You've Lost Your Way, Baby

How organized feminism has made itself irrelevant

Catherine Seipp from the October 2002 issue

(Page 2 of 4)

Feminists Go to War

When feminists haven?t been waylaid by irrelevant distractions, their attitude toward the post-9/11 world has ranged from tepid support for the war to silly posturing. Gloria Steinem, Alice Walker, Susan Sarandon, Eve Ensler, and about 80 other members of the Worldwide Sisterhood Against Terrorism and War circulated a petition last fall protesting the bombing of Afghanistan on the grounds that it "would only punish suffering people and increase the hatred on which terrorists feed."

The Feminist Majority Foundation has also been stuck in a bog of moral equivalency over the war on terrorism. In December its Web site, www.feminist.org, touted an online chat with its founder and president, Eleanor Smeal, "connecting U.S. and International Terrorism." The connection Smeal sees concerns not extremist American mullahs indoctrinating terrorists intent on murdering thousands but (and she?s not kidding) anti-abortion protesters. There was also a link to Scarves for Solidarity, a group urging all women to wear the hijab (the Islamic headcovering for women) in support of traditional Muslim women -- as if the most pressing social problem right now is the possibility that some Muslim women might be stared at.

Multiculturalist feminists have been complaining that "forced uncovering is also a tool of oppression," as two members of the Muslim Women?s League wrote in a January Los Angeles Times op-ed piece. "As an expression of their opposition to [the Shah of Iran?s] repressive regime," they continued, "women who supported the 1979 Islamic revolution marched in the street clothed in chadors. Many of them did not expect to have this ?dress code? institutionalized." Oops!

Turkey, the freest nation in the Islamic world, takes a different tack, forbidding women to cover their heads at public institutions, just as Germany bans Nazi regalia. These countries recognize their vulnerability to particular toxins and ban them to avoid a descent into fascism, not as an expression of it. Of course, head coverings don?t need to be illegal in America, and neither do swastikas. But feminists defending the former as just another "choice" should expect little more sympathy than those who defend the latter.

Another lesson to be learned from organized feminism?s reaction to 9/11 is that no tragedy is too great, no issue too important, not to be reduced to the most simple-minded identity politics. Those 343 firemen who sacrificed themselves at the Twin Towers? NOW is upset that there were no women among them. Its Legal Defense and Education Fund (NOW-LDEF) is demanding its share of federal disaster relief money. Never mind the widows and orphans; what the world needs now, goes the NOW-LDEF thinking, is more affirmative action.

"The critical thing is role models," Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) told The Washington Post after viewing NOW-LDEF?s Women at Ground Zero video, part of the group?s lobbying campaign to steer funds toward recruiting more female firefighters, police, and construction workers.

NOW?s activities offer a good reading on the state of organized feminism. It is the movement?s largest organization, claiming 500,000 members. (A Boston Globe story puts the figure at 275,000.) The second largest is Ms.?s new publisher, the 60,000-member Feminist Majority Foundation. FMF deserves great credit for publicizing atrocities against women in Afghanistan years before anyone else cared. But it?s worth noting that Mavis Leno, who used her celebrity connections (she?s Jay Leno?s wife) to spotlight the situation, originally joined FMF?s board in 1996 because she wanted to help defeat California?s Proposition 209, which banned racial and gender preferences in state universities and other public institutions. That proposition won by a wide margin overall and garnered more than half the female vote. Yet the organizations that purport to speak for women were fiercely against it. Little wonder most women feel free to ignore organized feminism.

Girls Don?t Need Special Help

It?s not hard to figure out why so many women dislike affirmative action, even if official feminists don?t get it: Girls are generally better students than boys, and it?s insulting to suggest that they need special help getting into college. They certainly don?t need rigged policies that keep them out in the name of social justice. The passage of Proposition 209 meant, among other things, that black or Hispanic male applicants could no longer be admitted to California?s top public universities over better-qualified Asian or white females. This policy affects many more women than the small number who might hope to be firefighters.

Although feminism?s party line about affirmative action is out of touch with the needs of actual women, it continues to be part of the standard patter about "women?s issues." I went to hear Los Angeles City Councilman Eric Garcetti during his campaign last year, and he launched into the usual pandering spiel about "gender equity." Garcetti cited as an example of unfairness that only around 13 percent of city contracts go to women, even though at least half of all new businesses are started by women.

Actually, women are becoming self-employed at something like 12 times the male rate, as Daniel H. Pink pointed out in his 2001 book Free Agent Nation. Many, perhaps most, are work-at-home types like me. City contracts are the last thing on our minds. When we think of the government at all in relation to our business, it?s usually because we don?t want it interfering with how we earn our (quiet, nonpolluting) livings.

In fact, the last time I had reason to consider my work in connection with local government was a few years ago. L.A. was then threatening to enforce a $25 annual home office registration fee and collect city income tax on a percentage of home office earnings. You can imagine how that went over here in Hollywood, home of the bathrobe-clad screenwriter.

Some have argued that the feminist establishment?s major problem is that its leadership is heavy with aging baby boomers, stuck in the outdated concerns of their youth. But the Third Wave Foundation, an organization of feminists up to the age of 30, is equally dedicated to parroting the same out-of-date platform, except they?re bossier and remarkably clueless.

"Hey! Been to a movie? Walked down the street? Spy any sexism lately?" asks the foundation?s "I Spy Sexism" campaign, which suggests sending postcards informing the wrongdoers of their wrong deeds. Third Wave isn?t just against the usual age, gender, sexual orientation, and race inequities; it includes "economic status or level of education" in its list of unfair discrimination. Presumably you should send a postcard to your bank if you were denied a loan just because you have no income.