Sisterhood

The more we women cooperate with one another, instead of cutting each other down and/or competing for rare resources, the better our lives will be.

From left to right: Francesca Donner, Deb Copaken, Annette Young, and Inky Thordar at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, April, 2022.

When I met Francesca Donner, at a journalism conference in Perugia, Italy in April of 2022, we were set up on a kind of friend blind date by Annette Young, the presenter for France 24’s The 51%—a show by and about women’s issues on which I’d been a talking head. Here’s a typical example of the show from last week, and yes, I introduced Annette to the amazing Dr. Kelly Casperson, whom she interviewed for this story about menopause:

To say I was wary of meeting Francesca is an understatement. She and another journalist were the gender editors of the New York Times “In Her Words,” and I’d heard they were good friends. That other journalist had just written a snarky and sexist review of my memoir, in which she called my near death from vaginal cuff dehiscence “gross” and somehow tried to frame it so that my point in telling my story was to test my readers, to see if they could stomach the horrors of that near death, instead of why I did tell it: to present the hard truths of the, yes, often bloody, stark, and life-threatening discriminations we women experience every day when interacting with our healthcare system, the divorce industrial complex, and corporate America so that, you know, maybe one day those systems could change.

Meanwhile, speaking of stomachs, while I waited at the table for Francesca to arrive, mine was in knots. Would she be snarky and cruel, too? Why had I agreed to this stupid dinner? I was tired, jet-lagged, and in no mood for having to defend myself against the subtle, passive aggressive digs we women (yes, all of us) can sometimes dish out because that is how our patriarchal system—where we must compete for resources, jobs, love, respect, basic human rights, etc.—has subconsciously trained us to be.

Then Francesca arrived at the table, this bundle of pure joy, self-deprecation, brilliance, support, love, and endless humor, apologizing profusely for being five minutes late, and from the moment we started chatting, I knew I’d found my new sister-in-arms.

We spent the entire festival merged at the hip, laughing and walking the narrow streets of Perugia, talking about how we each wanted to fight against sexism. Me? I wanted to keep writing about women’s health and uncovering the lies we’ve been told, mistreatment by doctors, and how the system has failed us again and again. Francesca, on the heels of the New York Times deciding her job as Gender Director was no longer needed, since we now live in a post-gender world (HAHAHAHAHA!!!!), said she wanted to start a new publication by, for, and about women. One day, she said, she’d reach out and ask me to write a story for her. I promised I would.

Francesca Donner in Perugia during one of our many wanders through the narrow streets, April, 2022. ©Deborah Copaken

Well, today that promise has been kept. A couple of weeks ago, Francesca reached out to say Kate Winslet was coming out with a new film about Lee Miller, and in her publicity interviews for the film in Great Britain, the actress often mentioned the power of the sisterhood to get the film made. Francesca wanted me to contrast that supportive sisterhood with the utter lack of sisterhood I’d experienced when publishing Shutterbabe, my memoir of my years as a war photographer, for her new publication, The Persistent.

Herewith, that story.

And may Francesca’s and my cheesy love story spur you, too, to find sisters-in-arms wherever you can. We need each other. And if we women work together, instead of tearing each other apart, the world, one day, might actually be ours to share.

From left to right: Annette Young, Inky Thordar, Kate O’Brian, Deb Copaken on our panel about sexism and ageism in journalism, Perugia, Italy, April, 2022

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