Future of Feminism: The Complete Works

I got a little behind last week chronicling the final few Future of Feminism posts over at the Ms. blog, so I thought I would list them all, in order, here. All posts, unless otherwise noted, were written by me. I also owe a great debt of gratitude to my tremendous editors over at Ms., Michele Kort and Jessica Stites, as well as the amazing fact-checkers, interns Catherine Scott and Kristen Schuetz!

Here's the 2012 Future of Feminism Complete Works:

March 1: Welcome to the Future of Feminism!

March 2: Flipping the Gender Script

March 3: Ending Rape as a Tool of War

March 4: Building Bridges to World Peace

March 5: The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword

March 6: Not Your Ordinary Mother's Blog by Avital Norman Nathman

March 7: Music to Our Ears by Avital Norman Nathman

March 8: 50 Global Solutions for Women and Girls by Amanda Montei

March 9: No More Media Sexualization of Women

March 10: Let's Talk About Sex

March 11: The Power of Local Journalism

March 12: Rachel Maddow and Melissa Harris-Perry

March 13: Beating the Gender Gap in Tech

March 14: It's Easy Being Green

March 15: Sex Workers Deserve Dignity and Care

March 16: One World, Many Gendered Voices

March 17: Girding Girls to Win Debates

March 18: Freedom from Body Shaming Regardless of Size

March 19: Encouraging Girls and Women in Sports

March 20: Transfeminism and Its Conundrums

March 21: Young, Queer and Sociologically Informed by Jessica Holden Sherwood

March 22: VAWA Goes Viral

March 23: The Hashtag is Mightier Than the Sword by Catherine Scott

March 24: Anti-Bully Pulpits

March 25: Shaping Feminist Spirituality

March 26: Hip Hop Critiques Gender

March 27: Telling Our Stories Out Loud

March 28: Sex Education as a Human Right by Kristen Schuetz

March 29: Girls and Women, Don't Be Camera-Shy!

March 30: Say No to Human Trafficking

March 31: Future of Feminism: Is Now!

Welcome to the Future of Feminism

I'm excited to announce that today marks the first day of my month-long series, "The Future of Feminism," over that the Ms. blog. I decided that this women's history month, I wanted to try something a little different:

I’m all for women’s history: I teach it in my women’s studies class, and I love learning about women politicians, scientists, artists and writers whose life stories were buried under a narrow-minded, patriarchal historical canon. I believe it is unequivocally important for women and men to understand that the conventional historical narrative often comes to us constricted and dulled, with many great women and people of color lost in the shadows. I hammer home in my students the importance of early feminist movements and ideas, how contemporary feminism rests on the shoulders of women who came before. But sometimes … sometimes I want to look forward to the future of feminism–not where we were, but how far we have left to go.

Come join me!

The Personal and The Political: Feminism on The Good Wife

The online forum In Media Res holds weekly themed discussions between academics, independent scholars and other interested parties on a wide range of topics dealing with popular culture, film, television, and the media. This week, IMR's topic is CBS's television show The Good Wife and yours truly contributed a post about feminism and gender politics on the show ("Between the Political and the Personal: The Lawyer, Her Boss and Their Investigator"), which I conclude with the following questions:

From the beginning of the show, Alicia’s role as Peter Florrick’s wife has been a salable and essential part of her identity as a lawyer, whether she liked it or not. If Alicia is no longer the “good wife,” does that preclude her ability to be a good lawyer? At what point does the political become personal? And, on a deeper level, does the recent scheming and disquietude between Alicia, Kalinda and Diane necessarily evince a “bad” gender politics on the part of the show or can we chalk it all up to episodic television’s compulsive need to disrupt and/or destabilize relationships regardless of gender?

You can read my entire post, as well as access the excellent and insightful posts by other contributors, here.

And here's the Youtube video I made to accompany my post:

Miss Representation

I hope I get to see this documentary soon:

Newest Miss Representation Trailer (2011 Sundance Film Festival Official Selection) from Miss Representation on Vimeo.

On generational tensions and the third wave

I know this blog is called "Fourth Wave Feminism" and, as such, I should probably be claiming some sort of transition away from third wave ideologies and into a hypothetical fourth wave. The problem, of course, is that even after writing this blog for three years, I'm still not quite sure what the fourth wave might look like. That said, I do have some ideas, most of them revolving around a reapplication of feminism for the future while not denying or forgetting its past, which leads me to my reason for posting today...

Yesterday, my good friend L. sent me an article from The Huffington Post. She was curious about my opinion, she said, and, after I'd read the article and devoted an unnecessary amount of Facebook wall space to typing out a response, I decided I might as well turn my response into a blog post, as it so typified the kind of debate that I often see in generational disputes over feminism's relevance, efficacy and enactment.

The article in question is written by filmmaker Dawn Porter, with whose work, I'll be honest, I am not terribly familiar. For the purposes of the case she's making and my reaction, however, knowing her work isn't essential. My response is to her article, not her work (although now I'm curious and will make an effort to track some of it down). Porter's article is intriguingly entitled "Women Like Me are not Like Women Like You, Does That Have to Make us Enemies?" and in it she discusses the negative response she received from an unnamed, presumably older, feminist journalist regarding her latest film Dawn Gets Naked in which, you guessed it, the filmmaker gets naked. According to Porter, her film chronicles women's body image issues in today's society, specifically "challeng[ing] the media's idea of perfection and the pressure that it puts on women."

Porter expresses frustration that her unnamed critic "drew the conclusion that [Porter] presumed that feminism is just about getting your tits out" and "didn't like it one bit." She goes on to argue that feminism can mean a lot of things to different women and, essentially, that's it nobody's business if she chooses to trim her pubic hair, wear stiletto heels, and still call herself a feminist.

I wholeheartedly agree. She points to some of the same problems in the ongoing clash/debate/tension between feminist generations. Obviously, you can't expect a movement or an ideology not to shift as time passes, and for people not to enact its principles differently. (For further reading, Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards' book Manifesta addresses these generational dynamics really well.)

But...

I do take serious issue with one thing Porter says (although its worth noting that maybe she doesn't mean it the way it sounds or she wasn't really thinking what it could mean when she wrote it). Towards the end, she writes, "But I do think that as feminism is having a golden moment and there is a chance it might really go somewhere this time, women who want to attack others should pick their arguments more carefully." The latter part is all fine and good. Nudity in a documentary that purports an interest in building self-esteem and interrogating media representations of body image does seem like a rather silly thing to get worked up over vis-a-vis feminism.

So here's me picking my argument carefully: it sounds an awful lot like Porter's saying that feminism hasn't gone anywhere in the past, or anywhere worthwhile, which is a really reductive and naive thing to say (and is precisely what some older/second wave feminists find so disconcerting about the third wave: the elision of history). To suggest that all the advances that women made in the 1960s and 1970s were not worth anything, that feminism didn't go anywhere, is pretty insulting. Perhaps what she means to say is that feminism isn't over, that there are still things left to be done, which would make a lot more sense and, in my opinion, is very true. If that's what she meant to say, it doesn't come across. How about choosing your words carefully?

If Porter does indeed mean to say that feminism hasn't done anything worthwhile yet or ever, I'm not even sure how to respond to that, considering her ability to even make a documentary in which she and other women ride around London in a double-decker bus nude has a lot to do with previous generations of feminists and what they've done for gender equality.

I hope she misspoke, I really do. Although I was deeply disturbed to look in the comments and see that Porter seemingly agreed with one commenter who wrote, "You have equal rights. Now get over yourselves­. Feminism is really now just about narcissism­: debating the finer points of Brazilian waxing, SlutWalk exhibition­ism for Facebook photos, or academic navel-gazi­ng about one's unused ovaries" (unsurprisingly, this commenter's moniker is "Men's Rights Videos"). Yes, women have more rights now than they ever have, especially in so-called first world countries. But, do we have equal rights? No, not by a long shot.

Should women be able to wax their pubic hair, wear high heels, take joy in their nudity and bodies, be super feminine and still call themselves feminists?

Absolutely.

Should older feminists accept that the younger generation might do things a little differently than they did but that doesn't make them any less feminist?

Again, absolutely.

But does that mean that third wavers or fourth wavers or whatever feminists want to call themselves these days should forget that there were women who came before them who had to fight and yell and break all the rules in order to help build the relative equality (in some areas, but still not all) we enjoy today?

No. No. No. Absolutely not.

Daniel Craig in Drag for International Women's Day

I'm a bit late on this, but here's Daniel Craig and Dame Judi Dench (v.o.) in their International Women's Day PSA.

"We're equal, aren't we Mr. Bond?"



(h/t Female Impersonator)

Classic Feminist Writings

I just found this amazing internet resource, funded and provided by the Chicago Women's Liberation Union (CWLU). It's a collection of classic feminist essays and manifestos, available online and for free, including Barbara Ehrenreich's "What is Socialist Feminism," Jo Freeman's "The BITCH Manifesto," Judy Syfer's "Why I Want a Wife," Pat Mainardi's "The Politics of Housework," Kate Millet's "Sexual Politics" (the essay that led to the book) and many more!

Happy reading.

(Also, I'm planning a series of posts syncing up with my women's studies class--something I started last spring, but on which I never followed through. I'll be starting it in the next two weeks or so!)

A Feminist Countdown to 2011 ~ Day Fifteen

See the full calendar here.

A Feminist Countdown to 2011 ~ Day Five

See the full calendar here.

Coming Soon...

Just a note to say that new and exciting content is coming soon! I have a review coming out this week over at the Ms. Blog of Darren Aronofsky's balletic thriller Black Swan (starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassel).

And, on Wednesday, I'll reveal my (epic!) Feminist Advent Calendar. Stay tuned!

Remembering Dorothy Height

A guest-post by my father, Fred Viebahn.

When Dorothy Height, the grand old lady of the American civil rights movement, died yesterday at the age of 98, it reminded me of a festive dinner nearly thirteen years ago where I was her table partner and saved her from going up in flames -- literally! (Or maybe I just saved a good part of Washington high society from having to take a collective cold sprinkler shower, fully dressed in their finest...)

It was on the occasion of the Sara Lee Frontrunner Awards, $50,000 each given by the cake & food company's charitable foundation to four notable women's favorite nonprofits. Dorothy Height had received the award in its early years and was, therefore, among the honored guests; this year, in 1997, the recipients were Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Washington Post owner Katharine Graham, Brady Campaign chair Sarah Brady and my very own poet laureate, my wife Rita Dove.

Of course Dorothy was wearing one of her elegant trademark hats. During dinner and the awards ceremony at the beautiful National Museum of Women in the Arts in D.C., she was seated immediately to my right. (Rita, in the usual Washington power festivities fashion where couples are seated at different tables, sat across the room, next to Sara Lee's president.) I had an animated conversation with the then 85 year-old, very chipper Mrs. Height about Eleanore Roosevelt, whom she had advised many years ago, about Rita's and my time at Tuskegee Institute, where the two of us had spent a semester in 1982, and about Dorothy's four decades as president of the National Council of Negro Women, a position from which she had just retired that year.

Shortly after we had turned our attention to the ceremony, which had started with a women's choir, I smelled burning cloth right under my nose; when I glanced down, I discovered to my horror that the left sleeve of Dorothy Height's jacket had come in direct contact with the table candle between her and me, and a flame had already caught on to her arm.

"I'm sorry", I said, "but you're about to catch fire", and poured my glass of water on her sleeve, while everybody else at our table, hearing my pretty loudly uttered "fire", jumped up in panic. Dorothy Height, however, after realizing that my unexpectedly aggressive behavior was not meant as an affront by someone who had lost his mind, regained her composure within seconds and pressed her napkin to her wet sleeve, just in case it was still smoldering. "That should do it", she said. "Thanks for saving my hide." The fire was out, she had escaped burns, and everything went quickly back to normal.

I shot some video that night, and uploaded an excerpt to YouTube. It's a bit crude and haphazard, with the camera panning past Dorothy Height once (she seems to be looking a bit embarrassed), then lingering a second or two on the candle that was the culprit; after the incident I moved it further away from its victim.

Taylor Swift as feminist success

It seems various assorted feminists don't like Taylor Swift. At all.

I've been wondering about this ever since I read this article (which is entertaining and enlightening, the Riese's Lady Gaga obsession aside).

But I'm not so sure Swift is as anti-feminist as she seems. In fact, I think she can almost be seen as a sort of subtle triumph for feminism.

To begin with, I don't think it's fair to compare Swift to Lady Gaga et al. Swift's target audience seems to be younger teenage and preteen girls. Lady Gaga is not at all suitable for young teenagers. She thrives on being outrageous; Swift on being innocent. There's simply no comparison to be made.

I'm don't think we can compare her with more truly feminist artists either. Take someone like Ani Difranco - her music is has at least an order of magnitude more depth and complexity than Taylor Swift's. The target audience is just not the same. Swift's music is meant for easy listening on the radio, not for inspiring contemplation on the nature of women in society.

So I'd like to compare Swift to another artist who has that 'innocent' vibe: 78violet, better known as Aly and Aj. Aly and Aj started out as a relatively Disneyfied pop act, minus most of the songwriting stereotypes that plague the likes of Swift. They matured with their second album, which which certainly not overtly feminist does have a few gems:

Were you right? Was I wrong?
Were you weak? Was I strong?
Yeah...
--Chemicals React, Aly & Aj (Insomniatic)

Which (unintentionally, perhaps) turns an old stereotype of stupid men and weak women nicely on its head. This is 'post-feminist' music, if you will - Aly and Aj feel free to say whatever they feel, without worrying about stereotypes, or trying to break them. This is not to say we're in a post-feminist world - far from it. But the casual presence of such ideas proves that feminism has truly accomplished something.

And that's what Swift could be like. She could be innocent, non-subversive, and simplistic, while assuming the existence of an egalitarian world. She doesn't. Her music still relies on princes on white horses sweeping princesses away.

But even in her stereotypical world there are flashes of something else. Take 'Love Story', the huge hit. The motif throughout is, "baby just say, 'yes'" - the standard pre-engagement plea. If you listen carefully, though, the line is actually sung by the girl in every case but the very last time it occurs! And I, at least, didn't even notice the point-of-view swap until I read the lyrics online. The song is still cheesy and stereotypical, but the girl is essentially proposing to the guy - hardly the standard Western tradition.

So Taylor Swift really does owe a great deal to feminism in her music; even more so in her real-life career. And that's probably more important than anything else: the young girls who listen are more likely to want to be like Taylor Swift herself than like the characters in her songs.

The point to all this is simple: An important aspect of feminism is defending the right of women to be non-feminist (not anti-feminist perhaps, but certainly non-feminist). If Taylor Swift isn't a paragon of feminist thought, she does unintentionally embody certain aspects of it; we could do much, much worse in choice of entertainment (the Pussycat Dolls, anybody?).

So what do you think - is unintentional feminism a sign of success?

It may be impossible not to love Ellen Page

I've loved Ellen Page since Juno (and, then, even more after Whip It), and she just keeps getting awesomer and awesomer. An excerpt from her recent interview in The Guardian:

How did you feel about the controversy aroused by your role in Juno?

I was like, you know what? You all need to calm down. People are so black and white about this. Because she kept the baby everybody said the film was against abortion. But if she'd had an abortion everybody would have been like, "Oh my God". I am a feminist and I am totally pro-choice, but what's funny is when you say that people assume that you are pro-abortion. I don't love abortion but I want women to be able to choose and I don't want white dudes in an office being able to make laws on things like this. I mean what are we going to do – go back to clothes hangers?

What do you think of the way women are treated in the movie business?

I think it's a total drag. I've been lucky to get interesting parts but there are still not that many out there for women. And everybody is so critical of women. If there's a movie starring a man that tanks, then I don't see an article about the fact that the movie starred a man and that must be why it bombed. Then a film comes out where a woman is in the lead, or a movie comes out where a bunch of girls are roller derbying, and it doesn't make much money and you see articles about how women can't carry a film.

Love. Her.

H/T AfterEllen and Feministing

Of Super Bowl Ads and Women

Ever since Focus on the Family announced their pro-life Super Bowl ad, there's been arguments and discussions all over. Should it be allowed by the network? Are feminists taking the wrong approach to criticizing it? (thanks, Sarah Palin!) And so on. One of the more interesting pieces was in the Washington Post - it basically suggests that feminists be, well, warmer and fuzzier and more appealing.

Echildne wrote a good (if very angry) bit about treating the pro-choice movement as if it was some sort of for-profit corporation, and loosing sight of well, a woman's right to choose.

I'm going to suggest a slightly different take; the problem is all in the framing.


Isn't it ironic that this is all about a Super Bowl ad? Think about it: the Super Bowl is, well, football. The game that consists of large, muscular men crashing into each other. The Super Bowl is perhaps the archetypal symbol of hyper-masculinity. And that's the context in which we're discussing women's rights.

This is a problem.

Now, I don't have and thing against men - or women - playing football. At the end of the day it's just another sport. But the sport has a long history of sheer hatred toward women, from the beer ads all the way down to the attitudes of the players and coaches (remember all those instances of college coaches hiring strippers with public money). That the Super Bowl is far and away the most watched sporting event - no, televised event period - in the United States says something very significant about our culture (for the record - the most watched event worldwide is the World Cup - that's no better. But I digress).

And here we are, arguing about an anti-abortion commercial which will be played during an overwhelmingly masculine, patriarchal event. So I'd like to suggest this: The commercial doesn't matter. While Kissling and Michelman suggestion for a counter-commercial is certainly apt, and would no doubt have a positive effect - so long as women's issues have to hitch a ride on bigger, more expensive, and more (in the public's mind) important, essentially masculine events, there something very, very wrong with the picture.

That's what we need to fix. As long as we look at this as some sort of big commercialized game (Oh dear - support for abortion rights is down slightly, but hey! Support for gay marriage is up! High fives all around!) we're simply doing it wrong. We need to be about cultural change and ideology, not politics, ads, and entertainment money.

(Crossposted @ Constant Thoughts)

Feminism as Realism

Recently, I saw the movie Fucking Amal (aka Show Me Love in the US). It was an enjoyable film, as a whole. It even includes an overt feminist moment: one of the main characters breaks up with her boyfriend - permanently - after he fails to disagree with his friend's hatred of women! But the most interesting feature of the movie was its realism. There's no trite plot, and the characters are remarkably flawed. Not in the theatrical, 'tragic hero' way, mind you - they just do things which are wrong. No more, no less. Early in the film, the main character (who we are supposed to sympathize with) says some insensitive and horrible things to a wheelchair-bound friend. Later she apologizes, but it's too late. There's no Hollywood reconcile-for-free card. She simply did something wrong, learned (or not) and moved on.

It was all rather interesting, and considering the feminist overtones, I found the movie to be a metaphor for modern feminism.

Now, the debate over what feminism is, what feminists believe, and what feminists do wrong has been raging for as long as the movement itself. Perhaps the oldest argument is about race - and as so many feminists were white privileged women, mistakes were made. Serious, important mistakes, in fact. And it continues to the present. In the world of online feminism, it sometimes threatens to overwhelm everything else. (As an example: the recent discussion, and lack thereof, about the rights of trans individuals sparked by the New Orleans Women's Health Clinic issue). It seems that whatever the merits of each individual discussion - which are many - they keep repeating themselves forever. So now, there no consensus, no agreement, and lots and lots of anger. People get alienated. It's difficult for non-feminists to see what it's all even about, so they are reluctant to join and thus do nothing.

So, I want to suggest a new, or rather and additional, definition for feminism: Feminism is realism.

Whatever the faults of this continuous debate, I think there is an explanation. Feminism, at some level, is about trying to find out what the world is really like, what really goes on. It is called 'feminism' only because what really is, is the patriarchy. And when we find out what the world is really like in more detail, we try and challenge it, try to change it. That's what makes it different from most other movements - so many *isms (think of Populism or Marxism or Religious Rightism and so on) start with an agenda, an ideal world, a goal. They try and work toward that goal at all costs. When the world changes, they either die out, or change their goals - and keep pushing, often at the cost of destroying so many other worthwhile goals, and certainly without really considering their actions.

Feminism, then, is far more based on reality, setting goals and agenda solely based on actual, observed inequalities. Hence the near-obsession with point even the littlest things out, from an obvious bias in a politician's speech, to a little detail in a car commercial. And also (for good or ill) the debate of defining feminism. Not because there's a question of what to do, but more a question of what the world is really like. Mistakes are made, to be sure. Real life is just like that.

And perhaps when we're done, even if it's not called feminism anymore, the concept will still remain: Finding out what is, realizing what is wrong with it, and challenging those wrongs.

Just a thought.

Feminist Television Characters (with clips!)

Jezebel just published a list of 20 feminist television characters and, although their list is great, they also lament that 1) most of the characters aren't that recent and 2) they're almost all white. While the latter is pretty much true of television in general--with a few exceptions--I thought I could still find a few more women from the 1990s and the 2000s to add to the list...especially a few more women of color.

Here are five more feminist television characters--three of whom are of color--just off the top of my head (and in order of appearance). Tell me more in the comments (Buffy and Xena are already givens)!


1. Clair Huxtable (Phylicia Rashad), The Cosby Show (1984-1992)



2. Winifred 'Freddie' Brooks (Cree Summer), A Different World (1987-1993)


(Freddie comes in around 3:30 or so, but the whole clip's interesting -- this episode dealt with domestic violence. A Different World might be one of my favorite sitcoms of all time.)

3. B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson), Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001)

I couldn't find a good, representative clip of her awesomeness (although, admittedly, they tamed her down a good bit over Voyager's seven seasons), but you should watch this fun little tribute video for the women of Voyager (Torres, Captain Janeway, and Seven) set to Salt-N-Pepa's "Ain't Nuthin' But A She Thing." It's priceless!

4. C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney), The West Wing (1999-2006)


Probably not the most representative clip, but I sadly, don't have all day to troll around Youtube! ;-) However, speaking of Janney, Melissa Silverstein of Women and Hollywood just posted a great interview with her the other day.

5. Sarah Connor (Lena Headey), Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008-2009)


Again, a compilation (made by folks who want to save the recently-canceled show). Still, so true...

That's all for now, folks! Seriously, though, add to Jezebel's list...and to mine.

Update: Check out the excellent additions (also with clips) by Melissa over at Women and Hollywood.

Feminist by any other name...

This is my first post here on Fourth Wave and I am excited and energized to be a part of such a wonderfully brilliant team of feminists. Feminists...or are they? The term makes me think of an interesting conversation I had about the aversion to that term.

I was recently in a classroom, surrounded on all sides of a conference table with bright Women’s Studies students. We kicked off a conversation about bell hooks' essay “Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression” by trying to define our feminisms (Check out the article here). hooks’ article speaks about the fraught relationship to the term “feminist” many women, particularly historically-oppressed groups of women, experience. She explains “that many women are reluctant to advocate feminism because they are uncertain about the term. Other women from exploited and oppressed ethnic groups dismiss the term because they do not wish to be perceived as supporting a racist movement; feminism is often equated with a white women’s movement”. Hooks goes on to speak about the many understandings and perceptions of feminist that serve as means to distance women from the term, negating the power of claiming an identity that embraces women’s equality. hooks instead offers the idea of “one who advocates feminism” working to sidestep the problem of naming and defining for a broader need to push forward women’s rights.

When I first read the essay I was sort of shocked by the move to distance one's self from the term feminist. I happen to like the backlash that I get when I casually drop the f-bomb on someone in conversation. But it was sitting with these women from different backgrounds that I realized the trouble—or potential trouble—that the term could present to women who feel that their “feminism” is not presented or accurate in the term’s public image. I think most feminists--or at least little ol’ Midwestern feminists like myself and my peers--have experienced this sort of feminist misunderstanding. It’s what I refer to as the feminist swear, or the act of using “feminist” as a means of dismissing, negating, and undermining someone’s political agenda. It unfortunately has done severe damage to the feminist movement as women gradually step away from other women’s rights advocates for fear of be called man-hating, ball-cutting, lesbians. From this has emerged an awe-inspiring number of feminist qualifiers to better define one's feminist image: eco-feminist, liberal feminist, black feminist, radical feminist. Instead of limiting the definition of feminist, these terms, as hooks suggests, have served as a way of making a clear definition much more complex. I tend to believe that it is the basic misconception of feminism that poses trouble. Feminist is not some unilateral term that can be broadly swept over the population to describe everyone. Feminism is a term of multiplicity! Feminisms! I believe that is the means of using constructionist ideology to try and define something that has an intimate relationship to each person who chooses to employ it in conversation. So the question remains, how do we cope with the multiplicity of feminisms while continuing to push forward social change?

So, dear reader, what do you think? Do you think shifting to “one that advocates feminism" is a friendlier way of incorporating different feminist views? How do you define feminist? Do you use a feminist prefix like liberal or eco? If so, what does it do for you?

Advocacy & the Western Woman

Funny how entering an international studies program precipitated my growing aversion to theorizing about people on the other side of the world. Life could be easier if my timing was better and my ethics just a little quicker on the uptake. Not so long ago I was two weeks into law school and having epiphanies about the pointlessness of competition and confrontational debate – both like kryptonite to me yet at the time were(and sometimes still are) perversely my go-to mannerisms. Now a year in an international studies program has left me reluctant to even gossip about my neighbor.

Should I really be so upset though, about not wanting to make snappy cultural judgements? Well, no. But it is crucial that a radical feminist be able to competently assess cultures and institutions for their gendered aspects. And don't we have a concomitant obligation to name and fight injustice wherever it operates? Feminists ought to be adept at identifying commonalities and therefore possibilities for empowerment whenever women are in need. And despite all the First-World meddling and agenda setting, I still believe in an international feminist movement that can transform women's and men's lives.

My role and agenda as an international feminist partly hinges on the resolution of this issue. No one has to come down on one "side" of the debate "between" multiculturalism and universal human rights. Toleration is not 'against' principled judgment - but if you're one of the hegemons, I believe more and more that it would be wise to back away slowly from judging anything more than 4-H competitions. And if an unawareness of privilege blinds you to the fact that the breathtaking view is made possible by the folks you're standing on, then for christ's sake watch your step. I do bitch a lot about injustice and inequity – but as a white, upper middle-class American do I truly have that much to gripe about? Sure I do – but I try to remind myself that bellyaching over "the Canon" does not compare with the way real hunger gnaws at the stomach (Haitians describe this as "Clorox" hunger, because the sensation of starvation feels as if bleach were eating their stomachs – a sharp, acidy feeling ). It is perfectly fine for me to be resentful about having to time a baby and a dissertation, but this means squat beside women who've had radically different reproductive "options" as victims of genocidal wartime rapes.

We must be able to rank and prioritize injustices if we are serious about stopping them. Wrongs and discriminations are concrete events that happen every day, and some of them are lethal. I may be resentful of many inequities I see in my reference group, but I am not hungry, carrying an unwanted child, prevented from driving, legally excluded from politics or suffering from poorly executed rituals involving my vagina. I would love to blame my family for picking out my really bad first husband (though the honor is indeed all mine) and my education hasn't been hindered by much except my hand getting too tired to sign another IOU. No one, for one of the first times in recorded history, has really prevented me from attaining general fulfillment (or at least as much fulfillment as most men) When I take myself seriously, it must be in a global context and I'm doing o.k.

God knows I'm an unfairness hawk, so these days I find myself in a perplexing situation when I can't find the right words to point out glaring injustices. Hey, I might be an American but I read – and the bottom line is that I have had the leisure time and emotional space not only to notice the suffering of others, but to amass the material resources that can relieve it. Much of the time I'm furious about how we're taught – through our cultural and political discourse – to think about other cultures. When we talk about how any minority group "treats its women," we tacitly reinforce the idea that men comprise the core of any identity, and that women are the passive agents of culture. How did we end up in a situation where human rights are dismissed as unique Western constructs? When I'm not mad about linguistically reinforcing patriarchy, I'm pissed at the absurd idea that "those women over there" must not share with us some basic desires or precepts of humanity – to live free from emotional and physical violence, to protect their children, to have a say in the laws that regulate their lives and families. Only women in the West want these things? This is a deeply awful idea – and one we should get away from right now.

I'm concentrating these days on tempering outrage with humility – and mostly failing – but I'm trying to strike a balance between being empathetic and so goddamn overpowering. Knowing my culture's colonial legacy cannot preclude me from honestly trying to do better. If we – relatively privileged Western women – aren't willing to be honest about our own roles in American cultural and economic imperialism, then what legitimacy do we have? Sleeping with the enemy, though we do it still, is never the way to resist. But as long as we benefit from economic policies that impoverish other women, as long as we hire them cheaply to raise our children and clean our homes, as long as we don't exercise what autonomy we've wrested from the patriarchy, we really can't claim to have an ethic to our names. I so want to believe like Virginia Woolf that as a woman I have no country - but the truth is that I represent many things I never wanted to be or do. I'm still not sure what to say about that.