A great opinion piece on the West's struggle with the feminism movement. Feminism movement was made by humans / people who don't have any ability to see / predict the future. Circumstances are always evolving & one's situation is never same as the other. Hence, feminism movement was not only short-sighted to start with, it lacked inclusion of all women from different backgrounds; based on ethnicity, religion, race, culture etc.
The idea of feminism was women are equal to men. Which they definitely are. No doubt. Problem was, & still is, that women were expected to act & do things exactly like what men were doing. As Jessa Crispin notes in her book that "feminism sold women a bill of goods by framing work as self-fulfillment and self-actualization. Women who rose to positions of traditional male power in corporations, in politics, in the military, on boards, like Clinton or Sheryl Sandberg became feminist role models." Essentially, a woman's self-worth was how much money she was earning by working in male-dominated sectors of the economy; heck, it didn't have to be male-dominated sectors of the economy. Period. That's why, some women in pornography industry are very happy & rose to the level of company CEOs themselves, & on their way to the top, debased other women, because they themselves have become millionaires; their self-worth is being measured in cold hard cash by themselves & the society around them.
As the writer details Jessa Crispin's thoughts on feminism in the following paragraph, it becomes evident that women were only fighting for equal rights & jobs as men, as long as those jobs were of privileged positions in the society. Women were not fighting to get in menial jobs. After all, those menial jobs are also held by men.
The idea of feminism was women are equal to men. Which they definitely are. No doubt. Problem was, & still is, that women were expected to act & do things exactly like what men were doing. As Jessa Crispin notes in her book that "feminism sold women a bill of goods by framing work as self-fulfillment and self-actualization. Women who rose to positions of traditional male power in corporations, in politics, in the military, on boards, like Clinton or Sheryl Sandberg became feminist role models." Essentially, a woman's self-worth was how much money she was earning by working in male-dominated sectors of the economy; heck, it didn't have to be male-dominated sectors of the economy. Period. That's why, some women in pornography industry are very happy & rose to the level of company CEOs themselves, & on their way to the top, debased other women, because they themselves have become millionaires; their self-worth is being measured in cold hard cash by themselves & the society around them.
As the writer details Jessa Crispin's thoughts on feminism in the following paragraph, it becomes evident that women were only fighting for equal rights & jobs as men, as long as those jobs were of privileged positions in the society. Women were not fighting to get in menial jobs. After all, those menial jobs are also held by men.
Equality is another issue in Western ideal of feminism; equality based on racial, ethnic, cultural, & social grounds. It seems that feminism became the movement-du-jour for the Caucasian / white privileged women. Every other women didn't get the memo; be they be women of African descent in America or of Latin descent in Northern & Southern America, or Muslim women in Middle East & South Asia or Hindu & Buddhist women in Asia. As Crispin correctly "echoes the sentiment in her rejection of the condescending attitude of Western feminists toward women in Muslim countries—this idea that these women need to be rescued (itself a masculine model) from their head scarves and their traditions."
In the name of feminism, women were driven out of their homes to work alongside men, & to become one more bread-winner for the family. However, nobody worked towards sharing the house work, & hence, women's responsibilities became child-bearing, child-rearing, all house work, & corporate work. Men still enjoyed their work outside the house & that was the end of their day's work.
What the general public has forgotten now that the women were driven out of the house to create a two-income family, to essentially, increase GDP in North America. The public & private sectors weren't creating any more jobs & GDP increases when the public spends on house & home purchases. Wages had become stagnant. So, instead of increasing wages or creating more jobs, women were encouraged to get out of the house, be independent, & make their own money; helping to keep up the lifestyle the public was used to; all in the guise of gender equality.
Here, I am going to bring feminism in Islam. The West & now, even the East, thinks that Islam, as a religion, suppresses Muslim women & their rights. In Islam, women are equal to men. Islam recognizes them as EQUAL, not as IDENTICAL. Both genders are complementary to each other & need one another to create a fully-functional, proper society.
This is all beautifully summarized by a letter to editor in the May issue of Maclean's magazine, by a Dr. Howard Taynen, from Ancaster, Ontario, Canada:
"... I am struck yet again by a routinely mistaken fundamental in this ever-present & evolving subject - equal is confused with identical. Thankfully, men & women are not identical anatomically, physiologically, temperamentally or psychologically. We are a magnificent complementarity of great potential value to ourselves, our children & the world. Eliminate the abuse, not the difference! It is naive & futile to defy nature by arbitrarily imposing identical roles in parenthood, marriage or the world in order to be equal. We are equal & different. It is a partnership that can function wholesomely without trying to change the differing roles & their respective strengths."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Literary Critic Jessa Crispin clearly appreciates the value of a catchy title. Her blog was named Bookslut. Now her new book, Why I Am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto, seems calculated to grab attention at a moment when feminism is portrayed as either trending or dead—or trending because it’s dead.
Feminism’s most recent and much exaggerated death spiral can be traced to the assumption, an absurd one, that the U.S. election provided a referendum on the topic. “Hillary Clinton’s loss in the presidential election to America’s most famous sexist instantly plunged the feminist cause into crisis,” The New Republic proclaimed hours after Trump’s win, as if the “feminist cause” is a single entity run out of a central command. If anything, the reverse proved true: the political upset galvanized organized protest driven by fear that the advances made by the feminist movement over the past 50 years would be reversed. The New York Times was bleaker: “Feminism lost. Now what?” ran a headline that suggested Clinton was herself synonymous with an ideology that dates back more than a century.
It’s precisely that conflation of a powerful, high-achieving woman with modern feminism that Crispin denounces in her slim, bracing polemic. The thought-provoking, sometimes frustrating book is part of a new literary groundswell: works grappling with the complex inequities of sexual equality and the ever-shifting gender see-saw a half century after “women’s lib.” Toronto writer Stephen Marche also wades in with his trenchant new book, The Unmade Bed: The Messy Truth About Men and Women in the 21st Century, in which he recounts leaving his job to be primary caregiver to his son so his wife could fulfill her career ambition. A countervailing groundswell is simultaneously at work: this vocal contingent calls for a return to the zero-sum game of the alpha husband, beta wife just as more than a third of women out-earn their husbands. The Alpha Female’s Guide to Men and Marriage by Suzanne Venker, the niece of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, laments that “society is creating a crop of women who are unable to love” and advises “it’s liberating to be a beta!” Similar messaging underlines the North Carolina billboard that sparked outrage last month. “Real men provide,” it read. “Real women appreciate it.”
Taking a cue from Crispin’s title, the media have described its message as more piling on the feminism-is-dead pyre: “The fall of feminism,” read the headline of a Los Angeles Times’ review. “Why this literary critic rejects modern-day feminism,” said CBC Radio.
Yet Crispin sits at an extreme rarely discussed in modern-day feminism: she’s a self-professed radical feminist, hell-bent on dismantling a patriarchy she blames 20th-century feminism for buttressing. “I am angry,” she writes. “And I do pose a threat.”
Feminism sold women a bill of goods, Crispin states, by framing work as self-fulfillment and self-actualization. Women who rose to positions of traditional male power in corporations, in politics, in the military, on boards, like Clinton or Sheryl Sandberg of Lean In fame, became feminist role models. Crispin doesn’t buy it, noting Clinton dismantled social welfare programs and supported international interventions that killed thousands.
Only spaces occupied by privileged men were desirable, Crispin points out; women, who’d always worked, but in menial positions, weren’t fighting for jobs held by poor men, labourers or miners, for whom the workplace and society would become increasingly hostile. The consequence, she writes, is a “kind of hyper-masculinized world, where women are participating—and absolutely expected to participate in this world by feminists—in patriarchal values.”
Crispin also takes aim at “universal feminism”—her term for a non-confrontational feminist status quo that bends over backwards to be agreeable to avoid the “man-hating” stereotype of decades earlier. This mainstream, she believes, is preoccupied with identity politics, narcissistic “self-empowerment” and whining about TV shows rather than the hard work of bridging to universal human rights. It’s a pop star battle: on one hand, Beyoncé embraces the “feminist” label; on the other, Taylor Swift, never one to rock the boat, prefers “equalism,” the belief that both sexes should be equal without highlighting feminism. “Lifestyles do not change the world,” Crispin writes.
Within this Instagram feminism, shrillness is anathema. That’s a problem, Crispin writes: “I hear the word ‘feminazi’ coming from young feminists’ mouths today way more often than I have ever heard it coming from the mouths of right-wing men.”
The reaction can also be chalked up to marketing forces that have diluted and co-opted “feminist” to sell products with an upbeat, friendly “empowerment” message for decades—from the “You’ve come a long way baby” Virginia Slims ads of the ’70s, to Acne Studios’ “Feminist Collection” featuring a $650 sweater, to the recently published picture book Strong is the New Pretty: A Celebration of Girls Being Themselves.
The fact that anyone can self-define as feminist, or not, also can render the word meaningless. Ivanka Trump claims both she and her woman-objectifying, women-grabbing dad are feminists. ... Marche rejects the self-proclaimed “male feminist,” saying it’s typically used to win points or get women into bed. Just be a decent guy, he writes.
Decades of hindsight offer perspective. For one, “trickle-down” feminism is about as effective as trickle-down economics. Equality has not touched all women equally, and there’s anger, as was evident at the Women’s March in Washington, where I saw a black woman hold up a sign at a largely white crowd: “F–k you and your white imperialistic feminism,” it read. She had a point.
Crispin echoes the sentiment in her rejection of the “condescending attitude of Western feminists toward women in Muslim countries—this idea that these women need to be rescued (itself a masculine model) from their head scarves and their traditions.”
...
Non-feminist history also reveals that blaming 20th-century feminism for the glorification of the work and the workplace, as Crispin does, gives it too much credit. Yes, the civil rights movement stirred second-wave feminism and The Feminine Mystique raised consciousness. But other factors, namely the need for dual-income-earning families and the Pill, which let women delay child-bearing or defer it altogether, played a role.
Now it’s evident that the very corporate workplace that women—mostly wives—flocked to in the ’70s was built on a male-breadwinner, female-homemaker model that remained unchanged. Needs of the new working wife and mother were ignored; nor was there a movement to replace or redistribute her labour in the home. The result: that famous Ms. magazine cover “I want a wife,” which also became a common working women’s half-joke.
...
That disconnect could explain why, 60 years after the “women’s movement,” reproductive health rights and sexual violence remain barriers to women’s freedom. Female politicians receive death threats. A gender pay gap exists, even in the professions. Yet Crispin isn’t offering an olive branch to men. She slams “casual hatred of men as a gender,” yet in the next breath, tells men it’s not her job to make feminism easy or understandable to them. “Figure it out,” she writes. “I just want to be clear that I don’t give a f–k about your response to this book. Do not email me, do not get in touch. Deal with your own s–t for once.” She offers one consolation: “Everything is more complicated than anyone wants to admit.” And that vague understatement pretty much sums up the long march ahead.
No comments:
Post a Comment