The bunny has the same reaction I do. via blue meridian @ flickr
Apologies in advance for the occasional use of all-caps in this post, but I’m pissed off. You see, CNN is wondering if feminism is obsolete. How cute! Carol Costello, a contributor to the network’s American Morning program wrote a blog post that hits about 10,000 miles wide of the mark in its “analysis”. Basically, Costello asks if feminism is obsolete only by referring to some famous women who are viewed as either being antithetical to or paragons of feminism:
Some conservative women were upset feminists didn’t protest loudly when late night host David Letterman initially refused to apologize for his off-color joke about Palin’s daughter. Is that because Sarah Palin isn’t a feminist? Can a conservative woman be a feminist these days?
I’m trying to follow that train of thought, but it just makes me dizzy. I seem to remember that a number of feminists did indeed protest vociferously about the Letterman “joke”, including SarahMC.
Also, notice that Costello says “some conservative women”, not “some conservative feminists”. Apparently the reason for that bit of semantic difference is the quote she gets from Mary Matalin:
“No conservative woman would choose to call herself a feminist as it’s described by liberals today,” she says. Matalin says feminism used to be about the freedom to choose the life you wanted. Now it’s an exclusive club, closed off to women like Sarah Palin.
Feminism as a conservative v. liberal issue! Oh that TOTALLY is what feminism is ALL ABOUT. See, we liberal feminists hate it when women who don’t share our political ideologies are granted equal status, so we don’t let anyone into our fun feminist treehouse unless they can prove they voted for Obama. Them’s the breaks.
Costello concludes by asking, “So, if the word ‘feminist’ is weighed down by such political baggage, why keep using it?” Because it’s a vital, necessary word that represents a vital, necessary concept. Is it really that difficult to understand? And if anyone really does think feminism is obsolete and our world doesn’t need it anymore, here’s a lovely pastiche of comments left on the post:
- Yep . Feminism is as dead as a door nail these days. We have bigger fish to fry. By the way you’re very pretty.
- Feminisim[sic] /Maleism what is your point? It is just one more way to divide people. Keep up your bad work and have all people hating each other for what ever reason you chose.
- Feminism today simply means women with short hair, and either unmarried or unhappily married.
- Feminism is not only obsolete, but it is also a devisive crutch that takes the power away from the individual powerful women, and puts that power into a facade of an obsolete civil rights movement that most of americans under thirty never can completely understand.
- It took away to come up with something sturdy but, I’m just gonna’ say that Chivalry was killed by the cold silent glare of feminism and I wish it hadn’t been. There’s no way to avoid getting yelled as sexist as a man and you can’t really call a woman sexist without getting yelled again so you know what, screw it!
That’s it, you oh-so-chivalrous-but-still-dudely dude, yell SCREW IT! Fight the power! Stand up to the MAN! Er, woman.
One reason this is supremely fucking maddening to me is that I was tipped off to this whole thing by father.of.a.lesser.god, who woke me up this morning with an excited phone call about the whole thing. As I mentioned in today’s Harpy Seminar, he sometimes contacts me with ideas for Harpyness posts. I thought he was so sweet to do so this morning! Then we started talking, and as I wrote in an email to my fellow Harpies, “As I got into the discussion with my dad, he said that [the question of obsolescence] depends on the society and I pointed out that even in the most ‘progressive’ societies like ours truly, there’s still that lovely privilege that allows men to blatantly check out/whistle at/catcall at women on the street without fear of retribution, and that kind of objectification is one of the MILDER examples of why feminism cannot be ‘obsolete’. Dad’s reaction? ‘Oh, I do that. It’s not offensive.’ HEADDESK. I RETRACT MY PREVIOUS SEMINAR STATEMENTS.”
I walked for about 6 miles this morning through the streets of Manhattan, and I received some of those fun catcalls. It’s objectifying, it’s offensive, and God help us all if feminism is viewed as being obsolete — because being eye-fucked by strangers on the street is the very least of the problems women are faced with.
NOW took Palin’s side, for chrissakes.
The idea that feminism is a movement that aims to divide people is making my blood boil right now. Right, if only we women would sit down and shut up, we’d all get along.
Much as I admire Carol Costello as a news anchor, I’m not looking to her for scintillating analysis of the goings-on in the world.
Feminism will be obsolete when every woman on the planet has equal rights to every man on the planet.
Word, Newty.
And Sarah, my dad just said to one of my brothers: “You’d better not say anything sexist in front of your sister the feminist.” This despite the fact that there were three other women present, including his wife. Presumably it would have been fine to say something sexist in front of them, since they’re not all humorless like me. Ugh. Dad FAIL.
Welp, this will be the last Father’s Day salute on Harpyness.
YA BLEW IT, DADS!
Hey Matalin, don’t confuse correlation with causation. They didn’t make the “No Shoes, No Service” sign at the Feminist Club specifically to keep YOU out, but as long as you and your party proudly wave your bare stinky feet around, they won’t let you in. MANNERS, MANNERS.
@BearDown: One of these days, I am going to get “correlation =/= causation” tattooed on my forehead. Also: you and Newtie are totally invited into my feminist treehouse.
@Becky: Sigh. Epic headdesk day for dads, huh?
@s.o.l.a.g.: Unfortunately my father generally has a lot more headdesk days than your father. But yeah, it kind of confirms for me that everything I said in the post about his discomfort with feminism is spot on!
So are you going to share the post with him?
First “post-racial”, now this… what’s with the media’s rush to shuttle off all the -isms? Is it because journalism died 10 years ago?
@ceejee: DING DING DING DING DING! No more news! Just (boneheaded) commentary!
Two things before I retire for the evening:
1) Using a couple of white, over 40, upper-middle class, Washingtonian-types as the Arbiters of Truth is a dead giveaway that this is not about the vast majority of actual women, feminist or not.
2) A quibble, but feminism was never about “the freedom to choose the life you wanted.” It’s about fighting for and gaining the political, social, cultural and personal equality of all women. AFTER that happens, y’all can choose whatever the hell you want.
@Newt: I feel like I could construct a sentence starting with “feminism will be obselete when…” every day.
For example, from tonight:
Feminism will be obselete when there aren’t movies like The Stoning of Soraya M. and when four randomly selected reviewers aren’t all men.
Right. I haven’t thought through what to say on this which probably means I shouldn’t say anything. But I feel like I haven’t commented on this site in ages simply because I don’t bother thinking through responses. a) I get the feeling the first comment you isolated from Costello’s piece is satire, and rather good satire at that. Sure it’s possible it isn’t, but come on, it’d be great if it was. b) cat-calling is fucked, I’ve never understood it; blatantly checking out is just rude, but without the ‘blatant’ it is easily something both men and women can do to each other without shame. (Oddly, I had a female friend argue with me and flat out tell me more than once that women who get cat-called are-yes she said it-asking for it. I was flummoxed.) c) Ciji, has it been 10 years? I was hoping it was less, but yet again, you’re probably right. d) Before PhDork refutes something in here, she is right in the post above mine and likely right in whatever she wants to refute in my comment.
Awww, aspex, personally I found item (d) of your comment endearing.
@aspex: I’m happy you’re commenting again! Your absence was missed and rued over.
As for whether the first comment was satire, that is possible. But, uh, the problem is that it was drawn with such a broad brush that it’s extremely ambiguous. The rest of the comments? Vomit-inducing.
I saw this last night, and my jaw dropped and I scared my kitties by throwing pillows are the T.V.
As stated above, feminism was NEVER about the right to choose your lifestyle. IT was about EQUALITY, legally and socially. And since we are very very very much NOT there, feminism is not obsolete nor is it a liberal thing. It angers and saddens me deeply that a news organization that I respected ran this piece. You can call yourself a feminist regardless of you political affiliation, as long as you promote and fight for the respect and equality of your peers, of society, and when you call out assholes(regardless of their gender and political stances) on their sexist, careless, rude, misogynistic behaviors!
Feminism challenges the status quo; therefore it is the opposite of conservative.
yr friend,
Captain Obvious
I was watching a documentary about Ralph Nader that said he would have won the presidency if everything he had done for the country had his name on it, seatbelts, food labels, etc. I think the same thing could be said about feminism, it would be much more popular and harder for people to go along with the backlash if every time a woman got a voting ballot, paycheck, or diploma it had a big sticker on it that said: If you appreciate this, thank a feminist!
@ bellacoker: You know, I think that’s a great idea! Let’s just start labeling things for feminism!
I completely agree that it is ridiculous to even ask if feminism is obsolete. And the fact that so many people think it is obsolete is absolutely disgusting, yet not surprising. She is also way off base to say that feminists didn’t back up Palin on this one.
While I do think that 90% of her blog post is pure crap, she does have one point. Most conservative women feel like there is no place for them in feminism, and they are not the only group that feels this way. Uneducated women, women of color, married women, women with children (especially those who are SAHMs), often feel there is no place for them in feminism even if they agree with many feminist ideals. I think we all need to be regularly asking why so many women feel left out of feminism. And when we encounter someone who asks “Can an X woman be a feminist these days,” we ought to be asking them why they feel left out and show them that there is a place for them rather than attacking these women, telling them they don’t understand feminism, and proving to them that there really isn’t a place for them in feminism.
[...] from being feminists. There is nothing about feminism that has political party motivations. I had a similar reaction to what Mary Matalin said about how conservatives don’t feel they fit into feminism because [...]