This interesting article in the New York Times is well worth the read. The author, Kate Zernike, tries to put together the impact of both the mysogynistic attacks on Hillary and the travesty of Spitzler on generational divides among feminists. She suggests many young women have thought that the US was beyond gender discrimination. And it is true that some women seem to have gotten the message that the power and responsibiity is theirs, a belief less for their convenience, surely, than for that of a discriminatory culture that does not want the blame. (I remember uphappily a meeting at which a local young female chamber of commerce administrator insisted that women professors themselves were responsible for the fact that women hold almost no academic leadership positions in our university. “You need to work on yourselves,” she asserted. Ouch!)
Is that changing?
Suzanne B. Goldberg, a law professor at Columbia and director of its sexuality and gender law clinic, called the current climate “a perfect storm.”
…
“I’m not such a Mars-Venus person but this is one of those moments where gender is at least a partial explanation, it affects how people hear campaign rhetoric, how people see political downfalls,” Ms. Goldberg said. “Even people who were unwilling to see it before are more likely to acknowledge the pervasiveness of sex stereotypes.”
…
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.
Why don’t younger women see what Kath Pollitt is described as articulating? That is,
“The hysterical insults flung at Hillary Clinton are just a franker, crazier version of the everyday insults — shrill, strident, angry, ranting, unattractive — that are flung at any vaguely liberal mildly feminist woman who shows a bit of spirit and independence,” she [Pollitt] wrote, “who puts herself out in the public realm, who doesn’t fumble and look up coyly from underneath her hair and give her declarative sentences the cadence of a question.”
…
“Every woman I know who calls herself a feminist, or is even just doing well, especially in a field in which men also contend,” Ms. Pollitt wrote, “deals with some version of this.”
We’re offered a dismal explanation:
Noreen Malone on The XX Factor, the Slate magazine blog written by women wrote] “The most powerful people in the world are old white men and pretty young women.”
“During my supposedly post-feminist lifetime, the women who’ve created the biggest stir are the young women who’ve ruined the careers of powerful old men,” she wrote.
Some power.
Our culture definitely discourages women from independence. Although, I don’t care much about the insults thrown at Hillary because she is a politician. You can’t throw too many insults at a politician, in my opinion. ;)
Anyway, it would be nice if the younger generation recognizes the restrictiveness of gender roles in society and the unfair socioeconomic limitations put on women by our culture and other social institutions. I think they do not because the grade schools teach a very unrealistically positively patriotic view of the country. A book I like about that subject is “Lies My Teacher Told Me.”
Anyway, I like the way Pollitt described it in the quote in your post: “…the everyday insults — shrill, strident, angry, ranting, unattractive — that are flung at any vaguely liberal mildly feminist woman who shows a bit of spirit and independence, who puts herself out in the public realm, who doesn’t fumble and look up coyly from underneath her hair and give her declarative sentences the cadence of a question.” It’s a shame that it’s true, but she explained it elegantly in my opinion.
Thanks for the reference, SH!
Re-reading this post after reading about the lingerie superbowl makes me realize how much work we still have to do. Maybe it’s more difficult to mobilize if the discrimination isn’t as blatant anymore (though lingerie bowls seem rather sexist to me!). To quote from the NYT article: “But some also argue that the media is not as quick to recognize misogyny as it is to recognize racism. ‘The media is on eggshells about race, but has blinders on about sex and gender stereotyping,’ said Ms. Goldberg of Columbia.” How can we use all this to raise consciousness again and get through the complacency (of course, there are some positive signs that seem to point to some awakening in the younger generation…)?
Thanks, Rachel. Great points. I’m not sure what to do, to be perfectly frank, but I think all of us together are taking action in a number of spheres, which is what is necessary. I don’t think it’s enough in the short term.
Thoughtful insights. It is easy to forget about the struggles of the past and not fully appreciate how far we’ve come.
One thing that I think is sort of cool, though…employment still has its discrimination, but women entrepreneurs are one of the largest groups opening up more small businesses than any other, worldwide. I run a blog that supports the female entrepreneur and the response has been tremendous. So, if the boys club won’t play, we’ll build a successful world anyway. :-) Power to the women!
Vicki Flaugher
p.s. I read recently where a huge majority of women believed in equal pay, access, etc. yet none of them wanted to be called a feminist. What’s up with that? Maybe we need to invent a new word to describe women who believe in equality, fairness, etc. Any suggestions?
Vicki,
Nice question about the term “feminist.” Given the effectiveness of the right wingers at villifying anything, I’m afraid a new term would soon carry the same negativity for a lot of women.