Originally I wasn't going to dignify Kate O'Beirne (and her book Women Who Make the World Worse) with a response. From time to time, there comes a book like this, and it will just as soon go away. So, I won't tear it up bit by bit and spit it out..others are doing this far more effectively than Ms. Strega. I just have a couple of points I want to make.
First, the title. "Women Who Make the WORLD Worse." Is she talking about the whole world--including countries where there are still "bride burnings," genital mutilation, and stonings? Oh, she's talking about the AMERICA world...which I guess in her estimation IS the world.
Second, the cover. The cover shows rather dreadful caricatures of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Jane Fonda, Hillary Clinton, and Carrie Bradshaw (typing on a laptop, with visions of Manolos in her head). I hate to let Ms. O'Beirne know this, but Carrie Bradshaw is not real...she's a made-up character, like Kramer on Seinfeld! I don't think Carrie's flings with Big and her shoe-shopping trips were any real threat to America (okay, maybe if we return to the 50s timeframe that O'Beirne apparently reveres, then Carrie's affair with "the Russian" might have been suspect). It would have been more believable to put Miranda Hobbes on the cover..or Samantha Jones...but they're not real, either! I know part of the book discusses this "evil show" that encourages women to feel positive about sexuality (wow, heaven forbid!)..but still. Plus, couldn't she have picked a more contemporary show to trash for its supposedly degenerate content, like Desperate Housewives? Sex and the City is off the air, albeit in heavily edited TBS reruns.
Third, O'Beirne wants us to return to the "age of chivalry." In the real age of chivalry, women were burned as witches and folks could be drawn and quartered, and their heads put on pikes as a warning to others. Yeah, I really want to go back to that. Give me traffic court any day. Alternately, Beirne would like us to return to the magical world of the 1950s and live according to its strictures, since it was somehow a better time (that "better time" included segregation, but her memory seems to falter on that point). She fails to examine the fact that the unprecedented prosperity of the 1950s was influenced in great part by the masses of women who entered the workforce (ie Rosie the Riveter) in World War II. But again, she seems to need ginkgo biloba or something to give her memory a nudge.
Fourth, O'Beirne contends that "homely women" such as Jane Fonda should have been asked out to the prom and given lots of male attention, for then we would have been spared the feminist agenda. O'Beirne's definition of "homely" is pretty interesting. Apparently, I've been working towards it all my life.
3 comments:
You go, girl! I'm with ya.
As far as James Frey, I said something on my blog connected to your most recent post--that I think people are obsessed by the "truth" of Frey's novel because they can't control all the lies our current administration tells.
Thanks for your comments, Kate--I think you are right-on!
Hi, Margaret--yes, Kate O'Beirne grew up in that time, though in my humble opinion, in a fairly sheltered environment. She is now an arch-conservative lawyer who disses the women's movement as ruining "traditional values." I think she has a rosy and unrealistic view of the 1950s and how destructive all the concealment was--she's sort of a high-powered modern-day Phyllis Schlafly. Her book is dropping like a stone down a canyon on Amazon, though--thank God.
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