Feminism

Discovering my Inner Germaine Greer at Girl With Pen


I have never taken to the label of feminist. An interesting quirk because I know that most people would label me one with ease, but I found them and their message to be limited mainly to the elite. The women who lunched set or those who worked for self-enrichment as opposed to the paycheck for which I and most of the women I knew worked.

Feminism had too many sub-groups. It reminded me more of high school with the pretty girls versus the band girls versus the jockettes versus the home ec crowd. Forgive my stereo-typing, but we women haven’t quite got it together as far as working together for our own common good goes.

But what is our common good? That’s the thing. Read Full Article

Sex and the City: Getting My B.S. in Post-Feminism


Girls Will Analyze Two-Word Conversations Like Jesuit Theologians

 

Girl #1: Oh my god, did I tell you? Alex called me yesterday! And it wasn’t 6 am for once, it was 3 pm!
Girl #2: That’s great!
Girl #1: I know. He was like [low voice] “heeeeeeey” and I was like [high voice] “heeeeey!” and it was amazing. Well, not really. But it was so great.  

–Starbucks, Washington Square (Overheard in New York)

I didn’t watch Sex and the City until after I was widowed. I think by then it was in syndication on regular cable channels, and so I didn’t even see it in all its HBO soft-porn glory. When I did watch the show, it was never on purpose. By that time I rarely watched television and any sofa-tater activity was a result of my inability to tune my mind to the off position and grab a little sleep.

For me the show wasn’t lulling. It took everything that was most awful about approaching middle-age, female and alone, and nearly all the worst aspects of women’s friendships and rolled it up in stereo-types, blatant contradictions, and really infuriating ideas about women that it would work me up more than it numbed me with glutton-like consumerism and cultural cliche. Read Full Article

Better to Let Horses Condemn Themselves


Ever hear the saying “From the horse’s mouth”? For a while now the media has been insisting that it’s treatment of the Democratic presidential candidates has been not only fair and balanced but that they have in no way played the gender card against Sen. Clinton. In fact, they go on, sexism just really doesn’t play into politics – or even out in the day to day lives of ordinary people – anymore. We are a gender blind nation of equals, baby.

The truth is something different and frankly for me this goes far beyond the current political campaign. How do you raise daughters in a such a chilly emotional climate? When these are the messages that are being hurled at us by the media? How does a young female (or an old one even) learn to be proud of who they are when everything about their biology is considered fair game for ridicule by people who should know better?