Rihanna, feminism and sex: The last go-round

I’ve had my dander up about this particular topic lately, so Ben Boychuk and I decided to tackle the issue in our column for Scripps Howard this week. You’ve already heard my take on this, so I’ll give you a taste of what Ben has to say.

Ben, to his credit, suggests that trying to link feminism to the Rihanna beating is “missing the point.” But then he goes on to blame feminism … for everything else:

There can be no doubt, however, that feminism’s futile effort to deny the differences between the sexes has had consequences.

Among those consequences is the widely accepted belief that girls can and should be a sexually aggressive (i.e. promiscuous) as boys. Another is the popular idea, born out by a national illegitimacy rate approaching 40 percent, that fathers aren’t necessary. Yet another is the trend among a subset of women to leave their husbands for other women.

I didn’t wrestle directly with these lines in my half of the column, because, well, we have both word limits and deadlines — and I had points of my own to make. But I do want to address these “consequences” just a little bit.

• THAT GIRLS CAN BE AS SEXUALLY AGGRESSIVE AS BOYS: Um, where to start? I’m no fan of hookup culture, but people have been trying to have sex with each other since, well, there were people. What’s changed is that 50 years ago, men (generally speaking) had sexual freedom and women had sexual responsibility — stuck with the responsibility to say “no” and the responsibility to live with the consequences if they didn’t. Even today, men who are “womanizers” don’t pay nearly the cultural penalty that “sluts” do.

Ideally, men and women should bear the same levels of freedom and responsibility for their sexual conduct. And while you’ll get no argument from me that the oversexualization of culture — brought to you in large part by capitalism’s marketeers — could use a bit of reining in, it’s not right to expect that women should bear the burden of that task.

• HIGH ILLEGITIMACY RATES THAT SUGGEST FATHERS AREN’T NECESSARY: Ben’s right that births to unwed mothers are about 40 percent. Unlike him, I’m not sure we know why that’s the case, and I suspect that “feminism” makes a convenient bugaboo here. But certainly it’s the case that it takes two to tango, and we have ample evidence that there are plenty of men who shirk their responsibilities in this regard — why else would we have an ever-growing set of rules and bureaucracy designed to get men to pay their child support, already? Is that feminism’s fault?

It’s true that feminism has encouraged women to get out of bad relationships rather than stay together for the sake of the children; but it’s also true that feminists have urged men to take on a greater portion of child-rearing duties than was the norm a couple of generations ago.

• A TREND AMONG A SUBSET OF WOMEN TO LEAVE THEIR HUSBANDS FOR OTHER WOMEN: Golly, I’d like to see some data on this trend. But I don’t think it exists; instead, I suspect Ben is referring — indirectly — to an article in Oprah Magazine which is frank in acknowledging that it can’t document any such trend, but goes on about it for a few thousand words nonetheless. (Ben, to be fair, hedges his bets by calling it a trend among a “subset” of women. Which subset would that be? Lesbians?)

Even if there is such a trend, though, so what? Is America really in danger of being swamped by a tide of lesbianism that threatens our ability to make another generation of Americans? If we’re not — if a sexual minority is simply getting slightly larger — what’s the big deal?

Unless you think homosexuality is ipso facto bad — and I won’t suggest that Ben believes such a thing — the only real consequence of this particular “consequence” is that things are different than they used to be. Conservatives tend to hate that kind of thing. But that doesn’t mean they’re right.

What the Chris Brown-Rihanna fight says about feminism

So National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez has elaborated on her bizarre suggestion that feminism is to blame for some Boston teen-agers blaming pop star Rihanna for her beating at the hands of boyfriend Chris Brown. As I’ve said before, Lopez is easy pickings best left alone. On the other hand, her elaboration takes the form of a nationally syndicated column. Thus, a bit of a response is deserved.

What has happened — and what Rihanna and Chris have to do with Gloria and us — is that by inventing oppression where there is none and remaking woman in man’s image, as the sexual and feminist revolutions have done, we’ve confused everyone. The reaction those kids had was unnatural. It’s natural for us to expect men to protect women, and for women to expect some level of physical protection. But in post-modern America, those natural gender roles have been beaten by academics and political rhetoric and the occasional modern woman being offended by having a door opened for her. The result is confusion.

It’s actually Lopez who is confused — deeply, sadly, obviously confused — here.

To read and believe her column, one must believe that pre-feminist America was a halcyon place populated only by big manly men who nobly protected gentle and nurturing women. But we know that wasn’t really the case. Then as now, lots of men (by no means all or most) hit their wives and girlfriends. But to a much greater extent than now, they got away with it. It’s not that society approved of domestic abuse, exactly; but there was a general unwillingness to punish a man for violence he committed within a relationship.

Feminism — it bears repeating — showed us the beginning of a way out. Insisting that abuse victims not be blamed for violence done to them, insisting that “no means no,” and insisting that women are not secondary beings wasn’t “unnatural,” but it did upset very old ways of being. A lot of people, like Lopez, took the empowerment of women as the neutering of men. That’s a shame. If, as Lopez suggests, man can’t be men without holding power — even benign “protective” power — over a woman, feminism is not to blame for that.

I don’t know why those Boston kids blame Rihanna for her beating. I know they’re wrong. And I know that feminists — informed by feminism — are the first to say so.

I’m starting to think conservatives really don’t understand feminism

Commenting on National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez is probably like shooting fish in a barrel, and thus should be avoided: She seems like a mostly harmless pro-life ardent Catholic who is better at mouthing conservative ideas than actually thinking about them. On the other hand, her real estate is one of the loudest and most prestigious advocates for conservatism around — and her attitudes seem to make her a reasonably accurate facsimile of a certain kind of homespun conservatism that’s widespread in evangelical circles — so she has to be taken a wee bit seriously. Doesn’t she?

Well, maybe not. Here’s her headline for a post at NR’s The Corner about a survey showing that a significant number of Boston teens believe pop star Rihanna “was responsible” for the beating she suffered at the hands of fellow pop star (and pathetic excuse for a man) Chris Brown:

“The Fruits of Feminism?”

It’s hard to know where to begin with Lopez. Does she not understand that it is feminists who have long been fighting against the “she was asking for it” excuse for violence against women? Apparently she doesn’t. But to make it clear: The attitude of the Boston teens is precisely opposite of what feminism stands for.

Perhaps Lopez naively believes that feminism removed women from the benign protection of men, and thus is bad. But she’d be wrong. Lots of women needed — and need, I can tell you from close observation — the empowerment of feminism to escape and fight back against the malign patronizing (even when well-intentioned) of men.

I’m no expert on feminism; I’ve never read Simone de Beauvoir. But it’s bizarrely ignorant to look at bad attitudes about bad things that happen to a famous woman and blame it on feminism. Then again, maybe I simply shouldn’t expect Lopez to know better. It wouldn’t be worth mentioning if I didn’t suspect her comments echoed the thoughts of many of her allies.