More Wonkette Syndrome
And speaking of Wonkers, Ian B sent me a lovely little piece from the Wall Street Journal the other day, that’s more of the same kind of bowl of warm spit. Written by one Charlotte Hays – which sounds like a woman’s name to me. Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend. Does Charlotte Hays think she’d be writing for the WSJ without feminism? Hmm?
Perhaps the nicest thing about attending the National Organization for Women’s 40th birthday event last weekend was that I didn’t have to pack a lot of fancy party clothes – the dress code was strictly old feminist. The mindset was of the same vintage. Though there was a “summit” for young feminists on Friday before the conference got under way in earnest (and I do mean earnest), most of the 700 women in attendance were no spring chickens. They were joined at the Crowne Plaza by a handful of hen-pecked, middle-age men, always touchingly eager to demonstrate their ardent sympathy.
There’s lots more of the same kind of thing. Old, boring, old, boring, old, not hip, old, not as hip as I am, old, we’ve heard that before, yes that Equal Rights Amendment, yawn, 1982, yawn, old, I chose to get a bite to eat at Quizno’s instead. Stupid stuff. And the Wonkette shall inherit the earth.
“…the dress code was strictly old feminist.”
Cackle! Guffaw! Fall about laughing!
How liberated they all are! Free…to choose identical garb!
May I point out that you are extrapolating your apparently hilariously self-amusing point from an unsubstantiated and clearly hostile piece of trash journalism? Get a life. More importantly, get a mind.
“hen-pecked, middle-age men, always touchingly eager to demonstrate their ardent sympathy.” Now that really is SHIT writing.
Nick-
Yeah, not only is it shit writing, but it reads like it’s from the 1960’s (the way my father-in-law’s generation would have thought of feminist men.)
“the way my father-in-law’s generation would have thought of feminist men”
Same with the Wonkette piece – yet she’s considered a clever writer. But she actually used the dead as a dodo phrase ‘bra-burner’. How stale is that!
The use of worn-out phrases is one thing, but they are also careful to insinuate that feminism is for lesbians. So one is left to think feminism is for either old bra-burners or dykes (as opposed to the lesbians in movies that men can relate to, you know!)
It’s sad, because discounting NOW or Katha’s advocacy for women’s equality as “old” or “just for lezzies” hurts every women. EVERY young woman – liberal and conservatice – is just as likely as the next to earn 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. But that’s just here in the states. When the same prejudice against women is applied in other countries, women and girls are not left less prosperous, they are left illiterate, mutilated, and bagged.
Well, it’s probably true that Hays wouldn’t be asked to write for the WSJ were there not a feminist movement to react to, but its existence and staying power means that her debt is of a different kind than that of a female lawyer or tenured professor today.
Such a lousy article. I somehow doubt Hays entertains feminist ideas even for “fun”, or at least to refine her own arguments.
“Does Charlotte Hays think she’d be writing for the WSJ without feminism? “
Well, I suppose that if there wasn’t any NOW she wouldn’t very well be writing about them for the WSJ or anywhere else. Still, it’s not entirely unreasonable to think that if she had something to say of interest and could present it well she’d have no problem getting published in the WSJ, feminism or no.. After all Rebecca West and Dorothy Parker were published quite often, and that was long before the days of NOW.
But then the author’s not complaining about feminism. She’s writing about NOW and NOW’s brand of feminism, and that is a very specific type of feminism.
Not entirely unreasonable, no, but it’s also not at all likely. Rebecca West and Dorothy Parker weren’t exactly typical, you know.
That’s what people forget, including or especially people like Wonkette and Hays: how non-existent women were, how invisible they were, how private and domestic and hidden they were; how very very unlikely they were to be writing anything at all for a paper like the Wall Street Journal. That’s finance, that’s Wall Street, that’s hard news and hard opinion, that’s not girl stuff. Parker and West were not typical or average or commonplace, they were highly aberrant. The vast majority of women simply did not do things like write for newspapers, therefore it simply didn’t occur to most women to do such a thing, therefore, since Hays seems to possess a very average mind, it is highly unlikely that she would have been aberrant and brazen and adventurous enough to be one of those very few women, and if she had been, it is still very unlikely that she would have written for the WSJ.
This is the point. Feminists have changed all that, radically. Not radically enough yet of course; women are still in a minority in places like the WSJ; but still radically. Yet here is Hays urinating on the very people who make her stupid article possible.
Seems to me we can criticize dhimmitude without being ungrateful to those who made it possible for us not to have to use Roman numerals all the time. Why would this be any differentt?
Dave: “May I point out that you are extrapolating your apparently hilariously self-amusing point from an unsubstantiated and clearly hostile piece of trash journalism? Get a life. More importantly, get a mind.”
I have a mind and a life and have better uses for both than making, or responding to, insults.
The article may well be hostile but the remark I referred to, none the less, has the ring of truth.
OB: “This is the point. Feminists have changed all that, radically. Not radically enough yet of course; women are still in a minority in places like the WSJ; but still radically. Yet here is Hays urinating on the very people who make her stupid article possible.”
What should she be doing? Venerating?
Perhaps she was suggesting that, in some ways, the world has moved on a bit? And some of these people haven’t?
Keith,
Because – what? There’s nothing between ‘venerating’ and the childishly banal sneering Hays offered up? Why would that be?
Indeed, she was suggesting that (in her view) in most if not all ways the world has moved on, and I’m claiming that that view depends heavily on pig-ignorance of how heavily she herself depends on what she is sneering at.
The idea that because (some) women can get as drunk as silly men or have commitment free sex like silly men, and that some women can have serious jobs in media means that old style feminism is passe, makes me weep.
When women as a whole, not just a privileged few, get treated equally as human beings, not treated differently because they are women, then maybe old style feminism will be passe. But we are nowhere near that. Not even in liberated Western countries, never mind less advanced states.
My daughters and wife remind me regularly that the the treatment I receive as a middle class professional man is nothing like the patronising treatment they receive, from men and women, based solely on their sex, not their worth as human beings. Until that changes, feminism has plenty more battles to fight.
And on the subject of making one weep, did anyone else catch the article in G2 of the Guardian today about how some middle class women have taken leave of their senses?
I think I’m going to have to give up the Guardian.
No, I didn’t see that; thanks, Jeffrey, I’ll look for it.
And ain’t it the truth. The Wonkettes and Charlotte Hayses seem to think that because their lives are pretty good, therefore all women’s lives are pretty good. There’s powerful logic for you.
OB: “And ain’t it the truth. The Wonkettes and Charlotte Hayses seem to think that because their lives are pretty good, therefore all women’s lives are pretty good. There’s powerful logic for you.”
In this discussion, logic seems to be largely missing in action.
The women most affected by repression and discrimination are typically in the poorest and most conservative societies. When I see “old style” feminists trying to do anything meaningful about that, I’ll aplaud.
This started from a comment about dress, and OB’s contradictory responses: “why women can’t just wear clothes instead of either tents or bathing suits”.
Rebecca West was an suffragette from the beginning, and she would recognize every trope in Hays article. I do think that Hays would be writing anti-feminist stuff for the WSJ without NOW, in the same way that the press, in 1900, would recruit woment to write about how unfeminine and unnatural it is to demand the vote. I looked up a 1910 book on the question of women’s suffrage on Google, and got things like this, from a Mrs. Mary K. Sedgewick: “Women have every opportunity that men have for intellectual development and public usefulness except in government and war. To counterbalance these limitations, women have at least two functions that men have not — bearing children and training them… [To which the editorial board of today’s WSJ could echo — lucky duckies!]
Beatrice Hale, in 1914, reported on the anti-suffrage women, and her description of them is, well, oh so premonitory of the conservative anti-feminism movement: “In America the anti-suffrage women… are officered by wealthy women who have leisure to give to the work, and have as good a corpos of paid and unpaid speakers as such a negative cause could readily produce. They were first organized among the conservatives of Boston, and have spread to many of the cities of the East and Middle West. They are, of course, infinitesimal when compared to the organized suffragettes, but they have an active national press agency, and obtain good space in the newpapers. There are a few professional and business women among them, but the number is negliglible, their stranght beng very properly drawn from the leisured and protected class.”
The lack of spring chickens, I think, is to be found in the anti-feminist argument. By this time, however, it exists not actually to discourage, say, women working — the middle class would collapse without women working, and the WSJ does not want to encourage men to demand the kind of money from businesses that allowed the one earner household to be at least economically viable (heavens, that would take away from the 50 million per of your average CEO in your average Fortune 500 company) — no, I think by now that kind of discourse exists solely as a form of psychological warfare, to permanently depress a certain class of people. If they can succeed in creating one woman whose work is incommensurate with her earnings, but who is too insecure to ask for a raise or a promotion, they have done their job. Bonus points for the kind of attitude that burdens, say, divorced women with the costs of child care while promoting the jolly myth that wifes take their poor husbands to the clearners in the courts.
“When I see “old style” feminists trying to do anything meaningful about that, I’ll aplaud.”
Okay, start applauding then, because that would be me for a start.
“This started from a comment about dress, and OB’s contradictory responses”
What’s your problem here? I’ve said twice – in the original Comment, and in reply to your misreading comment – that I know it’s contradictory. Why do you keep going ‘aha’ at the contradiction when the fact that it’s a contradiction was part of my point from the beginning?
Something tells me that Ms Hays might feel more at home at one of those goddess conferences instead. It sure helped that guardian reporter learn to sway her hips lushly down the street. There was also something about wearing less clothes as the inner goddess took over. Maybe we should all chip in and send Ophelia to one of those…Kali descending on a gaggle of woodland nymphs ;-)
Yeah! “I’ll give you ‘Goddess'” I would shout cruelly as I kicked all their garlands into a puddle. Oh the fun.
If any goddess needs to be revived, why can’t it be the mad, bad, kickass goddesses like Kali and Lilith? Imagine a goddess conference for that kind of powerful, dangerous women – all the terrorist alerts will go off the scale!
Fantastic image, mirax! Love it.
“Kali descending on a gaggle of woodland nymphs”
Yeah, I’m pretty chuffed to be seen as Kali swooping down on the wood nymphs, arms swirling. I wanna be baaaaad.
OB: “Okay, start applauding then, because that would be me for a start.”
Fair enough! I certainly applaud B&W.
OB: “What’s your problem here? I’ve said twice – in the original Comment, and in reply to your misreading comment – that I know it’s contradictory. Why do you keep going ‘aha’ at the contradiction when the fact that it’s a contradiction was part of my point from the beginning?”
That would be because you haven’t attempted to resolve the contradiction.
I can’t see that anyone else has attempted to, either.
Remember that I *have*, from the first, acknowledged the essential truth of that contradiction.
It’s as if, walking along, we arrive at a crossroads and you announce: “We have to go right or left here!”
As far as I can see, everyone is standing around saying “Yes! Right or left!” I don’t see how that gets us anywhere.
On the other hand, don’t let me spoil your fun. 8-)
I don’t think it can be resolved. I think it’s a problem. I think women dressing like prostitutes has a very unfortunate influence on the way women in general are perceived, but I also think that even trying to argue that case risks sounding and even being Talibanish.
Contradictions can’t be resolved; that’s what makes them contradictions; it’s not a failure of logic to be aware of that.
“I don’t see how that gets us anywhere.”
Well where do you expect any conversation to get you?! What am I, a magician? Dang – I’m pointing out a problem, an issue, a difficulty; I don’t have to solve everything!
The way I solve it for myself is (as you see) going right on pointing out that women dressing like prostitutes has some harmful effects (in my view), while being aware that there are problems with saying that. The way we do most things when there is something to be said on either side. I don’t do it by sprinkling the magic crystals and making it all go away. Jeez.
OB: “I don’t do it by sprinkling the magic crystals and making it all go away. Jeez.”
Damn!
And I was hoping for world peace tomorrow…
I been generally unclear through this whole discussion (and I’m not necessarily expecting to improve now), but I’ll be long-winded in the hope that this helps. (Note: this might be better placed in the original comment.)
If *I* have contradictory opinions I try to determine what is causing that contradiction.
You see, I can handle two different people having contradictory opinions but I am NOT at all comfortable being drawn to two contradictory viewpoints myself.
I think we can agree that imposing head-to-toe garb on women is wrong.
Therefore, to some extent, women should be free to choose how they dress.
The problem is that, as soon as we say “to some extent”, we limits individual freedom.
That, in itself, is not a problem. After all, we are not free to do whatever we want. We accept that there are situations in which freedom must be curtailed: I am *not* free to romp about whacking people.
And, as has been considerably debated here, we shouldn’t have freedom to romp around saying whatever we want.
But why should a woman not be permitted to dress like a prostitute if they want?
The answer is, of course, that doing so *may* foster undesirable attitudes in *some* people.
What we are then saying, however, is that we are opting to limit the freedom of some women, BUT NOT because they are affecting others adversely.
Instead, we limit the women’s freedom because it *may* provoke other people (mostly men) to adversely affect others.
What we are doing is punishing the women (by limiting their freedom) INSTEAD of the perpetrators.
This is often accepted without comment because of the cultural norms in some (many?) western countries which routinely view exposure of certain parts of the body invariably in a sexual context.
The horrific stories from strict Islamic societies demonstrate, beyond doubt, that it is not what, or how much, that is exposed that is the issue: it is what is accepted, particularly by the authorities, in that particular society.
I understand the unease with “women ambling around the supermarket with their stomachs or buttocks or tits poking out” (although, being male, I object less) BUT I believe that accepting the view that this is wrong only reinforces it. Cover the stomachs and buttocks and next it will be cover the ankles and arms.
Decades ago, if a woman turned up on an Australian beach in a bikini she ran a real risk of being arrested. Now the police would be laughed out of court if they tried to charge any women for being topless on a beach.
Attitudes change but usually slowly and often only when people push the envelope of what is “appropriate”. (See the “topfreedom” movement, for instance.)
Male dominated societies evolved long before people started wearing clothes.
The evidence is clear: if people (mostly men) want to regard women only as sex objects, then they will do so, regardless of what is or is not exposed.
To pander to the prejudices of these people is to submit to them.
Keith,
I know all that, obviously. (At least I think it’s obvious – partly because it’s all so obvious that I’d have to be asleep not to know it.) But it oversimplifies. I think you’re ‘resolving’ a contradiction by oversimplifying everything. Frankly I think that’s even less helpful than simply admitting that there is much to say for both sides. In fact I think it’s quite a lot less helpful.
(Oversimplfying what, you may ask? Well, for one, “The answer is, of course, that doing so *may* foster undesirable attitudes in *some* people.” is a radically oversimple answer. There isn’t just one answer, there’s a lot more to it than that. And the same applies to the rest of your argument.)
OB: “There isn’t just one answer, there’s a lot more to it than that.”
Well, this is what I wrote: “But why should a woman not be permitted to dress like a prostitute if they want? The answer is, of course, that doing so *may* foster undesirable attitudes in *some* people.”
What are the other answers?
They are apparently obvious to you BUT I appear to be too dense to see them.
You think that there is “much to say for both sides” BUT you don’t say what that “much” is. Until you do, there is really no reason for me to accept what you say.
I have explained my reasoning in depth. You haven’t. All you’ve done is deflect every argument I’ve made or reply in generalities.
So, I repeat one part of my response: “But why should a woman not be permitted to dress like a prostitute if they want? The answer is, of course, that doing so *may* foster undesirable attitudes in *some* people.”
Now, what are the other answers?
Keith,
Well just for one thing, I don’t want to spend all my time “explaining my reasoning in depth” in comments because then I’d have no time to do actual main page Comments; I take comments to be subordinate to Comments. For another thing, frankly, that comment does seem to me to be rather obviously simplistic – so I don’t feel as if I ought to have to explain why “in depth.” In other words, I think you’re mischaracterizing what I’ve said – for instance I never said women shouldn’t be “permitted” to dress in some particular way, nor did I say and nor do I think that I should have the power to permit or not permit women to dress in some particular way. For another instance, women dressing like prostitutes has some effect on them as well as on other people. And so on.
I don’t want to spend a lot of time on this argument because I don’t think it’s a very good one.
By the way, you said “Fair enough! I certainly applaud B&W.” Well you can’t very well applaud B&W without applauding me. I’m it.
OB: “I don’t want to spend a lot of time on this argument because I don’t think it’s a very good one.”
Well, I think that your arguments are confused and simplistic. (What, for instance, does “dress like a prostitute” actually mean?)
Further, I think that the attitude expressed, while appearing to respect women, is actually paternalistic, sexist and demeaning. (For instance, while someone might make a similar comment about men wandering about with stomachs and buttocks exposed, the underlying reasons are likely to be quite different.)
OB: “Well you can’t very well applaud B&W without applauding me. I’m it.”
The way *I* see it is that B&W is you, Jeremy and all the other people who contribute to the site. Yours is certainly the main voice and, most of the time, I agree with you.
That, however, doesn’t mean that I agree with all of your arguments or opinions.
To employ a sporting analogy, I applaud when a team scores but groan when they fumble the ball.
I’m groaning a bit now, because I think you’ve fumbled the ball.
Enough! Neither of us is going to convince the other here. 8-)
You’re annoying me.
“What, for instance, does “dress like a prostitute” actually mean?”
Look, obviously I’m writing in shorthand here, these are comments, not a post and not an article! And surely you know what that means.
“I think that the attitude expressed, while appearing to respect women, is actually paternalistic, sexist and demeaning.”
For the fourth time, that’s my point! I know there are problems with it!
“For instance, while someone might make a similar comment about men wandering about with stomachs and buttocks exposed, the underlying reasons are likely to be quite different.”
Well of course they are – and that too is the point.
You think I’ve fumbled the ball but that is partly because you’re insisting on misreading what I’ve said. That’s not to say I never fumble the ball or that I haven’t here, but that you’ve consistently misread.
“The way *I* see it is that B&W is you, Jeremy and all the other people who contribute to the site.”
Hey, you know what? It doesn’t matter how you see it. It’s not a question of seeing, it’s a question of facts, and you have your facts wrong. You might as well say that as *you* see it ‘Hamlet’ is Shakespeare, the Earl of Oxford and Gustave Flaubert; but that would be factually incorrect. Jeremy has nothing to do with the content of B&W (as he would be the first to point out). The articles, of course, are another matter, and they are the main feature of B&W; however I would point out that I commission, edit, format, and post them; they wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. Nothing would be here if I didn’t put it here – so I take exception to your making a distinction between me and B&W, as if B&W would still be here if I disappeared in a puff of smoke. It damn well wouldn’t.
I’ll just clarify that a little more. Nothing would be here if I didn’t put it here. Not. one. thing.
Brava, Ophelia! Keith was annoying me, too.
I, for one, appreciate your work, and wonder how you can find the time to set blokes like Keith straight.
Thanks, Doug! And the answer to that is, I can’t.
Doug, really, no-one has “set me straight”. As for OB “finding” the time…well it’s up to her to decide whether or not to respond. I’m busy too, but I *have* taken the time to try to explain what I mean and what I think.
I’m indifferent to whether or not you were being annoyed: no-one made you read my contributions.
OB: “Look, obviously I’m writing in shorthand here, these are comments, not a post and not an article! And surely you know what that means.”
I do know that it is not an article but if I knew what you meant I wouldn’t raise the query! You’ve accused me of being too simplistic but some of the things you’ve written seem too simplistic to me. They seem to assume attitudes and motivations which I would question.
To some extent, I’m feeling a bit frustrated here, not because you disagree, but because the responses I’m getting seem to be “you’ve [ie I’ve] misread or mischaracterised” or that “that is [also] the point” or that “that’s not the point”.
OB, I apologise as you appear to have taken my remarks about B&W in a way which is really quite different from that intended. Of course, there would be no B&W without you. And I understand very well the amount of work that goes into getting the material, organising it and so on. I DO applaud and appreciate your efforts. No. Question. About. It. (I won’t even try to explain what I was trying to say.)
Keith: “I’m indifferent to whether or not you were being annoyed: no-one made you read my contributions.”
You’re right about no one making me read.
Please be different, not in-…
Keith,
“I’m indifferent to whether or not you were being annoyed: no-one made you read my contributions.”
No. That’s the wrong attitude. That’s the kind of attitude that makes most comment threads on most sites so stupid and chaotic and bad-tempered and rude and time-wasting. Comments here are mostly better than that, and that’s a good thing. One reason they are better, I would say, is that commenters aren’t indifferent to what other readers think of their comments; I would surmise that that provides a motivation to keep their comments reasonably civil and rational even when they get annoyed. On this thread you seem not to have been doing that, in the sense that you keep telling me ‘X’ when I have repeatedly said ‘I know X, X is my point, I’ve already said X.’ That looks more like deliberately being annoying than like genuine argument. Just repeating ‘X’ when the other person has already said ‘X’ is pointless. By all means say ‘I don’t think you’re giving enough weight to X’ or similar; that’s not annoying; but just repeating ‘X’ over and over is annoying.
“To some extent, I’m feeling a bit frustrated here, not because you disagree, but because the responses I’m getting seem to be “you’ve [ie I’ve] misread or mischaracterised” or that “that is [also] the point” or that “that’s not the point”.”
Well, I’m feeling a bit baffled here both that you find that frustrating and that you don’t seem to get it. I don’t understand why you don’t [seem to] understand why it’s not useful to keep pointing out what your interlocutor has already stipulated, in fact began by stipulating. I don’t understand why you don’t [seem to] understand that you need to say more than that.
[About B&W. It’s not just that there wouldn’t be any B&W without me; it’s that no one else works on it. You seem not to be aware of that. There is no one else. I have no staff, no assistants, no secretaries, no colleagues. It’s literally true that I’m B&W, in the same way that Norm is Normblog. Norm posts guest articles, but he still=Normblog.]