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I did not mean to sound disrespectful of anyone, working class or upper class, who fought for women’s rights or a fair wage. They are my heroes. About people who work 12 plus hour days, I have worked shit jobs but I have not lived a life like that so I don’t know what it’s like. My thought was that a person who is struggling just to survive is more concerned about surviving and may not have much time to even think.

[Thanks, Mag. —fl]

I get the connection between feminists and Jewish American Princess stereotypes and I think it is nothing new. Do you remember how in the movie Mary Poppins, the mother was never home with her children because she was out marching for the vote? I don’t remember the tune she sang exactly, but it was something like “Our daughters’ daughters will adore us…” and she was really air-headed and goofy,and she did not see the woman servants in her house, who were too busy working to care about voting? The mother in the movie was a stereotype and I think that like many stereotypes, there is a grain of truth to it, even though many of the suffragettes did not fit the stereotype. During the turn of the century, many of the women who worked for the vote were women of privelege. I think that the reason for that sort of fits into Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, where women of leisure had more time to devote to fighting for the vote. A woman who is working 12 plus hours a day just to survive can not think about such issues. I think it is also true that women who are educated have been frustrated with the limits placed on them because of their sex, where a woman of limited education and limited means may be less likely to demand more. Of course this is just part of the picture. On the other hand you have labor activists (both male and female) who demanded a fair wage.

Back to Sex and the City, which I should probably admit was a guilty pleasure for me, it makes sense that conservatives would want to promote the idea that the women in the show are what feminism is all about just like they seem to enjoy finding evidence of a war on Christmas.

[Excellent points, especially about the way Mrs. Banks was portrayed. It’s not at all a new phenomenon. But, as Marcotte suggests, it’s undergoing a surge whether coordinated or not. Thanks, Mag. —fl]

Having read Amanda’s post and also the wildly off-track comments, I’m still trying to figure out how much validity there is to the idea that feminists are now being tarred with the old JAP stereotype of being selfish and spoiled. I’m skeptical. She doesn’t really provide clear evidence for it, and it’s not obvious to me how or if SITC is supposed to support the JAP/feminism connection – did anyone else follow that? It seems to me that the connection – if one exists – is slightly more subtle, making use of the lowest-common-denominator stereotype, which is the perception of both feminists and Jews as elitist.

On the level of anti-“elitism,” I think the connection does make sense, particularly with regard to abortion. It’s no longer socially acceptable even for most conservatives to say women deserve to be paid less for equal work, or to openly say rape is a good thing. But the anti-abortion-rights crowd is very quick to brand women who’ve had abortions as “selfish.” They insinuate that some of women’s most common reasons for having an abortion – to avoid poverty or finish one’s education – are trivial, reflecting the values of secular, liberal elitism. Never mind that most women who have abortions are not rich, politically middle-of-the-road, and as religious as the next gal.

These accusations of selfishness and triviality tend to shift the whole abortion debate, such that the Democrats are now willing to throw abortion rights to the wolves. Witness Harry Reid or any number of conservative Democratic freshman Congressmen, who’ve used an anti-abortion stance to gain power at the expense of women’s basic rights.

I would so love to see abortion framed as a human rights issue, rather than just another “choice” on par with buying overpriced shoes.

[I too would like to see the human-rights connection made stronger. The issue, of course, is that at least with the present administration here (not to mention too many other countries) human rights isn’t exactly on the front burner. I think Marcotte may be responding to the recurring meme (also assiduously advanced by conservatives and fellow travellers) that feminists don’t care about, for instance, women’s rights under Islamic law and/or about FGM. This meshes very nicely, by the way, with (in particular) conservative Islam which makes nearly the same arguments. See also Jonah Goldberg’s new book contending that Liberalism represents the triumph of 20th-Century totalitarianism… and that the “new face of fascism” isn’t jack-booted thugs but female education majors with degrees from “Swarthmore and Brown.” I.e. elete and very likely to be Jewish. At least that’s how I read it. Now one nice counterpoint to all that shit would be, say, bell hooks and 3rd-wave/inclusive feminism. But since the ‘wingers that are pushing the JAP/get-an-abortion-to-save-your-figure angle have never seen a woman of color except either “exotic” porn or inside a maid’s uniform bell hooks would be the 4th dimension to them. %#!$!@$. Thanks, Sungold. —fl]