{"id":439,"date":"2003-11-12T01:34:38","date_gmt":"2003-11-12T09:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/11\/12\/the-iwfs-big-success-80-whole-people\/"},"modified":"2003-11-12T01:34:38","modified_gmt":"2003-11-12T09:34:38","slug":"the-iwfs-big-success-80-whole-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=439","title":{"rendered":"The IWF's big success – 80 whole people!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speaking of Sara, I congratulate her on being quoted (and photographed!) in an IWF publicity pamphlet (.pdf link<\/a>), and also for being compared to Betty Friedan and Gloria Stienem. (I know the pamphlet is from back in February, but I didn’t read it until today).<\/p>\n

But the pamphlet itself is pretty funny. For instance, it proudly notes that “over 80 students and professors were in attendance at the University of Chicago event” to listen to anti-feminist uber-nit-picker Chistina Hoff Sommers.<\/p>\n

“Over 80”? At a campus as conservative as Chicago? [Note: Apparently Chicago ain’t as liberal as its reputation. See “update 2,” below.<\/i>]<\/p>\n

How lame can they get?<\/p>\n

Seriously – when the Guerilla Girls appeared at Lewis & Clark last year, the auditorium was standing room only<\/a> – and that was an auditorium that could fit hundreds. Similarly, when I saw Catherine MacKinnon speak at Oberlin, the hall was packed. At Portland State University, every Take Back the Night march I saw drew hundreds of students.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the IWF – with far more funding than any student feminist organization could even dream <\/i>of – thinks it’s a big success if they can dredge up 80 people for an appearance by their intellectual leader.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, the pamphlet breathlessly reports that the IWF has formed organizations not only at Chicago, but also at Harvard Law, Columbia, and Penn State. Wow – four whole campuses<\/i>. (Apparently the “SheThinks.org” campaign for a IWF campus presence was a bigger failure than even I had imagined).<\/p>\n

And these are the people who constantly tell feminists that our <\/i>movement is unpopular. At least the feminist movement actually exists<\/i>, which is more than I can say for the anti-feminists. If the Olin Foudation stopped pouring unearned money into the anti-feminist movement, the IWF would dry up and blow away within a week.<\/p>\n

UPDATE<\/b>: An Alas reader who attended the Chicago event informs me that they deliberately kept the advertising for the event low-key and non-controversial, in order to have a quiet and intelligent event. If so, then the organizers – which is to say, Sara at Diotima – should be congratulated, not criticized, for their approach.<\/p>\n

UPDATE 2<\/b>: A few people – including Allen in my comments this morning, and Will Baude <\/a>more recently – have pointed out that Chicago is not as conservative as I assumed from its reputation. Will, in particular, makes a good argument that the IWF actually did pretty well in Chicago, compared to the turn-outs that other conservative student groups muster:<\/p>\n

In other words, the argument that Chicago’s a conservative campus where conservative speakers should draw adoring crowds like liberals do at Oberlin fails, and it fails on its own terms<\/i>. No conservative group at Chicago enjoys packed auditoriums the way that Amp envisions.<\/div>\n

Fair enough; I stand corrected. My congratulations to Sara on an event that was apparently well-organized. (For what it’s worth, had I been in Chicago, I certainly would have attended).<\/p>\n

That said, I don’t think the campus presence that shethinks.org established (after several years, the campus chapters can still be counted on my fingers) is very impressive. Given how often anti-feminists, including Sara, have criticized feminism for allegedly being unpopular on campus, I think it’s fair to note that feminism remains vastly more popular on campus than their own movement.<\/p>\n

(By the way, Will, MacKinnon isn’t a liberal – she’s far more radical than that. And the crowd at Oberlin wasn’t “adoring” – many of the folks there, including myself, were liberal feminists who disagreed with her strongly.).<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaking of Sara, I congratulate her on being quoted (and photographed!) in an IWF publicity pamphlet (.pdf link), and also for being compared to Betty Friedan and Gloria Stienem. (I know the pamphlet is from back in February, but I … 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":[95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-feminists-and-their-pals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439","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=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}