‘True Woman’ movement: BARF.
Sorry, another Mother Jones link, but… goddammit.
The ‘True Woman’ conference is part of a faith-based movement placed directly in opposition to the feminist movement, and centers on getting ignorant, oppressed women to convince themselves and other ignorant, oppressed women that ignorant and oppressed is the way God means them to go through life.
Read the article for yourselves, and also note the bit on abuse as essentially a minor problem a little clergy counseling can get any normal couple through, you know, as long as the wife will stop mouthing off so damn much. And reading, and voting, and stuff. Sheesh.
My question: what the fuck do we do to combat this sort of crap? You and me on up to ‘The Government’ or ’society.’
Is quelling the urge towards the guilty pleasure of ironically-misogynist humor among my peers going to help by not putting that energy into the world? I don’t really hold with that, but I feel frustrated that my women friends, most of whom are smarter than me, have to deal with an asterisk in the bulk of their normal and professional interactions.
To me, the answer should involve public education (God help us!) It’s going to be a long time before there are enough openly lesbian, openly single, openly driven females who get enough face-time in public life that even girls who grow up under the shadow of institutions of insecure little men can’t be sheltered from an image of ability regardless of sex.
February 6th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
“It’s going to be a long time before there are enough openly lesbian, openly single, openly driven females who get enough face-time in public life that even girls who grow up under the shadow of institutions of insecure little men can’t be sheltered from an image of ability regardless of sex.”
Well put.
My two cents:
You can keep bringing up the subject.
You can ask your bosses if they’d be willing to help with Mercy Corps NW’s program to help formerly incarcerated women transition back into the workforce and society through microenterprise. (Really, this would be an awesome partnership.)
You can encourage your female friends, because some of us grew up with this and still fight it.
And yes, you can discourage misogynistic “humor.” It’s still oppressive.
Thank you, Shane.
February 6th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Awesome post, Shane. Seriously, it’s really encouraging to me as a woman to know men who are spending time thinking and writing about issues like this.
What I was going to say at work today (but couldn’t handle getting into at the time) was that I think it’s really interesting how these fundamentalist movements situate themselves in relation to feminism. It’s kind of encouraging, in a perverse way, because they always portray themselves as reactionary rather than proactive – like the excerpt where the True Woman manifesto claims that “while men and women are equally valuable in the eyes of God, here on earth they are relegated to separate spheres at home and in the church.” Prior to the first wave of the feminist movement, I don’t think anyone would have felt the need to claim that men & women were equally valuable in the eyes of God; look back a few hundred years and nobody in the American colonies was making any bones about their views on the supposedly inferior female mind & body.
I witnessed a similar conversation a few months ago on Ravelry, where there’s a group devoted to the “submitted wife” lifestyle – wives should submit to their husbands as men submit to Christ, etc. What struck me as interesting is that, when challenged, these women would argue “Hey, our marriage is 99% egalitarian. It’s just that when we have a disagreement that we can’t resolve, the husband always gets the deciding vote.” I think that’s so interesting. Not that I don’t still throw up a little when I hear it, but compared to a medieval or even Victorian ideal of marriage, that description is AMAZINGLY influenced by the feminist movement. So, not only are they reacting against feminism – which puts feminism in a position of incredible power for them – but they’ve even incorporated feminist ideals into their own Bible-thumping conservatism. They’re not really arguing that we return to a historical past; they’re arguing that we return to a romanticized version of the past, seen through the lens of the feminist movement. You know? So I think there’s hope, even though it’s still disgusting.