Rapist!

Panels? Oh those things that go on outside the Governor's Club.

Ugh, wasn't it ridiculous? And how about the panels about trying to get the young women of today's generationg to read the old feminist texts? Hello, how about the old feminists trying to listen to the new generation of young women rather than harping on the ideas that were important for their generation. If they're losing a generation of feminists, it's not only the culture of anti-everything thoughtful to blame, but a lack of attentiveness on the parts of sub-groups who wonder where their members are going off to. There were a lot of sub-standard offerings on this panel list. I hope it's a blip, but it's too bad it's for the 30th anniversary, you know? And I'm planning on coming back finally after two years of absence. Was hoping for some good panels. Guess I'll have to be in the bar most of the time. Although, poor me, I can't be in the Governor's Club. I didn't get a room in time. :-(

Yeah, Chris, I missed out on a Governor's Club room, too. We'll have to sneak in through the air ducts.

All those panels should be transformed into no-holds-bars cage matches. And even then I wouldn't go watch them.

OK, one, I think it can be useful to re-read old feminist criticism, if only b/c certain issues are just gone from our radar now -- the whole [david's blog won't let me say the word that means pictures of people doing it, god David] porn (Sorry! —D.) debate? What? Huh? That thing from The Handmaid's Tale? That wasn't fiction? But at the same point, the more contemporary feminism, the better.

Also, allow me to share w/ you Meghan's Govenor's Club Secret: climb the stairs to the 12th floor. Knock on the door. One of those people lounging around in the chairs always will let you in.

Yeah, there’s no point in reinventing the wheel, and the Stack Heel panel last year made it clear that feminists need more cross-generation dialogue. (And not just of the Q: How come your generation is always so damn angry? A: Because you little twits are giving away everything we fought for! variety.)

This one did irritate me, though:

The word “feminist” has fallen out of fashion; for some of us middle-aged crones, calling a book or story feminist will attract us, but how do we approach young women and girls to get them to read the works that made a difference for us when we were young?

I’m sorry, what’s the connection here? Do you want young women and girls to read feminist books, or do you just want them to read your childhood favorites? Are we really talking about feminism, or are we talking about the age-old problem of middle-aged SF fans not being able to recommend to new readers any books written in the last thirty years?

Or the proposed panel that was all "hey, why aren't the major television networks doing any science fiction television?" that just made my head spin.

The quote you picked about the feminism is exactly the one that made me shake my head, David. Sure, cross-generational discussion is necessary, but like *that*? That's what I meant by not really making any real appeal to the younger generation. Certainly a younger generation of feminists should read previous works, but sometimes you can't expect people to just want to sit at your feet either. Especially when there's been drift occuring for a good decade. You gotta find some other access points sometimes. Film, these days, is where I suspect you'll reach a potential feminist audience that perhaps isn't even aware they could be feminists waiting to happen. It'll happen in college classrooms and through reading books, but if you want real like huge numbers, it's got to be through a medium that will reach those numbers easily and without much work on the potentials part, I think. I'm just thinking mass culture here.

Feminism is simultaneously the most successful and least popular social movement of all time. We have won nearly every fight we have entered into and yet feminism's benefactors (which is everyone) continue to hate feminists. I say, let them hate. We're still winning. As "conflicted" as some young women might be about the label feminist, few want to go back to the bad old days. And anyway, those of us who embrace the term, won't let it happen.

I actually have not heard anyone object to feminism, or being called a feminist, in years. Certainly not anyone who goes to wiscon. I think you'd have to grub in the darkest reaches of Republican talk radio, wouldn't you? I mean, aren't even the attempting-to-be-palatable-to-the-mainstream wing of American conservatives eager to claim feminism?

Why the hell would anyone not want to be a feminist?

Some favorite third wave feminist treatises:

Woman and Nature, Susan Griffith
Gyn/ecology, Mary Daly
The Mismeasure of Woman, Carol Tarvis
A Manifesto for Cyborgs, Donna Haraway
In A Different Voice, Carol Gilligan

I actually have not heard anyone object to feminism, or being called a feminist, in years. Certainly not anyone who goes to wiscon.

Well, this is the problem, isn't it? Not everyone goes to Wiscon.

I think you'd have to grub in the darkest reaches of Republican talk radio, wouldn't you?

Sadly, no. In my experience ordinary well-intentioned women with progressive politics and reasonably strong views on women’s issues nonetheless often, if not raised by self-identified feminist parents, associate the word “feminist” with — well, the sort of women who sat in the back and made faces during last year’s stack heel panel.

I mean, aren't even the attempting-to-be-palatable-to-the-mainstream wing of American conservatives eager to claim feminism?

Eh? Not on any planet I've recently visited.

Alas no, Ben, but wouldn't it be nice? I had this bizarre and frustrating conversation a few months ago with a woman in her early twenties who thought too many women were too hung up on the whole feminism idea, and that she would never dream of calling herself a feminist because Those People are the ones who just run around being stressed out about all of these imaginary problems.

What Susan said. And everywhere from all-girls catholic school (where actually most people came to really hate "feminism" as espoused by the nuns, which was a charming combination of pro-life abstinence rhetoric and exhorting more girls to "go into the sciences") to Wesleyan (where people who werent' "radical" decided that just b/c some of the radicals were slightly ridiculous people, well, their causes were universally trival too.)

What David and Susan said. When I left America, I'd been teaching freshman comp. at university and by far the majority of young women today are more than averse--some dead scared--of being associated with the word "feminism", even if they have strong views and opinions that wouldn't have been quite as possible for them without feminism. There's no connection there for them. They live in a world where a certain degree of equality has been won and feminism seems an odd archaic concept, and i think they even have a difficult time imagining why it was even necessary, cannot imaginatively project themselves into the world that made feminism necessary. And if you took them to wiscon and showed them around, I don't think it would change their minds, to be honest, and not to be disrespectful at all, in many cases it wouldn't resonate with the issues they feel are important for women today. There's a generation gap. And I don't think it's a good idea to ignore it either, because what's been won can be lost just as easily.

Indeed, a tragilarious number of progressives refuse to call themselves feminists, even while a surprising number of conservative women (anti-abortion, pro "choice" in that one can marry and have a career, because either way is a useful strategy to escape that icky working class, etc.) do call themselves feminists. And they blame the other (actual) feminists for ruining everything and perpetuating sexism by acknowleding that it exists.

Although, Chris, to be fair to the older generation of feminists, I think we need to mention the one panelist in the stack-heel panel who was simultaneously "I'm proud to call myself a feminist" and "the problems feminism dealt with have all been solved". I felt like she kept insisting that there weren't really any complicated questions left to be dealt with, and for her, feminism was like a fashion accessory or something. Surely a lot of the intergenerational frustration has to come from the visibility of women like that, I think.

For a twenty-year-old kid from Lincoln, Nebraska I thought she was doing okay.

Meanwhile, just in time, Salon prints “My lunch with an antifeminist pundit.” After reading the first few paragraphs I don’t have any real desire to read the rest, but y’all feel free.

Do I get a cookie if I make it all the way to the end of that interview? I should get a cookie.

But I don't think an article about a right-wing pundit's rhetorical style necessarily refutes the claim that "anti-feminism is practically non-existent." If you feel like paying $3.95, September's NYT article about Ivy League women pursuing their Mrs. degrees is more on point... though again, I seem to recall a number criticisms directed at that reporter's tendency to begin her generalizations with the quantitatively fuzzy phrase "Many women..." (Many? How many, exactly?)

Did y'all notice the "Breeders vs. Broads" panel? See, I really think that's the core issue at the heart of the whole "anti-feminist" debate. And feminists aren't necessarily "mum" about it either: I've had more than one female mentor suggest, in all earnestness, that having children ruins women for science.

Oh, David, your initial complaint seems to have been somewhat misrepresented over at Emerald City...

But the program voting page is accessible to people who haven't registered, too. So if you get desperate, you could totally load the ballots. Or... you could just make peace with your inner rapist, and pay what's-his-name to come and lecture on redefining masculinity at the venue of your choice!

I know a young woman in her twenties who exclaimed that she would never be a feminist. The room was full of men, and I think she was doing it to attract them. I tried to talk to her about it, but she remained adamant.

I've also had plenty of guys tell me that women are already equal so there's no need to discuss the whole thing anymore.

My wife's getting her Nurse Practitioner's degree in Women's Health and easily half of the nurses enrolled in the program don't consider themselves feminist because they think it means 1) you must be hardcore pro-choice and 2) you must lose all femininity. Doubly odd considering the program is at the uberliberal University of Wisconsin here in Madison, but most of the graduate nurses didn't go to undergrad here.

I take it from inference that the vast majority of the nurses in that program are, in fact, women?

Presumably the other thing which is alienating a lot of feminist-averse women is the unfortunate assumption that "feminist" necessarily equals "man-hating"? Take this excerpt from Carol Emshwiller's autobiographical notes:

"I have three brothers. We adore each other. People keep calling me a feminist. Well sort of, I suppose, but I'm nuts about men!"

Help me out? I just don't know how else to parse that.

I believe there is only one man in this Nurse Practitioner program, and there's even fewer men in the Women's Health track. My wife's been in nursing for a decade now and has worked in a dozen or more hospitals in three different states. I think she's worked with four or five men who were nurses during that time. Men are "supposed" to be the doctors, you see, and women the helper-nurses.

Can't help you on the Emshwiller, unfortunately.

On a completely unrelated note:

Chris Barzak was tagged by Ms. Bond for the five weird habits meme. He tagged me. Now I'm tagging you.

The first player of this game starts with the topic "five weird habits" and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don't forget to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says "You have been tagged" (assuming they take comments) and tell them to read yours.

If you break the chain, it's not my karma.

Chris, David, if you don't like the panel suggestions, you're free to vote against them. That's what I did in the case of our egomaniac panelist described in the original entry here. You're also always free to suggest newer, better, shinier panels. Otherwise, you just tend to make the programming committee cranky by criticizing without taking positive action. It's not that hard!

I did vote against some of the panels, and supported some of the others actually. But I didn't suggest other panels because there is a note on the site, if I remember correctly, saying that as it's so late no new panel ideas will be considered. Did I read that correctly?

What? Look, I like Wiscon panels. The survey’s full of decent panels. Over-full, according to the survey site. All I’m saying is that it’d be a crying shame if the good ones got pushed aside to make room for these disasters in the making. Which I did vote against. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with suggesting (however shrilly) that other people vote against them too.

50,000 dead guys in South Chicago say no to disasters in the making!

Chris: Yes, you did read that correctly. Unless it's so brilliant that it makes my eyes bleed when I read it, it will be held for WisCon 31.

It looks like you're on the list of people who got the "Please submit ideas!" email, however. Is your hotmail address no longer good? That's where it went to, and earlier in the planning cycle I would have loved to see any and all ideas from you and anyone else here. (At this point, the program team for W31 will love to see them, as I said before. But please, if you've got great ideas, submit them now.)

Y'all be nice to the WisCon folk! Y'hear!

And vote down those nasty evil panels! Immediately!

Feminism = double plus good.

See you in Madison!

I don't know about anyone else, but I got the email saying "Send us your program panel ideas" on December 28th with a notice that the program idea submission page would close on January 30th. By the time I went to the link (less than a week later if I remember correctly), they had already closed the page to new ideas. If I had known it would close that quickly, I would have been a lot speedier in my response. I'm not sure why the January 30th date was given if it was essentially a first-come-first-served deal.