Strike me dead: the New York Times runs a decent piece on feminism and the election
In Postfeminism and Other Fairy Tales, Kate Zernike looks at the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Eliot Spitzer sleazemelt, and asks “where does society stand on gender matters?”
PERHAPS it was the “Iron my shirt!” hecklers. Or maybe it was Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the object of those hecklers, having to defend her likability. Or the resonance of her proxy, Amy Poehler, being shut out in the “Saturday Night Live” spoofs of the Democratic debates. Or last week, the spectacle of yet another male politician admitting he had betrayed his wife, while she stood clubbed beside him — and male commentators talked about his patronizing of prostitutes as a “victimless crime.”
It’s not quite an “angry woman” moment, or more pointedly, an “angry white woman” moment, to borrow a label that has attached derogatorily or proudly to white men, black men and black women at various times. But the politics of the last few months have certainly opened a spigot on the question of where exactly society stands on gender matters. Weren’t we in what some people have long called a postfeminist era, when we thought the big battles were over, or at least that the combatants had reached some accommodation? And wasn’t the younger generation less hung up on the stereotypes and issues of the sort Mrs. Clinton taps into among older women?
Not so fast. No matter how historic the prospect of electing a woman or black man as president this year, if the rising volume of chatter in the news and entertainment media is any measure, women are doing a little re-tallying.
Ah yes, that younger generation. The twenty-somethings who are convinced that sexism is irrelevant because they haven’t hit the the double standard or the glass ceiling yet. It reminds me of an editorial in the Boston Globe earlier this year by a 25-year-old woman who acknowledged the debt to earlier feminists, but concluded that women her age feel confident in their “abilities” and know that it’s safe to turn their attention to other problems. But maybe there’s hope:
Younger women, for their part, are starting to have what Ms. Goldberg calls “the aha moment” — even if it doesn’t put them in Mrs. Clinton’s column, as some of the welter of commentary last week found.
“Like lots of other twentysomething women, I’ve been an unswerving Obama girl from the get-go,” wrote Noreen Malone on The XX Factor, the Slate magazine blog written by women. “Oddly enough it’s taken Spitzergate — not Hillary’s tears, not her scolding — to make me less dismissive of the feminist ‘obligation’ to vote for a woman.”
I’m going to skip right over the fact that “tears” and “scolding” are part of the sexist narrative against Hillary, and if you’ve bought into it you might want to do a little re-calibrating on our post-feminist progress. Right, I’m going to skip over that. Not mention it at all. What I’m going to focus on is this next thing:
It reminded her of a depressing bit of wisdom passed on by a friend’s father: “The most powerful people in the world are old white men and pretty young women.”
There’s some truth in what the old dude speaketh, though he should have clarified that the young women’s “power” is a fleeting illusion based purely on their appeal to genuinely powerful men, and it expires the instant they pass their sell-by date. But when this same wisdom is delivered by old crones (feminists over 40 or so), our daughters complain that we’re scolds or dinosaurs or simply jealous of how young and pretty they are.
Which, again, is one of those little indicators that the Land of Postfeminism is still a long ways away.
5 Responses to “Strike me dead: the New York Times runs a decent piece on feminism and the election”
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julia says:
“The most powerful people in the world…..are pretty young women.”
They might disagree when they’re subject to male violence.
March 16th, 2008 at 4:26 pm EST -
Megan says:
“The most powerful people in the world…..are pretty young women.”
This as true as saying that a pretty female prisoner in a jail, pow camp or concentration camp is powerful because she can, if she chooses, make herself the property of the most powerful guard and thereby earn herself more privileges than the other prisoners. This might make her the most powerful of the sub-human class of prisoners, but certainly not the most powerful “in the world”. Furthermore, she is still a prisoner, her power is limited to what the keepers of the patriarchy prison will allow and she must pay for her power with her compliance to a system that says she is sub-human.
Feh.
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godammitkitty says:
Dear Ghost of Violet:
So glad I found your blog! I’m a 34 y/o Canadian feminist who has been very disheartened by the hateful stuff on the “Big” American blogs lately. Yours is like oxygen, and I thank you for it.
I’m rooting for you and my American sisters. Best wishes to you,
GDK -
pocochina says:
Why do they do all these articles about young feminists without consulting me, dammit?! I am 23. I am a graduate student. I am a feminist. I support HRC. MAN BITES DOG. Column, please!
(I found you via H1K and have been lurking for a while.)
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Violet says:
Welcome pocochina! And welcome goddamnitkitty!
