Must admit I feel like my head is gonna explode possibly due to reading 2 books rapidly in one day. First one, I confess has been gathering dust in the corner of my living room and took me ages to find, the second had read it all within a day. The reason my head is on the verge of exploding is that all two books made me despair, disappointed me and also caused me to question why there such positive hype over these 2 books?
What were they; One Dimensional Woman by Nina Power and finally, Caitlin Moran’s How to be a Woman.
Firstly, what I find exists in these books especially Power’s and Moran’s is this sneery looking down on women. Whatever I think of Katie Price doesn’t necessitate the description of “Vichy France with tits” (and it’s bloody offensive… has she heard of Vichy France? Comparing Katie Price to a Nazi collaborator is pathetic, wrong and insensitive). Also isn’t Moran marketing herself as something? Writer? Journalist? Replacement 21st century poor woman’s Dorothy Parker with some Germaine Greer thrown in? Indeed I know Moran’s book is apparently humorous autobiographical jaunt through her life with some feminist-lite as an explanation. I didn’t laugh once. So why the hype. Again, similar to Nina Power there’s this need, it seems, for women to tell other women how to run their lives in a rather sneery middle class way. This is commercial feminism and I somehow doubt whether Moran understands patriarchy.
Nina Power, where to start, who I find massively patronising and insulting to women (I have some sympathy with Jessica Valenti who she trashes on many occasions). She is creating a kind of elitism. She belittles women who spend their cash on wine, vibrators, chocolate and booze (so don’t come around my house any time soon….). My own reaction was, so what! This sneery kind of contempt started with Ariel Levy’s “Female Chauvinist Pigs” way back in 2006 and it continues. Power really doesn’t have a high opinion of feminism rather she disparages from the sidelines on those air-headed women “want shoes and chocolate and handbags and babies and curling tongs washed down with a large glass of wine”…
And the reason being we have been lied and duped by “advertising, magazines and media’. Power concludes that for feminism to be truly transformative “it needs to shake of it imperialist and consumerist sheen”.
But…….. is that true? Instead of critiquing consumerism and commodification which would involve Power needing to do a bit more digging and indulging in some empirical research rather she happily blames women (because that is how it’s coming across) she should give a lot more attention and thought to the dialectical relationship between patriarchy and capitalism. Instead we have Power demanding that feminists should go for more “structural analysis”. For a book based on Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man, she neglects research and analysis and produces just that, a one-dimensional book vilifying women duped by vino and vibrators. When for example she discusses (rather like Caitlin Moran discusses) self-harming behaviour in women highlights her lack of understanding and ignorance. She prefers to quote actor Christina Ricci as opposed to an ordinary women.
All that can be said for the private tribes (mostly) women cutters is that they do not understand each other symbolically, that there is no communication across scars. Self harm as the anti-tattoo.
Huh? I really do believe Nina Power should meet some women who self-harm. Her above argument is untrue. The behaviour does usually take place within the “private sphere” and that many women cut not just because it’s about “an attempt to induce reality” but also it’s a coping mechanism with life. Yes, it is individualized behaviour, but it’s contradictory as well, as many women (from my own experience) believe they are the only ones in engage in self-harm yet when a woman gets the courage to speak to someone it is a groundbreaking moment as precisely she doesn’t feel alone and there are usually acts of solidarity in self-harmers supporting each other. It is precisely that feeling of being alone and individualized and alienated that makes many resort to razor blade with the sole aim of coping with life. Power, empathetic to women? Supportive? Understanding? No, not in the least. There is no evidence she is other than finger wagging condemnation and pity. She breezily writes about the “collective” yet there is no indication of this in Power’s discourse of feminism and the contemporary modern world. There have been many feminist books finger wagging at women’s choices in this modern markertised capitalist world but rather analysing this many current feminists bemoan feminism ( like Power et al) for capitulating to this. Same with Ariel Levy.
Lynne Segal, socialist feminist expressed my own disappointment with this craze of blaming women and the crisis in feminism.
Because it is so characteristic of the twisted sympathies of a mediascape that is as eager to dwell upon the vulnerabilities of young women as to arraign those same women for their lifestyle choices, while simultaneously smugly highlighting the supposed failures of feminism in its inability to ensure women’s well-being, overall.
Furthermore
“The Equality Illusion: The Truth About Women and Men Today (2010),which presents us with the similarly pessimistic conclusion that women are more oppressed than ever today, yet fail to realize it. Even more explicit upbraiding of women and contemporary feminism for their betrayal of the hopes for female emancipation appear in the tone and text of Nina Power’s One Dimensional Woman (2009). Citing barely any well-known feminist writers, though abundant in its citation of reflections from male philosophers with little interest in or sympathy for feminist politics, Power accuses ‘today’s positive, upbeat feminists’ of abdicating ‘any systematic political thought’ for the celebration of ‘individual identity above all else’.”
Indeed I read Banyard’s book and that too depressed and filled me with despair. I was expected to write a review of her book but I gave up due to the feeling of disappointment and that I didn’t have anything positive to say.
Segal captures my own thoughts on Ariel Levy’s book as well.
“Moreover, Ariel cannot decide whether to treat her FCPs as victims, women unable to really enjoy sex or gain anything for themselves, or the opposite: women who are essentially selfish, narcissistic and predatory.
Sex is always a crucible of contradictions, but I find Levy’s own contradictions uncreative. We do need to talk more about the effects of our sexualised landscapes, but I don’t think we should be hoping for any manifesto that will tell us what good, authentic sex is. To imagine such a thing could exist it is to demonstrate the very kind of pared-down lack of imagination the book projects, perhaps rightly, on to the entrepreneurs of raunch.”
And that’s the other word that describes these recent glut of books, smug. Look at those women spending their wages on shopping for clothes, magazines and drinking more wine. That’s not liberation it’s misery. But rather than engage in this finger-pointing of women who have apparently submitted to the god of consumerism, vibrators, handbags, shoes, even more booze and waxing legs and the nether regions, ask yourselves this why? This type of narrative being put forward reminds of the 1980s radical feminism which emphasised the need for feminism to engage in certain ways, there was this creeping finger wagging morality that condemned women, this was never more polarised than the debate over pornography (it was porn on the brain everything else was subordinate). Women, it seems, has succumbed and submitted themselves to the patriarchy with a little help from feminism.
Don’t women get condemned enough in this society? Do this. Do that. Don’t do that. Women are straitjacketed and constrained enough without left-wing feminists/philosophers sticking the sisterly knife in the back. Also, this finger-pointing also is rather insipid as it inevitably focuses on working class women. What does Nina Power expect women to spend their money on? Her books so that they liberate and raise their political consciousness at the word according to Power? Lecturing women will not change anything, open and honest debate without the smugness and sneering where the aim and objective is to make women think about the world would be a start.
Power argues that feminism needs more structural analysis? What I would like to see is more of a structured argument from her as the books flits from one cultural aspect to another. What I also find odd is that Power focuses on women’s apparent obsession with consumerism yet doesn’t mention anything about men’s reliance on consumerism nor any interpretation of masculinity this could surely fit into the schema of the One Dimensional Woman.
Power spends very little on women and the labour market rather she concentrates on the feminization of labour. She lacks hard statistics, trends and counter trends and historical analysis of women entering the labour market this is a very big problem. As an academic you have a duty. Also, what she neglects is the number of women who will lose their jobs in the public sector due to the economic meltdown as they are the majority in that specific workforce. Yet Power doesn’t spend much time on any of these topics rather she drifts and gives no indication of where’s she going. We get a stream of consciousness instead. Neither does Power spend any considered time in her slim book on the interaction between race, class and sexuality, she skims instead much to the detriment of the book. Power sees work as a cultural signifier though I am not entirely sure what she means. What I do know is that’s at the level she approaches these things. The professional woman in her business suit is a cultural thing in the same way as a pornographic image of a woman is also a cultural thing.
I can see why for someone as a philosophy professor who sees work and cultural meanings are one of the same. But it’s not the same because work is about material reproduction; it’s about cleaning floors, cutting up sandwiches in a food factory, it’s about making endless lattes in a cafe.Work in capitalism is alienating labour and even worse for women. Power doesn’t seem to see work in that category rather it’s a mish-mash of postmodernism disconnected from the real work. She may quote Marx but she no understanding of Marxism nor about rudiments of labour under capitalism.
I also find Laurie Penny’s Meat Market very similar as it lacks analysis, and statistical research. Again, it drifts through consumer capitalism without any real understanding of alienation and commodification of women under patriarchal capitalism all we get is a rather superficial explanation but I am an old-fashioned socialist feminist who likes analysis with a theoretical basis. And that seems like a common thread in younger feminists. No development of an argument.
Overall, I would really invite feminists to read Socialist feminists from the 70s (and still going and writing!!), Lynne Segal, Angela Davis, Barbara Ehrenreich (if you want to read a realyl well researched argued book then read Global Woman), Sheila Rowbotham, Linda Gordon and so on. These feminists could bring theory into practice, they understood the nature of the dynamic shifts and changes within capitalism and patriarchy, intertwined with race, class and sexuality. The world may have changed since the 1970s but the arguments remain the same..
Please see this excellent post as well.
Posted by harpymarx 
