Quote of the Week:
From the point of view of the feminists responsible, the public proliferation of “slut” is a good thing — an attempt to “take back” a pejorative used for centuries to denigrate and deride. Repurposing the word, it’s argued, will protect women from the damage done by “slut-shaming,” or criticizing women for their sexual conduct. By “women,” of course, is meant sexually active women of a certain type, the kind who in a different age were known as, well . . . you know.
–Mary Eberstadt in “Jailhouse Feminism” at NRO
I am very tardy in urging you to read Mary Ebserstadt’s ground-breaking “Jailhouse Feminism,” and I suspect many Inkwell readers already have done so. But if you haven’t, do—I think Mary gets at the root of why so many words no half-civilized person would use are being slung about these days by feminists.
Although a very civilized person, Mary has listened to and read a lot of this language to write the article. In the course of doing so, she realizes something totally unexpected:
Yet listening in on some of the conversation today suggests an explanation other than simple venality. Something else is up out there making female trash talk all the rage — something unexpected, poignant, and, at the same time, awful to behold. It’s the language of bondage and captivity, told by prisoners of the sexual revolution. …
Jailhouse feminism’s unique level of anger is not exactly lost on feminists themselves. “Why Are Feminists So Angry?” asks Jessica Valenti in a recent piece in The Nation; her answer is that they are tired of fighting for the same things their mothers did. Feminist backlash ensues against any attempt, even the most anodyne, at rollback of the revolution. When the watchdog group Parents Television Council protested raunch at the 2013 VMAs, for example — which to many people might seem like shooting fish in a bucket — it was dutifully attacked by the blogger Amanda Marcotte as a “retro” and “reactionary” organization whose entire existence “is predicated on using children as a cover story for what they really want, which is an entertainment industry that treats grown adults like we are children.”
Some might say it was ever thus — that feminism has always been angry. But there’s a difference between the peevishness behind, say, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” and the potty-mouthed bile-o-rama now evident everywhere. Valenti’s piece, for example, is tellingly accompanied by a picture of an irate woman holding a poster that reads, “I cannot believe I still have to protest this sh**.” Measuring just by the yardstick of profanity, today’s is not your mom’s feminism after all.
This is an article you must read.