the most incendiary article I've read in ages

So, you wanna piss me off first thing in the morning, do you? Be my alarm clock-- that'll sure do the trick. Other than that, you can give me this article to read.

This really is the first time that an article about language and (not-)feminism has evoked such unmitigated ire from me in quite a while. In said article, David Gelernter rails against the new-ish convention of using gender-neutral terms in various avenues of writing in the English language, blames feminists for the inconvenience of it all, and bemoans the death of the English language as a whole (disregarding the inclusive, mutative, organic quality inherent to English, of course). His perspective has all the nuanced revelation of a pair of wooden clogs upside the head. And he repeated shows his ass like the ignorant yokel he clearly is. (Please forgive me the personal attacks on the man! Like I said, the article has left me fuming.)

His argument against the inculturation of students to the use of terms like "he or she" as opposed to just "he" or "firefighter" as opposed to "fireman" is that the words "mean exactly the same thing" and are more economic in terms of style. I would agree that "he or she" is unwieldy. Having spent a number of my years trying to be a poet and, then, having spent subsequent years in a glorified editorial job, I do not sneeze at the yearning for a well-employed economy of language. Really, packing a lotta meaning into a small space is a grand project. But at the expense of alienating a target audience? Gelernter goes on to cite a bunch of really outdated sources that say "he" is gender-neutral and functions as inclusively as "he or she." And that's just bullshit. "He" is NOT gender-neutral and it never was. It is a pronoun designating a MALE antecedent. It just is. There's no way around that. The fact that it was acceptable to use "he" to mean people of both genders 50 years ago only points to the fact that writers-- and people in general-- were less sensitive to their female audiences. That's ALL that means-- it does not make it OK that women were commonly excluded from most discourses. Nor does it make it bad that journalistic and academic writings of all stripes are NOW attempting to be sensitive to those female audiences.

And the same goes for terms like "firefighter" and "fireman." "Fireman" has the word "man" right in there. It is gender-specific. I would also argue here that "firefighter" is a more accurate term anyway. A firefighter fights fires. An extremely literal reading of "fireman" could interpret the word to mean "arsonist." (Yes, I know that's ridiculous, but I'm making a point about semiotics here.)

And then I came to this paragraph:

The fixed idea forced by language rapists upon a whole generation of students, that "he" can refer only to a male, is (in short) wrong. It is applied with nonsensical inconsistency, too. The same feminist warriors who would never write "he" where "he or she" will do would also never write "the author or authoress" where "the author" will do. They hate such words as actress and waitress; in these cases they insist that the masculine form be used for men and women. You would never find my feminist colleagues writing a phrase such as, "When an Anglican priest or priestess mounts the pulpit ... " You will find them writing, "When an Anglican priest mounts the pulpit, he or she is about to address the congregation." Logic has never been a strong suit among the commissar-intellectuals who have bossed American culture since the 1970s. True, "he" sounds explicitly masculine in a way "priest" doesn't, to those who are just learning the language. Children also find it odd that "enough" should be spelled that way, that New York should be at the same latitude as Spain, that 7 squared is 49, and so on. Education was invented to set people straight on all these fine points.

Now, I'm going to try to parse apart all the things I find wrong with these sentiments. First of all, the difference between "author" and "authoress" (or "priest" and "priestess") and "fireman" and "firefighter" are not the same at ALL. It makes perfect sense that a "feminist" (quotation marks here because I'm gonna take Gelernter's notion of feminism to task here in a minute) writer might prefer a term like "author" over a term like "fireman." "Author" is INHERENTLY gender-neutral from the get-go. As I've said, "fireman" has the word "man" in it. That's a big difference. And as far as the priest vs. priestess thing, well, that's actually a matter of accuracy. Episcopalian churches have priests. Their female clergy are not called "priestesses." They are priests. A Wiccan organization has priests and priestesses, but if a writer is referring to a member of the Christian clergy, it would be WRONG to refer to a female priest as a priestess. So, that argument is just plain ol' stooooopid.

Now, let's talk about this phrase "language rapists." Oh. My. God. How is it possible to NOT be offended by that idea? To use a term denoting violent sexual assault (one that is far easier to perpetrate upon female anatomy than it is upon male, no less) to describe the natural evolutionary processes of our language is so repugnant that I'm considering tracking down this Gelernter dude and giving him a piece of my pretty l'il language-rapist's hairbrush handle! Furthermore, has anyone noticed how he's positing an abstract concept, namely the English language, as a female entity? And a disempowered, pathetic female entity at that! It's "the mother tongue." "She" is a rape victim. "She" is a damsel in need of defending. Ugh. VOMIT! It's an old trope and a tired one. It's about as distasteful as the anthropomorphizing of sperm cells by calling them "The L'il Swimmers" or "The Happy Soldiers." For a guy so concerned with language, Gelernter sure as hell seems unaware of the resonances of his own word choice.

I recall once having a conversation with a woman (of European descent) from South Africa. She was a lay-person with no particular emotional investment in the English language. I was deeply ensconced in my Creative Writing graduate program at the time. She was lamenting Americans' deplorable usage, claiming that ONLY the Queen's English was a viable conduit for verbal and written communication. Now, I speak fairly well. I enjoy dalliances into assorted vernaculars, but, for the most part, I speak a lot like I write-- though, probably, with fewer convulutedly structured sentences. In other words, I hold my own with the Queeniest (ha!) of English speakers. And so, employing only the properest of dictions, I attempted to point out to her that excluding assorted English dictions that might seem more vernacular or might show evidence of non-white, non-European cultural heritage from the auspices of Proper English was a deeply, deeply racist notion. She really wasn't hearing me and, as I foresaw that it would be a waste of my breath and energy to argue with her, I let it go, but my hackles were surely raised. My point in relaying this anecdote here is just to draw the comparison-- by Gelernter's argument, the English language could only be considered to contribute to the inherent sexism in the cultural systems of all English speakers, much in the way my South African friend was unwittingly arguing for a continuation of a racist and exclusionary version of our language. But the thing is, those of us who believe enough in the structural integrity of language can see that it will withstand marauders of all genders, creeds and colors. In fact, such marauders can only enliven the language, keep it new and enrich it with added meanings and nuances. We're not rapists. We're gift-bearing new choristers! Please do not shun us with your reactionary, ill-informed desires to protect the old English fortress. After all, the best way to kill a language is to refuse to let it grow and change and encompass more and more and more opportunities to create meanings through specificity.

And now comes the time in this post, as with many posts before, at which I feel the need to take on the scapegoating of feminists. The other night, while on video-chat with my brother and sister-in-law in Tucson, some book or other with the word "feminism" in the title came into the conversation. Some former student of my brother's had apparently contributed to this book and my sister-in-law said she was looking forward to reading it. My brother, not a neanderthal by any means, said, "Oh, not me! I don't want to read anything about feminism!" I'm sure I looked a little surprised. I'm always a little surprised when people who are close to me espouse seemingly close-minded sentiments. He then said something about how there was just too big a stigma surrounding the notion of feminism. At that, I'm sure I looked positively shocked. Now, I know I exist in something of a very pro-feminist bubble. I'm constantly searching for assorted writings written from a feminist perspective. And because feminism is field of particular interest to me, the idea that some folks-- my own brother even-- think there is still a stigma against feminism seems really quite dated and a little outlandish. I mean, the wave of the anti-feminist backlash crested and crashed, oh, I dunno, about 12-15 years ago! Hasn't everyone heard that it's cool to be a feminist again? OK, yeah, fine, I know that must be a little naive.

In any case, my brother's clearly not alone. David Gelernter hasn't heard either. And as a result, Mr. Gelernter seems to be suffering from a particularly paralyzing Vagina-Monster-Phobia (add THAT one to your list, Jen!). In this article, feminists use "heavy artillery" and are "warriors." Besides being "language rapists," we are also clearly dismissed for being contrarians and generally stupid. We "drive 80-ton 16-wheelers into the nimble sports-car of English style." If that isn't an image that posits the old-school lesbian bull-dyke against the playboy dandy, I don't know what is! (However, I like the odds of the bull-dyke 16-wheeler in that match quite a lot!) Regardless, there's no way one could miss the distinct reek of fear of that which is female wafting throughout this article.

And beyond that, that fear is based on a pretty egregious misconception about what it means to be a feminist in this day and age. I've posted long and hard (ha!) about how a reasonable, rational third-wave feminist falls into neither the category of the it's-a-man's-world-after-all-and-I-am-merely-a-victim-of-all-man-sourced-injustices-because-I-like-being-a-girl sort of girl nor the category of I'm-just-as-good-as-a-man-and-will-behave-like-one-to-prove-it sort of girl. Having been minimally victimized by men, I have little reason to dislike them. And while I recognize a more systemic version of sexism, I'm hardly out to disembowel and cause to implode any number of social structures (language included) just because they show symptoms of that systemic sexism. Not that I could if I wanted to. I merely hope to draw attention to said symptoms and not blindly accept them. In due course, perhaps I can contribute, in some small way, to the healing of the symptoms. And I'm not ashamed that I identify as a feminist. However, I do resent being lumped in, wholesale, with a bunch of women from previous generations who espoused more unilateral feminist views. I mean, we needed these women-- those feisty broads out there on the vanguard-- and we wouldn't be where we are now without their work in the last century, but their perspectives are no longer so efficacious, especially for those of us who would not only like to contribute to the breadth of human society but would like to engage in hetero interpersonal relationships. It behoves us to examine where their blind spots were as much as it behoves us to examine the where blind spots of whackjob reactionaries like Gelernter are. But Gelernter's mistake is that he assumes all us feminist chicks have the same blind spots. And we don't. With any luck at all, though, ours are slightly more manageable than his, as clearly, he's peeking at us through a fucking pinhole!

If they're the future, Fourth-Wavers can eat me!

Several times in recent posts, I've invoked the term "third-wave feminism," and then committed one of the cardinal sins of critical writing--I didn't stop to define my terminology. So, here's what Wikipedia has to say about Third-wavers. This definition is somewhat more academic and historical than the one that has somewhat congealed in my head. This line ("Third wave feminism seeks to challenge any universal definition of femininity.") comes closest to what I mean when I use the term. But more specifically, inherent in the idea is that a woman should have to concede neither her desires to act and appear outwardly feminine and sexual, or not, nor her desires to be treated equitably in the workplace/classroom/mechanic's station/bank account/board room in order to gain anyone's respect and be free from harassment. In other words, my basic conception of third-wave feminism is that I don't want to have to behave like a man (i.e., live up to a standard of maleness) in order to achieve whatever the goals I set for my life might be. Obviously, the concept is inclusive of much more than this--honoring the experiences of minority women who, not only have to contend with a male standard, but also a white standard, the attempts to reclaim some dirty words (I would argue, however, that we have been less successful than the queers on this front, as "queer" is now a generally acceptable term in polite company, but "cunt" (which etymologically, and ironically, means "sacred cave" (thank you, Jen!)) is not), widespread global activism, etc., etc., etc. But when I use it, I mean to describe women who want to be simultaneously taken seriously as functioning contributors to the culture and taken seriously as sexual beings (not objects-- we'd like to maintain our agency, thank you! Though, it seems, we're still working out the kinks in our sometimes contentious relationship with that "male gaze" business) in whatever way we choose to express our sexuality.

In contrast to this concept, of course, is the second-wave. And while the second-wave laid much of the necessary groundwork for my generation of girl-power-proponents, the problem with their ideology can be easily summarized within the symbol of The Power Suit. This unfortunate item of apparel hit its stride somewhere in the 80s, I guess. Its notable characteristics include massive shoulder pads, wide, boxy jacket style and a complete obfuscation of the female form shivering beneath it. As a free gift with purchase, buyers of power suits received a cold and heartless persona that was supposed to be "manly" (men, if you aren't every bit as offended by that set of assumptions as I am, I'm inclined to feel a little ashamed of you). However, included in the price of the suit was the woman's ownership of her own sexual place in the world. Buy the suit, become an asexual automaton. Quite a deal! Off course, all this hearkens back to my post in which I whined about being chided for my own clothing choices at every job I've ever had. Not every woman wants to be as outwardly feminine as I do, but the ideas that a)I won't be taken seriously as a professional if I am outwardly feminine and b)I am somehow threatening to men? other women? the very foundations of American corporate culture? if I refuse to conceal my sexual persona is an intensely frustrating holdover from second-wave thinking. Hence, I've lit my third-wave torch and will wave it frantically for as long as I can.

And then along comes Wendy Shalit, proclaiming the emergence of the Fourth Wave. First she wrote A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue and now she's just released Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It's Not Bad to Be Good. To be fair, I don't have much of an intention to read either one of these books. But I did enjoy this pointed review of the latter book. As Deborah Siegel notes in this article, Shalit tries to blame permissive baby-boomer parents for the oversexualization of women of my generation and younger. I really don't want to discuss five-year-olds who dress up like my girl Britney--that stuff doesn't fit too well into my discussion here. But honestly, I think Shalit's idea is hilarious. I know my parents never really set arbitrary rules for me, and whatever consequences I incurred from assorted teenage missteps were real-world consequences, rather than the I-told-you-not-to-do-that-but-you-did-anyway-and-now-you're-grounded variety of punishment. My parents were not big on the "Because I said so/because I'm the parent and you are the hierarchically disadvantaged child" variety of discipline. Given, I got in trouble very rarely. I was not rebellious in any of the normal ways and so, I was probably difficult to punish. Seeing as I spent virtually EVERY weekend of my adolescence alone in my room reading, grounding me would hardly have carried the penal weight that it would have for most kids.

So what were they to do when I acted like a smartass? Well, more often than not, my mom would laugh and applaud my spunk. It's not like they were gonna force me to, I dunno, attend football games with hordes of other teenagers-- which would have been a truly miserable experience for me. But I do recall a conversation with my father (he denies recollection of this event), when I was about 15, in which he told me that, in this day and age, when there is so little social stigma against premarital sex, it was absolutely ridiculous for a person to wait until they've committed to a marriage before they discover whether or not they're sexually compatible with their partner of choice. The stereotypical protective-of-his-only-daughter dad, Fred is not-- in any way, shape, or form! In later years, his lack of protectiveness has led him to giving my phone number out to a stalker, but that's another story for another post. Suffice it to say, having a dad who so believes that his daughter is fully capable of taking care of herself is mostly really great-- and great for my self-esteem-- but every once in a while, it would be nice to have a firewall in place to guard against the crazies.

But were my parents permissive? I don't know. I didn't really get into enough trouble to test them. Was their permissiveness the reason that I've gone to some lengths to sexualize myself? In some ways, perhaps-- but only because they respected me and knew that, from a very young age, I have tended to make decisions based on what I actual want, as opposed to in opposition to arbitrary rules. And for the most part, I'm sculpted my sexual persona into the exact shape I find most suiting to me. Thank you, Mom and Fred, for granting me the freedom to make my own decisions! And for respecting the fact that I'm neither an idiot nor defenseless, such that I might need excessive sheltering.

Now, this is not to say that arbitrary rules don't piss me off. They do, but I'd rather deconstruct them and understand them than to haphazardly rebel against them. So, did my baby-boomer parents undermine my self-esteem by not issuing forth an edict that I was never, never, never allowed to have sex? Um. No. If you've met me, you can probably determine that this is far from the case. The fact that owning my sexuality is empowering for me pretty much shits all over Shalit's notion that being sexual equals being insecure.

And what a cockamamie idea it is! Shalit's real underlying assumption here-- the one I find so problematic-- is the one that insists women always use sex as a commodity, ripe for trading. In Shalit's world order, sex is what women give in exchange for diamonds, houses, cars, babies, security/stability (financial? emotional?), monogamy, external approbation (love of another), intimacy (in opposition to solitude), jobs, raises, cold hard cash. I mean, if women were to view sex as a satisfactory and appealing end unto itself, rather than trying to employ it in some misguided bartering system, why would being sexual make us feel bad about ourselves? If we give sex and expect any one or all of the things from my list above, and don't receive them, well, yeah, that feels lousy. If we give sex and expect, um, sex in return, well? Then we've made a pretty good deal, haven't we? In effect, Shalit is calling us all whores when she insists that casual sex leads to demoralization-- because, really, demoralization only arises when one party feels his/her end of the deal wasn't upheld, and that only happens when something expected was not granted. So, Shalit's "return to modesty" really means "own your inner prostitute." Uh, thanks, Wendy.

I'm also quite perturbed at Shalit's notion that sexual abstinence equates with goodness. This, of course, pisses me off because, here we are, right back at moralizing about sex. People who have sex are not bad. People who kill, steal, manipulate, lie, eat babies, poke their dogs in the eyes, drive Hummers, eat nothing but fast food, lie to the American public about the existence of nuclear devices are bad. Ah, crap. Even I can't say that with any conviction. People who do those things engage in immoral acts, in my opinion. I do not think they are correlatively bad people. But my point is, these are ACTUAL immoral acts. Fucking someone hurts no one, burns calories, hopefully ends in orgasms for both, and is fun. Where's the immorality there? Of course, I'm already granting the fact that this illustrative fuck is occurring without anyone expecting something more tangible than said orgasm in return. If one party promises something and reneges after the fuck, well, then, yes, a small morally questionable event has occurred. But the sex itself? Why is it that a sexually active girl with a bullet-proof sense of honesty and integrity still cannot be a good girl, by Shalit's definition? Because she presupposes that all women use sex as a commodity, that's why! And using sex as a commodity is, in my world order and in Shalit's, immoral. So. Now, I know this seems obvious but, um...girls, why don't we just stop using sex as a commodity? Hey, problem solved! No more moralizing about sex, right? Well, no...

Shalit, instead, opts for coining the term "Fourth-Wave Feminist" to denote she who is a prude-- um, I mean, she who "feels oppressed by how public sexuality is." Siegel cites, in a positive light, Shalit's congratulatory description of girls who organized a "girlcott" of some silly Abercrombie t-shirts. (The example given is one that reads "Who needs brains when you have these?") And I think this kinda willingness to get offended over something so goofy is, again, distinctly disempowering. I personally find shirts like that to be hysterically funny. If one so small-breasted and verbally bombastic as myself were to wear such a shirt, I would think that the ironic re-appropriation of the message would be worth its weight in feministic gold! The thin-skinned-ness of the sort of activism Shalit is applauding is so counter-productive and encourages girls to seek out ways in which the culture at large wants to victimize them and then camp out in that place. Beyond that, one of the really brilliant tactics Wikipedia credits third-wavers for instituting was that very re-appropriation of the language that had previously oppressed us. Has Shalit missed all the lessons of the post-modern era? Are we now so ensconced in the Post-Ironic Age that we can no longer see how there is power to be in had in turning dirty words on their heads and claiming them as our own?

Please tell me that, if we are indeed at the tail end of the third wave, there are still enough of us who are still in our child-bearing years that we may still produce enough daughters willing to embrace and defend the hard-fought sexual liberation that their, and our, mothers have tried to establish for us. Shalit wants to incite a whole new war-between-the-generations here, and I hope she doesn't. Solidarity between the generations will doubtlessly be more profitable. What good will it do if a bunch of little uptight, prudish brats turn their noses up at the work to which their earthy mothers have dedicated their lives?

And so, in a feeble attempt to keep the third-wave flag waving, I title this post with a crude cunnilingual reference and declare Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears to be among the most compelling cultural icons of our day. I'd hate to see Shalit and her coterie of young regressive thinkers made much headway towards tamping down the joyful, sexually satisfied sluts, bitches and hos of my generation.

And no, I still haven't read her damn book. Nor do I want to. It's a good thing I'm not a real journalist, eh?