American Electra by Susan Faludi

The funniest aspect of the mass internet-responses to Susan Faludi's much-discussed HARPER'S article, is that young women already run the joint. Therefore, when blogs like Feministing authoritatively announce:

We mulled over how to respond most effectively here at Feministing, and have decided to publish a week-long series of responses from a diversity of young voices in our community

Say whaat?

Um, isn't that who ALWAYS writes for Feministing? How is this any different from business-as-usual? They write as if this week-long special event is somehow different from the norm, and of course, it isn't, which is the hilarity.

In truth, "a diversity of YOUNG voices" (emphasis mine) is the typical demographic for ALL of the Big Feminist Blogs. The fact that a tiny middle-aged squawk over at HARPER'S (a magazine you have to BUY to read; it isn't online for everyone's perusal and I still haven't read the whole damn article) can create such a fuss, is telling.

I long ago unsubscribed to HARPER'S, after their Andrea Dworkin hit-piece, which I didn't like (see comments here). However, Susan Faludi commands widespread respect, even from young feminists. She is likely the primary reason for the overarching concern this time; even Amanda Marcotte, major Youthquaker, notes that she was eager to read Faludi's account. (For my part, I have been howling non-stop about ageism within feminism since my arrival in Feminist Blogdonia in 2007... nobody cares, and in fact, I am usually shown the door for bringing it up.)

What is immediately striking is how this mass counter-attack would not happen regarding any other form of discrimination, except (as we have seen numerous times) for fat. I very much doubt that if this was an account about racism in feminism by Alice Walker (and she did write one), the response would be, "to present a diversity of white voices in our community." (Or would it?)

Yes, it is the same.

Maybe worse, since Faludi outlines the incontrovertible facts: Second Wave feminism gave birth to the Third Wave, and this feud tends to imitate the elements of a mother-daughter fracas. Since that's what it is. Basically, many Third-wavers are spitting in their feminist foremother's faces. Faludi writes: "The contemporary women’s movement seems fated to fight a war on two fronts: alongside the battle of the sexes rages the battle of the ages."

Yep. (NOTE: Sorry I can't provide "a diversity of older voices" to reply along with me, but there are EXCEEDINGLY FEW of us online... and the Third-wavers have banished even those few, in favor of young folks talking endlessly about Lady Gaga. Thus, it is very difficult for us to even find each other.)

I still can't find the entire text of Faludi's piece, so if you can find one online, please link here. But here are some excerpts from what is currently posted:

Why does so much of “new” feminist activism and scholarship spurn the work and ideas of the generation that came before? As ungracious as these attitudes may seem, they are grounded in a sad reality: while American feminism has long, and productively, concentrated on getting men to give women some of the power they used to give only to their sons, it hasn’t figured out how to pass power down from woman to woman, to bequeath authority to its progeny.

...

I’ve been to a feminist “mother-daughter dinner party” where the feel-good bonding degenerated into a cross fire of complaint and recrimination, with younger women declaring themselves sick to death of hearing about the glory days of Seventies feminism and older women declaring themselves sick to death of being swept into the dustbin of history. I’ve been to a feminist conclave convened to discuss the intergenerational question where no young women were invited. After the group spent hours bemoaning the younger generation’s putative preference for a sexed-up “girly girl” liberation, one participant suggested asking an actual young woman to the next meeting—and was promptly shot down. I’ve delivered speeches on the state of women’s rights to college audiences whose follow-up comments concerned mostly the liberating potential of miniskirts and stripping, their elders’ cluelessness about sex and fashion, and the need to distance themselves from an older, “stodgy” feminism.

Gee, she sighed, I wonder why no young women were invited? (I can't imagine.)

Interestingly, Faludi uses the word "handicapped"--the type of old-fashioned term that makes young women (and me too, and I am older than Faludi) wince. (I wonder how often our language-choices 'mark' us as older, online?) She writes at length about the stylistic differences in Second and Third Wave feminists, and I suddenly remember my recent post in which I exhorted women to sass back to fatophobic doctors, advice that came almost verbatim from early issues of Ms. magazine, as well as Our Bodies Our Selves. I was lambasted for expressing disgust that women so often act like victims, instead of paying customers, which we are. This is the kind of thing that got me lauded (as a writer) in the 70s, but now, I get excoriated for saying the exact same things.

How radically have our sensibilities changed, that what I say can be taken (by my generation) as a praiseworthy goal, but by the young women as somehow insulting?

Faludi writes about the recent NOW [National Organization for Women] presidential election:

The candidate who seemed to be in the lead was thirty-three-year-old Latifa Lyles, a charismatic speaker attuned to a youthful sensibility, a black woman who insisted on a more diverse constituency, a technologically savvy strategist who had doubled the organization’s Internet fund-raising and engaged the enthusiasm of a host of feminist bloggers. A feminist activist since she was sixteen—when she told her mother she was going on a “school trip” and ran off to the 1992 reproductive-rights demonstration in Washington, D.C.—Lyles had worked her way up the ranks in NOW, from chapter leader to national board member to youngest-ever national officer. She had spent the last four years as national vice president for membership under [Kim] Gandy, who championed Lyles as her successor. “It’s hard to ignore the fact there’s been a generational shift in this country, and an organization that doesn’t recognize that is living in the past,” Gandy declared. “Latifa’s youth is not a detriment but an advantage. She’ll take NOW to a different level.”

“I never paid attention to a NOW election in my life until I knew Latifa was running,” Jessica Valenti, the founder of Feministing.com, a leading young feminist website, told the Associated Press. “This could be the moment where NOW becomes super-relevant to the feminist movement again.”

What kind of Major American Feminist isn't paying attention to the NOW election? I had no idea you could be a Big Feminist Blogger and Big Feminist Author and not care about NOW. (shows what I know)

If anyone wants to know what's wrong with modern feminism, doesn't that sum the whole thing up in a nutshell? The young women don't give a shit about NOW, unless the prez is a young hipster like themselves. Can we be forgiven for thinking they might not be too serious?

The preoccupations of the younger side of the generational divide were on rampant display the next afternoon at the young feminist workshop, which included tips on how to recruit other young women (do not use the NOW logo when advertising your event) and a prep session on Twitter marketing, led by a young woman in stiletto heels—along with tirades on the transgressions of NOW’s elders, people “so grumpy and crotchety that as a young woman, you come into that meeting, you’re like, ‘I’m never coming back here.’ ” “Many a time I’d hear, ‘Oh, why are you wearing high heels? We fought for so long not to have you wear those high heels!’ ” “I’ve been in meetings where Seventies-ish women say to me, ‘Oh, we’re so glad to have some young blood!’ It’s creepy, and we don’t like it.”

Do not use the NOW logo?!?

(They won't use the NOW logo, but I betcha they DO take those extra salaries, birth control pills and legal abortions that NOW secured for them.)

Lord have mercy, what a lousy state of affairs this is.

One young feminist I respect a great deal, because I know she heartily works for the Forces of Good, is Natalia Antonova, who wrote:

Inter-generational conflict always exists, and it affects way more than simply mainstream American feminism. Faludi’s assertion though that there is a “nightmare of dysfunction” within American feminism is, well… funny. For me, “nightmare” relates more to systemic exclusion of trans people. Or, say, how the concerns of those who are not middle-class and don’t get invited to sit on panels can easily get lost in the shuffle. Is that too much theory, perhaps? Theory, of course, is another thing that Faludi says that younger feminists are too preoccupied with.

Indeed, I have to say that bringing THEORY into the mix is something I genuinely appreciate about the youngsters. Recently, when I commented on another blog that [Bourgeois Feminist] didn't speak for me as a working class woman ... well, they heard me. They got it. I admit, older feminists often didn't, and still don't. They still don't understand why we all didn't vote for Hillary.

So maybe I wouldn't like the whole article, even as I enjoy the relatively cheap shots that I have quoted here. Maybe I'll even get to read it one of these days.

In the meantime, I am very pleased with my own daughter, as Jessica Valenti is proud of her own mother. Maybe that is key. Generalizations are one thing, and I can relate to them. But how do we really feel?

I am personally proud of young feminists when they stand up to patriarchy (pardon old-fogie terminology) and pave their own way... and that will never change.

Single gender education in Greenville County public schools -pt 2

Left: From my living room wall.

~*~

The conservatives in South Carolina never rest. On and on it goes.

However, in fairness, my liberal cousin believes this is a positive thing. We have agreed to disagree:

Single-gender classes growing here

By Lark Reynolds • STAFF WRITER • May 27, 2008
GREENVILLE NEWS

Taylors Elementary School has joined the ranks of Greenville County schools that will offer single-gender classrooms in the next school year.

Taylors is one of a growing number of schools across the state and nation to test the waters of single-gender education.

Critics say the move toward single-gender classrooms will erase the progress that has been made in gender equity in education since the Title IX act was passed in 1972 barring discrimination based on sex in any activity that receives federal money.

Supporters say the initiative takes advantage of natural differences between the ways boys and girls often learn best.

I wrote about this previously, and received emails telling me this was discriminatory and successfully halted in various other localities.

For the most part, no one knows how to proceed, or if this is actually legal.

More than 60 schools in Greenville County have expressed an interest in learning more about single-gender classrooms, according to the state Department of Education. Statewide, 96 schools in 46 districts are offering single-gender classrooms.

One school interested in the change is Blue Ridge Middle School, where parents and teachers attended an informational meeting April 21. Pattie Kellams was one of many parents who had questions.

"I'm a little concerned about the transition of children who are in single-gender classes going into high school, and suddenly, boys and girls are in there together," Kellems said.

South Carolina is considered a pioneer in single-gender public education. Leonard Sax, founder of the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education, said South Carolina is the only state with a full-time state Department of Education position dedicated to single-gender initiatives.

The man who holds that position, David Chadwell, stays busy traveling around the state presenting information to parents and teachers about single-gender classrooms and training educators in how material is best presented in single-gender classrooms.

Sax said providing comprehensive training and support for teachers who will be in single-gender classrooms is crucial to the success of the initiative.

"Simply putting girls in one classroom and boys in another doesn't accomplish very much," Sax said.

Chadwell said the large number of teachers in the state who are already teaching in single-gender classrooms is a valuable asset and a support network for those teachers just beginning to teach in such a classroom.

Calvin Auman, a second-grade teacher at Taylors Elementary who will lead an all-boys class next year, was one of 20 teachers and staff at the school who participated in a training conference earlier this spring in Columbia. He said he learned that boys often respond better in seating arrangements that don't have them face to face, which they can view as confrontational, and that they tend to do well on timed activities because they like the added pressure. Girls tend to prefer the opposite, he said.

Auman said he could identify in himself many of the tendencies boys have in the classroom.

"I remembered myself back in elementary school and thought, 'Man, I wish they would have had this when I was there,' " he said.

Chadwell said one of the most important points to understand about single-gender education is that the tendencies for boys and girls to learn better in differing environments are in no way absolute.

"These are generalized differences," Chadwell said. "This does not mean that all boys learn one way and all girls learn another way." That's why it's important that participation in single-gender classrooms be voluntary, he said.

Chadwell also emphasized that the curriculum for all-girls and all-boys classes is exactly the same. Only the method of teaching it differs.

Where are they getting this "research" from?

I don't like the website, which sounds decidedly conservative and riddled with that Venus and Mars nonsense.

The American Civil Liberties Union has voiced opposition to single-gender classrooms. The organization contends that the brain research upon which such initiatives are based is inconclusive and that "single-sex education fosters sex discrimination" and undermines the achievements of Title IX, according to official comments made to the U.S. Department of Education.

The ACLU said the 2006 amendments to Title IX that have allowed school districts to introduce single-gender classrooms weaken the original intent of the law, which was to ensure gender equality in education. In addition, the organization contended, single-gender education violates the equal protection guarantees of the Fifth and 14th Amendments to the Constitution.

The National Organization for Women also opposes single-gender education on the basis of a lack of available studies that prove single-gender classrooms increase learning. Under such circumstances, NOW President Kim Gandy said, there's no reason to open the door to potential gender discrimination in schools.

"In our decades of experience with gender discrimination, separate is unequal," Gandy said in the statement.

Dan Willingham, professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Virginia, cautions against basing differing curricula for boys and girls on brain research.

Willingham said the anatomical differences that can be observed between male and female brains might or might not justify conclusions about how each sex learns. The real justification for trying new things in the classroom needs to be data from the classroom itself.

"You believe or don't believe that an intervention works in a classroom based on data that come from the classroom, not because there is brain research that kind of seems to fit," Willingham said. "

Here in South Carolina, surveys of single-gender participants have yielded positive impressions. Among fifth-graders, 82 percent said learning in a single-gender environment increased their desire to succeed in school, and an identical percentage said it increased their self-confidence.

Wendy Roach said her daughter, who will be in sixth grade at Blue Ridge next year, is excited about the opportunity to be in an all-girls class. Roach said her experience as a teacher has convinced her single-gender classrooms would increase participation for both groups, especially at the middle school age, with hormones starting to kick in.

"When girls a lot of times want to speak up and say something, they're not going to with those males around," Roach said.

Well, I suppose it will be more viscerally pleasant for the gay kids. That's the only good thing I can say about it.

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Listening to: Against Me! - Reinventing Axl Rose
via FoxyTunes