More provocations by former philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers. She obviously does them to provoke, because she knows it teases, so I’m being very kind and generous to her by calling attention to them. Or, if you prefer, I’m taking her bait like a damn fool. Whichever. But I just keep being fascinated by the trashiness of it all.
There are two sides, she says.
Christina H. Sommers @CHSommers · 21 minutes ago
Why is Wash Post taking sides rather than offering readers honest account of both sides of #Gamergate? @caitlindeweyhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/10/14/the-only-guide-to-gamergate-you-will-ever-need-to-read/ …
Little evidence that video games cause harm. But overexposure to hardline feminism appears to cause personal & social harm. Studies needed.
Nanananana, feminism is a big poopyhead.
It’s an odd way for an intelligent woman to make a living, relentlessly attacking feminism. Lots of women have done it in the past, but it seems odd nevertheless.
Jessica Valenti wrote about that glorious history last July.
As for all those rights won by so many feminists on behalf of so many more American women, the sad truth is that they fought other women every step of the way. Indeed, we live in a country with a long history of anti-feminist women: Before we had women like Christina Hoff Sommers and Katie Roiphe arguing that feminism was hurting men and that date rape wasn’t real, respectively, women were leaders in in the anti-suffrage movement of the early 1900s. And it was a woman – Phyllis Schlafly – who led the charge against the Equal Rights Amendment in the ’70s. Schreiber points out that some of the debates against the ERA were about “masculinity run amok”: “Phyllis Schlafly said if we were are treated as equals, then men will shirk their responsibilities,” she notes.
Remind me: Who are the man-haters again?
Between the last presidential election and the next one, between the feminist social media explosion and even Beyoncé coming out in our corner, right now is one of the most exciting times for feminism in decades. Yet here we have female anti-feminists – emboldened by Sarah Palin’s faux-feminist movement – raining on our progress parade. And it is especially irritating given that they’re using their gender as part of their organizing strategy. “It’s an identity politics angle that they criticize but often invoke,” Schreiber says.
Women stopping the progress of other women – especially those who don’t have the power and prestige to work for DC think-tanks or pen anti-feminist books – stings much more than when men do it.
Irritates, rather than stings – but maybe that’s just me.