Defining the new feminism: Young women look for their place..., ...in a movement incr

Tyrael · #1 14th-August-2008

Quote:

Defining the new feminism
Young women look for their place in a movement increasingly splintered

Misty Harris
Canwest News Service
Saturday » August 9 » 2008

At a time when young women want to have their cake and bake it, too -- and are likely to be judged for doing either -- determining what it means to be a fearless female is more complicated than ever.

Bombarded by a dizzying array of ideas and images, individuals believe girl power is synonymous with short skirts as much as advanced education. They are demonstrating their independence through community involvement and at the stripper pole. And even as young females are equalling male achievements in math and science competitions, they're matching them shot for shot in bars -- studies show more college women are "drinking like men" and getting drunk more today than in the last 20 years.

It's all evidence of how young women are seeking to make their way in a culture of conflicting messages, experts say.

"I think they are trying to find power," says Michelle Meagher, a professor of women's studies at the University of Alberta. "It's like, 'I can show my breasts and that's a sign I love my body.'

"They don't realize it's a lot more complicated."

Meagher says some of the confusion may derive from the ever-increasing branches of feminism's third wave, which is challenging previous notions of what was good for women and the women's movement.

Some prominent women's advocates hold up sex work and exotic dancing as empowering, for example, while others denounce them as exploitative and fostering a culture of rape.

"If I say I have sex with men, does that mean, according to (feminist) Catharine MacKinnon, I'm sleeping with the enemy?" says Meagher.

"If I am more picky about who I'm sleeping with, does that mean I'm a prude according to pro-sex feminists?"

While Meagher notes the unwritten rules of early feminism were straightforward ("you didn't easily go to a women's group meeting or to a feminist organization wearing makeup or talking about your husband or wearing a diamond ring"), contemporary thinking is more diverse.

"In some ways, it's fantastic because you can make all kinds of choices and still proclaim to be a feminist," she says. "But it's also very confusing."

Jess Chapman, a student at the University of Winnipeg, says she's aspiring to a way of life that finds a midpoint between empowerment's extremes.

"Right now, it's either be a total skank or be a nun," says Chapman, 18. "And I think it's possible for a young woman to be a healthy sexual being without putting it all out there."

Chapman began identifying as a feminist at 16, around the time she read Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. Although she's confident about her own map of how to live fearlessly -- including a decision not to marry or have children -- she wonders about others who have yet to determine who they are and what they want.

"For girls who are less sure, they're going to get a lot of mixed messages," says Chapman. "They're going to hear (modesty maven) Wendy Shalit in one ear and (porn star) Jenna Jameson in the other, and it's just going to be overload."

Sharon C. Wilsnack, a clinical psychologist who has been studying female behaviour since the early '70s, has conducted research that demonstrates many young women are using alcohol as a means of reconciling modesty and inhibition with sexual exploration and experimentation. The more they drink, the more confident they feel in the bedroom.

Full article is here.

Comments by others:

Feminism has removed all moral restraints from Women. They are reverting to animalistic behavior. Whoring themselves with no morals. And when it suits them looking for a Sucker to rescue them from their rotten, shallow, meaningless lives. They are becoming like Men, faux Males, who are repulsive to decent Men. After years of Screwing Dirt Bags, and Thugs. Expect to be treated like Royalty. They are in fact not even decent peasants. Men should treat them with contempt.

That in effect is what Carey Roberts posts on Women's Shelters is doing, going after the Sacred Cow of the FemBots and its need to be funded. Its lack of accountability and transparency and that it is a Lesbian enclave that exists to Soak the Taxpayers and rip off a gullible public. They are used to recruit Women to be Lesbian Friends with Benefits and to misuse public funds. Its a solution in search of a Real Problem. Flim Flam Women who must keep the hatred and Fear of Men alive to keep the revenue stream coming their way.

When I bother to read pop magazine articles or watch the news, it is clear that we are now living in a world run by women for women, and they don't care to know what the men think. Most of the news anchors now are women (the men that are left are getting old, and they are there because they've been around for a while).

Maybe some of them are noticing that we are no longer visible, but they're still too preoccupied with their own topics. That article was written by women for women.

Yep. I can barely watch or read anything anymore because it makes me want to puke. Even the fucking reporters on the sidelines of NFL games are ditzy broads asking about how many homeruns a dude made.

The third wave movement is fracturing? Heck, the feminist movement has always been fatally fractured! An example from "Who Stole Feminism: How women have betrayed Women" by Christina Hoff-Sommers:

Quote:

The Hyatt Regency in Austin Texas, is a pleasant hotel, but not all of the five hundred participants of the 1992 National Women's Studies Association [NWSA] conference were happy with it. One woman, a professor ... complained to me about the weddings being held there ...

Being aggrieved as a conference motif. The keynote speaker ... opened the proceedings with a brief history of the "narratives of pain" within the NWSA. She reported that ten years ago, the organisation "almost came apart over outcries by our lesbian sisters that we had failed adequately to listen to their many voices". Five years ago, sisters in the Jewish caucus had wept at their own "sense of invisibility". Three years later the Disability caucus threatened to quit, and the following year the women of color walked out. A pernicious bigotry ... existed at the NWSA ...

At past conferences, oppressed women had accused other women of oppressing them. Participants met in groups defined by their grievances and healing needs. Jewish women, Jewish lesbians, Asian-American women, African-American women, old women, disabled women, fat women, women whose sexuality is in transition. None of the groups proved stable. The fat group polarized into gay and straight factions, and the Jewish women discovered thay were deeply divided: some accepted being Jewish; others seeking to recover from it. This year, concern extended to "marginalized" allergy groups ...

[snip]

One of Angela's biggest ouches came after her lesbian support group splintered into two factions, black and white. Tension then developed in her black group between those whose lovers were black and those whos lovers were white. "Those of us in the group who had white lovers were immediately targeted . . . . It turned into a horrible mess . . . . I ended up leaving that group for self protection."

Hilarious!

In the OP:

Quote:

One of 2007's most talked-about books on the third wave, Full-Frontal Feminism, was criticized for using the slender, nude midriff of a young woman on its cover. In an interview with New York Magazine, author Jessica Valenti said she was called a "patriarchal whore" because of that image, which she later described as "the bane of my feminist existence." But, she added, "let's face it, no young woman is going to pick up a book with the woman's symbol with a fist on it."

Ah, you completely missed the point Jessica! You have further oppressed the most oppressed of women, eg, women of color, overweight women, women with chronic skin conditions, women with ugly protruding belly buttons, women with tattoos, women who are offended by an exposed midriff, women with back problems that prevent them from leaning that way, women with missing fingers or hands, women with fat fingers, women who hate painted fingernails etc.

The herd mentality of women is ultimately going to sink them.

Yep!

OzPaul

**Percy** · #2 14th-August-2008

Have a beer, OzPaul.

**julie** · #3 14th-August-2008

That is probably one of the best things I have read.

I have a boss who is an old school feminist.

She has been forcing her ways on not jut me but her niece and her daughter in laws.

She does want what is best for us and she is not the only one out there wanting all younger women to be perfect mothers and have prefect careers but ....... she is slowly realising as are others that when they fought for women to have choices, younger women have taken it literally.

And how do you have one movement when everyone is making their own choices?

It can be a stretch to find someone who has the same choices as you.

**Percy** · #4 15th-August-2008

Maybe, Jools, this is a perfect opportunity for men in the MRM to all join around.

Woman are totally confused and in desperate need for a single point of view. A healthy and natural one.

The MRM needs men to form debriefing teams.

Britney could be our model of the new woman. She has been debriefed.

Billy · #5 15th-August-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by julie

She does want what is best for us and she is not the only one out there wanting all younger women to be perfect mothers and have prefect careers but ....... she is slowly realising as are others that when they fought for women to have choices, younger women have taken it literally.

And how do you have one movement when everyone is making their own choices?

It can be a stretch to find someone who has the same choices as you.

What you're saying is that women fought to have choices and they got them though they weren't expecting to have so many choices and like most women they really don't know what they want?

.

shaazam · #6 15th-August-2008

so pole dancing skills are another plank in their evolution up to equality with men
(chauvinistic pigs or whatever)

when I am waiting for a bus there are a few wimin there Iknow when they change their underwear - colour coded ID system

I figure if it is the same colour and the same size tag it must be the same unerpants as she wore the last three days

christianj · #7 15th-August-2008

In an interview with New York Magazine, author Jessica Valenti said she was called a "patriarchal whore"

No wonder that poor liitle thing is sooooo ! screwed up. Nobody has any time for the poor little thing...

Everyone hates her...

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