Everything Old is New Again

AKA: Those who do not listen to history are condemned to repeat it in four easy steps.

1) Linda Hirshman writes a web column about the backlash to her article about "Choice Feminism." The text of the web piece is not only the howls of outrage about her article, but pointing out that when women are still expected to be homemakers and not men, then feminism hasn't gone very far.

2) David Brooks of the NY Times rips Hirshman a new one, apparently (I have not read his op ed piece; I'm going to have to go dig Sunday's issue out of the recycle bin), calling her, among other things, a retro feminist.

3) This backlash to the backlash inspires The Reclusive Leftist, who links to the Duke University online archive of feminist writings, specifically their copy of "Notes from the First Year: The New York Radical Women, 1968."

The payoff to this digression?

4) A side by side comparison of the anti-feminist arguments used in 1968 and the anti-feminist criticism used by David Brooks in 2006:

1968 Anti-Feminist	2006 David Brooks
“Women don’t have it so bad. There are women doctors, lawyers, architects. Women are in almost all the fields open to men.”	“After a generation of feminist advance, women have more choices. They are freer to pursue a career, stay home or figure out some combination of both.”
“Don’t you know that women control most of the wealth in this country? They also control individual men, not overtly but indirectly. Women have the real power, baby.”	“[Hirshman]’s wrong to assume that work is the realm of power and home is the realm of powerlessness. The domestic sphere may not offer the sort of brutalizing, dominating power Hirshman admires, but it is the realm of unmatched influence. Power is in the kitchen.” Nea's note: I do NOT believe that he came *that* close to saying "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world"!
“But men are exploited, too. They do mostly unrewarding work. They are not allowed to be full human beings either.”	“[Hirshman]’s wrong with her astonishing assertion that high-paying jobs lead to more human flourishing than parenthood. If Hirshman thinks high-paying careers lead to more human flourishing, I invite her to spend a day as an associate at a big law firm.”
“Are you also advocating an end to families-putting all kids in nurseries? Kids need mother love or they’ll grow up neurotic.”	“Children, at least, understand parental power. In ‘Eminem Is Right,’ a Sidney Award-winning essay in Policy Review, Mary Eberstadt notes a striking change in pop music. ‘If yesterday’s rock was the music of abandon, today’s is the music of abandonment.’ An astonishing number of hits, from artists ranging from Pearl Jam to Everclear to Snoop Dogg, are about kids who feel neglected by their parents. This is a need Hirshman passes over.”
“Most women want things the way they are. They may demand equal pay or less drudgery but they still want to have the same kinds of personal relationships with men that people have had for centuries. It’s in nature.”	“[Hirshman’s] third mistake is to not even grapple with the fact that men and women are wired differently. The Larry Summers flap produced an outpouring of work on the neurological differences between men and women. One of the findings of this research is that men are more interested in things and abstract rules while women are more interested in people. (You can come up with your own Darwinian explanation as to why.)”

(Thanks to ginmar, who pointed out the link in her LJ, and Reclusive Leftist. Please give RL the webhits and comments.)

Books

Spent a surprising amount of the day reading book reviews on my f-list and then going to the bookstore. Whoever said that A Suitable Boy is of daunting size... daaaamn, you could beat someone to death with that thing!

The "3-for-2" tables at Borders Books are geek heaven right now. Not only are there nice copies of Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird, if you want classics, and some Phillipa Gregory for the rennies, there's also How To Survive a Zombie Attack, The Great Influenza, Dawkin's Ancestor's Tale, and the book I think everyone reading this should read, Stiff. (My rave review for Stiff is up on Reviewing the Evidence search archive. Suffice it to say that it's everything a nonfic book should be - informative and hilarious as heck.)

As I type this, I think that I know waaaayyyy too many people who would get two of the science books and the zombie one...

I also hear from Neil Gaiman's RSS feed that Barnes and Noble has his Anansi Boys and Pratchett's Thud for 50% off right now. So if you didn't get 'em for Christmas, now's the time.

Also in geek news, Wallace & Grommit, Curse of the Were-Rabbit will come out on DVD in February.