Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 3, 1995 TAG: 9509010088
SECTION: BOOK PAGE: F-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY LUCY LEE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"Like the sexual revolution, the women's movement was said to be over some 10 or 15 years ago, but people keep copulating and feminists keep writing away. Publishing activity, like premarital sex, begins early these days."
So says Wendy Kaminer in a recent "New York Times Book Review" article entitled "Feminism's Third Wave: What Do Young Women Want?"
Twenty-eight-year-old Rene Denfeld knows exactly what she wants but it's not even close to what the current movement offers. In "The New Victorians," she claims that feminist leaders "have changed the feminist agenda from fighting for equality and choice to promoting socially, sexually, and politically repressive ideals."
She singles out male-bashing, lesbianism, victim mythology, anti-pornography crusades, and goddess worship as issues that dominate the movement today.
This, Denfeld says, is a radical change from '60s and '70s (second-wave) feminism which focused on individual empowerment and political activism. Today's women's movement "has become bogged down in an extremist moral and spiritual crusade that has little to do with women's lives. It has climbed out on a limb of academic theory that is all but inaccessible to the uninitiated. ... For women of my generation, feminism has become as confining as what it pretends to combat."
Denfeld notes that early feminist leaders such as Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer now direct their energies toward older women. (Their latest books are, respectively, "The Fountain of Age" and "The Change: Women, Aging and the Menopause.") She is critical of Gloria Steinem's 1992 "Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem," which concentrates on inner health and spirituality: "Women who are in the midst of the struggle to balance work, families, and relationships while barely avoiding poverty find Steinem's happy pursuit of her inner child disconcerting. Many women are more worried about caring for their actual children first."
A primary concern of Denfeld's is that members of her generation, most of whom lead lives based on feminist ideals, are not willing to call themselves feminists. They are turned off by a movement that advocates censorship (of porn), sees men as oppressors (especially sexually), blames all societal ills on the "patriarchy," and argues that women are morally and spiritually superior to men.
The bulk of this ideology, according to the author, comes from women's studies courses, MS magazine and NOW (the National Organization for Women). Because these are the sources of most young women's introduction to feminism, it's important that they be challenged.
Denfeld resents the charge that young women are not interested in feminist issues. She says, "The problem is not that we are apathetic, ungrateful, stupid or antifeminist. The problem is that the New Victorian feminists have completely lost touch with our generation."
"New Victorians" is her term for current feminists (among them, Andrea Dworkin, Catherine MacKinnon, Susan Faludi, Robin Morgan) who, although they don't represent the majority, have come to represent the movement. They advocate "19th century values of sexual morality, spiritual purity, and political helplessness."
Denfeld reminds us that the pedestal on which Victorian women were placed was, in reality, a prison. The theory then was that "Contact with such sinful things as voting, free speech, sexual freedoms, and political power could only harm their (women's) delicate and lovingly pure nature."
She warns that this "difference" ideology, strains of which have been resurrected by the religious right, quickly converts women's "special" status to one of restricted rights.
Is Denfeld on target with her critique of current feminism?
Yes and no.
She does make valid points in identifying issues that are weakening the movement. She is correct in stating that 1990s feminism does not reflect the concerns of most women, and that a lack of tolerance for differences of opinion among feminists is also alienating.
But there are serious flaws in her arguments: chiefly, her identification of minor issues, such as goddess worship, as major ones. Most women are not into witchcraft and "pelvic power." When she says that the New Victorians advocate keeping men "out of our lives and out of our beds," and implies that this is dominant theory, she loses credibility.
Too, the evidence she uses to back up many of her points is often scant or extreme. The quotes she cites from women's studies courses are long and hardly representative.
Many of her statistics are dated and several of her themes have been addressed in other popular works (Katie Roiphe's "The Morning After," Naomi Wolf's "Fire With Fire," and Christina Hoff Summers' "Who Stole Feminism?")
However, these flaws do not negate the validity of Denfeld's main message: '80s and '90s-style feminism is not relevant to young women's lives (or, I would add, to many older women's). Her criticisms have been labeled backlash by some. But her passion and fresh perspective can be viewed as assets in reclaiming feminism for the majority.
Denfeld speaks for many women when she says, "Our battle is not against sex or men or abstract cultural constructs. Our battle ... is about those solid real-life concerns we face every day: our work, our children, our relationships, our health care, our reproductive choices, our economic situation.
"That's it, and that's more than enough.
Lucy Lee is a free-lance writer in Roanoke.
by CNB