Letters to the Editor
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But the more women who make it through the hostility and claw their way into these male bastions the less this will happen
Until there are enough women in it that it becomes a female bastion and then the same thing starts happening to the men. Because women don't feel the need to prove themselves in the same way men do the dynamics are slightly different but make no mistake: when the group is all women then not being a woman, and therfore not being able to act socially exactly like a woman, is experienced by the women in the group as causing a problem that has to be penalized. Obviously if there are lots of both then this is a different thing.
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There's more to femininity than the superficial
Practically the only example given of the femininity that is incompatible with feminism: Eve Ensler's belly-trimming woes--which stand for the whole capitalist beauty/diet/fashion-industrial complex and its imperialist hegemony over women's self-images. Feminism is right to take on this battle for female self-determination.
Where I question this formulation of femininity--I'm not sure if it originated from Laura Kipnis's book or the reviewer's gist of it--is this equating all of femininity with the colonization and exploitation of women's bodies for the sake of superficial appearances.
At this point I hear the voice of Margaret Cho explaining why she loves belly dance--
"The audience was practically all women. I had this notion that belly dance was strictly for men, like strippers, but I couldn't have been more wrong. There were women of all ages, all shapes and sizes, dancing for each other and having a blast. I've never seen a more accepting environment for women's bodies. It blew my mind. Here, what is considered excess flesh by mainstream Hollywood standards is considered beautiful. In fact it's better to have some weight on you if you want to shimmy properly. Women were moving their bellies, popping them out, popping them back in. Undulating. I had never seen women celebrate their stomachs before, ever. The stomach had always been a shameful thing for me, the dead giveaway that I was never going to be the ethereal love object, the chic and popular model, the movie star's girlfriend, but merely a fat and unchangeable human being. In ballet class, I was always admonished for not pulling my stomach in tight enough. In the gym, I was screamed at because I could never do enough crunches. I didn't even like to drink water because it made my belly bloat. These are the reasons I just stopped working out. I couldn't take all the dehydration and self-hatred. At the Cairo Carnival, my belly was free. Cairo—a name that conjures up the desert—ironically is the one place I finally felt safe to drink. Drink in the joy of women enjoying their bodies, loving each other and themselves."
The richness of femininity expressed by this dance--which does not depend on trim bellies but accepts all bellies of any size and treats them as beautiful--provides an example of femininity at a deeper level than the superficial. As in the poem "Belly Dancer" by Diane Wakoski, invoking the motion of the serpent:
If a snake glided across this floor
most of them would faint or shrink away.
Yet that movement could be their own.
That smooth movement frightens them—
awakening ancestors and relatives to the tips of the arms and toes.
So my bare feet
and my thin green silks
my bells and finger cymbals
offend them—frighten their old-young bodies.
While the men simper and leer—
glad for the vicarious experience and exercise.
They do not realize how I scorn them:
or how I dance for their frightened,
unawakened, sweet
women.
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Well, see...
>The only men I know that assess a woman's value based on "fuckability" are usually around 19 years-old and have just got their first new car.<
But that is "Man's" stunted idea of what being a real man is. He thinks women should be dealt with as fuck-toys--and resign themselves to that as being the way "real" men act because he's too immature and mysogynistic to change. His attitude is the same as racists who whine that non-whites are cramping their style by objecting to racial slurs. It's all about them--to hell with anyone else.
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Two moronic camps...
>What I read from Susan's post was that she was reduced to fuckability after a discussion among what she thought were equals in a progressive setting.<
Yep, that was the point. But the folks attacking her can't deal with that--or don't want to. I don't know which side is worse: the "you should be resigned to being insulted, you whiny baby--that's the way real men are, so live with it" woman-hating crew or the "if you were a real strong woman--like me--you would have just ignored getting blindsided like that." (I'll just ignore the "you can't spell" crew--that's the only arguement they can dredge up--:)) Both sides refuse to face how nasty and unneccessary that insult was because they would love to pull that (in the case of the first group) or don't want to be reminded it can happen to them no matter how "strong" they are (in the case of the second.)
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Yup...
>In my 20s, particularly, those moments cut to the heart for me. The guy's a jerk, of course, and his seek-solidarity-with-men-by-hurting-women is a very classic move among mean, shallow guys.<
Given that she was networking with him professionally, he was angry she wasn't charmed by his charms. Dissing her was a way to save face--a classic spiteful manuever of insecure people. Of course the "suck it up" and the "I'm a stronger woman than you" crowds on here aren't going to look closely at _his_ screwed-up thinking. Much easier to blame it on Susan because her story made them uncomfortable.
As for Susan--hon, you did nothing wrong. You wound up in a no-win situation. The guy was a creep--it's a good thing you found out early on. As for those giving you grief--nix 'em. They've got issues they don't want to deal with--or are too ignorant or weak to try to. :)
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Uh huh....Yup, that must be it....
"Given that she was networking with him professionally, he was angry she wasn't charmed by his charms."
Except that it's NOT what happened. Nowhere in Susan's "Sex and The City" type preciousness/drama was there any indication that HE was trying to charm HER. He stupidly dissed her, by way of an overheard comment, based on a questionable supposition, or more likely, as a tacky effort to dodge her networking efforts and run out of a lame party. It seems like he and his boys couldn't get out of there fast enough and took the first excuse that was offered by any one of them no matter how dubious it was.
All this "What Does It All Mean For Womanhood" big picture posturing and babbling about who has "issues" or not is nonsense. Dang, I think donna35 really had a point earlier and so does Kipnis.