"So, both are making a feminist argument. What, then, is the source of the disagreement?
"O'Connor and Palmer are using different levels of analysis. Palmer's is straightforwardly individualistic: each individual woman should be able to choose what she wants to do. O'Connor's is strongly institutional: we are all operating within a system--the music industry, in this case, or even 'society'--and that system is powerfully deterministic.
"The truth is that both are [partially] right and, because of that, neither sees the whole picture. On the one hand, women are making individual choices. They are not complete dupes of the system. They are architects of their own lives. On the other hand, those individual choices are being made within a system. The system sets up the pros and cons, the rewards and punishments, the paths to success and the pitfalls that lead to failure. No amount of wishing it were different will make it so. No individual choices change that reality.
"So, Cyrus may indeed be 'in charge of her own show,' as Palmer puts it. She may have chosen to be a 'raging, naked, twerking sexpot' all of her own volition. But why? Because that's what the system rewards. That's not freedom, that's a strategy.
"In sociological terms, we call this a patriarchal bargain. Both men and women make them and they come in many different forms. Generally, however, they involve a choice to manipulate the system to one's best advantage without challenging the system itself. This may maximize the benefits that accrue to any individual woman, but it harms women as a whole. Cyrus' particular bargain--accepting the sexual objectification of women in exchange for money, fame, and power--is a common one.
"We are all Miley, though. [Author's note--This is equally true of males who aren't part of the power elite.] We all make patriarchal [and other] bargains, large and small. Housewives do when they support husbands' careers on the agreement that he share the dividends. [Men do when they put up with abuse from their boss to keep their job.] Many high-achieving women do when they go into masculinized occupations to reap the benefits, but don't challenge the idea that occupations associated with men are of greater value. None of us have the moral high ground here.
"So, is Miley Cyrus a pawn of industry patriarchs? No. Can her choices be fairly described as good for women? No.
"That's how power works. It makes it so that essentially all choices can be absorbed into and mobilized on behalf of the system. Fighting the system on behalf of the disadvantaged--in this case, women--requires individual sacrifices that are extraordinarily costly. In Cyrus' case, perhaps being replaced by another artist who is willing to capitulate to patriarchy with more gusto. Accepting the rules of the system translates into individual gain, but doesn't exactly make the world a better place. In Cyrus' case, her success is also an affirmation that a woman's worth is strongly correlated with her willingness to commodify her sexuality.
"Americans want their stories to have happy endings. I'm sorry I don't have a more optimistic read. If the way out of this conundrum were easy, we'd have fixed it already. But one thing's for sure: it's going to take collective sacrifice to bring about a world in which women's humanity is so taken-for-granted that no individual woman's choices can undermine it. To get there, we're going to need to acknowledge the power of the system, recognize each other as conscious actors, and have empathy for the difficult choices we all make as we try to navigate a difficult world."
I believe that Ms. Reisenwitz has misread Professor Wade's article when she describes Professor Wade's solution as collectivist. In fact, I would actually state that Sinead O'Connor's view is more collectivist than Professor Wade's. Professor Wade is describing a communitarian solution to a problem when she speaks of collective sacrifice. It would be collectivist only if it were not voluntary. Professor Wade is describing women voluntarily sacrificing some of their individual goals and strategies--including both the fiction of "having it all" and the use of sex as a means to get ahead--in order for the community of women at large to achieve true equality.
Calling for a New Equal-Rights Amendment
There is still a very strong undercurrent in this country to treat women not just as second-class citizens, but as children, incapable of making decisions regarding their own mental, physical, or emotional well-being. This is seen in the fight against abortions and birth control, the crusade against exotic dance clubs, and the continuing fight against the decriminalization of prostitution. Years ago, COYOTE (Cast Off Your Old Tired Ethics) founder and prostitution decriminalization advocate Margo St. James warned everyone of what the result of not ending the prohibition on sex work in this country would be: "If we [can't] get the prohibition on sex work repealed, we [will] never end up hanging on to our abortion rights: 'it's the same piece of property.'"
The Neofeminists, in an attempt to acquire relevance and maintain power, have joined an odd coalition of right-wing Christians, law-enforcement agencies, unscrupulous academicians, and ignorant or corrupt politicians; who use the unfounded fear of wide-spread sex trafficking in this country as a means to bolster budgets, receive grants, raise their own pay, and to keep prostitution illegal in the United States. These faux feminists, ignoring Ms. St. James' prescient admonition, are in fact traitors to their cause, refusing to understand that everything either continues to evolve, or it begins to regress.
The Neofeminists believe that they have achieved so many of their goals to expand the role of women in our society without an Equal-Rights Amendment (ERA) that it is no longer needed. The continuous attacks from the Right on issues such as abortion, contraception, and other issues involving the control of women's bodies, shows that women's advances lack a true foundation. The various limitations to abortions by various states, the continuous attacks on and closing of abortion clinics, the murderous jihad against abortion providers, as well as the ongoing crusade against exotic dance clubs across our country, particularly in the "red states," shows the rights women believe they have gained without an ERA are as ephemeral as a fever dream. Without an ERA to protect women, and its inherent guarantee of women having control over their own bodies, all the Neofeminists believe they have gained can disappear in a single upheaval of reactionary fervor.
If any of you feel your rights are safe from reactionaries like Charles and David Koch, Joe and Pete Coors, the majority of the Hunt, Mellon, and Walton families, etc., you might want to take a glance at this Huffington Post article from January 3, 2011, "Scalia: Women Don't Have Protection Against Discrimination." This is what the extreme Right, the "let's take our country back (to the 1890's when Plessy v. Ferguson and segregation were the law of the land, there was no regulation of corporations, and antitrust was only used against unions)," really believe and strive to recreate. They don't want democracy, they want plutocracy--a form of oligarchy where the rich, and only the rich, are blessed with any real protection under the law, and the government is a wholly owned subsidiary of the domineering corporations. If any of you think the rights we have gained in the last fifty years are safe, I would very strongly advise you to look again. (See "12 At tacks On Workers' Rights That Will Make You Kinda Mad ," and understand women still get it worse then men do in the work place.)
A Future of Real Equality
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
