(anti-)feminist obsessions

The backlash has taken on truly creepy proportions in the U.S. I looked at the townhall site and lately I've seen stuff resembling that on other kooky sites (links provided by babble.)

I dunno, maybe if you want to turn the proportions around, you should try searching European sites...there has to be better stuff going on there.

La Gazette des Femmes (Quebec) might be a help.
[url=http://www.gazettedesfemmes.com]here's their Web site[/url]

What can you do to fight such a thing? Townhall's Doctor Professor Mike Adams, PhD is an inveterate liar who has been accused of making up correspondence from his supposed readership to advance his patently women-hating views (...there is some scuttle-butt going around that he's in fact a self-hating homosexual who goes on 'hunting' trips with another suspected closet case and former-drug-dealer-turned-anti-feminist-mall-preacher/whacko Doug Giles).

I really wish that country had some respect for ethics in public discourse, but it obviously doesn't.

The term "backlash" isn't something that is the exclusive domain of feminism anymore. Moreover, there are, believe it or not, a great many well thought out critiques of feminism and those voices have a right to be heard. Perhaps one of the neat things about living in a democracy is that everyone, from the most wigged out computer nerd to the most agendized feminist can essentially publish their thoughts, analysis and critique.

I have critiqued feminism in this forum because as a minority woman, I view mainstream feminism to be purely white and middle class, therefore, it can't possibly speak to my issues - are my observations and critique part of a backlash? Who knows, I guess that's up to the individual to determine.

My personal sense is that if there are a great many web blogs, websites, articles in the news, studies, etc that critique feminism, we can't necessarily rule those observations out because they are not shared by feminists. Conversely, there are a great many web blogs, websites, articles in the news, etc that are quite pro-feminist and which criticize everything from globalization to religious freedom.

There are many voices, in a democracy, we have to protect those voices because the minute we start demanding that those voices should be silenced, will be the first step toward anti-democracy.

I think young women also need to somehow feel they are "authorities" on things. So many women I know don't write about things because they think they're not informed enough.

Want to get rid of the backlash? Undo all the gains since the 1950's.

Success breeds this kind of thing. I'd revel in it. The time to be worried (aside from the truly hatefull and violent stuff) is when it starts to fade.

So maybe the correct response to the screaming anti-feminist idealogues is: "Neener Neener Neener" with thumb firmly fixed to nose, with fingers wiggling.

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I view mainstream feminism to be purely white and middle class, therefore, it can't possibly speak to my issues - are my observations and critique part of a backlash? Who knows, I guess that's up to the individual to determine.

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When NAC had its much publicized controversies back in the 90s, I recall a few right-wing anti-feminist commentators who seized upon the claims of visible minority women to say "look, feminism doesn't represent women, just a clique of white middle class women". An editorial in Alberta Report comes to mind specifically in this regard.

But in fairness, right-wingers will probably jump on any schism within any left-wing group to make similar claims. If white women had been complaining that NAC is dominated by visible minorities, Alberta Report would probably have been pretending to side with the white women.

What was I thinking yesterday? One of our very own, vickyinottawa, runs [url=http://www.smallman.ca/]Miss Vicky's Offhand Remarks,[/url] where she talks about whatever takes her fancy but always from a very pro-feminist point of view.

Hinterland, it is [i]too[/i] funny! He thinks you're in a feminist chat room, or somewhat later he thinks you're blogging -- not that there is anything wrong with those, mind.

But then he goes on to compare sizes! Hee hee.

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Well, now that you are reading the full text of your remarks - remarks you never expected to see broadcast in an internationally-read column

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[img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]

Ooh. I bet you're skeert. Overwhelmed, too.

And it gets worse. He wants you to know how many famous friends he has, and how they all link to him. Hee hee hee.

Talk about insecure. That's embarrassing.

Did you search specifically on "feminism" or "feminist"?

The reason I ask is that I really feel like the word feminism has been demonized much in the same way that "liberal" has (or, to borrow some demonized terms from the right, things like "evangelical Christian" or "neo-conservative". The upshot of this is that the only time liberalism or feminism seems to come up is when someone is slamming the concept. On the other side, many liberals have taken to calling themselves progressive and avoiding the term liberal altogether.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think that a lot of 'pro-feminist' articles are written but they wouldn't necessarily show up under a search for feminism. Instead, they would speak only directly to a variety of views that are important in the feminist movement (whatever you take that to be) without pitching it explicitly as being a 'feminist' view. In this same vein, how many pro-gay-rights articles have you seen that talk about the "gay agenda"?

I do understand your frustration, and it would be great if the word could be somehow re-claimed, but I suspect that this is not going to happen in the near-term. Myself, I sort of believe that all causes are best pitched as those of the mainstream, the educated, the reasonable or whatever, rather than granting them marginal or minority status right out of the gate by labeling them as the opinion of a single group of people.

I may be slammed for this, but I have to say that I think this phenomenon is actually evidence of success of the feminist movement and not failure. Nor do I think the perceived imbalance is evidence that society's pendulum is about to swing back on the progress regading women's rights. From sexual empowerment, to women in the worforce, to pro-choise issues and access to birth control, I think it's fair to say that these are all widely accepted by a majority of Canadians and are no longer opinions that are considered controversially held by only a small segment of society. Social, legislative, and corporate/business realities have all shifted to reflect this. So, while a bunch of bitter hacks are out there bemoaning 'feminism' (again, whatever that is), women and in fact many men have been making the slow-- but, in my opinion, inexorable-- progress toward equality for women. Though it's taking decades, the people whining about feminism are becoming increasingly marginalized. And I couldn't be happier about it.

Bitter commentary is the last refuge of the wrong.

[ 05 April 2005: Message edited by: Dex ]

writer,
In your original post, you asked "Is there any way to turn this around?" My question to you would be: What are you interested in turning around? Is it to have more positive/neutral articles written about women? Is it to have more positive/neutral articles written about feminism? Or is it to have more success in promoting issues related to the feminist movement? Anti-feminism writers may have sullied the meaning of feminism, but I think their victory is a Pyrrhic one.

Returning to the parallel of liberalism, I think that the movement has been very successful in furthering its causes. True, the term liberal is effectively an expletive in American politics, but the liberal movement has made amazing strides in terms of policy.

I just picked up this thread and I just have to say:

TOWNHALL.COM SCARES ME!

I can't help but get the heeby-jeebies when I read anything on their site. I try to read all sides of any discussion (otherwise my husband accuses me of being sucked in by my "left wing hippie proganganda") but this time I cannot stay on that site for a second longer than I have to.

In lots of schools, there's the bully and a weaker figure who hangs around him/her. That's the Doug Giles/Mike Adams dynamic.

Adams first came to public notice after 9/11 - a student sent him an anti-war email, and he forwarded it to someone who sent her a threatening email. The student's parent's held Adams accountable, but he denied all knowledge and cast himself as a conservative free speech martyr. Then he married the person who sent the threatening letter. Classy.

He then helped local Rethugs campaign against Senator Julia Boseman. Boseman is a lesbian, and they decided to make that a campaign issue. Naturally, most people were disgusted, Boseman won, and Adams was left whinging that the Rethugs had been made out as "intolerant" just because of their Christian principles. As revenge, he wrote an article hinting strongly that Boseman had been impregnated by her brother, which was untrue, but as a true sneak Adams worded it in such a way that he has probably avoided legal action.

I wrote on Adams on my blog[url=http://blogs.salon.com/0003494/2004/11/23.html#a188]here[/url]. I've also got stuff on[url=http://blogs.salon.com/0003494/stories/2004/10/31/gilesDoug.html]Doug Giles[/url].

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Originally posted by writer:
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writer, those threads were so much fun,then and now, I had forgottten all about them in their entirety.

But really, who would have thought a year and a half ago, we would be dealing with all these "progressive" men outing themselves as non-progressives, while in defense of a woman political party leader who had pretended to be equally as progressive to get where she is today?

Oh, how I long for those simple times in 2005, when we still had 1 string of naivety left within us. But the last 2 weeks have yanked that nasty string of, believing there were actually lots of progressive men out there affirming woman's equality, right out.

It would seem that the minute the bare foot and pregnant crowd took office, it became acceptable for other self proclaiming "progressive" men to jump on their bandwagon of regression towards women.

writer,

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