[lbo-talk] Free Martha!

D F Cornwell dorenefc at aol.com
Tue Jan 20 16:32:17 PST 2004


Actually, I do not think it requires any particular feminist insight or feminist intent for Martha to suffer sexist double standards. Just ask,s ay Jeanne Kirkpatrick. MS is a big target and her level of wealth puts her out of the league for the average woman, but I think it is possible to muse inconclusively for the moment about whether women or men of comparable standing are more likely to be nailed for covering up their grey business dealings.

Maybe Marth really is doing what makes her happy. Maybe she is such a patrician stiff that a lot of us cannot tell whether she is happy. Maybe her worst fits just wind up on the cutting room floor and maybe she would look a lot more huamn--or a look kkoier--if the fits didn't all get editted out. Maybe she has enough control over her corner of the world to feel like she can maintain some semblance of cotidian sanity and not have to look beyond that.

Anywaym, amking exucses for Martha is surprisingly fun, but she is still better off with a good lawyer.

DC

Michael Dawson -PSU wrote on 1/20/2004, 2:38 PM:

> I also don't think there's an ounce of feminist impulse, explicit or

> implicit, in anything she does. The claim that men resent her because

> treats the home as a business-place is ridiculous, a true reach,

> IMHO. MS

> does not treat the home as a business place. She treats it as a

> museum of

> self-display, just as upper-class wives have done for centuries. And her

> cold personality has absolutely nothing to do with shattering gender

> stereotypes. On the contrary, I'd say her ability to go through the

> motions

> of what she does without any genuine joy, yet to actually sell that

> mode of

> being as "a good thing," is profoundly anti-feminist. It sends the

> message

> that the conventional arrangement of upper-class households -- men off at

> the office and/or club, and joyless, isolated women making the home

> proper -- is something to which everybody ought to aspire.

>



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