Yes, I'm doing this when I should be doing something else...

[textualdeviance]

But I'm riffing off of something kyooverse said on the Post From Hell...

I consider myself a traditional feminist in many ways-- primarily in that I believe traditional gender roles are harmful to women (and to men, too.)

But one of the things traditional feminism missed is the notion that women are not All Good.

Absolutely women, as a sex, are still second class citizens in most of the world's cultures. Some worse than others, and some subcultures worse than others, too.

But where traditional feminism went wrong is in assuming that men are the ones solely responsible for this, and that men are therefore The Enemy, and the ones to be blamed, to be feared, to be held accountable. In training women to be aware of male power and to find ways to avoid being harmed by it, women were led into this false sense of safety and security with each other.



Case in point, the oft-discussed Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (and other women-only spaces like that.) The women there believe that they will be safe so long as an adult penis does not cross the boundaries of that space. And yet that's definitely not the case. While they may be safe from being raped by a man, or otherwise subject to male-specific violent or oppressive acts, they are still not safe. Women are not inherently non-violent. They are generally not as physically violent as men, but to assume that women are all nurturing, totally loving creatures who would never harm each other is a dangerous myth.

Who is it that enforces the practice of FGM? Women. Who is it that pressures girls into eating disorders? Women. Who is it that tells women they may as well not exist if they don't have male approval? Women. Who is it that ostracizes girls who are not gender-compliant? Women.

It may be true that the reason women do this is because of the outside pressure from the larger, male-dominant culture (particularly consumer culture) but that doesn't absolve women as a whole from culpability for the role they play in continuing the cycle, and it certainly doesn't absolve individual women from responsibility to not engage in activity which is damaging to other women, assuming they're in a safe enough position to do so. If you don't have a gun to your head, and won't lose your job or your house if you cease oppressing other women, you have no excuse. The women who do FGM have an excuse for what they do. Some arrogant teenage fuckwit nagging the school fat girl does not. Some mother clucking about how her daughter should really grow her hair out and wear something prettier does not. Women who merrily feed the corporate beauty and fashion machine, regardless of the deaths those industries are responsible for do not.

Women constitute a majority of the US population. Women now hold a great deal of power positions in business, politics, science and the arts. If women were indeed only pawns of the patriarchy who know not what they do, then feminism should have cured that, and we would all be free now. The strength in numbers and actual power we carry now, while still not ideal, is enough to set us free if women were in fact fighting for our rights as a group.

But obviously, that's not happening. Certainly, some women are too afraid of the consequences of bucking the system to suddenly stop feeding the sexism machine. But others know better, and are either too lazy, or have a twisted idea that they're benefitting from the subjugation of women as a group to bother. The fact that so many women with power insist on using that power to continue the abuse of other women is appalling. And those women absolutely should be held responsible for what they do.

One of the reasons Blank's original post pissed me off is the notion that femme space is somehow some special, magical place where one is fully loved and accepted and intimate with everyone there, because you're all mututally bonding over shoes. That's a pretty myth, but it's just that. The message of femme space is not "all are welcome here" but "you're welcome here if you are Femme or if you are Butch and support Femme." Sisterhood is not open to all with a cunt. It is open only to those women (and men) who will play along and do their part to reinforce harmful gender stratification.

No, we women are not safe with each other. Women-only spaces are not magical, mystical safe houses where no one will ever be harmed. Women in power has not ended sexism, and in fact in some ways is reinforcing it, because the only women who have thusfar been allowed to come to power are the ones who play the game. The concept that one will recieve unconditional love, safety and support merely by associating solely with someone whose genitals or gender identity you share is simply not actual fact.

Women can be just as nasty as men, and in some ways nastier because they're more subtle about the damage they do. And I'm supposed to just grin and say how great it is to be a chick, and how great other chicks are?

Hardly. No one is my "sister" just because she and I both have cunts.

Comments

[thefirstalicat.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think that a lot of the negative image that traditional feminism has today is due to how media presented feminism on the news and in other venues at the time - it was more "newsworthy" to describe Dworkin's rants, somehow, than it was to report on women's collectives organizing to force companies to provide child care for their employees. Obviously the latter is far more important than the former, but the former had a titillation factor that news media seem to feel they need in order to sell more papers or advertising spots, etc.

That said, by the later 1970s, the "traditional feminist movement" was under fire from within, because many women saw it as an elitist movement, catering to white, middle class, educated women and ignoring the different needs of the poor and non-white and uneducated women. I think that as an organized social force, feminism began falling apart around that time, because of that (quite true) criticism as much as it fell apart because of external pressures.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sure the media coverage definitely had a lot to do with it. But I do find it interesting that Rich and Dworkin, especially, form a lot of the core material in many women studies classes even now. At least they did when I was taking them. I remember one of my term papers was on how the conventional wisdom that porn is necessarily bad was wrong. (I pointed out that mainstream, non-porn sexualization of women has done far more to turn women into sex objects than stuff like, say, amateur hardcore with couples filming themselves in their basements.)

I suppose "traditional feminism" is probably a misnomer anyway, though. I don't think it can be said that there's ever really been a unified feminist voice, in any of the waves. Even the suffragists disagreed on philosophy. (Which reminds me: Iron Jawed Angels is a great movie.)

I guess my version of traditional... wrong word, but... is probably the stuff that sparked me when I was a kid. I don't recall specific voices at the time, I just remember hearing a lot about the ERA, and a lot of rot from Phyllis Schlafly about how we were going to get stuck with unisex restrooms and other silly stuff. My dad was the primary filter for me at the time, and the big message I got was that girls could do anything boys could do and men were pigs. Thanks, Dad. :) (Seriously. There are things my dad taught me that I disagree with now, but I really love him for encouraging me to be strong, even as my mom was trying to get me to wear dresses and be rather less vulgar.)

I didn't start hearing specifics in terms of theory and perspective until I realized I was queer about 12, and started in on gender-related writings from that angle. Amusingly, one of my first books in that direction was Our Bodies, Ourselves, the 1973 edition (still sitting on my shelf, actually.) My mother had gotten it from a co-worker who recommended it as a good book for sex education. I don't think my mom knew what was actually in it, though, especially considering the other book she presented me with at the time (donated from an entirely different co-worker) was a 1965 edition of the workbook from the "Sears School for Young Charmers." Add in all the teen rags and the issues of Cosmo I started buying around that time, and I'm sure you can imagine how confused I was. ;)

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the generation just behind me came away with such a warped view of things. I was growing up right in the thick of the movement, but by the time all those Reagan-era babies started being born, the ERA had been defeated, the socialist angles of feminism were being derided as un-American, and female power became embodied by becoming part of the captialist machine, or emulating the women on Dynasty. The more grassroots stuff was just considered hopelessly out of fashion as soon as denim gave way to polyester. I feel lucky that I was steeped in as much of it as I was, considering how anachronistic it was characterized as later. I also feel lucky that the third wave, and the older women who energized it, started up right around the time I was starting college. I remember reading Backlash and The Beauty Myth and getting really excited. But then the Backlash backlash started, and the third wave splintered, and Katie Roiphe started whining, and it was kinda all downhill from there.

I'd like to think that maybe the Clinton-era kids will become something of a 4th wave (they do seem pretty smart) but I'm afraid we're going to have a lot of infighting that's going to limit what the movement as a whole can do for the forseeable future. Maybe there will be another seminal work that sparks some unity, but for now, it does seem like there's no getting past the girl power crowd, and merely calling oneself a feminist, traditional or no, isn't quite enough to explain what it is one really stands for.

[thefirstalicat.livejournal.com]

I made up my degree in university, and one requirement for doing so was that I had to have core classes in at least three departments and two schools; one of the departments I chose was Women's Studies, then (1980-1983) a new program. Dworkin and others were writing at about the same time, but I don't remember them being discussed in any super-serious way; then again, I took mostly classes within the department that dealt with liberal arts, not feminist theory per se. I recall a strong sense of commonality and community in the classes, though, during that period. There was also one incident where the whole class had a raging debate for several weeks because a man wanted to take the course, and nobody was sure that he should be "allowed" to do so; some women felt the class was their only woman-only zone and felt uncomfortable about having any men around, others felt that the one man in the class, simply by virtue of being male, would somehow "take over" all class discussion and thereby ruin the discourse. As I recall, he was eventually asked to leave....and I'm not sure how that furthered the cause in any way.

Our Bodies, Ourselves, the 1973 edition (still sitting on my shelf, actually.)

Me too :>) Can't remember if I bought it when it came out (or received it as a gift), or if I picked it up later on, though...

by the time all those Reagan-era babies started being born, the ERA had been defeated, the socialist angles of feminism were being derided as un-American, and female power became embodied by becoming part of the captialist machine, or emulating the women on Dynasty. The more grassroots stuff was just considered hopelessly out of fashion as soon as denim gave way to polyester.

Yes, I was in my 20s in the Reagan years, and I definitely remember how feminism became a dirty word during that time; certainly young girls growing up then would have easily been led by the media and society at large to believe that "equal rights" was not a goal worth pursuing. There was a lot of the "women are better than men, so why lower ourselves to be equal?" claptrap going on in the media, which young naive girls might easily grow up believing. The Clinton "generation," however, might be more politically aware, not least for seeing how Hillary was reviled in the right-wing media for simply being a strong woman with definite ideas about how to make the country a better place. I think we can place some hope in that generation, as it comes of age over the next 10 years or so....

OTOH, it seems to me that, along with multimedia/zillions of websites and telly stations, etc., political organizations are splintering into smaller and smaller parts these days - you may be a militant lesbian feminist and I might be an older straight feminist - in the old days, we would have found ourselves in the same political organizations, fighting for equal rights for all, but today you'd probably be in groups that wouldn't accept me, and vice versa. Which is a shame because, of course, such splintering weakens the cause as a whole. But I don't see that trend reversing itself any time soon (though possibly the growing anti-war movement, consisting of tons of groups that otherwise have nothing in common, is a sign of better things to come).

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

(though possibly the growing anti-war movement, consisting of tons of groups that otherwise have nothing in common, is a sign of better things to come)

I hope so. I also think, given the trajectory of the US economy, that economics and social class issues are going to jump to the forefront in the next few years. Supply-side economics is about to go boom, and I think a lot of current political dividing lines are going to go wonky because of it.

Thanks for the convo, btw. :)

[thefirstalicat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the convo, btw. :)

*waves* de nada