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[Sarai]

I read with great interest the thread on inappropriate "laddish" behavior (e.g., toilet humor, porn on the computer).  Reminds me of a point David Brooks made in an Atlantic Monthly article, not to mention Susan Faludi's books.  While some of the posters are clearly quite offended on feminist grounds-- not just with the situation described but by other posters' responses to it-- we live in an America in which it's not at all surprising to learn that a fast-tracking coed en route to law school is paying the bills as a Hooters waitress or even exotic dancer, and has no problem with her fiance's bachelor party plans.  Try telling her that women shouldn't have political rights or economic rights-- the first generation feminists' concerns-- and she will quickly show her (latent) feminist colors.  But to her mind, her mother's successful career is all the evidence she needs that doors are open to women with talent, and all that stuff about "women being objectified" is fine for ugly women, but she looks good so why shouldn't she enjoy the "power" her sexuality brings her?  On Friday she beats the guy mercilessly in classroom performance; on Friday night she turns him into putty with her sexual power.  Who needs feminism?

With this kind of thinking pretty common-- going to law school to a Britney Spears soundtrack-- can feminism find its place any more?

Not, you'll notice, "Should it?"  No doubt the radical and moderate feminist arguments and the "backlash" arguments, glass ceilings and "war against boys" are all pretty familiar to most people on this forum.

[TomCat]

It seems that you've answered your own question.  It's the not smart and/or not pretty women who need feminism.

[a guy]

Indeed it's a topic dramatized in a piece in today's Independent (titled 'Female Chauvinist Pigs') on raunchy females and feminism. I think there's room for both.

[tamiam]

I agree with OP that young women who don't "get" what their elders went through to open doors for them are more the norm than the exception. And probably will be from now on.

[Fiona]

I wonder what will happen when (as is quite likely) abortion becomes illegal again. Then young women will become activists. I trust them to do that.

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[Sarai]

Fiona wrote:

> I wonder what will happen when (as is quite likely) abortion
> becomes illegal again. Then young women will become activists.
> I trust them to do that.
>

Good point.  I wonder if regional politics will affect this, though?  I don't expect any national laws outlawing abortion.  Repealing Roe v. Wade will simply return the issue to the states.  Will New Jersey's young women become activists on behalf of Alabama?  Will California's young women become activists on behalf of Utah?  The most interesting possibilities are in places like Georgia and Texas, where fairly progressive cities are surrounded by fairly conservative states, so that it's easy to imagine embattled young women in Atlanta being forced to fight for their rights.  

There are, of course, pro-choice women even in rural Alabama, but I rather doubt there are enough of them that by itself this issue can make Alabama feminist again.  On the other hand, since I began this thread with the topic "post feminist?", I should probably acknowledge that in my experience there are still numerous women in the US who are actually "pre-feminist" in many of their views-- for example, not really concerned about whether women are welcome in the workplace because they should be rearing children, not really concerned about women's right to the vote because anyway you can't expect good things from government, etc.  (I know some of these women).

[deb]

maybe abortion isn't as popular among young women as you seem to think.

[anon99]

1973 - 1996 stats on U.S. abortions.

http://womensissues.about.com/cs/abortionstats/a/aaabortionstats_2.htm

The figure doubled between those years.

[anon99]

http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/aboramt.html

Stats to 2001.

[deb]

hardly an impartial source: relying on this source is akin to citing that august deliberative body, the North Korean Parliament, on the virtues of collectivism. If abortion is such a popular idea--why the objections to turning the matter over to state legislatures, rather than relying on the supreme court to manufacture a "right" that has no relation to the text or logic of the U.S. Constitution? Why not give democracy a chance?

[Prytania]

Abortion won't be in favor again until women find out what it's like to live without it and have to rely on the old coathanger in the alley method.

[deb]

Well, the South managed to get on after slavery was abolished; Germany seems to have done all right even though the thousand year Reich collapsed 988 years early. I don't think civilization will end because civil rights are extended to those whose lives might otherwise have been extinguished because they happened to be an incovenience.

[wondering]

why don;t we give democracy the right to use the death penalty. Oh, I forgot, we did and look how many people were wrongly convicted and sentence to death in Illinois. And now they have commuted death sentences in Illinois.

I always find it funny that so called 'pro-lifers" are in faveur of putting innocent people to death.

[deb]

Why do find support of the death penalty to be incompatible with opposition to abortion?  Cold blooded murderers, etc., have done an evil thing--it is within the right of the state to deprive them of their lives as a condign response to destroying not only the lives of their victims but imposing a hardly less measure of misery on the loved ones of their victims. Unborn children have done nothing wrong--apart from becoming an imposition on their parents, who would rather not accept responsibility for their folly.  Do you not see a difference between the killing of concentration camp victims and their tormentors?  In April 1945 a reconnaisance platoon attached to  the US Third Armored Division liberated a Nazi concentration camp: twenty SS guards were shot down, probably hours before they eliminated their prisoners. By the lights of your argument---the US troopers were just as guilty as Hitler's minions.

[history grrrl]

deb wrote:

> Well, the South managed to get on after slavery was abolished;

I'm sure the thousands of black people lynched in the South after the Civil War would offer a different perspective, if they hadn't been hanged, shot, mutilated, burned to death, etc. Not to mention the millions who couldn't vote, serve on a jury, testify, live where they wished, work at any but menial jobs, obtain decent schooling, own land, buy insurance, try on clothing in a store, sit where they wanted on a bus, have access to sewer systems and paved streets, be addressed by titles, etc.

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