Et al.

Worth the price of admission

Today's Tom Tomorrow is worth the annoying little promo (if you are cheap like me, lazy like me, and haven't renewed that ol' Salon premium subscription). The current administration's ongoing and unspoken distinction between the lives worth saving (white comatose folks who want to die, fetuses) and those that aren't (anyone brown-skinned, Muslim, or who has used drugs) bears constant scrutiny and repetition.

Horrifyingly enough, the actual promo (which I watched without sound and without paying attention) is for something called "Revelations"--which appears to be a "moral values" crowd pleaser along the lines of "The Day After" and the other current end-of-the-world dramas, but here with an overtly Christian tie-in. If I were a responsible blogger, I'd watch it again and provide more accurate info., but I'm not and I won't. Instead, allow me to merely blather on about my assumptions, which are that the presence of the film and the ad confirm that secular culture is rolling over and playing dead before the inflated assumption that the vast majority of Americans have, in the years since 2000, when Gore actually won the popular vote, become screaming and bigoted fundamentalists. I just don't buy it.

I am fascinated by the re-emergence of personal faith as a public topic--and by this, I mean not a topic for cultural debate, but as an acceptable early topic among colleagues or acquaintances. It was just not that long ago when I could go semesters on end without having the faintest idea of my students' religious affiliation OR the degree of their fervency. Now it's suddenly okay for two or three per class to show up in my office, dragging their Faith like a deflating balloon, and flaunting their (to me) all but unrecognizable claims about Christianity as a mark of their moral superiority. Again, they seem to be buttressed by the commerical media's (I hate to use the collective, but here I think it fits) eager embrace of the idea that a fundamentalist Christian revolution has taken place. Again, I don't think it has. But I am surprised at how many of my peers in the business of secular knowledge and morality (yes, there is such a thing), have rolled over and played dead at these arrogant intrusions. My point is not that they have less right to say what they say, but that so many of "us" (secularly trained academics, well-versed in the development of the nation's political principles and its religious history) respond immediately by retreating. If there is to be a debate, why is their position any more sacrosanct than another religious or philosophical viewpoint? We wouldn't hesitate to challenge a student's simplistically Marxist interpretation. And I count myself among the wimps...

What I was really going to say, however, had nothing to do with fundamentalism. I note, (via Dr. B the passing of Andrea Dworkin. (Dr. B, being a Better Blogger than I, provides link to her own sources, and places to find more info. And frankly, if you're not reading her, you should be, so I'm gonna piggyback on her links rather than redoing them here). I'm amazed that most of these current defenders of feminism in its muliplicity still feel compelled to distance themselves from her version of feminism. It reminds me of the time I taught Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, during the discussion of which, every single student felt the need to preface his or her remarks with the statement that he or she "didn't condone homosexuality" or that he or she "had no way to really relate to homosexuality." It saddens me that even among the outspoken feminist blogosphere, we still believe (and probably accurately) a) that to acknowledge someone's passing is to express endorsement of her views; b) that most of our readers still assume that feminism is unilateral unless we remind them otherwise, and c) that Dworkin's views require us to distance ourselves from them because they are insupportable. I guess it's the grown-up blogwoman version of what my female students say: "Well, I'm not a feminist [because, presumably, feminists are man-hating, emasculating bull-dykes] but I still think women and men should be paid the same."

Dworkin was an outspoken woman who participated in the public discussion of feminism and raised questions worthy of attention. She pissed a lot of people off, as a feminist should. She's dead. 'Nuff said.

posted by Unknown @ 7:39 AM