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beandelphikiOkay, today in Editorial and Opinion Writing, we were supposed to read our columns on either
a) Betty Friedan's recent death, or
b) Stephen Harper's cabinet assignments
Now, I'm relatively interested in Canadian politics, but I'm not as caught up on the details as I would really like to be. So I decided the death of a feminist icon was a slightly easier choice.
So I wrote a small sketch of this last night...and then watched the Rick Mercer Report. (Best line of the night: "Go on to our website, where you can find archives of sections from old shows. For example, this one talk I gave in 2004 called, "Why The Liberals Will Rule Canada Forever." Beat. "...My bad.") Then I watched American Idol. Then I stayed up to 4 am reading pr0n and supposedly do a small bit of research. Yes, FOUR EH-EM. Fucking dumbass...because then I got up late this morning after 2 1/2 hours of sleep, missed my first class, FRANTICALLY wrote this column on the train, typed it up in a storm in a spare e-learning room...and was 15 minutes late to my second class.
Score.
So I missed a few people's columns - a bunch of the good writers, I think, which stinks. I'm sure Walter, my instructor, is a little peeved with me. I've missed a lot of his classes now, and he's getting about as stern as he gets over it. Eeep.
But my column was relatively well-received. Actually, I had a few people come up and tell me they liked it. I was happy it went over so well. I think it's kind of sloppy/messy, given that it was written on 2 1/2 hours sleep on the back of a brochure on the C-train. But I got pretty passionate about this one. (Actually, speaking of passion, I've noticed that my rhetorical style tends to build up into melodrama and get away from me. I need to work on reining that in.)
Partial credit for this one completely goes to people scattered around lj - notably![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shadowfae, I think - because I worked some of what I "overheard" over the past few days into this. I really didn't even notice that until I was reading this out today; that's what happens when you don't proofread your drafts. No intention of plagiarism was meant, but the ideas got in there. Of course, my instructor doesn't know that, but it's still not acceptable to my mind, and I want to work it out and clarify the transition from paragraph 6 to 7 with my own thoughts. (Well...technically, NONE of this is my own, original thoughts, and little in an opinion column gets cited. But I believe in the greater accountability of the media in coming years, you know?)
So here it is:
You're a feminist - yes, you are! - but what kind?
by Bean (<--that's me! Don't steal, I'll cry.)
Somewhere out there on the vast web of information, entertainment and junk we call the Internet, there is a page called, "Yes, You Are." Almost the entirety of the page is an essay by the same title, and the entirety of this essay is taken up with proving one point: that if you believe in the basic equality of men and women, then you are a feminist. Yes, you are!
Now, I am in full agreement with this document, but the one criticism I have of it is a really a question. If you believe in the basic equality of men and women, you are a feminist. But what kind of feminist are you?
Betty Friedan, considered by some to have greatly influenced the feminist movement with the publication of her book, The Feminine Mystique in 1963, died Feb. 4 of congestive heart failure at the age of 85. With her passing comes the reflection that is made in the wake of any icon. So what kind of feminist was Betty Friedan?
Betty Friedan was a feminist who belonged to the second wave. Coming after the first wave that focused on basic issues like suffrage, but before the third wave brought such concepts as intersectionality and the social construction of gender to the table, the second wave was an awkward, adolescent period for feminism. Many credit Friedan herself with spurring much of the second wave with The Feminine Mystique, a book which tried, in an awkward and adolescent way, to expose the sexism that lay beneath the presumed bliss of American women and American families. But the book, and Friedan's politics, had many flaws that were characteristic of the second wave.
Betty Friedan was a feminist who largely ignored class issues. Her classism is clear from the first pages of The Feminine Mystique, when she discussed the dissatisfaction of "the women of America," and highlights in the same breath that these women are so because they are not satisfied with comfortably raising several children in suburbia, not satisfied with the latest widgets when they are wasting their Ph.Ds. With an opening like this, it isn't a stretch to presume that Friedan wasted no time on the women of America who cannot raise several children in comfort, or afford enough higher education to obtain a Ph.D.
Betty Friedan was a feminist who largely disregarded issues of racism. If the "women of America" were middle-to-upper class in Friedan's world, they were also white. Friedan may have worked with black female activists to create the National Organization for Women (NOW), but she doesn't appear to have wasted much breath on speculating why feminist women of color began to split off from mainstream white feminism during the second wave, citing feelings of alienation as their concerns were ignored. Friedan made clear through the years that that her focus was on how feminism affected white, middle-class women trying to be considered equal to their husbands. It would probably not have made much sense to her when women who weren't white sided with their men, never made sense that their racial communities were more important to women who weren't white when even feminism did not see their issues as important.
And family! If Betty Friedan was a feminist who was only passively ignorant of race and class issues, she was actively homophobic for much of her life. She decried feminists who considered gay liberation a feminist issue. Friedan wanted the focus of feminism to be in the kitchen, never in the bedroom, and she claimed to have no use for examining sexism in the most basic of gendered action.
In the wake of her death, why does any of this really matter? Friedan was a woman of her time, and in many ways she was a woman well ahead of her time. Her short-sightedness may not matter to some; but I believe it does matter. Even riding on the wave of third-wave feminism, the gaps in the feminist fabric that Friedan and her peers left are still there in many ways. White feminism continues to be alienating to feminists of color; middle-class women still continue to control the dialogue. In many ways, the mainstream feminism of today is no more united, and just as self-centered as it was decades ago when Friedan first published The Feminine Mystique.
With the passing of this woman, I have a small hope. I have a hope that Friedan's death will come to be seen as the symbolic ending of an era, an era where white, middle-class heterosexual women embraced a thoroughly narcissistic version of feminism. I cross my fingers that the mainstream white feminists of today will take this moment in the stream of time to pause and consider, not just what feminism has done right so far, but also what it has done wrong. I want mainstream feminism to stop and examine the ways in which ending the rule of white, rich straight men has stuttered over the differences between all the people of North America besides gender. I want, in short, a better feminism.
So....this might (or might not) get published in the Weekly. Since the class liked it, and Walter said he'd try to swing getting these published. So I need to fix 'er up. Any suggestions, fact corrections, whatever, are welcome. This is a scribble, not a composition! Hell, I didn't even read over it again. I couldn't really make myself do it.
Eh. Anyway. Most of the class, actually, decided to write about Friedan. That surprised me for a second, but then I realized that MOST of the class probably had the same issue with the Harper topic that I did...not enough background. There was:
-Numerous columns praising Friedan for her contribution to feminism. Much waxing eloquent about the opportunities women have today.
[Okay, whatever. I'll grant that.]
-One accusatory column from a girl asking if feminism was a wasted effort, asking why women are apparently so interested in "fashion and beauty and dieting."
[*headdesk* I had a hard time sitting still through that one.]
-One from one of the few WOC in the class (journalism is so white, blah) that covered the criticisms of Friedan's politics that I had...interestingly, she said that she "doesn't care" for those who see Friedan as "myopic," because Friedan was writing only about her own sphere of life, and didn't have an opportunity to see "how the other side lives."
[And okay...getting outside your own POV isn't easy, and I wouldn't have liked Friedan trying to speak for poor women, or WOC. And yet! - she did! In a way...in totally ignoring anyone who wasn't white and middle-class and married or going to be married as being "women of America." And who had the better opportunity to learn about the other side - the woman who'd had an education and the training to conduct some sort of study, or the poor woman stuck just trying to survive?]
-One from a guy who went on about how women have long been held down by men's "dominant nature" and superior strength. Something about how abuse stems from fear of women's intelligence.
[Something I never completely bought. I don't know why, but it rings false to me...or at least greatly oversimplified. And he had a "first-principles" approach too...like men originally started subjugating women because of fear of women's intelligence. I don't know, I have no idea when "the patriarchy" - in any country - "started." Eh...]
-THE BEST FOR LAST! One girl - one of the "Plastics" as so dubbed by our class - read a column that praised Friedan's contributions in the vein of the others...but brilliantly referred to, "The beginning of feminism, in 1963, with the publication of The Feminine Mystique." Multiple times.
[I couldn't help it - I burst out with a *snerk* noise in the middle of her reading, but basically no one noticed. (Safe!) And a girl in my class named Jen - who is both well-informed and wickedly smart - later spent some time joking with me about Suffragettes and various feminists back through the centuries spinning in their graves. Guess this girl slept through 4th-5th grade history, when we TOTALLY learned about the women's right to vote being granted ALL ACROSS NORTH AMERICA in 1963.]
All in all, it was interesting. I kind of wish that more of the writing that we did was like that, instead of stuff that is supposed to "matter" to students, like....*picks up latest Weekly* The latest Open House. Finding a date for Valentine's day. How the various energy drinks stack up. And so on.... Blah.
Oh, and Group B's writing? Is SO not better than ours. Pfft.
a) Betty Friedan's recent death, or
b) Stephen Harper's cabinet assignments
Now, I'm relatively interested in Canadian politics, but I'm not as caught up on the details as I would really like to be. So I decided the death of a feminist icon was a slightly easier choice.
So I wrote a small sketch of this last night...and then watched the Rick Mercer Report. (Best line of the night: "Go on to our website, where you can find archives of sections from old shows. For example, this one talk I gave in 2004 called, "Why The Liberals Will Rule Canada Forever." Beat. "...My bad.") Then I watched American Idol. Then I stayed up to 4 am reading pr0n and supposedly do a small bit of research. Yes, FOUR EH-EM. Fucking dumbass...because then I got up late this morning after 2 1/2 hours of sleep, missed my first class, FRANTICALLY wrote this column on the train, typed it up in a storm in a spare e-learning room...and was 15 minutes late to my second class.
Score.
So I missed a few people's columns - a bunch of the good writers, I think, which stinks. I'm sure Walter, my instructor, is a little peeved with me. I've missed a lot of his classes now, and he's getting about as stern as he gets over it. Eeep.
But my column was relatively well-received. Actually, I had a few people come up and tell me they liked it. I was happy it went over so well. I think it's kind of sloppy/messy, given that it was written on 2 1/2 hours sleep on the back of a brochure on the C-train. But I got pretty passionate about this one. (Actually, speaking of passion, I've noticed that my rhetorical style tends to build up into melodrama and get away from me. I need to work on reining that in.)
Partial credit for this one completely goes to people scattered around lj - notably
shadowfae, I think - because I worked some of what I "overheard" over the past few days into this. I really didn't even notice that until I was reading this out today; that's what happens when you don't proofread your drafts. No intention of plagiarism was meant, but the ideas got in there. Of course, my instructor doesn't know that, but it's still not acceptable to my mind, and I want to work it out and clarify the transition from paragraph 6 to 7 with my own thoughts. (Well...technically, NONE of this is my own, original thoughts, and little in an opinion column gets cited. But I believe in the greater accountability of the media in coming years, you know?)So here it is:
You're a feminist - yes, you are! - but what kind?
by Bean (<--that's me! Don't steal, I'll cry.)
Somewhere out there on the vast web of information, entertainment and junk we call the Internet, there is a page called, "Yes, You Are." Almost the entirety of the page is an essay by the same title, and the entirety of this essay is taken up with proving one point: that if you believe in the basic equality of men and women, then you are a feminist. Yes, you are!
Now, I am in full agreement with this document, but the one criticism I have of it is a really a question. If you believe in the basic equality of men and women, you are a feminist. But what kind of feminist are you?
Betty Friedan, considered by some to have greatly influenced the feminist movement with the publication of her book, The Feminine Mystique in 1963, died Feb. 4 of congestive heart failure at the age of 85. With her passing comes the reflection that is made in the wake of any icon. So what kind of feminist was Betty Friedan?
Betty Friedan was a feminist who belonged to the second wave. Coming after the first wave that focused on basic issues like suffrage, but before the third wave brought such concepts as intersectionality and the social construction of gender to the table, the second wave was an awkward, adolescent period for feminism. Many credit Friedan herself with spurring much of the second wave with The Feminine Mystique, a book which tried, in an awkward and adolescent way, to expose the sexism that lay beneath the presumed bliss of American women and American families. But the book, and Friedan's politics, had many flaws that were characteristic of the second wave.
Betty Friedan was a feminist who largely ignored class issues. Her classism is clear from the first pages of The Feminine Mystique, when she discussed the dissatisfaction of "the women of America," and highlights in the same breath that these women are so because they are not satisfied with comfortably raising several children in suburbia, not satisfied with the latest widgets when they are wasting their Ph.Ds. With an opening like this, it isn't a stretch to presume that Friedan wasted no time on the women of America who cannot raise several children in comfort, or afford enough higher education to obtain a Ph.D.
Betty Friedan was a feminist who largely disregarded issues of racism. If the "women of America" were middle-to-upper class in Friedan's world, they were also white. Friedan may have worked with black female activists to create the National Organization for Women (NOW), but she doesn't appear to have wasted much breath on speculating why feminist women of color began to split off from mainstream white feminism during the second wave, citing feelings of alienation as their concerns were ignored. Friedan made clear through the years that that her focus was on how feminism affected white, middle-class women trying to be considered equal to their husbands. It would probably not have made much sense to her when women who weren't white sided with their men, never made sense that their racial communities were more important to women who weren't white when even feminism did not see their issues as important.
And family! If Betty Friedan was a feminist who was only passively ignorant of race and class issues, she was actively homophobic for much of her life. She decried feminists who considered gay liberation a feminist issue. Friedan wanted the focus of feminism to be in the kitchen, never in the bedroom, and she claimed to have no use for examining sexism in the most basic of gendered action.
In the wake of her death, why does any of this really matter? Friedan was a woman of her time, and in many ways she was a woman well ahead of her time. Her short-sightedness may not matter to some; but I believe it does matter. Even riding on the wave of third-wave feminism, the gaps in the feminist fabric that Friedan and her peers left are still there in many ways. White feminism continues to be alienating to feminists of color; middle-class women still continue to control the dialogue. In many ways, the mainstream feminism of today is no more united, and just as self-centered as it was decades ago when Friedan first published The Feminine Mystique.
With the passing of this woman, I have a small hope. I have a hope that Friedan's death will come to be seen as the symbolic ending of an era, an era where white, middle-class heterosexual women embraced a thoroughly narcissistic version of feminism. I cross my fingers that the mainstream white feminists of today will take this moment in the stream of time to pause and consider, not just what feminism has done right so far, but also what it has done wrong. I want mainstream feminism to stop and examine the ways in which ending the rule of white, rich straight men has stuttered over the differences between all the people of North America besides gender. I want, in short, a better feminism.
So....this might (or might not) get published in the Weekly. Since the class liked it, and Walter said he'd try to swing getting these published. So I need to fix 'er up. Any suggestions, fact corrections, whatever, are welcome. This is a scribble, not a composition! Hell, I didn't even read over it again. I couldn't really make myself do it.
Eh. Anyway. Most of the class, actually, decided to write about Friedan. That surprised me for a second, but then I realized that MOST of the class probably had the same issue with the Harper topic that I did...not enough background. There was:
-Numerous columns praising Friedan for her contribution to feminism. Much waxing eloquent about the opportunities women have today.
[Okay, whatever. I'll grant that.]
-One accusatory column from a girl asking if feminism was a wasted effort, asking why women are apparently so interested in "fashion and beauty and dieting."
[*headdesk* I had a hard time sitting still through that one.]
-One from one of the few WOC in the class (journalism is so white, blah) that covered the criticisms of Friedan's politics that I had...interestingly, she said that she "doesn't care" for those who see Friedan as "myopic," because Friedan was writing only about her own sphere of life, and didn't have an opportunity to see "how the other side lives."
[And okay...getting outside your own POV isn't easy, and I wouldn't have liked Friedan trying to speak for poor women, or WOC. And yet! - she did! In a way...in totally ignoring anyone who wasn't white and middle-class and married or going to be married as being "women of America." And who had the better opportunity to learn about the other side - the woman who'd had an education and the training to conduct some sort of study, or the poor woman stuck just trying to survive?]
-One from a guy who went on about how women have long been held down by men's "dominant nature" and superior strength. Something about how abuse stems from fear of women's intelligence.
[Something I never completely bought. I don't know why, but it rings false to me...or at least greatly oversimplified. And he had a "first-principles" approach too...like men originally started subjugating women because of fear of women's intelligence. I don't know, I have no idea when "the patriarchy" - in any country - "started." Eh...]
-THE BEST FOR LAST! One girl - one of the "Plastics" as so dubbed by our class - read a column that praised Friedan's contributions in the vein of the others...but brilliantly referred to, "The beginning of feminism, in 1963, with the publication of The Feminine Mystique." Multiple times.
[I couldn't help it - I burst out with a *snerk* noise in the middle of her reading, but basically no one noticed. (Safe!) And a girl in my class named Jen - who is both well-informed and wickedly smart - later spent some time joking with me about Suffragettes and various feminists back through the centuries spinning in their graves. Guess this girl slept through 4th-5th grade history, when we TOTALLY learned about the women's right to vote being granted ALL ACROSS NORTH AMERICA in 1963.]
All in all, it was interesting. I kind of wish that more of the writing that we did was like that, instead of stuff that is supposed to "matter" to students, like....*picks up latest Weekly* The latest Open House. Finding a date for Valentine's day. How the various energy drinks stack up. And so on.... Blah.
Oh, and Group B's writing? Is SO not better than ours. Pfft.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-08 08:48 pm (UTC)As for the column, good job. I liked your final punch at the end. But I'd suggest cutting down on the long, rambling sentences (ie fourth paragraph) and make them shorter and snappier. They're more essayish than editorialish... if that makes any sense at all.
And I'm surprised not many jumped on the Harper Cabinet. Here I'm pretty sure that's what this week's editorial is, but I actually forgot if that's what my editor said...
Once again, good job. Oh, and where are you going for practicum?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-08 11:24 pm (UTC)Oh my god, practicum. So much has been going on lately in my life, I almost totally forgot. Oh, I'm in shit.
*goes tearing off*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-09 01:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-09 01:10 pm (UTC)Last semester's practicum magically sort of got arranged in about a day, so it's like, I forgot to think of this as a process. I would almost be relieved at this point to not be able to finish the year, but that's a lot of wasted money. Eh. /thinking out loud
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-09 01:59 pm (UTC)Ah, you'll figure it out and graduate and go into the world leaving the halls of Senator Burns forever. It won't be that hard.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-09 03:20 pm (UTC)Ah, you'll figure it out and graduate and go into the world leaving the halls of Senator Burns forever. It won't be that hard.
Heh. I think I might actually miss the Burns building specifically. I practically sleep here, I should bring a cot.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-09 03:21 pm (UTC)Thanks for pointing that out.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-09 04:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-09 04:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-09 04:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-09 05:59 pm (UTC)