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Girls Don’t Cry: “Feminism” As The Ultimate Silencer

July 5th, 2009 by AV Flox in freedom of expression, manifesto, oversharing

Once upon a time, humans sat around a fire telling stories. That’s how we learned about the journey before us, by listening to the trials and tribulations of those who’d ventured forth long before us. Time passed and we with changed with it: we became “civilized.” We stopped sharing. What would our neighbors think? What would our friends say? We became isolated.

The great journey of life became ours alone because we no longer shared in the wisdom of those who came before us or walked beside us.

I see this changing. More and more, people are telling their stories the web over. It is as though we have exchanged the fire for the glowing screen of our laptops. We may be alone in our apartments miles apart, but once again, we have each other.

We have made a brave return to the great tradition of story-telling. I see this as a wonderful thing. But there are those who are not so relieved.

CONFESSIONAL JOURNALISM

“There is a new and very weird and, to my mind, very wrong genre of journalism that is becoming all too popular: female confessional journalism,” writes Hadley Freeman at The Guardian:

Here’s how it goes: a female journalist describes her obsession with her weight/breasts/ageing face/food or alcohol problems/inability to have a happy relationship. The article is illustrated by the journalist looking as miserable as possible. There are tales of daily woe. It concludes with the writer still sufficiently unhappy to be commissionable for another very similar piece.

This genre has nothing to do with journalists opening a window into what life is like for women today. It does women no favours at all. It is entirely about perpetuating an editor’s misogynistic image of what women are like (self-hating, self-obsessed) and making a semi-celebrity out of the writer in the belief that readers like to read journalists whose names and faces (and breasts) they recognise.

Perpetuating an editor’s misogynistic image of what women are like: self-hating and self-obsessed. Freeman completely ignores the feelings and trials of the women who inspired her column, labels their editor a misogynist and says that this form of writing is setting feminism back 50 years.

Who are these women?

TERRORISTS OF FEMINISM

Christa D’souza wrote about her three breast surgeries, the problems with encapsulated implants, breast cancer, and her final decision to have her implants completely removed.

Liz Jones has never loved food. Her need to be thin and have control of her life through food rationing has ruled her life since she was eleven. This summer, when her sister visited, she decided to eat normally for three weeks. Her journey of discovery is brutal, sad and heart-wrenching. She describes her change in mood—she’s happier, she feels better, she has more energy. Her skin is less dry. She is alive. But just the same, she knows that when her sister leaves, she will return to her regime. She is an anorexic. This is the truth she is facing within herself.

The story of the playwright Zoe Lewis was pointed out by Anna N in a post at Jezebel on what they’ve labeled “the business of self-hate.” Lewis is successful and independent, but she is questioning her choice of career over that of being a housewife.

NOT JOURNALISM

“Certainly, sometimes a bit of personal experience can add to an article,” writes Freeman. “A first-person piece about, say, drug addiction in the week the government is voting on downgrading the classification of certain drugs is journalistically justified. An extended piece pegged to absolutely nothing in which a ‘former anorexic’ journalist describes her hilarious horror at having to eat ‘normally’ for three weeks is not, and simply suggests that the journalist can think of nothing to write about but herself.”

But who said it was journalism? Is it really that surprising that, in an age where blogs are becoming more and more popular than print media, editors would seek to emulate their qualities in their publications’ lifestyles sections?

How about giving the finger to inverted pyramid style in a burst of first-person, politically irrelevant humanity?

“Many editors do love this genre of journalism,” Freeman adds. This sort of story drives page views. “But do readers [love it]? Well, speaking purely from personal experience, I have yet to encounter a single woman ever saying to me, ‘Hey, did you read that article by that woman in The Daily Mail about how she only eats 500 calories a day, and how she knows that all women are secretly as self-obsessed as her? Wow, I loved that!’”

Well, I’ll be the first, Hadley.

THINKING OF FOR YOU

“I have no doubt that the women who write these articles truly feel the emotions they describe,” Freeman says dismissively in her Guardian piece. “But these women need help; they do not need to be made to feel that their professional USP is to play up their misery. Yet I’m a lot less bothered about the effect these articles have on the journalists who write them than I am about the readers who read them.”

Why? Because we’re so suggestible that reading about a woman’s losing battle with anorexia or another’s miserable journey to find youth in implants will destroy our idea of what it means to be a woman?

Freeman’s verdict is final: “This kind of journalism sets feminism back by about 50 years, because not only does it perpetuate offensive stereotypes about women as needy, helpless, childlike narcissists, it suggests that the most interesting thing a woman can offer up to others is her own battered, starved, bloated, enhanced or reduced body. And that seems a lot sadder to me than any shocking revelation I ever read in a single piece of confessional journalism.”

What I see here is not the call of feminism, what I see is women trying to silence other women. I see women dismissing the realities of other women using words and phrases like, “dangerous,” “self-hating,” “self-obsessed,” “childlike narcissists,” “needy,” “fucked up by aesthetic and social strictures,” “twisted view of what it means to be a woman,” and “not normal.” And that is a lot more horrifying to me than anything I have read in a confessional piece.

It’s clear that the writers of the confessional pieces are not in a happy place within themselves. Should we silence them, then? Should we cut their experience away and lock it up somewhere lest they tarnish the notion that women are strong, are invincible, are women? Heaven forbid they influence other women, who obviously can’t think for themselves! How dare the press and blogosphere not do more to keep this sort of rubbish away from the masses?

Anna N makes a point for me when she points out that no one who reads D’Souza’s piece is going to run to get implants. There is a lesson in her story, just as there is one in that of Jones and Lewis. The decision to get implants involves more than knowing what size breast you wish you had. The decision to limit your calorie intake has more consequences than physical ones. The choice to give up a relationship for your career is a big one.

They may not be happy stories, but look at fairy tales—before Disney had its way with them, that is.

“Stories are medicine,” writes Clarissa Pinkola Estes in her classic work Women Who Run With The Wolves. “They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything—we need only listen. The remedies for repair or reclamation of any lost psychic drive are contained in stories.”

Sterilizing the media of the battles that women (or men, for that matter) face everyday is not going to make us stronger. What does make us stronger is not being alone in our struggles. And when we hear the stories of those who have lived what we are living, we are heartened.

PLEDGE

I’m a confessional columnist. I have made terrible and wonderful mistakes in my life. I have been hurt, I have hurt myself and I have hurt others. I have questioned myself, I have lost myself and I have found myself. And I have written it all. I will never stop.

I think of Muriel Rukeyser again as I write this, those immortal lines: “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? / The world would split open.”

In victory or defeat, we will not be silenced.

And if that’s a threat to feminism, then down with feminism.

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24 Responses to “Girls Don’t Cry: “Feminism” As The Ultimate Silencer”

Laurie Percival
July 5th, 2009 at 11:29 am

The fact that Hadley is completely missing the point of these women’s articles infuriates me. Sharing a real experience that you have had and how it affected your life does not make you self obsessed or appear needy.

These experiences need to be shared or how will the 12 year girl who has a bad self image due to size zero super models ever know that someone has battled this before? That anorexia can do so much more to you than make you thin, it can kill you. How will women of the world learn what they need to if there are not strong, brave women before them sharing those stories?
Laurie Percival´s last blog ..Murphy Goode: Not So Great Afterall

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AV Flox Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 11:31 am
I know for sure now that I will never, ever get implants. How about that strawberry shortcake for breakfast?

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Brandi Reply:
July 7th, 2009 at 11:27 am
You will never need implants.

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Aaron Liu Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
I tend to agree with Laurie. I skimmed the article / did not read it thoroughly, but I feel that telling the truth about difficult experiences can be very helpful to others facing similar problems.

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AV Flox Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 3:14 am
And perhaps even those who haven’t.

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Lesley Hall
July 5th, 2009 at 12:25 pm

The women who inspired Jackson’s column are fairly notorious examples of the kind of female columnist (described here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/15/platell-moir-malone-pearson) who exudes massive amounts of vitriol about other women who dare to appear in the public eye (even only because they happen to be married to someone who is, i.e. not even seeking the attention they get) while being fat, dowdy, old, having bad hair-dos, etc. I sometimes think if a woman discovered the cure for cancer, solved the problem of world hunger, and brought universal peace, these columnists would still be all about her lack of style, dumpy figure and bad hairdo as she accepted the Nobel Prize.

I’m therefore not sure that they get to have some kind of privileged status of immunity for revealing their own dysfunctions, when they’re so inordinately harsh on other women who don’t match up to their exacting, if superficial, standards. Having their own difficulties doesn’t seem to make them at all charitable or sympathetic towards the different problems of others.

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AV Flox Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 3:18 am
Perhaps the response they have received for baring their own insecurities will help them better engage and write about those of other women. This is my hope.

In a sense, my loyalty is to the choice we have today to share these stories with the world. But I am in agreement with you about being responsible for what we say, as well, when it comes to the stories of others, whether male or female.

Thank you for taking the time to comment here, Leslie. I am really glad that you did.

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Josh Day
July 5th, 2009 at 1:43 pm

I’m not sure Hadley Freeman struck the right tone with her criticism. If anything I think Hadley adds to the problems she finds with the article by giving it credibility. She really spent a lot of time on the dissection of it. Getting people to take a very close look at a written work makes that work more successful. The ultimate goal of the publication is to get readers in order to sell advertising. Freeman does a wonderful job helping them with that.

I think her criticism of the subject matter is off the mark as well. It almost strikes me that she may be dismissing the D’Souza piece out of jealousy. Christa D’Souza managed to make that story her first piece ever with The Daily Mail. I wonder what Hadley’s first piece was like.

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Josh Day
July 5th, 2009 at 3:53 pm

What I meant to write was, “Damn you’re beautiful, AV. No matter what you believe, I totally agree with you.” That’s realy sexist, and not really what I was thinking. Actually I do agree with you on the subject matter I was commenting on, I just got bogged down thinking about how I would come across and flubbed it.

Hadley Freeman has the noble idea that if every woman in the world stopped writing about social pressure it would stop. The things that society make women obsess about won’t stop existing if women quit writing about them. There will just be more girls out there who have no idea what other people in similar circumstances have felt in the past. Ms. Freeman shouldn’t be quite so harsh about it.

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AV Flox Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 3:46 am
Thanks for the compliment, the comments and the blog post, Josh.

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sachendra
July 5th, 2009 at 7:08 pm

very interesting take on feminism. We need more voices like yours

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AV Flox Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 6:54 am
And voices like yours.

We need more voices, period.

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OMG chronicles
July 6th, 2009 at 6:50 am

What a fascinating post (and thanks to Lisa Stone and Twitter for basically hand-delivering it to me!)

As a longtime professional journalist (read: almost out of a job), I am getting a bit sick of what passes for journalism today, especially the obsessive overshare that taps into all my wonderful gender’s neuroses. Whether it’s our weight, our beauty insecurities, our breast cancer struggles, our relationship disasters or our bad mothering, we gals spill and dish in whatever way we can, and the Internet is our latest very public diary. Most of it is mindless blather. Enough!

And yet … and yet … every once and awhile I stumble upon an intelligently written, thought-provoking post by a woman/boomer/girlfriend/worker/divorcee/single mom/etc. who captures exactly my Struggle o’ The Day. And then I stop what I’m doing and read and perhaps find a new way to address an old issue, and I am so thankful someone was so soul-bearing and real.

We have been telling stories forever. It’s what connects us. We can choose not to pay attention to some stories — I know I do; Jon and Kate? Meh! — but I’m sure glad they’re out there anyway.

Thanks for this intriguing post.
OMG chronicles´s last blog ..My son, the sexist pig?

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AV Flox Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 6:58 am
I’m glad they’re out there, too.

Thank you for taking the time to stop by a leave a comment. I appreciate the sort of conflict that you feel when confronted with these stories, but as you say, the fact that we are all sharing makes it possible for us to, every once in a while, find a voice out there that gives us perspective on what we feel or are living. And that can be a big help.

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SpiritOnParole
July 6th, 2009 at 5:31 pm

As per your request, AV, I’m reposting my comments from our discussion here for others to read.

Two key points:

1. Confessional journalism does not automatically equal self-indulgent wanking. When done well, confessional writing can offer a remarkably clear and edifying window into a struggle at once personal and universal–whether that struggle is against a medical problem, an emotional trauma, or a vexing professional challenge. I think that when a writer descends into self-pity, he/she crosses the line out of what constitutes good journalism. However, I challenge any writer to consider living with something like rape or cancer and not feeling strong, noteworthy emotions about the experience. These emotions can help to draw attention to important social issues, certainly, and can also help to inspire communities to band together in support of people who suffer–regardless of their gender.

2. Confessional journalism is not a uniquely female medium, and neither are the topics about which these authors tend to write. (If anyone doubts this, do yourself a favor and read A Private Family Matter by Victor Rivas Rivers.) To use the oft-brought-up example, anorexia is not a women’s issue, nor is it strictly a social construct. It has elements of a behavioral health disorder such as narcotics addiction, and also elements of a straight-up neurological illness such as schizophrenia. Yes, the majority of people who get diagnosed with anorexia are female. However, the same could be said for many other diseases. Interstitial cystitis (the disease that caused my chronic pain) is about nine times as common in women as it is in men, but it is also harder to diagnose in men due to anatomical differences. I don’t think any IC patient would tell you that he/she sees IC as a “women’s issue” simply because it happens to occur more in women than in men.

Anorexia is about brain biology that makes self-injurious behavior rewarding, and it’s about controlling one’s environment by every available means. It’s also deeply personal–no two people who have the disease will describe the experience of living with anorexia in quite the same terms. There’s also a difference between the kind of disordered eating behavior in which many people engage and an actual, pathological eating disorder. Mental illness is not a lifestyle choice, even if it involves active choices on a day-to-day basis. This is one of many reasons why “treatment” for eating disorders is often ineffective, another being the fact that so often anorexia and other EDs are approached exclusively as social issues impacting women.

I facetiously refer to my own anorexia diagnosis, which has been scribbled throughout various medical charts since I was a teen, as “The Scarlet A” because it became an automatic scapegoat for everything else that was wrong with me. In actuality, my GI disease became a big factor in my aversion to food because it was and is literally painful for me to eat. Sometimes it seems odd for me to remember that I’ve been hospitalized and hauled off to various therapists throughout my life for anorexia when I don’t associate that label with myself. I also don’t like talking about it because I fear being branded as an emotionally weak, childlike, hysterical woman who lives a life of insecurity and fear. I’m a bold, confident, dominant personality that shares a brain with some faulty biology. Over the years I’ve tried to forge a kind of truce inside, but it’s the eternal “eat too much to die but not enough to stay alive” struggle that Richey Edwards sang about. Then again, there’s not much incentive to do better at “eating normally” when I can’t digest most solid foods anyway.

When people have asked me if anorexia is about wanting to be thin, I find it hilarious. Nobody gets it unless they’ve lived it, which is why confessional journalism can serve a valid purpose in this regard. It’s about not wanting your body to be there at all, because corporeality is a painful reminder of everything you can’t control and can’t contain. Last I checked, that totalitarian impulse didn’t discriminate between gender identities, but the available treatment resources sure do.
SpiritOnParole´s last blog ..Checkpoint Charlie

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AV Flox Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Thank you for sharing this here, dear. As I mentioned in our previous exchange, I think these may offer some more perspective on the role of confessional journalism, as well as add to readers’ idea of what anorexia is. In university, I actually read a study about the rising incidence of anorexia among men and the dangers that came with dealing with a disease so often associated with women that specialists didn’t immediately know how to accurately diagnose it. That’s a problem–and not just one for women.

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Mel O
July 7th, 2009 at 4:36 am

Thankyou for highlighting this article. I think you are right to be concerned with any “silencing” action in the name of feminism.

1. Feminism (somewhat lengthily off topic, sorry)

Feminism has perhaps gone the way of many institutions these days, in that the original principles are now rejected by those who have claimed the label. (Perhaps the means have outlasted the ends?)

To me, feminism is about basic equality and lack of discrimination based on sex or gender. I would call myself a feminist to continue the work of – and in honour of – my mother and other women and men throughout history who worked so hard to alter the very dominant and unquestioned paradigm of women as inferior, or women as incapable or unsuited to certain occupations or pasttimes or thoughts. (And equality is not necessarily about seeing everyone as the same and enforcing the same rules upon everyone; it is about acknowledging, working with and celebrating differences instead of using them as bases for discrimination and prejudice.)

I still have picture story books, published by a small, local publishing house about 25-30 years ago, that explicitly communicate the message that women are not inferior to men and that girls can follow their dreams, whether or not they are deemed by society as “suitable” for women. This was the grassroots education initiative for young girls to combat the insidious attitudes of society. Can you imagine a world in which those books and that education were necessary?

While not in the same league of horror for women as the world depicted in Mike Leigh’s ‘Vera Drake’, it leaves me with the same chill and irrational gratitude to fate that I live *now* and not *then*. I am a woman and I am an electrical engineer. I split my working hours between head office and working on site at power stations, where a lot (but not all) of the time, I am the only female. For me, it has never been an issue; no one has said or done anything to make me feel harrassed or victimised or uncomfortable or unwelcome. (Now, in some ways, the double standard actually works to my advantage.) I have no idea what is said or thought out of my hearing, but I have never felt any effects of backstabbing or prejudice. When I think of how horrible work would become if even one person decided that I shouldn’t be there… Well, I am grateful to those who have gone before and shaped my world to be as it is.

2. Stories

I am at a loss to see the detrimental effect of “confessional journalism” on feminism (at least in my hastily scraped-together definition). As with any style of story, I think that the confession should not be the ends in itself; but should be a way in for the reader, so that they are better able to find and respond to the intangible *something more* that the writer seeks to communicate, that makes the reading worthwhile.

Any communication of experience, with that principle in mind, should further the goals of feminism. For it not only allows for the possibility of understanding people different from ourselves, but also for the joys of similarities recognised and empathy that bring people closer together.

—

And thankyou for the quote from Women Who Run With The Wolves; that will inspire me for a long time to come.

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Vanessa
July 10th, 2009 at 1:09 am

Very interesting post. Thank you!
Vanessa´s last blog ..Making Magic

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Porter
July 15th, 2009 at 11:27 am

A male (erst-)anorexic, here. Yes it is a very-bemusing somatopsychological disease, and I should someday like to find a real litterateur’s musings on it.

What a marvelously studied and executed piece, Ms. Flox! Thank you for it.

There has for centuries been the highly-regarded artform the autobiographical essay. Classics of the form have got their authors lauded for cold self-scrutinizing strength. Of course, its pretenders will produce crap — wherever there is art, there is much more crap. But for some newly-anointed commentator to call the form a girly novelty trumpets her own intellectual limits, not her objects’.

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DaisyDeadhead
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:45 pm

Awesome post.

I am a feminist who writes about politics, religion, etc and the most popular posts I write are usually confessional in nature. Obviously, that is how women identify and we enjoy reading.

One thing I learned in so-called “male” politics: you do not insist people come to where you are; you go meet them where THEY are. That is what I see the confessional posts doing, and that is their place in feminism.
DaisyDeadhead´s last blog ..Stubborn old goats

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DaisyDeadhead
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:54 pm

Apologies for serial posting, but one of my most popular posts was what it was like to grow up with a racist father (I’m almost 52), so it was at once confessional AND political. It was re-posted on other blogs centered on trying to learn how to counter/overcome various types of prejudices. My post gave others permission to come forward: yes, I was raised that way too. Although I started off “confessing”–it turned out to be some of the best political work of my life!

So “confession” are not always some private, apolitical phenomenon with no after-effects in the “real world”…
DaisyDeadhead´s last blog ..Stubborn old goats

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lemiffe
July 31st, 2009 at 11:15 am

I am just as against misogynism as I am against feminism. There should be no need for either of them, just as there is no need for racism. I don’t know what is utterly wrong in our world, but something is, and we need to change it fast before we end up killing ourselves, between genders, between races, between religions.
lemiffe´s last blog ..The increasing level of connectivity between Social Sites

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energytalkradio
August 18th, 2009 at 10:00 pm

Fantastic article! very thought provoking yet straight to the point. . Can we have you on our show? Talk about divorce maybe? http://www.energytalkradio.com is a radio show that donates 30% to charity. We have great topics like spirituality, intimacy, relationship, divorce, meditation, etc.

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BUST Magazine
December 14th, 2009 at 9:27 pm

This is a very thought provoking article. There is a great debate over the definition of feminism, what it should be, is it helpful or harmful, etc. This article tries to bridge that discussion and I think it does a good job. Thanks for the post.

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