{"id":366,"date":"2003-09-10T14:41:56","date_gmt":"2003-09-10T22:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/09\/10\/the-revenge-of-can-conservatives-be-feminsts\/"},"modified":"2003-09-10T14:41:56","modified_gmt":"2003-09-10T22:41:56","slug":"the-revenge-of-can-conservatives-be-feminsts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=366","title":{"rendered":"The revenge of Can Conservatives Be Feminsts?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aaaargh. I just lost quite a long response to Amy, of The Fifty Minute Hour<\/a>. Oh, well…. time to try again.<\/p>\n

Amy writes:<\/p>\n

Amp takes the somewhat reasonable position that anyone can be a feminist so long as they accept two basic premises:<\/p>\n
    \n
  1. Believes that there is current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism which on balance disadvantages women.\n
  2. Advocates for the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.<\/ol>\n

    However, he argues that most conservatives who call themselves feminists of one stripe or another are not actually feminists because they don’t buy the first premise. […]<\/p>\n

    Now, I obviously disagree with Amp on this one. I don’t buy into his first premise, but I consider myself a feminist. The reason is simply that I think that women in generations before me have won most every significant political battle against significant inequities that once existed in our society. Think about what Amp is saying: he’s saying that if liberal feminists won every political battle they’re currently fighting tomorrow, feminism would cease to exist. Sure, there would still be people like me who believe in equality of the genders, but according to his view, if there are no more political battles to be fought, there’s no more feminism. I don’t accept that. I don’t accept that women should no longer be able to identify themselves as part of the political tradition of Susan B. Anthony, Betty Friedan, and Jane Addams because the battles they were fighting have been won decisively for our side.<\/p><\/div>\n

    First of all, Susan B. Anthony wasn’t a feminist – she was a suffragist. Do I think that Amy (as a feminist) is right to see herself as part of Anthony’s political tradition? Sure. But that doesn’t mean that it makes sense for Amy to call herself a suffragist, because that battle’s long over. There’s no need to advocate for (American) women to get the vote – they already have it.<\/p>\n

    Similarly, if all women and men are someday made socially, economically and politically equal, then there will be no further need for feminism. People may still identify with the feminists (as Amy still identifies with suffragists), but they won’t themselves be feminists.<\/p>\n

    I don’t accept that feminism only exists so long as America needs more laws to protect women.<\/div>\n

    This is something of a red herring. Feminism is, as I’ve argued, a political and activist tradition, but surely Amy doesn’t believe that making laws is the only <\/i>possible way to be political or activist. (One could instead be in favor of overturning unjust laws; or one could organize consumer boycotts; or one could be a media activist; or one could organize community groups; etc, etc, etc).<\/p>\n

    Amy then brings up an excellent point – what about a woman who (like Amy) think that women have it entirely equal in the USA, but who still thinks that women are unequal in the world at large, and advocates for equality for women everywhere? Shouldn’t that woman be considered a feminist?<\/p>\n

    Well, in my opinion, yes, she should be.<\/p>\n

    (Would I agree with that woman about the state of the sexes in the USA today? No, but that’s not news – feminists disagree with each other about things all the time.)<\/p>\n

    Finally, after a mostly-reasonable post, Amy steps off the deep end:<\/p>\n

    Incidentally, while I’m not particularly interested in getting into a pissing match about whether liberal feminists have abdicated their responsibility to women in the developing world,…<\/div>\n

    “…but I’m going to start exactly that pissing match anyway.” And so Amy pisses away, going on to conclude that woman like Amy, who see nothing wrong with the US, do more good for women abroad than liberal\/socialist feminists like me who waste time worrying about sexism in the USA.<\/p>\n

    Since Amy went out of her way to bring up the question, maybe she could point out the extensive programs the right-wing women’s organization CWA <\/a>has to help women abroad. Since they don’t have to waste time helping women in the USA, I’m sure they’ve done much more to help Afghan women than the Feminist Majority Foundation<\/a> ever has, right?<\/p>\n

    It’s ridiculous – and counter to reality – to claim that liberal feminists have ignored what’s going on abroad (unlike those conservatives). The fact is, not a single right-wing womans organization gave a damn about women under Sharia (other than praising those governments for banning abortion) until 9\/11 made it fashionable – and there’s no reason to imagine that conservative interest will last after the fashion fades. Until a US conservative woman’s organization has a proven track record showing even half the interest of NOW or FMF <\/a>in helping women outside America, Amy’s argument has no credibility.<\/p>\n

    I will say this: we should give priority to the worst off. Just as I think it’s misguided for people who claim to be in favor of universal healthcare to spend their time advocating for a single-payer system in the U.S. when there are billions of people abroad who can’t get a 50 cent cure for malaria, I think it’s a misallocation of resources for anyone who calls herself a feminist to whine about a (disputed) 25 cent pay differential here when there are women in other nations who can’t leave their house without permission from a male relative. It’s a misguided misallocation of resources to spend so much trying to get some icing on the cake for ourselves when billions of women don’t have any bread.<\/div>\n

    Of course, Amy would never dream of applying the same standards to herself that she condemns feminists by. In the front page of her blog, I see her advocating for marriage rights for North American gays. Isn’t that “a misallocation of resources” – why didn’t she instead write about people thrown in prison for being gay in Egypt? Amy worries about the freedom of speech problems of Americans whose porn is censored – which seems misguided, in a world in which people can have their hands chopped off for supporting the wrong political faction. She even (to use her word) “whines” about the danger to religious liberty represented by a monument to the ten commandments in Alabama – a ridiculous stance when people in Iran and China are thrown in prison and sometimes beaten to death for practicing the “wrong” religion.<\/p>\n

    Somehow, what Amy criticizes liberal feminists for doing – paying attention to trivial American issues when there are more serious abuses abroad – she finds perfectly acceptable for herself.<\/p>\n

    Personally, I think Amy’s standards are inane, whether applied to me, to FMF or to Amy herself. It’s human nature for people to be interested in improving their own culture. Furthermore, a nation that never tried to improve its own flaws (or even admitted they existed), but instead concentrated solely on “helping” other people, would be a nation of insufferable busybodies.<\/p>\n

    There are groups who are too insular – groups like the Concerned Women for American and the IWF, who dedicate themselves entirely to partisan politics and feminist-bashing, and virtually never find time to try and fund girls schools in Afghanistan or advocate for more women in the provisional government of Iraq. I think the NOW and FMF model – groups that, rather than subscribing to Amy’s unrealistic either\/or philosophy, attempt to improve the world both<\/i> at home and abroad – is more admirable.<\/p>\n

    UPDATE: Corrected a brain-fart by inserting the word “suffragette.” Then, in response to a reader comment, changed it to “suffragist.”<\/p>\n

    UPDATE THE SECOND: Corrected an even bigger brain-fart by fixing the spelling of Amy’s name, which for some reason I had originally spelled “Stephanie.”<\/p>\n

    UPDATE THE THIRD: In response to another reader’s comment, changed “suffragist” back to “suffragette.” I’m nothing if not pliable.<\/p>\n

    UPDATE THE FOURTH: Then again, in light of Bean’s comments, I’ve changed it back to “suffragist.”.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Aaaargh. I just lost quite a long response to Amy, of The Fifty Minute Hour. Oh, well…. time to try again. Amy writes: Amp takes the somewhat reasonable position that anyone can be a feminist so long as they accept … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism-sexism-etc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}