TAKE THE MOVEMENT-- PLEASE!
Jessica, you're not the first to point out that NOW, Feminist majority and other big feminist groups founded by 1960s activists have had trouble opening up leadership roles to young women. I'm not sure there's anything particular to women in this--ie anything that justifies your analogy to that idiotic sorority. I mean, come on -- Delta Whatsis expelled women who were insufficiently princessy, white, thin and compliant. How is that like not getting to sit on a panel at the ripe old age of 25 or so?
That said, I totally agree with you about the ingrown and resistant culture of organizational feminism, and so do lots of older feminists. Whether it's generational, or the result of being in backlash-resistance mode for so long, or something about the particular people involved or what, it's a serious issue. Fact is, a lot of organizations, from corporations to synagogues, find it hard to reframe the mission, hand over power and welcome new leaders with a different style and different allies. The ACLU is going through a huge storm at least partly over this generational/insider-outsider power shift. Institutional cultures are very resistant to change. A lot of them are like dysfunctional families. Unfortunately,that's life.
Where you lose me is where you sound thin-skinned and ready-to-resent. is it really so disturbing to be told you're misinformed (which could never be, right? and which you yourself would never say to another person, right?), or be asked too often to admire your elders' mighty deeds? If you really feel dissed and dismissed by these minor events, don't hang around waiting for your big break. Start your own group. You know, like the founders of the existing groups did. In fact, maybe you should do that anyway. It's not as if the big feminist organizations are flourishing, after all. My closest friends and I are a bit younger than the second-wavers, and I am the only one who even belongs to NOW or Feminist Majority. My friends are all feminists, but for a lot of reasons, organized Beltway-based feminism just isn't on their radar screen the way it was years ago. Nobody I know but me subscribes to Ms, which is now owned and edited by Feminist Majority. Contrary to what you assert, its profile is pretty low in the general culture--no higher than Bust or Bitch, which are more youth-oriented. Maybe we could all use some new groups and new publications.
So I say, go for it, young feminists of America!
There's something else that bothers me, though, about your piece. It's the way you shift from a critique of unwelcoming institutions to a general complaint that older, individual feminists should criticize you, yourself, in any way. How dare some have a problem with Feministing's mud flap girl logo! And send you -- horrors -- e mails about it! As a constant reader of Feministing, I know that you and your co-writers are quite the blogo-battlers. You don't have the all-inclusive, nonjudgmental, everyone's-a-feminist POV you insist others take toward young women. (And how can a social-justice movement function if it has no working definition of social justice? if you start your own organization, you'll have to answer that question.) Besides, If you can criticize older feminists, why can't they criticize you? Because daughters can say whatever they like to mothers, but mothers have to bite their tongues?
If there are ideological differences between generations, they should be discussed as ideas, not declared off limits because the person who espouses them is younger (or older). You are doing what you accuse older feminists of doing -- declaring your views unassailable simply because you have them. They say,"You weren't there," You say, "You aren't here." Okay, but you still have to make your case -- plenty of young women, including young feminists, don't share your POV. Your real beef with Ariel Levy, for example, is not that she's too old and out of it to understand young women (she's only in her early thirties). It's that you don't agree with her view that today's sexual culture (girls gone wild, hooking up etc) is basically exploitation and exhibitionism packaged as feminism. I'm not saying she's right or wrong, I'm just saying that "Female Chauvinist Pigs" presents an actual argument, not a mindless ignorant diss of young women by some old fussbudget who knows little about them. Fact is, a lot of young women agree with her and loved that book. It was really popular on campus.
In any case, good luck with the takeover/makeover/startover of organizational feminism. I hope you won't have age limits of membership, because I might like to join.
Hard to argue with this.
I'll say it again, internicene conflicts are the juiciest and most interesting because the combatants mostly share a world view - so no one can accuse the other of being 'evil.'
February 28, 2007 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think that Jessica or I or anyone really defends the Girls Gone Wild culture---we've all called repeatedly for Joe Francis to be thrown in jail for stalking underage girls and the reported rape threat that he and his crew bring with them. I wouldn't say that young feminists don't organize either, particularly Jessica. She's like a one-woman organizing machine. I'm in awe of all the events she organizes for Feministing and other organizations.
I agree that, at this point, it might be better for young feminists to simply go on without expecting much or anything from the old hat organizations. But that's a shame, because we'd be a lot more powerful together than in teensy little mini-groups.
February 28, 2007 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Katha, thanks for the response--I respect your work tremendously, so I'm glad that you're weighing in.
I'm all for criticism, and I think it helps me become a better feminist. That's why I wrote the original post--because I care about feminism and I want to see it succeed! But I do think that plenty of criticism aimed at young feminists is often about maintaining the status quo rather than making change for the better.
On admiring our foremothers--I'm all for it. And I think that my respect for the work that's been done is implicit in the fact that I've made feminism my life!
Well, I kind of have. I know a blog or website isn't the same thing as an organization, but we do a lot of work on the site and off for feminist organizing.
I think you may be downplaying the power that these orgs have. I agree, they're not on the radar the way they used to be. But they're all we have in terms of a public face for feminism! And if that public face is alienating young women, then isn't that a problem?
And just a last minor point--I don't consider myself unassailable, or think that I don't have a lot to learn. I know I do. And I still look to folks, like yourself, for guidance.
February 28, 2007 12:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, that's all very interesting but how about dealing with the fact that women are still referred to as a "special interest group." Being half the population, one would think we're not a minority group, thus have no "special" interest status.
To illustrate just how "special" we are a few years ago a flyer from the federal government announcing job openings landed on my desk. It specified the disabled, minorities and women should apply.
My daughter, a lawyer, had her client's award sitting on the desk of a Texas judge for months - should have been immediately sent to the client - because, according to the judge, no woman should be a lawyer.
It took 135 years for us to get the vote and at the rate we're going it'll take another 135 to free us from our special interest group status. In the meantime, I suggest the "young" feminists are fooling themselves if they think the battle is won.
February 28, 2007 12:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jessica said: I've made feminism my life!
Why? What is your vision? What wrongs do you seek to right? How do you plan to accomplish your goals? Simply being for feminism with a capital F is not enough to induce me to jump on your particular bandwagon.
I am not familiar with your prior work. I only know what you have posted here and it hasn't been intriguing enough to make me want to seek out your other work.
It is interesting that both you and Amanda speak in terms of relative power. Amanda said, "... we'd be a lot more powerful together than in teensy little mini-groups." You, "I think you may be downplaying the power that these orgs have." Is power what you are seeking? Power to do what?
February 28, 2007 1:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jessica, as someone with both an inside and outside perspective on NOW there are a number of thoughts that come to mind. First, I do think that change happens more quickly when we work together as a movement. That's not to suggest that individuals can't make a significant contribution.
It was suggested that young women start their own group. The challenge I see with this is that there are always going to be new "young women" so why don't we older women just move aside and make room for the young women at the table? That would be my preference.
I think one of the reasons this is not happening the way it should is that older feminists now feel a sense of entitlement. I can't tell you how many times I've heard women my age say "I've paid my dues, let them pay theirs." I've never accepted this as a valid reason for keeping young women away from the table.
Then there are the older feminists who think they are offering you a seat at the table, not realizing it comes with conditions. You are not to question what, why or how the older feminist is handling things.
My suggestion to you, and to other young feminists, would be to simply take over the organization. It wouldn't really be that hard.
Working within NOW's structure it would take no more than four years, as that is how long someone must be a member in order to hold national office. You must have held an elected office at either the chapter or regional level before you can hold national office. That's pretty simple. In some chapters if you leave the meeting to use the restroom you are voted in as president by the time you get back.
At the national level there is a growing movement for change within the organization. A number of older feminists would welcome the opportunity to support a team of young women seeking national leadership positions.
It's time for young women to lead this movement, and I'd be more than happy to do whatever I could to help make that happen.
BAC
February 28, 2007 1:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Equal opportunity, equal pay come to mind. Equal decision making role in national policy. Just a few thoughts.
BAC
February 28, 2007 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, yes, all very stirring in the general sense but given that the literal definition of feminism is "belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes", hardly illuminating.
For me it is a given that men and women are equal. I recognize that that there are specific social, political and economic beliefs, laws, whatever that deny one or the other sex full equality of opportunity, pay or voice. But I can't tell from what Jessica has written here which fight she is fighting.
February 28, 2007 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Working within NOW's structure it would take no more than four years, as that is how long someone must be a member in order to hold national office."
Maybe for a twenty-something, four years seems like an unconscionably long time.
February 28, 2007 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
"disabled, minorities and women should apply."
Why do you complain about that? It's the standard 'affirmative action' type of encouragement on job notices that has come about largely as a result of the equalizing forces you seemingly have aligned yourself with.
Or do you read this text to mean something else?
February 28, 2007 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, without power, I hardly see how you can make change. Why is the idea of women seeking power so threatening?
February 28, 2007 3:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Did I say it was threatening. I simply noticed your interest in it and asked what you want to do with it. Now you say you want it to make change but you have a striking reluctance to identify what specifically you want to change.
February 28, 2007 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd just like to point out that my girlfriend of over 4 years is an extremely caring understand person who happens to be rather short and rather round. She was also a Delta Zeta and her chapter at least was far more like the chapter that got liquidated. It's what made the Delta Zeta's fun to hang out with as opposed to the other more traditional sorority and at my undergrad at least, they had become the top sorority because they were more inclusive by the time I left.
February 28, 2007 4:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ms. Pollitt writes:
I just wanted to say thanks for that...and for the rest of the paragraph...and for the essay entire. The more ancient of us have been on the receiving end of a number of whacks around the internet in the few months. It seems particularly true after the first of the year. Maybe there's something in the air?
The one thing none of us can help is when we were born. We fight the good fight as long as we can. We don't do it by ourselves. When I was young I had elders for my role models...men like Benjamin Spock, women like Rachel Carson and Jessica Mitford. I had plenty of elders who drove me nuts, too, but I never bought into the "never trust anyone over 30" ideology (well, maybe a little, after I turned 30 myself).
Now that I'm an ancient 65, still working, still enjoying it, I hope maybe I'm not too bad a role model myself to those in whom I can see my youth, but whose youth I'm quite willing to leave in their own hands.
aMike
February 28, 2007 6:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
I read it as being part of the 'disadvantaged.' Since the federal government apparently considers us to be part of the disadvantaged, the question arises as to why we are - still. Are we discriminated against because of our sex? Or is it because we're less intelligent, less able-bodied than men? You tell me.
March 1, 2007 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have much respect for Ms. Pollit. But I think this quote is especially ironic and silly given the youth of the women's liberation wing of the 2nd wave feminist movement. Shulie Firestone was all of 25 when she published the Dialectic of Sex. The members of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective (of Our Bodies, Ourselves) fame included one who was 24 at the time of the 2nd publishing of the book (the first commercial publising) in 1973. During the heyday of the 2nd wave, being younger than 25 was no cause for mockery.
March 1, 2007 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I never understand why you insist on twisting the words of people you disagree with.
I see how that has been effective for you, but do you find that to be a good way to have a dialog? Do you find that an intellectually honest process?
March 2, 2007 5:44 AM | Reply | Permalink