![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Bloody hell.
Sep. 7th, 2007 03:36 pmAnne Enright says " The statistics on how often mothers choose not to breastfeed girl babies are shocking." I had no idea that there was a difference - I don't think it occured to me that there might be at all. Does anyone know what the statistics are? Is it a culture-specific thing, or fairly widespread?
Rosalind Coward says "the issue of date rape arrived in Britain, as American trends inevitably do". Yes, date rape is almost as annoying as Barbie. She then goes on to ask: “The question is whether in such situations we can really equate unwanted penetration with rape – penetration against our will.” She paints a nostalgic view of the time when a man could force a woman to have sex, and the woman would just chalk it up to experience. Ah, happy days. This is from her 1999 book Sacred Cows, which is subtitled "Is Feminism Relevant to the new Millennium?" - unsurprisingly, she thinks not. And I can see why she thinks that, because apparently she hasn't ever considered that feminism might be anything more than the seventies' media stereotype.
One of the most offensive things she does (and as you can see, there's no shortage) is appropriate the term "womanism" for her own ends: "What I have called 'womanism', a sort of popularised version of feminism which acclaims everything women do and disparages men. Womanism is feminism's vulgate." I think she thinks she's invented the term, which would come as quite a surprise to many African-American womanists/feminists such as Alice Walker. That Coward could blithely ignore the history of womanism as a term and a movement and use it to describe a "vulgate", a lesser, dumbed down version of the "proper", (white) feminism is disgusting. Surely, surely at some point in the publication someone must have said "oh, that's actually already a term, and it doesn't mean anything like that?"
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at the awfulness of the book, as she writes approvingly of both Melanie Phillips and Katie Roiphe, and has a quote from Fay Weldon on the cover. Still, she is providing me with material that draws together many of the strands of my work.
Rosalind Coward says "the issue of date rape arrived in Britain, as American trends inevitably do". Yes, date rape is almost as annoying as Barbie. She then goes on to ask: “The question is whether in such situations we can really equate unwanted penetration with rape – penetration against our will.” She paints a nostalgic view of the time when a man could force a woman to have sex, and the woman would just chalk it up to experience. Ah, happy days. This is from her 1999 book Sacred Cows, which is subtitled "Is Feminism Relevant to the new Millennium?" - unsurprisingly, she thinks not. And I can see why she thinks that, because apparently she hasn't ever considered that feminism might be anything more than the seventies' media stereotype.
One of the most offensive things she does (and as you can see, there's no shortage) is appropriate the term "womanism" for her own ends: "What I have called 'womanism', a sort of popularised version of feminism which acclaims everything women do and disparages men. Womanism is feminism's vulgate." I think she thinks she's invented the term, which would come as quite a surprise to many African-American womanists/feminists such as Alice Walker. That Coward could blithely ignore the history of womanism as a term and a movement and use it to describe a "vulgate", a lesser, dumbed down version of the "proper", (white) feminism is disgusting. Surely, surely at some point in the publication someone must have said "oh, that's actually already a term, and it doesn't mean anything like that?"
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at the awfulness of the book, as she writes approvingly of both Melanie Phillips and Katie Roiphe, and has a quote from Fay Weldon on the cover. Still, she is providing me with material that draws together many of the strands of my work.
