(found by my wife)*
* Please note that neither I nor my wife endorse the article itself - it's a bit over the top
26 January 2009
This is what a feminist looks like!
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(found by my wife)*
* Please note that neither I nor my wife endorse the article itself - it's a bit over the top
Posted
by
truist
at
16:29
Everything makes a little more sense when it's anchored.
4 comments:
ok, proving that i don't know what's good for me or anyone, i'll take the bait and post a quasi-political diatribe. in the spirit of modern journalistic cowardice, i will attempt to make many strong statements without specifically endorsing any identifiable views. i promise to follow up in short order with a link about goats, weird babies, or british people.
feminism aside, i think she's right about left-leaning pundits reading too much into what the obama victory implies for a leftist agenda in politics. the average voter isn't more liberal today than she was four years ago. we have a collective acknowledgment that recent behavior wasn't working (this sentiment shared by more than a few mccain voters). i cynically thought that even this kind of superficial insight was impossible, but i was wrong. i think.
i suspect that obama will understand that he can't change culturally entrenched ideas with political maneuvers and will attempt to govern accordingly. at least moreso than bush ever did, who's "compassionate conservatism" only served to put the "ass" in "compassion". if obama can continue to do things that manage to annoy liz jones and everybody else without further deepening ideological divisions, he's probably accomplishing the best sort of pragmatic governance that we can hope for.
on the specific subject, or lack thereof, of the linked article -- the author's siege mentality seems common in activist circles. i heard almost exactly the same rhetoric about 6 years ago by a deeply committed abortion clinic defender at the one-and-only ACLU meeting I ever attended, in Cleveland. the idea that the battle is forever near lost keeps the true believers running. on reflection, i believe my subconscious response to that experience went like this: i disagree with her in tone and a bit in substance, but am relieved; the measure of her devotion means that i don't have to get involved because people like her never tire. So i'm none too proud of that.
ironically i wonder if you'd hear the same sentiment today around the table of a community pro-life organization's monthly chapter meeting. liberals in congress and the white house. more coming in the supreme court. they already control the media and PBS is turning our children into darwinist gay muslims. both sides also seem fond of fabricated damage projections like "it will take 150 years to undo the damage done by X's administration". give me a fucken break. we've got 300 million people with time on their hands who mostly just want to be told what to do. what damage can't we undo?
so like i was saying before i interrupted myself. there's a reductive interpretation maintained at least by me that activists cultivate this driving paranoia to offset the fact that they are vastly outnumbered by the apathetic majority. they have to care enough so that their ideas can be dissolved through the minds of tens of millions of mouth-breathing registered voters and still be potent enough to affect change. is the motion of our society an endless dialectic, careening between diametrically opposed camps waging a war of ideas that all believe lost? we are all victimized by such constructions. leftist and rightist activists both suffer daily, enormously, unfairly under the strain of their own terrors. their profound personal investment leaves them with little accommodation for slow, reasoned discourse.
like this article -- it is a panicked cry from the heart that can't find focus. it begins with a discussion of obama, and rapidly devolves into a stream of bizarre observations about the evils of post-feminism, in which terrifying signifiers are read into trends scientifically reported by her "wax therapist". i've not heard of "wax therapy", but i suspect this is how she's mentally rebranded wax hair-removal so that it doesn't contradict her own loathing of male chauvinist beauty standards. which male-pleasing beauty rituals are despicable? the ones i don't practice, of course.
how and what we decide to shave off of our bodies is at that difficult intersection of behavior and idea. what she fails to grasp is that for her, not getting a weekly brazilian is an ideological stand. for many of her therapist's other clients, getting one is just something you do, like parting your hair on the left. she wants to interpret the behaviors of others as though they were made in the framework of her own ideological constructions. unfortunately any trivial action can be an issue of enormous symbolic personal consequence, or none at all. for example, i sob hysterically every morning when i cut up the banana for my grape nuts, but euthanizing the occasional hamster goes pretty well. so much social behavior is just thoughtless imitation that we should not search for meaning in the dustpan down at the LA Wax Factory.
another major interpretive stretch:
"The new homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, is single, and regularly works 20-hour days. Susan Rice, the ambassador to the UN, is fiercely ambitious. Every one of them, crucially, is past childbearing age. The message is clear [emphasis mine]: you can have this job, but only if you behave like a man."
The message is clear?! The message is clear that self-negating hyper-ambitious freaks reach the upper echelons of political power in America and elsewhere. This is a problem with deep roots in our political process but her identification of these trends as "behaving like a man" is absurd. For example, i suspect that these women are attentive listeners and don't scratch themselves absent-mindedly in public. don't get me wrong, women of all races get the short end, in politics, church, business, and home; in american society and apparently around the world. but hating on the obama administration is misguided and counter-productive. perhaps this is residual bitterness over clinton's failed bid for nomination rather than a reasoned critique of still-gestating obama policy?
if it's not obvious, i'm rather liberal by most standards. but i'm frequently frustrated by the essential hypocrisy of the left; if we preach the virtues of tolerance and social diversity, it's often about us diversifying them, as though there were nothing of value we could hope to gain from living with the religious fundamentalists, libertarians, fascists. the invective in this article is case in point; she despises others for their most trivial choices, their "way of life", even as she despises such despising. it is confused and sad.
i wonder how we could establish a culture where we have the energy to press our ideological commitments without needing to feel ourselves constantly under attack; where people like Liz Jones can be concerned, passionate, effective, but optimistic and unterrified. i'm thinking her utopian vision of defiantly unshaved (or at least tastefully waxed) vaginas is probably not attainable in the near term. it's about changing our world view, our reading of others' behavior; but not necessarily about changing those basic behaviors, or political process, or media messages, or technology, though those may be tools to that end. what can we do?
excellent post.
My new favorite phrase (that I think I made up to myself although it prolly exists elsewhere) is "tolerate intolerance".
excellent post.
My new favorite phrase (that I think I made up to myself although it prolly exists elsewhere) is "tolerate intolerance".
excellent post.
My new favorite phrase (that I think I made up to myself although it prolly exists elsewhere) is "tolerate intolerance".
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