Radical Feminism Is Soooo Gross

Marjorie Campbell, marjorie@marjoriecampbell.com

Deal, you are right that "radical feminism . . . is still out there making plenty of trouble."  And George Weigel specifically cited the very same institution of clinginess:  tenured faculties.  But are you both miscalculating the influence of these equality-means-sameness dames of the academy?  Last week, a Santa Clara freshman moaned to me about a required reading:  Rubyfruit Jungle.  "Rubyfruit Jungle," I yelped, "surely you are joking me?"  If you never read this piece of bad Lesbian pseudo-literature in the 1970s, count yourself lucky.  "Why," I asked this young woman, "do you have to read that thing?  It was trite 25 years ago - it must be downright boring now."  Nodding, this peppy young woman shrugged it off, "The teacher's an old feminist.  It's soooo grossssss."

. . . which is not to say, Deal, that unmorphed radical feminism persists only at college campuses.  Another bastion of the beast, Planned Parenthood, keeps trying to make itself central and relevant to young people.  In SF, for example, PP is currently running a "Design a T-shirt, Win an Ipod!" contest for the best slogan to capture the themes:  Prevention, Safe is Sexy and Planned Parenthood is For Everyone.   But, really, who's fooled by this nonsense?

It brings to mind a recent bus whirl I took across Heathrow to change terminals, amid the chaos and clang of franticly paced terror-proofing construction there.  In route, a video blasted hopes that we were "enjoying your Heathrow experience" - showing happy people breezily passing through a stream-lined modern airport system, unlike anything actually happening outside the bus windows, within the miles of concertina-wired fencing, or in the now-renowned inefficient, congested terminals.  The whole bus burst into laugher.

At some point, radical feminism propaganda grew silly and irrelevant, as Elizabeth Fox-Genovese detailed with intellectual precision in Feminism Is Not The Story of My Life.  That broad-based, continuing decline explains Mrs. Clinton's schizophrenic efforts to portray herself as a Jesus-loving, hymn-singing politician motivated by "the scriptural imperative to love our neighbor as ourselves" (according to my recent Faith, Family and Values email campaign update) while still clinging to the radical remainders in her base.

We will have to live with the fallout of radical feminism, I know, but the contamination is being contained and shrinking fast, in my opinion.  All of which brings to mind an entry for the Planned Parenthood T-shirt contest:  Great & Powerful Planned Parenthood (Pay No Attention To That Man Behind the Curtain).