More on Women

"Stan, why do you go on so much about women?"
"Because I want to be one."
"What?!"
"From now on, I want you all to call me Loretta."
"But Stan, why do you want to be a woman?"
"I want to have babies."
"You can't have babies!"
"Don't you oppress me!"
[The Life of Brian]

I had wanted to raise holy hell about this article:

(1) Girl Power at School, but Not at the Office
"I used to think that perfection was the pathway to success. Not so, according to women I have interviewed who have reached the apex of their professions. Rather, it can lead to paralysis. Women, I have found, can let perfectionism stop them from speaking up or taking risks. For men, especially if they are thick-skinned, the thought of someone telling them “no” tends not to be viewed as earth-shattering."

What a smoldering steaming pile of bullshit. Ms. Seligson's sweeping and unsubstantiated cultural professions on behalf of all womankind, and then her trite reccomendations for cubicle decay ("girls do brag!") tempt me to rip out pages of Marx, crinkle them up, and meticulously stuff them into my eye socket. (and here i am, a market liberal, middle class meritocrat and everything)

but a thoughtful, more systematic (and substantiated? whatever, i have no journalistic integrity; i can revel in all the blog-ular steaming piles i want to) refutation of all the dumb presumptions in this article will have to wait.

Instead this may be the most fascinating article on the subject i've seen yet:

(2) Feminism and Freedom
"In 1991, the culture critic and dissident feminist Camille Paglia...described women's studies as 'a jumble of vulgarians, bunglers, whiners, French faddicts, apparatchiks, dough-faced party-liners, pie-in-the-sky utopians and bullying sanctimonious sermonizers. Reasonable, moderate feminists hang back and keep silent in the face of fascism.'"

"Women in the West did form a movement and did liberate themselves in ways of vital importance to the evolution of liberal society. Feminism in its classical phase was a critical chapter in the history of freedom. For most of the world's women, that history has just begun; for them, classical feminism offers a tried-and-true roadmap to equality and freedom. And even in the West, there are unresolved equity issues, and the work of feminism is not over. Who needs feminism? We do. The world does. Women everywhere need the liberty to be what they are--not, as contemporary feminism insists, liberation from what they are. This we can see if we look back at the history of women's liberation--not as it is taught in women's studies departments, but as it truly was."

Vindications of the Right of Women and the rifle wielding abolitionist Puritan--a fascinating ancestory to the Western Woman: bleeding heart do-gooder and the fierce independent, intellectual and family matriarch, sexual transgressions and mama bear of the den, Paine and Burke, and fifty other jumbled up polarities. How delightful to trace it to historical legends and archetypes: Wollenstein and More.

"Truth be told, there are also great numbers of contemporary American women who would today readily label themselves as feminists were they aware of a conservative alternative in which liberty, rather than "liberation," is the dominant idea. Today, more than 70 percent of American women reject the label "feminist," largely because the label has been appropriated by those who reject the very idea of a feminine sphere." --how fascinating!

I am intrigued by this alternative duality personified by Wollenstein and More: civil liberty and social responsibility, respectively. The educated, radical elite and the masses, respectively. That the first was to spend 100 years villified as a wanton tramp; and the latter is today trivialized as a do-gooding priss.

hmm. hmm. hmm. i agree with nothing yet; especially ingratiatingly sweeping generalization of "woman's nature" (as one should likewise be highly skeptical on statements of "human nature"; how else would philospher's be employed? bless the devil in the details). i ain't saying it ain't there, its just messy: some of it has a basis, and the rest is shit piled on top. In many cultures men are actually very interested in the domestic sphere. Why are some helping professions (of women) labeled "caring" and others (of men) labeled "heroic"? Why are men usually entirely left out of the discussion? i am provoked and enticed.

(fine, philosophers are not by and large employed; but how else then would cafes the world over stay afloat without them?)