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42 Years Was A Long Time Ago, "Baby" -- A Reflection on Feminist and Republican Party Agendas, in 1968 and Today

Sun, 2009-11-29 15:54 — figleaf

Summary: Hard to believe some people think feminism is still all about burning bras (myth) and singing “I am Woman Hear Me Roar.” They’re still around. They’re also still wrong.

Ariel Levy in The New Yorker finds a… startling assertion from Washington D.C. Republican analyst Leslie Sanchez, who’s got a new book out called “You’ve Come a Long Way, Maybe: Sarah, Michelle, Hillary and the Shaping of the New American Woman”

“I don’t agree with the feminist agenda,” Sanchez writes. “To me, the word ‘feminist’ epitomizes the zealots of an earlier and more disruptive time.” Here’s what Sanchez would prefer: “No bra burning. No belting out Helen Reddy. Just calm concern for how women were faring in the world.”

Read the quote in context here.

Hmm… let’s see… “bra burning” happened in 1968. Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman Hear Me Roar” came out in 1972. For that matter Virginia Slims, the “feminist” cigarette who’s slogan Sanchez twists in her book title, also came out in 1968.

Question for Sanchez: you want us to assess your Republican party based on their ideas in 1968-1972? Another question for Sanchez: Are you saying there’s been no development or refinement of thought in the Republican Party since 1968-1972?

More to the point, is Sanchez saying her Republicans are still pushing for passage of the Endangered Species Act and establishing the Environmental Protection Agency, or promising to federalize national transportation planning, pressing for a greater role for the Department of Education, pushing for urban renewal and investment in America’s inner cities, and, especially, kicking out members of the John Birch Society the way they did 42 years ago?

In fact no, I think she’d say you were a stupid moron if you said yes, they have the same agenda. And she’d be right.

To be blunt, therefore, she’s a stupid moron for claiming the modern feminist agenda is unchanged.

Sun, 2009-11-29 18:24 — Blue Gal (not verified) #permalink

Sanchez also has inside-the-beltway myopia — ANY woman getting through “the glass ceiling” into a government job furthers women’s position, even if it’s Sarah Palin.

Sanchez really doesn’t get it that women don’t vote for vaginas, they vote for ideas and stands on issues, and her insistence on the former shows what an ANTI feminist she is. Thanks, Figleaf.

[And not to be a total doof but Sanchez isn’t alone — some of the now-very-elderly women from my parent’s (Unitarian) church would still absolutely agree with Sanchez’s position that ANY woman getting through furthers all women’s positions. As Ariel Levy says in her New Yorker article on some level that would be true — that there are plenty of ‘wingers who’d through Rev. Huckabee under a bus for Sarah Palin really is progress for all women — if only in a Nixon-goes-to-China sort of way. Or, more specifically in her case, only in a Nixon-goes-to-China way. But that’s the point — the overall women’s movement is way more diverse, yes, but also way more sophisticated than it was in 1968-1972. Now, as you say, there’s now biology, yes, but there are also ideas and stands on issues. Thanks, BlueGal. —fl]

Sun, 2009-11-29 19:46 — Nightfall (not verified) #permalink

Obliquely related to both this and the last one: I wonder how many highly-placed conservative women (like, say, Palin, though I’m not claiming that she actually does) really believe that women would be happier and/or better off making babies and being chained to the kitchen. And if there are any, why aren’t they doing it?

[Levy covers your question nicely in her article.

Esther Peterson, President Kennedy’s Assistant Secretary of Labor, asked a high-school auditorium full of girls how many of them expected to have a “home and kids and a family.” Hands shot up. Next, Peterson asked how many expected to work, and only a few errant hands were raised. Finally, she asked the girls how many of them had mothers who worked, and “all of those hands went up again,” Peterson wrote in her 1995 memoir, “Restless.” Nine out of ten of the girls would end up having jobs outside the house, she explained, “but each of the girls thought that she would be that tenth girl.”

I’m pretty sure most conservatives just think they’re only temporarily not working in the home, the way they think they’re the “just this once” exceptions when they go to abortion clinics. Or, along those same lines, they may think “well, I’m different but it’s better for everyone else.” Or, I think like Palin, they really do just think they can and/or have to “do it all.” None of which happen to be particularly feminist points of view. Thanks, Nightfall. —fl]

Mon, 2009-11-30 03:51 — colorlessblue (not verified) #permalink

About highly-placed conservative women, I’m going to quote Slacktivist:
“Note that Tim LaHaye’s wife is something of a professional misogynist. She runs the 500,000-member “Concerned Women for America” — jokingly referred to by its critics as “Ladies Against Women.” For years, while Beverly LaHaye’s husband pastored a church in San Diego, Mrs. L. spent most of her time 3,000 miles away, in Washington, D.C., running a large organization committed to, among other things, telling women they should stay at home and sacrifice their careers for their husbands. She is not an ironic woman and doesn’t seem to find any of this inconsistent. (Nor, as I found out firsthand, does she appreciate jokes about the Freudian implications of the view from her L’Enfante Plaza office window. Sometimes the Washington Monument is just a cigar.)”
http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2003/10/left_behind_pre.html

Wed, 2009-12-09 10:34 — Phone Sex (not verified) #permalink
Sex only has meaning insofar as we experience it. Its meaning is emergent, not objective. We discover the meaning of sex each time we are sexual, meaning that only resides in our experience. The meaning of sex changes—is reinvented—each time we are sexual.

Most people need sex to have meaning because the alternative is too frightening: being sexual in an existential vacuum. Sex without meaning would require participants to float freely in sexual experience, rather than being snugly anchored in a cognitive framework.

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