Michele Bachmann couldn’t have said it better.
On “Meet the Press” recently she said, “Women don’t need anyone to tell them what to do on health care. We want women to have their own choices, their own money, that they can make their own choices for the future of their own bodies.” A-men!
Inspiring quotes by Representative Bachmann aside; I’ve wanted to join in on the critical discourse around the “Who Needs Feminism” campaign. At the time of writing, the Duke students’ Facebook page has garnered more than 8,300 likes (including my own).
I initially was overjoyed to see the attention the campaign was getting. I loved that a diversity of perspectives were represented on the posters. People around the world are participating.
Yet because I’m a curmudgeon and like to take on sacred cows, I needed to find out why the word sandwiched between “I” and “Feminism” was bothering me. That word is “need,” by which we’re to understand that the phrase is actually [I] [this ideology that I conceive of in this manner is important to me] [this ideology and/or movement that everyone has a different conception of] [because] [example].
“Who needs feminism?” as a dismissive aside is being answered in the manner described above. In my English seminar we talked about the campaign, and some of our discussion revolved around what “feminism” even means. As one student pointed out, “feminism,” like “democracy,” is a good thing that no one agrees about, which isn’t necessarily a problem.
The problem I have is that people are interpreting the campaign as a referendum on the importance of the ideology rather than the practical manifestations of sexism. My own conception of feminism is that it is an ideology that recognizes the existence of sexism and gender discrimination, and tries to combat this by providing equal access to opportunity.
I’ve been shocked to see some of the comments on the Facebook group. One commenter defended the hilarity of rape jokes; another commented, “Feminism: ‘Because its easy to assume men never have issues.’” Trolls are no fun, and they’re all over this s**t.
I loved the online pushback from Duke junior Diana Ruiz, who replied to comment above with: “Feminism is about much more that ‘assuming men never have issues.’ Perhaps you would be surprised to learn that challenging popular notions of masculinity can absolutely be a part of the way you engage with and interpret feminism.… I need femINISM because it’s a way to challenge and imagine beyond the conditions that make life incredibly painful for anyone ‘in’ an ‘ism.’” Diana made the conversation more productive by providing an explanation for her original statement. To quote David Foster Wallace’s commencement address: “The most dangerous thing about college education… is that it enables [our] tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract arguments inside [our] head[s] instead of simply paying attention to what’s going on right in front of [us].”
If I allow random commenters making gratuitous and ignorant comments to alienate me from the campaign, then exactly what DFW describes above happens. I start to question why feminism is IMPORTANT to me, as an individual, rather than what is happening in America right now. To many women, how their bodies are treated in practice is outside of these discussions of ideology. In Texas, Governor Rick Perry implemented a new law that will result in more than 130,000 women in Texas losing access to cancer screenings, contraception and other forms of basic health care. Last month, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker repealed the 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act, which prevented employer wage discrimination. A bill in Arizona would mandate that any woman seeking her employer-based health insurance to cover contraception must provide a medical rationale (not including family planning) to her boss. Mitt Romney pledges to “get rid of” Planned Parenthood.
Women still make only 77 cents to every dollar men make. As a paper released this March by the National Bureau of Economic Research demonstrates, the emergence of the pill accounted for 10 percent of the narrowing of the wage gap in the 1980s and 31 percent of the narrowing in the 1990s. We’ve now stalled, because the costs of birth control are still prohibitive to low-income women across America. At the point at which 60 percent of women are the primary breadwinners for their families, getting women affordable contraception should be an economic concern to all. If the Supreme Court deems the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional this June, then President Obama’s mandate that employers be required to include no-cost preventive services in their health plans, including contraception, could vanish.
Contraception is an economic issue. Of course, my belief in this objective is influenced by my subscription to feminism. But what if the most productive thing to do would be simply lobbying against (the) political party that practically imposes barriers to economic opportunity?
Of course no single campaign can do everything. But if the definition of the ideology/movement distracts us, then the real political things happening right now might not receive the attention they deserve. As Gayle Rubin concludes in “The Traffic in Women,” we need to change the system through political action.
Do we “need” “feminism,” or is it more effective to just politically mobilize for the materialization of its ideals? November should provide a good litmus test for how students at Duke address this question.
Samantha Lachman is a Trinity junior. This is her final column of the semester.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.