Recently, I’ve taken to firing sporadic, angry twitter messages in the direction of @SarahPalinUSA. This, in itself, is perhaps not a very odd thing to do. Sarah Palin seems to possess an uncanny ability to draw out vitriol from nearly all corners, turning liberals who pride themselves on their openness and reason into sputtering, red-faced, and at times misogynist goons. And yet, it was only last week that I finally reached the point at which I could no longer contain my internet silence—when Palin penned a pointed facebook note (unrelated: how much does she love those?) to NOW, accusing the organization of being anti-feminist because of its pro-choice stance.
I’ve since realized that what really sent me over the edge with this particular Palin-trocity was its blatant appropriation of the rhetoric of the feminist movement, in the service of a purportedly internal critique of feminism (she is, after all, a member of the group Feminists for Life). My indignation grew not only from my general horror of anti-choice policies, but from a sense of ownership—this is our movement; how dare she claim to tell us how to run it?
And just when I thought my feminist hackles couldn’t be more puffed up, I came across a rather heated argument between Jessica Valenti and Nina Power, which escalated throughout the feminist blogosphere (including this post by Smellen and a subsequent retort from Sady at Tiger Beatdown): Power’s new book suggests that much of the American feminist movement—typified, she claims, by Valenti—is lacking a serious critique of systemic (especially capitalist) oppression; Valenti counters that Power’s characterization is fundamentally a case of academic elitism; Smellen gleefully chimes in that the sort of individual empowerment Valenti advocates is narcissistic crap deserving of a punch in the face; Power amends her comments to suggest that Valenti is setting her up as a strawfeminist; and Sady points out that if we’re to the point of suggesting that face-punching is appropriate, something has gone terribly wrong.
Meanwhile, as a young academic feminist still smarting from the wounds of being semi-publicly taken to task for failing to adequately address substantive strategies of resistance by an Senior Feminist at a conference, I was beginning to be overcome with the sense that it all might be for nothing, that my efforts might not only be useless but patriarchy-complicit and bourgeois and racist and homophobic and ableist and terrorist-enabling by not solving the riddle of what real feminism – or legitimate feminist activism – looks like.
So, when I approach the topic of what it means to engage in feminist resistance or do feminist work, that’s where I’m coming from.
But I don’t think that’s all that needs to be said, and I don’t intend for my own situated neuroses around this topic stand in for actual reflection on them. I think that when feminists disagree with one another, this is a good thing—it often makes us stronger and more effective by making visible the ways in which we are unwittingly racist and homophobic and imperialist and ableist, for example—and so I do get a bit concerned about tendencies in the feminist blogosphere to decry such criticisms as egotistical attempts at setting oneself up as the One True Feminist. However, I am discouraged when such critiques take the form of talking past one another, shit-talking-without-actually-reading, and so on.
Of course, no one died and made me moderator of the feminist internet. The reason I want to spend a little time talking about the Valenti/Power debate is that it highlights something really crucial to me about the whole debate around feminist resistance. Power’s main criticism of Valenti and most of popular feminism is not that it’s insufficiently academic or elite or inaccessible; rather, her claim is that most of what gets passed off as feminism is a kind of consumerist, Sex and the City-inflected you-go-girlism, in which all that matters is being empowered to buy the best shoes, vibrators and chocolate. Power is a Marxist, so her suggestion is that this way of looking at things—that high-powered jobs and the purchasing power that come with them are what we really need for liberation—“depends on blocking out class and age constantly.” (21) Which is to say, the freedom to make serious money and be a Carrie Bradshaw- or Beyonce-style independent woman is only available to certain kinds of people, since all the hard work in the world won’t result in liberation for women in sweatshops.
Instead, Power suggests that what we really need to be fighting against is the exploitative capitalism that would reduce us all to our status as producers and consumers, and which at the same time brainwashes us into believing that only the bourgeois, heteronormative, nuclear family is our only viable option. In challenging her readers to think about radical reformulations of the family, for example, Power quotes a provocative interview with Toni Morrison, in which the writer says of the so-called teen pregnancy epidemic:
[Teen mothers] can be teachers. They can be brain surgeons. We have to help them become brain surgeons. That’s my job. I want to take them all in my arms and say, ‘Your baby is beautiful and so are you and, honey, you can do it. And when you want to be a brain surgeon, call me – I will take care of your baby.’ That’s the attitude you have to have about human life. But we don’t want to pay for it…The question is not morality, the question is money. That’s what we’re upset about. We don’t care whether they have babies or not. (qtd in Power, 67)
We need to rethink our assumptions about how we arrange our families, our sex lives, and our politics, Power says. And, in general, I think this is a worthwhile point to make. If all we’re after is equal pay for equal work, for example, this won’t help very much when it turns out that most work done by women—especially women of color, women in the Third World, and working-class women in the US—is deemed to be necessarily “unequal” or less valuable under the principles of American capitalism. But what worries me about Power’s book is that its most important point – that the problem of oppression is bigger than just me and my ability to do whatever I want – also becomes its undoing. So concerned is she to remind us that feminism isn’t just a self-help book that she frequently verges on claiming that feminism isn’t about you, you selfish vapid bitch, and becomes downright dismissive of efforts to help individual women recognize their own value:
Valenti does her best to sell us her feminist manifesto, in all its faux-radicality: ‘liking your body can be a revolutionary act’ she concludes, regarding her navel with a curious joy as centuries of political movements that dared to regard the holy body as secondary to egalitarian and impersonal projects crumble to bits around her…Slipping down as easily as a friendly-bacteria yoghurt drink, Valenti’s version of feminism, with its total lack of structural analysis, genuine outrage or collective demand, believes it has to compliment capitalism in order to effectively sell its product. When she claims that ‘ladies, we have to take individual action,’ what she really means is that it’s every woman for herself, and if it is the Feminist™ woman who gets the nicest shoes and the chocolatiest sex, then that’s just too bad for you, sister. (30)
While Valenti’s main response to this—that Power’s call for “structural analysis” (which means, for her, anti-capitalist analysis) is “elitist”—is unfair and seems to miss the point, her take on the question of the supposed navel-gazing quality of individual feminist awakenings is worth taking seriously:
By ignoring how important and transformational it can be for women to see the world through a feminist lens and recognize everyday personal inequities, Power disregards how this kind of individual realization often leads to collective action and activism.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that it will. And for every feminist blog-reader-turned-activist, there are probably dozens of us who…well, just read feminist blogs and feel a little bit better about ourselves. But here’s the thing: even when we don’t become activists or revolutionaries, we do something. When we allow ourselves to understand other women as valuable allies, rather than competitors for men or jobs, we do something. When we resist the notion that rape prevention is the responsibility of women, we do something. When we support survivors of abuse and incest in online forums, we do something. When we refuse to let homophobic or ableist or racist “jokes” pass without comment, we do something. And when we get taken to task by other blog commenters for our own unexamined privilege, we do something. All of these things are on some level individual actions, and indeed, it is true that they take less sacrifice than other forms of resistance to oppression. But the mere fact of their individual basis does not mean that they have no broader effect.
I don’t write this with the intent of absolving myself—or the rest of us—from (what I think is a real) responsibility for political action beyond our corner of the internet. As Valenti herself wrote in her WaPo op-ed this weekend, the material realities for far too many women, both within the U.S. and around the world, are too bleak to simply congratulate ourselves for consciousness-raising. Moreover, I would argue that to the extent that feminism becomes about branding, selling Cosmos and vibrators as independence, the “something” that it does is increasingly ineffective. I would suggest, however, that this is a deeply inaccurate characterization of most of the popular feminist movement (including, for the most part, Valenti) and blogosphere—and it’s telling that Power’s book is short on quotes and long on generalization in this regard.
But despite my own belief that we feminists ought to be engaged in collective political action against capitalist, imperialist exploitation and rampant SATC-style consumerism, I simply cannot ignore the fact that individuals not only make up the world; they alter it. Power writes in her book, “So conditioned are we to think that our behaviors are individual (a degree is an ‘investment,’ starting a family is a ‘personal choice’), that we miss the collective and historical dimensions of our current situation.” (34) Her point is that individuals aren’t isolated, autonomous things, but beings whose desires and actions are shaped by the political world around us. I believe that she’s right about this. But what I want to ask is this: why wouldn’t it go both ways? Why wouldn’t changes in our attitudes and shared discourses do something to shape the political world? Why shouldn’t we believe it’s the case that an individual revolution—in which we dare to affirm our own value, examine and combat our own privilege, rail against the injustice of our abuse, valorize our denigrated sexuality, race, ability or class identity—does something? Why this either/or choice between coalition-building and political revolt, on the one hand, and a personal revolt—one that says, I will no longer stand for being treated this way—on the other? We can do both. We ought to do both. And my hope is that we can recognize, and act on, the ways in which each sort of feminist enterprise might strengthen the other.
*standing ovation*
Thank you for being the voice of reason.
“But despite my own belief that we feminists ought to be engaged in collective political action against capitalist, imperialist exploitation and rampant SATC-style consumerism, I simply cannot ignore the fact that individuals not only make up the world; they alter it.”
Yes. This exactly and entirely, forevermore.
The thing that always troubled me about Power’s critique was how much of Valenti’s writing (like the WaPo article you mention) was being ignored by her critique. As much as I love academia (I was a Marxist right along with Power, in my grad school days of yore), I was always troubled by the tendency of academic critique to tear down arguments – and people – rather than to build them up. We cannot expect the girls who are growing up now – who have the potential to become powerful forces for feminism – to make any kind of substantive change if they do not know how to empower themselves, individually. We need women like Nina Power to remind us of the immediacy of politics and economics, but we also need women like Valenti to remind us of the value of the human spirit. After all, the price women have paid to the patriarchy is not just a political one; it’s personal too.
Thank you! I felt many pangs of recognition and “right on!” when I read this, but you lay it all out far more articulately and persuasively than I could have.
“Why shouldn’t we believe it’s the case that an individual revolution—in which we dare to affirm our own value, examine and combat our own privilege, rail against the injustice of our abuse, valorize our denigrated sexuality, race, ability or class identity—does something?”
Yes, THIS! As the old cliche goes, you can’t love others without first loving yourself. Similarly, how can you band together as a community to fight structural oppression without believing that you yourself have value. You have to start somewhere. For a lot of people, that start is the individual, navel-gazing stuff that Power so abhors.
I haven’t read the book, but I have the impression that Power is so wrapped up within the feminist and academic worlds that she doesn’t realize how many people outside of the Ivory Towers view feminism. I run into many people, women as well as men, who still view feminists as those loud, hairy, stinky, obnoxious, humorless cliches from the 1970s. I’ve met numerous women who basically espouse feminist thinking (on a basic level), but adamantly deny they’re feminists because they don’t want to be seen as one of “those” feminists.
So-called “gateway” blogs such as Feministing do a great service, IMHO. As do high-level Marxist critiques. Why can’t we have both?
Thanks, glad you guys liked it!
@Queen_George: I think this point about (some parts of) academia is right on–and interestingly, not particularly feminist. It’s not that I think academics (or popular feminist critics for that matter) aren’t supposed to be negative; it’s that the impulse to view critical discussion (even with fellow feminists!) as a chance to “win” or “beat” your opponent, or expose someone else as stupid/a fraud/a worthless scholar is often so rewarded that it leads to a kind of pugilist engagement that’s really counterproductive.
Elsewhere in Power’s book I think this kind of thing gets really out of hand, as she mocks Valenti et al:
“Politics, such as it is, belongs to the well-balanced individual (the happy shopper), sassiness is like, SO where it’s at (consumer confidence) and, most of all, one must never, EVER admit to cracks in the facade (ideology). This foundation is flawless! And it lasts all night! Unlike MEN, titter, titter, etc. etc…Feminism can, like, totally help you out.”
This quote reads to me not only as a super unfair characterization of Valenti’s efforts, but also as pretty thinly-veiled misogyny. (Seriously, “titter”?!) Disagreeing with one another is fine, and so is ranting about it. But I think there’s a difference between this and attacking someone is crucial, and the latter isn’t particularly helpful.
You win the internets. THE END.
@philosophyerin: right on. It’s the difference between attacking your opponent and attacking her argument. I actually think that the meta-debate between Sady and Smellen is a good example of this. Sady is definitely critical of Power’s argument, but that comes from a place of productive discussion. Smellen’s face-punch argument, though, like Power’s belittling of Valenti, makes me shut down and have trouble hearing the other, possibly useful, things that she is arguing.
@viajera: I’m with you on the idea that feminists come in all shapes and sizes and levels of hairiness, and that this is important to celebrate. And (if it’s not obvious already) I’m a big fan of popularizing feminism because I think it’s worthwhile. But where I *do* get a little worried about Valenti’s particular mode of popularizing is when it moves into the “I don’t have hairy legs and I’m not an angry lesbian” territory. Because while, as you point out, many women are turned off by hairy-legged, angry ladies…well, I think part of our job is to say, hey, what the hell is wrong with hairy legs and being angry, anyway? I think we can affirm a variety of feminist identities without throwing the 1970s feminists (not to mention most of the Butch and Trans communities) under the bus.
philo, thank you thank you thank you!
I’m so glad that you put wrote that and it is now in public!
I echo your appreciation of difference within feminisms, and question why is it white, largely dead, men are allowed to have differing views on a whole range of issues, but feminist (I would also include queer, post-colonial etc) discourses are not?
My god, what ever happened to “The Personal Is Political”?
It has always seemed like it was too monumental a task to convince women everywhere to believe in the same political structure, or economic structure, or whatever. But I would hope that we can all get together behind the idea that women are human and capable of making the other decisions for themselves, even if they don’t agree with me personally.
Or: Ugh!
@Bellacoker: Yes, exactly. And that while women might experience feminism differently or have differing ideas about how to achieve its goals, ultimately we have the same goals.
Thanks to philosophyerin for this well-written and thoughtful post. I wish I had something useful to add, but you pretty much said it all, and much better than I ever could have.
@Mackey: exactly. This is a problem that comes up a great deal for POC and the LGBT community as well – ideologies are expected to be monolithic and when two POC present two opinions that are even marginally divergent, people cry foul.
Incidentally, before I started reading Feministing and Jezebel I knew very little about feminism and didn’t identify as one. If it wasn’t for Valenti I never would have heard of Power.
@JennyK: agreed. I heard about Power through Sady’s posts at Tigerbeatdown. And I eventually managed to pick up her book. Although not finished with it yet, I’m learning some things – things I wouldn’t have come across had I not heard about her through someone who disagrees with a good bit of what she says.
What this all-or-nothing battle seems to forget is that we, as feminists, are able to make up our own minds about things. And we can do that better if we have as much info as possible – if we have both the personal and the political analysis available to us, like philosophyerin says in her post. To limit information in either direction is, essentially, to limit choice. And I’m glad that I can be in agreement with some of Power and some of Valenti and some of Sady, etc etc – rather than being limited to one woman’s opinion.
[...] nonsense, the Rejectionist’s review of Maggie Stiefvater’s book Shiver, and this post here, which refers to my drunk-ass shouting about the Jessica Valenti/Nina Power blogfight about a month [...]
Superb! Thanks for this post!
I’m constantly baffled when two groups with the same goal, but with opposing viewpoints, think they need to trounce the other. Like “it’s my way or the highway.”But why does it have to be that way?
For example, why does Power spend a chunk of her book complaining that Valenti’s “brand” of feminism is (as you wrote) “lacking a serious critique of systemic (especially capitalist) oppression” when she could have spent the effort doing that herself?
Both women and the blogosphere have dithered away time we could have spend doing something much more productive. You know, like actually fighting for feminism.
Beautifully analysed. I have Power’s book sitting somewhere in my email inbox, but haven’t had a chance to read it yet.
On her criticisms of Valenti, though – as I see it, there’s pop feminism, and then there’s pop feminism. There’s the Cosmopolitan/Sex & The City/Spice Girls type “feminism” which positions female empowerment as something that can be attained through a cocktail and a pair of high heels (it drives me crazy how many women’s business organisations are marketed this way). I don’t think Valenti, or most other mainstream feminist types, do this at all.
Then there’s pop feminism as manifested in mainstream books, newspaper opinion editorials, blogs and the like (several of which I personally partake in). What this feminism is often guilty of is not shiny pink wrapping paper per se, but an incredible simplification and repetition of issues that have been thrown around for a good 20-40 years.
There’s good reason this – said issues still haven’t been resolved, and I think sites like Feministing play an important role as both of a source of feminist news and as a gateway for new feminists – but as someone who reads and writes a lot in this area, I often wish pop feminism would advance the debate a little, instead of going around in the same old circles*. So in that sense, I was grateful to see Power’s argument, even if I think her analysis of Valenti – and contemporary feminism more generally – is largely incorrect.
* This, incidentally, is one of the things I like so much about Harpiness. It covers some of the less obvious issues, and with nuance and intelligence.
@philosophyerin re: not throwing hairy-legged 1970s feminists under the bus – I think you’re absolutely right, and I didn’t mean that to come out sounding like I was advocating throwing them under the bus. I think that part of feminism is the idea that women can be who/what they want to be, whether that be a hairy-legged butch “old-school” feminist or a lipstick-wearing, fashion-forward, leg-shaving femme.
However, I encounter all too many women, particularly women in their 20s today, who have this notion that all feminists are the hairy-legged butch variety (i.e., they’ve bought into the patriarchal portrayal of feminists), and they don’t want to be like *those* women, so they reflexively reject feminism without ever realizing what it’s really about. I even see this within my corner of the Ivory Tower; I’m in a PhD program in Biology. There are young (mid-20s) women in my department who believe in feminist ideas such as equal rights and equal work for equal pay, but yet they adamantly deny being feminists because they want to be femme and want to be accepted by men and think they couldn’t be either as feminists.
This is why I’m a supporter of Jessica Valenti et al’s ideas of so-called “gateway” feminism. Because you have to get those women’s attention and get them to listen before you can help them break their patriarchal mode of thinking and realize that “hey, what’s so bad about having hairy legs, anyway?”
“Valenti does her best to sell us her feminist manifesto, in all its faux-radicality: ‘liking your body can be a revolutionary act’ she concludes, regarding her navel with a curious joy as centuries of political movements that dared to regard the holy body as secondary to egalitarian and impersonal projects crumble to bits around her”
This is just one example of the truly incessant hypocrisy of this book, which would seem nothing but one long neurotic act of projection were its aims of self-promotion not so evident. Power claims lack of interest in vile female flesh, promising loftily abstract “political” thoughts about higher, daring impersonal projects of an immortal disembodied (male) intellect, but then rants about the “anxiety” she personally feels in “not knowing which model to look like”. This anxiety, she claims, causes feebleminded, irrational women to erupt in a “shopping frenzy” that resembles a elephant must set in a H’wood romcom Gucci sample sale brawl. And while declaring after all this, nonsensically, she will eschew the merely pettily personal and dare to dismiss with contempt “the holy body” (odd for a Marxist feminist, since Marxist feminism is grounded in the recognition that the origin of capital is labour, first and foremost that of women) she devotes the longest section of her book to a feverish, delirious expression of an unseemly obsession with Sarah Palin’s supposedly “castrated” female body and the arousal it causes some (dubiously) presumed- genuine facebook fans. Her bizarre fascination with Palin’s fleshly form and image of “womanhood” leaves her evidently time neither to mention the political, financial, religious and military institutions in which Palin is enmeshed, nor to recognise and examine their role in the destruction of the egalitarian projects crumbling to bits around her as she remains rapt before Palin’s vagina.
The body, (other women’s bodies, not holy but horrifyingly attractive to men) dominates Power’s book in fact, which is almost completely destitute of any other topic. There are the breasts she reminds us God gave women for feeding offspring not holding up wet t-shirts at the American ritual of Spring Break she learned about on tv; there are the bodies in old nudie movies which she finds less disquieting than those in contemporary porn; there is her own body and the bodies of models whose bodies she feels hers must emulate but whose variety of shapes and colours offends and confuses her; there is Jessica Valenti’s body which she condemns as insatiably sensual and too important to Valenti, and of course there is the body down whose throat she pictures some emission of Valenti’s sliding, like a friendly bacteria yoghurt….