MOST WOMEN REJECT FEMINISM

MOST WOMEN REJECT FEMINISM

1. FEMINIST UNIVERSALISM IS ELITIST AND ALIENATES MOST WOMEN

Evan Gahr, editorial writer for the New York Post, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, January 28, 1996, p. B-8.

Feminists like to think that they speak for all women. For them, marriage is an outdated patriarchal institution that restricts women, every act of intercourse is an act of aggression, and the very word “women” is an affront to “womyn.” But these kinds of arguments leave most women alienated from the angry white women who make up the feminist elite.

So the feminists who see marriage and motherhood as overly restrictive aren’t striking a blow for female empowerment at all. They are, as Ms. Fox-Genovese demonstrates, attacking the very things most women cherish. So while feminists are mired in the 1970s, with their emphasis on bra-burning and demonization of men, the women in Ms. Fox-Genovese’s book have a different set of priorities: “Women’s growing economic independence from families has not automatically lessened their commitment to family life. Indeed, the competing pull of work and family define many women’s lives.”

Katie Roiphe, author of “The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism.”, THE TAMPA TRIBUNE, January 7th, 1996, p. 4.

Feminism, more than most political movements of this century, has held out the alluring promise: This is your life. Its jargon and philosophy entered the most intimate realms of daily life: sex, families and who is supposed to wash the dishes. It offered not just social changes but an entire psychology of oppression to go with them. But somehow the political interpretations still left many of us feeling the dissatisfaction Fox-Genovese writes about, the sneaking suspicion that all of the rhetoric is irrelevant. It seems to me that there is always a huge distance between our politics and ourselves, between the passionate slogans on signs, shouted at marches and debated in classrooms, and what goes on in the living moms, kitchens and bedrooms of real life.

FEMINISM IS RACIST

1. FEMINISTS HAVE FAILED TO CONFRONT THE ISSUE OF RACE

Kathy E. Ferguson, philosopher at University of Hawaii, THE MAN QUESTION, 1993, P. 168. But the fear of being called racist and the accompanying taboo of criticizing women of color is sufficiently strong in contemporary feminism that white working class women often express their anger only privately, to each other. And there are few ways to talk about these glitches in the hierarchy of oppressions (white women not privileged by class; women of color who are) that don’t quickly degenerate into a contest for “more oppressed than thou.”
2. AFRICANA WOMEN REJECI’ FEMINISM

Clenora Hudson-Weems, African Studies scholar at University of Missouri-Columbia, AFRICA NA WOMANISM: RECLAIMING OURSELVES, 1994, p. 18.

But while some have accepted the label, more and more Africana women today in the academy and in the conmiunity are reassessing the historical realities and the agenda for the modem feminist movement. These women are concluding that feminist terminology does not accurately reflect the reality of their struggle.
3. FEMINISM IS A “WHITE” PHILOSOPHY WHICH ALIENATES AFRICANA WOMEN Rose Acholonu, African literaiy critic, AFRICANA WOMANISM: RECLAIMING OURSELVES, 1994, p. 18.

The negative hues of the American and European radical feminism have succeeded in alienating even the fair-minded Africans from the concept. The sad result is that today the majority of Africans (including successful female writers) tend to disassociate themselves from it.

Feminism, a term conceptualized and adopted by White women, involves an agenda that was designed to meet the needs and demands of that particular group. For this reason, it is quite plausible for White women to identify with feminism and the feminist movement. Having said that, the fact remains that placing all women’s history under White women’s history, thereby giving the latter the definitive position, is problematic. In fact, it demonstrates the ultimate of racist arrogance and domination, suggesting that authentic activity of women resides with White women.

FEMINIST EMPHASIS ON MALE VIOLENCE SHOULD BE REJECTED

1. FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF MALE VIOLENCE IS WRONG John Leo, essayist, THE TAMPA TRIBUNE, May 9, 1996, p. 19

To their credit, feminists made domestic violence a political issue. But they shaped the issue around a theory: This violence is an expression of patriarchy as a social force and marriage as a patriarchal institution. It is something men do to women because of the way society is organized. An enormous amount of evidence from 30 or more studies now shows that this paradigm is quite wrongheaded. But feminists are unwilling to adapt it to reality, and since the modem newsroom is very supportive of feminism, news stories on domestic violence are very carefully crafted, consistently unreliableand often just plain wrong.
2. FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF VIOLENCE IGNORES THE FACTS IN FAVOR OF MORALIZING John Leo, essayist, THE TAMPA TRIBUNE, May 9, 1996, p. 19

The feminist insistence of using theory to mug facts has had many unfortunate results. One is that a generalized view of men as uniquely violent and dangerous to women (“men batter because they can,” “the most dangerous place for a woman to be is in the home”) has leached deep into the popular culture. It turns up everywhere.

3. FEMINISTS IGNORE THE VIOLENCE WOMEN COMMIT AGAINST MEN John Leo, essayist, THE TAMPA TRIBUNE, May 9, 1996, p. 19

In fact, children are now more likely to see Monuny hit Dad. The rate of severe assaults by men on women in the home fell by almost 50 percent between the first National Family Violence Survey and the most recent update of data in 1992. It dropped from 38 per 1,000 couples per year to 19. Give the feminists credit for this. They did it mostly by themselves. But the rate of dangerous female assaults on males in the home stayed essentially static over that period - 45 per 1,000 couples - and is now twice as high as the male rate. Give feminists some responsibility for this too. By defining partner violence as a male problem, they missed the chance to bring about the same decline in violence among women. Feminist studies of partner violence rarely ask about assaults by women, and when they do, they ask only about self-defense. Journalists, in turn, stick quite close to the feminist-approved studies for fear of being considered “soft”on male violence. The result is badly skewed reporting of domestic violence as purely a gender issue. It isn’t.

4. FEMINISTS PORTRAY MEN AS MONSTERS

Alison M. Jagger, philosopher at University of Colorado, FEMINIST POLITICS AND HUMAN NATURE, 1988, p. 114.

Some of the most prominent radical feminists portray men as monsters. They see them as necrophiiacs, incorrigible rapists and torturers, irrational woman-haters. While this portrayal brings out certain destructive aspects of masculinity that are often ignored and need to be revealed, I think that it is inadequate both descriptively and theoretically. Descriptively, it ignores not just the relatively unimportant and always questionable individual exceptions to masculine behavioral norms; it also ignores the way in which those norms themselves vary cross-culturally and, in contemporary society, by race and class. Theoretically, radical feminism provides no explanations of why men have developed these bizaxre characteristics and so leaves the impression, sometimes reinforced by explicit suggestion, that these characteristics are simply innate.

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