Feminism's New Identity For Women: Either Potential Victim Or "Survivor"
Michelle Goldberg quotes Laura Kipnis at The Nation:
"It's the infantilization of women fused with identity politics, so that being vulnerable, a potential victim--or survivor, in the new parlance--becomes a form of identity," Kipnis told me. "I wrote a chapter on the politics of vulnerability in The Female Thing from 2006, and since then it strikes me that vulnerability has an ever more aggressive edge to it, which is part of what makes the sexual culture of the moment so incoherent."
I call it a way to gain unearned power, especially over men.
The subject of Goldberg's piece?
Last Monday, about thirty Northwestern anti-rape activists marched to their school's administrative center carrying mattresses and pillows. The event was a deliberate echo of the performance art project of Columbia student Emma Sulkowicz, who is lugging a mattress everywhere she goes on campus for a year to draw attention to the university's failure to expel her alleged rapist. At Northwestern, the target of the protest was not a person accused of assault, but the provocative feminist film professor Laura Kipnis. Her offense was penning a February essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education, titled "Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe," which argues against her school's ban on sex between professors and students, and more broadly against the growing obsession with trauma and vulnerability among feminists on campus."If this is feminism, it's feminism hijacked by melodrama," she writes. "The melodramatic imagination's obsession with helpless victims and powerful predators is what's shaping the conversation of the moment, to the detriment of those whose interests are supposedly being protected, namely students. The result? Students' sense of vulnerability is skyrocketing."
Kipnis writes in her piece of the effects of all the "protection" of academia (like that of her film students who found certain films she showed too "triggering" to watch).
What do we expect will become of students, successfully cocooned from uncomfortable feelings, once they leave the sanctuary of academe for the boorish badlands of real life? What becomes of students so committed to their own vulnerability, conditioned to imagine they have no agency, and protected from unequal power arrangements in romantic life? I can't help asking, because there's a distressing little fact about the discomfort of vulnerability, which is that it's pretty much a daily experience in the world, and every sentient being has to learn how to somehow negotiate the consequences and fallout, or go through life flummoxed at every turn.
Sadly, some of what we can expect is more of the sort of injustice done to former Sci Am blogs editor Bora Zivkovic, who was ruined by a few women with little actual power and position who used the power of being female and the Internet's special power to spread a blogged "J'accuse!"
What they deemed "sexual harassment never met the standard for anything close, but never mind that. Pretty much everybody from a pool of supposedly "skeptical" science writers went with it, and a good man is out of a job and scorned by the science blogging society that he pretty much created.
Someone please describe a "coherent sexual culture of a moment."
Is it fun?
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 18, 2015 11:13 PM
Well you're absolutely right, the new feminism is indeed survivor or future victim.
But I just don't under Michelle Goldberg who a year ago wrote about Toxic Feminists harassing each other:
http://www.thenation.com/article/178140/feminisms-toxic-twitter-wars
And then wrote this article above which seems right in line with that, but who in the meantime wrote this article whichis all about the abuse that feminists get online that cause them to "retire" (if only!) but never mentions how much harassment feminists give each other.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/online-feminists-increasingly-ask-are-the-psychic-costs-too-much-to-bear/2015/02/19/3dc4ca6c-b7dd-11e4-a200-c008a01a6692_story.html
jerry at March 18, 2015 11:41 PM
@ Crid's "coherent sexual culture of a moment."
Based on "of a moment" I think this might be describing a woman/girl's first time sexual encounter with a young male.
Bob in Texas at March 19, 2015 5:20 AM
"Someone please describe a 'coherent sexual culture of a moment.'
Is it fun?"
I suspect it's rather like one of those sports-talk shows where the hosts watch sporting events and tell you what's going on, rather than you getting to watch the events yourself.
Cousin Dave at March 19, 2015 7:37 AM
A woman carries a mattress on her back to protest rape. She is then labeled as a feminist-extremist.
And spends the rest of her college days wondering why she can't get a date.
The truly bad-guy criminal rapist is not going to care how much these women protest.
Nick at March 19, 2015 9:17 AM
Nick you're right, but just to be clear, in the case of Mattress Girl Sulkowicz, research into it and it looks like there was never any sexual assault in the first place.
jerry at March 19, 2015 9:34 AM
It's 'cause she won't take no sheet.
Conan the Grammarian at March 19, 2015 9:40 AM
Amy,
While I agree with what you have written here, I cannot agree with how you present yourself. To call yourself a "goddess" verges on the satanic. Instead of being filled with pompous pride and vainglory, let our hearts be meek and humble. I do not mean this in an accusatory tone... I only ask that you consider using your given christian name instead of embracing a demonic identity.
Andrew Dodson at March 19, 2015 10:15 AM
Ah, satire.
Cousin Dave at March 19, 2015 10:21 AM
Also cluelessness.
Cousin Dave at March 19, 2015 10:22 AM
> this might be describing a
> woman/girl's first time
> sexual encounter
Might, but it's inane, so we'll never really know,
But that's OK, 'cause we'll never really care.
Goldberg gets on my nerves. Now and then some mundane person snaps silently but securely into a position whence opinions are distributed broadly and taken seriously. And I wonder— Why?
Goldberg is like that.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 19, 2015 10:28 AM
Ok, the inane part was Kipnis.
But Goldberg poisons things, even those she mocks.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 19, 2015 10:32 AM
Rape, sadly, rather than being just the horrific crime it is has become the latest in humanities long line of hysterias.
Today its rape, 30 years ago it was satanic child molesters, before that it was the 'Red Scare" and McCarthyism, before the advent of TV such incidences rarely rose to national prominence. A notable example being the panic in the wake of Orsen Wells broadcast of "War of the Worlds"
But mass hysteria is very real and happens all the time
lujlp at March 19, 2015 10:45 AM
Amy Alkon
https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2015/03/feminisms-new-i.html#comment-5913065">comment from Andrew DodsonI only ask that you consider using your given christian name instead of embracing a demonic identity.
Problem One: I'm a Heeb.
Amy Alkon
at March 19, 2015 3:24 PM
Andrew Dodson:
I only ask that you consider using your given christian name instead of embracing a demonic identity.
Dude, we like the demonic identity, 16 squirrels and all...
kenmce at March 19, 2015 4:42 PM
"Problem One: I'm a Heeb."
Perhaps Andrew Dodson experiences the heebie-jeebies when he reads your columns?
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at March 20, 2015 12:13 PM
Nick of course there are guys who will date Emma. They are the white knight male feminists. See also Jamie Kilstein/Joe Rogan "debate" on "rape culture,". Kilstein and his type run in circles with their gibberish which defines nearly every man as a potential rapist. Then he goes on his radio show and calls Rogan a misogynist. Pathetic.
Also Google Goldberg Althouse blogging heads debate. I love seeing writers from the Nation face someone rational. The faces Goldberg pulls are fantastic.
CatherineM at March 21, 2015 3:41 PM
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