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 Is "feminism" (interesting the way this word is used in quotes, like the invisible ones a certain hip, cowboy-boot-wearing, pseudo-Marxist English professor at Columbia used to hang around the phrase "free-world" -- as in "the so-called free- world") on the side of sexual candor? A certain kind of sexual candor, sure, but since feminism is, at bottom, an orthodoxy like any other, you better watch out which flavor of sexual candor you're pitching. Having painfully rejected the orthodoxy I was brought up on, I have an absolute aversion to movements of any sort. I distrust group thinking, no matter how enlightened, and I've never come across a group in which people were willing to articulate what they were thinking in the privacy of their own minds unless it went along with the "group think." I think feminism took a wrong turn sometime after Betty Friedan on its way to Gloria Steinem, largely because the latter advocated one standard for herself and another for everyone else -- as far as investment in the cult of beauty and the cult of using powerful men to help one's ascent as a woman went. Of course, Steinem is sufficiently powerful and iconic to be immune from this sort of criticism. (I was once asked by the editor of Mirabella whether I'd be willing to write a critical piece about her and I was warned off it by friends who kept telling me how powerful she was and how it could hurt me; it was puzzling, almost as though we were talking about John Gotti.) There were other problems as well -- including, most signally, feminism's devaluation of motherhood and, ultimately, of heterosexuality -- but I think the lack of candor began at the top. So, as I said, I've kept my distance from "feminism" (those quote marks again), and it hasn't surprised me that two generations away from bra-burning (another idiocy, pardon my saying so, like tasting menstrual blood) twenty-something females barely pay it mind, even when it would serve them to do so. I'm proud to say I've earned the ire of feminist readers of the NY Times by writing a "Hers" column about liking Pretty Woman for its glossy but slyly updated exploration of the immutable female fantasy of being rescued by Prince Charming. And I earned the fury of feminist/lesbian readers of the left-leaning TIKKUN by writing an article about my flirtation with the idea of lesbianism but ultimate -- well, not quite rejection of it, but decision not to try that road. Which proved to me that lack of tolerance is at least as prevalent, in its way, among liberal minorities as it is among conservative, establishment types. I wish I were as patient with the movement as Sallie seems to be, but can't we learn anything from what came before us or are we really all doomed to repeat ourselves in the very effort of progress? 
- Susie's response to Daphne - Betty's response to Daphne |
Question 1 Susie Bright Betty Dodson Nancy Friday Daphne Merkin Sallie Tisdale Question 2 Susie Bright Betty Dodson Nancy Friday Daphne Merkin Sallie Tisdale Question 3 Susie Bright Betty Dodson Nancy Friday Daphne Merkin Sallie Tisdale Question 4 Susie Bright Betty Dodson Nancy Friday Daphne Merkin Sallie Tisdale Question 5 Susie Bright Betty Dodson Nancy Friday Daphne Merkin Sallie Tisdale Question 6 Susie Bright Betty Dodson Nancy Friday Daphne Merkin Sallie Tisdale |
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