How the ‘war on women’ quashed feminist stereotypes

[seabeyond]

When Phyllis Schlafly is forced to concede that not all feminists are ugly, it’s clear that something has gone awry on the right. Sure enough, in April, Schlafly, a conservative crusader who has been peddling stereotypes of women’s activists as physically and socially unappealing for decades, thought she should warn cadets at the Citadel not to fall for one. “Some of them are pretty,” she said. “They don’t all look like Bella Abzug.” Schlafly’s anachronistic dig at Abzug, a boisterous New York congresswoman who has been dead for 14 years and whose name and fondness for large hats probably don’t ring alarm bells for many undergrads, betrays the anxiety undergirding her warning. The aged, arid vision of feminism on which conservatives have long relied (and that Abzug embodied only in caricature, never in reality) is finally losing its power. The image of the feminist as a mirthless, hirsute, sex-averse succubus is a friendly-fire casualty of the Republican “war on women.” It’s a grave loss to conservatives, who have used this faithful foot soldier as a comfortably grotesque stand-in for the real people whose liberties they have sought to conscribe: women.

In a famous 1992 fundraising letter, television evangelist Pat Robertson described feminism as a movement that “encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians,” while conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has stated that “feminism was established to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream.” The characterization is so potent and pervasive that lefties have also availed themselves of it. In 2005, liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas dismissed feminist complaints as the “humorless, knee-jerk .?.?. tedious” stuff of “the sanctimonious women’s-studies set.” Painting those with a commitment to gender equality as brutish killers of buzzes and babies has been a useful tactic, not only in distracting the public from anti-feminist policy, but in sending messages to young people. Generations of kids, including my own 1990s cohort, have prefaced feminist statements with, “I’m not a feminist, but .?.?.” Sarah Michelle Gellar, who played girl-power icon Buffy Summers, once told a reporter that she hated the word “feminist” because it “brings up such horrible connotations and makes you think of women who don’t shave their legs.”

*

But the recent Republican incursions against women’s rights have been extreme enough to make women finally see beyond the wraith, to recognize that this battle is in fact about them. As presidential candidates sparred over birth control and state legislatures enacted punishing restrictions on reproductive rights and opposed equal-pay protections, newly vocal feminists resisted publicly. By doing so, they transformed the stereotype, putting youth, sex and humor on the side of the long-denigrated women’s movement. Conservatives such as Limbaugh, Foster Friess and Rick Santorum, dealing in sexual censoriousness and musty utterances, suddenly looked like the sexless relics of a bygone era, while the women shouting back at them presented a new, cool model of feminism — young, funny, socially nimble and appealing enough to tempt young men from the Citadel.

*

The 30-year-old Fluke’s eagerness to speak about gender equality — not just in her testimony, but since — further belied the retro view of feminism as the purview of older women. Young women, we’ve repeatedly been told, don’t care about the freedoms won for them by their mothers and grandmothers. But while Republican bankroller Friess’s comment, “Back in my day, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives; the gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly” made conservative men sound like great-grandpas, young feminist women were getting themselves noticed by the media. Images of ultrasound wands and all-male congressional hearings and social-media campaigns goosed boycotts, donations to Planned Parenthood and state-house demonstrations nationwide. Youthful engagement zinged through mainstream popular culture; on “The View” in May, 20-year-old actress Eden Sher recommended Jessica Valenti’s “Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters,” raving that the book “makes it absolutely impossible for anyone, but specifically young females, to not want to take action.” Women’s rights activism enlivened even small towns such as Dunkerton, Iowa, where residents protested an appearance by Bradlee Dean, a conservative Christian preacher whose band had recently told a group of high school girls that they would “have mud on their wedding dresses if they weren’t virgins”; demonstrators included female students with signs that read: “This is what a feminist looks like.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/one-good-casualty-in-the-war-on-women-the-stereotype-of-joyless-feminists/2012/05/11/gIQAcMyKIU_story_2.html

_____________________________

it was recomended that i cross post this article. the person that asked me to had this to say: I myself think the OP is a bit too rosy, but i would like to hear what ye think

i can always appreciate when info of interest or a desire for conversation comes thru pm .

personally, i could not agree more that the republicans have helped our young women toward feminism than ever before.

there is a problem getting the third page. it is a good page to have, to finish the article. that is why i did not post this a couple days ago.


edit.... i am curious and would like to have a discussion on what is meant by "rosey"

[DonCoquixote]

1. Hi there

What I meant by "rosey."

Simply put, I feel that while the "war on women" has indeed let the GOP let their mask slip, I do not think it has been as dramatic as this article suggests. Yes, it has made Democrats more cohesive, as it does truly show that if the GOP wins, they will indeed sign the death warrant for Roe, Birth control, and a lot of things women take for granted. However, I do think that there are plenty of GOP types/"Centrists" that will still push enough buttons and makee sure this truth gets hidden, from the Hassbelbecks to the Palins to the Huffingtons. I may be wrong, indeed, I hope I am.

[seabeyond]

2. what i am seeing happening because of all this, is the democrats willing to define themselves

more clearly on the women issues. for obama to more clearly define himself on the woman issues. and i think with the connection of the woman community and the lbgt comunity that it has allowed him to be free to define himself on gay issues.

i think this is going to be a real plus in allowing the democratic party to become more true to self and stand more firmly in their liberal ways, with permission from our society and pulling away from the center, more.

for me, that is the real benefit i am seeing from a political point of view.

[DonCoquixote]

5. I agree

Simply put, the GOP have extended their fangs too soon and too often. However, I see some danger in the "Centrists" moving in, for example, Lynn Evelyn de Rothschild is a funder of Americans elect, and got a big spread in the Huffington post. However, she is a staunch defender of Eric Cantor and Jon Huntsman (both anti abortion, neither of them friends of women's rights)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/19/lynn-de-rothschild-jon-huntsman_n_1159189.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lady-lynn-forester-de-rothschild/2012-third-party-americans-elect_b_1128640.html
http://www.salon.com/2011/08/20/lady_rothschild_2012/

[iverglas]

3. I am totally off topic

But I can't see the name "Pat Robertson" without thinking "Soviet Canuckistan!"

He must hold the record for backfired insults. "Soviet Canuckistan" was immediately adopted by Canadians as our preferred national title. Canuckistanian at this website nabbed a name others would probably have wanted.

Google gets 220,000 hits for it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Canadianism

(What, you didn't know there was such a thing as anti-Canadianism??)

The war on women up here so far armounts to cancellation of a couple of federal government programs, and another doomed attempt by a Conservative backbencher to pass something about abortion, this time an attempt to establish a committee to study the definition of "human being" for the purpose of homicide in the Criminal Code to find out whether maybe there isn't some science around these days that means we should change it. Nobody's too worried.

Obviously right-wing policies in general are hurting women in some specific ways, and the loss of things like the Court Challenges Program (to fund constitutional challenges to equality rights violations) is a blow, but we know you down there would be happy to have our problems.

Feminism actually never went out of fashion here.

What happens is the tipping point. You do reach a sort of critical mass where things just aren't going to go backwards, at least not in the absence of some revolutionary backward step. The US had not reached that point. Women's equality was just not sufficiently, and sufficiently strongly, embedded in the laws and policies and public spaces of the nation. Every little bit done in that direction, everybody's own personal contribution, helps.

[DonCoquixote]

4. agreed, with a caveat

"The war on women up here so far armounts to cancellation of a couple of federal government programs, and another doomed attempt by a Conservative backbencher to pass something about abortion, this time an attempt to establish a committee to study the definition of "human being" for the purpose of homicide in the Criminal Code to find out whether maybe there isn't some science around these days that means we should change it. Nobody's too worried."

Maybe so, but by the same token, it's not like the same forces are not at work up there, trying to find a way to sell Johnny Canuck their version of the progrom. Yes, most Canadians have resisted, but the fact Harper is still in power, exploiting the fact that the left refuses to unite, does at the very least raise a few red flags.

Also, you have had the benefit of several tipping points, not the least of which was a certain clergyman from Saskatchewan that refused to let the idea of medical coverage die, and les Quebecois, who, frankly, are the reason Canada has not been consumed by American culture. However, in a day and age where people will pay a lot of money to erase history, no tipping point is ever secure.

[iverglas]

6. not a caveat I buy

There is too much of a tendency for USAmericans to view us as the poor cousins, blowing in whatever wind comes from the south.

Harper is a particularly virulent strain of Canadian conservatism, but it has always been here. Although it does have to be acknowledged that some of it is rooted in immigration from the US to the West some decades ago, bringing fundamentalist Christianity and a right-wing world view with it. But that isn't the rest of Canada, and it isn't the conservatism of the rest of Canada.

That's not to say that Harper himself isn't in cahoots with transnational interests, but that's true anywhere in the world these days. We are vulnerable because of our proximity to the US and its greed for our resources, and that guard should never be let down. But that's different from saying that our politics just follows the lead set over the border. Hell, you were electing Obama while we were electing Harper.

You do know that less than 40% of the, what was it, 62% of the electorate that voted in the last election voted Conservative, and Harper's majority in the House was created by the electoral system, not the popular will.

And I'm afraid that any analysis that includes this "unite the left" meme and treats the Liberal Party as if it is a member of the same species as the NDP just doesn't fly with the actual left. The Liberal Party is a "socially liberal" party, in US terms, but then so is Harper's government: when the Conservative PM says he will not attempt to legislate on abortion (or same-sex marriage, for instance) and in fact will vote against the stupid backbencher's motion, we are not looking at US-style anything. The Liberal Party is actually a corrupt right-wing election machine, and this NDPer is not having any part of a marriage with it. A minority government of either stripe, even a coalition cabinet, yes. A merger with the Liberal Party, not on your nelly.

The fact is that even if some agreement were struck to abstain from running candidates in certain ridings, to avoid 3-way splits that go to the Conservatives (which no party is going to do anyway for several reasons), there is no guarantee that the NDP would win in ridings where a Liberal didn't run, because a majority of the Liberal voters in question, barring unusual circumstances, would vote Conservative. They don't actually regard themselves as "the left".

The Liberal Party at the moment is a leaderless rump, not that I underestimate its powers of revival. But there's simply no need to compromise the interests of the people represented by the NDP platform by compromising with the Liberals, particularly in the present circumstances. Bad enough we have a Liberal as party leader. (My membership had lapsed, but I would have voted for him anyway, basically just to get a leader in the House, preferably a yappy one, and get going.)

Yes indeed, Kiefer Sutherland's grandpa's accomplishments are defining moments in Canadian history and identity, the entire vision of ourselves as a kind and gentle people and our belief in equal treatment. But no, Quebec doesn't get credit for our existence. The merger that produced Canada is, of course, one of the factors in our continued existence and our difference from the US: the notion of accommodation of minorities and differences. And Quebec has in recent decades been at the progressive end of the Canadian political spectrum, but hasn't significantly affected policy outside its borders, unfortunately.

Have you read the "father is the head of the household" polling stories? I'll just copy and paste what I posted here a few months ago.

This says it all about the differences, and the problems in the US, to me:

iverglas
2. patriarchy

The link I gave in the previous post

http://www.michaeladams.ca/articles/pdf/here_father.pdf

is to this article, from which I'll quote a bit. (Lengthy article, these excerpts are fair use/dealing; my emphases.)

HERE, FATHER DOESN’T KNOW BEST

What makes us different: patriarchal attitudes are flourishing south of the
border, but Canadians are showing a marked divergence of opinion, says
pollster MICHAEL ADAMS

Wednesday, July 4, 2001

... Nearly 20 years ago, my colleagues at Environics in Toronto and CROP in Montreal began a study of Canadian social values. In our first survey of Canadian values in 1983, we asked Canadians if they strongly or somewhat agreed or disagreed that: “The father of the family must be the master in his own house.” ...

The “father must be master” question has become legendary at Environics. We love it because it measures a traditional, patriarchal attitude to authority in our most cherished institution: the family. Sons inherit the land, starting with the first -- primogeniture prevents estates from being subdivided like amoebas. Sons inherit the family business as in Smith and Son. Sons, not daughters, are named “Junior” in the hope they will prove worthy of their father’s aristocratic seed.

That first time, a total of 42 per cent of Canadians agreed that the father should be master, 15 per cent strongly so and 27 per cent somewhat so. ...

Nineteen ninety-two was the first year we began conducting social-values research in the United States, the world capital of individualism and egalitarianism, of civil rights movements and affirmative action (remember, an American was the first to deflower the feminine mystique). We speculated that the United States would be ahead of Canada and France on this trend.

We found to our surprise that 42 per cent of Americans told us the father should be master, while 57 per cent disagreed and 1 per cent had no opinion. ...

In our 2000 Canadian survey, only 5 per cent reported being strongly in support of patriarchal authority, down from the 15 per cent we found in 1983 (bad news for Stockwell Day). This decline was an authentic social revolution. ...

Meanwhile, we found that where 42 per cent of Americans believed the father should be master in 1992, the number increased to 44 per cent in 1996. We wondered if this was a statistical anomaly. We went back into the field in 2000 ... This time, 48 per cent of Americans said the father of the family must be master in his own home; 51 per cent disagreed and 1 per cent had no opinion.

And I have found an update.

http://americanenvironics.com/PDF/UpdatetoRoadmap2008.pdf

Sexuality and gender. Between 1992 and 2004, the percentage of Americans who agreed with the statement “the father of the family must be the master in his own house” went from 42 to 52 percent. But, at the same time, the percentage who agreed that “taking care of the home and kids is as much a man’s work as women’s work” rose from 86 percent in 1992 to 89 percent in 2004. How can this be? the answer may be that people hold different attitudes around gender roles and gender equality depending on the social domain (home vs. the workplace) in question, or that the definition of “master” itself has changed.

The aVS tracks distinct values trends relating to gender, including Patriarchy, Sexism, Flexible Gender Identity, Flexible Family, Gender Parity, Traditional Family, Traditional Gender Identity, and Reverse Sexism. Just because an individual takes a progressive position on one value doesn’t mean she holds a similar position on the other. we also have question batteries around premarital sex, promiscuity, adultery, homosexuality, and an experimental battery on “masculine overcompensation.”

Canada has had legal same-sex marriage for a decade or so now; Canadians have markedly and increasingly non-patriarchal values.

Same-sex marriage has been rejected repeatedly in many places and by several methods in the US; USAmercans have markedly and increasingly patriarchal values.

Coincidence? I suspect not.

[DonCoquixote]

7. poor cousins?

"There is too much of a tendency for USAmericans to view us as the poor cousins, blowing in whatever wind comes from the south."

If that is the vibe you got, let me assure you that is not what was meant at all (blush). However, I will say this much, a lot of freedom Canada has is the fact that it does have to define itself against America, and was able to do so under both the patronage of England (i.e. we stopped trying to take over after 1812) and with good, stubborn French culture (which, if any francophile was given a choice between an English heaven and an "enfer francais" would prefer to burn in Hell just for the sake of principle, as well as to enjoy conversation with Satre and Baudalaire.) Mexico has an older culture than either of us; what is called Mexico City was once Tenochtitlan, which even Cortes admitted was cleaner and larger than any European city, yet, because they warred with Spain, they were cut off from European support, that and the French were also thrown out when they tried to conquer.

However, the point is, no, I was not trying to patronize Canada; the closest I ever do to that is when I go to Hockey games and root for my beloved Tampa Bay Lightning, and even so, much discord between rival fans is dissolved with Buffalo wings, and we serve Labatt's in bars here to help. Besides which, we tend to hate the Bruins and Flyers on both sides of the border Of course, if you say "Just because I am a Canuck does not mean I like Hockey, I HATE HOCKEY!" then refer to my eariler statement where i did not intend any harm.

Let me state what I DO mean. Simply put, the powerbrokers do not care a fig for any nationality. They will tune in to whatever demon any nation has, and they do have them. Yes, Harper is an anomaly, but he is an anomaly that is sticking around, and if that blasted pipeline gets made under a President Romney, he can have ammo to stay longer. I know you are thinking that is rubbish, but even if a democracy kicks out a virus, the damage can linger. If you do not get pressure from the south, you can get it from China, which is, in an irony that I am sure is making Mao turn in his tomb, is becoming the new home of Global Capitalism. Sad to say, China is more liekly to beat anyone to the punch of biting off your resources, simply because they have way too many mouths to feed.