Why "fun feminism" should be consigned to the rubbish bin

[Prism]

146. A hateful bigot who doesn't understand Generation Y. Not surprising.

And yes, Julie Bindle is a hateful bigot against the transgender. She once said she didn't want to be included in the LGBT community, and I am only too happy to honor her wish to not be considered one of us.

That said, here's a dinosaur who half hilariously, half pathetically doesn't understand "these damn kids today" and - the greater crime here - spends no amount of time whatsoever in attempting to dissect the environment in which the current generation of young women were shaped. All she knows is these women are doing things men like, and that is all she needs to know to pass judgement.

Bindle is, by definition, a reactionary.

One doesn't need to get into 2nd or 3rd wave internecine squabbling to understand where Bindle goes wrong. At base, she fails to account for the kind of social and cultural environment Generation Y came of age in. There are a few major points here.

Generation Y is heavily dosed on Girl Power. This is not only a brand of female empowerment that is almost expected of young women today, it is by definition a clarion call to individuality. (The dark side of this cultural expectation is the plague of Gen Y'ers with ridiculously high, unearned self-esteem that doesn't prepare them for the real world.) We've just spent the better part of twenty years at pains to tell each and every child what a unique and special and totally awesome snowflake they are, and Bindle is surprised that many young women incorporate their female identity and sexuality into that?

What we have is a generation of young women with high self-esteem, no shame about their sexuality, and an almost off-hand willingness to cast off the shackles of male judgement on their proper place in culture and society. "Boys can sleep with whoever they want and be celebrated, but I do it and I'm a slut? To hell with that. I'm going to have as much fun as I want without society guilting me about it."

This actually is progress. It actually is equality. But Bindle - not shockingly - can't quite get past her problems with sexuality and tries to paint this as regressive submission to the patriarchy.

This reminds me quite a bit of a similar internecine battle you see crop up in the LGBT community from time to time. There is a strain of radical queer theory that holds LGBTers are different and apart from the rest of society - and that this is a good thing. When they see LGBT couples getting married, they sneeringly refer to them as "assimilationists" who are submitting to disordered society's expectations of monogamy and family structure.

But here's the thing, the queer radicals both won and lost. They did a great, great service in fighting for equality and bringing attention to the AIDS epidemic. But their victory ironically enabled them to be set aside. The result of their victories are those so-called assimilationists. LGBTers are becoming so accepted by society as equals that they are being included in it.

So Bindle is on the losing end here as well. Her brand of radical feminism paved the way for these "funbots" she sneers at. She doesn't understand that these funbots are not the antithesis of her ideology, but the result of it. She is so consumed by the hatred that has driven her ideology for so long that she cannot taste or savor the victories that are her's.

It is ironic, and very sad in its way, but the Bindles of the world are being phased out. This is inevitable and as it should be. At this point, her ideology and her are in their death throes. The result? A sad spectacle like this article. But not an unexpected one. Circle of life, Simba.