"A certain kind of feminism, or perhaps I should say a certain kind of feminist naiveté" ... Barbara "Separate Spheres" Ehrenreich employs Germaine Greer's time-worn schtick of presenting her private angst as a change in the Zeitgeist. (Registration required).
Posted by Alan Allport at May 18, 2004 05:59 PMThat phrase isn't particularly Barbara Ehrenreich's middle name. Why attach it to her?
As for "naivete," Ehrenreich isn't confessing disillusionment: she's moving on from her own sense of shock to make the more detached point that Abu Ghraib is the last straw for an outmoded view of female essentialism. That doesn't mean she was ever an essentialist herself.
Far from projecting her own current thought process onto the debate, Ehrenreich is actually striking a posture of disillusionment for rhetorical effect.
Ehrenreich has been devoting considerable attention for some time to the exploitation of women by other women through the international nanny trade. In the article I've just cited, which is an exchange with Caitlin Flanagan on Slate, she writes in part:
You do a sneaky or perhaps unconscious bit of elision in your article, Caitlin: You confuse feminism, which is a political movement, with the movement of (upper-middle-class) women into the workforce.Everyone has known the difference for a long time between women acquiring power and women acting honorably. Certainly Barbara Ehrenreich does.
I'm intrigued, incidentally, that when Orwell does this sort of thing, he's seen as judiciously spicing a logical analysis with subjective experience, but when Ehrenreich does the same, she's seen as inappropriately letting personal emotion interfere with logical analysis. Might this have to do with a cultural tendency to prejudge women as emotional?
As for Private England,
I had been gathering up some things to say about her for a while. The headers "My Own Private..." and "There Will Always Be An..." will have to go unused now. Just as well.
I think what everyone, including Ehrenreich, is missing is that although these photos were staged in order to demoralize Iraqis, they really tell us what a group of culturally blinkered Americans considered to be demoralizing. It shows a picture of what American torturers consider to be sexually frightening, and the answer is: homosexuality and butch women.
On seeing that photo of Private England with the cigarette and the hooded row of men, the first thing I thought of of was the embarrassingly corny Evil Feminist Lesbian Torturer in C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength. In this deservedly lesser-known sci-fi novel, a vaguely scientific entity -- the N.I.C.E. Corporation -- is shown first to admire secularism and "objectivity," and later turns out to be in literal league with the Devil. Lewis, who had not a scintilla of irony in his cranium, makes the Evil Lesbian's chosen implement of torture a cigar, which she first lights and smokes with unnaturally masculine relish. I'm nearly sure that one Abu Ghraib picture was composed with the cigarette as an important symbolic element. (Incidentally, I think I'm remembering a similar cigarette in one of the photos at the end of Joe Eszterhas' "Music Box." Maybe not. They go by quickly in the film.)
Private England obviously went along with those poses, & she likely did commit unforgivable cruelties herself, but I don't think she invented those poses. Sorry, but that dominant-defeminized-female stuff telegraphs Fear Of Women -- even specifically Fear Of Feminism -- in a way that seems most likely to have occurred to a gender-paranoid American man.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at May 18, 2004 10:25 PMA better way of putting that last point: the photos were an anti-feminist pageant. They represented an American male fear-fantasy of "women in control."
OK, only Jean Genet could do justice to this stuff. I can't.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at May 18, 2004 10:29 PMThat phrase isn't particularly Barbara Ehrenreich's middle name. Why attach it to her?
Editorial laziness on my part, mostly. Plus, I wanted to underline the fact that a statement like: "Secretly, I hoped that the presence of women would over time change the military, making it more respectful of other people and cultures, more capable of genuine peacekeeping" is straight out of the Victorian world of gendered moral universes.
If the "I'm shocked - shocked" tone is a device, it's due for retirement in any case.
Far from projecting her own current thought process onto the debate, Ehrenreich is actually striking a posture of disillusionment for rhetorical effect.
Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of the issue, it's a weakly constructed article. Lots of "we thought" and "we've now learned"'s when "I thought" and "I've learned" would be a lot more apposite (and honest). Ehrenreich says that "I'm not the only one wrestling with that assumption today", and props this up with ... one quote from another columnist. C'mon, even the hack rule of thumb is that three examples make a trend. Whatever one may think of her overall argument, this is poor journalism.
I'm intrigued, incidentally, that when Orwell does this sort of thing, he's seen as judiciously spicing a logical analysis with subjective experience, but when Ehrenreich does the same, she's seen as inappropriately letting personal emotion interfere with logical analysis. Might this have to do with a cultural tendency to prejudge women as emotional?
Without wishing to play the St. George card, I think an important distinction is that Orwell rarely presented his own views as anything other than his own. Even in state-of-the-nation pieces like the Partisan Review letters, there was rarely any use of the first person plural. (At least, I don't remember much use of it. If I'm wrong, please someone speak up).
To take this thought a little further ... while Orwell's reportage can be enjoyed in its own terms, its value as a benchmark for good journalistic writing today is questionable. Some of the tricks he got away with would I suspect no longer be tolerated in a world of greater media fact-checking.
Posted by: Alan Allport at May 19, 2004 03:06 AMFor the benefit of those not registered with the LA Times, this is probably the same piece listed on Common Dreams this past Sunday titled there 'Feminism's Assumptions Upended'. Not being registered with the _Times_ myself, I can't double-check.
Posted by: Henry Larsen at May 19, 2004 03:38 AMIt sounds as though it is - thanks Henry. (BTW, registration with the LAT isn't too onerous, though it's a requirement that irks me too).
Posted by: Alan Allport at May 19, 2004 06:13 AMYes, this looks like the same article. And nice of you to drop by, Henry.
Alan -- I agree it's not one of Ehrenreich's better efforts. And obviously she shouldn't have used a version of the disillusionment pose that invited disdain for her own thought process. If she were in the habit of arguing on the Internet she wouldn't have left that vulnerability.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at May 19, 2004 11:42 AMIf she were in the habit of arguing on the Internet she wouldn't have left that vulnerability.
This is more of a spin-off question, but do you think that the Internet's rapid-response capabilities will make traditional writers more cautious in what they say - and perhaps better writers as a result?
Posted by: Alan Allport at May 19, 2004 11:49 AMI think what everyone, including Ehrenreich, is missing is that although these photos were staged in order to demoralize Iraqis, they really tell us what a group of culturally blinkered Americans considered to be demoralizing. It shows a picture of what American torturers consider to be sexually frightening, and the answer is: homosexuality and butch women.
Martha, I assume you haven't seen this article from the New Yorker. Unfortunately, it looks as if you are jumping to theoretically obvious conclusions.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at May 19, 2004 12:43 PMAlan A. -- I'll pick up your thought in a new thread.
Alan H. -- yes, the MPs obviously acted on orders, but the folks giving generic orders probably didn't specify the precise crimes to be committed. Some of that stuff had to emerge from the soldiers' own imaginations.
BTW, this post from last year has links and citations for material on past official excesses. Again, the Church Committee report is Senate Report No. 94-755 (1976) and Volume III is the most frequently quoted. It should be on the shelves in any good academic library. Possibly its main significance now is as a baseline for tracking the decline of American official capacity for shame.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at May 24, 2004 01:28 PM