Oh, it is so much fun when bush-league college feminists start feeding on themselves. But it's much more fun and ridiculous when the icons of capital letter Feminists do it.
Here are two examples from this weekend:
The first came from the great Goddess of first-wave Feminism Gloria Steinum who took to the airwaves while promoting her latest venture to blame Rush Limbaugh for Feminism's bad rap.
Now let me be honest. I have never embraced the doctrine of feminism and more importantly to me, have always refused to call myself a feminist. I am a person. A person with skills. And I blame Gloria Steinem, not Rush Limbaugh. She never spoke for me. Steinem and her ilk like Ellie Smeal of N.O.W. drove the feminist bus off the cliff long ago by losing sight of the real goal of the Feminist Movement which was winning the right of choice for women. And while driving this bus over the cliff they made sure to demean any and all woman who made choses not in line with the feminist doctrine.
Feminism has always been much too limiting and whiny to me. I, like Meryl Streep as describe in the NY Post article, call myself a "humanist". To me it has always been about choice. I fully embrace the equality of opportunity for all humans regardless of gender, race, or whatever grievance group one might be defined. All should have the opportunity to compete equally in all fields of endeavor and achieve because they are qualified. No grading on curve. To lower standards just to achieve some faux, statistical "equality" demeans those who have qualified and do qualify on their merits and abilities. And in cases where lowering standards to just to achieve "equality" specifically in fire departments and elite military units, it can actually endanger the general public. But, most of all, I cannot tolerate whining about "Boo-hoo-hoo, they wouldn't let me [fill in the blank} because I am a [fill-in grievance group]".
But then this issue is just as stupid. For those of you who are not hip to the fine feminist monthly manifesto that is Glamour magazine, let me enlighten you. Rife with emaciated, holocaust victim-esque models and endless academic treatists on the joys of botox injections and age-abating plastic surgery, meaningless sex, and the latest in hem lengths, Glamour magazine will name in their latest issue Caitlyn Jenner (a/k/a Bruce "Kardashian" Jenner) as their 2015 "Woman of the Year".
Germaine Greer, leader of the second-wave feminist movement (whatever that is/was) has taken exception to a former man being named as any kind of "Woman of the Year" calling it just another example of misogyny. And then as right on cue, came the cry of "transphobia" as in this from Jezebel Germaine Greer Says Caitlyn Jenner, Transgenered Woman Are Not 'Real Women'.
Ms Greer was booked to speak at Cardiff University. But after her honest opinion about Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner's "Woman of the Year" honor at Glamour, the expected petitions by feminist student groups have been signed to unbook her because she dared to speak her opinion which translates in current college campus-speak as her obvious transphobic misogyny against the transgendered men. Science and Biology be damned! To the credit of Cardiff University administration, they refused to uninvite her.
I happen to agree with Ms Greer on this, but then I am a biological woman with all of the biological privileges that come with that who resents Glamour Magazine making me feel less than for not being an emaciated, holocaust-victim-esque model type. But more importantly, naming a former man as "Woman of the Year" demeans real womem of accomplishment by naming a man who just cut his man-parts off so he can call himself woman and wear pretty clothes. But then again, when did Glamour Magazine have any relevence in defining what a real woman is anyway.
So what have we learned here. Well, it boils down to this. If you don't go along with first or second-wave feminist doctrine, you are the enemy of everyone or a Republican. God help you if your Carly Fiorina...
Here are two examples from this weekend:
The first came from the great Goddess of first-wave Feminism Gloria Steinum who took to the airwaves while promoting her latest venture to blame Rush Limbaugh for Feminism's bad rap.
Now let me be honest. I have never embraced the doctrine of feminism and more importantly to me, have always refused to call myself a feminist. I am a person. A person with skills. And I blame Gloria Steinem, not Rush Limbaugh. She never spoke for me. Steinem and her ilk like Ellie Smeal of N.O.W. drove the feminist bus off the cliff long ago by losing sight of the real goal of the Feminist Movement which was winning the right of choice for women. And while driving this bus over the cliff they made sure to demean any and all woman who made choses not in line with the feminist doctrine.
Feminism has always been much too limiting and whiny to me. I, like Meryl Streep as describe in the NY Post article, call myself a "humanist". To me it has always been about choice. I fully embrace the equality of opportunity for all humans regardless of gender, race, or whatever grievance group one might be defined. All should have the opportunity to compete equally in all fields of endeavor and achieve because they are qualified. No grading on curve. To lower standards just to achieve some faux, statistical "equality" demeans those who have qualified and do qualify on their merits and abilities. And in cases where lowering standards to just to achieve "equality" specifically in fire departments and elite military units, it can actually endanger the general public. But, most of all, I cannot tolerate whining about "Boo-hoo-hoo, they wouldn't let me [fill in the blank} because I am a [fill-in grievance group]".
But then this issue is just as stupid. For those of you who are not hip to the fine feminist monthly manifesto that is Glamour magazine, let me enlighten you. Rife with emaciated, holocaust victim-esque models and endless academic treatists on the joys of botox injections and age-abating plastic surgery, meaningless sex, and the latest in hem lengths, Glamour magazine will name in their latest issue Caitlyn Jenner (a/k/a Bruce "Kardashian" Jenner) as their 2015 "Woman of the Year".
Germaine Greer, leader of the second-wave feminist movement (whatever that is/was) has taken exception to a former man being named as any kind of "Woman of the Year" calling it just another example of misogyny. And then as right on cue, came the cry of "transphobia" as in this from Jezebel Germaine Greer Says Caitlyn Jenner, Transgenered Woman Are Not 'Real Women'.
Ms Greer was booked to speak at Cardiff University. But after her honest opinion about Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner's "Woman of the Year" honor at Glamour, the expected petitions by feminist student groups have been signed to unbook her because she dared to speak her opinion which translates in current college campus-speak as her obvious transphobic misogyny against the transgendered men. Science and Biology be damned! To the credit of Cardiff University administration, they refused to uninvite her.
I happen to agree with Ms Greer on this, but then I am a biological woman with all of the biological privileges that come with that who resents Glamour Magazine making me feel less than for not being an emaciated, holocaust-victim-esque model type. But more importantly, naming a former man as "Woman of the Year" demeans real womem of accomplishment by naming a man who just cut his man-parts off so he can call himself woman and wear pretty clothes. But then again, when did Glamour Magazine have any relevence in defining what a real woman is anyway.
So what have we learned here. Well, it boils down to this. If you don't go along with first or second-wave feminist doctrine, you are the enemy of everyone or a Republican. God help you if your Carly Fiorina...
15 comments:
First of all, I think it says a lot about feminism that it must continually re-invent itself through various "waves." I can think of no other social activist movements that redefine themselves so markedly. That said, I think you've got your waves mixed up. First-wave feminism was mainly the suffrage movement. (Also, prohibition, but they like to forget that.)
Gloria Steinem was one of the original second-wave feminists, having "exposed" covert male chauvinism by working "undercover" at the Playboy Club in the 1960s where, shockingly, the women were regarded as sex objects. That Ms. Steinem of her own accord exploited her *ahem* natural assets to secure the gig continues to go remarkably unacknowledged.
As for Germaine Greer, she is so seminal (ovarial?) to the feminist movement that I have no idea who she is.
More thoughts on feminism to come...
Bev, I total share your humanist view. I'm firm believer that everyone is an individual and as such deserves equality under the law. Beyond that, it's up to you to make your own life or to mess up your own life. What drives me crazy with "feminists" is that they don't believe people are individuals (they see people as parts of gender/race gangs), they don't believe in legal equality (they believe in a legal apartheid system based on gender/race), they want to impose their own views and opinions and preferences on everyone else, and frankly, they are unpleasant, awful human beings.
As for the bad rep, feminism created its own bad rep through it's own behaviors. Moreover, that bad rep came into being LONG before Rush came along. Steinem is an idiot.
As for Greer, I have to laugh. This is the problem for the left. They advocate various stupidities and then they collide. In this case you have:
(1) Women must establish a parallel world where they get credit for doing what men do only as women.
(2) We must love and respect gays/transgenders and pretend their nutty ideas are real. Ergo, it is racist not to treat a guy who wants to be a woman as a woman.
When these two ideas collide, you get conflict at ex-men want to join the lists set aside for women.
It's like a twisted Reeses Peanut Butter Cup commercial: Hey, you got your bullshit in my idiocy! No, you got your idiocy in my bullshit! Only, this time, there is no happy melding of the ideas.
Also, let me add that this is now yet another example of the identity left falling out with gays now that gays got what they wanted.
"...Reeses Peanut Butter Cup commercial: Hey, you got your bullshit in my idiocy! No, you got your idiocy in my bullshit!
I...WANT...TO...MAKE...THIS...COMMERCIAL!
And this is what happens when a movement is exclusive rather than inclusive. But it was so predictable because these women don't really want equality, they wanted subordination and subjugation of men. Because frankly, women have had equal opportunity for quite some time now. I give credit to Steinem and the rest, they were the public face of the final push. But I give more credit to my great-grandmothers, my grandmothers, my mother and my aunts for their backbone and to the men who did not get in their way.
Tryanmax - They HAVE to reinvent themselves otherwise they render themselves obsolete. Just like military generals, what do they do when the war is won? They have to convince everyone that it hasn't really been won at all. The real battles are beginning.
On the subject of identity politics in general: The perpetually aggrieved hold onto this fantasy that education, hard work, and thrift are things that straight white men made up to get themselves ahead and keep everyone else down. I'm not denying there were in the past other institutions used to keep people down, but it's a little more than schadenfreude to see differing factions of the aggrieved conjuring up new institutions to the same old purpose.
Since I'm sorta on the subject, a thought about so-called institutional racism/sexism/whatever. When you boil it down, what's really being described is a networking deficit among women and minorities. Of course, it's a lot less sinister sounding to say those groups have a networking problem and it places partial responsibility for a solution on them--which is just unacceptable.
Straight white men are supposed to be reaching out to women and minorities, not the other way around. Nevermind the complex network of discrimination laws that make every protected individual a potential lawsuit bomb! It's prejudice and discrimination that keeps the good ol' boys to themselves.
All this fuss at Glamour just because ol' Brucey's trying to get out of killing someone while driving, er, texting while driving. Yup, that's my story of his story, and I'm stickin' to it, even though he still hasn't had his peeps chopped off yet.
As far as I know, Bruce hasn't even cut off his "manparts" yet. They're giving their Woman of the Year award to a drag queen.
GypsyTyger
I think the 2nd wave actually began a tad earlier; in the mid-late fifties when Betty Friedan published Feminine Mystique, a book that compared the life of a housewife to that of life in a concentration camp.
But feminism really went off the rails in the late-70s during the ERA fight when an upstart conservative pointed out to the public that this amendment was designed to force social change as it would lead to women being drafted for combat (only a few years after the Fall of Saigon) and abolish such things as mother-son picnics as discriminatory. She confronted them about this on Firing Line and the pro-ERA feminist agreed, that was the goal.
The feminist left lost its shit and at Illinois they went bats**t insane, chaining themselves to the gates of the capital building and torching the words "ERA" into, I think, the governor's front lawn.
The public quickly concluded, "These people are insane" and voted them down. The feminists hunkered off to academia where they stewed about how the Far Right had stopped them.
Then you had the "Porn Wars" of the 1980s and early-90s with the sex-phobic Andrea Dworkin and Mary Daly on the one side and the very pro-sex (probably a bit too pro-sex in some ways) feminists like Camille Paglia and Wendy McElroy on the other side.
The former group wound up aligning themselves with the Religious Right.
Today it's the "3rd Wave" which is obsessed with body image,
It's heroes are :
Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth* who has since gone cookoo —even by left-wing standards. Her last grab for fame was Vagina: An Autobiography, which by all accounts was about her ability, then inability, and finally ability again, to achieve what one reviewer paraphrased as "technicolor orgasms". I wish I were kidding.
She has also spent the last few years going into conspiracy theory territory claiming, among other things, that the videos of ISIS killing western hostages were faked, accused Bush of trying to stage a military coup in 2008, and accusing Obama of setting up "FEMA camps".
Yeah…
Eve Ensler, author of the play The Vagina Monologues. Christina Hoff Summers summarized the themes of the play as "Woman are from Venus and Men are from Hell" with the only positive portrayal of a member of the male sex being a guy who likes to stare at vaginas. Not have sex with them, just stare at them.
It has also for praising lesbian rape. Really, in the original production it had a woman describe how, at age 13, a 24-year old woman got her drunk and had sex with her, an act which by any definition is rape but is described in the play as "a good rape". I guess because it was by a woman not a man. Feminists defended it. An account of the 2000 Robert Swope controversy here: LINK
Recently, it has begun to suffer new criticism because none of the women in the play have penises. Again. I am not making this up. One women's college cancelled a production for this very reason.
As well as Susan Faludi, Jessica "I won't wrap the gifts" Valenti, and Anita Sarkheesian.
*Camille Paglia had this to say about Naomi Wolf'sThe Beauty Myth, and this was before Paglia went cuckoo for coco puffs: "If you want to see what’s wrong with Ivy League education, look at The Beauty Myth, that book by Naomi Wolf. This is a woman who graduated from Yale magna cum laude, is a Rhodes scholar, and she cannot write a coherent paragraph. This is a woman who cannot do historical analysis, and she is a Rhodes scholar? If you want to see the damage done to intelligent women today in the Ivy League, look at that book. It’s a scandal. Naomi Wolf is an intelligent woman. She has been ill-served by her education. But if you read Lacan, this is the result. Your brain turns to pudding. She has a case to make. She cannot make it. She’s full of paranoid fantasies about the world. Her education was completely removed from reality."
All I can say is that any further discussion of Bruce/Caitlyn/Whatever's manparts, and I may have to take a vow of celibacy.
Kit, maybe I was unclear. I'm not saying Steinem started the second wave, I was just describing her entry into it in its early days.
This is awesome.
While I agree with Ms. Greer that a man should not be named woman of the year, the irony is just too great.
My biggest beef is what did he/she do to get woman of the year? Matched her shoes with her bag? Seriously, what has it done to deserve the honor? One would think texting and killing would disqualify but perhaps it was the courage to do this while wearing a bra and heels. Heck, I see about a dozen of these women texting and driving every day. To get the award do they just need to run someone over? Do they get bonus points for only maiming if they don't kill?
After spending several months on ob/gyn rotation staring a vaginas, I really don't care to see any more outside a select few (one).
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