Feminisms

[faustus]

I've recently been copied into an email correspondence with a writer who claims not to be a feminist. Have you been educated beyond the age of 10? Are you published under a name rather than initials? Do you work other than in a factory, as a teacher, a nurse, a nanny or a mother? Still, her choice, of course. Her life would have been very different without feminism though. I did enjoy that the response to her began Ms---.

And on a related note, an account from a woman who, like Rose Marie in A Very Peculiar Practice, has rejected the patronymic. Curious how such things are now more difficult than they were. I wonder how Peri 6 copes.

Comments

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree it's a can of worms. Assuming we are talking about the same person (whcih we may not be of course), I did find it remarkably odd in that discussing intention he hadn't actually checked to see what she had said on the matter.


Re the last one: oh dear. But not the first or last to get into that rut.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I'm not identifying the writer - in fact I probably should have said person or woman because the specifics aren't what matter. (And I actually like her as a person even if she does infuriate me on occasion.) Just a constellation of thoughts around issues of female (and other) identity.

Intention in itself is a can of worms. Public pronouncements are worth taking into account - but my experience of working with Philip K. Dick's fiction is that I could often find a quotation from him to support the opposite position. Sometimes an attitude is not apparent to a speaker. ("I'm no racist/amti-semite/homophobe but ...") Ideology blinds us. Still, I haven't read the article that sparked the exchange.


Not the first, sadly not the last. From two meetings she strikes me as a trainwreck waiting to happen, but that a gut reaction and probably prejudiced as a result. There's just something about women and pints of Stella that often doesn't end well. Of course, it need not end wel with men either.