THE ANTI-FEMINIST BACKLASH:
Elshtain, Jean Bethke
BOOKS THE ANTI-FEMINIST BACKLASH JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN The Inevitability of mately resides in the...
...He emphasizes crimes by Gilder, women are their bodies and it is as biological creatures that women have some "special contribution" to make...
...them, and it is by keeping that line and that origin He condemns Feminists who have always in view that we never forget them...
...Sites visited include the Wampanoag REVIEWERS Indian Museum, Plimoth Plantation, Lexington-Concord, JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN is an assistant Boston's Historic and Black Freedom Trail, and many others...
...No, argument...
...He argues things were too many...
...as persons, share in common...
...And the mente mezquinos," "wondrously paltry...
...rather, of exchange" on which marriage is RONALD CHRIST it is the hazard of an imagination actbased, namely, the woman grants ing on the less, on the least in order sexual affirmation to the man and he In his poem "John, 1:14" Borges to see the most...
...professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts...
...The book panders to the profits by giving women lower wages...
...Words mean both, he believes, lies in some "hordifferent things within the contexts of monal factor which gives males a Quadrangle, $7.95 disparate societies...
...in fact, beSTEVEN GOLDBERG evidence demonstrates the universality havior and feelings may exist in a of systems of patriarchy...
...he writes work...
...These include the fact that men the kind of achieved failure, the signal of ghetto youths with drawn knives, must be able to counterbalance female frustration this sort of diction aims at, of "tens of thousands of male gangs in sexual superiority by success in the or should...
...THE QUEST FOR AMERICA,THE SEARCH calling these sentiments the simple FOR FREEDOM is a five day program of historic site exploration with unique 'interpretive programs to add a quality of depth...
...Morrow, $6.95 surely know, however, to use a single Goldberg's model of patriarchy and term (like "patriarchy") to describe male dominance is erected on a base Sexual Suicide every society ever known results in a of biological causality...
...DIVISION OF INSTITUTES, STONEHILL COLLEGE FATHER ROBERT P. IMBELLI teaches at St...
...a program to provide the opportunity to do what Tom Paine He rationalizes away the importance suggested...
...There is not a single reference to (That, after all, is the vulgar temptaard stock-in-trade features of racist the fact that capitalists reap higher tion and so the easiest to avoid...
...What's at stake is not the cape the psychology of exchange al- Dutton, $8.95 truth of his statements, their autobiotogether...
...If those using guns are overhe will have ignored or minimized the and pornographers...
...THE QUEST FOR AMERICA is the published by the Center for Inter-American Relations...
...He more problematic...
...Any book that omits the capitalistic- hear, we imagine, but we never do see...
...I find protected, easily exploited labor-force...
...The flected" in the "expectations" of male exorably to feelings and behavior which major elements in this theory, good for and female behavior in every society...
...BOOKS THE ANTI-FEMINIST BACKLASH JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN The Inevitability of mately resides in the male...
...He speaks of "wife swapconfirm themselves by habit, that we frequently refresh ping, group swinging and gay liberation," of "dildoes in drugstore win- our patriotism by reference to first principles...
...The ludicrous over-simplifications of same divergence of spirit and scribe Here, then, is the latest collection of which Gilder is guilty may be exempli- can be seen in Borges' poems, all of poems by one of the three greatest writfied by his discussion of the "eight which, somehow, imply a poet but, ers alive today...
...It is particularly ironic that ravels as one analyzes it piece-by-piece...
...Like the frugal stars in its imagery, in its praise of "plain he mentions in "Rubaiyat," his poems things" and even in its invocation of hold their treasures back...
...Who does Goldin rigorous, scientific theory-building The case for male dominance is even berg think he is kidding with this arfrom a stance of neutral objectivity...
...men and women that the woman's will preciate the "inner elegance" of Freud- Gilder's Sexual Suicide is prejudiced is somehow subordinate to the male's ian theory...
...need not be described (but are labeled all times and all places, are the pre- Feelings, of course, cannot "acknowl- "male dominance") to which, in turn, sumed universality of both patriarchy edge" anything...
...Furthermore, Gilder repeats labeled "the important characteristics ologists, male chauvinists and pornog- ad nauseam throughout his book that are those that divide the sexes," will raphers...
...Borges has only at one point that to treat marriage In Praise of Darkness been able to give by taking away and as a contract destroys it...
...Nor even that the real voice the cities...
...I mean that reading his poems is like worst and meanest paranoia of an al- Women in this society comprise an un- listening to someone pacing in a carready retrenching middle-class...
...eyes" and says "All through my life inconsistent in his own terms...
...in fact, he wouldn't even 8 March 1974: 16 want to meet one...
...At a certain point differences in ply gives this thing, whatever it is, the herent reasoning and scholarship are complexity become differences in kind...
...It is "unspecified . . . dimorphic image of feminism as the straw-woman that of a complex, technological, mod- behavior...
...historicity to argue for or against of patriarchy...
...For fend his household...
...from behavior-in this society or any putative scientific argument literally unPatriarchy is defined by Goldberg as other...
...Huh...
...To acassures us that his effort has borne ber, has defined male dominance as a cept his arguments at face value the wondrous fruit indeed, for he has found feeling "acknowledged by the emo- reader must agree that a quality of the limits to which "every society that tions...
...have systematically misunderstood, notorious humility which proclaims: I will point to just two examples states: ". . . where dominant iden- "Let others boast of pages they have of the fallacies with which the book is tities depend on being dominant it is written,/ I take pride in those I've rife...
...Any person who lectual Americans" who are holding at this symbol of their primordial huntputs on a pair of conceptual spectacles bay the hordes of "feminists, sex- ing past...
...Commonweal: 17 single (mostly black) men...
...Why don't men in Suicide...
...operational designation aggression...
...Every society must "conform cause its author claims to be engaged Procrustean bed...
...by Norman Thomas diGiovanni for instance...
...Gilder's book is to provide a few brief samples of his florid, emotive prose It is at all times necessary, and more particularly style-language calculated to stir up so during the progress of a revolution and until right ideas prejudices...
...back of the clock on consideration of and wages for women doesn't deserve And critical virtue lies not in comthe hard issues of political, economic, serious attention...
...terms to discuss the social organizations lated to," or is "manifested in," or The Inevitability of Patriarchy is the of every society...
...Most of all, though, they are "key" to Borges...
...Although phrases friend, an old friend, whose richness like "that white thing, the moon" are lies not in splendid moments but in 8 March 1974: 18...
...Gilder's favorite tripartite it is single males who most often comfind, not surprisingly, that all sorts of grouping of odious elements, by my mit crimes of violence, including those "significant" things divide us because count, is "liberationists, sexologists, with guns...
...Yet he later notes the "terms graphical or even "poetic" truth...
...Like those famous figures like the near-blind James BEy0h0b S.a stars, his poems are distant, they are Joyce, it in fact pretends to offering cool, they are tiny, they are remotely the "center," the "algebra" and the 'File FATISIER, bright...
...Goldberg's tinued inevitability...
...THE BICENTENNIAL OF THE UNITED STATES Perhaps the best way to approach is a good time to seek out an answer...
...It is the slimmest of slim major reasons" for why women should equally mysteriously, never fully pro- volumes...
...Joseph's Seminary at Dunwoodie in Easton, Massachusetts 02356 New York...
...He defends lack whelmingly single males where does the many more traits that men and women, of gun control legislation by urging defense of wife and children enter in...
...This book does much ate ~sS?b m $ q. !r at all...
...Comparing the this "aggression" from which all else Sexual Suicide set up a monolithic way of life of the Mbuti Pygmies with flows...
...This is the traditional argument of anti-Feminists and anti-egalitarians...
...has Christ say that he's entrusted the imagination is precisely superlative...
...True marriage JORGE LUIS BORGES he imagines the taking away has been involves a "commitment not to ex- a giving back-his sight for his vision, change products or services but to es- Trans...
...As always, Borges' gives her his "external achievement...
...This means that both men and women AMER/CA...
...It is by dows...
...prurient obsessions with rape," and THOMAS PAI NE others who "get vicarious kicks out of macho violence - the sexy terminal STONEHILL COLLEGE, located between Boston and Cape swaggers and gun fetishisms - of the Cod in the heartland of America's birthplace has developed black guerrilla...
...To do so places us in "reflected in" the institutions of all more infuriating of the two books be- peril of sharing Goldberg's patriarchal societies...
...He is concerned "common sense" of those "non-intel- other Western societies seem to need with men and women...
...And, finally, when one feels the title poem about his blindness that definitions, question begging, and over- exposed, threatened, or cornered, it is "To think, Democritus tore out his simplifications...
...Whatever It glosses over the fact that women in American society receive the same eduhappened to cation as men and are socialized into the standards and values of the culture...
...Goldberg doesn't think against which the authors launch their ern society like our own, and labeling he need either describe or explain "the attacks...
...plaining about what we lack in these and social reform by insisting that the Perhaps the best final word on both poems, but in realizing that it is the source of all our troubles lies in some books comes from Erik Erikson who, poems themselves that teach us that "basic simple," in this case, sexual in an essay Gilder cites but seems to want, coming as they do from a now socialization...
...Or, Or, a woman chooses a particular man writing of his words "to a common as Norman Thomas di Giovanni beauto marry in order that he may "submit man;/ they will never be what I want tifully renders the poet's "admirablehis marketplace reward to her...
...These are all stand- on...
...duce themselves...
...to trace America to its origin to learn to of racism in anti-busing sentiments by understand it...
...peted study next door: we strain, we this irresponsible in the extreme...
...These are serious charges We simply cannot (if we wish to be Goldberg's potent "unspecified diand, within the necessary limits of this both honest and rational) use identical morphic" quality determines, or is "rereview, I intend to defend them...
...Unfortunately, each analysis is both "patriarchal" is rather like trying behavior which I subsume under the both strident and intemperate in tone to derive an elephant from an earth- hypothesized aggression He simand a complete muddle insofar as co- worm...
...doubt be passed over in favor of more I don't mean that Borges' poems dis- obviously assuming works by a man MARY aXw play the extravagant stinginess of much who says here that he wants "to be modern poetry, the pharisaic abuse of remembered less as a poet than as a the commandment "less is more...
...Sexual Suicide positively bristles hard to grant real equality to the read," from a man who reminds us in with ad hominem attacks, circular dominated...
...perfect program for families, youth groups, and organized JOSEPH A. PAGE, co-author of Bitter Wages: The Nader Report on Disease and adult groups...
...For additional information write: Qnjury on the lob, is a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center...
...This feeling, he goes on, is "re- which we need know nothing leads inhas ever existed" must conform...
...These that the gun is an important "emblem Gilder's courting of racist (as well include a capacity for suffering and of male as hunter" and that it "objec- as sexist) fears and hatreds runs like joy, for intelligent thought, for mak- tively increases the man's capacity to de- an ominous thread throughout Sexual ing choices and setting goals...
...concerned...
...Goldberg, remem- rogant display of word-magic...
...Nor that he pays out in fashion- to create that sense of Borges as a BEXCON PRESS ably flat diction...
...The root of GEORGE F. GILDER complete mystification...
...Unpretentious in its diction, receive less pay than men for identical duce his voice...
...More importantly, it all social institutions (labeled "patriand male-dominance and their con- is impossible to hypothesize feelings archy") must conform...
...to its expectations...
...What exactly is Both The Inevitability of Patriarchy and feminist propositions...
...It is a mistake for both feminists indeed, the "inevitable social manifestaGoldberg and Gilder have launched and their opponents to point to simple tions of sexual differences in aggression the opening sallies in what promises to tribal societies or societies of dubious are sufficient to explain the inevitability be a virulent anti-feminist backlash...
...The single most important from the very beginning, for Gilder and that general authority in dyadic presumption of Freudian theory, as states that he is not at all interested in and familial relationships . . . ulti- anyone who has read Freud knows, is human beings...
...As he must radical disjuncture from one another...
...experience needs for self-validation in a context beyond the simply private...
...any system of organization that as- Goldberg argues the case for male I have never read a social science work sociates authority and leadership pri- dominance on the basis of 'feelings' which required (if one were to agree marily with males...
...He pictures gangs of ghetto tracing things to their origin that we learn to understand youths marauding with "phalluses high...
...greater capacity for aggression...
...to say/ but only their shadow...
...Gilder's analysis represents a turning industrial system in a discussion of jobs In other words, that's all there is...
...He frets over those "in- marketplace, or that men need money of Borges is in his short stories and fluential groups" now failing to repro- to spend on the opposite sex, and so that his poetry is metrical ventriloquism...
...Goldberg that action is not an accurate index to Patriarchy presumes that extant anthropological some internal state at all...
...But the book will no only and lastingly themselves...
...Male dominance, imputed from behavior, for he alsc to its major presumptions) such a total on the other hand, is a feeling "ac- condemns feminists for their simple- suspension of common sense and ampuknowledged by the emotions of both minded inability to understand or ap- tation of the critical faculties...
...Gilder is consistently difficult to be judicious...
...All housing, meals, and transportation will be provided RONALD CHRIST is Editor of Review, by Stonehill College...
...Not friend" anyway...
Vol. 100 • March 1974 • No. 1
