News Daze for May 7th, 2008

• White Kenyan aristocrat found guilty of manslaughter in the death of a poacher (NYTimes)
• Sarkozy seeks seeks to create a more American, and less French, form of higher education in France. French students do not approve (Washington Post)
• Rosen defends his "Case Against Sotomayor" without addressing most of the issues it raised (The New Republic)
• The future of openly gay, Arabic Linguist's job is in Obama's hands (Huffington Post)

Carrie Prejean Will Not Be Winning Miss Congeniality

I have withheld comment on California's controversial beauty queen Carrie Prejean since the story broke because it was being updated so rapidly and I like to have all the information before I lay down the law. First, she was just a dumb bigot (who used Christian values to excuse her bigotry). Then she was a dumb bigot (who used Christian values to excuse her bigotry) with an axe to grind in Washington. Next, she was a dumb bigot (who used Christian values to excuse her bigotry) with an axe to grind in Washington and some scandalous pictures that didn't seem all too Christian-y and a set of silicon bags in her breasts paid for by the pageant.

Mary Elizabeth Williams made some excellent points about the Prejean controversy that I believe are worth serious consideration. It is easy (and valid) to charge Prejean with hypocrisy, but we aren't safe from the accusation being turned around on us:

Prejean wasn't even born yet when Vanessa Williams had to relinquish the Miss America title when nude photos of her emerged. Yet, a generation later, we still cling to the nearly impossible-to-uphold standards we set for our beauty monarchy -- sexy but not too sexy, pure but not prudish, outspoken but only if we agree with the opinion. She's a bundle of youthful contradictions, wrapped up in one breast-enhanced, bikini-clad, Miss USA bankrolled package. She may have lost the contest, but congratulations Carrie Prejean: You're truly the queen of no-win, dammed if you do, dammed if you don't American womanhood.

But, as my cold, dead heart was beginning to melt and I was just about to dismiss this whole Carrie Prejean thing as a) the result of a slow news week b) Miss USA trying to make itself relevant/important again to the American psyche c) further meaningless fodder for the "conservative martyr-complex," I read the transcript from Prejean's interview with Greta Van Sustren on On the Record.

Since it is Fox News, the questions were obviously not very hard-hitting. Sustren did not expect or require Prejean to be particularly knowledgeable about the subject which she is "so passionate" about, but it seems as though the good folks at National Organization for Marriage forgot to give her...any...talking points. When Sustren asks her how she feels about civil unions and adoption, Prejean restates that shes only here to lend her support to traditional marriage and knows nothing about and has no opinion on civil unions or gay adoption. If shes passionate enough to get in bed with NOM, you think she'd be passionate enough to form an opinion or two.

So then I stopped feeling bad for Carrie Prejean. It all works into this Christian conservative martyr-complex I've talked about before. As society slowly progresses towards equality, Christian conservatives are getting left behind. Focus on the Family does not have Obama's ear the way they did Bush's or Reagan's, the time for evangelical politics is over and they cannot stand being left out. So they use their religious identification to claim that the big bad liberal bogeyman is prejudice against them. Instead of owning up to the way their "religious" beliefs discriminate and attempt to take liberties away from fellow citizens, they claim that same-sex activists and couples are attempting to take their liberties away. Last time I checked, being a homophobe wasn't constitutionally protected.

Here is an ad from National Organization for Marriage, Prejean's newest sponsor, that illustrates my point EXACTLY:

NOM is piggy-backing on Prejean's pretty face, insta-celebrity and ignorance of politics/political issues to push their own nefarious agenda. NOM even advises supporters to avoid using the phrase "ban same-sex marriage" and instead to say that they oppose "redefining marriage." By doing this, they attempt to turn the whole discussion around. It is no longer about equality or gay rights, its about their right to protect themselves against the big bad gay who wants to take their precious definition away from them. Its a homophobic wolf in a slaughtered sheep's clothing, or perhaps in NOM and Carrie Prejean's case, in one pair of pink panties.

Who Won Feminism? Not Women.

The response of the feminist community to Naomi Wolf's review of Bad Girls Go Everywhere, the biography of longtime Cosmo editor and author of Sex and the Single Girl Helen Gurley Brown, has not been positive. Many, including feminist blogs like Feministe and Feministing are up in arms over her simplistic representations of second wave feminists as humorless man hating polemics with hairy armpits and third wave feminists as "sexy and sassy" women willing to grab life (and men) by the balls--given it doesn't mess up their manicures. Neither group is portrayed in a particularly favorable light, but Wolf concludes that Brown's version of hip, happy "girl power" feminism has won:

"Just look at the culture around us. Ms. Magazine, the earnest publication that defined feminism in the 1970s and '80s, has been replaced on college women's dorm room shelves by sexier, sassier updates such as Bitch and Bust. The four talented, smart -- and feminist -- women of "Sex and the City," who are intent on defining their own lives but are also willing to talk about Manolos and men, look more like Brown's type of heroine than "Sisterhood Is Powerful" readers. The stereotype of feminists as asexual, hirsute Amazons in Birkenstocks that has reigned on campus for the past two decades has been replaced by a breezy vision of hip, smart young women who will take a date to the right-on, woman-friendly sex shop Babeland."

As a member of the younger generation who had a subscription to Bust in high school (I did not renew it during my first year of college because I found it to be full of fluff, inconsequential and without any serious critical merit) and who owns more than one sex toy from Babeland, I am blown away that Wolf, the author of The Beauty Myth, would attempt to convince us that the characters of Sex and the City are positive models, and therefore the future, for young feminists. The very basis of feminism is critiquing the patriarchal superstructures that control women's lives and there is absolutely nothing critical about that show or any of its characters. If anything, it continues to uphold patriarchal expectations of beauty and femininity and reduces its characters to their sexual and shopping habits. Not to mention all of these women are fabulously wealthy and white.

The fact is, we know the answers to Western women's problems: The way is mapped out, the time for theory is pretty much over. We know the laws and the policies we need to achieve full equality. What we lack is a grass-roots movement that will drive the political will. "Lipstick" or lifestyle feminism won't produce that movement alone.

While I certainly agree that Wolf's own personal brand of Diet Feminism will not achieve female equality, I am a bit confused by her statement that we know the answer to Western women's problems. Should Women's Studies departments therefore replace The Second Sex with Cosmo articles on "82 Ways to Drive Your Man Crazy in Bed?" because there is nothing left in our society or culture of which to be critical? And since when does feminism only concern itself with Western women? Are women in the rest of the world not women, do they not bleed monthly? Don't they deserve equal access to Cosmo.com's "Sex Position of the Week"?

The ideological difference between the humorless second-wavers and the apolitical third-wavers isn't generational, as Wolf suggests--its ideological. Its not old versus young, its radical versus liberal. It's feminists who believe in women and the equality and liberation of all women versus the "well, i wouldn't call myself a feminist, but I believe in equality-ists" who believe in the economic and sexual liberation of themselves--even if that economic and sexual liberation only comes through small concessions allotted them by the patriarchal and capitalist culture they've never bothered to fully question because then they'd be all, like, boring and serious. And Naomi Wolf has made it more than clear that women cannot be serious and sexy at the same time.

Addendum: Wolf begins her article praising Michelle Obama as the closest example we have to a blend between the intelligent and career-minded second-wavers and the fashionable and individualistic third-wavers. I think its important to remind everyone about Michelle Obama's Washington Post interview:

So is she a feminist? "You know, I'm not that into labels," Michelle Obama said in the interview. "So probably, if you laid out a feminist agenda, I would probably agree with a large portion of it," she said. "I wouldn't identify as a feminist just like I probably wouldn't identify as a liberal or a progressive."

News Daze for May 6th, 2009

• Republicans gear up for a fight, without knowing whom they're fighting against (Mike Madden)
• Utah representative Jason Chaffetz has more say on the DC same-sex marriage bill than DC's city council or their constituents (DC CityPaper)
• An all-white jury in rural Pennsylvania acquits two white teenagers of killing a Mexican man, although they are found guilty for the assault that lead to his death (Crooks and Liars)
• Gays in Maine and New Hampshire wait with baited breath for their respective governors to sign same-sex marriage rights into law (NY Times)
• United Kingdom helps reinforce "conservative martyr-complex" by banning talk show host Michael Savage from the country (Talk of the Nation)