“Well, I’m Not A Feminist, But…”

 

(The author, Jerry Fino, is the force behind www.menandmarriage.com) 

Well, then what the H-E- double-hockey-sticks are you?  

Interesting convo with a young lady the other day.  Considers herself a feminist but is also a fiscal conservative, embraces solid family values, likes men, doesn’t feel oppressed, dresses like a girly-girl, has no rage against patriarchy and doesn’t look anything like the Indigo Girls.  Mostly I was relieved to hear the term “feminism” being self-applied to a young woman I know to be intelligent, classy, eminently fair, kind, pleasant, rather pretty, sans chip on shoulder.  

Such a far cry from the representatives of that movement which, like too many any mass movements where the high profile, self-appointed mullas are, in fact,  hideous caricatures of the more moderate activity of rank and file. Poster boy examples of this: Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  

Feminism, to the self-serving potentates of the movement, have got to be leaning on their swords at the about-face cannibalization of the movement, with much gnashing of teeth, wondering “how-DID-we-evolve-to-THIS!??!!” not unlike the Republican Party.  Recall back in the day when Gloria Steinem was chortling that she and the rest of the sisters of Sapho needed men like fish need a bicycle, well, today’s goings-on would have been seen as playing right into the enemy’s hands.  (Steinem who also said that marriage makes a woman a non-person, married a man in September of 2000.  It would seem that at age 66 she needed someone around to open those darn jelly jars.)  Yes! The movement has gone beyond Patricia Ireland, former head of NOW, whose quasi Nurse Ratchet on quaaludes cadence can not hide the fact that a recent Sundance Film Festival cinematic offering, “Teeth” was inspired by her.  

Just what is modern feminism, anyway? One troubling off-ramp to insanity is know as “sl*tty feminism” where, according to Monique E. Stuart of the New York Times, “The new test of gender equality is how openly promiscuous a woman can be without judgment or penalty.”  Ah, now, THAT’S progress- aspire to a sub-minimum standard proudly.  But, by and large, young women of today seem to actually be ‘nice’ to men and want them around.  Still, I sense confusion in the ranks of women who, though they appear to be less militant and angry, still appear to be no more certain of what they are as women in a declarative sense.  The contradictions are still as numerous as the choices that women have (more than the choices available to men.) Most women hold Guy Ritchie in terrible contempt for scoring $75 million as a divorce settlement from The Material Girl, Madonna yet every day women take husbands to the cleaners in divorce and lay claim to money and things they earned not, things they might not even need, but want anyway,  justifying the theft as something they’ve got to do “to survive.”  (A job is out out of the question?)

Which is not to say that all women must all speak in choral unison and march in lock step to some Oprahesque Svengali.  That is actually what the bra burners attempted to do during the militant years of feminism when women aspired to be men, achieved it, found it to be less utopian than they thought it would be, and faded into cats, condos and white wine spritzers with the other man-free malcontents who remain as detached from their feminine essence as John Edwards from his Conair Infinity on a camping trip.   Which makes today’s low profile “feminists” so much more pleasant.  The “ism” seems to take a back seat now to the individual, the contrived ethos no longer defining these women.  That’s progress.

Nonetheless and sadly, feminism as groupthink cult is still awarded some fuzzy female genuflection, less out of principle or admiration than of custom. An element of PC American female inclusion requires at least a little least lip service to it. 

Still, I keep waiting to hear the young ‘feminists’ of today fall back on such ninnyisms as women still earning however-the-heck-many cents on the dollar compared to a man. 

Oh, shut the front door! 

The implication is as ignorant as saying that 95% of all deaths on the job are still men so we need to toss some babes down a mine shaft or into a farm combine to make it more fair. 

I’m encouraged to not particularly be hearing the same, tired rhetoric that is nothing more than a smoke screen for proof of what Eric Hoeffer once theorized about social movements when he said “What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.”  What a perfect mission statement for the National Organization for Women.    

I think women claiming to be “feminists” will have truly arrived when they can define themselves not in terms of what they are against, but what they are for, what they aspire to be as women, to do with their lives, what they ARE.  With absolutely no hint or insinuation of what ‘cool’ feminist Camille Paglia described as the “20th century feminism’s weepy victim mentality.”  

(Author’s segue: Camille Paglia is my favorite feminists precisely because of how  she views that whole movement.  Said Paglia in an interview with Timothy J. Madigan, “I am a dissident feminist who is a critic of the feminist establishment. I’m someone who’s trying to reform feminism, as much as my great heroine, St. Teresa of Avila, who wasn’t trying to get rid of Catholicism, but was trying to reform it. Which she did.”)   

“I’m not a feminist, but I believe in equal pay for equal work bla bla bla bla I’m an idiot bla bla….pull the cord on the back of my neck again bla bla bla…”  Like, anyone who hasn’t thawed out of a glacier is actually against this?

Given where we are in the 21st century, this is tantamount to coming out in favor of potable water.  

The coolest thing about many of today’s young feminists is that they exercise their right to choose in a way that the old Germaine Greer gaggle would have never approved of.  Many choose to be mothers, wives, perhaps a career or not; many choose to embrace a dignified demeanor and self-presentation and resist dressing, talking and acting like a female mandrill presenting herself to be mounted (starting at age fifteen.)  Many of these young, classy women really like guys- good guys- of which there really are quite a few.  

Actually, between Camille Paglia (age 62) and the young woman with whom I had recent conversation (age 17), there appears to be some women who are making fashionable again that wonderful feminine essence sans chip on shoulder while  telegraphing how comfortable they are in their own XX chromosomal skin.  

This should be encouraging to all bike shop owners near an ocean front or aquarium.