F for facile?

[slemslempike]

I read the f-word, which is a UK based feminist blog. I've always found it interesting, and even when I don't agree with their views, they're usually thought provoking, and well-argued. Today I found this on it. It's a blog post by Abby O'Reilly, who has taken issue with Zoe Williams' writing about her pregnancy. It's a pretty nasty piece of writing, I think - seeming to place "breeder" (delightful!) and "thinker" as opposite positions, and asserting that no-one except Williams and possibly other pregnant women could possibly be interested in what she has to say. So I wrote this as a response.



...is this some sort of joke that I'm not getting? Zoe Williams has always written about her own experience, so what your columnist seems to be complaining about is that Williams' experience no longer reflects her own. More than a little ironic, given that O'Reilly's post ends with a plea to embrace views that are inconsistent with one's own.

As a childless woman who fervently intends to stay that way, I hope I am not so self-centered that I can't find people's differing experiences interesting. It is untrue that only women who are or want to be pregnant will be interested in her writing about baby books. Not to mention decidedly anti-feminist - following the misogynist work of claiming that women's experiences, and particularly reproductive activity, is intrinsically dull and boring to 'normal' people. How retro. Her views on mothers continue "She has ... has carved a reputation for herself in the journalistic world for being quite the thinker...so why did she so readily endorse her reduction to that of breeder?" Since when are the categories of thinker and breeder antithetical?

Her analysis of Williams' comments on abortion was offensivly off-mark. I don't think that the sentence O'Reilly quotes in any way demonstrates a dismissal of forced abortion, and I'm at a loss to work out how anyone could come to that conclusion. "Leagues of women" is hardly equivalent to all, and to decide that this is a dangerous sweeping generalisation is to seem entirely ignorant of the context in which Williams is writing, in which the right to choose (which O'Reilly herself notes is fragile) is assailed with threat of removal "for women's own good".

The shoes analogy isn't just "trivial", it plain doesn't work. Williams' isn't saying that women don't ever consider what might have been, she's saying that such consideration isn't necessarily psychologically damaging. If O'Reilly must post such ill-thought out work, is it too much to ask that it at least be less excruciatingly written?

Comments

[hypatia.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I'm with you entirely. I read that with some irritation and wondered if I'd gone back in time.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

It's just so jarring to read, the idea that Williams is letting the side down by writing about her own experiences, as if women's lives weren't the central part of feminism, and as if this exact type of writing wasn't suppressed by "the patriarchy" in the exact way that O'Reilly's doing here. I now wonder if I should have put in the bit about it being badly written (though I toned it down a lot before I sent it), but it really is. And I think I genuinely wouldn't have minded had she appeared to have thought it through at all.

[sierra-le-oli.livejournal.com]

You've motivated me to write my own (shorter and not as good *g*) mail, thank you. I was so ticked off when I read that article.

I'm thinking that if O'Reilly had thought it through, she wouldn't have written such an article, but maybe that's my own bias. :-) But I didn't mind the lack of thinking as much as I minded how mean-spirited and hypocritical that article was, IYSWIM.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I've read her email in response to me, and unfortunately sees it mostly as a personal attack on her rather than her blog post (and I do agree with her that the last part could have been left out). I was, however, responding to the attitudes she espouses in the post, but I suppose that's difficult to separate from personal attack. I'd be interested to hear if you get a response from her as well. Hopefully I'll have time later today to reply to her and try to explain this, as well as argue some more over her points.

[sierra-le-oli.livejournal.com]

That is unfortunate. Perhaps she's getting more disapproving mails and that is putting her on the defensive. I'm not expecting a response as my mail was pretty short and not a good analysis like yours was, but I will let you know if I do.

You could have left out the part about the poor writing I suppose, but I thought it was a valid remark.

[sierra-le-oli.livejournal.com]

She sent me a long, thoughtful mail, but it'll be tomorrow before I have time to write a proper reply to her.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

I don't like the tone of the O'Reilly piece but I have to say I got bored long ago with ZW rabbiting on about her pregnancy as if her personal experience were somehow universally relevant. I think that is a mistake many metropolitan journos make, whatever specific experience they may be writing about.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I guess I've never seen Zoe Williams as a universal journalist, more as writing a column about her life, sometimes tying it into a wider context, sometimes not. It is one of the things the Guardian are particularly bad about though, London-centric as they are.

[netgirl-y2k.livejournal.com]

I haven't found that Zoe Williams being pregnant and me not has stopped me enjoying her writing any more than her being a Guardian columist and me not.

Good on you for having a well argued response.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

It is quite rare I actually respond to anything, so I'm feeling quietly smug just for having emailed, even if it's not the best thing evah.

Maybe it's just that I like Zoe Williams. I do though.

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

Hurrah for you for having written a response, not just got quietly pissed off about it. You rock. AND it was a greatly written rebuttal.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Thank you. But I'm nervous now, because the woman who wrote the piece has emailed me back about it, and I am too scared to read it, so I'm just ignoring it for the moment.

[chiasmata]

Hurrah you - a very well-written response to what is a rather unpleasant and not particularly well-done piece of writing. There are some enormous holes in her arguments, and that shoes analogy is just plain offensive.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I thought the thing I submitted was just for comments, and then they pick some and publish them next month, but now I have an email from O'Reilly herself, which I will read as soon as I have recovered from my dream in which I entirely forgot to teach one of my seminars, and the other one wnet HORRENDOUSLY.