Misogyny

I've always considered myself a classical feminist: I believe in the equality of the sexes (sometimes I genuinely believe in the superiority of women, but I try to avoid that prejudice), and I basically feel that we already have all the laws in place that we need to achieve that. Any future work in feminism should be in changing cultures that haven't caught up with the 20th century (*cough cough*red states*cough cough*).

So I've always taken a suspicious eye to today's feminism, especially last semester when I was taking a 400 level philosophy of feminism class, which had to be the most boring, confusing, and inane waste of time ever. Half the feminist thinkers (including the most obtuse feminist thinker in the world, Judith Butler) just muddled about how we need to move away from a dichotomy-based dialogue structure, and others glorified transsexuals as the next thing in art and thought (androgynous society: the dream of postmodern feminism).

Now though, I'm reading Henry James' "The Bostonians" which is about what 19th century thinkers called 'the woman question'; basically, what became known as feminism. The book itself chronicles the rise of a star motivational speaker in the women's (feminist) movement of the late 19th century, and it's refreshing but...

Well, the women of that period were unhappy with their place in the world (rightfully), and in the novel the feminists saw women's lot as the great misery of humankind (and holding men responsible for it), and pressed their movement until "certain laws and legislation" were passed--namely, the right to vote, equal rights for women, etc. etc. Well, we have those now. Most of the work of the 20th century has been in enforcing and reinforcing those laws and changing the culture of society to adhere to the spirit as well as the letter of those laws.

And yet, feminist thinkers today strike me as unchanged. They're still revolutionaries, they still see women's lot in life as the great misery of humankind, and they still blame men (and male Focoultian power structures) for the oppression they see themselves under. The feminist thinkers of 100-150 years ago only wanted equal representation and protection under the law; the right to own property, retain property after divorce, etc. Now we have the powerful women-voters demographic, Forbes' Richest Women in the World, and alimony/child support payments. 19th century feminist thinkers would have been more than happy with the state of things; so why aren't modern feminist thinkers happy?

Sometimes I think all women are unhappy with their lives and the state of the world, and just want to blame men for it. I'm not necessarily saying they're wrong of course; I just notice peculiar patterns.

In the novel, Basil Ransom (thought to be a horrid misogynist and enemy of the women's movement by the novel's feminists) makes an observation. He says something to the effect that women should stop focusing so much on their 'independence', and that women (and men, in his eyes) should begin to exercise the freedom that all humankind already has. I think that's a good thought to end on.