Umm, what's the "secret password" I need to know to read the link to Ms. July?

DrkEyedCajn - any word you want should work. ; )

Indeed. How many issues did we have to wait for an answer like that? I got really pissed at Rosario Dawson in the last issue when her answer to the question "are you pro-choice?" took about 10 pages and didn't even result in anything that one could reasonably call an actual answer.

I need to learn to stop skimming and start reading more carefully.

I skipped the headline and just read about Ms. July and interview in Bust and for about thirty seconds I thought WOW! It's so cool a Playboy model is so wonderfully articulare about feminism. How interesting that Bust interviewed her.

Hilarity ensues. I'm JUST AS excited that it's Ms. July, as opposed to Miss July, but man, that would have been a very interesting interveiw if it ahd been the other way around... :D

SpaceCake, I thought the same thing for a second. It was like, "Oh, my God! I am so going to go buy an issue of Playboy!" but then, yeah! But to be sure, there ARE porn stars who are considered feminists ...and then the whole sex-positive debate ensues!

But Ms. July brought up an interesting point of debate: as feminists (and whatever other label we use), are we obgligated to date feminists only? That's certainly my practice, but I am starting to find out that a lot of my female friends are now dating "non-feminists."

Is choice a choice to do anything we want, or only the things that benefit feminism?

Marc

marc,

i think for some people, the political is not the personal, even with regard to gender, so that if these friends of yours feel equitably treated and care about these guys, they may very well just not be terribly bothered by differing views on this subject.

personally, that would never work for me. i would not be able to date someone whose views with regard to gender were aligned with mine. it is too personal and too central to my life for to me to sweep under the rug like it's, i don't know, creamy vs. crunchy peanut butter.

so to me, it's weird that your friends can date guys who aren't feminists. but i suppose that depends on what you mean by "non-feminists." are they like, knuckle-dragging anti-feminist types or are they just too poorly informed and not conscious enough of gender issues generally to identify as feminists? because the former are likely incurable, but the latter may come to see the light. as a youngish person, i find that a LOT of my male contemporaries who seem otherwise intelligent, kind and thoughtful about the world around them are astoundingly ill-informed and backward when it comes to feminism. i think this is often not because these guys are misogynists, but that they have not yet examined their own unconscious ideas about gender and are thus susceptible to the "backlash" reasoning presented to them. i like to think that there is hope for them yet.

Just this week, I had a female student of mine say that she doesn't consider herself a feminist because it means "thinking women are better than men." I had to correct her mistake, but it was finally a breakthrough for me, having always wondered why more young women didn't identify with that word. Amazing, as always, how the conservatives manage to bastardize our language.

CCChild: This semester a girl who says she's liberal, progressive and a member of the green party disagreed with the definition of feminism given by the professor and said "feminism seems to really be more about feminazis trying to promote women over men."

This girl wasn't even remotely conservative, and they STILL got her!

"'feminism seems to really be more about feminazis trying to promote women over men.'"

Whenever I hear people day things like that I have to ask WHAT feminazis?!? Never in my life have I met someone who might fall into that category. No one I know thinks that women are "better than men" either.

I adore Miranda July, and I can't wait to read her book. She recently did an interview on KCRW's Bookworm and completely captivated me. She's brilliant.

I've never met a "feminazi" either--a term coined by the hateful blowhard Rush Limbaugh. And it's hard to believe too many people think feminism is about female superiority.

However, I and thousands of others do eschew the label becuase the label feminism has become, in the public eye, synonymous with wanton victimization and untenable gender theory, like the naive, social deterministic version of gender as a construct.

I call myself an equity feminist, just to clarify that I don't buy into all the gender dogma.

"the label feminism has become, in the public eye, synonymous with wanton victimization and untenable gender theory, like the naive, social deterministic version of gender as a construct."

Well of course you're a biological anthropologist, and a lot of people feel a lot of that work is poorly done too. I think you would be less likely to rub people the wrong way if you could state a disagreement with someone or some theory and a elaborate on your position a bit without using descriptions like "wanton victimization" and "naive". I've no doubt that with your particular life experience, your theories make sense to you. So why deny other people their own perspectives?

Gender dogma? I didn't realize that the assertion that women are not inherently feminine and men are not inherently masculine and that associating personality traits with biological sex is kind of silly was so threatening.

Well, I mean, I did. Just not to people who post on Feministing.

Also, I have no idea what the alternate to "equality feminist" would be.

holy crap! when i got the new issue and read this article, i had to read it again just to make sure that Bust actually had a self-identified feminist on their cover! seriously, it's about fucking time! i need to go through my past issues and do a count of how many times this has actually happened--it can't be that many. it always baffles me that a feminist magazine can't find a feminist to put on its cover...i mean, c'mon, it's not even a monthly!

Hissyfit:

It's because BUST isn't a feminist magazine but rather a women's magazine for feminists. Regardless of how hard they try to pretend they're feminist, they just totally are not.

Cara,
I think maybe an "equality feminist" believes that (inherently masculine) men and (inherently feminine) women deserve equality - kind of like the first-wave feminists who believed that women were entitled to voting rights because they'd offer a "feminine" perspective to elections that had been dominated by the "masculine" perspective.

Word, MirandaJay. I love Debbie Stoller, but Bust disappoints me all the damn time with its frivolity. I subscribe to Bitch instead.

And darwin, I think that denying the influence of socialization in gendered behavior is in fact the naive position, not the other way around.

Sarah - that sounds like a crock of shit, to me. Women are "feminine" and can offer a different perspective of life, not because of their inherent "womanly" qualities, but, in my opinion, the epistemological vantage point based on social constructs.

In other words - women know about the plights of other women, not because they both have vaginas, but because of the shared experiences of having been treated by the patriarchy.

I've always been told that if a woman were to run the country, they'd be less likely to go to war, because women are peaceful by "nature." No, women are peaceful and anti-violence because of misogyny. They've experienced violence as victims and don't care for it.

Then again, perhaps I am speaking for all women without intending to, so I'll shut my mouth and going back to drinking Red Bull now!

"Equity feminism" was used by Christina Hoff Sommers to describe feminist ideals of civil and legal equality without acceptance of modern gender theory. Being critical of gender theory does not entail a rejection of social forces' influence. It does reject the impossible notion of gender being a purely cultural construct. That would require a blank slate brain that could never have evolved through natural selection. Camille Paglia is a funny and insightful example of a popular equity feminist.