>> yes, i agree that one cannot forbid. But we CAN encourage people to
>> think about their expectations of gender, and challenge their
>> disinclination to examine their supposedly innate and unchangeable
>> preferences. After all, if i said, well actually I'd like to just keep
ted replied:
>see above.
by which he referred to: [>and beside those 'many, many men' are those who
are *not*
>threatened by these things. in disregarding them you dis-
>regard positive signs of progress in order to recite the
>same old totalizing message. that's not to say that i re-
>ject what you say--i don't--but i *do* think the failure
>to digest that simple fact is counterproductive.]
the point of course, ted, is that the objections were wielded in this way: 'it's not true that the cultural norm is for older men to marry younger women be/c i see plenty of people who do otherwise. therefore, it was argued, it's all really a matter of personal preferences.'
now come on. none of it's a matter of autonomous asocial personal preferences. and *that* was the point. there's a big difference between saying things are different and acknowledging the way in which desire is socially constituted and that's why things are different, and saying things are different because things have changed and now our "natural' desires are set free to manifest themselves willy nilly and wow. taht was entirely my reason for reciting good solid reasons why, for ex, women are considered attractive in the 40s and 50s today, when they weren't two decades ago, and that had little to do with feminism and a lot to do with shifting demographics, divorce rates, later age at first marriage and so forth.
ted also writes
>
>just a few years ago it was very alamodal for young women
>to be explicitly 'antifeminist' for various reasons.
i think you're confusing what judith stacey, among others, identified as 'postfeminism' [a general cultural phenomena] with what has now come to be called third wave feminism --grrrRl poWer, riotgrrrrls and all that--a particular "brand" of feminism. that is, there was a general phenom some feminists identified -- a sense among young women [like me] who thought that it had all been accomplished and the world lay before them.** [quick note to say that it took a long time for me to identify with fem b/c i identified as a marxist b/c of my class position way be/f i understood how my class identity was also shaped by gender/race] the wider cultural phenom activiely rejected the label feminism entirely. but in that sense they are no different than the women who rejected feminism in 1965. it's always been quite beyond me as to why older feminists thought they saw something new when they saw young women rejecting feminism -- it was always there. frankly what i think they identified was the trend away from activism in academia in general and the changing face of academia as it expanded to accept more people of color and working class whites. i also think that they were campus feminists who simply saw feminism all around them and then were shocked to discover that it wasn't once they had to start teaching a diverse body of students and/or move out of the isolated activist circles [see doug mcadam's brilliant analysis of the life history of movments in _freedom summer_]
the third wave doesn't reject feminism but embraces it--tho on somewhat new terms. that did entail, to some extent, a rejection or questioning of claims older feminists made about the sources of gender oppression and the prescribed strategies for fighting it. the somewhat popular strategy of separatism in the 70s, for example, has fallen by the wayside. but that's for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is that the interest in cultural separatism subsided in general. third wavers often read the material from the 70s only to say "oshkoshbygosh but who would want to cut themselves off from men? i like men. don't want no one thinking i'm one of those strident lezbeans because, hey, afterall, it's kewl to be a lezbean these daze, especially with an appreciative male audience" but as you suggest, that attitude is possible because of the work of feminists and gay rights activists.
i think i might have reflected what you're getting at four yrs ago on the bad list when i told catherine and laura that i considered myself a womanist, not a feminist. which, in and of itself, is interesting because the term came from alice walker who, long ago, argued that mainstream feminism did not represent black women's experiences, explanations for their conditions, etc.
and so, the dynamic you attribute to generational differences may not be attributable to that at all. the third wavers grrRl feminism with their sex positiveness and their wonder bras was always present within feminisms.
there has always been contention over the things argued here.
was that fem-
>inist battles had succeeded to the point where any actual
>return was well-nigh impossible, because the advances had
>become 'naturalized'--an almost transparent aspect of soc-
>iety. so i think it's fair to say that there *is* a gener-
>ational dimension to these changes.
i don't disagree. one of the best pieces of work i read in prep for teaching my first women's studies course did get at this dynamic and how to run a classroom in such as way so as not to presume the self-evidence of feminist analyses. the most practical reason for not presenting it as all doom and gloom, of course, is that if you don't then people find women's studies courses to be overwhelmingly depressing--sexisms is huge and everywhere and so how can I, one person, possibly fight it. so there is a move, at least on the women's studies list, to address this issue.
>and beside those 'many, many men' are those who are *not*
>threatened by these things. in disregarding them you dis-
>regard positive signs of progress in order to recite the
>same old totalizing message. that's not to say that i re-
>ject what you say--i don't--but i *do* think the failure
>to digest that simple fact is counterproductive.
i'm not sure that's what katha did--disregard positive signs of change. and while i think you have a point, sometimes it's simply a matter of strategy as to what you emphasize and what you don't. that is, if you paid careful attn to this discussion early on, katha and i were actually disagreeing. once we'd agreed on the general points, we were starting to move into a more nuanced discusson of the degree to which, say, media representations matter, how they affect our agency, whether they are univocal, and what to think about the substance of those represenations.
>
>i think basing practical social criticism on films in insane.
why? you go look at the singles ads and you explain to me why way more het men describe what they are looking for in terms of ref to some media babe than women describe what they want by invoking some media god
>and i'll tell you another thing: when feminism succeeds, it'll
>need to disappear.
and so will the critics of feminism. ahhh but we've been down that path before, eh?
kelley