Don't sleep on Katha Pollitt's great piece in the Nation on intergenerational feminism:
Media commentators love to reduce everything about women to catfights about sex, so it's not surprising that this belittling and historically inaccurate way of looking at the women's movement--angry prudes versus drunken sluts--has recently taken on new life, including among feminists....The wave structure, I'm trying to say, looks historical, but actually it is used to misrepresent history by evoking ancient tropes about repressive mothers and rebellious daughters. Second wave: anti-porn; third wave: anything goes! But second wave was never all anti-porn--think of Ellen Willis, for heaven's sake. It even gave us the propaganda term "pro-sex." The ACLU is jampacked with feminist lawyers of a certain age. In fact, feminists in the '70s and '80s had the same conflicts over pornography that are playing out today among young women over raunch and sex work. You wouldn't know it from the media, but there are plenty of young feminists who do not see pole-dancing as "empowering" and do not aspire to star in a Girls Gone Wild video. Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs sold very well on campus. These women don't fit the wave story line, however, so nobody interviews them.
It was so gratifying to see Pollit sum up the misconceptions and spuriously simple tropes of second and third wave here. And got me thinking more personally about my journey with intergenerational analysis...
As a younger writer, I was sometimes guilty of peddling in second wave stereotypes; it was a reaction, I think, that stemmed from (1) my sense of powerlessness and (2) my hunch that to be a writer of note, one had to be salacious and even a bit mean (see Linda Hirshman school of commentary).
With regard to the former, taking aim at the old guard allowed me to feel some sense of power, when I was otherwise relegated to making copies and pitching magazines like crazy with little to no response. It seems like part of our generational divide in print and online is directly rooted to our lack of forums and systems by which younger women can feel heard and seen (exactly what feministing strives to counter).
With regard to the latter, I don't ascribe to that theory on getting literary attention. While I do try to make fresh arguments, and sometimes aim for a little provocation, I am deeply committed to not caricaturing people in my writing. I don't think it makes any of us smarter or the world any more just.
I try to avoid over-generalizations these days, even as I attempt to sometimes analyze generational trends within the feminist movement. What's hard for me, and it would be interesting to hear Pollitt's take on this, is that there are generational differences that I'd like to address, but there is sometimes a fine line between addressing difference and reinforcing generalizations. For example, I do believe that older feminists tend to take a fairly myopic view when it comes to what constitutes a feminist issue. Does this mean that every young feminist identifies with intersectionality or every older feminist doesn't? Certainly not. But there is an important, largely historically-shaped trend there that warrants exploration. By doing so, I don't want to be seen as someone who reinforces stereotypes.
Ultimately, the proof is in the pudding with this kind of analysis. With thoughtful writing, good editing, and clear intentions I think we can do intergenerational analysis without stereotyping whole groups of people, but it takes care and a certain sense of efficacy not to grasp for the cheap shots, but to strive for the transformational conclusions.
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"I do believe that older feminists tend to take a fairly myopic view when it comes to what constitutes a feminist issue."
It's ironic that you're saying that, given the shit many WOC and trans feminists have gotten from young feminist sites like Feministing that don't appear to consider WOC or trans issues "feminist enough" to learn about, cover, or acknowledge in any meaningful way. Take a hard look at Feministing and tell me it's truly intersectional. Tell me why it gets boycotted by people it claims to be allied with.
It's also ironic that the very WOC bloggers who criticize and problematize how young, white, mainstream feminists do "intersectionality" are often predominantly older and have kids, two categories (moms and older women) that Feministing often rejects and alienates as "myopic" about intersectionality.
It's also ironic that you've identified older feminists as having intersectionality problems without seeming to recognize how being an older woman is an intersection unto itself.
Lastly, and perhaps most ironically, you think "older feminists" have intersectionality problems while tacitly characterizing all older feminists as white women. How very intersectional of you. How non-myopic.
I'm not trying to be overly accusatory here, but I don't see how long Feministing is going to go on like this, pretending like everything's okay, continuing to have discussions that further push away and marginalize any feminist bloggers who don't fit that young / white / no kids / cisgendered / blahblahblah comfort zone. It's not like there's an elephant in the room - it's more like there's a herd of elephants in the apartment next door, and you guys are having a cocktail party where you say, "Gosh, those elephants are so amazing! We should totally invite them to our next cocktail party!" and then you write in the invite "WE'RE HAVING A PARTY! ELEPHANTS NEXT DOOR: PLEASE BRING PRESENTS. BUT NOT YOUR ATTENDANCE." It makes no fucking sense to me.
Honestly, I know I probably sound like a bitch right now, but I could just cry. You guys are our A-list feminists. You crank out posts. You publish books. You tour the fucking country. You do amazing and rigorous work. You're the fucking feminist superstars! You're smarter than this.
Aren't you?
http://guyaneseterror.blogspot.com/2009/05/consider-this-free-edit.html
http://elleabd.blogspot.com/2009/05/why-your-community-aint-like-mine.html
(Disclaimer to any fellow commenters who think I've gone completely off the rail: this comment is the product of an ongoing situation, not just the original post alone.)
Thanks for this comment. I agree with a lot of what you've said. I think *some* branches of third wave feminism are great at being intersectional-- e.g., Gloria Anzaldua and Audre Lorde. Overall, however, there is still a large contingent of young white middle-class cisgendered feminists with the same problems regarding intersectionality as there were in the second wave. Honestly, I'm not sure that "third wave" is a useful distinction at this point. I know that "second wave feminism" covers many disparate viewpoints, but I think that's even more true of the third wave. It seems, in and of itself, a poor generalization. Not all third wave feminisms are intersectional and the continual comparison of third wave feminism to second wave feminism merely allows us to overlook this problem.
ghostorchid, I find it interesting that in the process of attacking me (and the rest of feministing) you employ the same overgeneralizations that you are railing against. We are not all white. And we are not all cisgendered. And in fact, we write frequently about the issues you claim that we won't touch.
Having said that, your point about me seeing "older feminists" as predominantly white is right on. Many of the older women of color I've met don't identify with the label feminist, so much of my personal experience with older feminists has, in fact, been with white women. This is exactly why I was bringing up how difficult it is to write about generational issues without overgeneralizing. There are trends (i.e. older women of color not identifying with feminism, older feminists not embracing intersectionality), but commenting on them doesn't have to invisibilize every exception.
First of all, I didn't read ghostorchid's comments as an "attack". A desire for a deeper conversation plus frustration for the lack of it so far, yes, but it's only an attack if you're too busy clinging to your privileges to acknowledge her/his point of view.
Second, s/he had an excellent point about issues of intersectionality being presented only occasionally and usually as a sidebar to the everyday show. Your claim that "we write frequently about the issues" is either a response to a misreading of her/his comment or not-very-cunning sidestep. If feminism is always in one box and, say, women of color are always in the one next to it, that isn't "intersectional" - it's segregational.
And you know what? It's okay if you make mistakes. It's okay if you have things that you need to work on. There are many good things about this site as well, and we all have flaws that could use some improvement. Heaven knows I've covered intersectional issues other than my own poorly on my own blog, too. But if we can't take a good honest look at ourselves and admit that we might be saying or doing things wrong sometimes, we aren't going to get anywhere in changing the world.
I doubt you're still reading, but it's genuinely taken me this much time to formulate a response.
"ghostorchid, I find it interesting that in the process of attacking me (and the rest of feministing)"
What distinguishes an attack from a critique is hostility. If someone suggests your site has race issues, coming immediately to the conclusion that they're just being hostile is a bit problematic. It's problematic because a) it dismisses the issues raised in their critique b) it refocuses the issue on tone instead of content and c) it reduces a political issue to a personal squabble. I urge you to take my critique politically, not personally. That's how it was intended.
I would also question - if I self-identified in my earlier comment as a WOC or trans person, would your response have differed in any way? Would you have responded at all? I find that when actual WOC or trans people raise these critiques, they get no response, but when I - who has identified as white and cis before on Feministing - raise such critiques, I am perceived as attacking and told that. Does that mean you perceive WOC and trans who make the same critiques I do as also being attacking? Those posts I linked to - do you think Black Amazon was being attacking? EllePHD? If so, would you be uncomfortable making the same accusation of them? (And if so, why?)
"you employ the same overgeneralizations that you are railing against. We are not all white. And we are not all cisgendered."
I never claimed or implied that you were, so I'm not sure how to respond to that. Having diversity amongst your editors doesn't mean your blog is exempt from race or trans issues, just as having diverse friends doesn't mean a person can't espouse racist or transphobic beliefs.
"we write frequently about the issues you claim that we won't touch."
I have a bigger response to that in the works, but for now I'll just say that we clearly differ in opinion about what constitutes "frequently" (or, tacitly, how much coverage about WOC issues is "enough"). I also feel that Feministing's coverage about race and trans is often lacking in complexity, scope, and breadth, and often unleashes a poorly moderated shitstorm of racist and transphobic statements and behaviors in the comments section. And lastly, Feministing has been eerily silent on its own race and trans issues, which I think is rather damning. We occasionally get a short thing like "We know we may not be blahblahblah but we're talking about it, we're concerned about it" and then...nothing. It's a far cry from acknowledging the severity of the issue.
I am curious to know - how do you think Feministing is doing, race and trans-wise? Why do you think it gets boycotted? What do you think is the motivation of those who boycott this site?
"Many of the older women of color I've met don't identify with the label feminist, so much of my personal experience with older feminists has, in fact, been with white women. This is exactly why I was bringing up how difficult it is to write about generational issues without overgeneralizing."
If you're talking about older white feminists, it's important to identify them as such. And I'm curious - why do you think older women of color don't identify as feminist? Can you see any relationship between the upset these intergenerational-themed posts have caused in the WOC blogger community and the hesitancy of many WOC bloggers to identify with feminism?
Notably, none of the questions I've asked in this comment are rhetorical - I am really curious as to what you think.
When I had my first experiences identifying with feminism via a "Race/Gender/Sexuality in the Colonial Contest" lit class taught by a professor who had written about and shadowed sex workers and written about BDSM, I shortly thereafter had some sort of kneejerk reaction against certain second-wavers like Catherine MacKinnon. I guess one of my big problems is that I dislike the gender essentialism that so much first- and second-wave feminist writing relies on or appeals to. But now I understand it's simply stupid to reject someone and her entire complex body of ideas without actually reading some of her work in its entirety. There is just so much of value even in the work of people you "thought" you wouldn't agree with.
the proof is in the pudding
FYI, the actual phrase is "the proof of the pudding is in the eating."