I've been astounded lately by how many articles have been posted on the main page and on the community board about how Lady GaGa is not really a feminist.
I'll expose my bias right away by admitting I do not understand the nature of looking up to celebrities. Lady GaGa's job is to make music and sing and dance and entertain us with her glitter and her disco sticks. Somewhere along the way in the entertainment business, doing these sorts of things also became about obsessing over the person behind the music (or movies, or television shows, take your pick). For some reason, they're considered role models and people who might say things worthy of our attention that have nothing to do with their singing or their acting.
Part of that comes with a joy on the consumer's part for tearing these people down. No one gets ridiculed more than singers and actors, and it's often said that they're fair game for attacking because, hey, they put themselves out there, didn't they? So the comments threads on all the Lady GaGa blog posts have been filled with people sneering at her and her stupidity and lots of writing her off as someone not worthy of our time.
In the newest What We Missed blog post on the main page, a lot of commenters have been discussing the Psychology Today article written by an evolutionary psychologist who completely. There's been some praise and applause for the rebuttal to that article, which is here.
In this article (which is FABULOUS), the author details how she went from being an, "I'm not a feminist, but..." to claiming the label for herself. She also explains how so many of her female students do the same thing -
I see, rather remarkably, my female students going through the same sorts of trials and self-examinations today in spite of the fifteen years of feminism that have passed. Some of these women students are planning to go to medical school. Some are engineering majors. They are track stars or nationally-ranked basketball players. These young women certainly work hard, compete fiercely and are not embarrassed about admitting that their goals are high. They work to put themselves through school. Most of them aren't considering getting married until they're several years into their chosen professions. Most of them leave home after graduation to make their way in cities across the country to find interesting, challenging jobs.
Yet when I ask how many of them consider themselves feminists, only about a third in any one class will dare to raise their hands. These women may not be afraid of getting bad scores on the LSATs or GREs, but they're afraid of not getting a date. They can be independent, intelligent and proud to be women. But a little word like "feminism" scares them. One girl, a student who'd taken two women-and-literature classes with me said that she loved the material, that the books had changed how she thought about herself and her relationships with men. We were having coffee in my office while discussing the subversion of the marriage plot in the contemporary woman's novel when I mentioned something about being pleased that her feminist perspective was being finely delineated by her careful work on the novel. "Oh, but I'm not a feminist," she said, surprising me, "I don't like that word." I gulped, and felt that whatever work I'd done in class I'd obviously missed out a crucial discussion.
Why are so many women afraid to call themselves feminists? It is because they fear the condemnation of experts such as Satoshi Kanazawa?
This, which I see reflected in so many women in my own life, makes all the hullabaloo over Lady GaGa stupid and misplaced. Lady GaGa is not special in her delusions about what being a feminist is about. She is not, along with other Hollywood starlettes that have been torn apart on this site, a lone idiot who just doesn't get it.
So are we also sneering at the 2/3 of the women in the professor's class who didn't raise their hands? Are we writing off her student who she had coffee with who, after being enlightened by the class, still refused to accept the f-word? Somehow, I think not, since they don't share that magical celebrity quality that Lady GaGa has. It's not quite so fun to be meanspirited when it comes to women who we might encounter in our classrooms, our offices, and our personal lives.
What can we, as feminists who are not afraid of claiming the label, do to attack this widespread misunderstanding? What sort of implications does this misunderstanding have outside of the glitter and disco sticks?
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I should have known all my proofreading wouldn't prevent SOMETHING from being left out. Italicized words are what should be in the above post:
"In the newest What We Missed blog post on the main page, a lot of commenters have been discussing the Psychology Today article written by an evolutionary psychologist who completely missed the mark about feminism."
There's something really problematic about assuming feminism is entitled to these womens' loyalty.
Political/philosophical labels, and assigning them to people, rather than letting people choose them for themselves, is problematic. You're not entitled entitled to define for someone else what feminism is, whether they identify with it.
Where is the line between defining something for someone and correcting misunderstandings about what that 'something' is?
In one of the threads about GaGa, someone said (paraphrasing) "I don't care if she doesn't identify as a feminist. I do care that she doesn't identify as a feminist for such a stupid reason."
I've been reading comments here for a while and I and other commenters have talked about everyday people we encounter who misunderstand what feminism is. So I don't think it's acurrate to say we single out Lady Gaga or Hillary Duff or whoever simply because they're celebrities.
However their comments are more likely to be noticed in the pages of Interview magazine than those of someone's co-worker or classmate who doesn't get what feminism is all about. So they're discussed because more people have access to their remarks.
Access is certainly an issue, but does that distinction warrant the complete dismissal of celebrities who say stupid things? The attitude that we have towards people who are in our everyday lives who share her misunderstanding is usually a lot more charitable and coming from a position of wanting to educate them, rather than the disdain that surrounded GaGa's remarks. It's like we can understand the women in our lives not getting it, 'cause we live in a patriarchy that we have to dismantle, but if a celebrity doesn't get it, that's crazy. And I'm sort of at a loss for why we ever expected GaGa to understand it when so many other women don't.
Part of what sparked me to write this was three or four posts on this site about GaGa within a day or two. It was like people just couldn't believe she was saying such a thing, when the Psychology Today article rebuttal that everyone was praising contained information about such a huge number of women saying virtually the same thing, and yet it went by without remark.
Now my comment is turning into another post, so I'll stop puzzling over it for right now. :)
This comment helped clarify your position, and I do see your point! :)
personally I feel the reason why people think that we should listen to them is because they are on tv shows that not only are there for entertainment purposes but also function as news programs. Because of this every singer with a half a brain is allowed to be questioned and spew their garbage. Don't get me wrong, I like lady gaga's music, the beat is fun to dance to and yes as unfeminist as it seems I like the lyrics. But that's not the point here. She has essentially taken it upon herself as have countless other women to destroy the very fine and difficult balance that exists in the worlds dealing with feminism
There are tons of posts about everyday people, and I believe Gaga is receiving the same critique that unknown people have received. And, of-course, these are public, widely read interviews and statements, so it seems logical that they would be noticed as a prominent part of culture, for better or worse, and used to launch a discussion. I personally haven't found any of the posts to be particularly sneering or mean-spirited.
I don't personally care for Lady Gaga, but part of my critique is as an artist and musician. I know people who are very similar to her who are not as famous, and I feel the same way about them. Just as we don't have to treat Gaga worse because she's a celebrity, we don't have to treat her better because of it. She's out there, she says stuff, we respond to it.
I am not in disagreement, but I do think it is important for celebrities to act as role models (which of course we can't expect most of the time unfortunately). But I fear for younger girls who may look up to media figures such as Lady Gaga, hear this message that being a feminist is bad, and internalize the stereotype of feminist as man-hater.
I just want to discuss the quote from Barreca and your response to it.
I think that you and she are missing part of the reason why many women who the two of you would consider feminists do not consider themselves feminists, which is the vast amount of different, often contradictory, definitions ascribed to "feminist." People in general are hesitant to label themselves as something, and so it's hardly surprising that not everyone wants to use a label whose meaning they perceive as vague.
Even on just Feministing (which is a small subsection of feminist thought), I've seen the idea that thin women can't be feminists, the idea that anyone who isn't a vegan can't be a feminist, the idea that anyone who doesn't believe in sex workers' rights can't be a feminist, and the idea that anyone who deosn't believe all sex workers are rape victims can't be a feminist.
As a side note - why care so much about what people call themselves, as compared to what people believe and how they act?
The problem with feminism and female celebrities is that there is a tendency with in the community to say, 'X is totally a feminist, she must be because she is so successful.' In other words we think a woman can't get anywhere without embracing feminism or, indeed, that a successful woman owes something to feminism and therefore is required to be a feminist.
It may seem obvious to point this out but, we don't have the same expectation/requirement of successful men. Well, why not? Isn't gender equality everyone's social responsibility? If we place added importance on the opinions of celebrities because they have the power to influence the community, then celebrity men and women should be held to the same standard.
Personally, I find the idea that because you're born female you owe more to feminism a little hard to swallow. We are all born into the world we're born into, we have no control over what has come before us. We have no control over what sex we are born with either.
Feminism has no divine right to expect that all women will identify as feminists, nor has it more of a right to expect that from celebrities. What we do have though, is a movement that is based on fairness and equality, one that more than holds its own against any other ideology. Like any ideology though, it relies for its spread on how we take the message to others? A lot of people (including celebrities) are ignorant of a lot of things, feminism included. I would suggest that the best way to combat this is to inform and correct the mistakes of the ignorant and save the 'tearing down' for those that hold a counter ideology. The difference between the two is, more or less, politeness - something which is the topic of another thread at the moment.
thanks