Feminism...didn't we already do that?
Honor Moore just contributed an excellent article to Slate's new feministish blog Double X (whose name is not a little...um...lame? Nevertheless!):
Poems have been integral to the women’s movement from the beginning—no surprise given that feminism has always understood language to be instrumental in maintaining oppressive power relations.
I read this and thought, well put and roundly acknowledged by every woman poet (though I know but a few poets in general) I know. This is, perhaps, why it's rarely spoken of. Something so tacitly understood does not bear repeating, right? But when I read just a few short paragraphs later, Moore's story of her first encounter with the term "Women's Liberation," well! I wanted to be there, in just such a pristine, revelatory moment of epiphany.
BUT, if there's one thing that writing and reading poetry has taught me, it is that turning over and over a page does not mean that its contents have been fully read; neither have they been realized. In fact, if I ever wrote a poem that could be fully read OR fully realized, I would never write again. What's the point?
This misconception that feminism has been fully realized is why so many women I've met - not just poets, mind - are so damned ambivalent about it. There's no more glass in our hair, let's move on, they imply. Feminism is for women who don't groom their pubes and who grow tumors on their funnybones. No one wants to be that bitch who defriended that loser from high school because he made a patently misogynist facebook wall post and made another patently misogynist response when confronted, amiright (Er, not that I have done this...)? Besides, what's not to like about Seth Rogen or Dane Cook?! Lighten up! they parrot. They are afraid, obviously, of becoming cultural pariahs. But in poetry, as Moore so deftly quotes, a woman's power need not be vanquished by those who disbelieve her. Besides, being a social pariah in the eyes of some douchetastic idiot machine is not exactly a BAD thing, ambivalent anti-feminist ladies.
Well, Double X was off to a rocky start a few weeks ago, but perhaps they can redeem themselves with more of the like? Please!
BUT, if there's one thing that writing and reading poetry has taught me, it is that turning over and over a page does not mean that its contents have been fully read; neither have they been realized. In fact, if I ever wrote a poem that could be fully read OR fully realized, I would never write again. What's the point?
This misconception that feminism has been fully realized is why so many women I've met - not just poets, mind - are so damned ambivalent about it. There's no more glass in our hair, let's move on, they imply. Feminism is for women who don't groom their pubes and who grow tumors on their funnybones. No one wants to be that bitch who defriended that loser from high school because he made a patently misogynist facebook wall post and made another patently misogynist response when confronted, amiright (Er, not that I have done this...)? Besides, what's not to like about Seth Rogen or Dane Cook?! Lighten up! they parrot. They are afraid, obviously, of becoming cultural pariahs. But in poetry, as Moore so deftly quotes, a woman's power need not be vanquished by those who disbelieve her. Besides, being a social pariah in the eyes of some douchetastic idiot machine is not exactly a BAD thing, ambivalent anti-feminist ladies.
Well, Double X was off to a rocky start a few weeks ago, but perhaps they can redeem themselves with more of the like? Please!
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