The Feminist Community: The Problem with Problems

December 1, 2010 Written by Current Events , Politics and Public Policy , Popular Culture , Women

I’ve been doing some light reading lately, specifically Gail Collins’s When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present. I’m aiming to fill a few holes in my knowledge of the women’s movement(s), which somehow my education has thus far neglected. I blame the men!

In the book, Collins notes that "Feminist" just means someone who supports equal rights and opportunities for women. But there have been very few periods in American history when it didn’t end up being linked to images of cranky man-haters in unfashionable footwear” (331). Even in this joking aside, Collins’s focus on these negative emotions really struck a chord in me. As much as she paints it as a stereotype, I do wonder how much of a problem excessive negativity poses for the feminist community.

I read a number of feminist blogs, which I enjoy very much. They bring up many interesting questions and keep me updated on news of particular interest to women. That being said, at times, the posts all start to sound the same. Frequently, one will introduce some sort of complaint, some previously-unacknowledged-as-sexist behavior or horrifying event from small town America. Occasionally, they promote a woman who has done something particularly noteworthy—but not often.

I usually agree with the writers. I do see the problems, I think they are real, and I want to change them. Nonetheless, after reading so many posts, it’s hard to resist the urge to turn off my computer—or at least, to use Google Reader’s skip feature. When constantly reading about these issues, how does one avoid compassion fatigue?

Supporting equal rights for women—to what extent does this require an active and constant dissatisfaction with the world? When and where can we make space for more positive discussions? Does this avenue prevent further conversation by putting into words what we already know—how spectacular women truly are?

I’m starting to notice the former instinct in myself, and I can’t say I like it very much. I walk around looking for feminist problems in the hope I might find one worth discussing. The academic side of me protests that I am simply problematizing an issue in (I hope) an interesting way. And yet, I wonder if this constant search for problems will ultimately lead to happiness. Perhaps this is an issue particular to the blogosphere, and our own 24-hour news cycle.

I am not suggesting that we ignore the problems, or even that we stop looking for them. But I would like t o take a few minutes to focus on something more positive. For instance, the new bill that the Senate just passed, the Food Safety and Modernization Act. Apparently, the bipartisan committee that staffed it was composed largely of women. What an accomplishment (both what they did, and who did it)! I’m curious about the particular traits these women had that made compromise possible, in one of the only bipartisan products in recent memory. How we might capitalize on these characteristics in future work?

Such a conversation, starting from a positive observation, could easily provoke an interesting discourse. And yet, these moments occur so rarely. Why is this? And more importantly, how can we change it? How can feminist writers use positive stories about women to question society, in lieu of negative ones? Might this bring us a breath of fresh air, a respite from negativity and fatigue? After all, we can always take up the problems again afterwards—with a renewed sense of energy, power, and accomplishment. With this feeling banishing our compassion fatigue, we might actually find some solutions.

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  • Gloria Pan

    A critical tactic of the feminist revolution of the 1970s was awareness raising – opening people’s eyes to oppression. I think that all the online discussion today it just a continuance of that tradition. But it’s a much harder exercise these days because the oppression is less obvious as is the level of unhappiness among women that we can directly attribute to gender. We are, in a sense, now down in the long-tail of feminist discussion, focusing on slivers of society rather than society as a whole. I do believe, however, that there’s a society level conversation still to be had, concerning dismantling the socio-economic/business infrastructure we have so that women can dig out from under having to take primary responsibility for TWO jobs (family and work) in an age when two-income families are necessary for economic survival. But this is a larger conversation for all of society, not just women, since men, too, would benefit greatly from such changes.

  • http://buffalomama.wordpress.com tedra

    LOVE this post. It does a pretty good job of summing up why I got sick of my old (Big Internet Feminist) blog, and why I don’t read a lot of feminist blogs any more–real news is important, sure, but I grow tired of the same old topics day in and day out.

    That said, it’s entirely possible that my ow ennui is partly because of my age (42)–most of the bigger feminist blogs seem to be written by/for younger women (and especially by/for women without children), which in a sense is fine. It’s good to grow the ranks, so to speak. And I am sure part of my ennui is simple sloth on my part–I’ve no doubt that there are feminist blogs out there with news (positive *and* negative) that I don’t know and would find interesting, even if/while the youth-oriented blogs get more exposure.

  • Christina Black

    Gloria, you’re right that I should keep the context of the women’s movement in mind when considering why things are structured the way they are. I like what you said about slivers of society versus society as a whole. Maybe I just wish that we could pick our battles more, to spend more time discussing the types of issues you note (the socio-economic infrastructure oppressing women) and less on localized problems. For instance, I just read a post about a specific sexist policy put into place by one manager at one particular company. Is this policy terrible and offensive? Yes. Is it worth writing a blog post about? Maybe not–the author doesn’t connect the post to any larger message, and the readers are so removed from the problem that they can do nothing about it. There’s a lot of sexism in the world. If we wrote a blog post about every instance that we saw, we wouldn’t have lives, and neither would our readers!

    Tedra, thanks for your comments. I wonder if a lot of feminists feel the same way, since I’ve noticed the repetitiveness of topics after only following the blogs for a short time. I definitely agree that there seem to be few (well-known) blogs out there addressing questions relevant to a wide variety of readers–or those of specific niches, like mothers, or women in the middle of their careers, of a non-white race, or outside the 18-35 age range, as you mentioned. The popular blogs don’t always show much diversity in this sense–and they don’t necessarily speak for the community to the extent they think they do, even if they are widely read by a certain set. However, I’m not sure you can blame your ennui on age–I’m in the target demographic, and I don’t care for most of them myself!

  • http://patriarchaldisorder.blogspot.com MadamaAmbi

    You raise many significant issues and I resonate to many of your observations. Younger women are discovering discrimination and power imbalances for the first time and they need a place to express their rage and find their voices. I support that. I think there is a developmental process within feminism. Also, since women come from many different walks of life, including disciplines, we are all going to bring differing perspectives to the table. I’m 56 and I’m also tired of the “react to everything that seems sexist” approach because it’s reactive rather than visionary. My analysis of feminism is that it’s stuck in 20th century thinking and that it’s misperceived as existing in the political sphere. Not by me. My background is feminist psychology; however, whenever I propose a discussion of internalized misogyny or other psychological causes of power imbalances, I get nada.

    My other observation is that we need new theory that points to new practice. I have backed off of my online activism because I’m pursuing a question that turns the “causes” of patriarchy and systems of dominance on its head. This book may take me ten years to write and it’s not communicable in blog posts. I’m willing to put in the ten years because this theory just keeps getting more and more compelling and coherent for me. But will feminists read it? We are very balkanized in our institutions and people are very identified with their organization or their non-profit or whatever other bunker/business they’ve established under the feminism flag. I posted just the other day asking the question “What’s a Feminist” and got no responses. I rarely get responses to my posts. Maybe it’s because I’m digging deeper than the 24-hour news cycle. Maybe I’m out of step with mainstream feminism.

    But being “positive” about women’s accomplishments doesn’t help us understand how systems of dominance are created and self-perpetuate, and until we understand these dynamics, which cannot be explained by any one phenomenon or discipline, we will just keep on with the same old same old.

  • http://n/a Sherri Black

    I have enjoyed the various voices and points of view expressed on this post. My experience in the business world for many years has shown me that ultimate change comes when we can initiate changes in the system. I want to live in a world when both men and women are not afraid to express both the masculine and feminine qualities; men can be gentle and considerate and women can be strong and strategic. It is good for young women to have a place to go to express their disbelief and range over the inequalities they are bumping against for the first time. However, to be an activist who brings positive change that impacts everyone, I believe, we need to come up with solutions that work within the system and allow all members of a community to express themselves fully.

    A great deal of the values men express have been taught to them through their upbringing. My hope is that mothers of future generations are as active teaching their sons to cook and their daughters to mow lawns. I want employers to be willing not to derail a promising career if a man or woman requests parental leave. I know change is coming when some of the men who have held anti feminist views have daughters who are entering the workforce. They want for their daughters a work place which is free of harassment and inequality and, so for the first time, they reevaluate their own actions and opinions.

    I have seen a lot of changes in my life time and can truly say “we have come a long way”. However, there is room for more change. Perhaps, joining together to examine multi generational views from women on the issue of equal rights is a good way to learn from the past and pass on the torch of true activism to younger women. We can be grateful for the changes some of us have witnessed. As we in the U.S. see more equality expressed by both men and women, as citizens of the world , we still need to reach out to our sisters in middle eastern and African countries, where major atrocities toward women exist even as we speak.