Feminism circa 2010

If you read one thing today, read Riverdaughter at the Confluence.

“A Tragic Setback For Womens’ Rights”

I caught Jane on several occasions going head to head with conservative bloggers on C-Span and other programs, warning viewers that Republicans were going to take away their rights to abortion and that only Obama and the Democrats would protect them.  And a lot of women, young women of child bearing age, listened to Jane and Jessica and Ariana and others like them, rejected Hillary Clinton in the primaries due to her Iraq War Resolution vote, heaped on Sarah Palin because of her anti-choice stance and failed to look carefully at what Barack Obama was doing or had done.  The final insult was Ms. Magazine itself proclaiming that Barack Obama was some sort of superhero feminist on its cover after a year of the most brutal and obscene misogynism we have ever witnessed in a national campaign.

Ms. Magazine was something I was first exposed to in the 70’s on the campus of my Junior High.  I used to read the articles and the poems all the time.

Well?

Where are the articles that talk about what happened to Hillary?  It was a feminist outrage.  An outrage.

I just read Germaine Greer’s piece over at The Times from the UK.  Click this link and go see for yourself.

She is talking about my mother’s generation of 60’s women.

What she says holds true for my generation as well.  It really does.  Especially this:

As women’s economic independence increased, their tolerance of marital infidelity, and of emotional and physical abuse, diminished. If you ever doubted that family stability depended on the oppression of women, you now have the proof. The proportion of divorces rises so inexorably that my figures are probably already out of date. In the developed world 40 per cent or more of marriages end in divorce, typically after seven or eight years, with a year or two to establish separation and then the actual divorce. Most of these divorces are initiated by wives. This is proper change. There’s no going back from here.

A woman who walks away from a marriage in which she has invested all her emotional energy for years is doing something heroic. She knows that the status of her family will slide down two notches as soon as it becomes a single- parent family. She knows that though she might work all the hours that God sends, she will struggle. She will be unable to afford a good haircut, nice clothes, a late-model car or holidays. She will find it harder to find a job and even harder to keep it.

Her ex-husband’s prospects of remarriage are nearly twice as good as hers, and — this is truly shocking — he will be wealthier after his divorce than he would have been if he had stayed married. If her children do well, she will get no praise. If they screw up, she will get all the blame. And yet she does it.

Yesterday I was down at the Y.  I was in the jacuzzi reading articles on writing screenplays when I saw the most grotesque vision of Humbert and Lolita I think I have ever seen.  Ever.  He had to be pushing 70 and she?  I’d say she must have been 19, given the pimples.  She was like a dyed blond, “imported” girlfriend from some other country because she spoke with a thick accent.  She was also grabbing his crotch and snuggling in a place where people go to relax and exercise.  Not view pornish escapades in broad daylight.

It left me with a gross taste in my mouth and a churning stomach.

Personally?  I plan to have my character The Velvet Babe sell really well.  Right into that demographic.

Does that make me a feminist businesswoman?

Yes.

Does that make me a non-feminist? No.

I want to use the money I make to finance healing films.

If I have to appeal to the patriarchal clan that rules my life I will.  As a woman I want some freedom to choose.  As a woman my choices are limited.

Seventies feminists told me I was going to need to support myself — that’s what Ms. said.  That’s what I was able to do because I went to college.  Twice.

I never got to have children because the men I was with did not want to be fathers.  You will be reading all about it in the very tough memoir I’m writing called “whitegirrrl.”

In fact, this morning my ire is up after reading RD and Greer.

You are reading an American Feminist when you read me.