A few weeks ago, I started to read women’s studies books. I quickly read a number of books dealing with the feminist issue:
- Full Frontal Feminism, Jessical Valenti (sadly, that review was lost in the CosmoCon Fail)
- Who Stole Feminism? Christina Hoff Sommers,
- In Our Time: A Memoir of a Revolution, Susan Brownmiller,
- The Female Thing, Laura Lipnis
- Hating Women, Shmuley Boteach
- Women’s Progress: How Women are Wealthier, Healthier and More Independent than Ever Before, Michelle D. Bernard
I was tired of making the same debates, arguing the same points and writing the same blog post over and over about why I don’t consider myself a feminist. Then I realized, that I never really studied feminism aside from regularly reading several feminist blogs. I didn’t understand the history or philosophical roots. Since declaring myself a conservative in the first grade, I have only moved farther right. Why on earth would I have taken a women’s studies class in college? (I only like blog confrontations.)
However, academic curiosity set in. Grad school taught me to question exactly why I believe what I believe. Aside from the abortion issue, why is it that conservatives and feminists hate each other so much? Is there common ground? Haven’t all women benefited from equality with men? Simply, what’s the big deal?
(Relax Mom! I’m just as conservative, if not more conservative for reading these books.)
After discussing this situation with other conservative women, I realized that I was hardly the only one who didn’t understand the history of the movement. In our current political climate, few us felt any reason to learn and ask our left-wing sisters why their dogma is so important to all womankind. (Conversely, I’d love to find a feminist who’s expended any amount of energy trying to understand the right.)
It’s not that conservatives of my generation don’t care. We grew up after the turbulent 60s and 70s. We have no concept of looking at the “Help Wanted” section and seeing job notices listed by sex. As S.E. Cupp said at the Conservative Women’s Network lunch this week, we grew up without the burden of sexism. To us, men and women have always been equal.
I guess that I’m unusual in the sense that my mother was as fiercely anti-feminist as Gloria Steinem is feminist. But I’m thankful for having grown up in that environment. I’m content in my femininity and respect men.
Thus far, the more I read of feminist philosophy the more I believe that it is outdated and insecure. Feminism is only legitimate as long as the Federal government makes concessions for it to exist. There is absolutely no free-market reason for a social and political philosophy to exist that demands that one sex receive preferential treatment. Forgetting all social issues, there’s no way that a small government, free-market supporter could agree with this ideology.
Plus, there’s the small problem that second-wave feminist theory is based on Marxism.
However, I digress.
This weekend, while dog sitting in Rockville for my former roommate, I visited the Montgomery County Friends of the Library Book Store. I’m a natural speed reader, so I depend on used book stores in order to afford books.
I hit pay dirt! I’ve never seen so many used books on feminism. I found original copies of radical feminist anthologies from the 70s. I also found Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and C.S. Lewis’ To An American Lady for $3 each. Outliers was $15 at McKays!) It makes sense. Montgomery County has the highest level of graduate degrees in the country and is as blue as a blue state can get. (There’s a freaking county income tax in MoCo, which is why I moved to Alexandria upon my return.) Here’s what I found:
- Letters to Ms., Mary Thom
- Woman in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness, Vivian Gornick & Barbara K. Moran
- The Cinderella Complex, Colette Dowling
- The Assertive Woman, Stanlee Phelps & Nancy Austin
- Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings, Miriam Schneir (editor)
- Woman’s Estate, Juliet Mitchell
- Born Female, Caroline Bird
- Feminism & Philosophy, Vetterling-Braggin, Elliston & English
- School Girls, Peggy Orenstein
- To Hell With All That, Caitlin Flanagan
- Bare, Elisabeth Eaves
- Feminist Thought, Rosemarie Tong
- Women’s Ways of Knowing, Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, Tarule
- In a Different Voice, Carol Gilligan
- Backlash, Susan Faludi
- Promiscuities, Naomi Wolf
- The New Women, Cooke, Bunch-Weeks, Morgan
- The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer
- Our Bodies, Ourselves, The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective (2nd edition)
- Feminist Frameworks, Alison Jaggar & Paula Rothenberg
Where should I begin? Are there any books that I should add to the list? I was hoping to find a copy of Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth after Hoff Sommers attacked it in Who Stole Feminism? but they didn’t have a copy.
There is another slough of books, particularly 3rd wave feminist writers that I want to read. There are also a number of books from the center-right that attack feminism and overtly sexual culture that it produced (Feminists vs. Women, A Return to Modesty, Unhooked, etc.). However, there isn’t much of a demand for those books in liberal elitist Montgomery County. I’m far more likely to found those at McKay’s back in Chattanooga.
