Two weeks ago, I was accused of being a feminist.
I received the insult in response to a column I had written (“Don’t rape,” Feb. 25) in which I argued that our college campuses—and culture in general— needed to send a clearer message about sexual consent. I also contended that rape is, in fact, bad.
I got slammed in the comments section. “The only rape case I know of at Brown destroyed the life of a male due to a grossly unfair process (that doesn’t even respect U.S. law) and has been set up by feminists like Cara Newlon,” wrote the anonymous commentator. “It has been frequently published that the scientists who came up with the statistic 1/4 of women get assaulted and 1/5 get raped were feminists in the 80s, who made up the numbers.”
I had been labeled a devious feminazi. This hadn’t happened to me before. It was kind of exhilarating.
And it underscored a deeper part of American culture: Feminism can be a dirty word.
Of course, this isn’t true for everybody. On Brown’s campus, we have active and vocal feminist groups, loud and proud on a quest for equality. Yet denunciations of feminism seem to be de rigueur — even by prominent, influential females:
“I’m not a feminist — I hail men, I love men,” Lady Gaga said in an interview. “I celebrate American male culture and beer and bars and muscle cars.”
Taylor Swift also rejected feminism in a 2012 interview, stating: “I don’t really think about things as guys versus girls. I never have. I was raised by parents who brought me up to think if you work as hard as guys, you can go far in life.”
My anonymous commentator, Lady Gaga and T-Swizzle have a certain view of feminism. They seem to operate under the assumption that feminists are a horde of angry women, working in seamless Groupthink, waving burning bras around their heads like some sort of Victoria’s Secret medieval mace. Feminism means: Women = good, Men = bad probable rapists. Some detractors believe gender inequity no longer exists.
This view on feminism is problematic. For one, feminists have rarely agreed on anything. When the Equal Rights Amendment was first introduced to Congress in 1923, many female reformers who had previously fought for suffrage opposed it, fearing it would eliminate women’s protective working legislation. Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem had a notorious rivalry, culminating in Friedan’s refusal to shake Steinem’s hand.
Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook, recently published “Lean In” — a feminist manifesto which encourages women to gain confidence, assert themselves in the workplace and put their personal lives second. Unsurprisingly, Sandburg has faced massive backlash from proclaimed feminists and non-feminists alike, critiquing her perceived dismissal of the concerns of working mothers.
The divisions remain: Should women focus more on work or children? Can there be a balance? Should we focus on getting more women in math and science? Are porn and stripping demeaning or empowering? Do we need an Equal Rights Amendment?
The prior critique of feminism also stems from the idea that gender inequity is defunct. As Taylor Swift aptly put it, girls who “work as hard as guys” should succeed as much as their male counterparts. Yet they don’t.
In 2012, the United States ranked 22nd on the Global Gender Gap Index, which measures economic and educational gender discrepancies. While more women attend college than men, they earn less than men — according to American Association of University Women studies, women’s wages are 7 percent smaller than men’s in the same occupation.
More striking is the leadership gap: Women constitute only 17 percent of the House of Representatives and the Senate. In Feb. 2012, the House formed a panel of all-male witnesses to discuss contraception. In the words of Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.: “Where are all the women?”
Critics almost universally panned Seth MacFarlane after his uncomfortable hosting of the Oscars, featuring a ditty titled “We Saw Your Boobs.” It served to exemplify the inequities within Hollywood, where women constitute only 9 percent of directors, 15 percent of writers and 25 percent of producers.
Feminism is not about men versus women or about vilifying men. It’s about advancing society to a point where a woman, all other things equal, can make the same amount of money or get the same leadership position. It’s about living free from the fear of sexual assault and eliminating the double standards that permeate our culture.
I received intense backlash when I wrote a column about sexual assault. A week later, Zerlina Maxwell — feminist, commentator and rape survivor — went on Sean Hannity’s show and argued against arming women to prevent rape. “The reality is that we need to be changing how we train and teach young men,” Maxwell said. “We need to teach them to see women as human beings and respect their bodily autonomy. We need to teach them about consent and to hold themselves accountable.”
Hannity brushed her off, stating that “evil exists in the world,” simplifying the myriad of sexual assault situations to attacks by strangers. In reality, most sexual assaults are perpetrated by people the victim knew and perhaps trusted — a friend, a boyfriend. Maxwell subsequently received rape and death threats.
Maybe it’s my “woman’s innate inability to never ever let anything go,” as MacFarlane would say. But shame and social opprobrium are powerful tools. Backlash to feminism is just an attempt to bully women into silence on uncomfortable subjects — and it’s succeeding.
Sexist behavior deserves to be reviled and feminism celebrated.
Cara Newlon ’14.5 is happy to talk at cara_newlon@brown.edu. Be warned: She’s a feminist.
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