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October surprise

My students’ papers just came in, and that means . . . it’s time for a blogging hiatus!  I’ll be back with new material next Friday, but in the meantime I’ll post a series of golden oldies from this blog’s early years.  I might even put up an excerpt from Rhetorical Occasions, because I’ve been so remiss in the book-flogging department lately.  (Though I will point out, for the benefit of those people who find the whole book-flogging thing kind of obnoxious, that I have thus far refrained from switching on the special Internets technology that would register each visit to this site as a sale from Powells.  That’s right, just a click onto this blog and you could be getting a book in the mail within the week, delivered by a specially dedicated Internets tube!  But I won’t activate the device—at least not yet.)

Actually, blog book flogging is obnoxious only when it’s one’s own book being blog flogged.  So before I sign off for the week, I think I’ll flog someone else’s book for a change.  Here’s a choice excerpt from Laura Kipnis’s latest, The Female Thing:

So who actually gained over the last thirty years, the heyday of women’s much-vaunted expedition into the workforce?  As we see, the job market proved flexible enough to absorb women into its ranks with barely a hiccup, while suppressing salaries and quashing labor demands across the board.  The exhilarating women’s lib notion that women entering positions of economic and political power would somehow transform the character of existing social institutions turned out to be just wrong.  With hindsight, the question is whether something got left out of the political calculation along the way—quality-of-life issues, for instance. Or what kind of equity to aspire to.  But then why be surprised that feminism too succumbed to the winner-take-all logic of a winner-take-all economy with the oppositional edges smoothed down to suit the times.  Who doesn’t want to be a winner?*

As the contradictions continue to mount, now we hear that the real radicals are the crop of twenty-something Ivy-educated women leading the so-called opt-out revolution, which is the new code for moms staying at home with the kid instead of ascending the career track.  This is being presented as the brave new thing, with words like “choice” lobbed around just to twist the knife a little deeper for cranky old feminists, who used the word rather differently.  Somehow, as highly educated as these girls are, they don’t seem to have heard about the 50 percent divorce rate!  Somehow, they imagine that their husbands’ incomes—and loyalties—come with lifetime guarantees, thus no contingency plans for self-sufficiency will prove necessary!  Let’s hope they’re right.  (Somewhere Betty Friedan must be cackling—though recall that Friedan wrote before the advent of Prozac, which might have made all the difference for her generation of depressed stay-at-home moms, as we hope it will for their successors.)

* For the backstory on the backing down, consult Alice Echols’s Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-75 on the break between feminists and the New Left, and the factionalism between liberal, socialist, and radical wings of the emerging women’s movement, all of which set the direction for future political calculations.

By the bye, I agree that everyone should consult Echols’s book.  As often as possible.  Great stuff, that.

And I see that Amanda has begun reading The Female Thing.  I do hope she keeps liking it as she goes, not least because I insisted to Laura that she really, really, really had to send Amanda a copy, or else.  Actually it didn’t take much persuading.  Because as anyone who’s read either Ms. Kipnis or Ms. Marcotte would know, the pairing is pretty obvious.

See you all when I’m finished grading papers.  In the meantime, the We Are All Detroit Tygers Burning Brightly in the Giant Nuclear Fireball Now party will keep the flame alive!  So to speak.

Posted by on 10/12 at 11:55 AM

  1. Kipnis’s book designer puts yours to shame. Why no nudity on the cover of Rhetorical Occasions? Make sure they redesign the cover for the mass-market version of your book.

    Posted by Orange  on  10/12  at  01:39 PM

  2. Yale women (and men) talk back to the NYT story on the “opt-out revolution.”

    Posted by Sally  on  10/12  at  02:09 PM

  3. There are huge numbers of men and women who don’t like their jobs and would quit if they could.  A very small number of upper-middle class women are able to do so, at least for a few years, and it’s some sort of anti-feminist scandal.  And the best reason Laura Kipnis can come up with for why they should spend the majority of their waking hours doing stuff they hate is—financial security!  Because you should live every day like your spouse is going to walk out on you tomorrow! Now that’s a thrilling feminist value, isn’t it.

    How about this:  it’s great that some families are able to live on a single family wage while their children are young. But it’s a shame that only sex-role stereotypes mean that it’s uncommon and frowned upon for men to take the stay-at-home role.  Isn’t that a bit more appealing than, In solidarity with your sisters, you must be Wall Street lawyers and investment bankers and leave your children with nannies all day!”

    Posted by  on  10/12  at  02:10 PM

  4. JR, I don’t think Laura Kipnis is actually saying that women should keep working at jobs they hate in the fear that their husbands might leave them.  I think she’s suggesting that the young women interviewed by Louise Story for that September 20, 2005 NYT article on the “opt-out revolution” hadn’t done the math—just as Story herself hadn’t done the math with regard to how many female undergraduates were actually marching under the opt-out banner.  In fact, Laura sounds pretty caustic here about the idea of female Wall Street lawyers bonding in solidarity with their sisters, does she not?

    But Sally, I have to say that I think it’s rude to talk back.  Just because people at Yale did some “research” and published a “study” doesn’t entitle them to get all snooty and elite-social-sciency when it comes to describing hot new social trends.  So they interviewed 469 Yale undergraduates, male and female.  So what?  Louise Story talked to a couple of students, too.  Or maybe a few, or maybe even many.  For example, look at this passage from Story’s NYT piece:

    There is just one problem with this scenario: many of these women say that is not what they want.

    Many women at the nation’s most elite colleges say they have already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children. Though some of these students are not planning to have children and some hope to have a family and work full time, many others, like Ms. Liu, say they will happily play a traditional female role, with motherhood their main commitment.

    So when Ann Bartow writes (in her more extended discussion of the Yale study, linked in the link you’ve provided here), “Many, many, some, some, many. What is the benchmark and sample size? Is there any actual quantitative data at all?” I have to ask Ann, what part of many, many, some, some, and many don’t you understand? And what is this nitpicking obsession with “actual quantitative data”?  “Many” and “some” are quantitative terms, as I learned at the John Stossel Institute for Statistical Analysis.

    And Orange, UNC Press did field-test a “nudity cover” for Rhetorical Occasions.  They decided, as a “result” of that “study,” that the big fat looming ghostly head was even more disturbing, and therefore better for sales.

    Posted by  on  10/12  at  02:33 PM

  5. ’This is being presented as the brave new thing, with words like “choice” lobbed around just to twist the knife a little deeper for cranky old feminists, who used the word rather differently.’

    That resonates. Especially with cranky old feminist moi, who have a habit of referring to self as a grizzled old feminist. Cranky, not to say savage and rude, would fit at least as well. But then, all this postlipstick feminism has that effect on old feminists.

    Posted by Ophelia Benson  on  10/12  at  03:09 PM

  6. And what is this nitpicking obsession with “actual quantitative data”?  “Many” and “some” are quantitative terms, as I learned at the John Stossel Institute for Statistical Analysis.

    According to the normal distribution, “Some” is at the mean, “Many” corresponds to a Z score of +1, and “Few” would be a -1. So what, you may ask, does this mean? None of the results are significant until they start getting into “multitudes” or even “boatloads” dependeing on where the confidence intervals are set. Feel free to ignore it in other words.

    Posted by  on  10/12  at  03:13 PM

  7. Frankly, I’m starting to think that we should ignore each and every NY Times article that identifies the hot new social trend spreading throughout the ranks of the many and the some - it seems to only encourage them.  I’ve lost count of how many features are written in this format, and pretty soon I’m going to have to stop reading the Times altogether in order to avoid an ulcer.

    Also, I have to laugh at the methodology in which asking college students what they plan to do or not do at some point in the future is accepted as a projection of what they will actually do.  If anyone had asked me in college if I planned to take a year off work to care for a little one, they would have ended up with the wrong answer.

    Posted by  on  10/12  at  04:32 PM

  8. John Stossel Institute for Statistical Analysis.

    Are there paper mill degrees available online yet?  We have this trial going on and i thought it would be cool to get a law degree in statistical research to validate the usefulness of the papermilled online degrees. 

    The Colbert Report Tuesday night had Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem on to promote their new women’s online streaming radio network.  In a classic Colbert skit, the three worked at a Food Net kitchen set baking an “all amerikan apple pie” whilst describing, in quite sophisticated terms, the need for powerful feminist positive radio.  One of the little funny moments arose when Stephen asked Jane to put in some cinammon, to which she responded she had already done so, but wasn’t that a typical male thing to not notice that a woman had been being responsible.  The ice cream threesome was pretty funny too, as well as the kiss the cook vinette.

    Posted by  on  10/12  at  04:40 PM

  9. None of the results are significant until they start getting into “multitudes” or even “boatloads” dependeing on where the confidence intervals are set.

    I think megaboss is the currently accepted term for “large number” among the NYO crowd. So it goes without saying that we should use it as well.

    Posted by  on  10/12  at  04:57 PM

  10. I’ve never liked the idea of being “for” or “against” how people divide up labour within in their families. It reeks of petty scoldishness.

    That said; the family unit hardly suffers from an excess of flexibility (unless maybe you’re a Yale graduate). Clearly there are two problems:

    1) Careers are doled out in 8 hours a day, 5 days a week chunks. For parents this means that one parent works too often to spend much time with their kids, or both parents work too often and the kids fend for themselves.

    2) Baby making does not have a price. Or rather, childcare doesn’t pay. Either does “home-making”.

    Whether women stay at home or go to work, it doesn’t matter. The economic constraints of the REAL problem remain unsolved.

    I would suggest maximum 15 day work months for everyone. Beyond that, your employer will have to pay you overtime. The 25% drop in workforce would be shored up by the number of stay-at-home persons who would be forced to enter the workforce. And throw in manditory maternity leave for both mothers and fathers.

    ...and then the Giant Fireball will strike.

    Posted by Central Content Publisher  on  10/12  at  05:26 PM

  11. Tigers! Tigers! so adroit,
    In the ballpark of Detroit.
    What immortal catcher’s twitch,
    Could frame thy fearful payoff pitch?

    That being said, I remain, as always, an A’s fan…

    Let’s Go Oakland!

    clap clap clapclapclap

    Posted by  on  10/12  at  05:59 PM

  12. I think megaboss is the currently accepted term for “large number”

    I stand corrected; that’s a much better measure of significance.

    Posted by  on  10/12  at  07:31 PM

  13. I remain, as always, an A’s fan…
    Let’s Go Oakland!
    clap clap clapclapclap

    That’s my boy, Ben!

    Why no nudity on the cover of Rhetorical Occasions?

    UNC Press also determined that Floating Head Professor has infinitely greater marketing potential: movie cameos, talk show appearances, Happy Meal tie-ins, and plush toys, just to name a few.  Nekkid Guy Michael scored poorly on all of those, with the lone exception of a curious spike of interest in the Test Group for a Nekkid Guy Michael plush toy.

    Posted by Oaktown Girl  on  10/12  at  08:55 PM

  14. I very much like Laura Kipnis’ writing in general, but have one problem with her prior book, AGAINST LOVE, which sort of seeps over into what little I know of this new one.

    Her argument in AGAINST LOVE seems to be that adultery and Marxism have a lot in common. The marriage-weary adulterer and the work-weary prole (or the unemployed Marx) both ask the same questions, “What is a working day?” They decide that they want *more* out of life than mere labor, “working at marriage,” etc… and start to form unions, demand higher wages, ‘fuck around,’ so to speak.

    I guess my question is whether or not Marxism is really the appropriate analogy for adultery. Marxism is sort of organized, based on this foolish notion of ‘equality’ (that we really all want and deserve to be equals). Adultery, meanwhile, is more of an anarchist gesture that flies in the face or organized labor movements and collective demands; the adulterer is not concerned about improving the conditions of their collective lot, but rather driven by individual pursuit of happiness, satisfaction, self-fulfillment, and so forth. Sounds sort of capitalist, even.

    So I wonder why Kipnis is always trying to find affirmative connections between Marxism (with its herd-mentality lets-be-equal mindset) and personal decisions such as who to screw around with, or when to screw around. So some schools of feminism cut their ties to the New Left? Perhaps this is a positive thing: less mind control and concern for the group, and more time to fuck or go shopping?

    Captcha: hope!

    Posted by  on  10/12  at  09:29 PM

  15. Why thank you for the recommendation. I have to add that if I ever bother writing a book, I will have lots of nakedness on the cover.  Because I love nothing more than getting into long, bizarre arguments with anti-porn feminists about whether or not the bellybutton will continue to exist after the patriarchy is demolished.

    I kid.  Right now, we’re just involved in a weird argument about whether or not a Pulp song that criticizes shallow sexual play as a substitute for actual intimacy is or is not actually a secret apology for such shallowness.  I’m bewildered.

    Posted by Amanda Marcotte  on  10/12  at  11:47 PM

  16. Golden oldies from this blog’s “early years?” Shouldn’t you have at least four annum in the can for that phrase to ring true?

    Must be the red shift-- or perhaps we’re all growing old faster than I’m willing to acknowledge.

    Posted by  on  10/13  at  12:02 AM

  17. I would suggest maximum 15 day work months for everyone. Beyond that, your employer will have to pay you overtime.

    Aha!  A new plank in the GNF platform—one that has nothing to do with yummy salmon!  What do we want?  15-day work months! When do we want ‘em?  Before the fireball strikes!

    Her argument in AGAINST LOVE seems to be that adultery and Marxism have a lot in common.

    I don’t quite agree, Foucault—if that is your real name.  Laura’s point, I thought, was that one branch of Marxism, once upon a time, tried to take such intimate matters seriously.  For Ms. Kipnis, making this argument involved dusting off ye olde Marcuse volumes and takin’ ‘em seriously, bless her heart.  Yeah, the argument that adulterers are rebels against a certain kind of punitive domestic economy is strained in places.  But mother of Ba’al, someone has to rail at the “marriage takes work” wing of the self-help industry—and its uneven division of labor. . . .

    I love nothing more than getting into long, bizarre arguments with anti-porn feminists about whether or not the bellybutton will continue to exist after the patriarchy is demolished.

    Well, Pilate Dead in Morrison’s Song of Solomon doesn’t have a bellybutton, and she runs a kind of microsocial matriarchy, so I’d have to come down on the anti-omphalos wing here.  Seriously, Amanda, five hundred something comments?  (If only you’d added the word “burqa” to that post you could’ve gotten Le Colonel de Kentucky to offer another sixty or seventy incoherent rants at least.) I keep thinking that the people you’re arguing with will actually go back and read the work of Lisa Duggan and Carole Vance and Nan Hunter and Avedon Carol and Linda Williams and Ellen Willis, and will do these people the courtesy of understanding them as feminists.  I guess I keep thinking wrong.

    When it comes to the meanings of songs, I see no serious hermeneutical questions. I simply defer to the intentions of the songwriter.

    Shouldn’t you have at least four annum in the can for that phrase to ring true?

    Ordinarily, yes.  But we’re talking about Internets time here, and as Fafblog once pointed out, in Internets time you go “from Blog Bastille Day to the Blog Reign of Terror to the Blog Buncha Ol Fat Guys Talkin About Blog Bastille Day in like a week”!

    Posted by Michael  on  10/13  at  08:08 AM

  18. I guess I keep thinking wrong.

    That’s okay, after the revolution, you won’t have that option anymore.

    Posted by Amanda Marcotte  on  10/13  at  08:12 AM

  19. And that’s okay too, because I’m told I won’t miss it.

    Posted by Michael  on  10/13  at  08:15 AM

  20. Marxists and adulterers both want something for nothing.

    Marxists want to be paid without any kind of responsibility. 

    Adulterers want to cash in without any kind of responsibility, too.

    And ultimately both crash and burn in a freefall into hell, leaving ashes in the mouths of everyone around them.

    Posted by Kirby Olson  on  10/13  at  10:11 AM

  21. OK, now I think we’ve cleared that one up!

    Posted by  on  10/13  at  10:12 AM

  22. Ashes, yum.

    Posted by Orange  on  10/13  at  10:21 AM

  23. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!

    And now I’m going to buy Kipnis’s book before the Blakeian Fire(base)ball hits and makes my feminism and my ambivalence about having kids all melt into sweet, sweet oblivion.

    Posted by Dr. Virago  on  10/13  at  12:20 PM

  24. Oh, and btw, I can’t believe Publishers Weekly called Kipnis “sassy.” That’s even worse than calling Michael “spunky” or a “whiz-bang manic trendy” (yes, catching up on back issues of CCT). Sassy magazine aside, calling a feminist “sassy” is fighting words!

    Posted by Dr. Virago  on  10/13  at  12:24 PM

  25. Well, despite what I view as her over-enthralled engagement with Marx (bless his tender interest in *feelings,* which Kipnis rightly points out that many people overlook), I like her books.

    I think she even quotes me here and there in AGAINST LOVE. smile

    Posted by  on  10/13  at  02:04 PM

  26. "calling a feminist “sassy” is fighting words!”

    OH yeah. Or feisty, or spunky. Or, albeit in a quite different way, twee.

    I’ve been called twee. It was anguish.

    Posted by Ophelia Benson  on  10/13  at  03:08 PM

  27. Michael, how do I flog “Liberal Arts” to my public library?  They don’t own a copy yet!

    Parenthetically (see?), they do have “Life as We Know It.”

    Posted by Linkmeister  on  10/13  at  03:43 PM

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