North American feminism has drowned in triviality. It produces nothing but strings of passive-voice phrases and collections of silly anecdotes about hurt feelings. My blogroll today brought me a sampling of what feminist writing is all about these days:
The “Somebody Was Not Nice at a Cocktail Party” Genre: “She was talking to a man at a cocktail party when he asked her what she did. She replied that she wrote books, and she described her most recent one, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West.The man interrupted her soon after she said the word Muybridge and asked, “And have you heard about the very important Muybridge book that came out this year?” He then waxed on, based on his reading of a review of the book, not even the book itself, until finally a friend said, “That’s her book.” He ignored that friend (also a woman) and she had to say it more than three times before “he went ashen” and walked away. If you are not a woman, ask any woman you know what this is like, because it is not fun and happens to all of us.”
The “Let’s Passive Voice Women to Death” Genre: “Femininity is so often conflated with powerlessness, so often painted as inferior, so often the target of street harassment.”
The genre is enormously popular, so there are always scores of articles in it: “““Some of the very qualities that make for great top-level editors, such as firm decision-making ability and willingness to stand up for your point of view against competing interests — are qualities that are often lauded in men and seen as overly abrasive in women,” said Ann Friedman, former deputy editor of The American Prospect.”
And some more: “Women face a classic double bind: if they confirm female stereotypes of gentleness, communality, and physical attractiveness, they are liked more but presumed less competent. If they disconfirm female stereotypes and act confident and assertive, they are liked less and presumed to have poor social skills. Both being liked and being considered competent is vital for getting hired, retained, and promoted.”
I’ve read hundreds of posts in this genre and let me tell you, the people who do all this presuming, seeing and considering are NEVER named. I have arrived at a conclusion that not naming them has a purpose. If you identify the culprit, you’ll have to do something about the situation. Vague, passive speechifying, on the other hand, is something one can enjoy in perpetuity.
The “Words Can Kill” Genre: “As I walk through the camp to the makeshift kitchen to drop off my baked goods (a donation, as I can’t be there myself), I say to some older women camped out there how wonderful it is to see so many people stepping up. They look at me and smile. ‘We’re doing it for your children, love.’ I reply. ‘Well, maybe not for my children, but for those of my sisters, definitely.’ They gaze back at me, as if they know something about me that I don’t. ‘Oh, you’ll want children one day. Everyone does.’ Again, I reply, slightly more firm this time, slightly more on edge. ‘I don’t want children.’ One of them points to the t-shirt I am wearing: a large tree with leaves made of music notes and roots stretching into the ground. ‘But your shirt has the tree of life on it. It’s the natural way of things.’ I shake my head and leave. Suddenly, the place has become menacing.”
In my search I also encountered a new genre, which is the People’s Clothes Hurt Me: “The shirt was offensive through and through, and it rankled. It hurt. It made me feel lesser and unwelcome. It felt as though that shirt was trying to single-handedly put me in my place—a distinctly inferior and foreign place.” Mind you, the shirt discussed in the anecdote is offensive. But it’s the language that describes the encounter that is so disturbing to me.
It took me all of 15 minutes to cull these and I could have easily found many more if I had the patience. Each of the quotes on its own is not a big deal. But when you keep seeing dozens of them every day and when there is nothing else, you’ve got to start wondering what the hell is going on.
In the meanwhile, do you know when was the last time I saw in my enormous blogroll that I read daily any articles on the subject of, say, paternal leave or preschool childcare, which, I am deeply convinced, are the central real issues North American feminism faces today?
The answer is: never.
Clarissa's Blog 
Maybe that means blogroll feminism = triviality. Everybody else is off doing worthwhile stuff.
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https://clarissasblog.com/2011/01/30/the-liberating-potential-of-the-burqa-or-the-future-of-gender-studies/
https://clarissasblog.com/2009/10/15/feminism-and-toilet-cleaning/
Can you tell me where this everybody else is located? I will be very grateful if you name some concrete spaces. Academia and the Internet don’t work. What’s left? Thank you in advance.
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Yep, and you are one of the minions, well, in name at least. 😛
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This is why I do my best to ignore virtually all of them.
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Some observations:
1.Everyone you just linked to either writes for or used to write for blogs I haven’t bothered reading in at least three years.
2.Most of the writers (I’m not counting the reblog on Tumblr, just the actual source) are well connected within mainstream feminist media.
3.Most of the writers appear to be white.
4.To be honest, I don’t even read the blogs on the feminist blogs newsfeed anymore.
I’m on a lot of feminist mailing lists (due to signing petitions over the years) and it’s very striking how passive even one issue feminist organizations are. “Give us money so we can sign this petition to react against this thing these bad people are doing/allies are just letting happen.” It’s a very toothless form of activism and you’ll never see any such feminist organization proposing an action like “Lobby congress for paid in full national preschool care”. I’m sure there’s a connection between this verbal passivity and a lack of action (as compared to reaction.)
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“I’m sure there’s a connection between this verbal passivity and a lack of action (as compared to reaction.)”
– EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!
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I clicked through some of the sites you linked to – Feministing does post trivial articles, but after a cursory skim I also see they’ve posted or linked to articles on abortion restrictions, rape kit backlogs, and wages and healthcare access for poor people.
LoveJoyFeminism is one I’ve read before, and has many in-depth posts exploring right-wing Christianity and growing up and being homeschooled in that subculture.
“I’ve read hundreds of posts in this genre and let me tell you, the people who do all this presuming, seeing and considering are NEVER named.”
Not so – even the article you quote here (“Women face a classic double bind: if they confirm female stereotypes of gentleness, communality, and physical attractiveness, they are liked more but presumed less competent. If they disconfirm female stereotypes and act confident and assertive, they are liked less and presumed to have poor social skills”) mentions specific research studies based on workplace evaluations of behavior… I haven’t yet read the abstracts, so I don’t know the details. But it isn’t just vague speechifying based on random feelings the author has. Maybe some of these articles can be brought to bear on yesterday’s discussion sparked by Entrepreneur 🙂
The Soraya Chemaly article also discusses similar research – it isn’t simply about people not being nice to you at a party. The article offers that anecdote but explores the topic more in depth, and it also has relevance to he workplace: How do you speak? How does your boss or co-worker judge your speech? (On its contents, or based on irrelevant attributes?) What can women change about the way they speak?
So from what I’m seeing, it’s a mixed bag. As for one of the points you made, about the language you find disturbing, I think this also has relevance to Entrepreneur’s discussion yesterday – the issues raised about emotional management and feelings of being watched/judged/perceived…
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If you see value in the linked pieces, that’s good. An intelligent person can squeeze value out of anything, pretty much. I, however, can’t get over the annoyance they cause me. This is probably one of those cultural differences that I simply can’t get over.
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Am I the only one who thought the woman in the article about the t-shirt was overreacting? Is that what she considers an offensive shirt, I’ve seen worse at Spencer Gifts that have references to sex and smoking pot and getting drunk. Maybe it’s because I’m a metal head who had a punk phase in high school, but it’s pretty hard to shock and offend me with a t-shirt and such. I’m offended by people who are offended by everything, it’s like that episode of South Park where they tried to do a nondenominational Christmas pageant that sucked and everyone hated.
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If I decide to wear a t-shirt with a sexist/homophobic/racist joke on it, either I have fun trolling people or I’m making some kind of statement against a certain group.
The shocked reaction from the woman is over the top, but I would be wary of the man wearing such a t-shirt too.
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The shirt is obviously stupid. But the reaction of “it rankled. It hurt. It made me feel lesser and unwelcome. It felt as though that shirt was trying to single-handedly put me in my place—a distinctly inferior and foreign place” is just not good. If the author isn’t seeing that the “inferior and foreign place” is located not inside the shirt but inside herself, this degree of self-awareness is very sad.
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I agree it was over the top, when I think of trolling I think of this: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=anal+cunt
This is a punk band that does deliberately offensive music to troll people, their whole point to piss people off and get a reaction from people. Once you realize that they are trolling and it’s a joke, then it’s funny
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When I was a kid I developed a macho ethic. I had seen a documentary about a woman who had trekked across the Australian outback with only a camel train to support her, and I — being born in Africa — wanted to be in a position to be able to flee to the bush and be self-reliant if something untoward happened to me, like terrorists approached or another danger closed in.
Already I was inclined to explore the roads and landscape in bare feet, much of the time, but I decided to step up the toughness quotient to another level by deliberately walking on rugged rocks and stones so as to harden the soles of my feet.
White kids already had rather hardened foot soles, with cracked heels being the norm, but nothing like their black counterparts’ feet, which tended to have layers and layers of dead skin.
I wanted to be the toughest, because anything less than the capacity to be one hundred percent mobile at a moments’ notice was a slight against my character, at least in my own mind. I hated the notion of myself as stuck in one place and dependent on the items of civilisation.
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This is fascinating because I’m the exact opposite. I was always a lot more shiftless than anybody else I knew, and I have forever been trying to get products of civilization weigh me down.
Still, I see you and me as having a lot in common. Is it the live for the extremes?
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I still have that ethic of idealizing self reliance but it is not so metaphysical, in the sense that if I were to fail I would not consider that a spiritual or moral failure on my part.
Yes, the extremes are always very alluring, though, aren’t they?
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