-------------------------------------------
Feminists Must Begin to Fulfill Their Noble, Animating Ideal

Some graduate students chafe at "requests" they receive from their faculty advisers
By CAMILLE PAGLIA

What is the future of academic feminism? As women's studies evolves into gender studies, how should we re-examine and strengthen it? Feminism is one of the great progressive social movements of the modern period begun by the French Revolution. Like the movements to abolish slavery and eradicate child labor, it is the fruit of the Western Enlightenment, which produced the concepts of individualism and civil liberties that have inspired insurgents against dictatorial regimes around the world.

Because of feminism's noble, animating ideal -- equal treatment of the sexes before the law -- one might expect the feminist movement to have the wholehearted support of every person of good will. That there is so much skepticism about feminism in the United States -- and that, as polls show, so few young women identify themselves as feminist -- can no longer be explained away with such facile formulas as "backlash" or "the war against women" (which are the titles of propaganda-filled books by Susan Faludi and Marilyn French). Instead, it's time for every American feminist to admit that both mainstream and academic feminism have been guilty of ideological excesses that require correction.
The reform wing of feminism to which I belong burst into public view in the early 1990s, but it actually has a long lineage. The most radically pro-sex of us began our struggles with the puritanism and groupthink of feminist leaders from the moment the women's movement revived in the late 1960s, after its dormancy following the winning of suffrage in 1920. The innovative, prankish dance critic Jill Johnston, for example, personified a feisty, libidinous, pugnaciously physical 1960s feminism that was erased from cultural memory. This process occurred both in the mainstream feminism of Ms. magazine and in the new bureaucratic-minded women's-studies programs of the 1970s.
To establish itself as a discipline and quickly prove its own academic legitimacy in the '70s, campus feminism became addicted to theory, which took two principal forms. The first, derived from Kate Millett's Sexual Politics (1970), reduced complex artworks to their political content and attacked famous male artists and authors for their alleged sexism. That atrocious book, which appeared while I was a graduate student, drove every talented, young, intellectual woman I knew away from the women's movement. Millett, who is responsible for the current eclipse of D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, and Henry Miller in the college curriculum, did enormous damage to American cultural life. She made vandalism chic.
The second major theoretical style adopted by campus feminism was a French import, derived from the highly abstruse and convoluted deconstruction and poststructuralism. These approaches invaded literature departments in the 1970s and later spread to other fields in the humanities. While the practitioners of French theory professed leftist and even Marxist values, they had little connection to actual politics and none whatever to ordinary people, who were condescended to and excluded by theorists' elitist jargon. Why the shifty, cynical, and verbose psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan -- a classic white, European male -- became the idol of so many credulous Anglo-American feminists remains a mystery. Simple careerism may explain it: From the late 1970s through the 1980s, attaching oneself to feminism or to French theory guaranteed employment, promotion, and, at the top, huge financial rewards. The academic marketplace reinforced cutthroat ambition and herd behavior, eventually seriously compromising the direct, sympathetic study of literature and art that should be the humanities' proper mission.
In the 1980s, the feminist law professor Catharine MacKinnon's implacable opposition to pornography, as well as her advocacy of stringent sexual-harassment regulations, became a dominant strain in academic feminism. The increasingly powerful deans of "student life" and their proliferating subdeans -- spawned by expensive American colleges and universities trying to attract tuition-paying parents -- were converts to MacKinnonism and its dated scenario of male oppressors and frail female victims. By the end of the 1980s, MacKinnon's feverish rhetoric and totalitarian politics had helped produce an epidemic of date-rape hysteria, to which colleges nervous about bad publicity responded with secret kangaroo courts that suspended the civil rights of male students and faculty members.
Feminist theory of the 1970s and 1980s was, virtually without exception, social constructionist, attributing gender differences entirely to social conditioning. Hormones did not exist. Even the psychologist Carol Gilligan's hazy, sentimental, bourgeois notions of woman's innate moral superiority carefully avoided the taint of biology. Any reference to nature was buried in kitschy, sanitized "Goddess" figures or automatically dismissed as "essentialist" -- a sloppy term used by amateurish academics innocent of philosophy.
Women's-studies programs were thrown together in the 1970s and 1980s without the most basic consideration of science. Sweeping generalizations about gender were made by humanists with little or no knowledge of endocrinology, genetics, anthropology, or social psychology. The anti-science bias of poststructuralism worsened matters, producing the repressed doublespeak of Foucault followers (such as the derivative and unlearned "queer theorist" Judith Butler), who substituted turgid word play for scientific inquiry.
A massive sea change in the 1990s has begun to reduce the campus prestige and influence of the French and feminist theorists. Most undergraduate students are no longer paying attention to them -- even though our ossified system of lifetime tenure will allow them to drain the treasuries of their institutions and distort graduate education and department hiring for at least the next 15 years. What are the reasons for this recent cultural shift? The unmasking in the late 1980s of the deconstructionist pioneer Paul de Man as a Nazi sympathizer sent shock waves through the humanities and did much to discredit deconstruction. Sudden scrutiny by journalists sent star professors accustomed to conference high jinks scurrying underground. The present atmosphere in many humanities departments is cautious and demoralized. Still, some theorists continue to hurt themselves. For example, the recent brazen memoir by Jane Gallop, a leading Lacanian feminist -- with its casuistical defense of her sexual affairs with her professors and graduate students -- has cast a glaring light on the intrinsic amorality of French theory.
Academic feminism, as well as the mainstream feminist establishment, lost control of the discourse on gender when a series of controversial issues spilled into the media and became a focus of raging national debate on op-ed pages and radio and television talk shows. The first was date rape, featured in cover stories of newsmagazines in 1989 and 1990. The next was workplace sexual harassment, dramatized by Anita Hill's charges during Clarence Thomas's stormy Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991.
Such practical matters, for which campus theorists were ill-prepared, were discussed and developed with great speed as talk shows multiplied on CNN, CNBC, and PBS, amplified by the refreshingly unedited coverage of lectures and public events by C-SPAN. Scores of lively women across the political spectrum could now be heard, without the censorship of the New York-based network news shows, which had long been under the thumb of Gloria Steinem and the National Organization for Women, with their intimate ties to the Democratic Party. The free exchange of ideas on the expanding Internet was also crucial in ending the era of political correctness.
The election of the Southern centrist Bill Clinton in 1992 removed the Reagan-Bush Administration officials whom many academics, in their smug sense of enlightened leftism, loved to deride, and it also began to break down the outmoded polarity of liberal versus conservative. Again, academic feminism (which was overinvested in liberal, social-welfare doctrine, sometimes approaching overt socialism) failed to keep pace with changes in the real world, here or in the former Soviet Union. It completely missed the rise of libertarianism (my own philosophy as a Clinton Democrat), which opposes government intrusion into private behavior and combines endorsement of a modified capitalism with adamant support of free speech (no minor matter in the early 1990s, when campus speech codes were spreading).
Because they were locked into the slower pace and the exclusivity of academic conferences and scholarly journals, campus feminists also have had little to say on most other controversial issues and public figures of the 1990s: Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs and the attack on the National Endowment for the Arts; gays in the military and gay marriage; Hillary Clinton; Paula Jones; partial-birth abortions; sexual harassment and adultery in the military.
Arcane French theory, based on linguistic paradigms predating World War II, looks pretty foolish these days, when most people are concerned with bread-and-butter issues such as child care, the divorce rate, drug use, and decaying public education. And by a delicious irony, hormones are back, as the baby-boom generation hits menopause. Germaine Greer, the most wonderful of the early feminists before she turned against sex, has devoted an entire book, The Change, to declining estrogen levels in aging women.
Furthermore, science has ceased to be the enemy for women seeking earlier warning and intervention for breast and ovarian cancers and for career women who postponed pregnancy and are experiencing fertility problems as their biological clocks run down. And for H.I.V.-positive persons who are putting their faith in the new protease inhibitors and, beyond that, in a future AIDS vaccine. And for gays who (much too prematurely) claim that a handful of limited studies have confirmed the existence of a "gay gene," thus proving homosexuality inborn, natural, and not a moral issue. In view of these pressing developments, the absence of science in the gender-studies curriculum seems all the more outrageous.
The arrival on the national scene in the early 1990s of a new generation of young feminists has also helped shift the center of gravity away from academic feminism toward real-life issues. The early books of writers such as Naomi Wolf and Susan Faludi, despite sometimes haphazard research and skewed reasoning, at least addressed the real society we live in, with its omnipresent media and conflicted sexual relationships. As Ivy League graduates, both women were heavily influenced by academic feminist ideology, from which Wolf began to move away in her later books. As girlish new personalities with strong opinions, Wolf and Faludi made the older, established American feminists seem tired and out of touch. Perhaps inadvertently, they also tolled the death knell for absurdly idolized French feminists such as Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray, whose tedious works had been forced down the throats of American women students in the 1980s.
A rich and dynamic popular culture also has overwhelmed the pallid, moralistic messages of academic feminism. For example, Madonna's embrace of pornographic scenarios and glamorous high fashion has subverted not "patriarchal hegemonic categories" (as tone-deaf humanities professors still like to say) but puritanical, MacKinnon-style feminism (which by this point is close to comatose). Since Madonna, younger women no longer feel that makeup and sexy outfits are incompatible with feminism. Progress has been especially striking in the gay world: The "lipstick lesbians" of the early 1990s, who first emerged on the West Coast, broke the stereotype of the dour, preachy, overall-clad, granola-eating lesbian feminist. The cover of Hot, Throbbing Dykes to Watch Out For, the latest book by Alison Bechdel, a lesbian syndicated cartoonist, says it all: The erotica shelves of a feminist bookstore are shown bulging with titles perused by eager shoppers, while the small section labeled "Feminist Theory" is nearly bare and filled with cobwebs.
We are left, then, with the duty to restructure gender studies to bring the field into line with recent cultural changes and the educational needs of the next century. It is an unhappy fact that women's-studies programs sprang into existence without the most elementary intellectual or scholarly oversight. Furthermore, many of them have been conducted as autocratic fiefdoms, insulated from critique on their own campuses and connected to each other nationally by a network of self-interested operatives who control hiring, grants, and publications.
Reasonable, well-intentioned feminists do exist on campus, but they cannot pretend that they are typical or that, before I launched my attack in 1990 in my book Sexual Personae and in the media, they dared to speak publicly about their discontent. Those who believe academic feminists are tolerant and open to dissent have never challenged the thought police, as both the philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers and I have done, walking into hostile mob scenes that no sane person would think possible on an American campus. Sommers's 1994 book Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women has been subjected to malicious and baseless attack by politically correct academics.
What should be the credentials for an instructor of women's studies? Faculty members and administrators have been utterly cowardly in their refusal to confront this question. Because women's studies as an academic entity was a product of the 1970s, its senior practitioners reflect the already hardened, male-bashing ideology of that period, with its disrespect for science as well as great art. Those whose feminism predates the 1970s have been out of sync with and often ostracized by academic feminism from the start. Critics who claim that I am anti-feminist, for example, ignore the fact that my own feminism goes back to my letter published by Newsweek in July 1963, demanding "equal opportunity for American women."
A foundation in basic science should be required of anyone teaching gender issues to undergraduates. Familiarity with traditional, rigorous research techniques in history, sociology, and anthropology is also necessary; the literary training of many of today's academic feminists is simply not enough. Postmodernism, a glitzy, game-playing style promulgated by incestuous humanities centers and that rubbish factory, Routledge, is a terrible preparation for gender studies, which requires patient, accurate observation of ordinary life.
A first step that colleges and universities can take to reduce cronyism and insure accountability is to insist that gender-studies courses honestly represent all sides in the debate. If dissident feminists and conservative critics of feminism are not included in the readings, students are getting indoctrination, not education.
Second, gender studies must break out of the ghetto of academic publishing. Faculty members should consider assigning the kind of general-release books whose sales in the many millions indicate that they have struck a chord with the mass audience: Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation; John Gray's Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus; and even the comedian Tim Allen's Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man.
These popular books, with their quirky humor, draw upon the wisdom of actual experience to present a picture of sexual relations far more persuasive than anything current academic theorists have yet produced.

When possible, please use a quote from the piece, and link to the source.

Also, those who know me will be dissapointed if I don't take this opportunity to point out that Intellectual Property Is Fraud.

What irritates me wildly is that she goes on and on about how feminism's been hijacked by these theory-inundated academics but then goes on to cite all these mainstream books like "Who Stole Feminism," etc. which were not published by some obscure university press but what Stephen King calls "big publishing." So who is *really* getting all the mainstream media attention, here? Academic "PC" feminists, or anti-feminists like Christina Hoff Sommers? I don't have enough fingers to count all the anti-feminist titles I've seen recently. . .The Surrendered Wife, What our Mother's Didn't Tell Us. . .and all these people are telling us the same thing: "PC" feminists dominate our culture and have ruined society. Two words: Puh. Lease.

And so it is true with feminism or, as those self same commentators have labelled, feminazis. Why don't young women want to be considered feminists? Because the propagnada machine has turned it into a bad word meaning men-hating, unshaven, lesbian freaks.

Can the media be so persuasive and so effective. You betcha although so many hate to admit it. So anti-feminist titles get all the press. They are on the morning shows. They are in your newspapers book reviews. They lead to feature stories in your favourite magazines. They are here, there and everywhere. Yet, your favourite feminist writer is barely mentioned at all.

And then there is a bit of controversey involving a feminist or a feminist cause. And suddenly we are deluged with commentators and call in radio shows and newspaper hate mongers all dredging up all the scary feminazi stories of the past and presenting them as symbolic of all that is evil and wrong with feminism. And another teenager is reluctant to call herself a feminist.

Turn off your TV. Leave the newspaper on the stand. Don't buy the magazine.

quote:

---

but I don't accept Paglia as a representive of feminism.

---

Nice response, I agree with several of your points, especialy regarding Paglia's conservative streak. I mean how progressive can anyone who calls herself a "Clinton Democrat" and thinks Madonna is original be?

In anycase, I do find a lot of what she says to be though provoking. She gives us many points of departure worth exploring.

As far as a "representative of feminism" goes though, I find that a very confusing statement. Surely you are not staying that feminist is an open-and-shut case that can be "represented" as completed body of thought?

Feminism is a field of study whose aim is the equality of women, not a particular school of thought, let alone a religion that can be represented verbatum. As such, Paglia is as legitimate contributer to the field as anyone, wether you care for her or not.

I agree that a lot of her fancy talk about french theory is so much hot air, but many of her points regarding the alienating, accusatory, self-rightous, unscientific, unsympathetic and anti-sex nature of certain schools of feminism bear discusion.

Perhaps I'm simply a little ignorant on the subject, but if there is a feminist scholar who makes these points better than she does, I'll be happy to have them introduced to me.

quote:

---

Surely you are not staying that feminist is an open-and-shut case that can be "represented" as completed body of thought?

---

quote:

---

But Judith Butler doesn't have a regular column in Salon.com (not that anyone'd understand it if she did , does she?) Neither does bell hooks, to cite a slightly more accessible feminist intellectual.

---

I have no dispute with that, and thanks for those two names. If you prefer, we can use these as a point of departure

On the pro-sex feminisim front, bell hooks Essay "Penis Passion" says it all, it's a knock out read. Thanks for the tip.

Regarding Butler's talk of feminism having made a mistake by trying to assert that 'women' were a group with common characteristics and interests.

Acording to:

here

quote:

---

Butler notes that feminists rejected the idea that biology is destiny, but then developed an account of patriarchal culture which assumed that masculine and feminine genders would inevitably be built, by culture, upon 'male' and 'female' bodies, making the same destiny just as inescapable. That argument allows no room for choice, difference or resistance.

---

This is a very useful way of looking at it.

If, as I think Butler's is sugesting, we concern oursleves with performance and not physical bodies, we can unite against domination, instead of devide over Male domination. Unite against violance, instead of divide violence against men from violence against women.

All of society has to take some responsibility for the problems we have, and all of us, together are the victims of the circumstances.

I think our feminism needs to be a little more sympathetic in that light. It is this pitting of male bodies versus female bodies, that is at the root of the alienation felt by many men and women alike from the label "feminism."

And it's not fair to say that this fallacy is commited only by media invented straw-men, even in this forum it's been recently sugested, and seemingly accepted, that our moderator must be a she, and not a he.

Having a male body disqualifies one from the performance of moderating a "pro feminist" forum, never mind being a Girl Guide.

[ January 11, 2002: Message edited by: Quirk ]

Camille Paglia certainly represents... something to do with feminism. She's definitely an example of a woman unafraid to be confident (to put it mildly!), confrontational, and so forth. (Quite apart from what she says, her style makes her a natural for the mass media).

But I can't take her seriously as a thinker or critic. She makes sloppy generalizations and wild statements, seemingly just to provoke. Provocation and challenge are not the same thing.

She resembles David Horowitz, whose identity depends on supposed dominance of America by a Stalinist left. Paglia requires a similarly uniform, dictatorial feminism, so she exaggerates both the numbers and the influence of those who practice it.

I can't compare to skdadl in analysing rhetoric, but here's some examples, just from this article:

quote:

---

The innovative, prankish dance critic Jill Johnston, for example, personified a feisty, libidinous, pugnaciously physical 1960s feminism that was erased from cultural memory. This process occurred both in the mainstream feminism of Ms. magazine and in the new bureaucratic-minded women's-studies programs of the 1970s.

---

"Erased from cultural memory" and "bureaucratic-minded" are clear references to the practices and style of something like the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

quote:

---

That atrocious book, which appeared while I was a graduate student, drove every talented, young, intellectual woman I knew away from the women's movement.

---

Every one? I think she means, "if they weren't driven away, they weren't talented, intellectual, etc." It's circular.

quote:

---

For example, the recent brazen memoir by Jane Gallop, a leading Lacanian feminist -- with its casuistical defense of her sexual affairs with her professors and graduate students -- has cast a glaring light on the intrinsic amorality of French theory.

---

Does it show anything more than that Jane Gallop like(s)(d) to have affairs with professors and graduate students, and find intellectual justifications for them? I doubt it.

quote:

---

Camille Paglia certainly represents... something to do with feminism.

[...]

But I can't take her seriously as a thinker or critic. She makes sloppy generalizations and wild statements, seemingly just to provoke. Provocation and challenge are not the same thing.

---

Yes Camilla Paglia has her problems and baggage, but I think it's a mistake to not take her seriously, just as it's a mistake to not take Ayn Rand or Karl Marx, who also have serious shortcommings, seriously.

She may spew a lot of bunk, but she also occasionaly hits something square on the head,
provocation is an important role to play in social discource, and her catagorisation of main stream feminism as being Alienating, Anti-Sex, and Self-pitying does have a lot of resonance among many men and women, as we see even in such topics as "I'm a feminist, But.." in this forum.

To shrug your shoulders and say that this aspect of feminist is purely a result of ignorant men and women buying into to bogus media straw-men is pure denial.

In place of the problematic Paglia, Relyc has given us hooks and Butler to use as a point of reference, and they make many simular points, so let's forget about Paglia and talk about how our feminism can be made more sympathetic and inclusive, less shrill, accusative, alienating and out of touch with the natural world.

There is sexism among feminist, sometimes the same inciduous, group-think, almost unconsious type of sexism that progessive men must watch out for. It's in our unchallenged assumptions, in our trained behaviour. Sometimes it's overt, in-your-face sexism, feminist women make the same kind of sexist statements when among their peers that men are know to make in "locker rooms" and "sports bars." And just like among their male counterparts, the ones making the sexist statements rarely gets challenged by the group, more likely encouraged.

It is as Butler points out, our inability to seperate performance from having male or female bodies that is at the root of where feminism runs into trouble, and also were sexism begins.

Feminist frequently attach performace expectations on us based on our bodies.

Without a commitment to gender-equality, without a commitment to being pro-men and pro-sex, without a culture of challenging sexism and puratinism, feminism will continue to be viewed as an undesirable label by many men and women.

quote:

---

I think our feminism needs to be a little more sympathetic in that light. It is this pitting
of male bodies versus female bodies, that is at the root of the alienation felt by many men and women alike from the label "feminism."

And it's not fair to say that this fallacy is commited only by media invented straw-men, even in this forum it's been recently sugested, and seemingly accepted, that our moderator must be a she, and not a he.

---

Well, this is a good point, and I can't say I'm necessarily down with the above-mentioned directive about a female-only moderator. If I had my way (oh if only!) I would be insisting on someone who identifies themselves as a feminist. But of course then you get into a big quagmire with regard to "what makes someone a feminist," and so forth. So you're right, it's complicated.

Perhaps it's not fair to lay all the blame on the media-created strawmen, but I'm still willing to lay *most* of it on them. I don't think the real voices of feminism, in all their contradiction and diversity, are being heard. Instead, society by and large is being told what feminism is by its enemies. Feminism is complicated, which doesn't make it very media-friendly. It's not a rigidly-defined movement with a specific directive. There are lots of kind, gentle feminist voices out there, but there's a lot of angry ones too. The media seizes on the angry, threatening ones (Dworkin, Thobani), take 'em out of context half the time, and hold 'em up as being emblematic of what feminism is when this is only part of the picture.

quote:

---

Yes Camilla Paglia has her problems and baggage, but I think it's a mistake to not take her seriously, just as it's a mistake to not take Ayn Rand or Karl Marx, who also have serious shortcommings, seriously.

---

Well, under no circumstances would I ever take Ayn Rand seriously.

quote:

---

. . . (Paglia's) catagorisation of main stream feminism as being Alienating, Anti-Sex, and Self-pitying does have a lot of resonance among many men and women. . ..

To shrug your shoulders and say that this aspect of feminist is purely a result of ignorant men and women buying into to bogus media straw-men is pure denial.

---

I don't think so. A lot of people *are* ignorant, and that's a fact. How many times have you heard someone spouting off about feminism and it's aims, and when you ask them who, exactly, they're referencing, they draw a blank. Or say they do come up with a name--It'll be, say, Andrea Dworkin or Germaine Greer--two women known for their inflammatory rhetoric. But how many people have actually read their books? Furthermore, how many people have enrolled in women's studies courses, studied the history of feminism and what's happening in the field now?

quote:

---

Let's forget about Paglia and talk about how our feminism can be made more sympathetic and inclusive, less shrill, accusative, alienating and out of touch with the natural world.

---

If this is not anti-feminist, then I don't know what is. Besides, who's "we" and which "feminism" do you feel entitled to speak on behalf of, man?

quote:

---

It is as Butler points out, our inability to seperate performance from having male or female bodies that is at the root of where feminism runs into trouble, and also were sexism begins.

---

You obviously never read Judith Butler; your interpretations are superficial and holes in your arguments gigantic. Your sentences are a patchwork of non-sequiturs, but then, like teacher (Paglia) like student. Only a pathetically low-brow person could start a thread against philosophical essentialism of some feminist schools of thought with a piece written by Camille Paglia. You and your quotes are your credibility's worst enemy.

quote:

---

You obviously never read Judith Butler; your interpretations are superficial and holes in your arguments gigantic. Your sentences are a patchwork of non-sequiturs, but then, like teacher (Paglia) like student. Only a pathetically low-brow person could start a thread against philosophical essentialism of some feminist schools of thought with a piece written by Camille Paglia. You and your quotes are your credibility's worst enemy.

---

quote:

---

I'm not saying there aren't *some* feminists who are shrill, anti-sex, alienating and all that--but so what? Every field of study has it's sampling of abrasive assholes. Why is it that feminists have come to be defined by theirs? I really think you're underestimating the power of the media in this instance.

---

I'm a frequent critic of the media, and of the hypnosis it causes, but as I said, that's not where it ends.

We both agree with Butler that expectations of performance must be independent of having male or female bodies. And that it is this pitting of male bodies versus female bodies that is where sexism begins.

With this as a starting point let's do an excercise together, go throught all the topics on this "pro-feminist" forum and take note of the number of times expectations of performance are linked to either having a male or female body.

I've already done this expercise, and originaly thought of posting a round-up. There are many clear examples, but I think that would be too inflamitory to gather and cite them all.

So I'll let you find them yourself -- it's not difficult, and the contributors expressing these expectations are both male and female, they identify themselves as feminists. They can not all be written off as "abrasive assholes," yet here they are, educated, sensitive, feminists who never the less clearly and openly flirt with the boundries of sexism.

quote:

---

What is the future of academic feminism?

---

From Mandos:

quote:

---

I'm sorry, but I find this whole tone to be academically snobbish.

---

Mandos, the whole THREAD is academic. It's about things academic. This is the reason I am not participating in it, as I am not an academic, nor am I especially interested. You are free to do the same.

[ January 11, 2002: Message edited by: judym ]

As for the "lowbrow." For every bit of arrogance that comes from a man who a) claims to speak on behalf of feminism better than feminists around him do, and at the same time b) plays the citation game without bothering to read people he cites, I have a forced landing. May seem brutal, but hey, they call for it.

[ January 11, 2002: Message edited by: Trespasser ]

quote:

---

Excuse me, Mandos? Is it too much to ask that if you're discussing a thinker you at least have to have read her?

---

Why? Because I think there are many debates that go on that need to include the non-expert. And I think the Coles Notes version is perfectly good for that, even if the interpretations or intentions don't match yours, and even if things are way off.

I've become somewhat more practised recently in the academia game. I know that in some contexts one must must play professional and cite correctly and all that. Babble is not a university nor is it a journal. One should be more tolerant of amateurs.

Now in the case of this thread, I think that it's especially important to be tolerant of amateurs, whatever their intentions are.

quote:

---

As for the "lowbrow." For every bit of arrogance that comes from a man who a) claims to speak on behalf of feminism better than feminists around him do, and at the same time b) plays the citation game without bothering to read people he cites, I have a forced landing. May seem brutal, but hey, they call for it.

---

quote:

---

Mandos, the whole THREAD is academic. It's about things academic. This is the reason I am not participating in it, as I am not an academic, nor am I especially interested. You are free to do the same.

---

quote:

---

Besides, who's "we" and which "feminism" do you feel entitled to speak on behalf of, man?

---

I speak of my feminism, why would I speak for a feminism that does not include me?

"We" is meant to be inviting and open ended, "our" feminism would be the feminism among those who might share the beliefs I am asserting.

It seems to me that this would be obvious to anyone not hell-bent on being divisive, Trespasser.

quote:

---

You obviously never read Judith Butler;

---

I'll go further, I had never even heard of Judith Butler until she was intorduced to me by Relyc, I freely admit my relative ignorance on this subject, I read what I could find on the internet, which certainly is not much, and am open to learning more.

quote:

---

your interpretations are superficial and holes in your arguments gigantic. Your sentences are a patchwork of non-sequiturs, but then, like teacher (Paglia) like student. Only a pathetically low-brow person could start a thread against philosophical essentialism of some feminist schools of thought with a piece written by Camille Paglia. You and your quotes are your credibility's worst enemy.

---

And you provide nothing but out-of-hand dismissals, personal insults and other fallacies, hardly a compeling case. For all my questionable quotes, your lack of substance and foaming at the mouth is your credibility's worst enemy.

quote:

---

You actually don't deserve to be taken seriously.

---

Then take me humerously, but don't waste our time tying to troll me into an empty flame war. You can't win, I won't be brow-beaten into silence.

[ January 11, 2002: Message edited by: Quirk ]

quote:

---

Don't lay the smackdown like that.

---

Especialy when there is not even a correction being made, in fact no specific conclusions either made or argued, just a boatload of fallacy and invective. Funny stuff.

But don't worry about me, this is not the first person to blow a gasket and randomly take an ass over tea kettle run at me, but I'd rather get back to talking about feminism than about Trespassers fuming.

After all, this thread is called "Less drivel, more Feminism." So let's forget about the drivel, and get back to the feminism....

Perhaps we can set about another forum where people can at length talk about wether or not I really am a low-brow, ignorant, anti-feminist, no good dunder heard, not to be taken seriously.

(It's only a matter of time before they point out that I can't spell either)

quote:

---

Well, under no circumstances would I ever take Ayn Rand seriously.

---

'lance, that's to bad, for although Ayn Rand thinking is largely dangerous and crazy, she is also very influential in libertarian though.

quote:

---

And this school of though is not withough it's usefull insights. Just like with Paglia, you are cheating yourself by ignoring her.

---

Let's see, Quirk, where did we leave off. . .?

quote:

---

We both agree with Butler that expectations of performance must be independent of having male
or female bodies. And that it is this pitting of male bodies versus female bodies that is where
sexism begins.

With this as a starting point let's do an excercise together, go throught all the topics on this "pro-feminist" forum and take note of the number of times expectations of performance are
linked to either having a male or female body.

---

No, I don't wanna do this exercise because I don't have time and because I have a feeling our results would be widely divergent based on our own particular biases. Also I don't necessarily agree with the starting point--what you say is Butler's point about sexism starting with male bodies pitted against female bodies because I don't necessarily believe in bodies, and I'm not sure Butler does either (don't ask). I've read some Butler, but not enough to weigh in confidently on this, and since you admit to doing the Cliff Notes version, I rather agree with the other posters that we shouldn't proceed based on assumptions. Butler's an incredibly dense, complicated thinker and I think it would be both dangerous and disrespectful.

quote:

---

Never said I ignored her, any more than I (was quite able to, despite my best efforts) ignore Paglia. Read a couple of her books, even.

---

Then what exactly do you mean when you say you don't take somene seriously?

Clearly you do take her seriously, seriously enough to read her books and have opinions about her ideas. What you mean to say is you don't care for her point of view, neither do I, but that's a whole different story. Ditto for Paglia, who I like better than Rand, but still....

quote:

---

Then what exactly do you mean when you say you don't take somene seriously?

Clearly you do take her seriously, seriously enough to read her books and have opinions about her ideas. What you mean to say is you don't care for her point of view, neither do I, but that's a whole different story.

---

No, not at all. I read her to find out what some of the fuss was about. What I found was a novelist who managed to combine purple prose with two-dimensionality, if that, in her characters -- whose characters were just stand-ins for various ideas, really -- and a "philosopher" who... well I'm less qualified to comment on the quality of her philosophy, but it didn't seem to me to have the sophistication worthy of the name. Just an elaborate, or maybe not so elaborate, apologia for selfishness, I thought.

quote:

---

What you seem to be saying is that feminism has an inherent element of sexism in it, which can't be blamed on media-bias or anti-feminst factions representing it as such, correct? Let me know if this is the case, and I'll speak to it.

---

Close, prevelant, not inherent and worse still, largely uncontested almost taboo to bring up. If I believed it were inherent, I could not embrace feminism.

It occurs in exactly the same way as the "locker room" cliche goes, where one sexist man makes derogitory statements which go unchallenged, but rather tollerated or even encouraged by fellow men who may not feel the same way but choose comradarie over confrontation. Or even worse cases, where real women are assaulted or humalated and the bystanders do nothing for the same reason.

Feminists are also reluctant to challange sexist points of views expressed within their ranks, hopeing to avoid confrontation with their peers, we see evidence of that in this very forum.

However, "locker room banter" is not a serious school of thought, Feminism is, and thus it is greatly hurt by this.

This prevelant sexism that obviosly starts to become tolerated in "pro-feminist" environments is precisely the reason than many men and women feel alienatied and avoid calling themselves feminists.

It's also the same reason that some men, who may otherwise be interested in athletics, don't hang out in the locker room with "the guys".

Unfortunately, the former is a much bigger loss than the latter.

Regardless of whether ot not Judith Butler would agree, it is sexist to restrict what someone can do, what someone can be a part of, or where someone is allowed to be because of their sex. Plain and simple.

Until our feminism starts to actively challenge these sexist views, we will forever be looking for scapegoats like Camile Paglia and the Media to explain why some many among us say "I'm not a feminist, but..."

Cheers, and thanks for the encouraging response Relyc!

[ January 11, 2002: Message edited by: Quirk ]

quote:

---

feminism rose up out of centuries of oppression

---

And they are not alone.

Oppression is wide spread, I don't subscribe to the view that men are not oppressed because they can get bigger pay cheques, that is just neo-liberalist rubish.

As the old saying goes, we either hang together or we hang seperatly.

quote:

---

Of course the women in these forums are going to get their backs up when you accuse them of 'reverse sexism.'

---

I am not unsympathetic to feelings of anger. And "reverse discrimination" is not what I'm talking about either, it's not anywhere near my radar screen when comes to important social issues. Trust me, I'm not rushing to the defence of the poor, unfortunate north american white middle class man.

What we are talking about is feminism as theory and more to the point, why many men and women feel aliented by it.

This is not a support group, we are talking about academic feminism. Which like all schools of thought has a responsibility to strive to remove from itself all illogical artifacts of bias and anger. Otherwise it weakens it's claims to intellectual integrity. It does not matter whether these biases and the anger can be justified on a personal level or not.

And this is sort of off topic, but as for your analogy regarding coloured people, I am a white, Ukranian, Jewish immigrant, raised in Canada by Black, Christian, Jamaican immigrants. Last week, after visiting with my half-philipino neice, my (East) German fiance and I went over to visit my Brother, who is half black, and his fiance and her parents, who are ethnic Chinese immigrants from India. Please take my word for it that I know a thing or two about diversity, equality and bigotry from many angles.

quote:

---

Ultimitely, is why feminists don't concern themselves with "sexism in their ranks" as much as you would like. It's about women first,

---

At the academic level, these are weak reasons, and if it's about women first, then why are so many women alienated by the feminist movement?

What I'm proposing is that it also makes the mistake of assigning expectations of performance on them based on their female bodies, just like the sexist males. Also on the men in their lives.

Now this is not, and shouldn't be taken as a blanket condemnation of feminism, which I fully agree is a vital field of study.

Only the opinion that it should not tolerate sexist ideas with it's theory.

quote:

---

ultimately, and we're not going to get anywhere if we don't allow ourselves the space to speak and think critically.

---

Unfortunatley it sounds as if your proposing the space to speak and think uncriticaly. Where certain ideas, and body types, are not welcome.

I like what I've come across regarding Judith Butler's idea of creating Gender Trouble, much more than an exlusively XX feminism, which simply reinforces gender differences.

quote:

---

Please take my word for it that I know a thing or two about diversity, equality and bigotry from many angles

---

I certainly was not making any assumptions in that regard, and apologize if it sounded that way. I only was hoping to get across a notion of how your average feminist in this forum might respond to some of your ideas about sexism on the part of feminists.

quote:

---

This is not a support group, we are talking about academic feminism. Which like all schools of thought has a responsibility to strive to remove from itself all illogical artifacts of bias and anger. Otherwise it weakens it's claims to intellectual integrity.

---

But wait a minute, this is exactly what I was talking about earlier. You're complaining about academic feminists, but you have already admitted, have you not, that you really don't know anything about academic feminism--except, it sounds like to me, the stuff you've read on the net in addition to what you've heard about it from Paglia. We've already established her biases. So how do you know that academic feminists aren't doing just what you've said--"striving to remove all illogical artifacts of bias and anger" from the study and practice of feminism? WHICH academic feminsts are you refering to? WHO has been going around spewing illogical biases and anger? Give me some names, please. And after I get the names, I want some quotes. Do you see my point? You are speaking in mainstream generalizations that don't necessarily have any grounding in fact. This is the stereotyped picture of feminism that gets filtered into our culture, and it's simplistic and reductive and disregards the hard work of thousands of women.

Then of course there is the question of who gets to decide whose anger and biases are illogical and whose aren't--but we'll leave that for another day.

quote:

---

We both agree with Butler that expectations of performance must be independent of having male or female bodies. And that it is this pitting of male bodies versus female bodies that is where sexism begins.

With this as a starting point let's do an excercise together, go throught all the topics on this "pro-feminist" forum and take note of the number of times expectations of performance are linked to either having a male or female body.

---

quote:

---

This is not a support group, we are talking about academic feminism. Which like all schools of thought has a responsibility to strive to remove from itself all illogical artifacts of bias and anger. Otherwise it weakens it's claims to intellectual integrity. It does not matter whether these biases and the anger can be justified on a personal level or not.

---

I have arrived late to this discussion, so won't attempt to address every issue raised. But I feel compelled to note that the two passages copied above, which seem to me exemplary of the position and rhetoric of at least one poster, are deeply sectarian in both intellectual and political terms, and the claim that no other position has a claim to "intellectual integrity" is both absurd and pretentious.

I, for instance, find the assumption that we can invent something I guess I would have to call the Argument from the Undifferentiated -- ideal? "natural"? -- Human Person, without reference to the experience of the so-far highly differentiated persons of history up to and including the lived experience of, eg, women babblers ... I find that assumption risible.

Neither am I defending anti-intellectualism when I note that there also is, simply at a common-sense level, something bizarre about defining feminism in a way that not only excludes but also insults or condescends to or pities the vast majority of the women who post to this board.

And two technical notes: The first-person plural narrator ("we") often seems to me a bullying rhetorical strategy -- see, eg, the columns of Margaret Wente, where "we are all Americans now," or, more often before 11 September, "we" are all upper-middle-class middle-management spa-goers worried about "our" portfolios. The famous, and troubling, use of this narrator that has preoccupied me for some years now is its romantic, idealizing, anti-historical appearance in the U.S. founding documents ("we, the people, ..."), but I digress.

quote:

---

And it's not fair to say that this fallacy is commited only by media invented straw-men, even in this forum it's been recently sugested, and seemingly accepted, that our moderator must be a she, and not a he.

---

I guess I should address that since I was the one who suggested it.

From what you have written it seems as if you are saying that I am basing my expectations of what a moderator should be on whether or not they have a male or female body. Is that correct? If the body were the only factor, then you would be right, I would be doing the "essentialist" thing and assuming that only a woman could moderate a feminist forum simply by virtue of being a woman, as if there were some "feminist forum moderation" instinct in women's bodies that will always exclude men.

This, however, is not what I'm saying. The reason I thought it should be a woman is because men do not have the first-hand experience of being a woman in our world, and it is this experience that is the very basis for the feminist movement. Feminism ISN'T just "academic", although I think feminist theory is incredibly important. Well, let's put it this way - feminism isn't a strictly objective, rationalist exercise. In other words, it's not a yes/no, one objective truth, third-person point of view type of study. No matter what kind of feminism you're talking about, the first person is always considered in feminism. It's not approached the same way that, say, natural scientists, or even some of the more objective, hands-off social scientists approach their fields of study.

Feminism has always had female experience as its starting point. It doesn't say, "Well, we have to look at this from an unbiased point of view, because once you let your own experiences colour your view of feminism, you taint your study." With feminism, the whole point is for women to be able to get in touch with women's experiences and then build their feminist theory on the foundation of that experience.

So when I say that a feminist discussion should be moderated by a female feminist, it is not simply because I figure they have some inherent moderation talent by virtue of having a vagina. It's because all women have the unique-to-women experience of being women, which is the whole basis for feminist thought. Sure, men may be able to sympathize with women. But they will never have the experience of being women. Feminism isn't just a rational exercise.

quote:

---

there is something to what I'm saying about the female experience being very important - the most important - aspect of feminist thought.

---

quote:

---

'lance, that's to bad, for although Ayn Rand thinking is largely dangerous and crazy, she is also very influential in libertarian though.

---

quote:

---

I read her to find out what some of the fuss was about. What I found was a novelist who managed to combine purple prose with two-dimensionality, if that, in her characters -- whose characters were just stand-ins for various ideas, really -- and a "philosopher" who... well I'm less qualified to comment on the quality of her philosophy, but it didn't seem to me to have the sophistication worthy of the name.

---

I finally reread Atlas Shrugged over the Christmas break. Well, most of it, anyhow. And I would have to agree.

She IS very influential in libertarian thought. And I thought she was a pretty good writer when I first read her. In fact, reading her again, I was engrossed in the characters in her book and everything.

You mentioned, 'lance, that you're not qualified to comment on her philosophy. I'm probably no more qualified than you since I'm only in second year philosophy, but there is one thing that really jumped out at me this time around, reading her books with a critical eye to her philosophical argument.

And that is this: one of the things I have learned over the past year and a half is that, to make a strong philosophical argument, you have to be skilled at exposition - stating the opposing point of view without caricaturing it. Because if you don't take the other point of view seriously, and you exaggerate it to the point of making it ridiculous, then you really haven't accomplished much of a feat when you argue against it successfully.

Using an extreme example: anyone can say, "Oh, all feminists want is to castrate every man on the planet, and I think that's wrong." Sure, you've won your point that castrating every man on the planet is wrong - but you haven't accomplished much because you haven't addressed the real position you are supposed to be debating.

I noticed this CONSTANTLY in Ayn Rand's novels. The characters who held her philosophy were little less than demi-gods. And she did a total caricature of the socialist position and the characters who held it. In fact, I barely recognized it. I can't think of examples right now, but the total illogic and one-dimensional thought of the antagonists in her novel were laughable. However, it's compelling reading to someone who wants to believe what she does, or to someone who doesn't know much about socialism and is learning about it for the first time from her. It's compelling to anyone who is not used to thinking critically about different positions beyond their own "common sense" ideas.

quote:

---

This is, in my opinion, what makes it bad philosophy. She argues against a made-up position that is so ridiculous that any reasonable position would look good in comparison, and then says she has defeated a genuine political philosophy which hasn't even come close to being portrayed in her book. It's academic dishonesty of the worst kind.

---

This is also why it's bad art ... or maybe why we have to say that it ain't art at all.

I'm a philistine when it comes to art. If it engages someone, makes them think and feel, then it's art to me. And obviously Ayn Rand has engaged and made a whole lot more people than me think and feel.

quote:

---

This is, in my opinion, what makes it bad philosophy. She argues against a made-up position that is so ridiculous that any reasonable position would look good in comparison, and then says she has defeated a genuine political philosophy which hasn't even come close to being portrayed in her book. It's academic dishonesty of the worst kind.

---

You're talking about Ayn Rand here, Michelle, yet it's also a very neat summation of my major objection to the writing of Camille Paglia. (It's tempting to speculate that the second wouldn't have existed without the first. Paglia, I believe, was heavily influenced by that glorious 19th-century kook, Herbert Spencer. I wonder if Rand was).

And another thing: someone or other said something to the effect that whatever shortcomings of style Paglia's might have, it had a good deal of useful content.

This, I believe, is another example of those false or at least misleading dichotomies. If there are serious problems with a writer's means of expressing herself -- gross exaggeration, gross oversimplification, pointless confrontation and abuse, rhetoric masquerading as analysis -- and if a reader has constantly to translate the work into more moderate language, then there are serious problems with the underlying ideas (if skdadl will forgive the essentialism! )

By the way...

quote:

---

And judging from what a very few of the men (including one who thought he should be considered for the position of moderator) thought was appropriate in a feminist forum...

---

[emphasis added]

Thanks for making the point, however obliquely, that the backlash, condescension and so forth exhibited in this forum has come from a very few male posters. They loom as a larger group than they really are because they've been so vocal. This phenomenom, of squeaky wheels getting inordinate attention, is of course common both in cyber-forums and in the Real World (leaving aside the question of whatever exactly that might be).

[ January 12, 2002: Message edited by: 'lance ]

quote:

---

You're complaining about academic feminists

---

I'm discusing, not complaining, why the divisive rhetoric? I am not seeking to seperate myself from academic feminists, who I definatelty see as part of my community.

quote:

---

but you have already admitted, have you not, that you really don't know anything about academic feminism

---

I am not an institutionalist, I do not value writing that is published by a university press any more than writing publishing in an online forum. And while I've "admitted" to having
not read many "proper" books on the subject, I do know about the academic femminism that is evident within my community, and I have heard, and read, and seen much discusion about it.

Being an Academic is a role, not a rank. Too many times people try to "pull rank" in discussions such as this, when logic holds that no argument made about me in any way addresses my assertions.

quote:

---

So how do you know that academic feminists aren't doing just what you've said--"striving to remove all illogical artifacts of bias and anger" from the study and practice of feminism?

---

Because I live, breathe, work and play within the progressive/academic/activist community, I have seen first hand, just like most of us, evidence of sexism among feminists, and just like the rest of us, I have seen evidence of the alienation that it causes.

This is not to say that the feminist community is bad or wrong, far from it, it is vital, a critical component of the broader progressive community. This is only to say that feminism discusion, because of it's focus on equality, especialy must include on-going dialouge regarding sexism within feminism. Particularily in an open public forum such as this one.

If you want quotes, all you have to do is read this forum. Given that this topic can't even be politely raised without walking on eggshells (a condeming fact right there), I think that doing a round-up of them would be far to inflamitory, as I've already said. You don't to look very far to find statement that place the cause of actions on gender even among educated, progressive, feminists.

quote:

---

You are speaking in mainstream generalizations that don't necessarily have any grounding in fact. This is the stereotyped picture of feminism that gets filtered into our culture, and it's simplistic and reductive and disregards the hard work of thousands of women.

---

I'm sure you meant to add "and men"

In anycase, yes what you say is true, yet this is not the end of it, these generalizations also make there way into progessive communities, including this one.

quote:

---

Re: the alienation factor, remember that feminism is a radical movement. What is radical? It has to be, at any time, what is considered unacceptable to the mainstream. And the ongoing misrepresentation of our goals and values by the likes of Paglia and her fellow pundits doesn't help.

---

Yet there is alientation towards feminism among radicals. I fully agree that feminism is a radical movement, however in order to stay radical it must evolve and challenge dogmatic preconceptions within it's own theory. You say this is happening, Yet, many feminists seem to get irritated when this is attempted, rather than jumping at the oportunity to educate, there is a line-up to attempt to brow beat.

Let's take a survey, who will agree with this statement:

(for feminists only)

"We, the babblers, hold that it is sexist to place expectations on a person's performance in any area based solely on wether they have a male or female body"

I wonder how many of you will agree.

sexism
n.

1. Discrimination based on gender, especially
discrimination against women.

2. Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that
promote stereotyping of social roles based on
gender.

[ January 14, 2002: Message edited by: Quirk ]

My two cents (or would that be two bags of catnip?): Is it necessary that women only may be feminists or may men be capable of being feminists also?

So it's not surprising that her work, if it captivates someone, offers a simplistic, if seemingly rational, set of solutions to a complicated world's set of problems, just as the Marxist-Leninist ideology could be oversimplified and used to power a rebellion.