One day last week I walked into Barnes and Nobles' "Women's Studies" section in search of some insightful reading to occupy my rides to and fro on the train, and I was having a difficult time choosing something. The bulk of the section is made up of schlocky woman-feely sister crap written by educated, white, upper-middle class women who tell other women how to connect to their woman-ness and talk about running with wolves and how the world used to be ruled by goddesses of peace or something. There are a few second-wave feminist gems, but I've read them, and mostly they are about body-image issues or are anti-porn (which I used to be, until I realized that I like some of it--unfortunately for me, this realization occurred while I was writing my anti-porn senior thesis at the university). I saw "Listen up! Voices From the Next Feminist Generation" but I've read bits of it, and mostly it is made up of coming to consciousness stories, and I just don't have that kind of patience.
The I saw a little blue book with an orange flower on the cover that would fit nicely into my tote to travel back and forth to work, and it had a title that would most likely ward off unwanted small talk from men AND women: "Cunt" by Inga Muscio. Cool! I flipped through it quick because I was running late getting back from lunch. I can pretty much tell you now that I am 50 pages in that it's a major disappointment. Already she has described each of her three abortions in graphic detail, the third one being of the "kinder, gentler" variety in which she explains that all she had to do was take certain herbs, get massaged by some woman who is not actually licensed to put her hands on people, and think about miscarrying every waking moment, or as she calls it, "imaging." Apparently this worked for her, and she was pleased to notice her embryo on the bathroom floor after eight days: "Me and my women friends did magic" (p.50). This actually made me ill and I'm pro-choice. Although, I guess when I argue that women should have the right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term, I am presuming that the getting pregnant part was a one-time accident. I also presumed that if medical abortions are what they are made out to be, that subsequently post-abortive women will then use greater precautions, not be so careless as to get pregnant and abort two more times!
Before that point Muscio went on and on about how great her menstrual blood is: we should save up our blood to feed to our house plants or use it to paint with. And we should all use sea sponges and keepers and cotton rags instead of giving our money to the man. I'm as eager to take down the man as anyone, but let's be realistic. I have actually used a keeper-type device and they're not at all what they're cracked up to be, and contrary to the little anecdote Muscio provides, coming out of a bathroom stall with a handful of some bloody device to wash off in the sink does NOT result in women bonding about being women together! And no, I am not ashamed about my menstrual fluids--I think being a woman this time of the month is pretty fuckin cool--for me it's a privacy thing. My menses is no one's fuckin business. Well, I guess it is NOW, isn't it? But at least I didn't paint with it.
Lastly (and probably leastly after all that) is the fact that she is an white upper-middle class college educated woman who has had opportunities in life. She has enough leisure time and money to live off of to write a book before she's even 30 (suggesting to me that she is not obligated to be paying back any student loans), and then somehow get it published. Then she uses this opportunity to make a mockery of herself! She continually uses hokey pseudo-urban slang like you would hear on bad primetime WB white melodramas in combination with intentionally poor grammar. It's a sad display all around.
But I guess her objectives are consistent with other feminists of her caliber, who are always looking for ways to be more "woman-identified," and on getting in touch with themselves as "women": looking at their vaginas in the mirror, pretending to be moon-worshipping lesbian pagans running with wolves and saving their periods up in mason jars for arts and crafts day. She and her cohorts needn't sully themselves with the gritty issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, globalization, and the "third-worldization" of America. They worry more about interjecting the most politically correct turns of phrase into conversations with each other over margaritas than about Ronaldo in the kitchen who has to scrub their lipstick off the rims of their glasses after they leave. Wealthy white feminists are concerned with the glass ceiling, but don't consider that their prestige granted them access in the first place. Self-exploration and woman-y bonding crap might be acceptable feminist exercises in some future society where no one is hungry, uneducated, un- or under-employed, and uninsured. But as it stands right this minute, my priorities lie in fighting my way out of this shit hole and bringing as many pissed off women with me as I can.
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