In order to evaluate what Jean Kilbourne is trying to do in "Can't Buy My Love," I think we ought to know a little more about where she's coming from. We don't have to agree with her, but if we understand her brand of feminism, we'll be able to come to a more nuanced critique of what she has to say.
There's a lot of stuff on the World Wide Web about feminism, and 99 percent of what I've seen is worthless. But the British television Channel 4 aired a series in 2002 called "Feminists and Flourbombs" (ah, another f-word). It's British, but the same issues have played out in the U.S. over the years.
Links are below.
Read the pages linked below and answer these questions:
1. How did the feminists allow their enemies to define them -- how did they lose control of the message? How might you have done things differently to keep control of the message?
2. As you read about the feminist movement in Britain, think of how society has changed in the U.S. since the 1970s, especially with respect to women's rights. What parallels are you aware of?
3. Be ready to discuss 1 and 2 above. Post tentative answers as comments to the Mackerel Wrapper post.
Links:
-- The overview at http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/F/flourbombs/index.html
-- The essay "Then and Now" http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/F/flourbombs/thennow.html
-- The essay bt Sue O'Sullivan, a member of one of the first consciousness raising groups in London who was editor of Spare Rib magazine ... http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/F/flourbombs/essay.html
A weblog for Pete Ellertsen's mass communications students at Benedictine University Springfield.
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About Me
- Pete
- Springfield (Ill.), United States
- I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.
13 comments:
Bob Hope, presenting the event, stood on a stage pelted with tomatoes and flour bombs. Bouncers were sprayed with blue ink. The women disrupting the competition shouted: 'We're not beautiful, we're not ugly, we're angry.'It is a woman's choice to be in a competition, or a stay at home mom, or an executive, or a teacher, one can be a feminist but not every woman HAS to live by their rules. Are you less of a woman if you put on a little lipstick? I believe this is one of the many reasons feminists have a "man hating" reputation.
'Feminists encourage women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practise witchcraft, become lesbians and destroy Capitalism,' Pat Robertson, preacher and former US Presidential candidate. Some women really think that and that why they can't run our country or have any hope in this case to do much becasue one bad apple can run the bunch!!!
question 2.... In 1970, the Equal Pay Act was passed, stipulating that women and men should receive equal wages for equal work.
In 1975, the Sex Discrimination Act was passed, outlawing discrimination in the workplace on the grounds of sex or marital status.
In 1976, the Domestic Violence Act was passed as a result of feminists campaigning and establishing a network of refuges under the umbrella of the Women's Aid Federation
women need to work on building on the past advantages but also need to put the hand back in their pocket and not out... they ask for this and for that but sometimes to get somewhere you have to work for it!!!!
From the reading feminists might have been looked at as radicals by their "enemies." They conducted themselves as preaching to all women of their typical ideal of "how women should be living." And that's not right. Our way is the only doesn't work with everyone. Feminist might have won a more favorable audience if they focused on equal pay and rights of women versuses the absolute "way" women should be living their lives.
Socialist, Marxist, radical, liberal, revolutionary, lesbian and anarchist were all different ways that that feminists became classified in the early years. They became sterotypes to become associated with feminists still to this day, so when you say feminist a few of those things pop into their head. I think if I would have controlled the message I would have had less extreme examples out there as protesters.
Even 30 years after the Equal Pay Act, women in Britain in full time work are paid 18% less than men. This isn’t a whole lot and proves many strides with the fact alone that women can get full time jobs, but it still isn’t equal pay. In the US women who work part time earn 39% less than men in full-time work and women earn an average of 25% less than men. That’s a fourth less then men and even worse then Britain.
Also in the UK, the violence against women is very bad, but not as bad as the US where 1 out of 5 pregnant women dies from assault from their partner. The world seems far from equal for women, but really consider how people are they’re not so bad off.
Feminism may have been around, in various guises, for centuries, but in the 1970s it started to take shape as a movement. In 1971, the first National Women's Liberation Conference was held at Ruskin College, Oxford. It was the first time women's groups from across Britain had met in a single place to discuss their demands and the challenges they faced.
The let their enemies judge them based on their looks through the pagents, thats all that was seen. And soon enough they were not content with just being judge on their face and figure.
1) "Feminists encourage women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practise witchcraft, become lesbians and destroy Capitalism," Pat Robertson, preacher and former US Presidential candidate. --- I think this quote says a lot about how feminists were defined and why they often get a bad rep. This quote is a little on the extreme side, but I believe most peole view feminists in a negative way.
I much prefer the quote, "'Feminists are women who don't want to be treated like shit" --This is the way I think abut feminism, and why I don't think it's a bad thing to be called a feminist. What is so terrible about women wanted to be treated as equal human beings??
As for the whole beauty pageant thing, I think if the protesters had been a little less extreme and presented their opinion in a less threatening manner, they might have made a better case. I don't really agree with beauty pagaents but I wouldn't go to the extremes, these women did. I think it's much more effective to just be an exapmle of the kind of women we need to see more of in the world...smart, driven, self-confident, and mature. They should be leading by example instead of just bashing other women who, most likely, didn't have these kind of role models growing up.
1.
Earlier years of feminists were radical, protesting a miss world competition? Everybody knows thats for beautiful women, i myself would not want to see a tree hugging non shaving women in the bikini competition. The demands that the feminists asked for really defined them among the nonfeminists, such as: free contreception and abortion? I would agree with Pat Robertson, because there are some women out their that really dont know the meaning of feminist and just call themselves feminist because they think they should be catered to and think they "deserve" the title. And how come the door cant be opened by the first person to it? Respect? or cultural norms?
2.
The U.S society has obvisouly changed drastically since the 70's. From the integration era and for the rights of women. Even though some women are paid less then men, and feel that they are discriminated against in the work place, that is something on the terms of the employes. You can change law, but you cant change the "man" that runs the law.
Enemies of the femenist group often looked at them as being radicle, extreme, unamerican, and not having wholesome traditional family values. While these may not be true, the feminist have in a way perpetuated this stereotype. They often come of extremley angry. There is nothing wrong with womens rights and equal rights for women, but that simple message gets lost in the wxtreme way in which the choose to present there message. While it is ok for a woman to have traditional womens rights views, it is just as ok for women to be stay at home moms, it is ok for women to participate in beaty pagents, it is ok for women to wear make up. I think that feminist loose control of their fundamental message when they start demanding others think and behave like them.
Reading this "as a man" I think that thier attempts to make women equal in society were both good and bad.
They’re rite women are just as important as men in this world, but they needed to involve all women.
"Looking back, the early 1970s were years of incredible optimism in Women's Liberation"
Just like that girl said in class, no sense in shitting on the women who don’t live the way they live or do what they do.
1. How did the feminists allow their enemies to define them -- how did they lose control of the message? How might you have done things differently to keep control of the message?
They lost control of their message because of the different areas of feminism all started arguing with each other. One of them was right and the rest was wrong. Perhaps if they had all joined together on one common goal, they would have succeeded more, as opposed to breaking up into different types of feminism – radical feminist, socialist feminist, lesbian feminist, black feminists, revolutionary feminists, etc. If they’d all just came together with the same idea – women’s rights – more probably could have gotten accomplished.
2. As you read about the feminist movement in Britain, think of how society has changed in the U.S. since the 1970s, especially with respect to women's rights. What parallels are you aware of?
Sine the 1970s, women are still getting paid less than men in the workplace in both the US and Britain, but as far as getting an education, women don’t have to try as hard to get noticed or have good grades or get jobs and other things like that.
Feminists allowed their enemies to control them because even though they had a common goal, they could not deal with their own differences and inequalities regarding race, class, antisemitism and sexual orientation. While they were being critisized from outside, they were self destructing internally, because although they shared a common goal, their differences outweighed their similarities and the drivers of the movement just could not answer all these voices.
Although equal rights for women have come a long way since the
70's, things are still far from equal. Women still make, on average, 18% less than their male counterparts, and the glass ceiling still very much exists (just look at Hillary Clinton). The stereotypical hardcore businesswomen that helped drive the feminist movement in the 70's still exist and thrive today, but they are few and far between.
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