In essence, a feminist pundit is being trotted out to “speak for feminism,” but feminism encompasses a wide range of views (as does any subject, really). By placing a significant portion of the public face of feminism in one person, who may or may not represent what is thought of as “feminism,” you run the risk of marginalizing it even more. Feminism, racism, pro-choice, et. al., cannot afford to be locked into narrow bands of tired rhetoric. They must appeal to new generations, who in some ways are more sophisticated, but in other ways ignorant, of these subjects.

That’s why I think the wise thing is to reject the MSM game altogether and do what more and more out-groups are doing, which is to disseminate the message using the web and other non-traditional media. Those allow readers to focus on the message and not the messenger.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again now: mainstream feminism as represented by the Feminist Majority and NOW and NARAL is run by and for women who are precisely the ones we see on tv talk shows-white, straight, college-educated, slim and attractive, upper middle class. They occasionally look outside the bubble and remember that women who are poor, disabled, of color and so forth might have their own concerns, but those groups only work on such concerns as a way of furthering their own interests. If we wait politely for those groups to remember women who are different than they are, we’re wasting our time. We have to demand that we are part of the discussion-not sometimes, but every time.

abby jean – Again, I agree with everything that you say here (the Psoul/Hasselbeck analogy was sloppy and mostly just for effect). In my previous post, “one mainstream feminist is better than no feminist at all” was my main point, because it seemed like the consensus was going against that point.

yes, this, lots of this. especially as those women are actively fighting to be heard even in feminist created spaces.

and while i recognize and (mostly) agree that one mainstream feminist is better than no feminist at all*, even that should be coupled with an effort to amplify the voices of those women of various degrees of invisibility within the feminist movement. or at least a recognition or acknowledgment that having that mainstream feminism visible in the MSM has this exclusionary effect on some groups of women. but i don’t think there’s much or any of that going on.

*i don’t classify pilgrimsoul as a mainstream feminist of the type we’re discussing here, so i reject the hasselbeck/pilgrimsoul decision.

“…keeping some women more invisible than others…” There are no degrees of invisibility; you either are or you aren’t. Logic fail.

“…present an inclusive message that includes all women…” Redundancy fail.

It’s/Its errors throughout. Global editing fail.

As the post lays out, the media has preferences that are exclusionary. One could argue that it’s worth capitulating to these preferences (white, cis, able-bodied, middle-upper class) if that’s what has to be done in order to present at least some aspects of the feminist perspective to a wider mainstream audience.

The big problem with this argument is, of course, that by capitulating, we reinforce the belief that only certain faces, bodies, and voices are worth being seen and heard. In a sense, we ask certain women to sacrifice more for the ostensible benefit of the class as a whole, even though these are the same women who have been sacrificing more from day one. The question in my mind then becomes, is this sacrifice worth it? I mean, it’s my perception that the image of mainstream feminism is already largely white, cis, able-bodied, and middle-upper class; is this image working for women as a whole enough to somehow justify it’s further perpetuation if, in fact, doing so winds up keeping some women more invisible than others?

Anther potential issue I see is that, even if a “White Mainstream Feminist” pundit is uber-conscious and nearly flawless in her efforts to present an inclusive message that includes all women, will the message that the audience receives inevitably be narrowed by it’s perception of the messenger?

I think there would be less concern from folks like abby jean if we were talking about, say, putting together a panel of feminist pundits that represented a variety of backgrounds. But as things stand, I guess we’re just supposed to be grateful for at least having a shot at choosing one woman to explicitly represent feminism in the MSM.