It seems like we’ve all become apologists for a brand of feminism that stands for anything as long as it also stands in opposition to such contentious issues as anger, militancy, bra-burning, hairy legs, lesbianism, etc etc. In this game, any expression of aggression or force is immediately put in a box marked ‘crazy militant feminist, run for your life’. When what I say can be seen as ‘in that box’, my opinion is necessarily invalid. It seems to me that people in the small ‘l’ liberal, middle-class circles that I inhabit believe vaguely in the equality of men and women, but any real attempt to address said equality in a feminist rather than broadly egalitarian framework is somehow identified with crazy militant feminism. It is therefore ignored. Continue reading
Month: February 2010 (Page 1 of 2)
The broadsheets are getting excited. A wave of recent articles have been claiming that the beauty norms of fashion, advertising and women’s magazines are expanding (literally) to include something other than airbrushed images of skinny, tall, white teenagers that comprise our current “visual grammar”. Is the revolution really here? If not, why not? And does it really matter? Continue reading
These are dark days for gender history. We’re on a cliff edge. Either we jump back into the increasingly choppy sea of post-structuralism, or we hot-foot it back to the safety of sexual difference. You know times are rough when Joan Scott, the alma mater of gender as a ‘useful category of historical analysis’, is saying she hardly ever even uses the word anymore, and would much rather focus on how men and women have operated within distinct sexual spheres. Yes, and the evolutionary psychologists cackle with glee.
What would an ideal feminist world look like?
- Women would RULE and men would have to crawl around at our feet getting us chocolate
- A land of bra burning, hairy lesbians out to get YOU!
- There would be no gender binaries or heteronormativity…