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Topic: is postfeminism = antifeminism?
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anna_c
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2845
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posted 19 August 2002 06:47 PM
my desire to open a discussion on this question was prompted by the "mysterious" comment made on another thread (and echoed elsewhere): quote: "feminism" as a movement is no more.
this may aid in directing our discussion:
quote: In October 1982, when the New York Times Magazine featured an article titled “Voices From the Post-Feminist Generation,” a term was coined, and ever since the women of America have heard, ceaselessly, that we are, and forevermore will be, in a postfeminist age. What the hell is postfeminism, anyway? I would think it would refer to a time when complete gender equality has been achieved. That hasn’t happened, of course, but we (especially young women) are supposed to think it has. Postfeminism, as a term, suggests that women have made plenty of progress because of feminism, but that feminism is now irrelevant and even undesirable because it has made millions of women unhappy, unfeminine, childless, lonely, and bitter, prompting them to fill their closets with combat boots and really bad India print skirts. But to perpetuate this “common sense” about feminism and postfeminism requires the weekly and monthly manufacturing of consent. Postfeminism is, in fact, an ongoing engineering process promoted most vigorously by the right, but aided and abetted all along the way by the corporate media. Postfeminism is crucial to the corporate media because they rely on advertising.
full text
From: montreal | Registered: Jul 2002
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anna_c
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2845
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posted 20 August 2002 10:27 PM
to attempt a rough characterization, it seems that many who call themselves or their views "postfeminist" have failed to grasp the history, meanings, intentions, projects of "feminism." often, at the same time, they are oblivious to the sexual oppression still prevalent in society. but i do not wish to represent "postfeminists" as a monolithic group. some express affinities with postmodernism and are concerned mainly with cultural products and criticism; some are liberals who hold the view that feminism has succeeded in making women "equal" to men, and is therefore no longer necessary; others are conservatives who are all too eager to herald the end of feminism, claiming that as a society we have recognized how problematic, unnatural, heretical, and hopeless the feminist project is.
From: montreal | Registered: Jul 2002
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nonsuch
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1402
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posted 20 August 2002 11:48 PM
It's a meaningless term. These days, a movement or idea or social phenomenon or trend in art or science isn't allowed to last more than a couple of decades - becuse, once everyone has heard the term, it loses media-allure. The audience hears a word it's heard a few times before, says "oh, that again" and tunes out, so they can't keep using the word. But the next movement, idea, social phenomenon or trend hasn't begun (because the last one isn't finished), so they can't come up with a new name, so they just stick post in front of the old name, to make it sound different.Don't worry about it: just keep doing whatever you need to do. What you mostly need to do is resist labels, reject images and standards other than your own, refuse roles and functions that don't fit you, fight injustice whenever you get the chance, and live your life as fully and humanely as possible.
From: coming and going | Registered: Sep 2001
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scrabble
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2883
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posted 21 August 2002 08:30 PM
Aaaaaaaall right, anna_c. Didn't I already tell all youse in another thread that I never wanted to hear this "p*st-feminism" word ever again? This highschool student gets it. So does this man, although this will be the last time I post a man as a source on any parafeminist issue: quote: If feminism is about oppression by men, post-feminism is clearly about oppression by postmen . . . For example in the old days all the top positions in society were monopolised by men, nowadays they are nearly monopolised by men. Times have changed.
From: dappled shade in the forest | Registered: Jul 2002
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Tommy_Paine
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 214
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posted 21 August 2002 08:44 PM
In my mind, "post-feminist" means a feminist who grasps the idea that women should be empowered to make their own choices, and that this also includes whether to adopt all or part of the old "feminist" dogma.It doesn't mean that the "struggle is over", just that feminists are now allowed to step out of the old orthodoxy where they believe it is wrong, or ill suited to them as individuals. I see it as a good thing. New ideas will be allowed to surface, to be either adopted or repudiated. It will serve to bring new life to the movement.
From: The Alley, Behind Montgomery's Tavern | Registered: Apr 2001
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anna_c
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2845
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posted 22 August 2002 05:20 PM
quote: In my mind, "post-feminist" means a feminist who grasps the idea that women should be empowered to make their own choices
but is this not precicely the feminist project? to attempt a crude sketch of a history of feminists fighting for choice: in the so-called "first wave" of anglo-american feminism, suffragists/suffragettes fought for the right to participate in the democratic process: i.e., to make formal political choices. in both the first and subsequent "second" wave of feminism, the phrase "a woman's right to choose" became synonymous with the reproductive freedom feminists were agitating for. in fact, your very statement, tommy, is possible only given a long history of feminist struggle. the idea that women are capable of (let alone entitled to) making moral, political, religious, or personal choices is a historical one. if this is postfeminism, it can only be characterized as ignorant of the historical conditions for the possibility of its very existence!
From: montreal | Registered: Jul 2002
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