I read two fascinating books recently. I would bet that you have all heard of one (and I know at least one of you has read it), and that almost none of you have heard of the other (I told one of you, though).

The book you have heard of is The Feminine Mystique. I learned about it in high school, but never read it until now. I learned a lot from it about conditions for middle-class women in the fifties and early sixties, and what really surprised me is that while some arguments in the book could be looked back upon with a mentality of "I'm so glad we don't do that now", other arguments Freidan brings up are still being debated. Despite the flaws in the text, it gives a good perspective on both how far we have come and what challenges remain, and the advice near the end of the book is constructive for anyone.

The book I doubt you have heard of is Covering, by Kenji Yoshino. The author is a Yale law professor and a former poet, and as a result the book is one of the best syntheses of fluid, beautiful prose and solidly reasoned argument that I have ever read. The main thesis of the book is that the acceptance of a minority group into the mainstream is in three stages: Conversion (what you are is inferior and that's all there is to it), Passing (don't ask, don't tell), and Covering. Covering as he defines it is hiding parts of yourself that are not accepted in the mainstream, which applies to both minority groups trying to fit in and non-minority groups in unusual situations (a nice example of this is single dads). He sees the acceptance of gays, women, and racial minorities to be in this Covering stage, where people are often asked to hide parts of themselves or be subject to consequences. There were positive messages about the importance of accepting others and the need to not be required to cover--Yoshino sees this as the new stage of the civil rights battle. But what was alarming for me about the book was the examples he gave; as a law professor he gave many examples in the form of legal cases, mostly in the last 15 years but many from the last five years. I did not know that the court has helped people lose their children or their job teaching children for not hiding their homosexuality, or upheld the firing of women for refusing to wear makeup, or the firing of blacks for not changing their hairstyles to traditionally "white" hairstyles. In general until quite recently the idea was that if you are being asked to cover and you possibly can, the court would rule that you are obligated to do it. This was really shocking to me, especially how recently this was.

What was also really interesting is that when he discussed women, he said they were the only group covering that he knew of which was subject to both covering and anti-covering demands from the majority group. What that means is, while for a racial minority they are asked to act white by the majority white group, but lambasted by their minority if they act "too white"; women in careers are asked to hide parts of their gender identity (for example, not take too much time for pregnancy/childbirth and hide evidence of parental responsibilities) but are also taken to task by the same people for not being feminine enough (women will often get passed over for promotions if they are perceived as being too aggressive or frigid, which basically means not being a pushover). What I liked about hearing this was that it put a categorical description to behavior I've seen a lot of times, from many different sides. And I've said it before but I'll say it again--legislation to help women in the workplace helps some men as well, men who have outside interests or want to actually be fathers or any number of other things. The basic idea of the book was that we should be accepting diversity, which will make everyone more productive and capable of pursuing what they want, and it was presented in such an eloquent and well-reasoned fashion that I wish everyone would read this book. Really.