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I get the impression that we don't find it important to recognize the misogyny in our culture because it isn't convenient. I have to wonder about the general dislike for talking about isms — is it because it's annoying and politically correct? Or is it lazy self-protection? Because being mentally engaged means understanding the discrimination inherent in our cultural architecture and it means questioning privilege rather than just enjoying it.

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[ March 05, 2002: Message edited by: Alix ]

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Feminism isn't about exclusion or elistism - if it is, then it's another agenda entirely that has hijacked the term feminism for its own purpose. Equality benefits everyone - if it excludes, it isn't equality, by any definition.

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This may be why many people - including some who have contributed substantially to women's causes - shy away from the word. Because of spotty, inaccurate, sensationalist reporting and even spottier attention on the part of the public, Feminism has become associated in a great many minds with extremes.

[ March 05, 2002: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

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plays by Franca Rame, Dacia Maraini, and others, we studied performance artists (Rachel Rosenthal was one). It was a hard course to summarize, but for me, a lot of it was about pushing intellectually the boundaries of what I considered to be "theatre"

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!!!!!!!! So Franca Rame not only performed with Dario Fo but also wrote her own plays! I had no idea! And I thought D Maraini was a prose writer exclusively. (Never heard of Rachel Rosenthal, )What were their plays like? What did you think of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author

The right complains about "political correctness" , but they've play the same game. We've seen words like "feminist" and "liberal" demonized by the supposedly liberal dominated media.

God, the lies.......the lies are mind numbing.

ANYWAY,

I think two can play at that game. I think we should be refering to Ossama bin Laden, at every opportunity as a "conservative", or "religious fundamentalist". (drop the Islam part)

Like, "Today, U.S. and allied troops took on conservative religious fundementalist Al Quada troops in the eastern mountains of Afghanistan."

As a wobbly segue back to the topic, the language we use implies a set of personal assumptions and bias that are inescapable, which is why the term "feminism" is so loaded. Call yourself a feminist and suddenly you're a shrill, ball-busting harpy, a dyke, a marxist, a man-hating bitch. At best, an over-educated, white liberal reeking of class entitlement. Maybe some of the above are true for some individuals, but they certainly aren't exclusive to feminism, and half of them can't even be qualified as insults to anyone with a particle of self-awareness.

I don't mind other people calling me a feminist or womanist or humanist or whatever. But when considering what I call myself, I think I have to admit many, many labels which, individually, come nowhere close to who I am, but collectively might vaguely resemble something I'd recognize as "me".

Another reason why mainstream media is so irritatingly inaccurate is because they seek to simplify complex things so that the plebes don't have to bother their silly little heads about the Big Issues. They label, box and compartmentalize everything, then package and market it in the most banal and oversimplified way that can produce maximum revenues.

People are complicated and many-faceted, and feminists are people.

About reporting. I'm not starry-eyed enough to expect objective or unbiassed or even covering both (let alone all) sides. It would be kind of neat, though, to get a quote with the whole sentence in, verbatim, rather than just the first bit, or to see a paragraph of background, context... something more than the shrill expostulation at the end of a long, well-reasoned exposition.

This is only to welcome JeffHouse to the Feminism Fora - I know he's here to stay.

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I think human perception belies true objectivity, so it's impossible to attain in anything, certainly not in mainstream journalism.

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I agree, and whenever you read or hear anything, "consider the source" is something all but the most credulous do.

Unfortunatley, today's media is riding on the coat tails of a time when news media was much more reticent about displaying it's bias, and is to their own detriment, squandering credibility built up by those that went before.

Not to look at things through rose coloured glasses. Newspapers and such have never been paragons of virtue; there's nothing in print or in broadcast today that would make Randolf Hearst blanch.

I think what I object to, is the out and out lies that go unchallenged, and the idea, mostly confined to punditry at the moment, that "the other side lies, so I'll balance things by lying too." -- The Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson school of journalism.

I object too, to columnists and pundits that try to float fallacious arguments. It really dumbs down the public debate and there's no excuse for it. I think it reflects very badly on Universities that have Journalism courses that they can't graduate people who can or care to construct an opinion without resorting to leaps of illogic that a factory schlep like me can cut to ribbons.

There was a course on women writers I took in my last year of university that required a critical analysis of feminist thought before we even got down to tackling the actual literature. That, and a course in international politics, were the only instances in four years of "higher learning" where I was required to critically analyse, and not regurgitate some derivative, hackneyed crap for the desired GPA carrot.