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In my reading I come across plenty of things that are sound and commendable. Too many things that are mindlessly banal and/or just awful. Occasionally something that’s novel and thought-provoking. And then once in a while, I encounter something that can really be categorized only as “wha-huh?”

Such is the case with “Smart Girls Wear Short Skirts, Too,” posted by Amanda Marcotte at slate.com’s XX Factor blog. This, apparently, is a response to a NY Times item by Lisa Belkin in which, according to Marcotte, the author “conflates women having sex with men and actual social inequalities between college men and women” and generally bemoans female participation in juvenile sexual antics, or at any rate the nature of that participation.

Having read Belkin’s item at the Times, I generally agree with Marcotte’s criticisms. e.g.

To Belkin, the fact that women dance in their underwear at parties is part of the same pattern that caused a fraternity to circulate an email explaining that women aren’t actually people, as if women could get their people status back by putting more clothes on.  But I think that men are perfectly capable of being turned on by a woman dancing in her underwear while never forgetting that said woman has a family that loves her, a mind of her own, and ambitions that are equal to his.

Quite. Nothing amiss, here; I consider myself a modern and committed feminist and believe in equal opportunity for men, women, and every other category of person to comport themselves how they like and still be treated like human beings. You shouldn’t be leered at or exploited just because you dress like a slut. Just as you shouldn’t be sniggered at or assumed to be somehow “repressed” or “incomplete” because you’re celibate, either. Go with yourself.

So naturally I’m neither troubled nor puzzled by Marcotte promoting a similar standard. Where she loses me is, instead, when she allows that “Belkin is quite right to be upset that men still exert total control over the college social scene, and that young women feel they have to suck up to men or they won’t have a social life at all.” Marcotte ends her post by revisiting this issue, in further but still-confounding detail:

I do think Belkin makes some interesting points about how unfair campus life is to women, who don’t get to share power over orchestrating campus social life.  That women’s relationships with each other are eroded by competing for male attention is a problem, as is that men get to make all the decisions about what to do for fun and the women are just expected to tag along.  But these problems are complicated, and solutions aren’t immediately evident. Plus, the solutions to them would require asking something of men, that they share power and treat women with respect.

What the fuck is she talking about, here? (more…)

Because I love you. Or because I really just love the “sound” of my own writing “voice.” Or because I’m just OCD. In any event, in the past month I read the following books:

The Incredible Detective, by Gene Caesar. This was the fascinating story of William Burns, one of those figures who was apparently very well known 100 years ago but is essentially forgotten today. The William Burns Agency is still a large security corporation, though I wonder how many, even among those who know of the company, are familiar with its founder. His story literally is incredible; Burns’ ability to identify tiny but important clues and unravel crimes with deduction may have been the closest any real-life figure has ever gotten to that of great fictional detectives. There should be a movie or perhaps an entire television series about his career. If I ever decide that I need a rejected screenplay to carry through life as a badge of my “writer” status, I could do a lot worse.
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The finally-over primary season has made one thing crystal clear: pretty much everybody who doesn’t consider him/herself a feminist (and many people that do) has no idea what feminism is.  This has manifested on both sides of the Clinton/Obama divide, and continues to show up in the media pretty much daily.

 To many Obama supporters I’ve encountered, “feminism” is a way of behaving based on dualistic and oppositional thinking (men and women are at WAR!!!) and hypersensitivity to the possibility of slights.  The label “feminist” has often been tossed out as an insult against overzealous Clinton supporters, which is unsettling.  To a certain extent, this is the fault of incomplete gender awareness among said Obama supporters, but the blame also belongs to some Clinton supporters. 

You see, it appears that a slice of Clinton’s backers (now mostly calling themselves PUMAs or Hillocrats or some such stupidity) agree with the above-mentioned Obama people that feminists are thin-skinned man-haters who spend their days hunting for examples of misogyny.  These folks not only practice this weirdness, they excoriate feminists who dare use the label without adopting their framing.  It’s very similar to the situation Josh discusses, wherein a small handful of stupid people who call themselves “Christians” have managed to convince most Americans (and, consequently, most American Christians) that Christianity is only for those who like snake handling, speaking in tongues, and directing one’s prayers to George W. Bush.

Unfortunately for these people, feminism isn’t what they think it is.  It’s actually a pretty simple concept: feminism is the belief that women are equal to men, that they should be treated as such, and that we have to work hard to make that happen.  Yes, part of that is recognizing some of the more subtle instances of misogyny that pop up constantly, and, often, pointing them out in ways that may or may not be abrasive.  But it’s also a lot of other things.  Not to get all cultural theory or anything, but we’d really be better off discussing “feminisms,” since such a wide variety of approaches, many of which are contradictory, end up under the feminism umbrella.  The point is, just because one “feminist” does things a certain way doesn’t mean that any other (let alone all other) feminists do too.

Of course, the problem goes far beyond Clinton and Obama supporters.  The worst of it has always come from the mass media (despite what the PUMAs seem to believe, almost none of the bona fide misogyny that polluted the primaries came from Obama, his campaign, or the vast majority of his supporters).  Take, for instance, this gem, wherein Scott Martelle of the LA Times suggests that Obama is a closet woman-hater because he referenced Ann Richards’s famous quip from her keynote at the 1988 Democratic National Convention: “After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did.  She just did it backwards and in high heels.” 

Here’s Obama’s remark: “[W]omen can do anything that the boys can do – and do it better, and do it in heels.  I still don’t know how she [referencing Hillary Clinton] does it in heels.”  Apparently, Martelle thinks Obama’s mention of heels will be interpreted by “some” (oh, that pesky “some”!  They’re so touchy!) as misogynist because, well, I guess because some women wear heels.  I’m really not sure what offense Martelle expects women to take, and I think that’s because he doesn’t either.  Regardless of whether or not he calls himself a feminist (I doubt that he does), I’m 100% certain that he doesn’t understand what feminism is, if he thinks what he’s doing qualifies. 

Most of the comments on his post indicate that most people are smart enough to see this as shameless conflict-mongering and nothing more.  But the problem is that “some people” (in this case, the PUMAs) will undoubtedly pick up on this and add it to the list of other dubious infractions Obama has supposedly committed.  These folks will once again use this comment as a litmus test for what they call feminism, and, sadly, lots of others will take their word for it.  The end result is that, once again, we’re letting crazy people define feminism for us, and more and more potential feminists will turn themselves off entirely to everything bearing that label because they believe that feminism is always already batshit crazy.

The trick of it is, I can’t, in good conscience, go around  denying that these assholes are feminists, because it’s not my place to do so, and if I did, I’d be guilty of what I’m criticizing them for doing.  All I can do is offer my definition of feminism as an alternative.  So here we are: there are assholes everywhere, and some of them call themselves feminists.  Beware of assholes.  Sorry, internet, that’s the best I can do.