Letters to the Editor
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Couldn't agree more with you, CindyLu
The whole tone of Valenti's article is that 'older feminists' are the big honking problem for being mean to the brilliant (and irrefutably correct) 'younger feminists'. (btw, I fall into both categories, depending on who's defining the cutoff age).
She's careful to list ALL of younger feminists' grievances against the older ones, but curiously omits the insults hurled the other way, which can mostly be summarized as that older feminists are too stupid, resentful, dull, mindlessly following a party line and (most of all) OLD to have an opinion.
I loved this sentence:
We also know how hard our feminist foremothers fought to be here and how important the moment is--and we want to be a part of it. I certainly do. But not at the expense of what I believe is best for women....
Oh my, how very noble Jessica. Thank goodness you have a patent on living one's principles! Unlike 'older' feminists who could not possibly also be expressing their own beliefs of what is best for women.
I'd be more persuaded to take younger femnists' opinions seriously if they'd actually iterate why Obama is a good feminist choice, rather than shouting about how they're being constrained by the evil stepmothers of the First Wave. I spent quite a while looking, and had I been able to find even one or two, I may have voted for Obama. You may not agree with older femninsts' reasons for supporting Clinton, but at least they have them.
Her solution is just as much a throwaway as the 'group hug' she mocks. I was a bit surprised at its shallowness, until CindyLu tipped us to her book promotion. Now it makes sense.
And um, what does Steinem's china have to do with anything?
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Hey,
We're young
You're old
and that's life!
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@manos
One day, if you are fortunate, you will be as "old" as we are.
Then, because it's karma, you're likely to run someone just like you, implying that you have no more to contribute and that you should get off the planet or at least STFU.
Can we assume you will withdraw gracefully?
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Excuse me??
"The younger generation has never been told that they shouldn't get paid as much as their male co-workers because they don't have 'a family to support' and have never had to try to make progress in a company that thinks that women should all be beautiful and bubbly. They think that they're feminists because they've marched in a couple of 'take back the night' marches (as if only feminists can be opposed to rape) and because they can tell a man that he has to wear a condom."
Excuse me?? I'm part of that younger generation, and I spent 4 years in the Army. I was a platoon leader, executive officer and eventually acting commander of an 80-person PATRIOT Air Defense Artillery battery in Germany and in Kuwait. And let me tell you, I ASPIRED to be addressed as "bitch." That was what happened on a GOOD day.
Don't tell me what I have and haven't been through. You know, it seems to me that it's the older generation that doesn't give a crap about what the younger generation has to say. Not to mention the fact that this older generation of feminists has had very little use for women of *any* generation who have had successful military careers. You don't suppose I'd have any insights as to what it would take for a woman to actually serve successfully as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, would you? Nah...you have all the answers, I'm sure...
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Actually...
captainlarab, had you been a bit less defensive and shout-y, I'm guessing most older feminists would be rather interested in your experiences. After all, none of them would have been allowed in your position. (although being in the military is far from the only experience where being called a bitch is a good day). That particular accusation was rather left field.
The previous poster was speaking in general. And generally, very few younger women have had a lot of experience in the workplace or other venues. That does not mean 'without exception'. The personal may be the political, but that is not the same as taking every political statement personally.
Younger people don't tend to value experience because they don't have much, they don't even have the experience of having experience, so it's difficult to really value it.
The funny thing is, this alleged intergeneration rift is hardly new or unique to feminism; almost every culture, political group, organization and you-name-it experiences it. Yet what is actually a fairly common occurrence is slapped across a flaming banner by media and anyone who hates/fears/dislikes/is annoyed by feminism as the herald of the feminist apocalypse.
This election campaign is a case in point; according to the demographics going to Clinton and Obama, there is just as much of a 'divide' between older Democrats and younger Democrats, but I've yet to read a single article about how it's the destruction of the Democratic Party.
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worst of the isms?
Ms. Valenti's article states that "NOW executives . . . campaigning for Clinton in Ohio told women voters that sexism is 'the worst of the isms.'"
Hmmm. Worse even than cannibalism? Fascism? Jihadism?
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Women Hating Women
Women fighting women. Women hating women. That's what these blogs and this campaign have become. Younger women adamant about supporting Obama and chiming in on some of the sexist spew about Clinton...older women going both directions. Blacks being called "traitors" for not voting for Obama and women being called heroes if they do...what a disgusting showing of how far we have actually come.
Younger women have no knowledge or respect for what their mothers and grandmothers went through or the roads they forged for them. They will get older though, and things will become clearer then...when they have to deal with their daughters and grand daughters, who again, won't get it.
Whatever happens to Hillary in this campaign, she has forged a road for women in America that no other woman ever has -- on so many levels. That is just a fact. And when women attack her stance on women's issues (ridiculous) and say -- just not "that woman" -- they completely disregard that "that woman" is the only woman who could get that far in over 200 years -- for a reason. All of her qualities that are so loved and so hated are exactly why "that woman" is where she is in American politics today...like it or not. Someone had to be the first -- and I challenge all of the female "Hillary Haters" to live one day in her shoes...to see what she faces, not just from them, but from the rest of the world as well.