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Reader Feedback on "The Third-Wave-Feminist Mystique"
And, Muscio says she is NOT a third wave feminist, so this whole article and most of the comments are pointing out something she has already made a point to say. Maybe it is the type of attitude shown here that made her make that statement.
--jh
03/25 |
I thought this whole article missed the point. First, as a veteran, I can say the author makes points about connecting how this soldier acted to her reading of Cunt. First off, no where in Cunt does Muscio EVER try to teach women to act the way the military does. Not understanding military mentality deeply flaws this article. I can tell you as a person who both has read Cunt and has been in the miltary in no way does the retalliation portion liken itself to military training or the mentality that teaches the military to treat its enimies not as people but as objects. While you may say that the retaliation prt does just that I will say that it is talking to women to act out of love for themselves. Would you say the criminal justice system acts out of hate? No, its acts out of justice (or so its supposed to) When we as women are continually denied justice Muscio suggests ways to regain both self-appreciation (and cast away shame) and seek justice. It seems very right wing to take that idea and make it into a complaint of "innocent until proven guilty" over being appalled that women are STILL denied justice in the criminal justice system. Nothing Muscio calls for is even near the level of loss rape casues for women, its more an exercise in shame for the offender. What happened at Abu Ghraib has nothing to do with ending patriarchy, its poor logic to try to connect Cunt with approval for what happened there. This just seems like more pettiness that women too often partake in. If you don't like what Muscio wrote then write your own book. Its better than spending your time trashing a book that has helped many women feel more empowered as women. Constructive criticism is one thing, but as I said before, alligning this book with approval for torture is another. This article seems rife with white priviledge, and I feel this also leads to missing the point on more than one level. Being able to call some a crack pot for pointing things out that people of color have been plauged by for generations is not only rude but it is also allows people to continue to walk down the path of blindly repeating the same mistakes this country has been making since its inception, starting with the genocide of the native peoples. If you can't see how racism, sexism, homophobia and the like are all connected I am not sure that either of Muscio's book are for you. We have enough barriers and hills to climb as women without tearing each other down. SGT JH www.ivaw.org
--jh
03/25 |
I know I'm a little late on reading this piece, but just wanted to give fives up to Ada Calhoun on her dead-on approximation of third-wave feminism and cogent explication of why _Cunt_ doesn't deserve to be included in its canon.
--STO
07/16 |
Ada, thank you so much for writing this piece. It nicely balances that horrible "Modern Love" piece in the New York Times which really made me cringe with that tired old "before I met COLIN and had the love of a good man it was just too hard, too much of an intellectual challenge to figure out that you can a feminist and love men at the same time" whiney routine. From now on I will just send your piece instead of going into one of my long diatribes about the true and contemporary nature of third wave feminism. Have you by any chance read "Yes Means Yes" by Kath Albury? It would be right up your street, she is a wickedly funny Australian scholar and "sexpert" having a go at the likes of Inga while also sending up anyone from John Gray to Andrea Dworking and Naomi, defending internet DIY porn and the right of surburban housewifes to be saranwrapped to the apple tree in their own garden, if they so choose.
--eva
05/25 |
Thank you for defending us Third wavers - I am proud of my feminism, admit to having a love/hate relationship with "men" in general, yet still cringed all the way through Inga's book.
--sc
05/23 |
This is absolutely the best article I have ever read on hooksexup.com, and I've been reading this site every day for three years.
--JKM
05/21 |
Much of what Ms. Calhoun had to say about the book "Cunt" and the attitudes expressed within I thought were dead-on, but I did think she missed or only glossed over one of the most important aspects of the book and of Third-Wave Feminism itself: process. See, all of us described by Calhoun in our twenties and thirties and forties who have read Cunt, among other incendiary materials, are ignited by them. Life is breathed into us by Kathleen Hanna, and a million other artists dead and living, sane and insane. We find a way to incorporate that life and spirit into our life and our worldviews, and then we move on. We put the book into our bookshelves and then we fondly remember it as an old friend who once served us well in a time of need, but who embarrases us at Thanksgiving. But the process is learning. Separating the wheat from the chaff is learning. Cunt had a lot of good ideas, that we all still carry around with us today, and we owe it a minor respect for that. It had a lot of bad ideas, just like the US government does at times, and I suppose if you can't lead by example, you may as well lead by contrast. Perhaps that's the Fourth Wave.
--aed
05/21 |
Thank you, this was a great essay! Can you synthesize it into a few sentences so that when people don't understand why i'm a women's studies major I can tell them where their misperceptions are coming from?
--mm
05/19 |
I was once a young clueless male who had my eyes opened in a Feminist Philosophy class. I signed up for the philosophy at first, not the feminism. I remember reading Mary Daly, Catherine Mackinnon, and Shulamith Firestone, and feeling like I was the enemy of the very ideals I embraced. In that class, I had to lead a class discussion on “kinky sex”. It was hella uncomfortable at the start, but after the initial dust settled, I was met with genuine interest and enthusiasm from the class. It somehow warmed my heart to learn that intelligent attractive women, who despised subjugation, could still enjoy bondage and spanking. As a (favorable) result of feminism, I have struggled for the last 10+ years to come to terms with my sexual desires and my political ideals, which don’t always intuitively go together. After the class ended, I went away feeling more optimistic, but more confused than before. I went on to read Manifesta, The Beauty Myth, Backlash, The Morning After, Sexual Persona, Talk Dirty to Me, and a slew of other third wave tomes. While I was again pleased to find that smart women did indeed like sex with men, it did relative little to quell my discomfort around feminists. Mostly because people like Inga Muscio hijack the term feminist, like she purposes women do to the word cunt, and make it mean something that it doesn’t necessarily intend. There has been an emerging theory of psychology that claims that your mind is made of your language. (See Lacan, Derrida, Levi-Strauss.) Hence: it takes a crack pot to want to change the language. During that 10+ years I was struggling and reading, I discovered hooksexup.com. It was everything I wanted in a sexual culture magazine: smart, literate, adventurous, aesthetically inclined, not afraid of homosexuality, but not iconizing it either, not ignorant of sexual politics, but not politically uptight about sex, not ignorant of the world creating the contexts in which we have sex, but not loosing the focus that this is about the sex here, not the world. I’ve said many praising and a few condemning things about Hooksexup. I keep coming back for more. Your article is one of the reasons why.
--JHR
05/19 |
Excellent essay. Thank you.
--TKK
05/18 |
I read your whole essay, but I'm mostly still reeling from the seminal photograph & retraction. How can we be so worried about this four-letter word, ESPECIALLY in the context of the trial and the TRUE obscenity of remorseless torture? Did any of the source material refer to this twisted reversal? I'm sickened.
--swtp
05/18 |
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