Her Name is Her Name

Ariel Levy checks in on Robin Morgan:

These days, she is more concerned about offending people. “I always fall into the trap of thinking if I’d written it better, surely, surely they would have understood,” she said, referring to the young women who were upset by “Goodbye (#2).” (“Morgan’s essay is incredibly condescending,” one blogger wrote. “It completely fails to recognize that there are a variety of valid reasons younger women might decide to support Obama.”) Morgan put a log on the fire with her good arm. “They think I’m telling them what to do, but they are investing me with an authority I never had. Why is that? Do you know why that is?”

But who is this mystery blogger? Could it be my friend Ann Friedman, Deputy Editor of The American Prospect and Editor of Feministing.com? I think it just might be. Perhaps a casualty of print's sad space constraints, but you'd think that at least the online version of an article that mentions a blog post could link to the post in question. Readers interested in exploring the issue further might like to see the context. Who knows?

Comments

Morgan equates women who vote support Obama with slaves who don't realize they are slaves. Friedman finds that insulting. Morgan claims not to be telling Friedman what to do. Maybe they don't link to it because Morgan's response makes no sense.

Posted by crack | April 16, 2008 11:12 AM

Her name was on the street?

Posted by southpaw | April 16, 2008 11:17 AM

Stopped reading after I saw that she said Charles Manson was only the logical conclusion of male thought. Call me dense, or a chauvinist.

Anyway, to comment on "...there are a variety of valid reasons younger women might decide to support Obama...", it's true. One, for instance, would be that Hillary Clinton poses herself as the crowning achievement of feminism, even though she only got where she is because of her marriage to (and refusal to divorce) her cheating husband. Taking out true icons of rational feminism, like Samantha Powers, along the way.

Posted by socctty | April 16, 2008 11:19 AM

A typical example of the obtuse narcissim of Hillaryland and its denizens. More than four decades after the start of feminism and the best we can get is Hillary? Before you blame everyone else for being a tool of the patriarchy (at best), maybe you should look to the complete failure of your movement to achieve any of its stated goals.

I'd love to vote for a woman for a president, but I'd prefer to vote for one who wasn't explicitly running as the American Maggie Thatcher, not to mention exploiting every gender stereotype available to her benefit, no matter how much it degrades every other woman on the planet.

Better feminists, please.

Posted by Client #11 | April 16, 2008 11:26 AM

It's radical feminists like Robin Morgan that get everyone on the right (and a fair amount on in the center and on the left) all riled up.

A lot of people don't know that there is a difference between feminism, which is an extension of the Civil Rights and equality movements, and radical feminism, which amounts to a fem-superiority movement. Maybe the idea of these types of feminists is to achieve the goals of the "equality" feminists, but the train of thought is that you "can't stand still on a moving train". That sort of approach doesn't attract reasonable people, though.

Posted by socctty | April 16, 2008 11:39 AM

I heard Omar was out in the streets calling Friedman a punk.

Posted by Anonymous | April 16, 2008 11:45 AM

This post is completely opaque to me.

Posted by HeavyJ | April 16, 2008 11:47 AM

It's a bit depressing to see that Matt's post on the validity of a pro-Obama feminist position is being responded to primarily by misogynists.

Posted by Alex | April 16, 2008 11:53 AM

Alex -

Please, do elaborate. Who was being a mysoginist, and how?

Posted by socctty | April 16, 2008 12:06 PM

This seems a case of corellation not being causation. There is misogyny in the world and misogyny directed at Hillary Clinton. But, in my opinion, misogyny is not what's causing Clinton to lose. To the contrary, if misogyny were such a deciding factor in this country, Clinton would not have been taken seriously as a frontrunner. So yes, there is misogyny, and no, it's not why Clinton is losing.

But some people are hard to convince. So consider this scenario. Barika Obama is the second black woman to represent Illinois in the senate. She is biracial, and grew up in Hawaii with a few years in Indonesia. She is the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. She is married to an African American attorney from Chicago. She is tall, thin, attractive, telegenic, and considered a great orator--in fact her 2004 Democratic convention speech brought down the house. She earlier wrote a critically acclaimed autobiography of coming to terms with her race and gender in America.

But all is not perfect with Barika. She has two young sons and doesn't get to see them much with the campaign going on. Her husband has taken a leave of absence from his job to help her campaign and to be the primary caregiver to the kids--a move which some people applaud, but others start wondering if she's a "ballbuster" and is putting her ambitions ahead of her family. Her wardrobe is chicer than Clinton's, but some wonder if she's too fashion conscious to be president. And of course, there's that name--Barika Fatimah Obama--who's going to vote for a woman with a name like that? Nonetheless, she has an army of small donors, a message of hope and change, and seems comfortable with people of all races. And against all expectation, she's leading Clinton in the primary--not by much--the superdelegates will still have to weigh in--but not by so little that Clinton can make up the gap. So...why is Clinton losing?

Posted by JMS | April 16, 2008 12:24 PM

"It's a bit depressing to see that Matt's post on the validity of a pro-Obama feminist position is being responded to primarily by misogynists."

lol

Posted by Client #11 | April 16, 2008 12:31 PM

Congrats on a post that combines Andrew Sullivan levels of solipsism with the raw power of Megan McArdle incoherence!

No small accomplishment.

Posted by Friends plug friends | April 16, 2008 1:31 PM

Putting this one after the post on the myth of meritocracy in the political blogosphere was a work of comic genius!

Talk about making a point with laughs! And not being afraid to indict yourself!

We stand in awe!

Posted by Jonathan Swift, Voltaire & Lenny Bruce | April 16, 2008 2:06 PM

I don't know, I don't think there's anything wrong with not naming the blogger. The point was just to give a representative quote -- the name "Ann Friedman" wouldn't mean anything to about 99.99 percent of The New Yorker's readership. And of course, in The New Yorker, readability and prose style are hugely important. Stuffing Friedman's name and title into the middle of a parenthetical sentence would probably much it all up, at least in the eyes of The New Yorker.

Posted by too many steves | April 16, 2008 2:46 PM

A lot of people don't know that there is a difference between feminism, which is an extension of the Civil Rights and equality movements, and radical feminism, which amounts to a fem-superiority movement. Maybe the idea of these types of feminists is to achieve the goals of the "equality" feminists, but the train of thought is that you "can't stand still on a moving train". That sort of approach doesn't attract reasonable people, though.

The reason why a lot of people don't know that is that it's not true. This is a bizarre and unreal distinction you're making. Not that there aren't wide variations within feminism, some of which can be seen as involving degrees of radicalism and some which can't, and not that there aren't some whacked out feminists, but they don't line up neatly into "radical fem-superiority" and "nice cool civil rights equality" camps. For one thing, someone supporting Hillary Clinton is almost by definition not very radical, Hillary being a classic centrist. For another thing some of the most radical feminists stem from the civil rights generation - as do a certain number of apparent wankers like Robin Morgan.

Posted by Kalkin | April 16, 2008 3:27 PM

Too many Steves,

You kind of missed the point. Yglesias was noting that on the Web one would not need to put her name into the article. One would just need to make "blogger" a link and people who were interested could read more, and people who weren't could skip it.

I agree that this is not a particularly essential case because it does not appear that the name is particularly significant, or that the quote is being taken out of context. But I take it his point is that links are so easy to do that even in cases like this there is no reason why the default should not be to make it easy for people to find out more in this way.

Posted by Lon | April 16, 2008 4:15 PM

These days, she is more concerned about offending people.

Unless they're transgendered, then she goes out of her way to offend them.

Posted by Daisy | April 16, 2008 4:17 PM

Would this woman run Angelina Jolie for President?

Bet not.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 16, 2008 5:13 PM

I think he's right - the significance is that it was written on Feministing, one of the biggest feminist blogs and one that has prominently coverd the election and this specific issue. The impact of it having been written on Feministing, more so than being written specifically by Ann Friedman, is important to the context - that post got 109 comments, and were it written on a more obscure blog, it wouldn't have been read by as many people (including Levy most likely).

Posted by Rachel Kramer Bussel | April 16, 2008 7:51 PM