Feminism

I concur with the general sentiment of Will Placek's letter, "Creeping Sharia is bound to choke off our freedoms. " Perhaps Sharia will not choke off all our freedoms, but most definitely our granddaughter's freedoms will be decreased. The more Sharia law, with its religiously prescribed second-class status and accompanying separateness, influences our society, the more future generations of women will gradually lose their hard-won feminist freedoms. This brings me to my question: When it comes to two pieties, worshipped in our modern society - feminism and multiculturalism - which one holds the trump card?

I applaud Maria Santo's  journalistic valor in her article regarding abortion last week.  Her perspicacious treatment of our country's involvement in this sordid business aptly pierces the twisted logic that has rationalized and legalized the killing of 54,000,000 children. I have always wondered how some individuals abhor domestic abuse, blanch at schoolyard bullying, cringe at animal cruelty and wince at terrorist waterboarding while turning a blind eye and deaf ear to wide-spread torturing of the pre-born.

WHEN YOU don't want to write about something as badly as I don't want to write about the Bobbitt case, it's nature's way of telling you to figure out why.Too easy to say that there's nothing more to say. Not good enough to note that the case of the woman who cut off her husband's penis has evoked more bad double entendres than anything in recent memory.No, none of that is why I've avoided the Bobbitts. It's because of feminism. It's because, three decades after the movement for women's equality began, the Bobbitt case is what naysayers truly believe it is all about: cutting it off.But never fear, gentlemen; castration was really not the point of feminism, and we women are too busy eviscerating one another to take you on.Witness an article in Esquire magazine about a group of young women characterized as "do me feminists" because of an agenda heavy on sex when and how they want it, with no guilt, no regrets.

Two items have recently burst onto the media scene: a movie called "The Iron Lady" about one of the greatest women in history - former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher - and a growing European recall of breast implants in danger of exploding. I wonder what the former would say about the latter. Did it ever cross Ms. Thatcher's mind that women's lives could be meaningfully enhanced by surgically strapping gel packs to their chests? How did women get from Margaret Thatcher to this?

In response ro Dana Ely's letter "Multiculturalism trumps feminism when the two clash," I want to stand up and be counted as a 67-years-young resident of Columbia who does not believe that Sharia has a place in the Columbia Association or any other public forum in the United States. Practicing one's faith and beliefs is personal. In this country we recognize women as equal to men and demand to be treated no differently. If someone feels they cannot conform to that standard that came to women after a century of working toward equality, they need to find an activity other than swimming.

Just where is feminism now, in the wake of the many event that have brought women's issues to the fore during the past year? That seems to depend on what you call it. Call it "feminism," and you get shudders and averted eyes. But if you avoid the "f" word and talk instead about equality between the sexes, support seems to be alive and well in the American mainstream. There, belief in the justice of equal pay and equal treatment seems to have taken root in all but the most conservative soil.

A feminist conference seemed the ideal place to catch women where so many stereotypes about them exist: the public bathroom. You've heard the jokes before -- about the endless lines, the gossip, the manic primping, the inability to enter without an entourage. But for many women attending the Feminist Expo 2000, which ended yesterday at the Baltimore Convention Center, there was minimal vanity. They seem to agree that beauty and bathroom regimens are private and should not be held up as a yardstick for how seriously a woman takes feminism or herself.

In the next few days, the historical narrative about the presidential primary race between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton will become set in stone. The contest between a powerful and talented black man and a powerful and talented white woman has already become, in the minds of many, a story about the continuing power of sexism over racism as a barrier to equality. But very little about the candidacy of Hillary Clinton reflected feminism. First of all, to be a modern feminist necessarily means to reject racism.

These are confusing times for women. A best-selling book questions the legitimacy of "date rape." Men are lauded for working outside of the home. Women who do so can lose custody of their children for being too neglectful. Shannon Faulkner might have to submit to a buzz cut to prove she would make a good Citadel cadet. Even after the Tailhook affair, female cadets at West Point are groped by their peers at a football game.Although two Supreme Court Justices are women and the first lady participates in her husband's administration, polls have found that most women are reluctant to be identified as feminists.

IS FEMINISM a lost cause, a dead issue, much ado about nothing?Ask the political pundits, women's rights activists, social scientists, psychologists or your mother. Everyone has a different opinion about the validity of feminism, especially now that conservatism seems to be at critical mass.Lately, I've heard a few conservatives argue that the women's movement is partly -- if not wholly -- to blame for the number of single-parent households in this country, for the loss of children into poverty, for the lack of male role models in the ghettoes.

In response ro Dana Ely's letter "Multiculturalism trumps feminism when the two clash," I want to stand up and be counted as a 67-years-young resident of Columbia who does not believe that Sharia has a place in the Columbia Association or any other public forum in the United States. Practicing one's faith and beliefs is personal. In this country we recognize women as equal to men and demand to be treated no differently. If someone feels they cannot conform to that standard that came to women after a century of working toward equality, they need to find an activity other than swimming.

I concur with the general sentiment of Will Placek's letter, "Creeping Sharia is bound to choke off our freedoms. " Perhaps Sharia will not choke off all our freedoms, but most definitely our granddaughter's freedoms will be decreased. The more Sharia law, with its religiously prescribed second-class status and accompanying separateness, influences our society, the more future generations of women will gradually lose their hard-won feminist freedoms. This brings me to my question: When it comes to two pieties, worshipped in our modern society - feminism and multiculturalism - which one holds the trump card?

In the next few days, the historical narrative about the presidential primary race between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton will become set in stone. The contest between a powerful and talented black man and a powerful and talented white woman has already become, in the minds of many, a story about the continuing power of sexism over racism as a barrier to equality. But very little about the candidacy of Hillary Clinton reflected feminism. First of all, to be a modern feminist necessarily means to reject racism.

LOS ANGELES -- Parents looking for role models for teenage daughters: Finally there is a show for you. Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll, which made its premiere last week on the CW network, may look like just another reality show with attractive, slinkily dressed women preening for the camera in the hope of a shot at stardom. But Pussycat Dolls Present is about female empowerment, the show's producers explained to television writers here in January. "Everything the Pussycat Dolls are is everything that I've developed myself into being," said rap star Lil' Kim, who is a judge on the show and who served a prison sentence for lying to a federal grand jury about a shooting outside a radio station.

MOSCOW -- Vladimir Rakovsky glides around dressed in black with the air of a guru -- albeit a self-appointed one -- as he holds forth before a group of admiring students on the virtues of womanly wiles. This softly lit room on the second floor of a Moscow theater is as appropriate a place as any to stage a master class for women on how to act -- literally -- to get men, and what they want from men. This, according to the name of Rakovsky's class, is known as stervologiya, or the art of being a sterva,which in Russian means, literally, "bitch."

ELIZABETH FOX-GENOVESE, 65 Author on women's issues Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, a historian and author who influenced conservative thought on women's issues, has died in Atlanta. Dr. Fox-Genovese, the Eleonore Raoul Professor of the Humanities at Emory University, died Jan. 2 at Emory University Hospital of complications from surgery in October, the university said in a statement posted on its Web site. A self-described complex conservative, Dr. Fox-Genovese earned her doctorate at Harvard.

Feminist author Naomi Wolf suddenly bolts from her seat in Los Angeles' elegant Four Seasons Hotel cafe and stomps off, her black-booted feet smacking against the carpet."

"Work Matters: Women Talk About Their Jobs and Their Lives," by Sara Ann Friedman. Viking. 284 pages. $24.95 What do women want? cried Freud and despaired. And he never had to deal with modern orthodox feminism, particularly the confused, dithering variety on display in "Work Matters."For a glimpse of the state of the soul of the contemporary women's movement, go no farther, but be warned: it's not a pretty sight, especially for a woman. Does one really need to interview 200 women, for example, to come to this shattering conclusion: "What we do matters to us."

I'm afraid I may have caused a disturbance in Betty Friedan's grave recently. I let ignorance run rampant in my classroom. I left at the break, claiming I couldn't stand listening to it anymore. Although that was true, the larger reason for my departure was the fact that I was ashamed. I was ashamed that I let a 20-something man say America needed a "men's movement" without saying anything in response. A woman in her late 30s said the women's movement had splintered because feminists were too unwilling to concede anything in their fight; I let that pass, too. I sat there while more 20-something men spoke with apparent authority that the movement failed because its leaders had been unable to deny their biological clocks.

Painter Grace Hartigan, whose latest works are on view this month at C. Grimaldis Gallery, traces her artistic roots back to the abstract-expressionist movement of the 1950s, when her contemporaries included such giants as Jackson Pollack, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline and Philip Guston. But Hartigan, 84, has outlived all of them, as well as the heyday of America's first internationally important art movement, and chances are that she will be remembered as much for being a pioneer of all that followed as for her initial contributions as an Ab-Exer.