I just lurve women that call themselves things like “equality feminists.� Or “conservative feminists.� These are ladies who doth protest a bit too much about how they trust and respect women—all while bashing the hell out of them. (Or as the ever-brilliant Ms. Marcotte said recently, “’equality feminists’ are for equality if you think ‘equality’ is synonymous with ‘looks good with the boot on her neck.’�)
Case in point, Bridget Johnson.
Johnson has a whole article dedicated to the idea that folks who are excited about the possibility of a woman president are the sexist ones. You see, unlike holier-than-thou Johnson, feminists who support women candidates actually don’t trust women’s capabilities.
It doesn't make me feel personally empowered that Pelosi is the first woman speaker of the House or Clinton is running for president; I already knew women were capable of as much.
Well that’s lovely. And while I think most would agree with Johnson when she later says women candidates shouldn’t be supported just by virtue of having ovaries, the first few paragraphs of her article make it difficult to take her seriously.
Check out her description of a women’s studies class she took:
It was every bit the granola-breath nightmare I'd been warned about by fraternity guys. The teacher, not the most feminine-looking lady, wore woolly stockings with comfortable loafers; her intellectual husband lived on another continent. In step with the greatest bra-burning stereotypes, the star student was a girl who always wore shorts and never shaved her legs. And since we had to arrange our desks in a circle in order to foster our sense of community, we were forced to look at this teacher's pet as she expounded on the subject of oppressive men. The dearth of cute male eye candy in the class was tragic, but the guys who had no choice but to fulfill the graduation requirement sat slumped in their seats like they'd rather be playing Russian roulette.
I think that’s the most feminist stereotypes I’ve seen in one paragraph ever. But seriously, something tells me that Johnson is still desperately trying to please “fraternity guys� by bashing women—hence her gig at the National Review.
Nothing disgusts me more than someone who sells out other women for little more than a pat on the head from the guys.
That’s all…I just needed to rant this morning.
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Huh. I'm not granola-breathed and unshaven, but I have to say, the women's studies courses I took were filled with people (women like Johnson) who had this mentality. Most of them didn't give a shit that Watson and Crick got all of the credit for discovering the double-helix, while Rosalind Franklin got the shaft, because, well, "It would have been discovered eventually". I guess what I want to know is why people bother taking women's studies classes to begin with.
And, as if it even matters, every women's studies prof I've had has been attractive and intelligent as hell. I guess comfortable loafers won't land them husbands, though. Too bad stuff like intelligent conversation and mulitple brain cells won't get them attention from the frat boys. Shame.
What's odd is Johnson's comment about women in the military. in the 70's Phyllis Schlafly ( the mother of all anti-feminists) fought against the era precisely because woman would have to be included in combat. It seems since the iraq war, conservatives have co-opted a byproduct of feminist beliefs for their own gain.
the first mention of "fraternity guys" and my ears (or eyes in this case) are closed haha
"Ms. Johnson, would you stop making out in the back of the room with the marginal male eye candy and pay more attention to this discussion of Simone de Beauvoir?"
"Dammit, loafered oppressor! This is going to go in my usenet group, alt.bridget-johnsons.diary!"
she sure is spending a lot of time staring at another woman's legs in this paragraph. hmmm.....
(p.s. reading her description actually made me quite nostalgic for my granola-breath, wooly socked, women's studies days!!)
I wonder what she'd think of my women's studies education. The biggest feminists on campus are two men. Of course, one was gay and the other isn't really eye candy so she'd probably still be upset...
hmmmm...."granola-breath, wooly socked" sounds like the female profs. i've seen teaching history, psychology, anthropology and religious studies. i've seen a few women GTAs in the economics department who fit the same description.
perhaps if Johnson got out more she would notice that is not a phenomenon restricted to WS programs. oh, i should also mention that i believe most of them are also in heterosexual relationships.
/unshaven and tattooed but wearing nylon stockings
"The teacher, not the most feminine-looking lady, wore woolly stockings with comfortable loafers; her intellectual husband lived on another continent....the star student was a girl who always wore shorts and never shaved her legs. And since we had to arrange our desks in a circle in order to foster our sense of community, we were forced to look at this teacher's pet as she expounded on the subject of oppressive men. The dearth of cute male eye candy in the class was tragic,"
OK, speaking as a women's studies teacher, let me reveal a little secret to Ms. Jones:
Class is not a singles bar. If, instead of ogling your teacher and classmates, you spent a little time thinking about the material being taught, I'm sure that you could do well in the class as well. Really--her entire description comes down to "There was nobody there I thought was cute!" Well, welcome to class. It doesn't revolve around your judgment of cuteness. While you're being forced to think about something other than whom you'd like to sleep with, you might learn something. It does happen.
Excuse the threadjack for a minute.
Elle: I was once in a psycho-sociology class, and we were put into groups and each given a person to study who impacted the double helix discovery. I was fortunate enough to be in the group representing Rosalind Franklin, and we actually had an assignment where one group member got to roleplay their chosen subject (in my case, I was Anne Sayre, who wrote Rosalind Franklin and DNA as a response to Watson's Double Helix). It was pretty awesome to get to roleplay a strong female, and I had to argue in favor of awarding Franklin the Nobel (even though it is not supposed to be awarded posthumously).
Watson pretty much admitted to sneaking in her lab and stealing her x-rays of the double helix, because she was the only one who had been able to get the clearest pictures. In his book, he described her as a shrew, and he talked about how much better she would've looked if she would've done her hair, worn makeup, and lost her glasses. In Ms. Sayre's book, she pointed out that Rosalind never actually owned glasses. He must've just added that for an extra touch.
Anyway, back to the original post, why do the anti-feminists always feel the need to emphasize how comfortably some women are dressed? As if it's an insult to wear clothing that is warm and shoes that don't hurt? Oh right, it's meant to emphasize the "manliness" of the woman. But I thought the anti-feminists were all for men? It's so confusing to analyze their hypocritical dogma.
So...she's saying we don't really need a female speaker or President, because she already knew women are just as capable as men.
Gosh, I didn't realize Ms. Johnson had awesome godlike powers.
But apparently, she does!
Just by her knowledge that women are as capable as men, she has brought about total sexual equality on Earth!
She simply thought it, and it became reality.
WOW!
Brava to EG. As another women's studies prof. of sorts (it doesn't say that anywhere in my cv, actually, but my research and teaching is all about gender and power and agency), I can tell you that that would be a wonderful lesson for folks to learn. But of course women profs. can't win here. Especially young ones. I routinely get course evaluations informing me that I am "hot" (I promise this isn't the least bit flattering and really means that they will go on to claim you lack "authority"). Other young women profs. get hair/clothing/makeup tips. Charmed, I'm sure. Next time pay better attention to that Gayle Rubin essay you were asked to read.
Not surprising (considering her extensive interest in studying the attractiveness of her prof and classmates rather than feminist theory) that her brilliant conservative feminism paper earned her a C.
I dunno. I don't think it's great that Nancy Pelosi is Speaker because she's a woman, because then I'd have to think it was great that Condolezza Rice is Secretary of State and she's a woman. And a *black* woman at that! A real trailblazer!
I think it's great that Speaker Pelosi is the third-most-powerful person in the US today because she is a strong-willed liberal who shares many of my views, because she will fight what I see as evil, *and* because she's a woman. Bonus!
Before the reign of the Bushites, I was more or less a two-issue gal. I was firstly for First Amendment rights and secondly for women, and everything else was significantly less important. When Elizabeth Dole considered running for president as a Republican, I considered voting for her because she'd be a woman, and because Al Gore was married to let's-censor-the-music-industry Tipper Gore (and the Clinton administration in general had played fast and loose with the First Amendment, what with Clipper chips, the DMCA, etc.)
Now I am a Democrat. I will vote for a man over a woman if I think the man will promote *all* the causes I believe in more effectively than the woman, including keeping a Democratic majority in the Congress to act as a check on Republican power, being anti-Iraq War (in fact anti any war in general unless there's a damn good reason), helping the poor and middle class recover from Republican class warfare, not destroying the environment, *and* protecting the First Amendment *and* protecting the rights of women.
Am I happy that the Speaker of the House is a woman? Sure thing! But I am happy because she is the *right* woman, not just because she has ovaries. Last I checked Condoleeza has some of them too, and so does Ann Coulter, and I would not personally cry if either of *them* mysteriously vanished in the night like Jimmy Hoffa.
But I swear, who the hell goes to a women's studies class to look at the *men?* If you want to spend your class time gazing at fine specimens of college-age manhood, take business classes for god's sake! Or pretty much any hard science (although omg you might have to look at GUYS WHO WEAR GLASSES, then.)
A woman who spends any time at all ranting about how there was no one attractive to look at in her women's studies class (and exactly why was she assessing the attractiveness of the women in the class? If you're bi, Bridget, be out and proud about it! *I* found the excessively short hairstyles of the self-identified lesbians and bisexual women on campus unattractive, because *I* am bi and wanted to date women with big fluffy hair, and I freely admitted my bisexuality at the time (though I was not rude enough to tell the lesbians they would look cuter with bigger hair. Obviously they were not trying to attract bisexual chicks who like big hair, or they would have had some.) What were you doing obsessing over the hair and legs of women unless you wanted to date them? Come clean! It's good for the soul!) is unbearably shallow. Why does anyone listen to her again? Oh, yeah, she writes for the National Review. They aren't looking for logic.
Do you think that maybe the woman was considered the star student because she actually paid attention and participated in class instead of focusing on everyone's looks?
Johnson seemed annoyed that the class tried to expose her to a new perspective and mad at the teacher who gave her a bad grade when she spent her entire term paper ignoring all of the concepts taught in the course. Imagine that!
Oh I love this:
"While it would be hilarious to see Bill Clinton and his ego succumb to the title of First Man, the election of Hillary Clinton would not mean some great new dawn for women’s rights."
Oh the shame of being the husband of the first woman President! Oh the humiliation of being the man behind - or beside - a woman in a leadership position. To stand aside and allow a woman - your woman - to be in charge. The guys at the Elks lodge will never let him live it down. Cue the "who wears the pants" cracks and bullwhip sound effects.
Yeah this Johnson woman really believes in women's equality, you can tell.
Alara, I loved your comments about hair! I went through this horrible hair period in college, where I would want to have big fluffy hair because I loved the way it felt/looked but then often felt I couldn't get a date because the girls didn't take me seriously! So, I'd cut it all off until I started dating someone and then gradually let it get longer. Oh, the things we'll do for love.
This is another prime example of what I call Stupid Bitch journalism.
The writer is a bitch who cherry picks her examples of "women she knows" to make the point that all female humans (but her)are stupid.
With the vauge hope that now the men will let bitch play on their team. "See, the boys like ME, not YOU!"
And male editors eat this shit up ("Catfight in the press room!)
Class is not a singles bar. If, instead of ogling your teacher and classmates, you spent a little time thinking about the material being taught, I'm sure that you could do well in the class as well. Really--her entire description comes down to "There was nobody there I thought was cute!" Well, welcome to class. It doesn't revolve around your judgment of cuteness. While you're being forced to think about something other than whom you'd like to sleep with, you might learn something. It does happen.
Can I just say "you read my mind." That's almost exactly what I was going to say.
Imagine that- some of us went to class to *gasp* learn.
My Woman's Studies classes were actually filled, for the most part, with really interesting, thoughtful people. I can safely say that my mind was blown more often in those classes than in almost any other classes I took. If the biggest thing you take from a class is the footwear of your prof or the shaving habits of the most vocal student in the class, maybe you should re-evaluate your priorities. Also, if the most vocal student in the class is saying things you don't agree with, maybe you should quit lamenting the lack of cute boys and start engaging with the class.
What a novel idea, right?
*sigh*
Yeah, 'cause the most important features of a university class are:
a)how the teacher looks
b)how the students look
c) wheather or not there is male eye candy.
Barf
Yeah, 'cause the most important features of a university class are:
a)how the teacher looks
b)how the students look
c) wheather or not there is male eye candy.
Barf
Is she pissed that the people in the class weren't noticing how cute she is?
I don't know, I always have huge crushes on my feminist profs. Maybe it's their big sexy brains that tend to explode my Weltanschauung, or maybe it's the fact that they spend more time preparing lectures than grooming themselves according to the megatheocorporatocracy, but I think subverting the patriarchy is the biggest turn-on.
I never had a chance at my college to take a course on Women's Studies, but I would've liked to. It's probably because my school is 80% male (engineering, you know) and there is probably not much student interest. Although for my Minor Capstone project, I did choose to write a 20-page report in German about the history of feminism in Germany, which is very much connected to the various American movements.
I envy all of you who have careers in gender studies, though. Maybe when I pay off my student loans at my engineering job I'll start taking some classes again.
This woman works for the LA TIMES? This hackneyed article was picked up by the National Review? I would really like to know how old she is because really it sounds like the writings of someone who is regurgitating something she read or saw in a movie somewhere. Just my take on it. Oh, and BARF.
The point is not that feminists didn't know women were already qualified to be Speaker. They do know that, that's why they've been fighting longer than Johnson's been alive to change the system so that such a thing can happen.
Doesn't this woman know that smart women can't be hot? Like, ever?
I totally sypathize. How could I ever respect a teacher who wears comforable shoes? I plan to TA my next lab in stilettos to show just how devoted I am to science. Also, I'll make sure all the women in the class shave their legs, because that's totally my buisness. Russian roulette optional.
I hate the notion that women need special help. As an engineer (hi, Mary!), I was told that I only "got in because I'm a woman." Because my 800 math SAT had nothing to do with it, nor my straight As.
When you give women a leg up because we are "weak" or "need it" or "oppressed," we make it difficult to be taken seriously as equals who can compete on a level playing field. There is a very legitimate criticism that feminism has gone too far (in some areas) and demanded a slanted playing field. (Not to say that there isn't work to be done elsewhere, but we should be conscious of ultimate goal of equality; too often, any movement subverts its ultimate goals to its methods.)
A question for the posters: what do you consider feminist issues and where do you stand on them? Feminism should be a big tent - as anyone who believes in the political, economic, and social equality of women is a feminist - but the smaller issues vary between women. Which is great. I hate the idea that women should follow Third Wave doctrine just as much as I hate the idea that women should act like they are from the 1950s.
A professor who doesn't understand that dogma is dogma, regardless its adherents, is a poor representation of modern feminism.
Rant over.
While it would be hilarious to see Bill Clinton and his ego succumb to the title of First Man ..."
Wrong, Bridget. Should Hillary Clinton become elected, her husband will be referred to as "President Bill Clinton" or "Former President Clinton" as he has already attained that title. You get to keep the presidential form of address for life.
In the future, should a different woman be elected whose husband was never president, his title will be "First Gentleman."
What are feminist issues? Hmmm. Good question. I think of feminism as a conscious lens through which individuals believing in equality of women view every issue, rather than a doctrine. Do you think that women are not oppressed? I think there is a continuum of oppression- really privileged people don't suffer from it or maybe don't see that they are affected by it, while people who are dealing with a multiplicity of oppressions because of race, class, orientation, national origin, are more acutely aware of their oppression(s).
For example, friends who watch movies with me sometimes accuse me of 'overanalyzing' them because of my background in womens studies/creative writing. Friends who watch movies with me with the same background sometimes do the same 'overanalyzing'...
"I think of feminism as a conscious lens [...] rather than a doctrine" - kpsisu
Exactly.
Well Put!
Not quite, Cycles. Once a President steps down from office, he is the former President.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/06/AR2006060601276.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns
Mr. Clinton will be the First Gentleman.
I do like the "conscious lens" idea. :) I have never taken a women's studies class but personally hate most movies - I cannot stand to see women trip and scream when running away from attackers/giant animals, while men in the same situation will find some brilliant way to defeat the villian/oversize animal/monster. That's but one example, of course.
Not saying women aren't opporessed - just pointing out that we have some ways to go but have come an extraordinarily long way. It really doesn't make sense to talk about, say, the problems with female sexuality in the same way that we would talk about the problems of not allowing women to vote.
I also don't think that we need a leg up - being smart, talented, and ambitious (not to mention more educated than men).
"I guess what I want to know is why people bother taking women's studies classes to begin with."
Why? Needing to fulfil some requirement to graduate, and not being able to fit any non-women's-studies class which would have fulfilled the requirement into her or his class schedule, I bet.
I also don't think that we need a leg up - being smart, talented, and ambitious (not to mention more educated than men).
Economic outcomes are more important than the fact more women are in school than men right now.
An interesting side comment regarding women in science is that pretty ones tend to do worse. Since a pretty woman can't also be smart.
One researcher did worse when she got a good picture taken by the university and much better when the photo was really bad.
Arturo - do you have a citation for that? If so, I'll go get a bad haircut or something.
"A career journalist with experience as a reporter, editor and award-winning columnist, she never even meant to enter the field, instead majoring in criminology and studying serial killers, which impressed many a man"
from the "about me" portion of her website www.GOPvixen.blogs.com
so glad impressing men is priority #1. you've just answered your own question of why we need women's studies classes.
DT- No! I can't even remember where I read it exactly. It just really stuck in my mind. If I find it, I'll post a link.
I envy all of you who have careers in gender studies, though. Maybe when I pay off my student loans at my engineering job I'll start taking some classes again.
As an aside, Mary, it's funny you should say that because I and a few other humanities-type friends (including one who does gender history stuff) were wistfully saying that perhaps we all should have gone into engineering, given how brutal the job market is in our fields.