My friend Ben (of LOLPorn fame) came up with the phrase “conjugal enemies” during a conversation in which I attempted to describe old-skool romance novels to him—I think I was talking about Catherine Coulter’s ouevre in particular, especially the WTF factor of “he uses cream to ease the way of the rape, so it MUST be lurve!” However, I can’t be certain; at the time, I’d shotgunned five old-skool romances in a row as part of research for The Book, and my brain had been addled by all the punishing kisses, cynical smirks, pointless misunderstandings and non-consensual fuckin’.
Anyway: conjugal enemies? Hell yes. The protagonists in these old-skool novels couldn’t stand each other. The heroine’s loathing for the hero was writ large every few pages (at least, until the first orgasm, and then the loathing transferred to her own body as well), but they still couldn’t stop conjugatin’ all over the piece. This lack of control over their passions—even if it was passionate hatred—was often transformed into passionate love through a mysterious alchemical means I’m not entirely sure I’ve figured out yet. At some point in the book, the heroine suddenly sees the hero’s lack of control and little signs of tenderness (not raping her until she bleeds, not forcing her to meet his former mistress, allowing her the freedom to indulge in some unconventional-for-the-time activity like sailing or running a business or communing with the whales or whatever the fuck) as signs of affection, and she re-interprets her actions and reactions as being signs of True Luuuurrrrve as well. I don’t find these transformations convincing, but I know many other people do, and the different reading and interpretation process is fascinating to me.
This isn’t to say that adversarial relationships aren’t fun to read about, or that they can’t be used as convincing indicators of two people who resist falling in love with everything they have. When these relationships are more balanced, I tend to think of them as “loving adversaries”—circumstances or their own personalities don’t allow them to act on their attraction, so they spar and snipe as a way to act out some of their tensions in ways other than bonin’ each other six ways to Sunday. I recently watched His Girl Friday, and that was the term that immediately came to mind. Underneath the constant quipping and sparring and attempts to one-up each other between Walter and Hildy was a sense of attraction and true affection.
But there was more to it, too. I think what made it an adversarial relationship as opposed to one based on enmity was the way the two of them were portrayed as equals. Walter would try to pull a fast one on Hildy, but oftentimes, she’d be just one step ahead of the game and have blocked his move before he could complete it. Hildy, at least until the end, is a strong woman with enough power and experience to make her choices and moves count.
And that’s not something you can say about the old-skool heroine. Most old-skool novels make a point of systematically stripping power from the heroine—she’s young, she’s alone in the world, and most of the meaningful choices over when, how and to whom she wants to express her sexuality is denied her. The only true power she has is her hold over the hero, but she’s unaware of this until a significant part of the book is over; her constant expressions of hatred were a way for her to deny the hero his emotional hold over her. The power imbalance results in a much more virulent hatred instead of a more playful sparring, and it’s this hostility that raises my hackles and makes it difficult for me to accept the transformation from conjugal enemy to lover. Adversarial relationships, on the other hand, are not necessarily based on enmity, and I find the resulting clashes much more satisfying and believable to write about.
Interestingly enough, the old-skool romance and His Girl Friday end in much the same way: the heroine capitulates to the hero, and the resolution feels a bit limp as a consequence. Hildy’s transformation at the end of His Girl Friday is less than convincing for me because the writer made her pliant—almost wide-eyed and confused. It’s disappointing because Hildy has real power that she seems to cede over to Walter once she acknowledges that she still loves him. The old-skool heroine’s often abrupt about-face, while startling, is at least consistent with the worldview of the book—she gains power once she stops struggling against the hero and accepts him.
Not all romance novels end this way. One of the reasons why I love Midsummer Moon by Laura Kinsale so much, for example, is how Merlin and Ransom are locked in an adversarial relationship throughout much of the book, but you never lose sight of how much affection and love the two of them feel for each other. Ransom finally makes a significant power-grab when he takes what Merlin loves away from her (those of you who’ve read the book know what I’m talking about), but in the end, the power balance equalizes when he learns to love and live with Merlin as she is, not as he wants her to be.
Not all romance novels use the conjugal enemies/loving adversaries model; Patricia Gaffney’s best work, for example, as well as Barbara Samuel’s, don’t set up their conflicts that way. But it’s a fun way to set up a story, and like the Energizer Bunny, it’s easy to allow the conflict to go on and on and on. I also know that many people view the adversarial relationships between hero and heroine in old-skool romances than I do. What do you think about power structures and loving adversaries vs. conjugal enemies?
Enumclaw?
(Ahem. Bad joke based on the existence of an animal-sex farm in Enumclaw, WA; the legality of beastiality in Washington State for a time; and the fact that I used to be from around that area, and let’s just say I wasn’t surprised when the story broke.)
I read Larry McMurty’s “The Last Picture Show” when I was 10. The opening chapter (if I remember correctly some thirty-four years later and alas, I think I do) featured a boy and his heiffer.
I can’t tell you how badly, and for how long, I was thoroughly squicked out by that. Mind you, I hadn’t even read that many romance novels – rape or no rape – at that point. The whole mechanics of sex thing was still deeply disturbing to me. The Last Picture Show didn’t help.
I’ve wondered since then if I’ve conflated that book and something from another book, but I’m pretty sure I haven’t. Thalia, Texas. The Last Picture Show. I’ve never gone back to read it and see if I have the details right. Altho I also remember the scene where the coach’s wife is enduring sex with her husband and she imagines that his huge gut pressing down on her is a mound of cans of cling peaches, which she’s been feeding to him all these years. A really powerful scene and even at that age I got the pathos of it. The man can write.
I’m from Texas. For years afterward I thought all farm boys everywhere did their livestock.
i don’t think the canid coitus graph was a joke. The rest of the post was deadly earnest.
My goodness, we really are not communicating very well at all, Holly. I was just interested. Language: don’t forget that I probably don’t speak yours. British English, especially standard BE used by people over the age of about 50, often sounds unduly ‘formal’ to younger speakers (maybe that is where the schoolmarm accusation fits in? I have never been accused of that before!) especially AE speakers. 😉 Would you be more comfortable if I had written ‘while fucking’ instead of ‘during coitus’ or ‘dogs, wolves and other dog-related species’ rather than ‘canids’?
I did not label bondage and related activities ‘fascist’ simply because I, personally, find the idea so very unattractive, and certainly not because I use the word as an undefined, generic pejoratice adjective. I don’t. I used the word because it is specifically in societies that are essentially rigid, nationalistic, authoritarian and usually right-wing that such sexual proclivities tend to flourish best, and I gave a couple of examples.
(Inter-species copulation – or sex, if you prefer):
I meant ‘ordinary’ in the sense of unsurprising rather than acceptable. Men sexually assaulting animals such as sheep and pigs has never been really uncommon, though it has always been disapproved of, and ‘bucolic’ is an appropriate adjective; low population density and the availability of animals are important factors. In urban areas, there are fewer medium-sized domestic animals, and usually more chances to buy no-strings-attached sex with women. In past centuries, the unfortunate ewes, nanny-goats and sows who had been sexually assaulted by some man were sometimes punished along with the human attacker if the offence was discovered.
Sigh. For pejoratice, read pejorative, above.
Oh, and I wasn’t joking. I was seeking information, because I have never read any were-something books, so I don’t know what happens.
Because the evil sluts tempted him!
There was a right wing lawmaker a couple of years ago who claimed that this was basically true, and he included himself in that farm boy group. The gist was that of course he had done it in his youth but he grew out of it. He said this while criticizing homosexuality as being a society destroying perversion, which made the whole thing extra special.
I find it interesting that women are asked if they are feminists, but men never are. Because men can’t believe in equal rights for women?
So many people seem to confuse equal rights with being the same. Feminism isn’t saying that men and women are the same, but that they should have the same opportunitites.
As someone who works with statistics I find it annoying when people say that men are “stronger”, blah, blah, so they are the only ones who can go to war or operate the TV remote. Comparing the “average” man and women ignores the fact that we all deviate from the average.
Thanks for the opportunity to vent.
I am just going to say one more thing about power dynamics before retreating to bed.
The concept of women as sexually voracious, and even the extreme masculine nightmare fantasy of the vagina dentata actually depend on men being more powerful in most areas of life. Power carries responsibilities and expectations. People do not wish to appear to ‘fail’ in front of those whom they regard as subordinate or inferior, or indeed before loved individuals whom they see as being under their protection. (Parents do not like to be embarrassed or humiliated in front of their children, because it robs them of some of their status). ‘Performance anxiety’ is a slick psychological term, but it is very deep-rooted. Dangerous female genitalia express all sorts of atavistic masculine fears
The myth of the irresistible seductress also relieves a man of moral responsibility. ‘The woman tempted me’. For a man to ‘give in’, to be conquered, by someone weaker than himself would never do, so she has to have been stronger in that particular context. This is all predicated on the male seeing himself as normally being in the more powerful, decision-making role.
Inequality, both social and sexual, is always fraught with difficulty for both the powerful and the powerless. It can never be wholly removed: indeed, social hierarchies are hard-wired into social organisation just as they are in so many other gregarious species, but striving for equality in personal relationships is at least is a good goal.
Snarkhunter, you pre-empted me, writing that as I was writing the post above! Exactly!
😉
Ok, fair point. As a younger speaker of American English I can see that I may have misinterpreted your tone – it was not the words themselves. (And of course I won’t assume that you assume that as an American I’m unfamiliar with “coitus” or “canid.”)
It was the tone of High Academic Dudgeon that struck me, I suppose.
Phrases like archetypal fascist sex – perhaps it’s not schoolmarmish. It’s donish. Is it donish? or donnish? As in Don-like. Although over here we don’t have Dons. We have MAs in Gender Studies.
I still don’t see why the popularity of BDSM literature among Americans – and is it not popular among British readers? I’m asking, I don’t know – might augur anything negative, or why it might augur anything at all. It’s a fad. It will pass.
I’m afraid I can’t do anything about my desensitization to the word “fascist.” I just stop listening once the word is used.
I always figured the sexual vibe in Weimar Germany had more to do with boots and riding crops and pointy helmets and the Germans’ inordinate love (at that time) of all things military, none of which was peculiar to the Nazis, right? Hypermasculine, hypermilitary societies like that frequently feature that kind of thing.
My mother thinks she’s against gay marriage – she’s not, she just thinks she is – and I asked her one night, what can a gay couple possibly do to harm the institution of marriage that Henry VIII, Elizabeth Taylor, Britney Spears, and the Kennedys have not already done?
Someone has suggested that in order to preserve anti gay sentiment as a political tool opponents of marriage equality are essentially treating “marriage=1 man + 1 woman” the way a corporation treats a trademark issue. You have to defend your trademark everywhere all the time or you loose control of it, even if a particular infringement is actually trivial. In other words, the objection has nothing to do with what does or doesn’t damage marriages & families and everything to do with control.
So many people have a visceral squick about homosexuality that I think the stated objections just don’t get examined closely at all.
Uh…Weimar preceded Nazi Germany. It went Empire, Weimar, Nazis.
I never got much of a sexual vibe off of Nazi Germany. I was always distracted by the OMG DYINGOPPRESSIONMURDERGENOCIDE thing they had going on.
I have heard that before but… no. I didn’t do the in class full-time student thing. I did mine through distance learning, online classes, and on post classes.
Actually, the biggest place I encountered this? The military. Lord, I cannot count the number of times some older female sergeant such and such gave me this same speal.
Snark: Yes, I know that. I was thinking of the German general who died en route to one of the fronts in WWI – he was on one of the Kaiser’s personal trains – had a heart attack at dinner. It took them hours to get him out of the pink tights and tutu and back into his uniform before they could call in the doctor. I have to go look it up – I’m certain this time, at least, that I’m remembering correctly what I read. I could be wrong about the color of the tights.
I was going off what Ag said about fascist sex under right wing governments. I don’t recall Wiemar being fascist.
Mildly afraid of wading into this discussion, but I found the “feminism” stuff to be quite interesting. I consider myself a feminist. My husband considers himself a feminist. But if I ever make comments to that effect at appearances discussing the feminist themes of my books, I get one of two reactions:
1) “Wow, who would have thought a pink book/book with a girl with a bikini on the cover would be one of those manhating feminist things?”
2) “Your book CANNOT be feminist. It’s chick lit and the cover is pink/has a girl with a bikini on the cover.”
You really can’t win. Either they think of feminism as a pejorative term or they think of your book in pejorative terms and therefore not feminist.
Interestingly enough, though male readers of my books (enlightened souls, to dare to pick up pink bikini covers!) are more likely to tell me that the situation I describe does not exist, I’ve gotten lots of fan mail from female readers talking about how their job etc. features exactly the same sort of sexism the book talks about.
That is AWESOME. I was confused by your comment, so sorry if I came off as condescending. 🙂 I see what you were saying now.
Catherine, I admit I’m surprised to hear that. The military is about the LAST place I’d look for radical feminist thought…especially given what I’ve been hearing about the sexual assault rates in Iraq lately. ::sigh:: Well, I apologize, but that is where I personally confronted the annoying more feminist-than-thou girls, and where a lot of women I know have also had to deal with that.
My point is, though, that they don’t represent all of feminism any more than Fred Phelps or Pat Robertson represent all of Christianity for me. Or any more than the bastards who rape their fellow soldiers represent the rest of the military.
I’m so depressed when I hear this. 🙁 I really am. I feel like Sisyphus sometimes. It makes me feel like we’ve lost the battle and we’ll lost the war, too.
(However, I am going to go hunt up one of your books! Feminist themes AND pink covers? Sign me up!)
Yes, it is awesome indeed, and I’m discomfited by the fact that I can’t get anywhere near it on Google – but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I will be crushed if I find out that I have been carrying an awesome, but fictitious, historical anecdote in my head. Cause I hate when that happens.
spamword=ever37. Because the validation code I have to enter to post this is ever47 and I’m thinking no way, baby. I’m ever 37. I was 37 when I was 26, and i’ll be 37 when I turn 45.
No, I understand what you mean. However, what I meant was that in my generation (from my point of view) feminism has been bastardized more often than not into that crazed agree-with-me-or-not-be-a-real-woman version. Quite frankly, I don’t want to be associated with that at all. I know feminism was meant to mean something better, but I don’t think it does anymore.
In regards to the military: Well, that is just a confusing situation. Not just for the people looking from the outside, but even from the people involved in it. *Be aware I speak only from my own experience and not in regards to every woman who has been in the military*
It seems like half of the female population of the military flat out hate men and are very, VERY extreme in their feminism. The other half seem to want their equality and get their special treatment too. Then there is the small population that seems to just want to do their job and not be associated with any of those other types.
The man hating ones: They seem to be bitter about their role in life to the extreme. Every time they didn’t get a promotion or an award it was because all the men are against them. If they get stuck on a detail it’s only because the men didn’t want to work on the weekend. They sneer at all the new ‘parade pretty” female soldiers and are especially harsh on their female soldiers because they want them to be better than all the men. They do not want equality, they want total historic role reversal. All the women should be in charge and the men should feel the degradation and suppression that they have. Women should be able to run around calling them ‘sugar’, slapping their ass and telling them to get them coffee.
The equality with special treatment: They want to be equal to men and get the same pay and benefits as them, but they really don’t want to have to do all the grunt work that is involved with it. You want them to PMCS a truck, help install equipment, move a heavy object? They really don’t want to do it and are more than willing to sweet talk some guy into doing it for them. These are the ones that abuse the system and make male PLT SGT’s flat out say that they don’t want any girls in their shop. Not because they hate girls, but because they hate that a task that was assigned to one person is now taking two or more people to do it and taking those guys away from what they were doing.
One of the saddest things I saw in the military was the sheer amount of sex that went on. The guys were getting it everywhere because girls seem to have some thing with guys in uniform. There are so many less girls than guys in a unit that the male soldiers all cluster around them and compete for attention. This seems to make the girls feel powerful. They stop associating their value with them as a person and start valuing themselves because so many people want them. Not every one, but most of them, seem to sleep with a staggering amount of men every year. It really upset me to see my friends view themselves this way and enjoy it. They got stuff for free, they didn’t have to do the crappy work, they always had people who wanted to hang out with them… what’s not to like? Ugh, very sad.
Catherine, that is sad. That makes me really sad, actually. Particularly the second one, b/c those are the women who make other women in the military look bad.
🙁
That is simply the usual way I write when I am trying to make a serious point. A highly colloquial, conversational register does not come naturally to me when writing, and in any case, the regional/chronological gap between AE and BE is a lot wider in informal speech than in formal English, so if I were to make an effort to write in a chatty style, you would probably still misunderstand my tone and perhaps even my meaning.
We are all adults here, so naturally I assume that you all do know perfectly ordinary words like coitus and canid! If I honestly thought that anyone here didn’t know them, I wouldn’t use them. Would you prefer me to make the outrageously rude and condescending assumption that such words are ‘too hard’ for contributors here? Simplified vocabulary and syntax may be required when writing for children and for non-native English speakers, but not for a group of English-speaking adults – and moreover, a group that, by definition, consists of enthusiastic readers.
Wow, take a day off for a national holiday, and all kinds of things open up!
I haven’t caught up with the comments yet, but this caught my attention, and I apologize if it’s already covered:
One of the backlashes against feminism in the mid-to-late 90’s (according to my increasingly faulty memory—about the time that Bly published Iron John) was definitely caused by how a lot of feminists represented themselves.
It wasn’t enough for a woman to be a feminist, you had to be a militant, vegan, lesbian, pagan, eco-warrior, anarchist feminist. You couldn’t be Christian and a feminist, you couldn’t work for a major corporation and be a feminist, you couldn’t like men and be a feminist. Like high heels and makeup? You’re a sell-out, honey. You eat MEAT?!
There was a real sense that you not only had to agree with my political platform, but you had to agree with ALL my political platform, and you had to agree with it for the same reasons that I did.
The skreed got really uncomfortable, and anyone who wasn’t cutting-edge, militant, radical, and extremely non-conformist was not willing to accept a label that smeared them with all the extras.
Man, you bitches have interesting conversations.
after86: yep, it was definitely MUCH later than that.
Did we pass through the same 90s? Because honestly, I never encountered that. I was born in 1960 and all of us who are my age or older remember the pervasive culture of that time. Women were definitely second class citizens. Remember the Charlie perfume commercial where the woman sang “I can bring home the bacon, and fry it up in a pan…”? That commercial was HUGELY controversial because it showed that a woman could be successful in business and in the home.
I remember when sexual harrassment was totally unknown as a phrase. If you had a male boss and you were young and cute, you WOULD be the subject of comments gestures and more. Once my (then) boss gave one of my girlfriends a ride home in his car and opened his pants and stuck her hand in. It didn’t occur to either of us to report it. Report it to who? It was just something you put up with. Anita Hill was the first woman to ever step forward publicly to say that treatment was NOT okay, and look what happened to her. And until she stepped forward, I had no clue you could stop it happening or even that behavior like that wasn’t normal or expected, just the lot you had to bear.
Any woman who ever took a car in for repair then knows what that was like. Jokes about your driving. Jokes that you didn’t know anything about a car and had imagined the problem you were having. When we bought cars, the salesman would refuse to discuss things like engine size or power, and instead would say, “what color you want, honey”. That is, if they spoke to you at all. If you were with a man, you were completely ignored as unworthy of conversation. Even if you said something, the salesman would reply to your male companion.
I am a feminist. I am proud to call myself so. I know what it was like just those few years ago. Yet I and my friends who were and are strong women who have managed to beat the system of that time while wearing makeup and sexy clothes. Okay. We didn’t wear bras. Heck, we were young. We didn’t need to and it was the style. Watch any 80s movie. (boy howdy I wouldn’t be caught dead in public without a bra now.)
Anyway, just wondering where this feminist backlash comes from since I never saw any feminists that match that whole radical, hating, birkenstock wearing, no shaving, no makeup stereotype.
Nor have I. I would say that all my female colleagues throughout my 40+ year working life considered themselves feminists (regardless of their personal lifestyle or political ideologies), including those older than myself (I was born in 1941). I know a great many vegetarians and count several life-long lesbians amongst my closest friends, but the stereotype you describe, the rather aggressive suite of characteristics, is genuinely completely unfamiliar to me. Maybe this was mainly an American phenomenon?
I am aware of some rather silly pseudo-academic work done in the name of feminism (the whole idiot ‘herstory’ thing), but it is a tiny amount compared with the wider benign influence of feminist perspectives in many different academic disciplines, including my own. I experienced that change of perspective as it happened, with its implications for the representation of subjectivity and objectivity in archaeological analysis. The earliest published papers I wrote in 1962-5 had to adhere to the old standards: the author had to be invisible (‘I’ was a verboten word in academic discourse); opinions had to be expressed as objective facts, and no alternatives could be offered, e.g.
‘the evidence indicates that this rebuilding phase took place in the Neronian or early Flavian period’.
Now, we are allowed to admit that there may be several possible interpretations of the evidence, and it is okay to say that the one we favour may be a personal choice, and that future discoveries may either confirm or disprove it. We can say:
‘On the present evidence, I would date this rebuilding phase to the Neronian/early Flavian period’.
This is a major advance in scholarly honesty and integrity, and it is very, very closely tied up with feminism, at least in my own discipline. Of course, it has benefited scholars of both sexes. Feminism does ultimately benefit both sexes. We may still have to fight every inch of the way on matters such as promotion and salaries, but the feminist movements of the last 40 years have made a permanent difference to scholarly endeavour, just as the feminism of the late 19thC began to reform legal statutes for the better.
I wonder if the cumulative effect of comments like these is to give the impression that all hairy-legged, Birkenstock-and-jeans-wearing feminists who eschew make-up are considered un-sexy manhaters. I’m not sure if anyone meant to imply that, but it’s the impression I’ve begun to get from reading this thread.
I never understood what was so sexy about the pair of bright pink high heels discussed on an earlier thread, though. Are there very fixed conventions in the US about beauty ideals and the sexual (or anti-sexual) meanings of certain kinds of clothing/accessories?
I dunno. I’m as American as it gets, born and raised in Kentucky and have lived smack in the middle of the country (Missouri) for the past 20+ years…
Maybe it’s a big-city or Northeastern thing. Because I sure haven’t seen it here.
When I was in college I took a few women’s studies classes and encountered some of the types of behavior that people are talking about. In my experience it had almost nothing to do with feminism and a lot to do with being young and exposed to new ideas and “consciousness raising”. For many of my classmates college was the first time they really saw how badly women & minorities & the planet were really being treated. They were pissed about it and they were young enough to be very certain that they had found the one true way to fix things. I’ve never known anyone over the age of 30 who talked or acted like that.
That’s not to knock or make fun of the young in any way. That kind of energy & determination can be fabulous. But it often lacks nuance and empathy.
I sure don’t know about manhaters. But I’ll be very honest and say that for me personally, the whole hairy armpit/birkenstock look…no. Not sexy. Sorry. Obviously someone must find it sexy, I do not.
However, I’m not the one who equated feminists with this unflattering stereotype. I was merely stating that I hadn’t encountered that stereotype even though I grew up when feminism really took off in the 1960s.
I’m from the North West for what it’s worth.
I certainly didn’t mean to imply that if that’s what you thought. All I was doing was speaking from my own personal experience.
Huh, I’ve only ever really experienced those views from people older than that age. It was a prevelant condescending attitude that just because I was young I didn’t really understand a woman’s struggle. I guess different experiences for different people.
Holly – I think the event occurred a little earlier (before World War I) – but is even better!
The officer in question was the CHIEF of the German General Staff, and he was dancing in the tutu and feathered hat for the KAISER! when his heart failed and he died.
(I wonder if the hat belonged to the Empress Augusta? Wilhelm II gave her 12 every year on her birthday, and she was always seen wearing one.)
No idea if the tutu was pink or not, though!
I was born in 1967, and I’m from Western Canada (the boonies of Alberta, specifically). I gained my impression from what I was reading in the 90’s, a lot of which was new-age and holistic health stuff, as well as goddess-centred re-visioning of history. Prehistory, really. Much of which has apparently come under fire since I drifted away from actively following it.
Anyway.
There was definitely an angry reaction against (for example) Naomi Wolfe’s The Beauty Myth as being anti-feminist, and I definitely bought and read a book of essays that were feminists’ angry or uncomfortable reactions to the Iron John men’s movement.
And I definitely read many very angry essays and articles loudly declaiming what wasn’t feminist, and a handful of essays from women explaining why they didn’t embrace the title of feminist.
It’s possible that my impression was mangled by my admittedly skewed information intake filter, but that’s the impression I got back then, and it holds true for me now.
Susanna – thank you, thank you! I so wanted that anecdote to be true, you know?
I’ve run into – and away from – the angry type of feminists that Catherine is describing, and they’ve usually been a little older than me – Baby Boomers.
And I used to think it was a feminist thing, and then I realized that it was an aging thing – and I’m trying very hard not to do it myself. The whole “young people today….” skreed that you swear you’ll never do? I see lots of folks not much older than me doing it. Right now it’s the Gen Y’s who are getting it – they’re selfish, they’re lazy, they want everything handed to them, they don’t appreciate teamwork, yada yada. I hear this from older women in the workplace more than anyone else. Don’t know why it is. Some people get bitter and crochety and scared in thier old age, and their old age starts way sooner than it should.
I read two very interesting blog posts on the topic of feminism today and thought of this place. One was over at Megan McArdle’s Atlantic blog and her views about perfectly mirrored mine. But in much better prose, of course.
My comment could very much have been construed that way, and I didn’t mean that at all, but I can definitely see where the way I constructed my comment leads to that interpretation.
Generally, I have a fairly laissez-faire attitude towards clothing—although not towards hygiene. I don’t care if you shave or what you wear, really, but you’d better bathe as often as it takes to make sure you’re not gross if you want to stay in my good graces.
I get really frustrated by the battle of the stereotypes. Person A (and this isn’t meant to target Catherine at ALL) says, “Feminists are/do XYZ, and I don’t want to be associated with that.” Person B says, “I’m a feminist and I don’t do XY or Z. I prefer ABC.” Person C says, “So are feminists who do XY and Z also D or F?” And the stereotypes continue.
It’s why I linked to the Sars essay in the first place. She says it better than I do. A feminist is simply a person who supports (in some way or another) equality of the sexes. That’s it. It has nothing to do with sexuality or dress or attitude towards others. I didn’t mean to convey that the Birkenstock-wearing vegetarian feminist who rarely wears makeup is a man-hater, any more than I would say the man-hating feminist (there are a few, I imagine) is automatically a vegetarian.
One thing I like about being a feminist in this day and age, however, is that I feel like I can wear what I want, think what I want, have kids, whatever, and still be a feminist. I look at the women around me—the women who belong to the pioneering generation and are now full professors, and nearly all dress in very mannish clothing, eschew make-up, and wear their hair short. If that’s what they like, great. But there is a decided push among that crowd to similarly androgynize my generation of women when we go out into the job market, and most of us refuse to allow it.
I’ve run into that here in Western Massachusetts. From what I hear, it is also prevalent in the San Francisco/Bay area of California.
Around here they are derisively called “Femi-Nazi’s” because they really are “Join me or die” types of people. I’ve run into people online who claim that any male initiated sex is rape because of the power differential between men and women. *mind boggles*
Unfortunately, these people are perpetuating the myth that women are helpless and less than men because that is all that they seem to want to focus on.
Spamword – Yet23. No thanks, I wouldn’t want to be 23 again. I’m happy where I’m at.
Oh my God. I HATE those people! I want to be like, “Honey, it’s really not all that empowering to say that I can never have any kind of power.”
Holy crap! I hadn’t heard that one before. I’ll be sure to pass that on to my husband. I’m sure he’ll see their point. *snort*
That was Andrea Dworkin’s big thing, IIRC – that all heterosexual sex is rape. It really does invert the whole thing, and turn women into helpless, perpetual victims who aren’t even in a position to give their consent to get laid. Like the Womens’ Studies professors who won’t allow men to take their courses because the presence of men might inhibit female students from expressing themselves.
There was a awesome blog post at some feminist network site not too long ago, wherein she raged against Joss Whedon’s Firefly – I think she had just seen the movie Serenity, and she said she’d never watch the series, because Whedon was basically a woman-hating terrorist, and she went on this long tangent and had a lot of commenters going all You Go Girl on her. There were spirited discussions at other blogs trying to decide if the whole thing was some brilliant (and it would have been brilliant parody but alas, I think it was completely sincere.
BTW – Joss Whedon’s females Kick Ass Quite Righteously.
YES! I was thinking of her when I saw that comment. God, that was stupid. She was arguing that Joss is a rapist because he may have once asked his wife to have sex, and that Zoe was totally degraded b/c she calls Mal “sir.” Nevermind that they’re both ex-military and he was her commanding officer. Nope. It’s aaaaaall about the degradation.
To be fair, Dworkin NEVER actually said that all hetero sex is rape. It’s a common misconception. She made a much more nuanced argument that suggested in some situations apparently consensual penetrative sex could be coercive, or something like that. She was a radical, no doubt, but I’ve learned that she has gotten a much nastier rap than she deserved.
Also, I don’t think that was on a feminist blog. It was on Livejournal.
They call feminists “Femi-Nazis” here, too. The truth is, except for the internet, I don’t hear people doing anything BUT degrading feminists for being hairy-legged lesbians who want to castrate all the men in the world. Even among the women I know. “I’m not a feminist, but…” is a constant refrain.
I think part of the problem is that we live in a world that doesn’t want to admit the extent to which women are still not treated equally. The misogyny is so deep-rooted and so common that most people don’t even see it. Which makes women who speak out look like they’re overreacting.
Also, we are a culture that feeds on sound bites. And who’s a better sound bite – an intelligent, well-spoken woman or a man-hating harpy? As long as the feminists we see in the media are the most radical and militant element of the movement, people will still think that, “I’m not a feminist, but…” is a valid statement.