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Newsletter
Book Reviews
Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild
Deborah Siegel; foreword by Jennifer Baumgardner. 1st ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. HQ1121 .S54 2007.
In Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild Deborah Siegel provides a concise summary of key figures and events surrounding feminist history since the 1960s. Implicit in her argument is the notion that feminism is an evolving process and that conflicts surrounding feminism throughout the years have only helped the movement grow.
Her book is divided into two parts: “Mothers” and “Daughters,” with a total of five chapters. The first half, “Mothers,” reviews the struggles of second-wave feminism, focusing primarily on the dialogue between the key feminist figures, like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, over such issues as how to understand politics, power, and the personal. In revisiting this aspect of the women?s movement, Siegel establishes a background for understanding the responses of some of the future spokeswomen and leaders of the third wave. The second half, “Daughters,” centers on the third wave, the “new generation of public spokeswomen—the Katie Roiphes, Naomi Wolfs, Rebecca Walkers,BUST, and Bitch magazines” and argues that “the [internal] debates remain alive because many of the original problems feminism set out to fix are still alive with us” (17).
In the first chapter of “Mothers,” Siegel describes the significance of the slogan “The Personal is Political” and how “In the latter half of the twentieth century, few words have been more important to women's equality and women's empower-ment than these” (24). Siegel provides an account of the second wave feminist movement and how women who were part of the radical feminist movement at the time found the notion of “sisterhood” problematic. For instance, she dis-cusses the disagreements that occurred between radical feminists, such as Roxanne Dunbar, an anarchist, and more mod-erate Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique. Siegel writes, “In Friedan's opinion, radicals like Dunbar were lead-ing the movement astray with their „crazy' talk of sexual politics and their vocal refusal to work within the system and side by side with men” (72). Clearly, internal conflicts presented themselves as particular challenges for feminists at the time. By first highlighting the disagreements that were at play between key figures of the second wave feminist move-ment, Siegel is able to move the discussion to “Daughters,” members of the post-second wave movement in order to showcase how internal conflicts are transferred within the feminist movement.
In “Postfeminist Panache,” the first chapter of the “Daughters” section, Siegel describes how when feminism evolved through the 1980s and 90s, the paradoxical term “postfeminist ” resurfaced, which defined the belief that feminism was dead because it was no longer needed. While the word “postfeminist” was first uttered in 1919 by “a group of female literary radicals in Greenwich Village who rejected the feminism of their mothers” (7) Siegel illustrates how the word “postfeminist” resurfaced in the 1980s and was used by media pundits to claim the end of feminism. Just like women were debating the necessity of feminism in 1919, a similar argument re-emerged during the third wave. Siegel describes how there were “No more Miss America protests, flush-ins, sit-ins, or national strikes making the evening news” (106). She asserts that while feminism in the 1980s “was a decade of integration, solidification, and institution building,” (107) it was the Anita Hill battle with the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 that “framed a younger generation's under-standing of women, politics, and power” (111).
The following chapter, “Rebels With a Cause,” focuses specifically on the generation gap between the second and third wave feminists. Siegel writes, “At the dawn of the new millennium, it was no longer simply a battle between feminists but between older and younger women more broadly” (137). She explains that while second wave feminism was by and for middle class white women, third wavers insisted that theirs would be “multicultural and multi-issue” (141). In her conclusion, Siegel attempts to bridge the gap between the first and second feminist generations. While current popular feminism differs from that of the early 1970s, Siegel argues that feminists today still continue to question what it means to have power. Specifically, “The original mission—social, economic, and political equality for women—remains rele-vant, because so much of it remains unfulfilled” (161). Ultimately, she provides a call to action that reminds women to not dismiss feminism and the notion of the personal being political.
Sisterhood, Interrupted is an ideal read for those interested in not only expanding their knowledge of feminist history, but also gaining particular insight about second and third wave feminist movements.
—Mark Bartkiewicz
Women As Weapons Of War: Iraq, Sex, and the Media
Kelly Oliver. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. General Collection. On Order.
A new book recently hit the shelves that sparked my attention, and made me pick it up immedi-ately. Many times we discuss women as objects, slating them in terms of how their bodies are used or misused; in her new book, Kelly Oliver takes this notion further, seeing women as weapons. Her text Women as Weapons of War: Iraq, Sex, and the Media questions the ways in which we view the women of the Iraq war. Linking the war in Iraq to the continued use of sex and violence in the media, the book delves into the, “visual and rhetorical meaning [of the con-nection between sex and violence] in an attempt to understand the deeper significance of vari-ous aspects of th[e] „war on terror'…” (3). As Oliver discusses, this connection is linked to women.
Oliver begins by discussing the image(s) of women in war; recalling that many of the images that continue to haunt us from previous wars, are those photos of or containing women. These representations take many forms: women as victims, heroines, suicide bombers, or torturers. We still reflect upon Pfc. Jessica Lynch being rescued from her captivity in Iraq, or the female Palestinian suicide bomber, Wafa Idris from an attack in 2002. Such media attention exposes “an ambiva-lence toward women, who are figured once again as dangerous…represented as both offensive and defensive weapons of war, a notion that is symptomatic of age-old fears of the “mysterious” powers of women, maternity, and female sexuality (20). For instance, Oliver uses the incidents photographed at Abu Ghraib in which female soldiers were photographed torturing male prisoners. Many of these photographs had women in sexually dominant positions, laughing and smiling. She writes that when we see innocent looking women torturing men, we feel “at home and not at home” (22). In other words, the conventional idea that women are innocent caregivers is present; however, there is also a violent and sexually dominant woman: an image American culture refuses to process. What is shocking about these images is not what is taking place in them, namely torture, but that it is the women who are doing the torturing.
Oliver moves from the images of women in war to the rhetoric of liberating women used to justify the war on terror. She argues, “global freedom is being defined in terms of sexual freedom, imagined as the freedom to expose the female body, to wear any clothing, and to shop for that clothing” (47). Hence, she is arguing that freedom is limited to material gains. Basically, we have reduced true freedom (freedom to vote, own property, follow any religious belief) to that of wearing the trendiest clothing, purchasing lipstick, and baring more skin—the right to “bare arms”(5). Here we witness a drasti-cally different scene than the one connected to the images at Abu Ghaib. Those women were pictured in a situation of power, but in the quest for freedom women do not have total control of their own bodies, or the freedoms they receive. In addition to the corruption of “freedoms”, there is hypocrisy about women's freedom in ourown country. Oliver offers the latest controversy over the HPV vaccinations being given to young girls, and the continued Pro-Life/Pro-Choice argument as telling examples of the limits women's “freedom” has in our own country, let alone the Middle East.
All in all, Oliver's text is about seeing beyond the black and white and questioning what we see. She concludes by saying, “rather than trying to deny the complexities of life by seeing everything in black and white, in terms of good and evil, us and them, we must explore not only the ways in which our lives depend on those ambiguities but also the ways in which without those ambiguities, life made is empty and ultimately meaningless” (165). She urges us to examine all those ambi-guities that make up our lives, and not let them go unnoticed. Blending theory seamlessly with current events, Oliver's text is not only relevant, but necessary as we continue to fight a war and view women within it. Women as Weapons of War is a book for anyone for or against the war, but is especially requisite for those ambivalent towards it.
—Gillian M. Smith
