House of Eratosthenes

This blog, which nobody ever reads anyway, would nevertheless be remiss in allowing the 40th anniversary of the National Organization of Women pass into the compost heap of history without comment.

And, since it takes so little effort and I happen to be lazy, a link to the Wall Street Journal’s first-hand account of the festitivities in Albany, NY, courtesy of Charlotte Hays.

Whereas younger feminists on college campuses are flocking to Eve Ensler’s hot-ticket play “The Vagina Monologues”…the exhibitors this year featured less frivolous fare: There was a stand for the socialist People’s Weekly World (successor of the Daily Worker), a midwifery booth (how I wish I hadn’t peered so closely at the frontal photo of a squatting woman welcoming a child into the world!) and a vendor of lesbian-themed quilts. New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney was the highest-ranking office-holder present. One might have thought that Sen. Hillary Clinton would show up — after all, Albany is her state capital — but she never did. Her office claimed that she had a scheduling conflict. I envy her.
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For me, the most memorable session was the one entitled “Feminist Media Reform.” Although two NOW employees spoke, along with Kathy Bonk, a well-known feminist media specialist, the star of the session was Bree Williamson, who plays Jessica on the ABC daytime soap opera “One Life to Live.” (She has also guest-starred on a Toronto-based show called “Mutant X.”) Ms. Williamson, who went all pouty-face when somebody noted that TV heroines tend to be blue-eyed blondes, had a message: Write letters to producers telling them what you want to see. Talk about empowerment! If viewers of “One Life” start to see Jessica battling the patriarchy, they’ll know why. But one panelist implicitly questioned the effectiveness of such campaigns, lamenting that NOW failed to save Geena Davis’s series “Commander in Chief.” I don’t know what it means that I heard more about an imaginary female president than about Hillary during the course of the weekend.

Feminism is supposed to be all about choice, and here it is being twisted around into a fake-grassroots movement to muscle around free enterprise and tell it what kind of actresses to hire.

People support feminism when it has to do with women controlling their own bodies, and being paid equal-pay for equal-work. Controversy surrounds fifty percent of those two; but the fact remains that this is the doublet arousing widespread sympathy.

Gee, I just turned forty. People like to tell me what to do all the time. After four decades of me not listening, I’m not sure why the lesson hasn’t been learned, but the advice is still forthcoming, so obviously forty is still green enough for you to keep on collecting these well-intentioned tidbits.

So here is something for NOW. I note that my overall health, at forty years plus some change, seems to be much better than NOW’s right at the hash mark — so listen to your elder, NOW.

Stick to the choice angle. If I haven’t discriminated against any women in hiring/promotion practices or wages or admissions, and I haven’t forced anyone to carry my baby to term, when I go to Hooter’s your wrinkly mouths stay shut. If you have anything to say at all, it’s to celebrate the choice exercised by the young ladies who choose to work there, and the female stockholders who are making a King’s ransom off the success of the franchise.

Television shows? Pretend presidents? Midwifery? Quilts? Truly independent 9/11 investigations?

Trouble with this movement, is it’s trudging toward zero. All crusades may start with a zero and progress toward infinity, or else, start with a degree of filth and impurity and progress toward purity. They may cruise away from a bulls-eye, or toward it. This is a fundamental distinction to make amongst political movements. All political movements. At least all the ones of which I’ve come to be conscious. They are one or the other; they approach an undefined ether from a defined point-of-origin, or else aspire to a point-of-destination from said undefined ether. They explore, or they purify.

Political movements, however, have it in common that each generation of the movement desires to realize objectives wholly unimagined by the previous generation. This is a natural fit for movements, like the exploration of uncharted territories for example, that conquer wild frontiers, pave over them, and look for new frontiers. Fits like mustard on a hot dog. For the other category, where we aspire toward nirvana, approaching it from an outer ring of relative filth and impurity…it’s an inherent contradiction.

The malignancies have been removed. You, ladies, can be paid the same as a man. If someone discriminates, you can appeal, and their career will probably be ruined. You can have an abortion. If someone makes a law that says you can’t, the law will be overturned.

And yet the feminist movement, fulfilling the law that applies to all movements, searches for new frontiers inconceivable to the generations past, but it crusades toward zero rather than infinity. They do their best to overcome the inherent contradiction. Quilts. Huffing-and-puffing about “the new Supreme Court might turn the clock back.” Television shows about pretend presidents. Midwifery.

BOR-ING.

Trouble is, thinking people weren’t designed to trudge toward zero. We are explorers by nature. The first woman bit into the apple, and we ended up exiled from a point-of-origin, trudging toward the ether — not the other way around. And so our species is one of strangers to nirvana. We go out and not in. What our parents only dreamed of, we do; what was unimaginable to them, we dare to dream. It’s what we’re supposed to do. The instinct calls to those who have dedicated their lives to declaring an impurity cancerous, convincing those around them that it must be removed, and then so removing it. And then they have nothing to do, nothing at all, but to look around and find something else to declare cancerous.

And they end up making themselves into spectacularly silly people.

I feel bad for them, really. But I feel worse for society, as they get it all twisted around and lopsided, and start forcing people to do things under the banner of “choice.”

Awesome of you to mention this. I am ashamed to say I didn’t know it was today. I’m going to put this on my own page, too, but I want to say that (a) SOME OF US DEFINITELY READ YOU, often daily, and (b) feminism is vital and thoroughly commendable in its real sense. Sadly, it’s women, today, who most loudly and mistakenly lament what they see as the flaws of feminism, thereby merely proving that they are missing the point and allowing growth and maturity and freedom to be bastardized (semi-pun intended). Then again, that’s evident in other areas too, isn’t it? Difficult times, these.
- aup | 07/28/2006 @ 11:20
“Nobody reads this” is not whining and it’s definitely not a slight against the “nobodies.” It’s all explained in the FAQ.

Aup, do you have a page? Your blogger profile comes up empty.
- mkfreeberg | 07/28/2006 @ 11:31
FAQs duly noted – I was trying to be amusing. Writing is such an iffy thing.

Page should be visible. I’ll look into that. It’s http://yarnsandyarns.blogspot.com meantime.
- aup | 07/29/2006 @ 05:57
You’re already listed. Somehow the link isn’t being made with your identity. Always good to have one of life’s little mysteries solved, and GREAT blog BTW.
- mkfreeberg | 07/29/2006 @ 06:50
Wow. Thanks for the warm words. Back atcha! One of my goals for the next year (I’m about to be “two”!) is to write longer think pieces, as you already do.
- aup | 07/29/2006 @ 13:17

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NOW 40Friday, July 28th, 2006

NOW 40
Friday, July 28th, 2006