Monday, July 2, 2012

Rethinking the Feminist Canon

Normally I don't support lists that name and catalog influential women by their flaws, but given the number of feminists who can't seem to comprehend that women's rights don't begin and end with middle-class, white, hetero, cis women,  this post from New Wave Feminism is indispensable.

She says, "google does a terrible job at providing me with the type of critiques I’m looking for. So I figured I might as well crowd-source and ask people what feminist did they once look up to but realize was not looking out for you? Everyone has that “I bought all her books & watched that documentary she made and wound up being terribly disappointed” story, or that “I don’t understand why everyone likes this person when they erase my reality” story."

The obvious offenders like Mary Daly and Janice Raymond have been critiqued and deconstructed at large, and even the most inveterate feminists admit that their work was flawed to the point of irredeemability, but where exactly do you draw the line, I mean, where (the collective) we have to remove her work from the feminist canon, ignoring the impossibility of such as task? Or, as is often the case now, stop subscribing to, reading, and supporting her blog?

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