Feminist Media

I like to read feminist blogs, webzines, news sources, things like that from time to time. I find it provides a useful counterpoint to mainstream media - pointing out biases we take for granted and forget we have, offering viewpoints and experiences that are often underrepresented, making radical arguments that sometimes ring surprisingly true. Of course, "feminist media" is tough to define. It's difficult to pin down what qualifies.

Case in point, Double X. Based on the obvious biological allusion of the title, we all know about what we're going to get - a feminist (or at least unapologetically female) perspective. I skimmed through the headlines this morning and was pleased to find a variety of perspectives on a variety of topics, from abortion to the economy to the election in Iran.

Reading the articles wasn't terrible, but it was a bit anticlimactic. Their article on challenges to Myriad Genetics' patenting BRCA1 and BRCA2 (the "breast cancer genes") reads like a list of talking points prepared by the ACLU, glossing over many of the very details that make this case interesting and important. Their five-part series of letters between three authors of "What It's Like to Be a Military Wife" books was maddenlingly circular and strikingly uninformative, repeating what mainstream media has already made sure we all know - it's hard to be a military wife, and really confusing when you think you're a feminist. Despite the media-induced familiarity of their lives and despite how different and varied they keep insisting they are, their stories were uniformly distinct and alien from my own experience - to read them, you would think only officers married. Is this just a chip on my shoulder?

Wondering what their angle really is, I went to their "About Us" page, which, I realized, says very little. "Double X is a new Web magazine, founded by women but not just for women," - is it reactionary of me to think this comes across as apologizing for their readership? "...We started a conversation among women—about politics, sex, and culture—that both men and women listen in on," two sentences in a row, no less. It's as though they're saying, "We're oreinted around women...but not too much." Their topics are "sexual politics, fashion, parenting, health, science, sex, friendship, work-life balance, and anything else you might talk about with your friends over coffee." Is it silly of me to find that trivializing? They describe their approach as "unabashedly intellectual but not dry or condescending." Is it overly sensitve of me to find that very phrase condescending? So...just what is Double X about? News for girls? And for guys to? News written by girls? That guys can read too? If they never use the word "feminist" in their self-description, are they a feminist media source? Do they want to be? Or at least to look like one?

Contrast this nebulous self-description with the "About Us" section from bitchmagazine.org. "B-Word Worldwide is a nonprofit (501c3), independent, feminist media organization best known for publishing Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, a print magazine devoted to feminist analysis and media criticism." It goes on to describe how and why they achieve this very clear objective. They have a focus - feminist analysis of pop culture, not "anything...you might talk about...over coffee." They're not afraid of the f-word, and their intended audience is, presumably, anyone who's interested enough in their topic and focus to keep reading. They don't bend over backwards to say, "It's ok, boys! You can read too! We're not scary!" Rather, they show men - and their readers in general - the respect of not asuming they're so jittery as to be scared away from material that might interest them by "f-bombs" (the 8-letter kind) and female authors.

This is not an issue of moderate versus radical feminism, it's an issue of having a focus and not apologizing for it. It is okay to have a specific focus - your focus does not negate the presence of different viewpoints well-represented elsewhere. It is okay to write with a specific demographic in mind - that focus does not negate all relevance to other demographics. And to those who feel unwelcomed by not being specifically greeted, I offer the same response I gave in college when asked, "Why should there be all of these high-calliber women's colleges but no high-calliber men's colleges?"

"No reason I can see. Quit whining and go start one."

Quick and of Interest

Miss Manners on knitting in public.

"For centuries, ladies sat quietly doing needlework while gentlemen conversed around them, and didn’t miss a thing of what was going on."

Angry, Sword-Wielding Feminist Seeks Peaceful Spot to Knit

Hi, I'm Sasha. I like swords, Star Wars, Russian literature and knitting.

I'm a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison working on my Ph.D. in Slavic languages. I have very little free time and even less money. I rent a room from a wonderful family whose decor I would describe as...unapologetially 70s. Alright, it's not their decor per se, but they haven't quite gotten around to ripping out all of the blue carpet yet. My boyfriend, who shall remain nameless, is in his last year of law school in a different state. The two of us look forward to buying a house, shacking up and, with the help of a bit of disposable income, making said shack a home. With the job market the way it is, it's lookin' like I'll be staying in my rented room for a few more years.

For Christmas, my mother gave me Jane Brocket's The Gentle Art of Domesticity. I love it! I'm at the point, both in my knitting and in my cooking, where inspiration is at least as valuable to me as straight-up "how tos," and I found this book to be very inspiring. Lush, even. Perhaps a bit heavy on the pink for my taste, but it's really Brocket's appreciation of the value, both sensual and emotional, of domestic creativity that strikes a chord in me.

So my reaction to Liz Hunt's review in The Daily Telegraph was one of surprise...and then surprise at my surprise. Hunt, through exasperated sarcasm, accuses Brocket of popularizing yet another set of "impossible standards [for] the rest of womankind via beautifully illustrated books and websites." I must admit, from time to time I myself fall into the trap that seems to ensnare Hunt.

Let's face it: I'm young, I'm broke, I can't even set up a home with my boyfriend, who shall continue to remain nameless. I live in a rented room - I can't splash brightly colored paint all over my walls to brighten up my living space. I don't have an expensive digital camera with which to take gloriously luxurious pictures of my finished projects. I certainly don't have time to bake all the damned time.

But then Jesus, who does? How many of us actually are, as Hunt describes them, "women who have done the career bit and, looking around for a new diversion and cushioned by private income or a wealthy husband or generous alimony, target the home and impose impossible standards on the rest of womankind via beautifully illustrated books and websites." Who really has the kind of time to create a home as airy, as peaceful, as lush as Jane Brocket's? Who are these women? And how on God's green earth will I ever find the time or the money to make my home the bright, cheery, welcoming haven that I see in all of these beautiful pictures?

Decades ago, women in America were relegated to this domestic sphere whether they liked it or not. They had the time, and some of them had the money, but they had little choice. And they too, through the spread of television in particular, had impossible standards to live up to. Then the feminist movement blasted out a place for women in the workforce. It wasn't easy, but women could find productive, fulfilling, rewarding work outside the home, if that's where their interests lay. And for a while, the worst thing that an energetic, intelligent, educated woman could do was to chain herself to the home in defiance of her new, hard-won freedom.

The craft movement is a sign of things changing yet again. Women, by baking, quilting, gardening, knitting and most of all by being proud of their work, are reclaiming parts of our femininity that had been devalued. Men, by finding the same delight in the same pursuits, are showing that traditional concepts of femininity are not dirty or shameful. Just as I can put on a suit, grab a sword and go conquor the world, a man can knit an afghan to enrich his home. Creation and domesticity are empowering. I learned to knit at Wellesley, for Chrissakes!

But now it's in the media. Now we have books of inspiration - or standards - published by women with means far beyond those of most of us. My stockinette will never be that even. I will never get this damned bulb to sprout. I will never be able to afford a house that would ever look like that. And who the hell quilts? I have blue carpet, and it's not going anywhere. Is this liberating development yet another set of impossible standards - new shackles for my hypothetical daughters to break?

Every time we break through the walls of what defines feminity, we set up another, newer, shinier set of walls, but they're just as constricting. So fuck it. My home, my little room, is going to be every bit as gorgeous as Jane Brocket's, blue carpet and all. Because I effing said so. I can't afford much, but that's one reason I love making things: doing for myself. I will make this the home I want it to be. It's not going to look like anyone else's, and that's what will make it perfect. That's what will make it mine.

I'm done looking outside myself for standards to live up to. There's inspiration, and then there are standards. Inspiration is at its most delightfully surprising when it comes from outside of you. Standards, to have any validity, must come from within you. I will be inspired by Jane Brocket's books and blog and beautiful photographs, as she intended, but I will never expect to resemble her. I will not be knitting tea cozies, but I do think I'll make a quilt. I will stay in this rented room, but I will be home. In place of my boyfriend, who shall remain nameless, I will live with my hilariously blue carpet. I will make this room a haven. A place of warmth, of comfort, of ease, of beauty. And I will do it on my terms - less pink, more swords!

If anyone ever follows this blog, I hope it inspires you to do the same. Not to embrace my undoubtedly quirky esthetic, nor my necessarily frugal budget, nor my giddily rabid feminist ideals, nor my insistant use of the words "nor" and "whom," but to redefine, to destroy entirely the standards that my gender - that both genders - have been duped into falling short of. I like knitting, and I like fighting, and I have blue carpet, and that just freaking rules.


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