"The Feminist Backlash"

Anger: i.e. You are angry. I am angry. We are angry.

A few people on campus are very angry right now. "okay...so why are they angry?"

A few feminists are very angry right now. What might the reaction to this be?..."Aren't all feminists angry?" (hahahaha, very funny)

My sad admission is that throughout this past week it had kind of seemed that way to me. Luckily, my favorite feminist professor along with my trusty band of fellow-student feminists reminded me tonight that feminism is my happy place. Breathe in, breathe out. Wax on, wax off. They are very wise women, and I am so very thankful to have them around.

Still, I am now trying to figure out how I feel about the results of when feminism & anger are combined. So, I would like to discuss the issue of anger and feminism and whether it can divide feminists, bring us together, or get misplaced in negative ways.

After those two opinion articles on feminism I wrote about in my last post, there are certainly quite a few feminists on campus who are VERY angry. Angry to the point of, well, perhaps harrassment of my current editor-in-chief. I would just like to say, he really is innocent in all of this. Mistakes get made. Yes, he is a man. No, he is not conspiring to silence the voices of the feminists on my campus.

Is it necessary? Is it helpful? Is it furthering stereotypes? More than anything, is it wrong to react with such anger?

I don't think it is wrong to be angry, and I certainly don't think feminists (simply by being feminists) should worry about showing their anger. However, being angry while being a feminist can put a girl in some hard-to-navigate territory.

What I always liked about feminism and feminists is that we talk about things, we open up discussion...which had been happening over these articles. At one point on our women's studies Facebook page someone suggested we start a feminist student org in response to the mysoginistic opinion article. Great! That is a fantastic solution which would further open up discussion about feminism.

But what I've also seen this week is a lot of misplaced anger. Many are blaming everyone involved on my campus paper (boycotting it) or are now sticking the finger to the man (my editor-in-chief) by writing email after email and stalking our office (this is mostly just one person). This is not productive.

I think it was good for people to get angry about what was said in our paper, and it was a good idea on everyone's part to write letters to the editor in response. That was so great to see. But, on the other hand, it is not helpful to suggest in an open forum that the editor-in-chief (who didn't write the article) is actively involved in a "feminist backlash."

By doing this--by ignoring our newspaper's attempts to apologize for said article--I think that is where anger starts to hurt the movement. Yes, we should get angry over issues and how feminism is misunderstood, but I don't believe we should direct anger at specific people, not even the writer necessarily, because that just feeds into the "angry feminist" stereotype and, in the end, it doesn't help teach others about what feminism is really about.

My big thing is that, in feminist theory, we always talk about how many people have false perceptions of feminism. Also, given how boys and girls are raised in this society, men often don't realize just how much more power and privilege they have in life compared to others (e.g. women). So, it makes sense to me that a male writing an opinion piece on feminism would get it wrong, not cite any facts/data, and assume he has it right. Is this frustrating? Oh heck yes, but instead of just directing all kinds of anger his way I try to sit and talk about it. I have encouraged him multiple times to look at feminist writers or have mentioned the benefits feminism would have for men.

I have always been a pacifist, so I admit that I am biased against anger as a reaction. That's just how I am. However, anger to the degree I have seen this week is not only going to keep people from actually changing their perceptions of feminists--it could very well drive some feminists away. I certainly have felt alienated and hurt and frustrated over this catastrophe all week, and I don't want to be a part of something that comes off as hateful and exclusionary. Like I said before, though, I'm lucky enough to have a great group of fellow feminists within the department to turn to, and they most certainly embody the kind, loving, intelligent/wise aspects of feminism that will always draw me to it.


On another note, I wanted to brush off all of this anger and frustration. So, I picked up a copy of "Bossypants," Tina Fey's new book. It already has me laughing, and hopefully I can finish it quickly (before I get too bogged down in finals) to post a snazzy review!