So yesterday in my women’s studies class we were doing a group exercise listing routine stereotypes of feminism. Perhaps not surprisingly for a group that’s been largely unexposed to feminism, many items, though not all, were cliché and negative.

So towards the end someone mentioned Lorena Bobbitt who, in 1993, cut off half her passed-out husband’s penis after he came home drunk and violently sexually assaulted her. Which he evidently frequently did.

The story of the Bobbitts was widely celebrated at the time for its luridness. For instance there was a widespread hunt for the severed parts, which Lorena Bobbitt had thrown out of the car window as she drove to turn herself in to the police. And once found the part was successfully reattached. And finally, maybe a year later the story resurfaced when the by-then former husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, appeared in a porn video.

At any rate, my professor wryly pointed out that while her story is often linked to feminist stereotypes Bobbitt herself wasn’t a feminist at all. In particular, if she had been a feminist, or in any kind of contact with feminism, she would have had access to many less violent ways out of her situation.

Pretty good point. And pretty interesting to think that if Lorena Bobbitt had been a feminist we’d never have heard of her or her husband.