Via Amanda, I was able to read yet another interview by Linda Hirshman and was yet again struck by how off her statements are, no matter her feminist intentions.
As I said in the comments at Pandagon, as much as I tend to wish with Hirschman that all women will aim for wider and higher goals, the “PhDs wiping butts is immoral” shit really rankles me. The nasty undercurrent of Hirshman’s goals is a wish for weathy women to achieve status on the backs of others. I get it, baby steps, living in the world as it is, blah blah blah, but a bitch has to dream for alternatives. Swapping the exploitation of one gender or class or race for another is not what feminism is made of, role models be damned, and when Hirshman pooh-poohs women who wish to care for their own children as sell-outs for the patriarchy, she’s asking women to single-handedly make over all gendered marriages or put our housework and childwork at the feet of women who are more poor and less educated than we.
But oh, these wealthy women of opportunity aren’t doing it on the backs of the little people, they’re doing it for the little people! Yes! It’s all for them!
So, let’s kill the motherhood angle. Kill the motherhood angle and what is left of Hirshman? Apparently not much. According to this book review, anyway, Hirshman’s main rhetorical device for convincing young women who have not yet made all these detestable choices is to convince them how gross parenthood is. You know, it ain’t a Hallmark card, but you don’t shit on your demographic either.
If any of this conversation has left you doubtful that Hirshman is indeed elitist and patronizing, I’ll let you read her blog and her bizarre disdain for low-wage earners and the loathed freelance writer (whose success can only be measured by Google searches).
I got another letter the other day from a student at Dickinson University, asking me “if your book covers strategies for the women who have not been able to take earnest pride in their careers for they are stuck in dead-end jobs with kids, no father, no help, no health care, and whose mission every day is simply to survive.” She continues, “what I was thinking when I was reading that article was what about the thousands of women who are walking through the doors of say, Wal-Mart every morning earning their $5.15/hour . . . who have babies at home with no father to help … One cannot pull herself up by her bootstraps if she’s got no boots. ”
The answer, of course, is no, I am not directing my advice to unmarried Wal Mart cashier mothers. Had she read the book, rather than just following the common student strategy of asking me what was in it, she would know that my strategies are all intended to apply BEFORE women end up single parents at Wal Mart.
I might have been so stupid to ask that same question, considering that I can’t afford to buy the book myself. I’ll catch it at the library eventually. In any case, Hirshman sounds disturbingly similar to the conservative Christian women who ask us to lie in the beds that we’ve made for ourselves, and that’s not my kind of feminism.
I get the general notion that Hirshman is not writing to an audience of the likes of you and me (i.e. working-class women who do the majority of the work to propagate the species) but to upper-class women. I think it’s important work.
Those who have power in our society come from the ranks of the upper-class (whether economically- or socially-speaking). The remainder of us only have power collectively, within social movements.
Traditionally for the upper class, the men went to work in their own spheres while the women raised the children (often with hired help from the lower ranks) and acted in their own organizations, usually aimed at easing the symptoms of social ills. Studies show that not much has changed. So, while the husbands are off ruling the land (majority collectively through complex capitalist networks), the women go to their social clubs and organization meetings. They effect change largely through donations to help the less-privileged and by sometimes gaining mainstream media attention to their cause(s). Whether or not these women have any personal influence on the men in their lives remains an area researchers don’t have access to.
I’d much rather see elite women getting active in our government, businesses, and policy/policy-planning organizations than staying within their dainty social clubs.
The nasty undercurrent of Hirshman’s goals is a wish for wealthy women to achieve status on the backs of others.
Boom. That’s it in a nutshell for me. All this talk about “role models” is just so much swill. Those high-powered women don’t give a rat’s ass about working class women, just like their male counterparts! Why is Hirschman ignoring the vast majority of women who aren’t “opting out”, hmmm? Seriously! We are the majority, most of us have an education, we haven’t taken any “time out” from our careers (unless we got laid off)—yet still, we aren’t rising to the top. Why is that? Ya think it might have to do with, oh, I dunno—sexism? The fact that after all these years of feminism, there’s still plenty of men who aren’t comfortable mentoring women and opening the doors of the “inner sanctum” for women? Even though the vast majority of us have a proven record of staying power in our respective careers?
Bullshit. Change isn’t going to come from the top on down—it has to come from the ground on up. Unionize! Organize! Vote! Agitate! Shake the earth with the voices of the many! That’s what will bring change. I’m a union member. I get paid the same as my union brothers. If I was in the corporate world, I wouldn’t—period. The solution to sexism won’t come from the trickle-down theory.
glad I saw you pink back at pandago or I would NEVER have bothered to read that blog. Ihad just got done ranting what I have read of Hirshman and those who support her. Saw your ping back, read her blog, and my jaw dropped.
Why is Hirschman ignoring the vast majority of women who aren’t “opting out”, hmmm?
If you read her stuff, she explains exactly why.
She’s critiquing choice feminism. Therefore, it makes sense to focus on the women who actually have choices.
Lauren, you couldn’t possibly like her less than I do.
See e.g. this: http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=985
Here is a somewhat petty, but not irrelevant, point as well: She’s probably a huge hypocrite. What is the way for an academic to “get to work” in a way that gives her power and status within an institution? To get tenure, which can be a long hard slog that requires many sacrifices. Linda had several teaching jobs, but did she ever get tenure? Her bio is strangely cagey on that point, so I’m guessing no. How long did she practice law? Oddly, the bio is a little vague on that as well.