There's A Woman Missing From this Story
I really liked Kay Hymowitz's piece in City Journal about Sarah Palin and the battle for feminism. She brings up many important points:
How are liberal feminists to understand the kind of soi-disant feminist who would vote against a Paycheck Fairness Act? Gloria Steinem has tried this hoary explanation: “Any group of people that has been subordinate absorbs the idea of their own subordination . . . and comes to think that the only way to survive is to identify with the powerful.” That charge is so thoroughly inadequate for describing women like Michelle Moore and Sarah Palin that it only makes Steinem look clueless. But there were liberal feminists who understood that the Grizzlies’ arrival confronted them with a question that they needed to take seriously: What is feminism?
But I cannot believe that not once, not once in this entire piece, is Margaret Thatcher's name mentioned. How odd and glaring an omission is that?
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Jul '10
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
Thatcher is receding into distant history with this attention-challenged culture. So was Ronald Reagan until Obama lately discovered that he and RR are just about the same except for policy differences here and there. It's not called triangulation anymore. It is something higher and better framed by Greek columns.
Aug '10
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
don't you think that Kay was trying to reach beyond the usual readers to the actual feminists out there, and in an attempt to ignore their ossification ,tried not to mention someone even older than them ? Your youth forgets the narcissism embodied by these abortive operatives for a forgotten empire, and who is more emblematic of a forgotten empire ( Churchill is déclassé according to Allied Van Lines) than our heroine Baroness Thatcher ? You are one of few people in the world who can question the City Journal, and only risk a paycheck. I would risk my sanity. And I have never seen much criticism of City Journal, have they been the subject of much ?
Dec '10
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
Claire, there's also no mention of Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir or Catherine the Great. Perhaps that's because the article is narrowly focused on American politics and not the status of women in politics throughout world history. (Note that Germaine Greer also gets overlooked on the feminist-theory side of the article.)
Oct '10
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
This isn't a feminist problem; it's a groupthink problem. The groupthinkers are conquering every cultural institution (with a political aspect) in America. From blacks to women to gays to [insert minority here], the "civil rights" movement has turned into "group-conformist oppression movement."
Edited on Jan 24, 2011 at 6:04pmJul '10
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
What I find intriguing is that the women who were expressing, "...violent, nay, murderous rage..." towards Palin and who wanted to "...vomit with rage..." were responding in such a lunatic fashion upon their very first exposure to her.
Something tells me that was, more than anything else, a reaction to her decision to bring Trig into the world. Politics is politics. But to women like that, abortion is a sacrament.
By the way, I've bookmarked the article so I can remind some of our Members who suggest that to oppose Sarah Palin is to make league with the Left that there is a vast difference between doubt on the right and lunatic rage on the left.
Jul '10
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
If they mentioned Thatcher they would have to address her as a phenomenon, and they have a word limit. And it avoids the egregious and utterly premature comparison of Palin and Thatcher that we keep landing in hereabouts.
Jun '10
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
Assuming the pseudonyms belong to men, all the comments on this thread are from men, mine included. So, I guess I agree, we need a new definition feminism. And if not a redefinition then, perhaps, a new women's movement, as the old one doesn't seem to have taken hold.
Nov '10
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
Joseph Eagar: This isn't a feminist problem; it's a groupthink problem. The groupthinkers are conquering every cultural institution (with a political aspect) in America. From blacks to women to gays to [insert minority here], the "civil rights" movement has turned into "group-conformist oppression movement." · Jan 24 at 6:03pm
Edited on Jan 24 at 06:04 pm
Point of order: Groupthink is a symptom. Leftist ideology is the problem.
Feminism and the other victim-isms you talk about have been co-opted by the far left. They concern themselves only peripherally with the issues they claim to champion; their real aim is the advancement of socialism (yes, I used the 'S' word).
Notice that the groupthink you point to spans all of the popular causes. No matter if you're gay, ethnic minority, handicapped, immigrant, whatever, you're part of the same groupthink. No matter what your gripe, the answer is bigger government.
Sep '10
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
Back in the late 1970s, a women I barely knew told a mutual friend and me that we were wrong to think that feminism would take hold among the majority of women because it was anti-motherhood. . . . Back then, every marrying woman I knew kept her surname. In recent years, though, most young women I know who have gotten married—many of them offspring of "the movement"—have not kept their maiden names. At first there were lots of hyphenated last names, but that too has become less common, with most brides simply dropping the surname or making it her middle married name. . . . In 2008, a dejected Hillary Clinton was pretty much abandoned by her feminist sisters and other progressive Democrats. But at the same time, this motherhood-loving babe called Sarah Palin arrives on the scene, and women from all over come to see her, dragging their little ones behind them. . . . Soon we hear reports that women are the movers and shakers of the Tea Party. . . . In 2009 and 2010 the movement is politically successful. . . . No wonder feminists are so inflamed: they've lost their movement to the worst infamy of all: biology.
Jun '10
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
No doubt an enormous amount of "here" and "there". One was a supporter of FDR who became enlightened that the path FDR had put the country on was essentially the road to serfdom and became the voice and conscience of restoring the American experiment. The other has been described as a radical Marxist-Leninist hell-bent on fundamentally transforming America to a socialist state and who has helped create even more centralized authority over Americans and business by the federal government. Other than all that, of course, they are "about the same."
I refuse to believe that Obama has embraced Ronald Reagan's political philosophy. It's all for show and because he needs to have moderates and establishment Republicans say how wonderful he is at pivoting. The man isn't stupid. He realizes that in order to continue to transform America he will have to be re-elected.
Sep '10
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
Leslie,
Very interesting point about how many women are the movers and shakers in the Tea Party movement. I'm also intrigued by the trend you noticed among married women of not keeping their maiden names. What is the age range that you find this happening in?
Dec '10
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
Cas, of the first six comments, four address the specific question about Thatcher. I'm not sure there's much that says about feminism.
Oct '10
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
Indeed, the future belongs to those who show up for it. Liberalism and feminism are demographic dead-ends.
As for the lack of attention to Margaret Thatcher, I believe Stuart has the gist of it. Arguably, Jeanette Rankin has had a greater historical influence on today's crop of Republican women politicians.
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
That's because City Journal is so admirable. I say this not out of concern for my paycheck, simply out of real love for the publication. My comment wasn't precisely a criticism of the article, which I found excellent and thought-provoking. It was an expression of surprise, however, because as I read it, I kept thinking, "This is so familiar: It's what everyone in Britain was saying of Thatcher--a generation ago." Of course I'm minded to think of Thatcher more than most Americans, but I do think a nod to Thatcher would have broadened the picture here and suggested that this is actually a predictable trend in feminism generally, not just in America.
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
The old one has very much taken hold--but it has, interestingly, succeeded on its own ideological terms more than its authors understood. It's a fascinating thing. The stated goal was to open doors and expand choices for women. In practice, the first-generation feminists in fact believed women should walk only through one set of open doors--take the doors to the left, ladies, walk this way. But they inadvertently opened a lot more doors, and behold, women seem to be streaming through all of those open doors, the ones on the right in particular.
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
The old one has very much taken hold--but it has, interestingly, succeeded on its own ideological terms more than its authors understood. It's a fascinating thing. The stated goal was to open doors and expand choices for women. In practice, the first-generation feminists in fact believed women should walk only through one set of open doors--take the doors to the left, ladies, walk this way. But they inadvertently opened a lot more doors, and behold, women seem to be streaming through all of those open doors, the ones on the right in particular. · Jan 25 at 1:30am
One possible moral: It may be possible to unleash new political forces, but do not imagine you'll be able to control them forever.
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
Sure, I understand the word limit issue--but talking about conservative women who force the world to rethink the concept of feminism without mentioning Thatcher is a bit like discussing pacifism without ever mentioning Gandhi. And you don't need to say that Palin is Thatcher's equal to remark that in this regard, there is an important similarity--there obviously is.
Jun '10
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
As Stuart says, the article narrowly focused on American feminism and politics. Thatcher would have been out of place in this piece.
I can't think of any young women who are keeping their maiden names. I guess they all figured out that keeping your dad's name is no more a statement of independence and strength than taking you husband's.
Sep '10
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
Pseudodionysius: Leslie,
Very interesting point about how many women are the movers and shakers in the Tea Party movement. I'm also intrigued by the trend you noticed among married women of not keeping their maiden names. What is the age range that you find this happening in? · Jan 24 at 8:09pm
All ranges, actually, but mostly women in their late 20s and early 30s. They all could be my daughters. I myself would never take someone else's name, mostly because I'm a radical for the individual; besides, whether you keep your surname or take your husband's name, both are from the father's side, so what's the diff?
Sep '10
Re: There's A Woman Missing From this Story
Leslie Watkins
Pseudodionysius: Leslie,
Very interesting point about how many women are the movers and shakers in the Tea Party movement. I'm also intrigued by the trend you noticed among married women of not keeping their maiden names. What is the age range that you find this happening in? · Jan 24 at 8:09pm
All ranges, actually, but mostly women in their late 20s and early 30s. They all could be my daughters. I myself would never take someone else's name, mostly because I'm a radical for the individual; besides, whether you keep your surname or take your husband's name, both are from the father's side, so what's the diff? · Jan 25 at 6:36am
I have to admit that though my wife took my name -- and many of our generation didn't -- I'm unclear on what the strong arguments are for it. That said, I've seen an even stranger occurrence where both spouses take each other's name so they're this format:
First Name-Last Name-2nd Last Name.
Then, they as well as all the kids are hyper hyphenated. I don't get it.