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Feminism: Essential Questions
In the recent post Feminism Over the Phone, fellow Feministing blogger Barley Jane describes her experience talking with a younger cousin who remains skeptical of feminism and the whole idea that women are oppressed at all, even though she’s in a college course learning about these issues. I think many of us could relate to the experience. It is frustrating and borderline bizarre that many women just don’t seem to understand why feminism is good and necessary, even when they are reading the works of our best and brightest. I am suggesting that this is not the fault of other women, but of us feminists. Thus, some questions:
Why have we failed to convince or motivate most women to become feminists?
What is fundamentally amiss with our feminist ideologies that they are so widely unappealing or unconvincing?
Of course we all immediately think that the problem is not with us, it is with them. They are misogynist, their belief system is based on patriarchy, they are dimwits and shortsighted. But why haven’t we succeeded in converting the misogynist, in dismantling patriarchy, in demonstrating the truth? Is that not our task as feminists? It is clear that the barriers are complex, but are we not better than barriers? If our ideas do not ring true, can it be that our ideas are just not that powerful?
If a student dismisses the women’s movement, is that their personal failure or ours?
A thoughtful blogger commented that exposure to women’s ...
The Feminist Equivalent of the Poop Joke is Still the Poop Joke
It may sound sexist, but I think most women, and certainly every honest woman, would agree with me when I say that the phallus is funny and the vagina less so.
The penis protrudes bizarrely from an otherwise harmonious silhouette. A penis flops around. It swells unpredictably or splurges prematurely. It has a little personality of its own. Even things that resemble phalluses are funny by association: trombones, sausages, pointy hats, the Washington Monument, oversized cigars, normal cigars. And History can attest, too: In Aristophanes’ The Clouds, the characters chase each other with a big, fake penis and bop each other on the heads with it. Priapus, the ancient Greek’s version of a scarecrow, was a demi-god with a hilariously swollen phallus ...
It may sound sexist, but I think most women, and certainly every honest woman, would agree with me when I say that the phallus is funny and the vagina less so.
The penis protrudes bizarrely from an otherwise ...