The Other Charlotte and I have been blogging away with relish at our rad-fem sisters’ sudden discovery, after the Abu Ghraib revelations, that women can be just as nasty as men! (See, for the latest, TOC’s report today, “The Wife of Bath Hits First,” on the doctrinaire feminists who insist that wives never, never beat their husbands–except in self-defense, of course.) My contribution yesterday was this op-ed piece by Barbara Ehrenreich in the Los Angeles Times yesterday (See my Feminist Illusions Revamped):
“We need a feminism that teaches a woman to say no ‘ not just to the date rapist or overly insistent boyfriend but, when necessary, to the military or corporate hierarchy within which she finds herself.”
To this, InkWell reader K.C. e-mails:
“Finds herself? Like she woke up one morning and surprise! She was in the Army? Barbara so doesn’t want to let go ot the notion that women are victims. Women who join the military usually have a very good idea of what’s going on (far more G.I.Janes than Private Benjamins, to be pop-culture about it).”
I couldn’t agree more. Not only do women volunteer for the military service but they also fight for job slots at top corporations, where they scramble to rise in the very corporate hierarchy to which Barbara thinks they should “say no.” Where was Barbara all those months of The Apprentice?
As K.C. wisely observes, Barbara’s head is stuck in an outdated Marxist mindset where women are the victimized proletariat in an endless round of class warfare. Earth to Barbara: Marxism is the god that failed! And Earth to feminists: We women aren’t helpless. We can make our own moral decisions, just like men, and sometimes, as with men’s decisions, they’re the wrong ones and people get hurt. We’re simply no better and no worse than men.
Update: Instapundit alerts me to blogger Ann Althouse’s take on Ehrenreich and the brand of “moral superiority” feminism she preaches:
“This is not a new version of feminism’as the existence of an old saying shows’but the same expropriation of the power of feminism in the service of political goals that are not very appealing at all to the many people who easily support equality feminism and can easily continue to do so despite the role of women at Abu Ghraib. Women are individuals, capable of good and evil, who deserve to be treated fairly as individuals. There is nothing naive about that at all. It strikes me as quite a bit more naive to think that Abu Ghraib is going to excite women about your ‘infiltrating’ and ‘subverting’ project.”
Well said.