmless immigrants.

• To rationalize their lies, people -- and the governments, churches, or terrorist cells they compose -- are apt to regard their private interests and desires as just.

• Liars -- especially liars in power -- often conflate their interest with the public interest.

• When the government seeks to expand its power to spy on us, it should be required to show how the loss of anonymity and freedom will make us safer.

• Whatever lessons we take from this dreadful attack (on the World Trade Center and Pentagon), we should never forget that it was, after all, a faith based initiative.