One Dimensional Feminism - Part Two
Part 2 of Kathy Miriam’s brilliant essay on the oxymoron of liberal-feminism.
One Dimensional Feminism, Part 2
Where have all the flowers gone?
A Tale of a (Lost) Passion
Oscar Wilde, writing in The Soul of Man Under Socialism, said, “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.”[1]
Preface: for Mary Daly in memoriam
I write this blog-essay on the occasion of the death (January 3, 2010) of my only Mentor, Mary Daly. And I wonder, is this the passing of the flowers of the utopian?
If Mary taught me one thing it was that feminism is a passion. By passion I do not mean emotion, but a whole world-view, an imaginary—meaning a sense of collectivity beyond the current scheme of things…
Stan:
“Why not a dentist’s office?”
This is a perfect example of the forced disingenuity of the whole liberal project, as Pateman shows… the liberal-patriarchal project.
We need a name, and a popular exposition that breathes life into the name, of this kind of weasel-wording, this shell game that conceals power (in abstraction).
I am reminded of how people will say, defensively, “I don’t care if you’re black, white, or green…” They have to throw in the color that represents nothing real, because they have to disappear the actually-existing power residing in actually-existing white-black.
Liberal ideology cannot survive without this particular fallacy, this particular way of effacing power.
12 January 2010, 10:18 amxenia:
very interesting, thanks a lot… recently i have found myself thinking a lot about how in most other respects (career, money, reputation) i have stopped caring much what other people think about me. the one serious barrier is coping with age as a woman.
my face is very young, but my hair has started graying prematurely in large chunks. this poses interesting questions. at age 28, i waa able to pass for 20 and had to show my ID a lot. what now, several years later? should i be dying the hair so that i can get a decent job? dying the hair so that i don’t perceive myself as “old” in the morning when my face is tired and the eyes red? should i be doing it to be able to flirt with the universe, and to be “energetic” and “youthful”? if i were a man, of course, it would add to my charms as a melancholy intellectual, and i might even break a few hearts unwittingly (a la sean connery). as a woman, a poor woman at that, with strange, decidedly non-corporate taste in clothing, i have to be a lot more careful when presenting myself. in our days, hags are neither wise nor dangerous, just embarrassing.
and then, of course, the question expands, including possible identification with ancestral bodies (or hatred of them for being fat, wrinkled, bent etc). the struggle is really to appreciate and be loving to my body, and by extension, other suffering bodies as well, including handicapped and deformed ones. on the other hand, there is an emerging understanding that any body, no matter how loved, must decay and die. so how much attention should be given to “it” and what kind? those are questions which we are faced with, and to which liberal feminism does not give an answer except: worship the youth, strive to look young even in the grave, and don’t even mention anything beyond that.
12 January 2010, 10:59 amLisa:
A pity these two judges were women.
Insouciant Americans
By Paul Craig Roberts
…The “war on terror” is a far greater threat to Americans than all the terrorists in the world combined. This is so because the “war on terror” has destroyed the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. American citizens are now helpless in the event someone in government decides that some constitutionally protected behavior, such as free speech, or a contribution to a children’s hospital in Gaza, where Hamas, a U.S.-declared “terrorist organization,” happens to be the elected government, constitutes aiding and abetting terrorism.
On January 5 a ruling by the Federal Appeals Court in the District of Columbia gave away the most essential protection of liberty by declaring that the U.S. government is not bound by law during war. The ruling absolves Washington from complying with America’s own laws and from complying with international laws, such as the Geneva Conventions. It makes a mockery of all war crime trials everywhere. By elevating the executive branch above the law, the court gave the government carte blanche.
The rationale offered by the court for refusing to uphold the law came from Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who said that America had been pushed by war past “the leading edge of a new and frightening paradigm, one that demands new rules be written. War is a challenge to law, and the law must adjust.” By “adjust” she means “ be set aside” or “be thrown out.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to defend both the Constitution and the principle that government is not above the law. Last December 14 the Supreme Court refused to review a ruling by the Federal Appeals Court in the District of Columbia, which dismissed a torture case with the argument that “torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants.” In other words, neither U.S. nor international laws against torture can be enforced in U.S. courts. The opinion was written by Judge Karen Lecraft Henderson.
The “war on terror,” which is enriching Halliburton, Blackwater (now operating under an alias), and the military/security complex, while denying Americans health care, is running up debt that is a threat to Americans’ purchasing power and living standards. The contrast between America’s sanctimonious rhetoric and the murder of civilians and torture of prisoners has destroyed America’s reputation and caused Europeans as well as Muslims to despise the United States.
The sacrifice of the Constitution and rule of law to a hyped “theorist threat” has destroyed the heart and soul of America herself.
As a poet wrote, “our world in stupor lies.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24380.htm
12 January 2010, 6:43 pmStan:
All the fear and loathing related to the body (and death) is culturally projected onto female bodies.
16 January 2010, 7:53 pm