The other day I was sitting in an A.A. meeting when a woman I don’t know, I’ll call her Jane Doe, stormed out of the room, obviously pissed off.
During the meeting we had been reading from a section of the Big Book titled “To Wives” and I know that is what set her off. Ten minutes later the meeting ended and I found myself outside on the sidewalk where Jane Doe, at full throttle now, was telling whoever wanted to listen “I’m not gonna sit in there and listen to that sexist bullshit!”
“Sexy? What's wrong with bein’ sexy?” I wanted to say, pulling out one of my favorite quotes from the film Spinal Tap, but I stayed mum.
I knew exactly what Jane was raving about but as I am inherently conflict averse I turned away from the gathering sidewalk debate about sexist language in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and skedaddled away.
Right now, in America especially, there is a zeitgeist of women who are examining their drinking habits. I’m sure a lot of this is because of all the irrefutable data coming out of the Mayo Clinic and the World Health Organization about the link between drinking alcohol and our likelihood of getting breast cancer. The facts are there and they are scary. Women who consume three drinks or glasses of wine a week are 15 percent more likely to get breast cancer than non-drinkers. And the more you drink, the higher that percentage of cancer-likelihood. So that is sobering. But for most of the women I know, not sobering enough to forego their weekly (or nightly) wine allotment.
Recently there seems to be a movement to discredit A.A.’s effectiveness for female alcoholics. Several authors including Holly Whitaker (New York Times bestseller Quit Like a Woman), Laura McKowen (New York Times bestseller We Are The Luckiest) and Annie Grace (This Naked Mind and This Naked Mind Workbook) are insistent that Alcoholics Anonymous is not an acceptable treatment program for women, simply because of the way it was written almost 100 years ago.
These three female authors (and others) would condemn the entire program of A.A. because of the stilted 1930s language. And what are we to do? Us poor alcoholic women who can’t go to A.A. because, in the words of Miss Whitaker, “women are not welcome in A.A.”
Never fear, all you ladies who need to stop drinking but are “unwelcome” in A.A. Lo and behold these three authors have each founded their own “online sobriety schools” where, for a hefty fee, women can sit alone in a room in front of their laptops and try to get sober. Miss McKowen has even written her own nine steps to get you sober (in case A.A.'s twelve steps seem too daunting).
The fact that these female authors are trying to monetize other women's sobriety while actively pulling them away from the twelve step program of A.A. is predatory. They are hoping to profit from other people’s addiction. To line their own pockets with other people's suffering. Financial profiting from addiction is something that has always been anathema to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I find these books and these female authors who disparage A.A. for women while offering up their ridiculous online and for-profit “recovery schools” dangerous and repugnant.
I agree that there is language in the Big Book that can be viewed as sexist. There is also implied sexism in the Bible, the Torah, the Quran, the Hindi texts, the Tao Te Ching, and almost every other spiritual text written over the course of our human history.
I can only assume that this is because men have historically ruled the world. But, as Bob Dylan might say, “the times they are a changin’.”
And changing for the better. I’m just glad I’m not living in 1595 when the “are women even human?” debate between Valens Acidalius and Simon Gediccus took place. This debate was brought to my attention ages ago by my friend Luca who, while a lovely guy, is a bit of a chauvinist. But I didn't mind. I love a good debate. Especially one where I know I am in the right. Women are, indeed, human. I knew it then. I know it now.
I can't remember all the amazing details of the twisting turning arguments as to why women either were or were not human. But after much argument and fierce infighting it was decided (by a bunch of men wearing what look, in the etching I saw anyway, like ratty tatty bathrobes) that women were to be classified as human.
But these wise men also decided that women were to be placed in their own genus, not with the men, but below them, as a sort of sub-human human, hovering somewhere between man and horse. This debate, when over, decreed that woman was like man, just without all the things that make man great. Women in 1595 Europe were basically considered walking, talking (but unthinking), cooking, cleaning, baby-making, obedient, subservient slabs of meat.
But I digress. Yes, there are more than traces of 1930s era sexism sprinkled throughout the Big Book. There is even that one chapter titled “To Wives”. The Big Book was written the way it was at that time because Bill Wilson and his cronies were not aware that women could be drunks too. But we could, we can, we are. And how!
As soon as the “founding fathers” of Alcoholics Anonymous were made aware that women could be alcoholics too, everything changed. The first female member of A.A., Marty Mann, was sponsored by none other than Bill Wilson himself.
Other sources claim the first female in A.A. to be Florence R. who joined a Brooklyn-based A.A. meeting in March of 1937. As soon as the men in A.A. realized that women suffer just as much as men from the disease of alcoholism and addiction they threw open their doors and invited them in. They even changed the original text of the Big Book, adding personal stories of female and other minority alcoholics as they become more aware that alcoholism touches everyone everywhere of all ages, all colors, all sexual orientations and all socioeconomic groups. Alcoholism, it seems, is a ubiquitous part of the human experience. It’s not just “for the guys”, as Bill and his cronies might have thought at first.
I try to focus on the positive aspects of the Big Book and move on. Its writing was a miraculous feat, and it has literally saved millions of lives (mine included) across the globe. Is some of the language sexist? Yes it is. But for my own recovery I need to move past that, understanding that people and cultures and even fixed ideas change and evolve and grow. Hopefully for the better. Women are now seen as equals, in the world and in A.A. That is progress.
And, as we used to be reminded in that Virginia Slims commercial, “You’ve come a long way, Baby.”