Rejecting feminism
makes no sense
By LEONARD PITTS JR,
from the Web, February 11, 2008
Brace yourself. I'm going to
use a word that offends folks. I'm talking the ''F'' word.
Feminist.
This woman sent me an e-mail Monday, and it got me thinking. See, in
describing herself, she assured me she was not ''a women's libber'' -- the late
1960s equivalent of feminist. She also said she was retired from the U.S.
Navy. There was, it seemed to me, a disconnect there: She doesn't
believe in women's liberation, yet she is retired from a position that
liberation made possible.
Intrigued, I asked my 17-year-old daughter if she considers herself a feminist.
She responded with a mildly horrified No. This, by the way, is the
daughter with the 3.75 GPA who is currently pondering possible college majors
including political science, psychology and ... women's studies. I asked
her to define "feminist."
There began a halting explanation that seemed to suggest shrillness wrapped
around obnoxiousness. Abruptly, she stopped. ''It's hard to explain,'' she
said.
Actually, it's not. Jessica Valenti, author of Full Frontal Feminism:
A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters, calls it the
I'm-Not-A-Feminist-But syndrome. As in the woman who says, ''I'm not a
feminist, but ... '' and then "goes on to espouse completely feminist values.
I think most women believe in access to birth control, they want equal pay for
equal work, they want to fight against rape and violence against women.''
A once-useful term
''Feminist,'' it seems, has ended up in the same syntactical purgatory as
another once-useful, now-reviled term: liberal. Most people endorse
what that word has historically stood for -- integration, child labor laws,
product safety -- yet they treat the word itself like anthrax. Similarly,
while it's hard to imagine that any young woman really wants to return to the
days of barefoot, pregnant and making meatloaf, many now disdain the banner
under which their gender fought for freedom. They scorn feminism even as
they feast at a table that feminism prepared.
Says Valenti, "The word has been so effectively misused and so effectively
mischaracterized by conservatives for so long that women are afraid to identify
with it. They'll say everything under the sun that's feminist, but they
won't identify with it because they've been taught feminists are anti-men,
feminists are ugly.''
Deborah Tannen agrees. She is a professor of linguistics at Georgetown
University and author of a number of books on gender and communication,
including: You're Wearing That?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters
in Conversation. "The reason, I believe, is that meanings of words come from how
they're used. And since the word feminist is used as a negative term
rather than a positive one, people don't want to be associated with it.''
With apologies to Malcolm X, they've been had, they've been hoodwinked, they've
been bamboozled. And it's sad. I've lost track of how many times,
visiting high schools or teaching college classes, I have met bright girls
juggling options and freedoms that would've been unthinkable a generation ago,
smart young women preparing for lives and careers their foremothers could not
have dreamt, yet if you use the ''F'' word, they recoil.
'I am a feminist'
We have lost collective memory of how things were before the F-word. Of
the casual beatings. Of the casual rape. Of words like ''old maid''
and ''spinster.'' Of abortion by coat hanger. Of going to school to
find a man. Of getting an allowance and needing a husband's permission.
Of taking all your spirit, all your dreams, all your ambition, aspiration,
creativity and pounding them down until they fit a space no larger than a
casserole dish.
''I'm not a feminist, but ... ?'' That's a fraud. It's
intellectually dishonest. And it's a slap to the feminists who prepared
the table at which today's young women sup.
So for the record, I am a feminist. My daughter is, too.
She doesn't know it yet.
Posted on Wed, Feb. 06, 2008
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