In the last 24 hours, my hits have shot through the roof.  Lots of folks clearly want to know why I had my foreskin cut off last year. 

For whatever reason, the feminist blogosphere seems to be undergoing a period of particularly intense self-criticism.  The whole Ampersand/Alas/porn thing exploded this week and the discussion continues in that arena.

Meanwhile, the debate over "fun feminism" (or feminist women’s concessions to femininity) has re-emerged with a vengeance.  Three feminists whose writing I admire immensely (The Happy Feminist, Amanda Marcotte, Jill Filipovic) all offered their own personal, articulate reflections on their own relationships with "femininity".  (See here, here, here).  This particular round of self-reflection was sparked by a new book from Laura Kipnis, The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability.  (Not even available to the schlumps like me who have to wait for its publication; some folks clearly got review copies.  Ahem.)  Jill summarizes the Kipnis thesis:

That feminism and traditional femininity are at odds with each other, and that compliance with the traditional trappings of femininity only serves to keep women down. I’m not too far into it yet, but in the intro she points out that traditional femininity wasn’t directly put upon women, but created by women themselves as a rational response to their own powerlessness. She argues that, now that women have the same legal rights as men, we’re still choosing to embrace these feminine things, and that feminism has been complicit or even supportive of that embrace. And, in embracing these things, women are complicit in their own oppression.

In the course of their three very different, very readable posts, HF, Amanda, and Jill all admit to at least some conflict and ambivalence regarding their own "feminine strategies."  Jill writes of enjoying high heels, bikini waxes, and Sex and the City.  HF notes her use of hair dye and anti-wrinkle creams. Amanda ties in her decision to take full financial responsibility for contraception.   But read all three posts at length rather than my summaries.

Though Jill, Happy, and Amanda are more experienced feminists than my students, what they write reflects what I read in student journals all the time.  So many of my students who are budding feminists worry about what they will have to "give up" in order to become "real feminists."  Many make lists of their feminist principles, and juxtapose them with the particularly "femmy" aspects of themselves.  "I want to be a feminist, but I like the door being held for me by a man."  "I consider myself a feminist, but I like feeling pretty."  "Can I be a feminist if I wax?"  "Can I be a feminist if I watch Project Runway?"  "Can I be a feminist if…."  The list is endless.

Of course, the temptation is to offer reassurance that "anything can be feminist" as long as its "what you want to do" and not "what society tells you to do."  As Jill points out, most folks who’ve gotten past Feminism 101 recognize the speciousness of that particular reasoning.  Teasing out what is really "our" desire and separating it from what we have been taught to want by a sexist culture is not nearly as easy as we imagine.   The most superficial kind of feminism is "choice feminism", which insists that any choice a woman makes is above reproach merely because she is making it as an active agent.  Shallow "choice" feminism offers little opportunity for reflection on what is gained, what is lost, and who else gets hurt by these choices.  Jill, HF, and Amanda all clearly and emphatically reject choice feminism.  Jill and HF don’t claim that their choices to wear heals, wax, or use wrinkle creams are feminist choices — but they also argue that they aren’t inherently anti-feminist decisions either.  They acknowledge the tension and ambiguity that exists in feminist women’s relationship with femininity, which is a very different thing from mindlessly accepting the dictates of pop culture.

On the other side, read Twisty and Molly.  Twisty savages Bust Magazine for its faux feminism, and Molly rebuts Jill with a post entitled Why my Brand of Feminism is No Fun at All.  Molly writes:

Being introspective about one’s choices and admitting that not all of them are empowering is a great first step. But that’s it. Once you’ve gotten to that level, make some more changes. For instance, I did feel like shaving was a real pain in the ass, and yet I kept doing it for a long time because I felt I had to in order to gain acceptance. Once I examined this view, however, I felt guilty. But I didn’t say "well, I can stop feeling guilty because I’m so fun!" I stopped shaving my legs except when it’s so dry that they itch unshaved (this amounts to 1-2 times per year). Oh no — now I’m a "Hairy Feminist," and we all know hairy girls can’t be fun. I don’t feel guilty about the times I do shave my legs, because now I am doing it for my own comfort. When I realized my actions were not in harmony with the ideology I espoused, I did what I could to change my actions.

Bold emphasis mine.  Jill has an excellent rebuttal to Molly in Molly’s comments section.  Excerpt:

I’m not saying that I’m immune to criticism for my personal choices, but I do wish that we would go after the system that compels women to make certain choices rather than the women themselves. I don’t see the point in having a feminist pissing contest about who’s the "most" feminist based on how we dress or how much hair we have on our bodies.

Bold mine again.  Molly has a follow-up here, which is where we finally get to the point of my post this morning.   She makes an interesting point (and singles me out as an example, which obviously gets my attention).  Molly argues that those of us who are public feminists (and that includes not only those of us who work for money as feminists, as I do, but also prominent bloggers like Jill, Amanda, and Happy) must be held to a higher standard than "newbie" feminists or those whose role in the movement is not as public:

I only mean to address those who hold themselves up, either explicitly or implicitly, as feminist role models. This would definitely include all feminist bloggers, particularly those who have acquired real renown in the blogosphere. I don’t hold a random woman on the street to the same standards — or even close to the same standards — as those who would be the voice of feminism online.

Molly has a point.  Some of us get hundreds, many of us thousands of individual readers of our posts.  Young men and women looking for information on feminism frequently "google" certain topics that lead them to Feministe, Pandagon, Happy Feminist, Hugo Schwyzer, or dozens of other feminist blogs.  And as someone who works with high school and college-age feminists, I know how vital the Internet and the blogosphere are in shaping perceptions of what contemporary feminism is all about.  If we’re lucky enough to have a high readership, we can be fairly certain that at least some young (and not so young) men and women are taking our words to heart.  And as we saw in the Ampersand/porn controversy, part of our "cyber cred" is the sense that we who blog and act as role models are doing our best to practice what we preach. And where we find ourselves engaged in personal behaviors that we believe to be inherently problematic, we who are role models have a special obligation to work to change our behavior.

Am I taking Molly’s side over Jill’s?  No.  What Jill does more publicly than most is something vitally important for feminists to do: "process out-loud."  Maybe it’s just the Episcopalian in me, but I like it when folks allow themselves to sit in tension, allow themselves to wrestle with ambiguity, allow themselves to acknowledge complexity.  Jill likes getting Brazilian waxes,and she’s clearly aware that part of her pleasure in being hairless is linked to the culture.  But by the same token, part of her preference for hairlessness may be part of who Jill is as an individual, distinct from a socially imposed pressure to be "bare down there."  It’s absolutely absurd to suggest that those women who take pleasure in traditionally feminine behaviors are always doing so because of the patriarchy, while those women who take on more androgynous, more masculine behaviors (not shaving is stereotypically masculine) are somehow always demonstrating their courageous resistance to "the man."

Do I have a nifty answer for all of this?  No.  But let me tell you what I think a role model ought to do.  (And Molly, thanks again for singling me out as one.)  A role model is willing to wrestle publicly with his or her own uncertainties.  A role model is willing to engage in healthy self-analysis, and willing to give up behavior patterns that are hurtful to others.  But a role model is not a super-hero.  Real role models are flesh and blood men and women, with their own unique set of desires and experiences, hopes and fears.   Real role models aren’t defensive (and Amanda, Happy, and Jill have been anything but on this topic).  Whether they wax or don’t wax, wear heels or not, they are willing to examine their own choices critically and dialogue with others about them.  Some role models may choose to not wax; others may choose to continue to do so.  What makes a man or woman an important feminist role model is openness, candor, and willingness to acknowledge a connection that links private pleasure, public behavior, and the larger feminist movement.   Twisty meets that standard.  Amanda meets that standard.  Happy meets that standard.  Jill meets that standard.  And by being willing to wade back into the heat over his decision to sell amptoons, I think Barry Deutsch (Amp) is doing his damndest to meet that standard.

Few of us ,one hopes, get out of higher ed without learning the Socrates admonition: "The unexamined life is not worth living."  I decided a long time ago that my primary task as a pro-feminist blogger was to live out a very publicly "examined life."   How I eat, how I make love, how I teach, how I dress, how I exercise, how I vote, how I relate to those beneath and those above, how I pray, how I read Scripture, how I spend — all of those choices are rightly open for analysis and discussion.  Of course, "examining" is not the end goal!  The end goal is to become an ever more loving, ever more effective human being.  The goal is change and growth, in the name of our own happiness, yes,  but even more so that we might be of ever-greater service to the world and to our cause.

So let’s keep challenging each other in the feminist blogosphere, let’s keep pushing each other, let’s keep telling each other the truth.  And let us balance our eagerness to hold each other accountable with a willingness to acknowledge that we all see through a glass darkly.  Let’s be really loving to each other, modeling for the whole world what a cyber feminist community can look like.