The Onion: Women Now Empowered by Everything a Woman Does

[redqueen]

An oldie but a goodie

Women Now Empowered By Everything A Woman Does
http://www.theonion.com/articles/women-now-empowered-by-everything-a-woman-does,1398/

OBERLIN, OH—According to a study released Monday, women—once empowered primarily via the assertion of reproductive rights or workplace equality with men—are now empowered by virtually everything the typical woman does.

"From what she eats for breakfast to the way she cleans her home, today's woman lives in a state of near-constant empowerment," said Barbara Klein, professor of women's studies at Oberlin College and director of the study. "As recently as 15 years ago, a woman could only feel empowered by advancing in a male-dominated work world, asserting her own sexual wants and needs, or pushing for a stronger voice in politics. Today, a woman can empower herself through actions as seemingly inconsequential as driving her children to soccer practice or watching the Oxygen network."

...

Whereas early feminists campaigned tirelessly for improved health care and safe, legal access to abortion, often against a backdrop of public indifference or hostility, today's feminist asserts control over her biological destiny by wearing a baby-doll T-shirt with the word "Hoochie" spelled in glitter.


"Not every woman can become a physicist or lobby to stop a foundry from dumping dangerous metals into the creek her children swim in," Klein said. "Although these actions are incredible, they marginalize the majority of women who are unable to, or just don't particularly care to, achieve such things. Fortunately for the less impressive among us, a new strain of feminism has emerged in which mundane activities are championed as proud, bold assertions of independence from oppressive patriarchal hegemony."

...

[iverglas]

1. and the companion piece!

The ultimate victory for feminism!

http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-finally-put-in-charge-of-struggling-feminist-m,2338/

Man Finally Put In Charge Of Struggling Feminist Movement

December 3, 2007 |

WASHINGTON—After decades spent battling gender discrimination and inequality in the workplace, the feminist movement underwent a high-level shake-up last month, when 53-year-old management consultant Peter "Buck" McGowan took over as new chief of the worldwide initiative for women's rights.

McGowan, who now oversees the group's day-to-day operations, said he "couldn't be happier" to bring his ambition, experience, and no-nonsense attitude to his new role as the nation's top feminist.

"All the feminist movement needed to do was bring on someone who had the balls to do something about this glass ceiling business," said McGowan, who quickly closed the 23.5 percent gender wage gap by "making a few calls to the big boys upstairs." "In the world of gender identity and empowered female sexuality, it's all about who you know."

Gotta run, they're about to announce the new leader of my party!

[TPaine7]

3. Very funny! n/t

[seabeyond]

5. "The whole movement just seems more legitimate with Buck in charge,"

the onion is too right on sometimes to be satirical.

[seabeyond]

2. it appears though, once the young feminist matures

or simply recognizes how this is not working for us, they are seeming to change their position.... totally.

Natasha Walter

We have arranged to meet to talk about her new book, Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism. It is organised in two distinct parts, and the first finds Walter ­taking a journey through the seedy underbelly of modern culture, an ­excursion that starts, in faintly ­surreal fashion, at a "Babes on the Bed" ­competition in a Southend nightclub, a contest to find a glamour model for Nuts magazine. It's difficult to ­imagine anyone more ­incongruous here than the intellectual, refined Walter; ­especially when the DJ starts ­shouting, "This is Cara Brett! She's on the cover of Nuts this week! So buy her, take her home and have a wank." The ­uncomfortable scene grows uglier as a series of young women take to a bed and strip off their bras to "joggle" their breasts before a throng of men.

The journey continues through interviews with a former lap dancer called Ellie, who helps illustrate just how sexist the culture has ­become: "Now," says ­Ellie, "women get told they are prudes if they say they don't want their boyfriend to go to a club where he gets to stick his fingers in someone else's vagina." She interviews a woman she calls Angela, who, in ­describing her work as a prostitute, says that "basically you've consented to being raped sometimes for money". And then there's pornography addict Jim, who says that "porn is way more brutalising than it used to be. There is this unbelievable obsession with [extreme] anal sex . . . It's far more demeaning to women than in the past."

*

One email in particular stuck out, a message from a 17-year-old girl called Carly Whiteley. She said that she was "starting to think it was time to give up and sit in silence while my friends put on a porno and grunted about ­whatever blonde, airbrushed piece of plastic was in Nuts this week. What you said gave me back the will not to give in . . . It's nice to see someone else saying it, makes me feel like less of a prude-type oddball."

The "prude" reference was key. In Living Dolls, Walter takes on the ­notion that, for example, stripping and pole dancing are ­empowering, ­liberating choices; instead, she ­suggests, it has become increasingly difficult for young women to opt out of this culture, to take any path other than that which leads inexorably to fake nails, fake tan and, finally, fake breasts. And, if they do, there are ­serious social penalties. "I was surprised by the attitudes of the girls I interviewed," she says, "who seemed to feel that they would be mocked if they protested within their peer groups. You know, when I was at university [in the 80s] it was OK to be annoyed about ­sexism, to take it quite seriously – if you argued about it, it didn't make you the ­subject of ­mockery. Even if you didn't ­particularly identify yourself as a feminist, you could choose where you wanted to be on a spectrum, and you could still say, 'I really don't want Page 3 in the ­common room,' or, 'I ­really hate the idea of porn' . . . I was surprised when I was ­interviewing young women that they felt ­uncomfortable engaging in that way. Of course, a lot them would say, 'It's fine, we can choose whether to [interact with the sexist culture] or not,' and then you dig a little deeper, and you realise that it is more ­problematic than that."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/25/natasha-walter-feminism-sexism-return

[iverglas]

7. it must be a drag to be young these days

and to have one's options so limited by social attitudes.

Funny how we back then thought we were making the world into something quite the opposite for the ones who came after.

I don't remember ever giving a shit about what anybody else thought about anything I said or did, pretty much. Not after I was about 14, anyhow. I mean, sure, I felt like an outsider a lot of the time, and that can be a drag, but I didn't actually alter my thinking or my actions to get "in", because I really and truly just didn't want to be in that "in" place. Even when I moved to a broader world, university at 16, and made friends and joined groups with more similar outlooks, I still felt "out" in my radicalism sometimes, at least socially. (Years later, people told me how they thought I was the "in" one, and the one who obviously knew exactly who I was and what I wanted ... which wasn't how I saw myself at all.) But there were occasional young men who appreciated that kind of autonomous thought and action, at least. And young men in general at the time certainly were not even remotely as vulgarly misogynist as so many are these days.

Maybe the best lesson we can try to pass on to women who feel oppressed by this culture, the one actually to be learned from experience, is that the only way to achieve a modicum of real happiness is to live by your own values. And seek out people who share them. At any given moment it might seem that it would feel better to cave and join, but utimately that won't work. You may not achieve the same kinds of success you might by caving and joining. (In another regard, if I'd caved on my political principles and joined the "establishment", I'd have been a very rich lawyer invited to all the right parties, instead of a lawyer having to support myself by other methods so I could do the work I believed in -- although in my case it really was just about congenitally impossible for me to do otherwise. ) But the kind of happiness that comes from living your values isn't matched by anything else, in the end.


bad editing edited

[seabeyond]

8. jeeez... lol

i didnt realize the similarity. i have never been a part and am fine with it. maybe more fine as i got older, but was fine enough about it when young, i refused to do anything about it. even though i was capable if i choose.

i have often said, i dont desire to lead, but i refuse to follow, too.

my 19 and 22 yr old niece both refuse the game. my oldest niece had to come to it after listening to me a lot for a couple years and personal experience. y youngest niece was in my house so often, and independent enough, she just is.

i think it is awfully sad, too. and leaving them open to a lot of work on self when they get older, to live in that grounded, balanced, healthy world.

or not

[TPaine7]

4. LOL! n/t

[RobertEarl]

6. Actually

I knew a woman like that. I always thought she was being a bit macho, but it may have been that she was growing so fast in her time with me that the little things she was discovering she could do, and not be oppressed, were transforming? I like to think so....

She had been mightily oppressed in former relationships, she claimed, and now that she had freedom to express herself made it seem like the world had changed?

Anyway, it is a damn shame women have been treated the way they have.