"Offshore Eddie"  wrote in message
news:ZrYPd.1224$W%5.1081{at}newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> "Where are the great women thinkers? Thinking so much about women has
shrunk
> their minds."  Ha ha.  That pretty much sums it up.
>
>
>
>
> From the L.A. Times
>
>
> February 13, 2005 E-mail story
>
>
> GENDER STUDIES
> Feminist Fatale
> Where are the great women thinkers? Thinking so much about women has
shrunk
> their minds.
>
>
> By Charlotte Allen, Charlotte Allen, author of "The Human Christ: The
Search for
> the Historical Jesus," co-edits the InkWell blog for the Independent
Women's
> Forum.
>
>
> When Susan Sontag died recently, she was mourned as America's leading
female
> intellectual. So the question naturally arose: Is there anyone to take her
> place? If you can't come up with many names, you're in good company. The
list is
> short.
>
> This wasn't always the case. Ironically, during that part of the 20th
century
> when overt discrimination barred many women from advanced educations,
lucrative
> fellowships and prized teaching and editorial positions preparatory for
the
> world of public letters, there were many brilliant, highly articulate
female
> writers who combined a rigorous mind with a willingness to engage broad
> political, social and literary issues for an audience beyond academia. We
still
> read their books (or at least their epigrams), and we remember their
names:
> Gertrude Stein, Dorothy Parker, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Mary
McCarthy,
> Iris Murdoch, Hannah Arendt and Sontag, to name several.
>
> Some of these women possessed glittering scholarly credentials. But most
did
> not, because a public intellectual is more than simply an intellectual.
Unlike
> the academic version who speaks mostly to fellow scholars, public
intellectuals
> pitch their ideas to the general reading public - and their writings
appear in
> newspapers, magazines and books. Garry Wills is a public intellectual;
> Berkeley's jargon-laden postmodern theorist Judith Butler is not.
>
> Public intellectuals also explore the implications of ideas, which
distinguishes
> them from sharply observant journalists. When Sontag wrote about camp - or
Tom
> Wolfe about customized cars as kinetic sculpture - they joined writing
about
> popular culture with the long tradition of writing about high culture.
>
> One possible explanation for the dearth of Sontag successors is our
> electronics-saturated age that is inexorably diminishing the number of
people
> who read. Our hyper-specialized higher education system is another
candidate.
> Academic postmodernism, with its contempt for the general public, has
largely
> replaced the core liberal arts curriculum that once created a shared
literary
> culture and an appetite for serious ideas.
>
> Still, there is no shortage of well-known male intellectuals. Besides
Wolfe and
> Wills, we have Richard Posner, Louis Menand, Francis Fukuyama, Ian Buruma
and
> Henry Louis Gates Jr., to name some, along with scientists who write
> provocatively for a general readership: Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker,
Richard
> Dawkins and Jared Diamond. In books and magazines, these intellectuals,
who
> represent a wide variety of ideological perspectives, debate a broad
spectrum of
> topics: science and politics, high and low art, literature, evolution, the
Iraq
> war, campus sexual mores, the origins of the universe.
>
> There are female intellectuals with stellar credentials and bestselling
books:
> Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, Barbara Ehrenreich, Naomi Wolf, Susan
Faludi,
> Deborah Tannen, Natalie Angier. But there's a big difference between these
women
> and their forebears. They are all professional feminists. They don't
simply
> espouse feminism; they write about little else. Feminist ideology forms
the
> basis of their writings, whether it's Greer on the infantilization of
women by a
> patriarchal society, Tannen on how the sexes are socialized to communicate
> differently, Faludi on how white men have reacted to women's progress,
> Ehrenreich on how the male medical establishment intimidates female
patients, or
> Angier on how humans ought to be more like bonobos, the female-dominated,
> sexually liberated cousins of chimpanzees.
>
> Greer of "Female Eunuch" fame has lately taken up memoir-writing and a
> fascination with adolescent boys, and Ehrenreich similarly has branched
out into
> socioeconomic topics ("Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in
America").
Even
> then, Ehrenreich looks mainly at the plight of female workers - but the
other
> women have stayed even closer to home, exploring subjects of interest
mostly to
> like-minded women: gynecology, the backlash against feminism,
dysfunctional
> families, marriage versus career, eating disorders, the beauty industry,
> pornography (does it victimize women or empower them?), guys who can't
share
> their feelings, the professor who put his hand on your knee back when you
were
> in college. That kind of parochialism disqualifies them as public
intellectuals.
>
> A typical example is Laura Kipnis, rising literary star and professor of
media
> studies at Northwestern University. In a recent article for the online
magazine
> Slate, she wrote: "For some reason, the majority of women simply would not
give
> up the pursuit of beautification, even those armed with feminist theory."
The
> topic of Kipnis' article was playwright Eve Ensler's new one-woman show,
"The
> Good Body," whose subject matter is the author's potbelly. Is this what
female
> intellectuals have come to - women writing about women writing about
getting
> fat? If you think it's unfair to target a single essay by Kipnis, be
reminded
> that her oeuvre consists of books about sex and gender ("Ecstasy
Unlimited"),
> pornography ("Bound and Gagged") and the miseries of
marriage ("Against
Love: A
> Polemic").
>
> Ideological feminism has ghettoized and trivialized the subject matter of
> women's writing. As a successful ideology, it has foreclosed debate - and
debate
> is the hallmark of the public intellectual. The idea of a public
intellectual
> gained momentum in Europe during the first half of the 20th century, when
the
> conflict between Marxism and fascism was fierce. Both ideologies were
> totalitarian - they claimed to embrace not only politics but also art,
> literature, scholarship and everyday social relations. And each side, for
that
> reason, had its share of engagé intellectuals: Martin Heidegger on the
right; De
> Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Malraux and Albert Camus on the left;
and
> Arendt on neither side. English and American thinkers - George Orwell,
W.H.
> Auden, Stephen Spender, Aldous Huxley - followed their continental
counterparts
> into the agora.
>
> It was this world, with its habits of mind and deep interest in an array
of
> intellectual pursuits, that nurtured Sontag's mind. She was always a woman
of
> the left, and many of her pronunciamentos - her fawning over North
Vietnamese
> regulars who tortured American POWs, her characterization of the "white
race" as
> a "cancer upon history," her insistence that the U.S. was to
blame for the
Sept.
> 11 attacks - can make you wince. But she refused to embrace ideological
> feminism, though she came to fame at a time when she could have remade
herself
> into a Kate Millett or a Greer. She eschewed turning the personal into the
> political, preferring subjects of universal interest: aesthetics, the role
of
> writers and critics, the meaning of photography, the place of art in a
> totalitarian society.
>
> Ideological feminism has failed to produce successors to Sontag not only
because
> of its thin range of interest-group concerns but also because it has tried
to
> systematically shut out - and shout out - dissent. This is why, when I
think of
> female intellectuals today, only Camille Paglia comes to mind. Like
Sontag, she
> writes boldly and forcefully on art, literature and politics. Trailing her
is
> Gertrude Himmelfarb on the right and maybe Greer on the left. The vast
majority
> of women who might otherwise qualify as public intellectuals would rather
recite
> the feminist catechism or articulate some new twists and refinements on it
than
> carve out a place for themselves in the larger public world.
>
Ha Ha!! Well all the regular men on this happy little newsgroup have always
seen feminism
as a cult of cupid stunts and narrow minded thinking.
Females today only think about "number one" and that is why there are no
female geneeeeiiiiii !!!!!

MCP




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