May 12, 2007
What Do Women Want? III Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 10:30 PM EST Mr. Gordon has it backwards. He writes that if I think “that feminist leaders would have had the same reaction to the Monica Lewinsky scandal had Bill Clinton been a Republican, then that’s fine with [him]. It’s a free country, and one can believe what one wants: in a flat earth, that the world was created in 4004 B.C., in Santa Claus, that the moon is made of green cheese, that pigs can fly, you name it.” These five propositions have been roundly discredited by scientific evidence (though certain parties—namely, a few of my nieces and nephews—are still clinging for dear life to the Santa Claus narrative). Mr. Gordon has accused feminists like Gloria Steinem of hypocrisy and class bias. In earlier posts I produced evidence that second-wave feminism has been extremely attentive to matters concerning working-class and middle-class women alike, and I asked Mr. Gordon to produce evidence to the contrary, and/or evidence that prominent feminists have been hypocritical in their treatment of male politicians. He has done neither. In effect, it is Mr. Gordon, not I, who retains old prejudices without any sustaining evidence, and sometimes, in the face of evidence to the contrary. But, as he says, it’s a free country, and if he wants to believe in flying pigs, I’m all for his right to do so. Mr. Gordon is correct that Gloria Steinem is a partisan Democrat, though the notion that she considers herself a Democrat first and a feminist second I very much doubt. Steinem played an active role in the presidential campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern and also clocked considerable time as a volunteer organizer and publicist for liberal outfits like the United Farm Workers of America. (Which, I might add, would bolster rather than weaken the case that she has been extremely interested in the issues effecting working-class women. It’s worth noting also that Steinem grew up in a working-poor family, in a working-poor neighborhood of Toledo, Ohio, attended Smith College on scholarship, and spent the first 20 years of her professional career living in a very cramped one-bedroom apartment in New York, barely scratching out a living as a freelance writer. Her working-class credentials, like those of many second-wave feminists who came to prominence in the 1970s, are impeccable.) But Mr. Gordon’s original point was not that many leading feminists are partisan; indeed, many are. His point was that they are upper-middle-class snobs who look down their noses at working-class women and stay-at-home mothers, and that they are hypocrites. He has not attempted to prove either of these points and has ignored all evidence to the contrary.
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