by Lisa Jervis
As Susan Brownmiller relates in In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution, “getting your name in the paper was ‘personal publicity’ that made you a ‘star,’ guilty of the sin of personal ambition.” Flo Kennedy dubbed it “horizontal hostility”—“misdirected anger that rightly should be focused on the external causes of oppression,” not on the few women who managed to work with the media. These supposed stars were swiftly ostracized by their sisters for breaking one of the cardinal unspoken rules of the WLM. The art of “trashing”—knocking down emerging stars—was widespread: Women in Brownmiller’s consciousness-raising group, for example, circulated a petition against her, claiming that she had sought personal fame by writing about the movement in the mainstream press. Others, like Shulamith Firestone, drifted away of their own accord, disenchanted with the so-called sisterhood for quashing her personal ambitions. Alice Echols’s comprehensive history of second-wave radical feminism, Daring to Be Bad, is littered with stories of women who left the movement or were forced out because they were unwilling to subsume their career trajectories or drives for personal achievement into the collective good.
Further complicating the matter, most of the members of the WLM distrusted the mainstream media (even the ones who worked for it), and most groups had policies of not cooperating with the establishment press, or doing so only on their own very narrow terms. This stance of noncooperation, however principled, ultimately sabotaged the radical wing of second-wave feminism, as its silence allowed more palatable, media-friendly liberal feminists to become the face of feminism. Writing in 1972, Joreen pointed this out with great precision: “Because the movement did not put [the ‘stars’] in the role of spokesperson, the movement cannot remove them. The press put them there and only the press can choose not to listen. The press will continue to look to ‘stars’ as spokeswomen as long as it has no official alternatives. The movement has no control in the selection of its representatives to the public as long as it believes that it should have no representatives at all.”
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi: The “Unlikely Guru of Women’s Lib”
The real turning point in the feminist fame game was a 1971 Newsweek cover story that declared the long-legged, short-skirted writer/activist Gloria Steinem “the unlikely guru” of the women’s movement. Despite the fact that the article was a whole lot of hype—Betty Friedan had been the formal leader of NOW since cofounding it in 1966; Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone, and Robin Morgan had recently published extremely influential books; and hundreds of other women had started consciousness-raising groups and action collectives—it was self-fulfilling. After the piece was published, Steinem did become the public face of feminism—and the object of bitter jealousy and resentment. In In Our Time, Brownmiller describes how she and many of the other radicals were outraged by the hype and by seeing “hard-won, original insights developed by others in near total anonymity be turned by the media into Gloria Steinem pronouncements, Gloria Steinem ideas, and Gloria Steinem visions.”
But Steinem—and her glamorous U.K. counterpart, Germaine Greer—served a critical function, as Brownmiller also recognizes in hindsight: “While the radicals were insisting, ‘We don’t need a leader,’ mainstream women needed to have Gloria up there—a golden achiever who wore the armament of perfect beauty, was wildly attractive to men, and spoke uncompromising truths in calm, measured tones that seldom betrayed her anger. And Gloria, for all the complex reasons a person seeks heroism and stardom, needed to become what people wished her to be.” Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, in her recent memoir of the ’60s and ’70s, Outlaw Woman, is less forgiving, painting Steinem’s ascension as a ploy to shift the movement away from radicalism: “Gloria Steinem was being promoted by the New York liberal media establishment as the model for the women’s liberation movement.”
Whether or not she sought out or desired her stardom, Steinem managed to parlay her fifteen minutes of fame into a lifelong career in public feminism. As she said in a 2000 interview in Bust, “I think the challenge is to figure out how to use public recognition to convey some message.” She also tried, in both concrete and abstract ways, to deflect the star label. In the early days, she took a cue from the radical feminist cadres and insisted upon speaking only with female reporters, or participating only in articles that would feature several women’s voices and not just hers. Current media outlets continue to ask for Steinem’s presence, and she always attempts to share the spotlight with other women—especially, of late, the younger generation of feminists.
Backstabbing, Grrrl-Style Now
Alas, the art of trashing was not isolated to the second wave. Sadly, the criticisms of selling out or seeking undue fame resurface with every rekindled interest in feminism. The rise and fall of the riot grrrl movement in the early ’90s, in particular, makes for a compelling parallel with the heady days of the second wave.
Even before Naomi Wolf and Susan Faludi—arguably the two most prominent feminists of the early 1990s—rocketed to the top of the bestseller lists, a younger generation of activists had coalesced into a vital, messy new feminist force. Like the radical feminists of the second wave, these women were staunchly antiestablishment, operating outside the mainstream and embracing indie- and punk-rock culture—and they too were inspired to action by the sexism of the men in their supposedly alternative communities. The term “riot grrrl,” first invoked as the name of a feminist zine and a gathering of hundreds of angry young women, was interpreted by the mainstream media as the name of the movement. Before this nascent movement had a chance to define itself, it seemed, it was plastered across the headlines of Time, Newsweek, and Sassy, leading girls across the country to start “chapters” and declare themselves “riot grrrls,” much to the bemusement of the originators of the term. In a tale that may be apocryphal, Bikini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna purportedly convinced a “mainstream reporter” that there were riot grrrl chapters in cities across the country when there really weren’t; in response to the story, girls went looking for the chapters, and when they couldn’t find them, they decided to start their own.
In search of a public face for this new movement, reporters latched onto the outspoken Hanna, who was—not at all coincidentally, at least for the media’s purposes—a onetime neighbor of rock star Kurt Cobain. Hanna’s sudden high visibility soon affected her ability to participate in the very culture she was supposedly leading. In a 2001 interview in index magazine, Hanna said, “I went to a couple of Riot Grrrl meetings, but then I faded out of it, because I got sort of famous. I mean, at least famous in my own little scene, I got all this attention.” Like Brownmiller, Firestone, and Steinem, she was perceived by some as a traitor.
But from the start, Hanna was, she told Bust, “really embarrassed and humiliated by being singled out” and tried to resist being characterized as the leader of riot grrri—even going so far as to resist being called a riot grrrl at all. In the liner notes to a CD release of Bikini Kill’s first two records, the band insists it is not “the definitive ‘riot girl band’” and that its members are “not ‘leaders of’ or authorities on the ‘Riot Grrrl’ movement.” And furthermore, they write, “Tho we totally respect those who still feel that label is important and meaningful to them, we have never used that term to describe ourselves as a band.” These mixed feelings about being publicly allied with such a diffuse movement were shared by many of the original participants in riot grrrl, including zine authors and Bratmobile members Allison Wolfe and Molly Neuman and British band Huggy Bear, all of whom ended up declaring a sort of media blackout. Frustrated by their misrepresentation in the press and anxious to maintain control over their images, riot grrrls refused to participate in interviews or be photographed for stories. As a result, as with the radical wing of second-wave feminism, their message was co-opted by the mainstream press and diluted into a slogan of anything-goes girl power.
In the meantime, Hanna struggled with her newfound celebrity, trying to balance her own integrity with the potential to reach a
broader audience. Like Steinem before her, Hanna has developed a great awareness of fame’s potential, and its pitfalls. In a dialogue with Steinem in Bust, Hanna said, “I need to know how, as an FF—Famous Feminist—to deal with these things [backbiting, horizontal hostility disguised as valid criticism]. I need to see the graceful ways that other women have dealt with that.”
The Media Abhors a Leaderless Vacuum
Much of the anger directed toward feminist stars stems from a deep-rooted frustration with the way the media treats the movement. Women rise to fame not because they are lauded as leaders by other feminists (even though, like Steinem and Hanna, they might already be seen as role models), but because the mainstream media sees in them a marketable image—a newsworthy persona upon whom can be projected all sorts of anxieties, hopes, and responsibilities. A feminist’s fame is often aided by something tangential to her politics—and that something is frequently related to her looks. Gloria Steinem and Naomi Wolf, for instance, rode to fame on the “she’s a feminist, but she’s sexy!” angle, while Kathleen Hanna was titillating because she was a feminist, a budding rock star, and a stripper. Meanwhile, contrarians like Camille Paglia and Rene Denfeld made news by being feminists who hate other feminists. You get the idea: It’s rarely original thought or sharp intellect alone that gets a woman noticed.
These days, the feminist fame machine operates almost entirely outside the realm of feminist activism, organizing, or journalism. More often than not, the women who are held up as icons have little to do with, well, actual feminism. In fact, it takes very little feminist activity to become anointed a feminist icon. Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, coauthors of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, are among those who have pointed out that feminism’s shift away from its activist roots has had serious negative consequences—one of which is that, because feminism is so far removed from grassroots, hands-on action, it is possible for a person like Elizabeth Wurtzel or Katie Roiphe to declare herself a feminist and, with no clearly articulated politics or ideals, become someone people in the media call on when they need a feminist perspective on an issue of the day. As Baumgardner and Richards put it, “[People] have begun conflating celebrity with expertise. She who gets the most attention is presumed to be the ‘leader,’ regardless of the content of her message or her character.”
Moreover, as our culture grows ever more obsessed with celebrity, it has become harder and harder to find examples of living, breathing feminists in the media. The infamous 1998 Time cover story that traced the history of feminism from Susan B. Anthony to Betty Friedan to a TV character who never identifies herself as feminist (Ally McBeal, played by Calista Flockhart) is the most well-known example, but it’s far from unique. (In fact, the article hardly referenced a single breathing person, instead relying on media images of imaginary women like McBeal and Bridget Jones to speak for women. The few real-life women who were mentioned—Courtney Love, Debbie Stoller, Lisa Palac—were media creators themselves, not activists.) When they aren’t fictional characters standing in for real women, public feminists tend to be either only marginally identified with feminist politics (as with the aforementioned Wurtzel) or in fact ideologically opposed to many of the tenets of feminism, as is the case with the current crop of antifeminist feminists. (Formal leaders of mainstream feminist organizations—like Patricia Ireland of NOW and Ellie Smeal of the Feminist Majority Foundation—have been recognized as experts when it comes to commenting on specific public policy issues relating to reproductive rights, but not much more.)
The current scarcity of feminist stars is a curious thing. It could be read as a step forward—a reflection of feminism’s evolution, a renewed interest in local activism, and the growing realization that feminism is not a monolithic ideology. It could be a sign of waning public interest in feminism or another backlash, the belief that feminism is over and our work done. It could be that, as a reflection of these conservative times, the most recognizable feminist icons are not actually feminists.
The truth is, feminism is in many ways a victim of its own successes. On the one hand, an awareness of feminism—or at least its basic principles—is increasingly interwoven into American mass culture. But on the other hand, it is rarely explicitly discussed in the mainstream media, except for the occasional pronouncement that it’s “dead,” or in reports stating that a majority of women do not call themselves feminists.
Looking back on the lesbian-feminist movement of the 1970s, artist Terry Wolverton asks, “In letting go of our worldly ambitions … were we truly forging a female model, one that assumed our influence would be psychic, cellular, would work its way through an underground network of women’s wisdom? Or were we unwittingly participating in our own marginalization, ensuring our efforts would be lost to history? Were we redefining power or giving up on it?” Wolverton could just as easily be describing the riot grrrls or the third-wavers. It happens again and again—the radicals refuse to be co-opted by the mass culture, and so their history, too, remains obscure.
The proliferation of micromedia—independent websites, underground zines, and info-sharing networks—has infused new blood into feminist activism, as the popularity of Ladyfest and other locally based skill-sharing workshops attest. But without famous faces, or at least provocative new visages, attached to it, this kind of grassroots activism is invisible to nonfeminist media. (And with the rocky state of national feminist media these days, we can’t afford to isolate ourselves in a pro-grrrl media ghetto.) To remain vital and relevant to a larger group of women, feminism also needs a public face—or better yet, public faces.
We shoot ourselves in the foot when we punish or ostracize leaders. The lesson of Gloria and Kathleen is this: People aren’t right or authoritative simply because they’re famous, nor are they bad or bent on screwing over their colleagues. And if we don’t select our own leaders, the media will do it for us—much to the detriment of the feminist movement. Feminists have to let go of the notion that to be a public figure is to seek personal glory and personal glory alone, and realize that the desire to take feminism to the public realm comes out of a desire to help craft our own collective image.
Unnatural Selection
Questioning Science’s Gender Bias
Keely Savoie / SPRING 2004
SOMEWHERE IN THE MOUNTAINS OUTSIDE OF KYOTO, JAPAN, a group of Japanese macaques are doing something they have no evolutionary right to do: having lots of hot, homo monkey sex. Every mating season, the females couple up with each other. Some of the consortships last only an hour, others more than a week. During the time they are together, these female couples mount each other tens or even hundreds of times, defend each other from male aggressors, groom each other, forage together, sleep together, and choose each other over interested males. According to Dr. Paul Vasey, assistant professor at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, among these particular Japanese macaques, the girls get it on with each other more than they do with the boys. And they get off, too: The mounter rubs her clitoris against the mountee’s back, while the mountee rubs her own clitoris with her tail, and together they enjoy wanton lezzie action with no reproductive value whatsoever.
Meanwhile, in a lab at the University of Georgia, Dr. Patricia Adair Gowaty, distinguished research professor at the Institute of Ecology, is studying fruit flies that also break the evolutionary mold. Instead of buzzing around frantically trying to mate with any available female while the females sit back and pick the cream of the crop (“Not you. Nope, not you, either … Ahhh, what nice complex eyes you have. Yes—you”), Gowaty’s males are just as choosy as females, sometimes more so—even though everyone from Charles Darwin to Dr. Phil knows that the evolutionary mandate of males is to mate, mate, mate.
As I furiously scribbled notes during Vasey’s and Gowaty’s talks at the convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), all I could think was, Finally, this week of proteomics lectures and career workshops is coming through with
the ultimate payoff—sex. But while I reveled in the salacious details of monkeys’ erotic lives, Vasey, Gowaty, and other scientists at the seminar had a bone to pick with their discipline.
For all the emphasis on advancement in the field, most biologists still tend to view animal behavior through the socially conservative lens of the field’s Victorian forefathers: Sex is strictly for reproduction, and males and females have prescribed roles—a formula that conveniently reflects social values but renders Gowaty’s finicky males and Vasey’s lusty females the orphans of evolutionary theory. Biologists have known about the lesbian macaques for over forty years—and there is documented homosexuality in over four hundred species—but no one has come up with a satisfying theoretical framework for their nonreproductive sex. And Gowaty’s fruit flies are not alone in their defiance of parental investment theory, a branch of evolutionary theory asserting that females are “coy” and males “indiscriminate” due to the respective size of eggs and sperm (hence, the amount of energy each gender invests in its progeny). Yet the theory still stands as the default explanation for differences between the sexes.
Dr. Joan Roughgarden—the tireless feminist, gay, and transgender activist and eminent theoretical ecologist at Stanford University who organized the Evolutionary Aspects of Gender and Sexuality seminar that was the occasion for Gowaty’s and Vasey’s talks—says research that eschews those archaic assumptions about gender and sexuality is routinely marginalized, swept under the rug, ignored, avoided, and ridiculed. Passive and active sexism in scientific research, she says, have resulted in a skewed and incomplete picture of the world that only a feminist overhaul of existing and future research can correct. Happily, there are scientists like Gowaty and Vasey doing the work, but they face a long, hard slog, not just against die-hard scientific tenets like parental investment theory but also against the recalcitrant professional and academic institutions of science itself.
