Jan
29
Today media images are repeating a particular version of the age-old idea of the hysterical and dependent woman. The manless women of the contemporary era are unhappy, unfulfilled, and, in some ways, mentally deficient according to many headlines abounding in the mainstream press. The central question these sources bring to the fore is: How can women today, if more independent than ever, be so unhappy? Women seem unable to properly cope with the equality granted them—through years of struggle—by the feminist movements. As Susan Faludi puts this perception, “Women are enslaved by their own liberation.”
Apparently, according to mainstream media reports, the reason is is that feminist liberation itself is a failed project; it deprived women of their only source of completeness and satisfaction: male companionship.
These proclamations are not unique to right-wing, reactionary sources—where one would expect to find such drivel—but they fill the pages of Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, even “liberal” journals like the Nation and Vanity Fair. Popular movies and novels explore this theme as well. But these declarations are not restricted to such areas only. Perhaps most disturbing is the tendency of some so-called “experts,” intellectuals and academics, to support this thesis. Even former female proponents of women’s liberation have joined the chorus. But when one hears such pronouncements they should immediately ask the obvious question: Are women truly so equal today? Faludi answers this question with a resounding no. “If women are so equal, why are nearly 75 percent of full-time working women making less than $20,000 a year [in 1992], nearly double the male rate?” The social indicators go on—presenting quite a different reality than the popular picture portrayed as its own self-evident truth in the mainstream media, Hollywood, academic circles, liberal publications, and elsewhere.
The truth is that women have quite a road to travel before reaching freedom or equality, at least in as much as those terms have any meaning at all. Rather than feeling “liberated” women feel quite the opposite. Many languish in a structurally-induced second-class status within the political economy. They are forced by economic realities to not only fill their traditional roles as mothers by themselves—in no small part due to a disturbing trend on the part of men to willingly cede their fatherly duties—but to work in poor paying jobs just to survive and support their families.
So why, one might ask, all the false imagery and propaganda? To find out, we must look into whose interests such lies serve. And ask why those elements would take part in such a conscious and systematic effort to reverse positive gains brought about by the women’s liberation movements. Faludi notices it, quite rightly, as a part of a “counter-assault” against those gains. It goes deeper than patriarchy alone—however important such a notion is. It is at the heart of the social system as we know it. The backlash not only shows the reactionaries’ tendencies to lash out against even the slightest divergence from the status quo, but also the corporate, capitalist elites’ inclinations to do the same. Male interests—entrenched in capital interests, essentially being one and the same in the socio-economic and political structure of contemporary society—are unwilling to relinquish their positions beyond the smallest capitulations and reformist allowances. In short, a capitalist society benefiting from gender inequalities will not surrender its positions of privilege voluntarily. It will fight and use its seemingly infinite resources to stop any challenge to those privileges. And part of what Faludi demonstrates is the lengths to which those resources manifest themselves in society. This goes to the heart of the argument that struggles against all forms of socially-induced inequalities are correspondingly struggles against the social system that creates and reinforces such inequalities—in this case capitalism. So in order to successfully fight against the inequities of gender, race, and class relations, one must merge their efforts to the conflict against capital. Only here will they achieve long-term and permanent gains.
Apparently, according to mainstream media reports, the reason is is that feminist liberation itself is a failed project; it deprived women of their only source of completeness and satisfaction: male companionship.
These proclamations are not unique to right-wing, reactionary sources—where one would expect to find such drivel—but they fill the pages of Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, even “liberal” journals like the Nation and Vanity Fair. Popular movies and novels explore this theme as well. But these declarations are not restricted to such areas only. Perhaps most disturbing is the tendency of some so-called “experts,” intellectuals and academics, to support this thesis. Even former female proponents of women’s liberation have joined the chorus. But when one hears such pronouncements they should immediately ask the obvious question: Are women truly so equal today? Faludi answers this question with a resounding no. “If women are so equal, why are nearly 75 percent of full-time working women making less than $20,000 a year [in 1992], nearly double the male rate?” The social indicators go on—presenting quite a different reality than the popular picture portrayed as its own self-evident truth in the mainstream media, Hollywood, academic circles, liberal publications, and elsewhere.
The truth is that women have quite a road to travel before reaching freedom or equality, at least in as much as those terms have any meaning at all. Rather than feeling “liberated” women feel quite the opposite. Many languish in a structurally-induced second-class status within the political economy. They are forced by economic realities to not only fill their traditional roles as mothers by themselves—in no small part due to a disturbing trend on the part of men to willingly cede their fatherly duties—but to work in poor paying jobs just to survive and support their families.
So why, one might ask, all the false imagery and propaganda? To find out, we must look into whose interests such lies serve. And ask why those elements would take part in such a conscious and systematic effort to reverse positive gains brought about by the women’s liberation movements. Faludi notices it, quite rightly, as a part of a “counter-assault” against those gains. It goes deeper than patriarchy alone—however important such a notion is. It is at the heart of the social system as we know it. The backlash not only shows the reactionaries’ tendencies to lash out against even the slightest divergence from the status quo, but also the corporate, capitalist elites’ inclinations to do the same. Male interests—entrenched in capital interests, essentially being one and the same in the socio-economic and political structure of contemporary society—are unwilling to relinquish their positions beyond the smallest capitulations and reformist allowances. In short, a capitalist society benefiting from gender inequalities will not surrender its positions of privilege voluntarily. It will fight and use its seemingly infinite resources to stop any challenge to those privileges. And part of what Faludi demonstrates is the lengths to which those resources manifest themselves in society. This goes to the heart of the argument that struggles against all forms of socially-induced inequalities are correspondingly struggles against the social system that creates and reinforces such inequalities—in this case capitalism. So in order to successfully fight against the inequities of gender, race, and class relations, one must merge their efforts to the conflict against capital. Only here will they achieve long-term and permanent gains.
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