Gotta give props to Brian Fairbanks over at Nerve who compiled a list of some seriously courageous, complex feminists for his Top 10 Feminist Icons. He writes:
Males have something against admitting they are feminists, perhaps because they mistakenly believe the term applies only to women.Today, I decided to set out to right that wrong-- much as these women (and one man) did over the course of their very interesting lives. The result is pure history-filled entertainment and not meant to be definitive by any means. For one thing, Gloria Steinem, Virginia Woolf, and Sylvia Plath should be on a list of the great feminists, to be sure, but I found that so much has been written about them already and decided it was best to spare you my half-assed attempts to say something original about them.
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Upset that Susan B. Anthony wasn't included...feminism is an evolving movement, and even though she didn't believe in everything that 'third wave feminism' advocates, she still was instrumental in the abolitionist movement and getting women the right to vote.
Do love that Kate Chopin was included though. She's an amazing writer, and was definitely thought provoking for her era.
Susan B. Anthony is to feminism as Sigmund Freud is to psychotherapy. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but boy did they start something. You have to give them props. But I think Brian didn't put her on the list for the same reason Steinem, Plath, and Woolf weren't on there.
I'm so happy about Alan Alda being included. I will always have a crush on him, despite our 50+ age difference.
The cool thing about Alan Alda, I think, is that his activism hasn't just been outside of his work. As he gained more editorial control after the first couple seasons of M*A*S*H*, there were more and more stories focusing on the nurses and their lives (and they were actually portrayed as diverse, strong women, unlike Margaret Hoolihan was in the first couple seasons). There was even an episode (which, as I understand it, was pushed through by Alda) that lambasted the military for excluding gays, and portrayed the gay soldier as one of the best soldiers of his unit... and this was in the '70s!
I'll always have a crush on him too, but I'm much closer in age to him than you are.
Although not activists in the traditional sense, how about considering Raewyn Connell, Michael Kimmel, Harry Brod, Judith Gardner, Victor Seidler, William Pollack, Madeline Arnot, Dana Nelson, Patti Lather, and Susan Reinharz? Maybe Carol Gilligan, Mairtin Mac An Ghaill, Madeline Molyneux, Martha Nussbaum.
That's all I could think of for now, but there's some good guys in there as well.
I think I recognize maybe 2 names on that list. You should do a community post about them!
Funny that he's related to Douglas Fairbanks - I'm related to Mary Pickford! My grandparents used to have a trunk of her old stuff but they have since lost it somehow...so upsetting. sigh.
I loved that he included Crystal Lee Sutton and Shirley Chisholm. Sutton because women who worked in organized labor (especially here in the South) are sadly under-documented, and Chisholm because I can still remember the day a few years ago when I found my mother crying because Chisholm had died. (I said, "Who?" and then proceeded to learn a lot!)
Chisholm always reminds me of another African American woman, though not as high-profile - Mazie Woodruff, one of the first women to serve on the city council in my hometown, Winston-Salem, N.C. I Googled her when I was writing this post, and it bugged me that the only sites that come up relate to a building named after her at our community college. So, I smell an opportunity for some research...
So, I'm one of the males Brian's referring to who isn't sure whether I can apply the feminist to myself. I've always viewed it more as something which I can be allied to and support, but not be part of, seeing as I lack the same experiences women go through; thus it feels awfully presumptuous of me to appropriate the feminist label.
Anyway, it's a fascinating list--I'd not known of half of them, nor did I know of Alan Alda's campaigning for the ERA.
"...perhaps because they mistakenly believe the term applies only to women."
Eh. It's not so much confusion on men's part that a lot of us are squeamish about calling ourselves feminists. A significant enough fraction of women believe, mistakenly or not, that the term applies only to women that, for better or worse, it can be more disruptive to say so than to go your own way.
But I agree it's a serious mistake to imagine that the benefits of feminism can accrue only to women, or that social transformation can happen if men are left as the "normal" (control group?) against which change is measured against.
For the record, while I can't find a link to it, back in the late 1970s Alan Alda wrote an op ed in, I think, Ms Magazine about, I think, "testosterone poisoning" that was a) pretty funny, b) thoroughly debunked the idea that only *women* are subject to "hormonal fluxuations," c) first introduced the idea to me anyway that false gender narratives and stereotypes weren't just about women, and therefore d) gave me the first inkling that feminism might have application for men and not just be "making things a little more fair for the ladies."
My only quibble would be with the "Top" part of his top ten list. If he's going to acknowledge that he's leaving Steinem, Woolfe, and Plath out of his list because they're such *well known* icons then by his definition it can't really be a top-ten list. If it's not a top ten list, though, it's still a great list.
figleaf