So I just came back from a talk on modesty given by Wendy Shalit, and I'm not sure if I have anything more to say than:
1) It's reassuring to know that you can spin two entire books out of shaky statistics and a methodology that is weaker than the one in my (still unfinished, mind you) senior thesis
2) My opinion of Williams just dropped to the negatives for letting someone who can't even make a logical statement graduate (and I'm not saying this because I disagree with her points. She would literally say something incredibly disputable and trail off with "yeah" or start with "We all know (insert something that no, we don't all know/believe)" and then somehow forget to show the logical route that took her to this conclusion)
3) See title. I think that when I'm on my deathbed, I'm going to be really bitter about this lost time
I mean honestly, I might have appreciated the kernel of what she was saying (we should create a space for women who don't want to be empowered solely through sexuality) except that she took it to this extreme degree where value judgments were being tossed around (she called it "allowing women to have 'higher' standards. Yes, as if women who want to be sexual somehow have 'lower' standards), marriage was the be-all-end-all conclusion (we should save ourselves for the "right person" and a solid marriage is the indicator of a successful life), and feminism was represented as this malignant force that somehow pathologizes women for not wanting to be overtly sexual (I mean for godssakes, which feminists was she reading? The white, middle-class ones preaching sexual liberation in the fucking 60s? Thanks for reducing feminism to ONE PART of the fucking SECOND WAVE!).
It was seriously a shitshow, and I wish there was a nicer way to say it, but there isn't. While Shalit seemed like a friendly and personally engaging (though not on a group level) person, the reality is that her talk was ill-prepared and disorganized, there was nothing intellectually deep (or even intellectual period; I think the talk as it was is better geared towards a middle-school audience) about her points, and honestly, it wasn't even worth going to because there was nothing thought-provoking or stimulating about it. Just an hour and a half of poor logic, awkward analogies, bad statistics, and overblown and oftentimes offensive conclusions.
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4 comments:
Ugh. None of these "modesty" or "chastity" books is ever aimed towards boys or men. The religious right still doesn't want their sons having extramarital sex, but they don't judge them the way they judge women (I know I'm making generalizations here, but I feel like they're valid). You should check out jezebel.com. They go on rants about issues like this all the time, and in a wonderfully snarky way. feministing.com is awesome too, just not as lighthearted or snarky.
i love jezebel! (i actually got to reading it because of gawker)
and you're right, it's seriously crap how much of a double standard these books are (though funnily enough, shalit did make a point to say in her talk that this applied to men too. unfortunately, i don't think it was that apparent in her actual books)
Yay, jezebel! Do you ever comment there? (I'm still working up my courage)
nooo. i feel like i'm not legit enough to!
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