From October 2005.
Tuesday night, my wife and I were in the Apple store in Old Town Pasadena, picking up iPod accessories. When I handed my credit card over to the young woman behind the counter, she read my name and said “Hey, you teach at PCC.” I admitted that it was so, and we chatted as she rang up the purchase. Jokingly, I asked her why she hadn’t taken any of my courses. I mentioned my courses in Western Civ, as well as Women’s History. As soon as I mentioned the latter class, the gal remarked “Well, I’d never take a class like that. I’m not a feminist. I’m all about being a homemaker, and I don’t like sitting around listening to a bunch of women complain about how unfair the world is.” We had a movie to catch, and I almost never argue with folks in public, so when I heard this, I just smiled my most indulgent smile and said “Well, if you take my class, you might be surprised”, and I left it at that.
But I’ve been thinking about that encounter ever since. I’ve heard similar things from many young women. Curiously, I’ve found that some of the most virulently anti-feminist young women are also assertive and bright. They have plans to transfer to elite universities and colleges, and while some — like the woman in the Apple store — aspire to be homemakers sooner rather than later, others are quite clear that they wish to have careers and public lives. They either don’t connect their freedom to pursue education and career with feminist history at all, or they pay grudging respect to the struggles of previous generations of activists, but persist in saying that in the twenty-first century, feminism is no longer necessary.
I don’t keep good track of my own posts, but I know I’ve mentioned this at least once before: I think most of the anti-feminist rhetoric we hear from certain young women today is tied up with a profound sense that to be a feminist is to embrace victim language. Somehow, someway, some young women have been given the false impression that feminism over-emphasizes women’s powerlessness and suffering. The last thing many young women want is to think of themselves as victims, particularly when our popular culture promotes the ideal of the “hip, together woman” who can handle herself and “doesn’t let adversity slow her down.”
On the one hand, I’m not fond of “victim language” either. Actually, I don’t know many authentic feminist scholars and instructors who are intent on convincing young women that they are being victimized by the big bad patriarchy. Most of us are far more interested in giving young women the tools with which to change their lives — and the lives of other women around the globe — than we are in reinforcing resentments or inculcating bitterness. Yes, I want the young men and women with whom I work to get angry. Yes, I want them to look honestly at the ways in which our society still discriminates against and exploits women. But I don’t want to leave them stuck in anger or in fatalistic surrender to the inevitable. The way to approach the notion of women as victims is not to ignore or deny the reality of women’s suffering (which anti-feminists do), but instead to (oh, over-used verb alert) empower young women to take tangible but vital steps towards taking responsibility for changing their lives and the lives of their sisters.
As in AA, the first step is admitting that a problem — in this case, rampant and enduring sex-discrimination — still exists. But acknowledging the problem is the first step towards transformation. The tragedy is that contemporary rhetoric has created the idea for young women that to be a feminist is to be “stuck” in bitterness and resentment, to be constantly aware of one’s victimization. It’s not a pleasant picture the anti-feminists paint, and it is disturbingly effective at scaring off countless young women and men who really do need to confront the reality of local and global injustice against women.
The other aspect of this anti-feminism I encounter among my students is a disturbing refusal to see any sense of responsibility for and towards other women. Not all anti-feminist young women are selfish. But I have to admit that more than a few of the brighter ones, are alas, going through that depressing stage where they think the Fountainhead is the greatest book ever written, and Ayn Rand has become — at least temporarily — their hero. (Thankfully, they usually grow out of it. Lots of young men and women become captivated by the radical self-centeredness of objectivism in their teens and early twenties; most abandon it once they learn what it is to truly love another human being unconditionally.) Young women like this flatter themselves into believing that sexism is just an excuse used by unhappy and unsuccessful women to explain their failures; the Rand devotees insist, with an almost heartbreaking naivete, that in the modern world any young woman can succeed at anything she wants if she tries hard enough, and she can do so by herself. Women’s failure to achieve happiness, they defiantly declare, is due to individual shortcomings only, and not to broader social problems.
Young women in this latter category tend to have, I notice, few good female friends. They are often card-carrying members of the “all my good friends are guys” club. Frequently, their speech drips with contempt for most other women, whom they consider “weak” or “superficial” or “catty”. “Me, I’m more like a man than a woman”, these gals will boast. For some that means sexual aggressiveness, but for most, it means that they associate masculinity with boldness, decisiveness, and certainty — qualities they see as infinitely preferable to what they see in most of their female peers. For this sort of young woman, anti-feminism is a perverse badge of honor, a way of saying “I am achieving success for myself on my own; I don’t need a feminist movement, I don’t need a ‘sisterhood’”.
As much as this attitude drives me bats, I have to admit I relish the challenge students such as these present! It’s why I’d love to get the gal from the Apple store into class. Make no mistake, these young anti-feminist women are frequently bright and articulate, and often make excellent students. Even as they push me — and I push back, hard — I am grateful for their presence. They force me, and all of us who do this work, to do a still-better job of making clear that feminism is still relevant and essential to the lives of contemporary American women. And they compel me to make the case that we do have collective obligations to our fellow human beings — and in a very important sense, we have a special obligation to those who share our sex.
Visit the old comments section below the original post, but please put new comments here.
She’s all about being a homemaker, but she’s working at a job for pay? Little disconnect there. And something tells me she wouldn’t smile and nod if she got crappier work assignments and hours than her male co-workers.
Somehow, someway, some young women have been given the false impression that feminism over-emphasizes women’s powerlessness and suffering.
Truly, where could they have gotten this notion? It is indeed one of the mysteries of the ages.
They probably read one too many of those highfalutin books full of po-mo gibberish that take 200 pages to say what could have been said in 20, and wind up concluding that this or that is insoluble, or that one can deconstruct it into irrelevency. That was my first guess. But I wonder if they also ran into someone who really thinks things are never going to get any better, the way my parents do, the latter being currently convinced that the human species just isn’t going to make it, period. It seems like despair is “in” these days, not just for feminists but for a lot of folks, and this really frosts my shorts. I can’t stand it, and I don’t know what to say when someone starts with it. I have always said success–and survival–go to the resourceful, but I don’t know if I can be resourceful enough to make it.
The idea that feminism and related currents dwell too much on suffering and hopelessness/helplessness is an old one, and I don’t know all of its roots. There may have been some writers who had a jaundiced view of the chances of things getting better, and some people who believed them, and enough of that may have gotten around to poison the water for a long time.
A recognition of just how foul a situation is, is needful for anyone to start fixing it. The “lament phase” is one that people sometimes get stuck in, due to not having proper instruction on how to start the repair process. People stuck like that are not much fun to be around, and might be mistaken by even naive-er ones for the main stem of the movement, or community, or whatever you call it, that claims to push for social change.
Lastly, some folks–like me–are self-centered enough without ever having stepped in Rand’s work, and spent our formative years and free time on stuff that seemed more fun. Some of us, like me, were almost asocial and preoccupied with other things, and some were too busy partying to note how the cake wasn’t being cut fairly.
I do not know if in fact one has a special obligation to those who share this or that physical feature; I myself have more loyalty to kindred spirits/minds whatever they look like, but I have always felt that no one should be penalized for anything they themselves did not do or choose, so feminism and other justice movements were a natural for me. I talked the talk, even when I didn’t walk the walk, but at least I never stomped on anyone’s hopes.
Seems to me that when current actions seem futile, it might help to come up with more imaginative ones instead of giving up. You smart folks out there can do it. Anyway, the other big need is to educate the ones that can learn, and that’s what Hugo is doing. And that’s one of the key antidotes to the lugubrious atmosphere that Robert notes.
I’ve been operating under the impression that many young women disassociate from feminism because of the very successful feminist backlash of the nineties. When I talk to younger women about feminism I hear, “I’m not a feminist, I like men,” or, “I’m not a feminist, I want to have lots of children,” or, “I like to wear make-up and high heels.” Apparently feminists, to these women, are jackbooted childless lesbians. Well, come to think of it, I get the lesbian man-hater thing from men, young and old, frequently.
I used to be one of those young Rand followers after I read Atlas Shrugged. And I still find myself defending her idealistic philosophy because of its sheer beauty. Anyone ought to make it on will power and determination alone. But alas!
Also I used to have just guys friends–not because I was tough (though I was very independent)–but I realize that I’d never had very loving female relationships. Until I opened myself up to them, and experience how truly wonderful and necessary they are, I viewed women different as from myself.
I used to think that I was not a feminist, until at the age of 38 I took my first class in feminism. In retrospect, I cannot conceive of how I had not identified as such, since I was forever defying the highly restrictive gender norms of our religious group. I suppose the best explanation is that I had been unaware of any definition for feminism other than that provided by anti-feminists. Once I came to understand what it truly is, I became such an ardent feminist that I made National Equality Day and the Feast of Mary Magdalene big holidays in our family.
Having said that, like the young anti-feminists you teach, the “sisterhood” emphasis in feminism makes me very uncomfortable. You are right; I “associate masculinity with boldness, decisiveness, and certainty” and I acknowledge this failing. (I became acutely aware of the negative effects of that particular failing when I saw it my young adult daughter.) I do not, however, believe that my achievements are mine alone. I am acutely aware of how much I owe to the feminists who have proceeded me and those who continue to work to protect my liberties and those of my fellow women.
I am uncomfortable with the idea of sisterhood and I am wary in my female friendships for two reasons: I have experienced the “normalizing†influence of other women as incredibly brutal and I have found that I cannot have close female friendships and an emotionally intimate marriage at the same time.
Allow me to explain, starting with the brutality of women against other women. I have been shunned and publicly humiliated by women for the sin of not matching their image of what a good mother and or a virtuous woman looks like and I have watched other women suffer the same extraordinary cruelty, often perpetrated by the “good” women in a community. I am not talking about the cattiness you alluded to. I am talking about severe verbal abuse and character assassination conducted so skillfully and ruthlessly that it truly life-destroying. And God forbid that a woman does not meet the criterion for a good mother set by other women in her community. The public shame and shunning such a woman faces makes the Pilgrim’s public humiliations seem merciful. One of the better examples of this is the hideous verbal abuse heaped on Hanna Rosin for daring to suggest that she did not enjoy breastfeeding. It was the ugliest, nastiest flaming I have ever witnessed, and I read the Fox blogs from time to time.
The second reason I find it difficult to maintain my friendships with other women is that they expect me to hold my own, or at least make a token contribution, to the “my husband is such an idiot” complaint sessions. While some of these conversations are couched in humor, in all of the sisterhoods I have participated in and observed, HAPPY MARRIAGES ARE NOT ACCEPTED. Of course, allowances are made for those newly in love or newlywed. But there seems to be a belief that happy marriages are just too good to be true, that men are inept, unkind or that they are cheaters just waiting for some floozy to fall into. And so the relationship of the happy woman is dissected until she finally comes to “the realization†that her marriage and her husband are as bad as everyone else’s. This is so prevalent in our culture that it seems to have become the only alternative to an action hero in popular media. Unless the star is Jack Bauer or James Bond, he is a bumbling, selfish idiot like Jim Belushi in “According to Jim.” And this is what, in my experience, the sisters find entertaining and what they bond around.
I have to admit that on a couple of occasions, I have succumbed to peer pressure during one of these gripe sessions, and have told a mildly derogatory and funny story about my husband. But as the women laughed AT my husband, I felts sick, realizing that I had just committed a serious betrayal of his love and trust in me. I once read that while women’s most primal fear in a relationship is that they will get killed; a man’s most primal fear is that he will be laughed at. While I am sure that there is a lot gender essentialism in that; I have also found few men who can handle women laughing at their expense.
What has been even more troubling to me is that during those times when my husband and I have been going through a tough time in our marriage, I discovered that sharing the problem with my “sisters” only made it worse. When I confided in them, they became a part of the disagreement. Never once did one of my sister’s look at me and say, “Well now, sweetie, I am pretty sure that one is all on you. You might want to apologize.†Instead, they always found my husband at fault. I found myself modulating my responses to him by how I would account for them to my “sisters” the next time we talked and worse I began seeing him through their eyes, which were more jaded and certainly less loving. Even in good times, I found that I shared fewer of my feelings, less of my life with my husband when I was engaged in deep female friendships. I will allow that this might be due to my introversion, and perhaps I was expending what little social energy I had in a day. But in any case, it felt as if they became another person or people in our marriage, and as Diana so famously said: three in a marriage is “a bit crowded.â€
Yes, I am much poorer for opting out of the sisterhood. But I have yet to discover how to be in my integrity – how to continue enjoying this amazing journey of intimacy that is marriage and how to remain worthy of the confidence and trust my husband has placed in me while being part of a sisterhood.
Former Wild Child, it sounds like you might need to get a new circle of women friends. Failng that, you might want to get up at the next gathering and let in some truth, about how nobody’s perfect, not even your adorable husband, and solidarity in a group might not really require trashing anyone outside it. Maybe some counseling too? [with great effort, extricates self from solve-everyone-else's-problems mode]
I don’t have a quick cure for the problem of female internecine struggles and the lack of solidarity/loyalty/progress caused thereby. I think though that it is something someone like you who has given it some thought could be in a good position to take on. I’d like to hear what Hugo would say about this.
As for male-bashing, I find it as annoying as its opposite, and have witnessed it at its most virulent from women who do not seem to identify as feminists, though I must say I didn’t spend enough time with them to find out for sure. My female relatives don’t male-bash very much, and when they do I call them on it, just as when they fat-bash and so on.
As far back as the mid-70′s there were some women, presumably smart enough to be in college, who were flabbergasted, and not in a good way, to hear of one of their dorm-mates being interested in a non-traditional career; as I recall, said individual did not let them deter her.
Angiportus, it is funny that you mention both a new circle of female friends and counseling. Almost all of my female friends are psychologists or therapists.
What Angiportus said – I think you just need to hang around different women. Just as there are groups of guys who sit around and complain about their wives and who ruthlessly gender-police each other, there are groups of females who do the same.
Former Wild Child,
I’ve also experienced the influence of other women as incredibly brutal as well. When I evaluate these women I tend to see most of them as being very self-absorbed. They were also very dismissive of my feelings, while at the same time incredibly demanding–their expectations were completely out of line with what they offered or brought to the relationships. One of the current relationships that I have with a friend now has also indicated that she feels the same, although I think she has had a few other close friends that she grew up with. I find a lot of group dynamics can be quite problematic anyway. Being ostracized from the group (people vying for position, control, dominance over others) because you fail to adhere to unreasonable and rigid standards can be very unhealthy and emotionally painful.
Much of my introversion (I’ve never labeled myself as an introvert) was an emotional response to relationships that I found brutual, emotionally draining and toxic–in other words I was protecting myself, and yes these were women.
Phayvanh writes, “…but I realize that I’d never had very loving female relationships.”
I think this is true for many women and it starts in our own families and what is modeled to us as loving female relationships. In my family the focus was more on connection through doing or shared activities, rather than relating and emotional connection to feelings. I was the designated “feeler” in my family group.
This is a good topic that I feel could spin off into many directions and future topics.
Growing up in the 60s and 70s, I never self-identified as anything other than a feminist…it was just a basic fact of life to me that women were equal, and though I realized that the struggle for equality wasn’t over, I never thought of myself as anyone ‘less than’.
I do find that it’s very different with young women now, and I can’t say that I blame them. Like it or not, most of our young women are growing up online, where misogyny is still rampant. Like me, they are often friendly with as many males as females…unlike me, they are also growing up with online communities that are still heavily male-friendly. Most of the ‘feminists’ on those sites become more and more stridently victim-centered out of self-defense if nothing else…you can only hear ‘bring me a sammich’ or ‘TOGTFO’ so many times before you internalize it. In that type of atmosphere, 14 year old girls posting increasingly provocative Facebook pictures and the victim mentality both seem rational, as does the competition with other women.
To me, although I’ve been online since 1984, the real world as opposed to the online world is much, much more accepting of women. I’ve never lost a job because I’m a woman, with the exception of a few brief forays in University days I’ve met few people of either sex who despise the other, and generally as a woman growing up in North America, my life has not been that bad. In general, and then most particularly as a mother, I’ve found incredible support from other women in real life. Girls and women may trash each other online, but offline, the support and love is still there. To me (as the mother of 14 year old girls) the question is more about how we can meld the craziness of the online world with the reality of how life actually is.
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Former Wild Child, in hopes that you regain your wild splendor, I hope that you can when next in the company of that group stand up and say that a solidarity that depends on enemies to trash is no true solidarity, and while an occcasional shared chuckle over the oddities of one’s family/spouse is okay, habitual trashing of any group or individual is not healthy for women and other living things. I would expect psychologists and therapists to understand this more than the average person, not less. You might suggest they find some healthier ways to relieve the tension of their careers, and you might even say that you are sick of them alienating you from your husband, when your marriage is probably all right. You implied that you have opted out of that sisterhood, so my kibitzing is probably too late, but in case the opportunity arises, perhaps you can say it better than I can.
Happy Intact Day, everyone! [I think it's today, excuse me if it isn't.]
Former Wild Child, I really don’t think that feminism is about being sisters with every single woman you meet (after all, not many feminists are friends with Meg Whitman or Sarah Palin). I think that the basic idea of it is that you don’t eschew friendships with women simply because they are women. But if you walk around (not saying you personally) with the idea that all women laugh at men and unfairly scrutinize women, you’re not going to get very far– not to mention that such a belief is an unfair scrutiny of women in itself. Perhaps there are women who feel the same way you do within your community; maybe you can try reaching out to them. Women are not guaranteed by biology nor culture to gossip negatively about other men and women.
As for your last example of husband-unfriendly women, I’m not sure if they were finding him at fault for being a man. Rather, they might have been trying to sympathize with you; self-blame runs rampant within a lot of people, and maybe they were afraid of that in you and just wanted to make you feel better in their own way. Of course, I don’t really know what happened: I wasn’t there and I’m not them. But from the way you’re telling it, their intentions to me seem less clear than you make it out to be. Personally, when someone is confiding in me their relationship problems, I try not to point the finger at them (unless it was clearly so).
Anyways, feminism isn’t about forced female friendship but letting go of generalizations about men and women, and sometimes, when members of one group have hurt you deeply, it can be a difficult thing to do. No woman is the arbiter of sisterhood; being excluded by one woman doesn’t mean you’ve been excluded by all for forever and always. Dealing with that kind of pain and learning to trust again may be more difficult, I think, than pretending that all the problems are innate rather than systemic– for one, what’s believed to be innate is easier to dismiss. Rand-ian culture can be appealing in the sense that if you buy into it, you can just deal with individual cases instead of looking at the patterns and the culture and the system. In some people, it can turn to a strange divide: every person is an individual, but they generally prefer friendships with men or with women, exclusively. Clearly, something within us needs to be examined more carefully.
While I had wanted to resolve a conundrum posed by feminism, more than anything, the point of my post was to use the example of my own experiences to raise the possibility that women who express reticence at forming female friendships may have reasons far more complex than the miopia described by Hugo. In that, I believe I have succeeded (although I appear to have created the mother of all run-on sentances in explaining this)
And now to the excellent points raised here, many of which I had not considered.
Karen, I agree with your quote from Phayvanh “but I realize that I’d never had very loving female relationships.†The chief child-rearing concern for women in my family was socializing me into the norms of good female behavior. Not only was I never treated very lovingly, but as I consider it, they also never treated each other with the love, kindness and basic loyalty I would expect from an relationship which is even moderatly emotionally intimate. The men in the world I grew up in were deeply loyal, even if they were often equally flawed. The love I have received infinitely more love from men and that love has come with fewer (or perhaps just more easily obtainable and understandable) requirements.
Jen, you and I grew up in the same era, but I would be willing to bet we did not grow up in the same geographical area or in the same religion. I did grow up in an environment in which women were most definitely less-than. I attended classes in college in which women were not allowed to speak and question a male professor. But your twin experiences: of a gender-friendly environment and of female support, when contrasted with my own may point to something important. Is it possible that environments in which women are consistently and systemically devalued and degraded foster intra-gender animosity? I remember reading in “Girls in Trouble with the Law” about girl-on-girl violence and how prevalent it is in highly misogynistic environments. I wonder if that can be extended to the Southern country club and Women’s Bible Study?
Mon-Shane: You raise another interesting point. I had assumed that since my friends were constantly critical of their own partners/spouses, their attempts to convince me to divert blame from myself and to my husband were a sub-textual form of gender-bashing. But I have recently realized that by any objective standard, I am prone to self-blame. So I can see in retrospect where they may have been asking me to consider the possibility that I might have mis-attributed responsibility.
And perhaps you are all right, there might be groups of women who support and encourage not only the individual women but also the relationships of those individual women. I find, however, that I am reticent to look for those women.
When I examined that hesitancy, I realized that I see men as “easier” and as less frightening. I feel I know what to do to maintain an amicably and even mutually supportive relationship with a man. I find that I can predict with relative accuracy how a man will respond in a given situation. But women continually surprise and unnerve me. In my interactions and relationships with women, I will think I know what is happening only to later discover that I misread the entire situation or completely misunderstood the woman’s words.
But in considering my self-perceived incompetence in relationships with women, I keep coming back to the perhaps this is because in our Evangelical corner of the world, young women were urged to anticipate the needs of men -to read their faces for hints of their moods or for indications of what they would next need or want and to give it to them before they needed to ask. I remember one great example of this; my “Christian Womanhood” teacher was fond of telling us to never let our husband’s glass of iced tea go empty. It was our job to see when it was getting low and to fill it before our husbands could even ask. But it wasn’t just about providing our husbands with an endless supply of diabetes inducing beverages: it was a metaphor meant to demonstrate the extent to which we should pay attention to our partners. I wonder if, as a result, some of us are far more skilled at reading, understanding and relating to men than women. Is it possible we identify with men because they are simply more comprehensible and predictable?
As you have all said, this topic is something which needs to be examined more carefully. And I would add my voice to those of others requesting Hugo’s insight on the subject.
Okay, I have just had the mother of all freudian slips. I have been writing a little piece about the end of a relationship and it was open on my desktop. After I wrote this most recent post, I dropped this post into the relationsip demise document for spell-check. When I picked it back up, I accidently posted everything, including the chapter I was writing.
Crap.
Lol, I was wondering what in the world that related to Former Wild Child, especially when followed by such a sane and rational on topic comment, I was nonplussed. Nice writing though.
And I’ve deleted that section, FWC, on the assumption that we can consider it thread drift!
Former Wild Child–”The point of my post was to use the example of my own experiences to raise the possibility that women who express reticence at forming female friendships may have reasons far more complex than the myopia described by Hugo.”
I get your point and think it valid. I agree the reasons are complex and many. I think this is true of most relationships anyway–they are layered and complex.
“Not only was I never treated very lovingly, but as I consider it, they also never treated each other with the love, kindness and basic loyalty I would expect from a relationship which is even moderately emotionally intimate.”
Family relationships are complex to be sure and very confusing. We all learn what is modeled to us and it is so familiar–that familiarity dulls awareness. It takes time to sort it all out—some people never do. My family could be loving, but also quite cruel and roles I feel were very rigid. I also believe that a lot of people struggle with issues of emotional intimacy.
My situation is difficult to explain, but I felt like I had to emotionally parent my own mother. The relationships that I’ve had with other women feel the same–they are needy and aggressive and want me to fill the role of confidant and nurturer to their incessant emotional neediness, ignoring boundaries while all the while remaining blissfully emotionally unaware. I experience a lot of women as selfish and making unreasonable demands and I confront them, but they ignore or dismiss my feelings—that is how I’ve experienced a lot of women. In response to this behavior, I’ve become less warm, less out-going as a means of protecting myself from their assaults on my privacy. I have met few women, if any, who have been emotionally supportive, but I’ve certainly run into a ton of people who seem to expect or desire me to behave emotionally supportive and nurturing towards them when they do not give the same of themselves.
I’ve had plenty of issues with men too, but like you I found them to be more open and accessible, although they are not without faults and problems of their own. I’m thinking of a relationship that I have now with a male friend who does respect my boundaries and I can at least tell him when he is overwhelming me. He will listen. He doesn’t get defensive and lash out with cruelty. These constant tests of loyalty exhibited in group dynamics and behaviors drive me crazy. The slightest hint of a dissenting opinion seems to create destructive dynamics—all these people trying to control and manipulate everyone, I find it deeply oppressive.
I think my experience of men is somewhat similar to yours, although I’m not suggesting that they don’t have a lot of issues, or that I didn’t/don’t have difficulties. My religious experiences were oppressive as well as spiritually violating—the last straw was a relationship I had with a woman who was an ordained minister—she was a very messed up person.
I well understand your reticence in seeking more fulfilling relationships with women. I think it a very natural emotion to have given some of the situations that you describe.
I don’t consider myself a ‘feminist’ because I don’t believe men and women are the same. However, that statement doesn’t mean I don’t believe in equality in my pursuit of the American Dream.
Last time I checked the magazine selection at the airport, Glamour, Self, Oprah’s O, Vogue, etc., etc., are still touting “HOW TO BE THE BEST”, screaming “DIET”, screaming “VICTIM OVERCOMES”…basically, the same old drivel that somehow, somewhere, if I would just get ‘something’, my life would be better. I’m not good ENOUGH. All of the editors (feminists, with great feminist credentials) have a home page touting: awesome feminist lives, happy non-judgemental children, successful husbands, huge salaries and a house in the Hamptons.
Take those hypocritical women on, Hugo! They are selling 99.9% of American women a lie! They rely on nannies, handlers, make-up artist, and assistants. Their lives aren’t ‘real’.
I tried having it all. It is a lie. As with most choices in life, there are trade-offs. I made my own money, traveled the globe with toddlers in tow, and raised great children who all got college degrees paid for by me. Somehow, though, I’m supposed to feel bad about myself because I don’t consider myself a feminist.
Why don’t I feel bad? My children think I am pretty empowered!
Katy,
Hugo knows some big words, but he can’t think or reason at all.
If a new trend developed among teenagers of dumping a bucket of dog poop on each other’s heads, Hugo would have an article within a week – “On Buckets, Dogs and Excrement – Towards an Eponymous, Irenic Theory”.
Hugo is an idiot.
It’s all a self-absorbed adventure by Hugo to write every little detail of the Angst und Sturm of his private life – with his 4 marriages (and counting … according to campus rumors), drug and alcohol issues and battles with homosexuality.
And taxpayers have to pay for this narcissistic idiot because college administrators are too cowardly to say that “women’s studies” don’t belong at a place that professes to be a source of higher learning.
An extremely judgmental (at least towards males), shallow, trend-following, narcissistic twit.
What a sick person, and how embarrassing for the people who support him.
And yet, Portia, here you are spending your precious time commenting multiple times on his blog. I suspect that you ought to turn your detailed analysis inward for the real problem if you’re THAT worked up over Hugo. What’d he do, pee in your cornflakes?
Portia –
The “four marriages” aren’t “rumors” — Hugo has always been very open and introspective about it on here.
I don’t know what your problem is, but random attacks and accusations about things that he’s been completely open about just make you sound like you have a personal vendetta.
That said, even though it was cruel, “On Buckets, Dogs and Excrement – Towards an Eponymous, Irenic Theory†is hilarious. I sense you are one of those “bright, hardworking” young women he talks about who refuses to call herself a feminist. (Assuming you are a female…Portia is obviously a female-sounding handle and assuming you are not a guy pretending to be a gal, which happens a lot in feminist blogosphere.)
It didn’t take me too long to start calling myself a feminist, though I started from the position of a conservative Christian and ended up a liberal atheist feminist. I had it down by my freshman year of college. (Going on year 6 now.)
However, I think there are several barriers:
– The popular perception that feminism is about victimhood, as Hugo has postulated
– The “hairy ugly unfashionable man-hating lesbian” myth, which goes against the feminine rituals that many women genuinely enjoy and don’t want to give up
– Backlash against young women who do identify themselves as feminist, or those who perceive they might…I frequently was told, “No, you’re not a feminist, you’re an egalitarian!” or “No, don’t be a feminist, that’s reverse sexism”…I had friends and family members denying me the label even when I claimed it for myself
– The myth of the meritocracy which makes individuals feel powerful because we are sure we are special and have merit and above average and will come out on top entirely based on our own awesomeness, which means feminism is a lie.
I think this last one is a big one. Many young women wholeheartedly believe it — and men; I think it’s mostly the young with less experience dealing with bureaucracy and institutions that think there are no unequal barriers to a given position/resource. Getting over this myth is hard, but it’s equally hard not the fall in the complete opposite end of the spectrum and enter into victim-land when you first begin to realize it’s a myth, because you still suffer the illusion that you are exceptional, so you assume “Without all these barriers I would be the CEO and have gotten into Yale and have SO MUCH MONEY!!! It’s not faiiiiir.”
It’s hard to accept that there’s no meritocracy, so even if you work really hard it’s possible you won’t get anywhere, much less the specific thing that you want, and also that even if it WAS a meritocracy, it’s very very possible — nay, likely — that you would be found average, not exceptional.
Especially as a middle-class white woman. Most of my friends’ parents are helping them pay for college; mine aren’t. I feel the gender thing, and I feel poor, but I’m not poor and I’m white which gives me a LOT more of a head start than being a male does now (though it used to be much more comparable). I have to force myself to step back and remember that even though the gender part messes with me and it seems like I have less money, I’m not really poor, and I actually have a LOT of privileges. And I have to remember that in a true meritocracy, there are many who are currently “below” me on the metaphorical totem pole who would pass me up, because they are more exceptional but facing more barriers. I have educational advantages because I went to private elementary school. I have cultural advantages because of my accent and word choice and clothing choice and religious background that gives me references even though I no longer practice it. And heck, I’m white and most people in positions of influence are white (especially near where I live) so that’s one less thing they have to mentally overcome before they like me.
I had to come to the point of realizing that while feminism benefits me and what I’m fighting for will help me, it will help other people who need it a lot more than I do. I have enough even though it’s not as much as I want and it’s not entirely fair; others face more barriers and feminism can help them more, and it should.
FWC, whoever told you to find a new group of female friends was right. But I do want to offer one more insight:
Many of the women I know who complain so bitterly about their husbands regret getting married, and many of them when I asked them why they got married in the first place couldn’t explain why. “I just wanted to,” or “It was just the right time.” But WHY did you want to, WHY was it the right time? — no real way to explain. I have come to believe that many of them got married not because they genuinely thought, “I love this guy so much that I want to spend the rest of my life with him, and I want to sign a legally binding contract that says so and make it official!” but because they were pressured, or felt they HAD to, or that they were approaching some kind of inexplicable timetable, or that (worst of all) it would help fix their problems in the relationship.
They got married when they weren’t ready, or in spite of being unhappy or dissatisfied, or before the relationship had really developed enough for them to know who it was they were signing up for. Now they feel trapped and miserable and they lash out. And they don’t want to think about it too closely because they know they got there from their own choices, and they’re upset but not enough to want a divorce and have to start all over. And they usually really do care for and love their husbands as people, but they wouldn’t have married them if they’d known. That messes with your head and you get messed up behaviors as a result.
That said, complaining and expressing your frustrations and going to your friends for advice is really helpful, I think. But there’s a difference between venting frustrations — usually at a specific behavior — and bashing the person. Between asking for advice and letting your friends dictate your relationship.
“I don’t consider myself a ‘feminist’ because I don’t believe men and women are the same. However, that statement doesn’t mean I don’t believe in equality in my pursuit of the American Dream.”
Equal does not always imply SAME. Equality in the pursuit of the American Dream is what I always thought feminism was about, at least partly. Apparently there are many defintions of feminism and sadly negative ones at that.
Unfortunately I’m going through this with my best friend. She is not a feminist although the misogynistic community might label her as such because she is overweight, strong, and gets ahead with sheer determination. Anyway, I feel so distraught that I’m completely alone in the real world with my views. I’m married to a husband that believes in equality for women, but still strongly clings to biblical pictures of how women and men are supposed to behave. He believes that behind every great man is a great woman… I’m more of there are great men and there are great women, why do we have to get shafted of the credit to boost a man’s ego? I have no real life connections with feminist women, and I feel like I can’t trust any women to talk to for fear of being viewed as weak and a victim mentality. When I talk about feminism I try not to project myself into the social situations I’m describing so that I KNOW I’m not taking a personal vendetta against any wrongs I may have perceived in my life. I really wish there would be more on this hugo, about perhaps how to have a discussion to these kind of women on what feminism really is, and how we still need it today. My friend is still under the impression that feminism is all about equal pay, and climbing up the corporate ladder, I think she fails to see how feminism would benefit men, relationships, and social situations. She has no care to learn either, I’m guessing the willful ignorance is because of the fear of what other people think, which just goes to prove to me just how much feminism is required. Given she doesn’t live up to ‘hot’ according to the media it wouldn’t be very beneficial to draw more negative attention to herself if she was to find a partner, which proves the fear we as women still feel as a result of patriarchy. Everything we do as women revolves around men and to compound the issue, women as well. To me the competitiveness of women is centered around patriarchy in the feeling that we as women are valued less unless we have a mate, and we are under constant duress to attract a mate and to do so usually involves a self sacrifice that is so common to women today that it’s second nature. What is that sacrifice? Values, dignity, equality?