Oregon Humanities

Looking for an Out

If you read my last post, you know that I’m interested in gender. And, by the way, for those of you who did read that last post, I remain unsettled by Betty Draper’s character development in Mad Men last season. I’m proud of her. I’m mad at her. I’m impressed by her. And I’m disappointed in her.

That said, I have what I think are two more unnerving stories about gender:

1. Last month, at an informal dinner with some female colleagues, one woman referred to second-wave feminists as “ugly” and “man-hating.” I understood, of course, as another colleague pointed out, that feminists of our generation had to pave their own way and create their own relationship to feminism. Still, the use of the terms “ugly” and “man-hating” caught me off guard. Had this woman not considered the dangerous and oppressive dominant cultural construction of beauty? Had she not considered that demanding equal rights for women had less to do with “hating men” than with creating an egalitarian culture that was concerned about all people?

1. A few weeks later, a group of House Republicans attempted to stop the Democratic Women’s Caucus from making their arguments about how the health bill would benefit women by screaming over them. Representative Lois Capps (D-Calif.) only had time to say, “Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to—” before another delegate shouted “I object.” You can watch the exchange here. The silencing of women in this instance, by both men and women, is devastating and shocking.

These anecdotes leave me wondering if, on a very deep level, things have not changed very much since 1962 (the time in which Mad Men is set). Women—really smart women—are still buying into a notion of beauty that both marginalizes and damages many of us. At the same time, it seems that some very smart women are still equating feminism with man-hating, a dangerous, wrong-headed—and telling—assumption. While these conversations are taking place, women who have finally claimed their rightful and much-deserved spot among our national leadership are being systematically silenced for speaking out.

I’m not quite sure how to read all of this. But I can’t seem to stop thinking about the Marxist theory of false consciousness. And I hate this, because folks who subscribe to this theory usually prescribe a “right way of thinking” for others. And I don’t want to do that. Goodness knows I make mistakes in my thinking all the time. Still, the idea here is that, in the midst of all the ideology we’re bombarded with throughout our lives, we sometimes fail to understand the instruments of our own oppression. I’d like this to be the case because it provides me with an out. After all, if the house members and my colleagues are the victims of false consciousness, I can simply garner up some compassion for them and move on. What I fear is that people actually do understand the extent to which they oppress—and that they are motivated perhaps purely by the possibility of self-empowerment. And if this is the case, I’m afraid I have no out, but instead, have a great deal of work in front of me.

About Cara Ungar-Gutierrez

Cara Ungar-Gutierrez is the executive director of Oregon Humanities.

01 December 2009 | Posted by Cara Ungar-Gutierrez in Inside O. Hm. New Ideas
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