Unrelated? - Two stories that

Unrelated? - Two stories that seem at first blush to be unrelated - but maybe aren't.

Cathy Young writes about the decline of feminism after 9/11 in Reason. The money quote:

Maybe the real gender-related message to be gleaned from Sept. 11 is this: However much we would like to see women's liberation as a natural right, it is the achievement of a complex, advanced civilization. Recent events remind us that this civilization is fragile and that its enemies are hostile to freedom for anyone—but especially women. Feminists, perhaps more than anyone else, should realize that the West is worth defending. Perhaps if they did realize it, they wouldn't be so irrelevant.

And, as Young notes, perhaps seeing what real gender-oppression was about - Burkas, public executions, confinement to houses - was a bucket of cold intellectual water to some feminists.

In the meantime, the new Miss America is - heavens to Betsy - a conservative!

Why do I think there's a link here? Because while the post-9/11 reports of the death of irony and insignificance were greatly exaggerated, I think people are taking some of the more life-or-death aspects of our daily lives more seriously. It's harder to call dirty jokes in the office "oppression of women" when we just fought the real thing. And if, indeed, the Miss America pageant wants to pretend to have some semblance of relevance to life today, what would be the point of having yet another blah cheesecake for Miss America?

Feminism - as in "the quest to make women politically and legally equal, and taken seriously", as opposed to whatever Catherine McKinnon and company practice - may be one of the real victors of the post 9/11 world. Just don't tell the feminists.

Posted by Mitch at September 24, 2002 10:41 AM