Contributed by Brooke Warner.
In her recent Bookslut review, “We Don’t Need Another Anthology,� Eryn Loeb is operating under the assumption that the only people reading feminist anthologies are feminists and women’s studies majors, and thus misses a few major points about why publishers put out anthologies in the first place.
I am an editor at Seal Press, “the main perpetrator,� according to Loeb’s review, of bringing new feminist anthologies to the marketplace. The notion that our readers are already primed on the topics we’re covering is both idealistic and completely unrealistic (though I empathize, particularly coming from a woman who, I’m willing to bet, is “primed� with a background in women’s studies). However, most young women today don’t even consider themselves feminists. Listen Up was published in 1995, and during my time at Seal Press many women have told me that that book was what turned them onto feminism. We Don’t Need Another Wave does, indeed, cover many of the same topics—twelve years later. There are personal essays and confessionals that range in topic from abortion to abuse to polyamory. Loeb’s critique of “the heavy emphasis on personal experience� dismisses the very thing that brings many young women into the movement in the first place—that someone out there is relating an experience that resonates so deeply that it provokes an awakening, an ah-ha moment: They’re feminists—and that’s a good thing.
What’s surprising is that Loeb, a self-proclaimed feminist, would even ask the questions she poses: “Are we really still butting heads over abortion? Haven’t we been fighting ‘the mommy wars’ forever? How much longer do we have to deal with this whole wage gap thing?� Loeb might ask herself why she continues to stand behind a movement that’s still committed to fighting for causes that she’s sick of hearing about. Feminism is not about giving up and giving in. It’s about being outraged by the fact that we’re taking giant steps backward on reproductive rights issues. It’s about acknowledging that the divide between mothers who work and mothers who stay at home has deep social roots and consequences that aren’t good for any woman. It’s about choosing not to ignore the fact that we are still making 76 cents on the dollar compared to our male colleagues. If this all feels like rehashing and bemoaning, then I’m concerned that other young feminists who are brave enough to call themselves feminists are at risk of getting so jaded so quickly that they won’t want to hear about, talk about, or read about these pressing issues. Forget reaching new audiences.
Loeb writes that the voices that fill the pages of the anthologies we publish sound like background noise. To me, they sound like the strong, independent, unique, striving, passionate voices of women who talk and write because they believe that people are listening and learning and forming opinions and working toward change. She urges us to “stop talking and writing amongst ourselves� and asserts that these anthologies “read like calculated proof of feminism’s vitality and diversity.� Here’s a news flash: These anthologies exist to remind us on a daily basis that we have not come a long way, baby. Loeb writes that “these feminist struggles themselves are feeling awfully repetitive.� Shouldn’t women like Loeb instead be asking themselves why these struggles are feeling awfully repetitive, and what they can do about it? Bashing one of the trends that gives young women a sense of voice and agency is certainly not a good place to start.
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My gosh. I think there's something to Loeb's criticism to the extent that there aren't enough feminist single-author books--not that there are too many anthologies, but that there are not enough single-author books (big difference)--but this is insane:
"Are we really still butting heads over abortion? Haven’t we been fighting ‘the mommy wars’ forever? How much longer do we have to deal with this whole wage gap thing?"
Uhm, there are still people trying to ban and restrict abortion, working mothers still get demonized (and punished) for what they're doing, and the wage gap still exists.
Does she consider criticism of the Iraq War passe, too, just because we've been there for over three years and it's so 2003? If the problem exists, so should the movement to address that problem. Jeez. What the hell?
Cheers,
TH
Wow. This post and the last are great examples of people seeing something I think we can all acknowledge is a major problem (here, fights over abortion rights and career-vs-mommy-track, and previously, the conundrum of corporate enslavement of the western world) and, instead of bothering to try and figure out the actual roots of the problem, blaming "feminism" because hating on feminists is currently in vogue.
Talk about asinine, boring, and counterproductive.
The other thing is, people start somewhere. Those anthologies are a great place for people just getting into the movement to start seeing the variety of thought present, and to start seeing how they fit in.
Maybe I'm biased, because I love anthologies, though.
Listen Up by Barbara Findlen. One of the best third wave books I've read. Highly recommended.
I want to add my testimony of all the women who were deeply touched by Listen Up. I read it as a sophomore in college, in, yes, my first women's studies class. It had an enormous impact. My mother was a second-wave feminist, but I was one of those oft-bemoaned young women who didn't think feminism was for me. Listen Up - along with my kickass women's studies prof, and the other feminist women in my school - really showed me how rich and vital feminism could be.
I mean, Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had a newsletter read mainly by feminists and allies. That was ok, because there's a value to that, as part of a larger organizing/movement strategy.
I hate the term aha-moment it is so corny!
I've never commented before although I've been reading pretty much daily since the summer. I won't repeat what must be true for most - feminist anthologies have been a way for me to access and understand different arguments and points of view within feminism. I will concede that at times they can seem repetitive and too much personal isn't always useful. However, I am convinced that the personal is one of the best ways to access social critique and I think this goes beyond positioning the writer. (Also, when I saw that Loeb included Jane Sexes It Up in her critique I had to say something because Merri Lisa Johnson was my professor and I don't believe that anthology is quite the same as the others mentioned.)
I get really ticked off when a "heavy emphasis on personal experience" is dismissed in academic/political writing. This kind of criticism just (as far as I am concerned) perpetuates the hierarchy that places 'objective' impersonal writing above that which invokes the author's experience. One of the (many) things that attracted me to Women's Studies and feminist theory in the first place was the acknowledgement of the importance of our experience in terms of shaping our theoretical perspectives. The personal, after all, is political!
Sigh. I don't even think my university HAD a women's studies program or course when I was there (1980-84).
Oy. Reminds me of Wonkette's (yeah she has a real name but I'm too lazy to remember it) review of Katha Pollitt's Virginity or Death! in the NYTimes. "But feminism is BORING. Look, check out my hott high heels!"
Interestingly, another columnist recomends "She's Such a Geek" in the same issue of Bookslut.
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