(The Nationalist, 15 June 2007)
An American feminist, Paula Rothenberg, in an essay called, “Snatched from the Jaws of Victory: Feminism Then and Now,” wrote about how she sees feminism today. Among other things, she said, ‘Empowerment, we are now asked to believe, is not about getting an education, not about becoming economically independent, not about taking control of our bodies, not about saving the environment, not about working toward social justice, but dressing in a certain way and wearing the newest version of whatever t-shirt or body piercing we choose.’ She asks, ‘And whose interests does this serve?’ And answers, ‘Women are socialized to relate to a false world of erotic fantasies and images that are defined and controlled by men…’ In fact, she said, women are beginning to realize that nothing new happened at all. ‘What we have is simply a new, more sophisticated (and thus more insidious) version of male sexual culture. Sexual freedom has meant more sexual opportunity for men.’
Another writer, Kathy Pollitt, put it this way, ‘Women have learned to describe everything they do, no matter how apparently conformist, submissive, self-destructive, or humiliating, as a personal choice that cannot be criticized, because personal choice is what feminism is all about.” Girls and women now believe they show how liberated they are by dressing like the ultimate male sex fantasy. How convenient for capitalist patriarchy that young women today think that dressing like every man’s sex fantasy is a sign of their liberation, and that the women’s movement was all about getting the right to choose and had nothing to do with making hard decisions about what values and what social vision should be reflected in our choices. What look like individual choices are really social in nature and reflect the values and interests of those in power.
Personal choice without social responsibility and without social context may be just an exercise in self-indulgence. Consider what Human Rights Watch says on its website (www.hrw.org) about the current status of women:
Millions of women throughout the world live in conditions of abject deprivation of, and attacks against, their fundamental human rights for no other reason than that they are women.
Abuses against women are relentless, systematic, and widely tolerated, if not explicitly condoned. Violence and discrimination against women are global social epidemics.
Seen against that background, much of what appears to concern some Western women cannot but appear as trivial, self-centred, and of little benefit to women in most of the world.