Katha Pollitt on Intergenerational Caricatures in Feminism

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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