Blog Entries tagged 'baby love'
Yes, in fact, I do blame (F)eminism
So there seems to be outpouring of excitement about the Katie Roiphe piece on Double XX on motherhood as a narcotic.
What frustrates about this "excitement" on Salon and all the other more "mainstream" blogs, is the way editors and many readers ignore the work of women outside of their "milieu" be they poor, black, Asian-American, gay, male, community-college educated or otherwise.
My book Baby Love, for example, is also about the subject of feminism and motherhood and making a surprising and seemingly "anti-feminist" choice, and yet received none of
the nuanced treatment. In fact, Salon used my piece on this exact
subject to excoriate me personally, running an ill-informed post by Phyllis Chesler in which I was labeled misguided,
confused, and in the throes of some kind of misplaced mother-daughter
drama. My
work was dismissed as personal pathology.
Which brings us to Katie
Roiphe. Good gracious, she and I hashed it out on Charlie Rose ten
years ago. Her intellect is no more superior, her writing no more
"eloquent," but her
privilege is, truly, many more generations deep, and certain editors apparently believe she has much more in common with their readers--an unfair assessment.
The entire
episode reminds me of one of the more insightful things my mother
told me (and regardless of the current state of our relationship, my mother has told me MANY insightful things):
"We read them,
but really, they do not read us."
Meaning, of course, that
many white women of privilege and access think what they write is new because they don't really
bother to read the work of women (and men) outside of their race and/or class. And yet we think nothing of
reading theirs and weighing their contributions as part of our process
of informing ourselves as we begin to do our own work.
And,
really, truly, the bottom line? I blame it on (F)eminism. Why is it that women of privilege are able to do this with impunity in the name of (F)eminism?
Because this kind of racial and economic apartheid is built into contemporary, especially Second Wave, (F)eminism. This latest exchange of pseudo-philosophical banter is just one more line item on an exhaustive list of betrayals, insults, and selective dismissals of the work of many self-identified feminists and others who have long ago abandoned their affiliation.
This remains a breathtakingly short-sighted method of engagement.
Living With Music: A Playlist by Rebecca Walker, The New York Times
On Wednesdays, this blog is the delivery vehicle for “Living With Music,” a playlist of songs from a writer or some other kind of book-world personage.
This week: Rebecca Walker, whose most recent book, “Baby Love,” is available in paperback.
