Oh God, Not Again With the Freud

[akirlu]

I've just had a realization. Basically, I feel about feminism much as I do about chiropractic: the practice is all well and good, and I'm for it, but much of the alleged theory behind it is complete and utter wank, and rather embarrassing to have to sit still for.

Comments

[liveavatar.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'll raise you one and say that much of the alleged theorizing behind almost any philosophy is complete and utter wank.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, anything that derives its intellectual parentage from contemporary literary criticism, anyhow. But feminist theory has a closet particularly full of, at base, anti-feminist skeletons. Freud is a big one.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

No, I am not talking about definitions, or what gets filed on what shelf in bookstores, I'm talking about the extensive academic critical literature, and its popularization, that calls itself Feminist Theory. I'm not talking about the filter of conservatism, I'm talking about what the academically vetted theorists themselves say.

[annafdd.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to have to say this because a lot of my most intelligent and sharp friends devote their life to it, but when I hear "academical critical literature" I tend to run screaming.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Technically, I think you're talking about feminist literary theory (analyzing literature from a deconstructionist framework with an unhealthy dollop of bad pre-history) rather than feminist theory (analyzing politics and society with the idea that one's gender ought not to determine one's right to vote, one's job, or one's pay scale).

Whose chain are you trying to yank here?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Technically, I think you're talking about feminist literary theory (analyzing literature from a deconstructionist framework with an unhealthy dollop of bad pre-history) rather than feminist theory (analyzing politics and society with the idea that one's gender ought not to determine one's right to vote, one's job, or one's pay scale).

In theory, yes, but in practice, I don't see anything like a hard, bright line between the two. Certainly practitioners of the former feel entirely free and qualified to engage in the latter, without anyone blinking or saying boo, let alone laughing them off the stage for doing it. I expect there may be people engaging in feminist theory sans post modern theoretic baggage, but if so they're drowned out in the noise.

Whose chain are you trying to yank here?

Why does it have to get down to that? Periodically I just get a crawful of being asked to lower my intellectual standards in order to qualify as a feminist. I have an ongoing wrestling match between my willingness to embrace what I will call sensible feminism and all the stupid shit that gets passed off as justifying, or being entailed by, support of equal rights regardless of gender.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

I have an answer to that, and it's this: as a Democrat from Ohio, I'm not responsible for James Traficant's toupee or his lack of principles. As a feminist, I'm not responsible for the errors of feminist literary critics, either.

And in completely unrelated news, please Google the phrase, endangered mountain chicken frog airlift. Doesn't it just roll off the tongue?

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

re: EMCFA
Wow, you weren't making that up at all. (Make things up, sure why not. With that combo of nouns, I had to go look. Who knew?)

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

I have made up many things, but the endangered mountain chicken frog did not come out of my brain.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Not that I read much in this category any more(1), but that phrase "academically vetted theorists" ... is it, by any chance, an alternative way of saying "circle-jerk wankers" (or whatever the female equivalent of that might be)?

(1): Not that I ever read much in the Official Academic Genre on this topic, but there have been several waves of it in Fanzines over the past fifty years, mostly written by feminists who were also practical and accomplished human beings, with good senses of humor and an ability to detect ridiculousness -- unlike all too many Academics on several grounds.

Feminism

[u-must-b-joking.livejournal.com]

Any feminist theory unsupported by current understanding of biology gets a hall pass from me the same way religion does. It's bunk - but a lot of people take it seriously and get right feisty if you start driving trucks through the logic holes.

[shikzoid.livejournal.com]

There's also a fair amount of re-inventing the wheel, IMHO. Sometimes I'll read something in, fr'instance, The New York Review of Books and think "nineteen seventy-three". or thereabouts.

[greyorm.livejournal.com]

That's exactly how my wife and I feel about it as well (Yay feminisim! Boo feminist critical theory wankery!).

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

huh.
Well, my feminist theorizing, such as it is, is not primary, but directly secondary.
If you put anarchism onto a bumper sticker as, "One size fits all -- doesn't," then you have feminism (as I understand it) right there -- along with several other very important things.