Sarah Boyes on the legacy of the feminist movement and on what I believe to be its contradictions:
These aims weren’t revolutionary and often unabashedly so (many women
came to feminism through explicit disenfranchisement with labour
movement sexism), but they could have a piercing core. There was,
importantly, a canny rejection of a whole array of expectations about
how women should be, which have today (more the act of the rejection
than the expectation) become part and parcel of cultural discourse. For
instance, feminists rejected:
‘The Unbeatable Madonna-Whore Combination. Miss America and
Playboy’s centerfold are sisters over the skin. To win approval, we must
be both sexy and wholesome, delicate but able to cope, demure yet
titillatingly bitchy. Deviation of any sort brings, we are told,
disaster: “You won’t get a man!!“‘ (3)
This was often followed by a more subversive attempt to challenge to
the underlying assumptions of a society that pitted people against one
another in a bid to succeed, and put one, man, at the top. Such aims
were limited, and perhaps in some ways were always meant to be.
(...)Indeed, it’s this ambiguous legacy, seen most clearly in the superficial
tension between choice and moral prescription, especially around the
family, which points towards a deeper lack of direction that comes
through in the present day – where it seems there’s been a return to
more conservative gender roles albeit updated - the ‘yummy mummy’, the
WAG, even Michelle Obama is considered a sort of fashion icon.
Complaints about ‘ladettes’ letting it hang loose, even imitating the
boorish behaviour of blokes, is on the rise; dismay or disgust at
big-breasted celebrities and attendant ‘raunch culture’ seems to be
gaining ground; stories of women not reaching the glass ceiling due to
the prevalence of ‘male bonding’ in the workplace pepper the press;
concern over the ‘negative body image’ of young girls has become
popular; older women aren’t getting enough time on telly, females have
only recently been allowed onto Navy submarines, there aren’t ‘enough’
women in the cabinet – or as Engle gently finds, women of a certain
class still tend to shoulder the domestic burden, even when they earn as
much as their husbands. Even though we’ve got past the point where we
know a porn star can have a PhD, one of the most perplexing moments of
the films is the wry little smile given by a number of wives as Engle
asks their husbands how much share of the washing they do, whether they
clean the bath after getting out, are they a feminist? Is this any
different from the working wife who doesn’t know her children’s shoe
sizes or think she should have to? Does it matter?
I have always wondered why sexuality is tied up to morality especially when it comes to women and that any attempt to use it or to gain control of it make one a whore? It seems to me that beyond all the feminist mambo jumbo, the real issue remains whether sexuality ought to be used to define a woman or to make a judgment about her moral compass. The trouble seems to be that nowadays, complexity is out the window, there is the overwhelming accepted principles that women cannot be certain things, and there are certain combination that are not possible for a member of the second sex to have, it isn't possible to a sexual being and to be smart and cultured, it isn't possible to be Madonnalike and conservative and moreover, it isn't possible not to be a feminist and not to be confused or solely under the domination of the patriarchy. In other words, the fact that feminism still comes down essentially to straightening women out and separating the good from the feeble explains in part why it is as relevant and as alive a movement as socialism.