The old guard
I am not sure why people continue to perpetuate the idea that feminism is something in which only women can participate. Now, I don’t read Ms. magazine, although I suppose I would rather flip through it than Cosmopolitan if it were laying around in a doctor’s office. But the publishers of Ms. recently created a shitstorm in the “feminist” community by putting an illustration of Barack Obama on the cover ripping open his suit to reveal a t-shirt underneath reading, “This is what a feminist looks like.” It doesn’t seem like such a big deal to me–nothing even worth mentioning–but apparently there are quite a few feminist organizations that are pretty huffy about it.
But why?
I have never understood why it is that men are not allowed to be feminists. Doesn’t that defeat the whole point of defeating the patriarchy? There is ample evidence that a patriarchal society is harmful to men as well as women, especially men of color/queer men/men of lower socioeconomic class. Personally, I’m always excited to hear when a man identifies as a feminist. However, my Women’s Studies major friends inform me that this perspective puts me decidedly on the edge of a different wave of feminism than is commonly represented when the MSM decides they need to hear about “women’s issues”. According to the book Manifesta, a poorly written and shoddily constructed book about the so-called third wave of feminism (think Generation X, chunky Mary Janes and riot librarrrians), feminism can be neatly divided into three eras: the first wave of suffragettes, the second wave of bra-burners from the 70s, and the third wave of disaffected Gen Xers who horrified the Brownmillers by wearing lipstick but went to Wellesley to major in Gender Studies anyway. It’s a very narrow, classist view of what feminism means and can mean to other women and men and people in general, and sets up an entire social movement to be exclusionary and separatist.
I like the idea of not just one kind of Gloria Steinem-approved feminist theory and thought but a plurality of the same, such that “feminisms” is a more apt term than simply “feminist”. While I do think that there are hallmark traits and beliefs associated with feminist identification, I would like the term(s) associated with feminism(s) to be broadened and expanded upon. Because feminisms should mean something to everybody, and it won’t happen if the MSM continues to perpetuate the idea that feminists are stodgy old broads who have nothing better to snipe about than a picture of Barack Obama on the cover of a magazine that hardly anyone reads.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 7th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
thanks for the link - I was super excited to read that the Obama administration will make every effort to ratify CEDAW.