Last night I stayed up late reading a lot of Caitlin Flanagan / Serfdom related items—the entire Slate exchange between Barbara Ehrenreich, Sara Mosle and CF; other bloggers who’ve blogged about her, not always kindly, and I even listened to a radio interview she gave. I was exhausted when I finished. What a tempest in a cyber-teapot. Yet, frayed as my brain was around the edges by the whole experience (I do not thrive on conflict), I was heartened to bump into a few voices that just seemed to get it, heartened to bump into Barabara Ehrenrech’s reminder, for example, that feminism is not a lifestyle:
You do a sneaky or perhaps unconscious bit of elision in your article, Caitlin: You confuse feminism, which is a political movement, with the movement of (upper-middle-class) women into the workforce.
There's a connection, of course: Feminist activism helped open up the professions to women, and many young female aspirants to the professions were feminists. But they're not the same thing. Feminism is not a particular lifestyle, defined by having your own job and checking account, for example. It is a moral stance and one that has always valued the stay-at-home mothers just as much as the corporate strivers.
Zelda Bronstein gets it too. I re-read her review of Global Woman and thrilled to sentences like: "Second wave activists have campaigned for affordable child care and for paid family and medical leave, programs that would greatly benefit working parents and their children. What they haven't defended is unpaid moral commitment."
I feel encouraged to see this sort of feminist vision that focuses beyond the "cash nexus".
10:44:41 PM 
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