{"id":6928,"date":"2009-12-08T08:41:59","date_gmt":"2009-12-08T13:41:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=6928"},"modified":"2010-01-24T15:38:32","modified_gmt":"2010-01-24T20:38:32","slug":"core-principles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=6928","title":{"rendered":"Core Principles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading Salon’s vacuous interchangeable 20-something “music writer”, who seems to be\u00a0 encountering a bit of cognitive dissonance<\/a> over the runaway success of Taylor Swift:<\/p>\n

Feminism is confusing sometimes! As I’ve lamented before<\/a>, it occasionally compels me to defend the anti-feminist likes of Sarah Palin and “Twilight,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Note to conservatives, who actually will get this:\u00a0 Palin is “anti-feminist”.\u00a0 No extra points for guessing what this writer’s sine qua non <\/em>of feminism is, now, is there?)<\/p>\n

and if that weren’t bad enough, now I can’t figure out what to make of this year’s platinum success story Taylor Swift, recently nominated<\/a> for eight Grammys. I haven’t thought much about Swift, but I’m generally inclined to agree with ladybloggers like Amanda Hess and Sady Doyle<\/a>, two smart writers in their 20s who have concluded that the 19-year-old’s songs reinforce some not-so-woman-friendly stereotypes in extremely annoying ways. But today, with a typically excellent post<\/a> about pop culture’s promotion of patience as a girl-powerful virtue, Hess got me wondering — not that she meant to — about whether there might be a legitimate feminist argument in favor of Taylor Swift.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let’s see; she started writing music when she was a pre-teen, actually worked on being able to sing without the miracle of Auto-Tune<\/a>, play an instrument or two, and build a career at an age when most of her peers are, well, writing dreary politically-correct drivel for web-zines.<\/p>\n

First, let’s acknowledge some major points in the Not Feminist column. As Hess says, “Taylor Swift sings songs about waiting around, being a princess, and crying for her ‘Romeo’ to rescue her from her dad, who is so mean. Then, she makes videos for these songs where she is literally waiting in an ivory tower for her prince to come.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Goodness.\u00a0 Indulging in fairy tales. <\/em>A form of “literature” that’s been around for thousands of years, for good reason; people like ’em.\u00a0 Hence they’re popular.\u00a0 And what, homophonically, is the goal of writing and performing “popular” music?<\/p>\n

I don’t wanna keep seeing the same hands, here.<\/p>\n

And that brings us to the crux of the “Is Taylor Swift good for women?” debate, which — exceptions like “White Horse” aside — really comes down to Taylor Swift, lyricist, vs. Taylor Swift, public figure. It’s her superstardom (and apparent business savvy) itself that provides the most compelling pro-Swift argument. As music critic Ann Powers wrote in the L.A. Times last year<\/a>, “Swift might play a princess in many of her songs … but in the studio she’s her own boss, writing and producing those fairy tales.” Hess is unconvinced: “This is the Sarah Palin theory of feminism. If she’s a woman, and she does stuff, it’s feminist…”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, of course.\u00a0 Being a woman and doing <\/em>stuff isn’t as important to “feminism” as being a woman and believing all the same stuff, word for word and note for note, <\/em>that the modern, academic notion of gender-identity feminism tells women to believe.<\/p>\n

It’s why a Sarah Palin, a Michelle Malkin, a Michele Bachmann or a Laura Ingraham or Ann Coulter or Katherine Kersten or even a Taylor Swift – women who’ve actually accomplished something without having to either demanding allowances for their gender or, for that matter, losing any ground due to it – can be called “anti-feminist” with a straight face, while mainstream, academic gender-identity feminists can wipe out decades of “workplace equality” and “no means no” rhetoric overnight on behalf of, say, Bill Clinton.<\/p>\n

Because the fact is this; to a modern, academic gender-identity feminist, a “feminist” who’s never amounted to anything outside of a make-work pseudoacademic university “Women’s Studies” program, but who supports abortion without question, is a feminist, while a pro-life women who’s moved mountains through skill, determination and the force of her own merits who is pro-life is not.<\/p>\n

Put another way – it’s “framing the argument” for the not-so-bright.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Salon’s vacuous interchangeable 20-something “music writer”, who seems to be\u00a0 encountering a bit of cognitive dissonance over the runaway success of Taylor Swift: Feminism is confusing sometimes! As I’ve lamented before, it occasionally compels me to defend the anti-feminist likes of Sarah Palin and “Twilight,” (Note to conservatives, who actually will get this:\u00a0 Palin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-men-and-women","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6928"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6994,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6928\/revisions\/6994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}