This is from my “can’t avoid it” file.  I’ve been avoiding it.  You can’t get the whole article online, although you can get a bit.  Here’s a taste:

“A generational breakdown underlies so many of the pathologies that have long disturbed American feminism—its fleeting mobilizations followed by long hibernations; its bitter divisions over sex; and its reflexive renunciation of its prior incarnations, its progenitors, even its very name. 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.”

Unlike certain Maclean’s articles on similar themes that I’ve had to suffer through lately (click here for it – don’t say i didn’t warn you), this one is by a thoughtful smart person in a real magazine.  And yet….I really didn’t like it, I don’t think it was either accurate or insightful, although parts of it were beautifully written. I am deeply concerned that we keep having these discussions in these same ways.  As one colleague said to me today when we talked about this:  ‘Is a unified movement really something we’re looking for?’

Is this what people are upset about? Hasn’t that ship sailed?  I’m comfortable with the fact that some people might not find me feminist, or “truly feminist” because in I expect people to make up their own minds about that sort of thing and I know I can make a case for myself (if I felt I needed to).   But coalition building amongst feminists/isms – and others! – on issues (anti war; moratorium on gulf oil drilling; sex work; tax cuts), and accepting when those coalitions just won’t work – well – aren’t these goals are more important than policing the boundaries of the word?

Like other commentators (see below), I’m not precisely sure what Faludi thinks she is doing, but my heart sank because I was sure that one of the results will be that both sides will harden positions.  Or perhaps not.  Here are some of the responses (from “younger” feminists) that give me some hope that this might not go on forever, because I don’t think they are taking the bait..  I look forward to finding out in 33 years. I also look forward to hearing from the “other side(s)”, whether by blog or otherwise.

Courtney Martin of Feministing (who features in the article)

I depend on both my own mother, and the larger feminist legacy, for wisdom, but I expect to be seen and heard accurately and compassionately in return. It’s time that we took this dialogue to a new level; instead we’re wallowing in finger-pointing and holier-than-thou judgment. There are real enemies out there, waiting for our good energy and savvy methodologies. Let’s not waste all of our time parodying one another.

Emily Bazelon of Slate:

Faludi blames the daughters for the generational divide in organized feminism. But her main narrative is all about the mothers rejecting the daughters. Faludi describes last summer’s contest for the presidency of NOW between 33-year-old Latifa Lyles and 56-year-old Terry O’Neill, who jumped into the race after Lyles appeared to have it in the bag and “made a point of representing NOW’s older, more traditional constituency.” Lyles goes from NOW’s annointed to the loser of a closely divided vote. After O’Neill’s victory, Olga Vives, another NOW veteran who at first ran herself, then got sick and passed the baton to O’Neill, spews bile about Lyles and her peers. “We created these little monsters with all this ‘You can be anything that you want,’ ” she says. “That’s who we created and that’s who is now demanding control.”

Somehow, from this Faludi builds to the conclusion that today’s young feminists are flappers—heedless, hedonic, unserious. Their feminism is all about looking good and buying right. “It posits a world where pseudo-rebellions are mounted but never won nor desired to be won, where ‘liberation’ begins and ends with workplay and pop-culture pastiche and fishnet stockings.” Sorry, but what am I missing? Lyles embodies none of this. Her sin, if it is one, is to have doubled NOW’s Internet fundraising and “engaged the enthusiasm of a host of feminist bloggers.” I guess bloggers is code for shallow and callow? Have I mentioned that Lyles is black and O’Neill and Vives are white? It is really hard to see how the NOW election stands for third-wavers and their younger sisters kicking the second-wavers aside.

Jennifer Baumgartner at Feministing

The day I first heard about this piece, Amy Richards and I spoke at a luncheon for Emily’s List. The founders (all incredible—Ellen Malcolm, Judy Loeb, etc) are in the process of passing the torch to younger women at their organization. There was some concern (from Ellen, Judy, and others) that younger women don’t understand how much is still to be done before women are treated as equal to men. Ironically, I was seated at a table of twenty-something women who were engineers and had met at Brown. Their stories of what it’s like to be a young female engineer today were shocking and interesting—from the isolation (too few women) to the sexual harassment to the fact that they feel like they can’t quit because there are so few women and they might have to sacrifice themselves on the altar of changing the gender dynamics of that field. I want to hear more of that story about young feminism.  Don’t you?

Anna North at Jezebel :”

….I’d like to champion a particular way of talking about feminist issues, one that’s less about what kind of feminist you are (Good, Bad, young, old, second-wave, third-wave, post-) and more about how you see yourself, how you see society, and how you can find common ground with others. I disagree with Estep-Armstrong that we need “a new wave, a new school, a new theory” — I think we need a No Wave feminism, one that understands and respects that people and movements are complicated, that we’re all going to have different beliefs, and that we can talk about these and even disagree without having an enormous schism. This will take trust, and calm, and a thick skin — the best way to have a productive debate is not to get pissed off in the first place, a lesson I’m still learning. Most of all, it will take an understanding that feminism isn’t one ideology or platform or women’s studies curriculum — as Martin points out, it’s something that millions of women are doing, every single day.

and  Amanda Marcotte writing at pandagon (great title: “I expect to be writing this same post when people are talking about the 16th wave…”).

[Faludi attributes the generational] divide to the same, tired, evidence-free stereotypes of bimbo daughters and harridan mothers that you always get.  The only way she updated it is by dismantling the “harridan mothers” part of the equation, sympathetically casting feminists older than her 51 years as hard-working activists being shoved out the door by ungrateful young’uns who never listen to their mothers.  And she reinforces a jumble of often conflicting stereotypes on younger feminists to discredit us: that we’re obsessed with navel-gazing over activism, that our obsession with technology comes at the expense of actual work, that we don’t know our history and don’t care about systemic issues, that we’re materialist and unwilling to challenge sexual exploitation for fear of pissing off men, that we’re so busy cultivating our graduate degrees writing about Lady Gaga (using academic language that excludes most readers even as we have pretensions to pop culture appeal) that we can’t be bothered to worry about real world issues.  .

Bottom line?   The gap between the Harper’s article and the Maclean’s article should have been MUCH bigger – but it wasn’t.   My favourite quote from the macleans article [which, uses racial tropes (gangster rap!) and other arguments ranging from dumb to weird - and along the way really kills and buries what might be a real discussion about empowerment and the marketing of sexuality to teenagers].

X recalls “…wearing satin hot pants when she was 15. “But it was a different time,” she says. “Back then there was at least equal premium put on intellect and what was in your head. It was the opposite of ‘Go out and please men.’ ””

Um, was that a missed opportunity for empathy that I just saw?  Yes, Macleans – you’ve got it:

“It’s worse than the 1950s.”

Hey, on the other hand, the Harper’s piece on writer (and Moomin creator!) Tove Jansson is really good and interesting. So don’t toss the magazine out the window in a rage.   Now that all that’s out of the way, anyone have a feminist legal issue they’d like to discuss? Anyone?