The upside of my anger is that it gets me off my backside. Metaphorically so, I suppose, if I just sit down again to write. I have learned, however, not to fool myself that the writing, in and of itself, is sufficient response. It is only a beginning, an exercise in working out the world for myself and a precursor to strategizing more effective action, which sometimes includes planning a five-course Valentine’s Day Dinner for my family and sometimes does not.
While I was on computer hiatus there was apparently a minor blogland brouhaha over an article in The American Prospect slamming "elite" women who choose not to work in the public sphere while raising children. The author, Linda Hirshman, judges them for a multitude of reasons having to do with power, without once stopping to analyze the very notion underlying all her arguments. And she identifies herself as a philospher!
Hirshman does not strike me as particularly bright.
Not so much for what she writes (philosophical shortcomings aside)--she is, after all, as entitled to her opinions as much as anyone (even if she’s just recycling a lot of Simone de Beauvoir’s opinons)--as for her subsequent thin-skinned defense of the article. If she were truly a clever feminist, couldn’t she sense that goading a good number of American women into anger and a sense of solidarity was a good thing? And then be on her merry way?
Ah, well, and ho hum, as a favorite writer of mine used to say. Now I must be on my full-flourishing merry human way as I need to get some daylight into my pineal gland and the sun is shining.
12:19:08 PM 
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