Persistent Myths of Christina Hoff Sommers
Jun 30th, 2009 by admin
Bitch Magazine e-mailed me to tell me they liked the post I wrote about Christina Hoff Sommers a while back and had quoted it and linked to it in their latest post about Sommers’ recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship. It’s a great article, check it out! And thanks, Bitch Magazine!
Heart
The thing that always interested me is that conservative women were the beneficiaries of feminism. Hoff Sommers probably wouldn’t have gotten her job had it not been for feminist activism.
Once feminism makes dramatic changes, and radical women put their all into the fight to change things, then the conservative women mysteriously get on board.
However, I too have never been able to find historically accurate information about “the Rule of Thumb” and Romulus is indeed a mythical founder of Rome.
There are a lot of exaggerations in feminist commentary to be sure, and the idea that all women are powerless victims is one of them.
But the conservatives have always wanted to undermine women’s rights, and never stop trying. They just don’t admit it quite as openly as they once did. Same for racism, the structures remain in place even as the people in them are oblivious to how they mold and control people. Nobody wants to admit they are a puppet in a system, and if you never live in another country, you’ll be even more in the dark as to what forces shape your behavior.
Re victim feminism - I **really*** like what I just happened to come across re “victim feminism” by Susan Brownmiller recently! Just skimming her book “In OurTime”. I really feel her insight into how this “victim feminism” jeer got started is so spot on.
“…the establishment media pursued their own agenda and interests when it came to rape….The feminist antirape movement was founded on the testimony of raped women, and its success in changing public opinion derived from their truths. Criminologists,psychologists,and law enforcers, proving to be quick learners, adjusted their theories to reflect the new thinking. As the seventies turned into the eighties, however, and self-disclosure became the stock-in-trade of the proliferating talkshows, the rape victim became indistinguishable from the typical fodder of dailyTV, yet another person with a gruesomestory. By then the issues of battery, sexual harrassment, and date rape had been added to the mix, and critics of feminism began blaming us all for portraying all women as victims. I think the criticism was simplistic. Our goal in politicizing rape had been to illuminate the role of the male aggressor, not to train a perpetual spotlight on women as victims. Of course, ****the political explication of male violence proved infinitely harder to keep in the public eye than the victimization of women****, but the failure to do so wasn’t the movements fault.”
Hi Jeyoani, good to hear from you again. I like your analysis, and believe it is correct as far as public media is concerned.
Actually, “victim feminism” is not a phrase I am completely comfortable using. I use it, because it is in common currency. I guess one of my personal ideas is how I felt about feminism say in 1972 — excitement, go out and conquer the world enthusiasm, be the only girl in shop classes, build stuff, work on my first political campaigns for early women pioneers etc. That was excitement get things done, go where no women could go before feminism. When you are a pioneer and the first to do this and that… well you tend to get weary of excuses sometimes.
Somewhere into the 80s, when I got back from Japan, I was shocked at the change in attitude, or just the cultural difference between Japanese feminists and American lesbian feminists.
The whole therapism culture had taken over San Francisco. EVERY darn lesbian in San Francisco it seemed was in therapy. My partner and I were very mystified. What’s with this therapy? Where do they get all this money to go to expensive therapists? As much as my detractors would like you to believe, those were the days when my partner and I had almost no money, and had to work very long hours just to get back into American culture, which was overwhelming. We just persisted. Then suddenly, all the lesbians we knew no longer were in therapy, so we thought, maybe the insurance payments had changed or something…another story I’m sure.
Then it got to the point where you’d just meet someone, and out of nowhere, they would blab out, apropo of nothing, that they were incest survivors. Coming from Japan, with it’s elaborate ritual politeness, this came across as shocking. At first, I was very sympathetic, if not taken aback. But then women just kept on dumping and dumping and dumping, and I realized they just would go on and on oblivious to everyone else in the 100th retelling of “victim” stories, for lack of a better word. I don’t mean any disrespect to women who have suffered, but you just begin to wonder after awhile. It somehow felt as if their blunt story of being an ex-prostitute, incest survivor, alcoholic, drug addict… whatever, just erased anything I might feel or have to say about my life. It is hard to describe this socially weird dump truck ism … and again, the vocabulary for this is elusive. This kind of stuff went on for years, until I’d begin to feel creeping indifference. This woman doesn’t even know me and already she’s launching. I began to feel emotionally taken advantage of. Kind of like listening to straight women go on and on about how unhappy they are with the men in their lives. On some level, I’m just not going to care all that much.
So to me, feminism in many ways has become the women whining thing rather than the let’s get something exciting done faction, for lack of a better word.
I think there may be many women who got tired of victim dumping, and I think people who have often gone through horendous suffering don’t talk all that much about it — friends who’d been in Japanese internment camps, for example.
The talk show, tell all, Dr. Phil, psycho-babble that has taken over everything… I you hear about how everything for women is a disaster all the time, there is a certain congitive disonnence. My life has never been a disaster, I’ve had tough challenges, but I just persist. Some people might think I am this oppressed minority, but really, I believe that now is the best time to be a lesbian. There is a certain amount of social distance, but as I get older, I’m finding that more and more women connect with me, and as I’ve progressed in my career, I find all kinds of people give me respect and time. Getting older is great for lesbians sometimes.
I am disappointed to read a lot of radical feminist stuff, I must admit.
It certainly can drag you down rather than lift you up. Since my life is about solutions, and about revealing things that will really protect women, this can feel frustrating.
Or perhaps I just got this kind of genteel education in Japanese culture, and always drift toward this. I am highly optimistic by nature, even though I’ve seen a lot of really bad things happen to people. The thing is, if you’ve seen a lot of the bad, somehow, you begin to want to hang out with the optimists, and the women who have achieved in their lives. You are attracted to beauty and elegance, you feel drawn to poetry and art. Or you smile in genuine happiness as you hear an incredible piece of Baroque music on the radio as you drive through Los Angeles.
Where once feminism celebrated the firsts… wow, a friend of mine auditioned with Seiji Ozawa and got in as an oboeist, wow, my neighbor down the street is a lovely opera singer… wow, Hillary Clinton won the California primary!! Yahooo. This kind of enthusiam is actively made fun of in radical feminism. Happiness and optimism is trashed as “empowerfulness” or “empowerfulment” so you kind of back away, and think geez, I was so excited to tell you about…. (poem music happiness)… Thus, you begin to feel that my favorite brand of feminism known as triumphalist feminism (my invented name) got displaced by this long tale of woe. I can see the value in women telling the truth about rape, and getting it out there. But somehow if it’s too much disaster, too much rape, prostitution and bad, well… this might be what turns into victim feminism. It just might not ring true if the success of women’s lives as a result of the previous 40 years never really gets celebrated all that much. Just saying…
The excessive disclosiveness (dumping) of women vis a vis victim experiences goes hand-in-hand with therapism. There’s nothing like therapy to nip a real revolution in the bud.
Therapism… yes Branjor that was a very good word coined I believe by one of my heroines Janice Raymond. The cult of the victim and the disaster is so deeply entrenched in feminism now that it just wears you out. I’ve noticed this annoying thing sometimes, someone calls to cancel some event, and they leave a very detailed voicemail message as to why they can’t come to the event. This only makes me more annoyed at the person, when a simple “I’m so sorry, something has come up, and I’ll call to reschedule.”
But I’m off topic on Hoff Sommers. I think I do understand to a certain extent where conservative feminists are coming from. Women live in different worlds, and this informs your ideology.
I recall smiling to myself recently when a woman who heads a large women’s group asked me why more lesbians were not coming to the group. I just shrugged my shoulders, too tired to explain. The question was well intentioned, but there was no thought about what exactly would make lesbians want to come. Many came when they had a lesbian speaker at a dinner, but again, it was a very heteronormative group, and they didn’t know how to properly reach out to the half dozen lesbians who did come.
Feminism has come down to an awful lot of whining, and I think a lot of women just didn’t want to hear about how women are losing every battle everywhere, when this clearly is not true.
If you persist, you will make progress, but you have to be willing to persist.
The irony again of a Hoff Sommers, is that feminism has always been radical. The very notion that women have desires completely a part from men, and a completely different concept of social interaction is one of the insights of feminism. Just as lesbians and straight women have very different social agendas. Thus, even the word still scares even a lot of women. To face the idea of male supremacy straight on is to call attention to this.
“Women live in different worlds, and this informs your ideology.”
-Satsuma
So true!
I have so many thoughts re your comments. They are maybe too sloppy to make for a great reply comment. When read undefensively I can hear you really well on all this though.
Balance is always so important, and hard. Appreciation is always in order, of peoples’ respective strengths and weaknesses. It’s harder for some women to take action, to be do-ers. And harder for others to reflect, to take time to weigh the gravity of their own or others’ backgrounds. Both are necessary though
I’m in a mode right now where action seems like everything and then some .
But I still won’t give in to the temptation to think, “action is everything, reflection is for crap…”….(not saying you said this– I’m talking about my own extremist tendencies).
I can see how if you went through the womens movement in the 70s and 80s everything else seems incredibly inactive.
Self-disclosure and memoirs nowadays drive me insane, mainly because it’s reached a narcissistic fever pitch(w/some exceptions) BUT….I actually have always felt heartened when I read someone has said “I was raped” or some such thing. I barely have heard anyone talk about it in real life. I never experiencd the fullfledged womens movement but I did experience a full fledged conservative Christian movement so there’s a big difference. I can see how in the ways you described out of your experience , it can at times be inappropriate and unhelpful. People are weird and damaged, trying to sort crap out by putting their business in the street- sometimes this is good, sometimes not.
When I try to think of actual media representations of victims’ stories in and of themselves– their feelings, anything in depth — I can barely think of anything really. (Apart from talk shows but actually I have only seen like one or possibly two shows where it was about sexual abuse of any kind. )
I worked at a theatre in LA that played “Monsoon Wedding”and on several occasions people would make fun of when one of the female characters (it was an ensemble cast) confronted the man who had sexually abused her as a girl. They’d mock her voice.
That movie is one of the only films I can think of in which the subject
of sexual abuse is treated in a way that is not tittilating, –AND in which the survivor is fleshed out as a whole person. Her pain is addressed but her past victimization isn’t the ONLY thing about her.
To a certain extent “MONSTER” did this too.
Maybe the subconscious feeling goes — I’m gonna keep whining til I’m heard, Or maybe subconscioulsy they are whining til they can really hear themselves. I think what is ideal is realizing”no one’s gonna hear you how you want to be heard anyway.”
Once you can hear yourself is when you really become powerful I think. I don’t see many (hardly any) women really writing about sexual abuse–their own sexual abuse– in depth–women who do this are actual activists and healers,their work helps build a new world. Whereas just sorta putting out there “this happened to me and here are the gory details”, (like the women you knew) or vague references of personal sex abuse– serves a purpose too but it’s a different purpose .
Re therapy I’m not against it per se but I never had any–this is the thing –overall, I don’t see a difference
in people who have/haven’t had any therapy! That said most people I know who have had it, liked getting it.
I recently enjoyed”Take it from me” byErin Brockovitch for a buck in the bargain bin!
She advised talking to yourself and I seriously think it’s one of the best pieces of therapy advice ever!! I think many other years in my life I’d of thought “this book is too simplistic.” But I LOVE this book today!! It has truly helped me. Her theories (among a few others) are “Tough/You HAVE to” and “Talk to Yourself”. Therapy gold for me!! Anyway she’s more your style I would say, as in …DO something.
I have to say I think that there’s a definite difference between political victims and sexual victims. There’s more social diginity
and recognition of peoples who have gone through public humiliation because of their people group at the hands of acting governments. You know? It isn’t that way for sex victims–who are usually women and girls. For reasons we know…..
Anyway there are sooo many differences. I’m not downplaying political victims’ trauma *at all*. I use this term “political victims” to mean– people who endured humilation/abuse for a certain amount of time. When it stops, acknowledgemnet that it
was wrong–in this day of human rights violations awareness — is more ofa no-brainer (though it may take a v.long time to come into public recognition) .– Flimsy as it may be, this is still somewhat affirming for the victimized group. This public affirmation does not happen for very many sex victims-. It’s more complicated.
I’m just saying it’s quite different on many levels. People who go through political oppression due to their people group - they are seen as the ultimate victims– they weren’t doing anything wrong and generally people feel compassion for them. People don’t tend to feel pity or compassion for prostitutes. When a person speaks of sexual violation there is a massive amount of a specific discomfort. Different feelings are activated in the listener when a political victim speaks their story.