Helen Andrews has been receiving wide, and deserved, attention for her recent essay “The Great Feminization.” Here’s my 2004 column from the News & Observer of Raleigh that touches on many of the same themes.
Feminism is often portrayed as a portal — a movement that afforded women access to the corridors of power.
Though this effort is one of its chief achievements, feminism has also pushed a broader aim: that American culture reflect the sensibility of women. They have demanded that the national discourse not only address the issues of particular interest to women (abortion, for example) but also that it discuss a range of other issues — from politics to entertainment — in language that speaks to their concerns.
What is the language of women? It is a language of feelings, of personal dynamics. We are edging toward stereotype when we say women are interested in people and men care about things, that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Examples to the contrary abound. Nevertheless, the broad-brush descriptions ring true.
Admitting these gender differences is essential if we are to identify one of the most important yet least recognized accomplishments of the women’s movement: the feminization of American culture.
Consider a few profound developments from the last 40 year: The deep interest in the personal lives of our leaders; the rise of a confessional culture (hello, Oprah); the preference for personal anecdotes over cold data; the celebration of feelings. Nowadays we talk about everything — usually in the most personal terms.
Of course, many factors have fueled these trends. It is hard to imagine them coming to the fore without Freud or the rise of mass media, especially TV. But it is impossible to explain their ascendancy absent the ascendancy of women. Men may partake of feminine culture, but they never would have built it.
A confession: As a man, I still feel more comfortable talking about things rather than people. Our let-it-all-hang-out style is not my style. I don’t know that I will ever reach the point where I will embrace it completely.
As a critic, however, I have a deep admiration for the changes women have wrought in our culture. It also seems clear that even as the female sensibility has suffused the fiber of our culture, it has not yet received the respect it deserves. For it is not simply a culture of feelings, but a deeply intellectual exercise from which men have much to learn.
I’ll cite one example. A few months ago I began stockpiling books for a column on Mother’s Day. Soon my desk was overflowing with works that praise and parse motherhood from a variety of angles. Many were lovely love letters, such as “Mama: Latina Daughters Celebrate their Mothers” by Maria Perez-Brown and Julie Bidwell (Rayo) and “Rise Up Singing: Black Women Writers on Motherhood” edited by Cecelie S. Berry (Doubleday).
The more provocative ones addressed the tensions many mothers feel between the demands of work and of home. These included novels such as “From Here to Maternity” by Kris Webb and Kathy Wilson (St. Martin’s Press), memoirs like “You Make Me Feel Like an Unnatural Woman: Diary of a New (Older) Mother” by Judith Newman (Hyperion) and works of social criticism including “The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women” by Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels (Free Press).
If you’ve browsed your local bookshop recently, you know I could have mentioned hundreds of others. What’s clear is that women are writing and buying these books because of the modern challenge to be both a bread winner and a bread baker. The women’s movement has given many of them great liberties and hard choices.
What often gets lost in the discussion of these books — which are too often dismissed as whiny and self-indulgent (though some may be) — is the intellectual process at work. Women aren’t simply expressing their feelings, they are studying them. They aren’t overwhelmed by emotion; they are figuring out how to conquer life. They are answering philosophy’s highest call: to live an examined life.
Another recognized yet largely underaddressed fact is the great changes the women’s movement has wrought in the lives of men. In numerous and obvious ways, our traditional roles as boyfriends, husbands and fathers are being rewritten.
Despite these sea changes, the literature of the new man is relatively paltry. The world is making new demands. Yet, we are responding in the same old way: we’re winging it. Though most of us happily devour books on baseball, technology, history and other pressing matters, we have little interest in exploring the forces shaping our personal lives. It seems we still have a hard time asking for directions.
Perhaps we still consider that women’s work. But thinking about your life so that you might respond to its challenges with a smidgen of informed reason is a noble human endeavor.
