Letters to the Editor
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A cottage industry of gender divisiveness
The comments here are alarming me. I fear we're feeding a cottage industry of gender divisiveness, run by people who profit by making us believe one gender or the other has a monopoly on evil. Some people really believe that; most rational people don't. But such thinking is unproductive, and can only lead to more divisiveness and backlash.
Can we please stop with the generalizations, the stereotying about genders? Men need to acknowledge that women generally are, in numerous ways, many of them subtle, still treated as second class citizens. This is a cultural and historical remnant of a bygone era that neither I nor my fellow men create, but men need to work with women to change all that. And women need to acknowledge that stereotyping all males as evilwhen only a very small percentage of males do bad things is itself evil.
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"worst scar in American history"??
Hmmm... I wonder if the descendants of slaves think gender inequity is the "worst scar in American history"...
Nice hyperbole, though.
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Whatever
Feminism is not--could never even in an alternate reality or a parallel universe be mistaken for--the game.
What game is this? Feminism is glad to play the game of using men's limitations against them.
Men are finally fighting back. Get used to it, more is coming.
When do men have the latitude, freedom that women possess, even BEFORE feminism, the women were the coddled ones who did not have to risk themselves to prove their worth.
The worth was ASSUMED to be there.
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Women attacking women
The comments here are alarming me. I fear we're feeding a cottage industry of gender divisiveness, run by people who profit by making us believe one gender or the other has a monopoly on evil.
You really should not put down the professional 'feminism' industry so much.
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Texas Take
Well, living in Texas, it's always hard to tell what reality is elsewhere, but I obviously need to read Faludi's book.
Around here it just seemed like the standing male network in D.C., which was progressing over the past few decades, got a toxic dose of Texas Good Ol' Boys when we exported our trash to Washington. Bush and Co. practiced sweet-talking all the nice church-going folks here before going on to more fertile and profitable fields, although his record of incompetence was well known—ask any Texas "childrens". 9/11 was the best smoke screen that hapless W could have wished for, because had it not taken place, the Incompetent Cowboy and his sidekicks would surely have been rounded up by clever Yankees long before.
As far as women returning to our domestic chores, we're working hard to clean out our State House here so we don't let our trash escape again. Might mean getting uppidity, but Texas women have a history of doing that when needed, especially when it comes to seeing our young'uns—both boys and girls—shipped to pointless wars (and that even includes my 89-year old Aunt Dorothy, who doesn't think the war is very Christian).
I guess that we've been so busy signing Code Pink petitions, visiting Cindy Sheehan in Crawford (does she get a mention in the book?), celebrating Nancy Pelosi's rise, mourning Ann Richards and Molly Ivins, and having a record number of women run for office (finally have Dems running in Republican districts that will probably turn in 2008—Karen Felthouser almost unseated the incumbent in Bush country while being outspent 12 to 1: http://www.offthekuff.com/mt/archives/010090.html) that we didn't notice all the backward turns that feminism took, and are looking forward to the forelash.
Regarding Harriett and Condi, the Good Ol' Boys here always have a few token Good Ol' Girls (and minorities) as their workday Stand-by-Your-Man wives, so I'm not sure they really count as strikes for feminism.
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Bruce
I know Bruce Springsteen is great, everyone tells me so. But I've never been able to understand a word he sings. Never. Could I get a transcript? Thank you
Pat
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I don't get it
Faludi's argument is not at all compelling in the face of the first woman striding confidently -- and with very little opposition based on her gender alone -- to the Presidential podium. Hillary may not win, but her bid will always register as historic...in part because she's a woman but even more because no one seems to care all that much. Opposition to Hillary certainly exists, but has little or nothing to do with her being a female; it is almost always framed in terms of her ethics, stance on health care, foreign policy, etc.
In the past 2 years the media have been lousy with 'the mommy wars' and "boys at risk" stories. Surely these stories are a direct reflection on the culture as a whole's continued march toward gender equality. Both stories have the 'modern' woman as the power/driving force to be feared, threatening and smashing what is traditional (moms that stay home, moms in general, growing boys trying to be boys). If one wished, one could view the very presence of these stories as evidence that feminism is alive and well and effective as never before - else why so much anger and fear over its results?
Faludi's effort to co-opt 9/11 as a backdrop for a continued backlash against feminism is weak. I mean, come on -she wrote "Backlash" in 1991....and is claiming the backlash continue 16 years later, refreshed by events of 9/11? Pretty scurrilous.
I could just as easily write a book about how men have been 'freed' by 9/11...they are marrying in their 20s at less than half the rate of men in their 20s two decades ago. The trouble is that 9/11, seminal as it was, has nothing at all to do with that cultural shift - it's the triumph of feminism. Men are far more likely to demand equal partners in a marriage than was the case for their fathers and brothers just 20 years ago. Women are far more likely to defer marriage and child-bearing until they have established their careers.
If testosterone fuel the response to 9/11, including the ongoing backlash of feminism (and yes, to answer Faludi's gleeful journalist -- war does put feminism on the backburner of most people's agendas...racism too. All kinds of isms, in fact), then maybe all Faludi is proving with the writing of this book is that she has more than her fair share.