Thoughts on Crazy Week

It was a crazy week in blogland with one article triggering a fury in the feminist/mother/feminist mother corner of the web. Luckily, these events don't happen too often, because it really does take over one's life and no one can afford to let that happen every day. But it is also so enormously fruitful as we all throw out our first ideas, get feedback, and then hopefully get smarter by the end of it all. One of the amazing functions of the blogosphere.

Awkwardly, Linda Hirshman was reading the commentary and appearing in some blog comments. I am sure she is not reading my blog anymore, but .... The blogosphere is a tough place where we get to use bad language and trash talk each other. We are using our blogs to respond to things that appear in the media. For most, this is the only opportunity to "respond" to experts and elites, though few really expect that the original author reads this stuff. If we knew you were going to read our posts, we would have been nicer. Your article stirred us to put some half baked ideas into print and to be consumed by ideas for a week. Thanks for that.

I have some final thoughts that I have buried under the fold since I assume everyone is sick of the topic, but I still want to get these ideas off my chest.

Why did this one article make so many people upset? I think because Hirshman inadvertantlly offended 99% of women with kids. She wrote that 50% of women stopped working after they had kids and were traitors to the movement. Bad names. Those 50% include women working part time or in lesser capacity than before they had kids. Those 50% include those who really tried to work, but faced one roadblock after another. She added insults to injury. Of the 50% who worked full time after they had kids, 49% are in non-elite positions and thus had no impact on gender inbalance in positions of power. So, 1% of women with kids are working full-time in positions of power; 99% of women were offended.

Hirshman's units of analysis switched around all the time. Sometimes she seemed to be zeroing in on rich women and other times she was making generalization about all women, like when she wrote about employment figures. I'm happy as the next person to hate rich people, but when you go after my girls then I get my back up.

Definitions such as elite were not well defined. Vagueness leads to problems.

There is also some confusion about whether women should feel guilty about staying at home. Sometimes Hirshman said that women are staying at home to plan weddings and bake pies. But her set of rules give another message. It says that it is tough out there to work and have a family and things must be planned very carefully. If such careful planning is required, then women must face strong barriers to work, and therefore, should have no guilt placed upon them.

I also think that there were some generational issues going on. Employment opportunites have changed so much since the seventies. I might write some posts about work next week.

Comments

[Amy P]

You're onto something with regard to generational issues. Reading Hirshman feels like being addressed by some guilt-tripping older relative who is disappointed with what we've done with ourselves. After all they've done for us!

[Mrs. Coulter]

Yes, yes. Amy is totally right. But I have to say that if there was a nasty tone to the commentary, Hirshman herself is at least partly to blame ("untouchables"???). If you're going to dish out, you have to be willing to take it. I mean, she herself said that she was going to be judgmental. I didn't see if she popped up in your comments, but elsewhere she sounded rather bitter and angry. Frankly, if I were a right-wing pundit, I couldn't have invented a better "feminist" foil.

[Phantom Scribbler]

Honestly, I don't think I would have been nicer. Blogging has taught me to be considerate of my audience, all right -- but I'm not going to extend that courtesy to someone who can't be bothered to extend it to me. If Hirshman had any concern for being nice to the people she appeared to be addressing in that article, it sure doesn't come through.

[dave s]

Now that you've beaten Hirshman to a bloody pulp, here's some more grist for your mill: problem will be solved in fifteen years because there won't be any men who've been successful in school:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/02/AR2005120201334.html

I have some of the 'girlier' boys out there: they will sit quietly if reminded fairly often, want to be thought well of, do their homework. They test well. I think they will probably be among the ones who make it through. And, if they are in college where it is 2-1 girls, they will certainly be popular! But it does not look good if we lose so many boys, there aren't a lot of jobs in tire factories any more.

[Another Damned Medievalist]

I've been giving this a bit of thought lately, although trying to stay out of too much blogging. When I married, my husband came with a motherless and fairly troubled 12-year-old. I was researching the diss, and it didn't occur to anyone to mention that I could have asked for a stop on the clock to adjust to motherhood. So I taught almost full-time, but not in my field, I mothered ful-time, and I wife-d full-time. I ended up even further out of my field in pursuance of keeping a new family unit together and 'doing my share' -- and never once felt I'd let down the movement, because I was ddoing it all. Of course I felt that I'd let down myself and my adviser and my department ...

By Hirschman's standards, I probably wouldn't be a person who let down the movement -- there I was, working in corporate America, showing what I could do.

But here's the deal -- I'd given up my own goals and aspirations, or at least sublimated them, denied the parts of myself I liked best, in order to be an equal partner in a marriage (which I never was) and a mother. THat seems to me to be a far greater betrayal of feminism than making a choice to stay home because it's what one wants.

[Laura]

re: being nice. Hard to rebel against the nice Catholic girl training. Judging from her comments, she seemed genuinely surprised that so many people were mad at her and was hurt at the reaction. I felt bad. whatever.

I see that Dave S is trying to get me to switch topics. I know, Dave. I have a couple more things to get down and then I'll be back to being silly again. My oldest is the typical wiggly boy, so I'm going to read the article ASAP.

ADM -- I know that my husband feels the same way. He had to give up his study of history and get a job that he doesn't care about in order to take care of the family. Reality gets in the way sometimes.

[tekanji]

I wouldn't have been nicer if I knew Hirshman might read it. In fact, I may have been harsher. That woman is in sore need of a wakeup call. If, indeed, she is sincere about her wish to be a real feminist then she needs to stop being a mouthpiece for the patriarchy. Blaming other women for the chains of the patriarchy does not a feminist make.

[Alison]

I don't want to totally diss what's best for women, but sometimes can we think about what's best for the children? Forcing poor women to work without providing quality childcare doesn't seem to be best for anyone except the work ethic nazis. Women who have children and work full-time without singificant support from a spouse or other family are juggling their kids, and sometimes (and maybe always) that won't be good for the kids. Some women may have work that is important enough for their kids to come second. For most of us, even many of us who are highly educated, that isn't true.