Feminists: Up (in) Arm(ies) [Update]

I actually took a moment (when I should have been sleeping) to read up a little more on these articles. It seems I should have directed everyone instead to the Slate article by Linda Hirshman, to which Dickerson's article is merely a response. Hirshman brings up the concept, proposed by Amy Tiemann and presumably others, that it's time for an assessment (read: struggle) of the Mother-Daughter paradigm, that the "Mothers" (read: "old" feminists, first-wave feminism) are too busy calling the shots and holding the purse strings. That it's time we second-wavers -- if that's what we are -- need to start standing up for ourselves.

I don't know about my co-feminists who might read this (anyone?) but I don't know that I feel all that alienated by first-wave feminism. Any Women's Libbers I ever worked with through the Society for Women at WJU and through other networks professional, social and non-profit have been open to all suggestions and conversations about the status and progress of women and their rights in this day and age. I don't think any first-wave feminists are afraid of letting us in or having us prep for taking the helm of these organizations. That was never the point of feminism; it isn't to establish some kind of tacit Cabinet-for-Life network. I think we second-wave feminists and those of us who think like feminists but are afraid to call ourselves the F-word have shot ourselves in the foot with our hemming and hawing about what exactly the word "feminist" means, and whether we can apply it to ourselves without scaring off the status quo.

There seems to be a lot of backpedaling to me. Women with whom I've taken classes or know socially or who I've worked with, whom I regard as some of the most well-educated, confident, brilliant and talented people I know, are afraid to use the word. Of course, no one says "I'm afraid to call myself a feminist". But I've been in the presence of at least one woman who declared, in the presence of others including men, that feminism was just over and it was time to move on, that women should just "get over it". Get over it?

Sorry, but is humanism over? Is philanthropism over? Just because it's an "-ism" doesn't mean it has an expiration date. I was both saddened and frustrated to hear my friend say this, simply because it seems to be such a frightened and shallow answer to the question posed by the very nature of being female. Much as I'm sure some people would like to unsex themselves in the academic and professional sectors in order to ensure fair treatment, it just won't happen any time soon. It's gotten better, I absolutely concur. And I'll be the first to say that my colleagues -- of my age -- in academia are some of the best at working on leveling the playing field. But you only need watch "Flip That House", for example, to see sexism and double-standards alive and well in the US. There was an episode in which the house appraiser came to look at a house being worked on by three men who were doing a "flip" for the first time. The ringleader, aware that he was being filmed, continually addressed the no-nonsense appraiser (who was, of course, petite, blonde and had a southern accent) as "Sweetie" or "Hon". Later, when she no-nonsensically handed him the bad news that his house flip was a bust, the "Sweetie" approach vanished. He seemed almost hurt and betrayed by the failure of the appraiser to respond in a "feminine" manner to him as he was by the failure of his flip. Like, seriously? He thought that was an appropriate way to address a professional on national television?

So I'm not sure where this call to arms against the previous generation of feminist came from. I don't think it's appropriate, particularly when the only place you can argue equality for women exists is in the West, in the US and Canada and in Europe, and in Australia. Even then, I'm not sure we aren't just dealing with new iterations of sexism. There are much bigger problems out there to deal with; it's not the time for us to be taking the offensive against our mothers.


(I'll read the rest of the article later. This is going to be one loooooong set of posts.)