Feminism: what went wrong?

[seabeyond]

My daughter and her friends are hard-working, sensible girls who care about exams and don't aspire to be models for Nuts or Heat, as far as I am aware. No doubt there is an element of irony, and mother-bating, in her wish-list. But there is a serious problem with the mindless hedonism that grew out of Girl Power and learnt its morals from Sex and the City, a problem which Natasha Walter examines in her new book, Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism. Walter, for those not up to speed on the feminist canon – and who is, these days? – wrote The New Feminism, published in 1998, which delighted in the progress that had been made towards an equal society. ''Here's feminism as phoenix, as blazing torch lighting the way to a new century,'' wrote Michele Roberts in a breathlessly enthusiastic review. Now all that optimism has turned to dust. Living Dolls analyses the increasing sexualisation of feminity and the extent to which young women are led to believe that their bodies are their only passport to success.

Far from relations between the sexes flourishing emotionally and physically, against a backdrop of mutual respect, understanding and equality, a generation of young girls is interpreting liberation as the right to behave like top-shelf models. These women, interviewed by Walter, are also committed to no-strings sex, celebrating one-night stands as notches on their designer handbags. For them, STDs are almost a badge of honour, eating disorders commonplace and men who talk of love and commitment are sneered at for "going soppy". "In previous generations many women had to repress their physical needs and experiences in order to fall in with social conventions, and feminism was needed to release them from the cage of chastity," writes Walter. "But what I heard from some women is that they feel there is now a new cage holding them back from the liberation they sought, a cage in which repression of emotions takes the place of repression of physical needs." In short, they daren't feel because it might limit the exercise of their freedom. "It's my choice," is now an argument-clincher for any kind of louche behaviour.

*

A few years ago feminism
was dismissed as boring and earnest, something espoused by women in dungarees, that sartorial symbol of a movement that felt the need to hide women's femininity, not celebrate it. These days, the very word feminism has become so besmirched that is is now referred to as the f-word. But, with the turn of the new decade, a slew of books is attempting to recast, or revive, the almost-deceased debate about women's place in society, among them Ellie Levenson's The Noughtie Girl's Guide to Feminism and Kat Banyard's The Equality Illusion. These books will be lucky to find any kind of readership, when even intelligent young women choose Katie Price as their role model. Price is unashamed of surgically enhancing her body in order to make herself more sexually and commercially desirable; she epitomises everything Walter bemoans. Price hasn't got a good degree, or a stable marriage, but she has made a pile of money out of her grotesquely exaggerated charms. This, it seems, is where feminism has led us: down a cul-de-sac lined with lap-dancing clubs and the right to pole dance. Talking of which, that's my daughter's next request: pole-dancing lessons. "My teacher says it works all the muscles."

Questions about the flaunting of sexuality do not trouble this generation. Today, the only debate about gender issues centres on the physiological differences between men and women. "All that gender determinist stuff about men having one kind of brain and women another is even more dangerous that the more aggressive sexism of the past," finds Izzy Finkel, who has just graduated from Cambridge, and, like most of her contemporaries, is chiefly concerned with getting a job.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/6969532/Feminism-what-went-wrong.html

[WingDinger]

1. "the very word feminism has become so besmirched that is is now referred to as the f-word."

Same process as LIBERAL.


"All that gender determinist stuff about men having one kind of brain and women another is even more dangerous that the more aggressive sexism of the past,"


I see the same theistic bent on proving LGBT are deterministic. And fight it as simple explain. Gender and all it's trappings are being crammed into one size fits all. And even ordained by God. I can only imagine how far both men and women regress, if the rethugs win. Country musics idea of MAN will be idealized. And woman will be something out of MADMEN. The male version of Sex and the City.

[seabeyond]

2. i chose to define myself as feminist, liberal, democrat, not cause i am but because it blows peoples

minds in the area i live in, just to hear those words.

i am not any of those things, really. (maybe feminist now, but not when i was using the words). i dont do well in any group. i dont follow. i dont lead. but, i own the words just to say them out loud. and ask, do you love me anyway? this is the look of a liberal, feminist, democrat. am i really that evil?

consistently people will say, i am the exception. and i will tell them, no.... this is it. all it is.

your post is very very perceptive. i agree. and what i see. but, it is foolish for us to think it is just the repug agenda of what a male is. it is not. it is across the board, male issue.

[WingDinger]

3. Be the salt of the earth. As we were enticed.

I know the patriarchy is not partisan per se. Every possible gender advantage, is designed. Sounds conspiratorial, but is a tool, just as femininity was a tool for Marilyn Monroe. The Rethugs though, are selling women that on balance, traditional femininity, and dissmissing of same, is a fair bargain.

[redqueen]

6. I swear to you that I only saw this post

after I'd responded in the REDSTOCKINGS thread. GMTA and all that...

[seabeyond]

7. i know. right. i thought that pretty nifty of winger.... nt

[MadrasT]

4. The comments on that article are appalling. n/t

[seabeyond]

5. internet is so anti women that i never read comments anymore. it skews my view of RL.

cnn taught me that.

[redqueen]

8. "There is a cost associated with being opposed to sexism which most people do not have the courage

to endure."

Saw that on Facebook. Definitely agree, so I thought I'd share it here.