i’m 19, female, & in my 2nd year of uni. I stumbled upon this series of posts you put up. just wanted to say you’ve really made me think about some of the things i took for granted in society. thanks so much for opening my eyes to feminism without the negative connotations of man-hating, hairy women. :)

Without meaning to take away from the really strong series of posts, I did notice some disablist language in your post (I’m in the UK – I think in the US it would be called “ableist”).

Using words like “lame” and “dumb” to denigrate something is the equivalent for some disabled people of the way in which using “gay” as a slur resonates badly for some parts of the LGBT community.

Could you not do that?

On a related note, there is an excellent essay by Susan Faludi in the October issue of Harpers on the disconnect between 2nd and 3rd wave feminists – and how the “3rd wave” may just kill the movement altogether.

I would post a link, but it’s subscriber-only. I’d post the text, but it’s too long, I think.

I’d imagine that even if women hadn’t gained more rights, the desire to put them back in their place would still be about as strong. Pointless cruelty never quite goes out of fashion.

ps. i must apologize for my poor written skills in advance ;)

http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/wstudies/griffin.html

There’s plenty of strong points made here but what really struck me was her final point about silencing.

Here, I’ll paste it:

“Our silence. The silence and the silencing of women. The creation of authority in the image of the male. Of god in the image of the male. Rape. The burning of witches. Wife-beating. Laws against women speaking in public places. Against women preaching. The imprisonment of suffragists. Force-feeding. Harassment on the public streets. Scorn for the women who dares to act like man. A woman’s love for another woman, unspoken, hidden. Our invisibility in history. The manuscripts of Sappho burned, the writing of women never published, lives of genius spent obscurely, or in domestic labor and child-rearing; the life of the mother, of the housekeeper, unimagined and unrecognized. Woman’s word pronounced full of gile. A woman’s testimony held suspect in court.

These several centuries of the silencing of women are a palpable presence in our lives — the silence we have inherited has become part of us. It covers the space in which we live; it is a blank screen, and onto this screen a fantasy which does not belong to women is projected; the silence of women is the very surface on which pornography is played. We become other than ourselves.

And the story does not end with this forced silencing. Just as silence leave off, the lie begins. This lie is not only the lie the pornographer tells, but the lie a woman begins to believe about herself, or even if she does not believe it, the lie a woman tries to mimic. For since all the structures of power in her life, and all the voices of authority — the church, the state, society, most likely even her own mother and father — reflect pornography’s fantasy, if she feels in herself a being who contradicts this fantasy, she begins to believe she herself is wrong. Wordlessly, even as a small girl, she begins to try to mold herself to fit society’s image of what a woman ought to be. And that part of her which contradicts this pornographic image of womanhood is cast back into silence.”

With porn becoming so much more ubiquitous (not to mention more hate-filled and violent) since this publication and interview, it’s very difficult for me to accept how silent women are on the subject, how little push back there is. Have we taken our dose of Soma and we’re in some daze of putting up and shutting up? What Griffin said three decades ago is eerily prophetic.

This blog is one of the few places where I can find intelligent and thoughtful critique that is current, so thanks again ND for having a strong uncompromising/uncompromised voice and for providing us this space to speak.