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Two Sides of the Same Con
[Cross-posted from Infinite Thought]
Feminism is the new spam mail, offering you the latest deals in lifestyle improvement, from the bedroom to the boardroom, from guilt-free fucking to the innocent hop-skip all the way to the shopping mall - I don't diet so it's ok! I'm not deluded! I can buy what I like!
Feminism TM is the perfect accompaniment to femme-capital TM: Politics, such as it isn't, belongs to the well-balanced individual (the happy shopper), sassiness is like, so where it's at (consumer confidence) and, most of all, one must never, ever admit to cracks in the facade (oh, you know, ideology). This foundation is flawless! And it lasts all night! Unlike men, titter, titter, etc. etc. Capitalism makes a better lover than any guy - it's full of shoes, and Sex in the City DVDs and gossip mags and, like, now we've proved that eating chocolate is more exciting than kissing...but didn't we know that all along, girls?...The world is ours for the taking...just let me finish this packet of Maltesers first...
Today's puff piece for equality by Jessica Valenti nforms us that not only does feminism do wonders for one's flat ('as I was getting ready for the photoshoot for this article, the guy I'm dating...tidied up for me so the photographer wouldn't see what a tip my apartment is at the weekends'), it actually makes life more fun. You see, girls, it's not all about grim-faced non-shaving and being a bit angry. Feminism can, ohmigodnoway, totally help you out. Take Valenti's job description, for instance: 'I have an amazing group of women friends who spend their days speaking out against sexist idiocy - and who also happily dance their asses off with me when we're out clubbing.'
Apart from the rhetorical horror of folk actually 'dancing their asses off', Valenti's argument is a desperate bid to sell feminism as the latest must-have accessory - some celebrities have probably had their name on the waiting list for months. And, oh what a twist in the (no)tale. Cos, you know, I bet you thought that those brave women who spend their days boldly and stridently speaking out against, you know, SEXIST CRAP couldn't possibly be the same ones getting smashed at the bar and requesting
Dirty Dancing tracks for the hundredth time...well, I've got news for you, sister! They really are the same girls! Who'd have believed it...
Trotting out the tired old line 'I used to think that all feminists were miserable and hairy', Valenti does her very best to sell us her feminist manifesto, in all its, cough cough, radicality: 'liking your body can be a revolutionary act' she concludes, regarding her navel with a curious kind of joy as centuries of political movements that dared to regard the holy body as secondary to egalitarian and impersonal projects crumble to bits around her.
(Incidentally, for the disproportionate fear that the statistically and historically minimal group of women who were both angry and had hairy legs have inculcated both in their detractors and in their faux-successors, we should salute them as often as possible).
Because you're worth it
'All women, especially younger women, deserve feminism in their lives '
Stripped of any internationalist and political quality, feminism becomes about as radical as a diamanté phone cover. Valenti 'truly believes' that feminism is necessary for women 'to live happy, fulfilled lives'. Slipping down as easily as a friendly-bacteria yoghurt drink, Valenti's version of feminism, with its total lack of structural analysis, genuine outrage or collective demand, believes it has to compliment capitalism in order to effectively sell its product. When she claims that 'ladies, we have to take individual action', what she really means is that it's every woman for herself, and if it is the Feminist-brand woman who gets the nicest shoes and the chocolatiest sex, then that's just too bad for you, sister.
By infinitethought | April 19, 2007 | Permalink
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» More on Faux Feminism... from Marginal Notes
I haven't been well enough to blog this past week, but happened upon this blog entry tonight that discusses many of the same issues touched on in my recent post 'Liberated Women?'. I have to applaud 'infinitethought' of the Long [Read More]
Tracked on Apr 23, 2007 1:26:28 AM
» More on Faux Feminism... from Marginal Notes
I haven't been well enough to blog this past week, but happened upon this blog entry tonight that discusses many of the same issues touched on in my recent post 'Liberated Women?'. I have to applaud 'infinitethought' of the Long [Read More]
Tracked on Apr 23, 2007 12:14:14 PM
Comments
*salutes*
Posted by: Dominic | Apr 19, 2007 3:45:12 PM
i cannot bypass this rare opportunity to comment on an Infinite Thøught post. (even if i don't really have that much to say).
Posted by: northanger | Apr 19, 2007 4:21:33 PM
move over, Bitch PhD.
Posted by: | Apr 19, 2007 10:07:41 PM
A friend who is a long-time reader just turned me on to your blog. You've hooked me!
Posted by: TT | Apr 20, 2007 12:26:16 AM
Yes but "thou shalt not condemn petty-bourgeois feminism that hath been recuperated by capitalist consumerism" because pretty soon we're going to need all the feminists we can find. From the Washington Post:
In her stinging dissent, Ginsburg said the court's "hostility to the right Roe and Casey secured is not concealed."
She wrote that the answer to Kennedy's concern that women would regret uninformed decisions to undergo the procedure is to require physicians to give them more information.
"Instead, the court deprives women of the right to make an autonomous choice. . . . This way of thinking reflects ancient notions about women's place in the family and under the Constitution -- ideas that have long since been discredited," Ginsburg wrote.
Ginsburg, joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens, noted that the court is "differently composed" than the last time it considered abortion restrictions. She added: "A decision so at odds with our jurisprudence should not have staying power."
Posted by: Swifty | Apr 20, 2007 6:43:51 AM
Swifty,
Did you actually read Carhart? It would help to do so before parroting a newspaper's quotes of random lines from Ginsberg's over-the-top, reactionary dissent.
In her stinging dissent, Ginsburg said the court's "hostility to the right Roe and Casey secured is not concealed."
This is astounding given the fact that the only two justices on the Court who have ever been openly hostile to either decision made that known in a seperate concurrence. Kennedy, on the other hand, is partially responsible for the Casey opinion and while he may not believe that the Constitution supports a jurisprudence of abortion-on-demand, there is no indication in any of his opinions that he is just waiting for the chance to toss either into the dumpster.
"Instead, the court deprives women of the right to make an autonomous choice. . . . This way of thinking reflects ancient notions about women's place in the family and under the Constitution -- ideas that have long since been discredited," Ginsburg wrote.
This line dumps into the open the extent of Ginsberg's depravity. First, she never bothers with the crucial question over an "autonomous choice" for what. That "what" is, however, graphically detailed in Justice Kennedy's opinion and in his 2000 dissent from Nebraska v. Carhart. Second, "autonomous choice" is not a rational standard by any stretch of the imagination; I don't see her ready to decrey the law's deprivation of a woman's "autonomous choice" to blow up an abortion clinic or, heck, steal a stick of gum. And third, as for her reference about things "discredited": where have they been "discredited" and on what basis? Ginsberg's feminist whim? Also, notions about a "place in the family" is not tantamount to forced confinement to any family, though Ginsberg steps over this in order to get her rhetoric out there. But, more fundamentally, calling anything "discredited" absent either a cogent argument or a string of citations to the source of that discrediting comes across as cheap and lazy.
Ginsburg, joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens, noted that the court is "differently composed" than the last time it considered abortion restrictions.
This is an entirely banal observation since shifts in the Court's composition has historically altered the course of its jurisprudence. One of the greatest proofs of that statement is the development of the Warren Court and the large shifts in social policy it helped bring about. No doubt that if Justice Scalia or Thomas were off the Court tomorrow and a liberal cut from the same cloth as Ginsberg got on, the next abortion case would be decided in the opposite direction. It's sad, yes, but for someone of Ginsberg's activist stripe to make a point of this is like the pot calling the kettle black; she has never in her history on the Court held back voting to overturn recently-forged precedent in the name of her personal politics.
She added: "A decision so at odds with our jurisprudence should not have staying power."
I'm curious: Does she believe that about the Court's recent jurisprudence concerning homosexual sodomy (Lawrence v. Texas) or the death penalty (Atkins v. Virginia & Roper v. Simmons)? The recent death penalty cases overturned decisions that were less than fifteen years old; the pro-sodomy decision overturned a precedent that was sixteen-years-old. Prior to the recent opinions, all such cases had a long and secure history in the Supreme Court, the lower courts, and the common law--it is only the recent opinions that have cut against the grain. So, why is this acceptable and yet a modest decision that upholds the government's right to regulate one form of abortion that is tantamount to infanticide not?
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Apr 23, 2007 12:09:00 PM
Your commentary is superb. I hope you don't mind that I have published the bulk of it on my own blog.
Posted by: Polly Jones | Apr 23, 2007 12:24:57 PM
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