Click Elicits “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
If I cried out, “Yes!” every time I thought it while reading Courtney E. Martin and J. Courtney Sullivan’s, CLICK: WHEN WE KNEW WE WERE FEMINISTS (Seal Press, 2010), I would have sounded like I was re-enacting that famous restaurant scene in the late 1980s film WHEN HARRY MET SALLY. A lot of what I’ve written lately seems critical of feminist writers. Frankly, it’s felt bad! It’s necessary, but also leaves me feeling like I’m complaining about the very people cheering me on and keeping women’s issues alive and relevant. Thankfully, I happened upon CLICK, which is a collection of short essays by women (and one man) who share their memories and experiences of realizing the need for feminism or becoming feminists.
Each story is a little different. Each is a testament to the latest generation’s feminism, and bridges the feminist thought and action of the seventies with women’s experiences today. The ideas run the gamut. Nellie Beckett tells us that we need to stop defending feminism and the appearances of feminists and have the true diversity that is feminist thought “recognized in the mainstream.” Succinctly and plainly, she says: “If there’s a movement whose image shouldn’t be the top priority, it’s feminism.” Then again, Courtney Martin wonders whether the stimulation of women through shared fashion sense isn’t a perfectly valid way of engaging subsequent generations. She recognizes that we are all most comfortable when we share something in our outward appearance and that after that initial spark of self-reflection in another, we might more easily draw out women (and men) to find more substantive things about which we can connect. She had no idea, for example, that a feminist could or would wear fishnet tights! These two seemingly conflicting views rest happily together, at once challenging a younger generation of women to stop worrying so much about appearances and start working together, and yet also not feel excluded if fashion is part of your list of passions in life.
Jordan Berg Powers writes about his own experience with feminism and how it feels to be a black, Jewish man and what it is like having a family full of feminist women who refuse to call themselves feminists because of the trappings of the term, which, in the black community, is seen as being a bunch of white women. In other non-white writers’ experiences, this is also true. Asian and Indian women find American feminism hard to take as part of their identities even if they and their families embrace feminist concepts and ideals. Powers claims that when we put gender into a box, we automatically create boundaries for the others, as well. He claims that feminism was the springboard from which he developed critical thinking and which altered his worldview. Joshunda Sanders writes about both race and economic status as separate from feminism, which she saw as a group of people who ignored her. Karen Pittelman contributes to this discussion, as well, with her essay that focuses on class, entitlement and privilege.
Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne writes an emotionally charged and truly important essay about identity and uncovering our true selves. At the age of eleven, she demands that her father take her deer hunting, just like he’s done with her brothers and is done with the other eleven-year-old boys in her town. Her father quietly does what she asks and neither is prepared for her reaction. In the end, she warns us that we must always watch out for merely proving a point versus living true to ourselves. She says, “I had allowed myself to be defined by what the boys said I couldn’t do, rather than what I wanted to do.” While my personal experience of this idea is vastly different than Shelburne’s, her message hit a deep, personal place inside me. This is an extremely significant message to feminism and its evolution, which should not be missed. It’s not merely about women doing certain things because they CAN. It’s really examining whether what we want to prove is true within our hearts and minds. When I think of the COSMOPOLITAN magazine version of feminism in the 1980s and women serving in combat positions in our armed services, this wise sentence speaks volumes. It opens lines of communication we should explore as we work together to find a common ground and understanding among and between women and men.
This post reads more like a standard book review, I know. However, I am so excited and inspired by what I read that I wanted to touch upon the views represented because they reach out to every one of us. The take is fresh, modern and speaks to the “third wave” generation. Check back in for Part II next week as I conclude my raving about this amazing book!
This first section first published: http://www.hercircleezine.com/2011/09/01/yes-yes-yes/
If I cried out, “Yes!” every time I thought it while reading Courtney E. Martin and J. Courtney Sullivan’s, CLICK: WHEN WE KNEW WE WERE FEMINISTS (Seal Press, 2010), I would have sounded like I was re-enacting that famous restaurant scene in the late 1980s film WHEN HARRY MET SALLY. A lot of what I’ve written lately seems critical of feminist writers. Frankly, it’s felt bad! It’s necessary, but also leaves me feeling like I’m complaining about the very people cheering me on and keeping women’s issues alive and relevant. Thankfully, I happened upon CLICK, which is a collection of short essays by women (and one man) who share their memories and experiences of realizing the need for feminism or becoming feminists.
Each story is a little different. Each is a testament to the latest generation’s feminism, and bridges the feminist thought and action of the seventies with women’s experiences today. The ideas run the gamut. Nellie Beckett tells us that we need to stop defending feminism and the appearances of feminists and have the true diversity that is feminist thought “recognized in the mainstream.” Succinctly and plainly, she says: “If there’s a movement whose image shouldn’t be the top priority, it’s feminism.” Then again, Courtney Martin wonders whether the stimulation of women through shared fashion sense isn’t a perfectly valid way of engaging subsequent generations. She recognizes that we are all most comfortable when we share something in our outward appearance and that after that initial spark of self-reflection in another, we might more easily draw out women (and men) to find more substantive things about which we can connect. She had no idea, for example, that a feminist could or would wear fishnet tights! These two seemingly conflicting views rest happily together, at once challenging a younger generation of women to stop worrying so much about appearances and start working together, and yet also not feel excluded if fashion is part of your list of passions in life.
Jordan Berg Powers writes about his own experience with feminism and how it feels to be a black, Jewish man and what it is like having a family full of feminist women who refuse to call themselves feminists because of the trappings of the term, which, in the black community, is seen as being a bunch of white women. In other non-white writers’ experiences, this is also true. Asian and Indian women find American feminism hard to take as part of their identities even if they and their families embrace feminist concepts and ideals. Powers claims that when we put gender into a box, we automatically create boundaries for the others, as well. He claims that feminism was the springboard from which he developed critical thinking and which altered his worldview. Joshunda Sanders writes about both race and economic status as separate from feminism, which she saw as a group of people who ignored her. Karen Pittelman contributes to this discussion, as well, with her essay that focuses on class, entitlement and privilege.
Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne writes an emotionally charged and truly important essay about identity and uncovering our true selves. At the age of eleven, she demands that her father take her deer hunting, just like he’s done with her brothers and is done with the other eleven-year-old boys in her town. Her father quietly does what she asks and neither is prepared for her reaction. In the end, she warns us that we must always watch out for merely proving a point versus living true to ourselves. She says, “I had allowed myself to be defined by what the boys said I couldn’t do, rather than what I wanted to do.” While my personal experience of this idea is vastly different than Shelburne’s, her message hit a deep, personal place inside me. This is an extremely significant message to feminism and its evolution, which should not be missed. It’s not merely about women doing certain things because they CAN. It’s really examining whether what we want to prove is true within our hearts and minds. When I think of the COSMOPOLITAN magazine version of feminism in the 1980s and women serving in combat positions in our armed services, this wise sentence speaks volumes. It opens lines of communication we should explore as we work together to find a common ground and understanding among and between women and men.
This post reads more like a standard book review, I know. However, I am so excited and inspired by what I read that I wanted to touch upon the views represented because they reach out to every one of us. The take is fresh, modern and speaks to the “third wave” generation. Check back in for Part II next week as I conclude my raving about this amazing book!
This first section first published: http://www.hercircleezine.com/2011/09/01/yes-yes-yes/
EDITORS COURTNEY E. MARTIN AND J. COURTNEY SULLIVAN
Part Two: inContext continues a consideration of CLICK: WHEN WE KNEW WE WERE FEMINISTS.
There are many women in feminist scholarship today who imagine a wider net cast for what is still called feminism. Women like Susan Faludi see the confines that restrict men, and in CLICK, we have Winter Miller who imagines what she calls a future of “equalists.” A few posts ago, I proposed “egalitarianism” as the new term for feminism. Part of my reason for writing about and including men in my arguments about feminist issues is due to being married. Another part is being the mother of a son and a daughter. My husband and I would like nothing more than for my husband to be home and for me to work and be the main breadwinner. For various reasons, this has not happened except for during a few short years of our lives. The societal pressures on men about defining manhood help keep him working, as it is his identity to an extent, no matter our personal preferences and desires. As the mother of a daughter, I want her world to be equal. I want her husband to respect her as a partner, an equal. I want my son to be the same man I’d want as a partner for my daughter. I also want him to stop worrying about his physical appearance as much as any girl. I want him to not worry about being sensitive. I want my husband to have other stay-at-home dads as friends and for men to not belittle him at family gatherings or parties with friends, neighbors or colleagues of his wife or his own. I don’t want him lonely as the token stay-at-home dad in his town. I don’t want his wife to get the evil eye from neighbors as she comes home from work at night. Thus, an essay about imagining a different kind of wave entirely is welcome.
Sophie Pollitt-Cohen asks questions about titles and terms, also hoping for something more inclusive since she believes feminism lends itself to females caring about female issues and uses the example that “There is no special word for people who support civil rights and fair treatment of black or gay people.” Maybe Faludi, Pollitt-Cohen and Miller are onto something here and we can collectively move not “beyond” feminism, but rather broaden the term to include widespread issues that are a part of feminist thought and action.
I will never forget when my best friend, a guy, was a freshman at Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts back in 1989. At orientation, the new students were instructed to do the old “look left and look right” and to consider the men in the group as potential rapists. Date rape on college campuses was a pressing topic for the incoming freshman classes in the U.S. and this was how this public college in New England chose to handle it.
My friend was horrified at being called a “potential rapist.” I was equally horrified. While I did not have a husband or son at the time, I imagined that the freshman class was full of future husbands and it was definitely full of people’s sons. Sorry, freshman orientation leaders, all men are not potential rapists, and don’t you dare call my best friend, my brother, my cousin, my uncle, my father, my husband or my son a potential rapist. Just because a man has a penis, we cannot assume he has the potential to violently attack women. This is absurd and the kind of thing that motivated me, even over twenty years ago, to work toward equality and mutual respect between people regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, religion, ability, etc.
J. Courtney Sullivan makes room in feminism for her father, her mother (who only recently identified as a feminist) and for the arguments inherent to the feminist cause. In an extremely salient essay, Sullivan exposes the two-faced nature of our obsession with care-taking and housework. We simultaneously place no value on it while raising it to false heights of status. Housework and childcare are two places Susan Douglas’s “Enlightened Sexism” are ever apparent. We won’t pay women (or men) to stay home and take care of children or homes. We pay very little to those who do childcare and housework when they are paid. Yet, advertising (and increasingly politics) claim childcare and housework “priceless” and beyond commoditization. These are arenas of love and are promoted as spheres in which women call all the shots. So, on the one hand, we won’t provide government funding or require private companies to pay for extended maternity or paternity leave. However, we’ll also feed you a line with a cleverly hidden hook that claims you are doing the best thing in the world, and actually exhibiting a lot of control and power, if you “choose” to stay home. And, if that scenario applies only to those with the economic possibility of making that choice, that’s o.k., too. In the arena of advertising and consumer culture, those poor people who cannot choose to stay home weren’t making enough money to buy the products they’re selling anyway.
CLICK is the book on feminism I’ve sought. It is current, fresh and filled with stories that make sense to “my generation” of women. It is the book that I think might just be the thing that bridges the gap between my daughter, feminism and me. It has something for everyone and every experience of feminism and a search for equality. It speaks from different races, gives voice to lesbian and gender-based feminism, addresses religion, and speaks from poverty and privilege and even from a male viewpoint. Whether you read it now or not at all, consider sharing YOUR “click” moment as a comment below. Do you identify as a feminist? When did you begin to think of yourself as feminist? Do you think of yourself as an “equalist” or “egalitarian?” How do you define any/all of these terms?
First published: http://www.hercircleezine.com/2011/09/08/when-did-you-click/
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