Wherefore Women? More Musings

By April Lidinsky

Katha Pollitt, columnist for The Nation, has a gift for taking the temperature of the moment, drawing together many examples that give a reader a broad perspective punctuated by specific examples. Her latest column, “Backlash Spectactular,” is a terrific example, as she assesses our gender politics at a moment when women’s progress and women’s backsliding are so strangely intermingled. The occasion of her piece is the fact that Washington University in St. Louis is giving an honorary doctorate to Phyllis Schlafly and hosting conservative commentator Chris Matthews (Pollitt calls him a “mad misogynist” and it’s hard to disagree) as the commencement speaker.

What could such decisions tell us about the gains and losses for women in the U.S., now? Here’s a taste:

Tell me the backlash against feminism isn't crackling up a storm. I try to keep my eye on the big picture and the bottom line: education, employment, autonomy, power. Surely, I tell myself, the fact that half of all new med students are female is more important than Paris Hilton's omnipresent visage; that a woman has made the first viable run for the presidency says more about the United States than that media clowns like Matthews basically call her a crazy castrating bitch on a daily basis; or that Caitlin Flanagan, smarmy enemy of working mothers (and another big believer in compulsory sex for wives), won a National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism.

Pollitt also weighs in on the recent failure of the Senate to support the Lilly Ledbetter bill regarding women’s right to sue over pay equity issues, along with the closing of shelters for battered women nation-wide for lack of funding. (The resources in our own area are frighteningly thin; our excellent YWCA facility is often very near or at capacity.)

Yes, women are making progress in education, and perhaps we’ll have a woman on the Democratic ticket after all (stranger things have happened in politics), but Pollitt’s closing examples are persuasively alarming:

Culturally, there's misogyny wherever you look: Grand Theft Auto IV, which offers players the opportunity to have sex with prostitutes and kill them, got rave reviews and is expected to have $500 million in sales its first week out. If there's a pro-woman cultural event with that kind of reach and impact, I'd like to hear about it. It certainly wouldn't be Vanity Fair's photo of tween icon Miley Cyrus, clad in nothing but a bedsheet at all of 15 years old--or the daily media onslaught urging women to focus on their babies like a Zen master contemplating a rock--when not taking pole-dancing lessons, getting Botoxed or catching up on the latest "studies" purporting to prove that they lack the drive and brains to do anything better with their brief time on earth. Feminism, please call home!

Women and men who support gender equity: Let’s not leave gender politics behind as we move to the next phase of the election.