The June 28, 1998 issue of Time spotlighted the story "Is Feminism Dead?"
I responded immediately to this article, but I never heard from Time or knew whether my response was considered. This article was published in my book Prisms: Refracted Light of Women's Lives, 2009, Xlibris, Philadelphia, PA.
Today I'm running my response so my HuffPost Blog readers can read it.
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Time magazine is confusing apples and oranges when it compares women who have given a great portion of their lives to fighting for equal rights and opportunities-for-women with female show business celebrities.
Problems abound. When feminists are scholarly and serious, we see such articles as "Why don't feminists smile?" and "Where is the humor?" In this article, the writer talks about "the flightiness of contemporary feminism" and states that "much of feminism has devolved into the silly." The writer condemns women for supporting Clinton, ignoring the fact that the only available alternative was a fundamentalist-controlled-Dole. When a million men marched in Washington D.C., it was front page news for days; when the same number of women marched in the same place on a later date, I found one story on page eight of our local newspaper. When the media portrays feminists as "sexless," yet condemns feminists for a performance about body parts, it's easy to see that-in the eyes of the media-it's hard for feminists to win. What America needs to know is that feminists are individuals who cannot be lumped into one or two categories...but who are independent beings, each working in her own way to further the cause of equality for all.
Thus, we enter the world-of-media-composed of some truth, much opinion, and raging propaganda. Propaganda is insidious...it creates problems, then blames them on others. In the June 29, 1998 issue of Time, powerful men who own and operate the media create straw women and blame the behavior of these figments-of-their-own-imagination...on feminists. I realize that a woman wrote the piece; and I also realize that she was directed regarding the "spin" she should put on it.
What is feminism? Someone said, "It is the notion that women are human beings." In fact, it is the struggle to regain God-given equal rights for both genders after the human-male-power-system stomped women's rights into the ground and dismissed them as irrelevant. It says "The personal is political; the political is personal"-which is absolute truth. It supports the idea that no one should harm another or the earth. It is a good and positive ideal-despite media attempts to demonize those who advocate feminism and to try to diminish the tremendous amount of good that feminists have accomplished over time.
Since the beginning of time, women have worked to help others. Only relatively recently have women begun to also work to help themselves. While working to abolish slavery, female abolitionists realized that they had no more legal rights or opportunities than the slaves they were trying to free-so they added working-for-women's-rights to their vital agenda. Time's selection of four representatives of feminism suggests, implicitly, that very few women have done any work to benefit women. My library overflows with books detailing thousands of women's contributions to our nation and to the world, yet Time selected only these four. Space will not allow me to discuss in detail the many fallacies contained in the article, so I will briefly discuss the four selected women.
In America over a 72-year period, women fought, were imprisoned, and were tortured for daring to expect the rights of citizenship. Newspaper Editor Susan B. Anthony, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Jocelyn Gage, Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, and hundreds of others gave of themselves for most of their lives to accomplish a small step toward equality for women-the right to vote.
Journalist Betty Friedan wrote Feminist Mystique about "the problem that has no name". She pinpointed ways-media-stereotypes influence and condition women to behave in certain ways, often contrary to their own true selves. The book sold over six million copies. Friedan and 27 other women organized the National Organization for Women to provide a national forum for women's concerns. In the first five years, membership increased from 28 to 15,000. Today NOW is a leading voice in the modern women's movement.
Journalist Gloria Steinem worked with a strong group of women to found Ms. Magazine, a magazine that would neither cater to corporations nor allow advertisements selling products-that-are-damaging-to-women. She served as editor for 15 years.
Friedan, Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, and others founded the National Women's Political Caucus which grew to a membership of 80,000 by the end of the 80s. NWPC realizes that women must have fair and equal representation in order to achieve equal rights in the "land of the free". In the 70s, Abzug chaired an amazing meeting in Houston called "The Year of the Woman Conference". Twenty thousand people attended and pledged themselves to electing more women to public office and to policy-making boards. Very slowly, women are gaining some equity.
Countless other women have also waged private and/or public struggles to attain full personhood and an independence unknown in recent generations.
These women have paid their dues-they have dedicated a great portion of their lives to working for women's rights...they exhibit the feminist spirit. But a fictitious character, portrayed by an actor? Get real.
Having never seen the fictitious character which Time deemed equal to three women who have made a real difference for womankind, I watched Ally McBeal this week. Here's what I learned: Ally McBeal is a figment of a male writer's imagination. The program was created and produced by a man. I saw no feminist women involved here. Thus, in the manner of another misguided man, Dan Quale, Time appears to have taken seriously a flippant creation by a man who seems to manifest male insecurities. The episode I viewed portrayed McBeal as a competent attorney, who directed the efforts of her group behind the scenes...and who had casual sex with men. The insecurities of the men were manifest by:
1) A former partner who was jealous of her current partner, and who kept chastising McBeal about his own unfounded jealousy;
2) A potential partner who told her he couldn't consider dating (read "sleeping-with") her until she was through with the current partner; and
3) The current partner, a handsome model who was also unhappy, feeling he was only a "boy toy".
Despite the fact that she had men falling all over her-literally-and that she seemed to be in charge of strategy for the trial they were conducting, she was also insecure and seemed unable to assert herself enough to convince unwanted men to back off. Does the character frighten men? She's attractive, educated, professional, capable of making a good living, and capable of living the male-sexual-stereotype of casual sex. Is the sky falling?
Sounds a lot like Chicken Little-powerful men run around saying "feminism is dead" and some unthinking-people believing them. Rest assured, the majority of Americans are thinking-people, and they will choose to believe the positive actions of millions of feminists they see daily-women who put their lives and livelihoods on the line to improve the lot of all women and children.
Several years ago Time announced "The Death of Feminism". Excuse me! Just as a very-alive Mark Twain announced that "reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated", so are pronouncements of the "death of feminism" and the subsequent creation of the pseudo-term "post-feminism". My best suggestion to Time mirrors time-honored-wisdom which says, "It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt".
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Note to Time editor: I did extensive research on gender inequity for my master's thesis, "Sexism: Subliminal Societal Control," in the late 80s. Subsequent research confirms that sexism is alive and thrives in America, particularly in the media. As a communicator and a scholar, I feel this biased article needs a published response.
You may use my comments in "Letters to the Editor" or as a separate piece-so long as you do not take them out of context.
Jackie De Hon, Ph.D.
Submitted to, but not published by, Time 6/29/98