Letters to the Editor
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Joel, I'm a feminist and I care about gender equality
I've been reading feminist thought since Ms. Magazine came out when I was a child. My domestic scene is no picnic in that, yes, we are all on treadmills all of the time. My point in bringing up the So. Cal world I live in was this: even here, I don't know anyone who has had a boob job, much less anyone who is walking around passing it off as a self-esteem booster. I think I explained myself earlier when I said I didn't want to be thrown in with the crowd that says "no" meaning "yes," because when I say "no" that's what I mean--and that's what my daughter will mean when she says it too. And that's what my son will hear.
Good for you for reading feminist thought. It's important. But this article pertains to very few women, even in this country, and I think it's a luxury to worry about the particular issues it brings up. And excuse me for being less concerned about non-orgasmic "hook-ups" than Darfur.
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No hypocrites
Donna35: you're making the mistake of assuming that if you have not experienced something, it must not exist or is invalid. Yes, women fake orgasms. Yes, sometimes women can't decide what they want. You don't fake orgasms. You always know what you want. Congratulations, no one cares. If you write an interesting, intellectually poised book about it, then maybe someone will care.
By the way, you say that discussing various issues in Western feminism is a waste of time and self-indulgent in comparison to what's going on in the rest of the world. This may or may not be true, but I fail to understand how the way you are living your suburban, bourgeois life, raising suburban, borgeois children is helping to solve any world problems either. Let's not be hypocrites.
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SM
No, that is not what I am saying. Western feminism is important, but jesus, there is more to it than faking orgasms or not. Women who chose to fake orgasms are responsible for that. Let's talk about how hard it is these days to raise children in America if you are middle class. That's a good feminist issue. Also: I've been reading Laura Miller's book reviews for about eight years now. My favorite was her long-winded analysis of women writers, and why they were incapable of writing The Great American Novel. She isn't all about women's equality. She's about how their differences make them inferior.
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donna35,
In retrospect, despite your laying it on thick, I get where you're coming from. Salon's usual articles on this subject tend to be filled with precisely the sort of navel gazing pretensiousness that I think you're fed up with, BUT, I don't think that's the case here. What I liked about the article was that it questioned some of that dogma and trends.
Anyway, apologies if I was a bit harsh to you.
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masculinity "hinges on sustaining an underlying sense of male inadequacy"
The article quite rightly points out that femininity "hinges on sustaining an underlying sense of female inadequacy", but one could equally say the opposite:
Masculinity "hinges on sustaining an underlying sense of male inadequacy".
There are all sorts of masculine stereotypes men fail to live up to as well (carved six pack, Bradd Pitt good looks, naturally athletic and well-coordinated, and, let's not forget, wealthy and powerful).
On the one hand, these simplistic ideals that neither sex can live up to perhaps make us strive to better ourselves. I go to the gym for others, absolutely... which also makes going to the gym very much for me. And when I see the benefits to my health and happiness, I'm glad I'm not secure in my perfectness, sitting at home getting fat (and unhealthy) on the couch, in the name of not buying into a male stereotype.
We all struggle with who we might be able to be, versus who we really can be given our actual circumstances, versues who we ought to be, versus who we want to be, etc.
Any normal person tries to find a balance between these forces (unsatisfactorily, up until death), and though women and feminists certainly have their unique blend of wondering who should they be, and for whom, *nobody* gets a free pass. Women are not unique in having these sorts of struggles in the first place; their struggle just comes in a different flavour than men's.
When women (would it were now!) reach parity with men in terms of holding power in society, the struggle won't magically disappear.
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foofahwhfehifoeho
Yes, Jeffrey, how ridiculous of American women to want orgasms. They should be in the third world adopting babies with Angelina Jolie or something! They just don't know how good they have it, do they? That's their real problem.
Maybe if *men* were informed from a younger age that sex is not like in the movies and women aren't all Lara Croft getting off just thinking about how hot their implants look as they fire that uzi, and that instead they require clitoral stimulation, women would be able to have them. Because men might have an inkling of what to do about it.
Just think--if women got regular orgasms then maybe they wouldn't be so uptight and they would even be freed to worry about the really important things, like genital mutilation, and crusade against it. As I'm sure you do in your spare time.
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foofahwhfehifoeho II
In case you didn't pick up on it, I was trying to draw a subtle parallel between breast implants and the way women will cut themselves up to "enhance" their biological secondary sex characteristics, often going into massive debt to do so, and those poor clitori that were chopped of with rusty tin cans in Africa.
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Feminism vs Femininity
Reading this article prompted me to read your review of "Against Love". There is a very telling quote from Against Love in your review:
"...clearly if there were a Starr Report on every American marriage, the institution would instantly crumble, never to recover. And what, then, of the republic? Citizens obviously have a duty to lie about their sex lives, as Clinton himself knew -- and tried valiantly to do."
In your latest review, you say that Kipnis is saying:
"Instead, she's suggesting that we stop lying to ourselves by pretending we can run with the rabbits and hunt with the hounds."
I would like to argue that in order for women to be both feminine and feminists, they should become hounds and stop acting like rabbits.
My personal belief is that marriages fail because of dishonesty and lies. Many married women that I know are unwilling to face the fact that men are "hounds". They are willing to turn their backs on facts in order to maintain an illusion that they can turn their mate in to the Prince Charming of their child hood.
Almost all the men I know are unwilling to level with their women out of fear that their women will begin to hunt just like them. There's a Robert Heinlein quote that is very much on point:
"A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity. "
Both men and women are neurotically jealous and that's the problem.
So, men lie to their women so that they can continue doing the things society allows them to do, while women turn away from this reality in order to pursue their fantasy of turning their husbands / partners in to the Prince Charming they've been brought up to expect. Once in a while, partners might have an affair that will make them feel better, but that does not fix the root problem. It merely relieves the symptoms - boredom, insecurity, etc.. The root problem is jealousy.
In my view, the very difficult solution is to face the facts. We're just animals. There is a lot of positive that comes from marriage and a strong bond with your partner. Especially in regards to bringing up children. But, we need to face who we are. When we do, women will become empowered, the goal of feminism, and become more sexy and feminine than ever before.
Now, if only I could convince my wife.....
:-)