In her new book The Female Thing, Laura Kipnis argues that it is their own “inner woman,” as opposed to men or a global conspiracy, that acts as the biggest barrier to women realizing the progressive utopia they deserve.
The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability
by Laura Kipnis
published by Pantheon (October 17, 2006)
Hdbk., 192 pgs
ISBN: 0375424172
Perhaps the best way to educate an audience about a particular subject is to outline the uniqueness of its properties, which is most easily done by juxtaposing its essence alongside what it is not. Professor of Media Studies1 at Northwestern, Laura Kipnis, in her new book, The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability, uses this strategy to illuminate intrinsic female qualities via the four emblematic areas listed in the title. While it may sound rather popish, her brisk essays succeed in their goal. The author has produced a competent, intelligent, and valuable narrative.
It may surprise conservatives that a book written by a leftist-feminist could possibly appeal to them,2 and undoubtedly some will disagree with this reviewer’s assessment. It contains a great deal of profanity, and individuals who cannot tolerate the counter-cultural view of sexuality will feel rather uncomfortable at times (as evidenced by the title of her 2003 offering, Against Love: A Polemic). Kipnis also remains a believer in the existence of an apocryphal patriarchy, and has built the book’s intellectual infrastructure upon the texts of radical luminaries like Betty Friedan, Simone de Beauvoir, Susan Brownmiller, Eve Ensler, Shulamith Firestone, Germaine Greer, and Catharine MacKinnon. Yet, despite such elements, the book still has merit.
The Female Thing’s central theme is that it is their own “inner woman,” as opposed to men or a global conspiracy, that acts as the biggest barrier to women realizing the progressive utopia they deserve — a utopia for which, the author concedes, many women are not even interested. Females have certain refractory predispositions and fascinations which cannot be propagandized away. This is revealed in the female longing for men, the way in which feminine personality types persist despite their sometimes being cloaked in feminist garb, and the world’s assigning to women a higher worth based on their bodies. By identifying Woman as a free-thinking agent, Kipnis infuses the opposite sex with responsibility, and this immediately places her on a plane far above her peers. Hopefully, more non-equity feminists will agree that, socially and psychologically, our “respective anatomies produce different situations.”3
That’s not to imply that she is a biological determinist, however. What she does state is that, “what kind of anatomy you’ve been assigned invariably structures the female experience here on earth.” These views are a major advancement for feminism as they eschew the lie that only social construction makes us who we are.
The book’s greatest strength is the arguments produced by the author’s iconoclastic and insightful mind. Many novel ideas are on display. She clarifies that women’s empowerment came with a cost because much was lost in the process. Furthermore, has not femininity been on its own, from its earliest beginnings, an incredibly effective strategy for the acquisition of resources? From there, we turn to a major dilemma for the modern woman: one can’t really be feminine and a feminist at the same time for they are mutually exclusive conditions. The former denies weakness and frailty while the latter promotes it. We find that the root of women’s ever-increasing resentment of men — a resentment which is largely not reciprocated — is their own disavowal and self-deception. Their over-expectations can be attributed more to a lack of personal fulfillment than to the inadequacies of men.
Somewhat comedic is the extensive influence that Sigmund Freud has upon this work. He is frequently cited, but rarely critiqued. In fact, Kipnis seems rather taken with the positions of the late Viennese Doctor regardless of his being despised by feminists. His most vilified theory, penis envy, is even referenced, and the effect is devastating:
Funnily enough, it’s not actually psychiatrists who peddle this idea anymore; it’s women themselves, since isn’t the notion that “something’s missing” the dynamic driving the entirety of women’s culture?
That the icons of feminism appear as sources does not prevent Kipnis from deconstructing them. Kipnis is not only skeptical about the recently deceased Andrea Dworkin’s past allegations of sexual assault, she is even suspicious about her ubiquitous obsessions with intercourse and rape. She wonders, “. . . can there be this much aversion without some sort of desire? The opposite of desire isn’t aversion, it’s indifference.” She also takes issue with that quote attributed to Gloria Steinem about a woman requiring a man in the same way a fish requires a bicycle, saying, “. . . it turns out that fish are devoted cyclists.”
While The Female Thing may not be a precise fit for conservatives, it undeniably marks an advancement in our relations with feminists. Its pages are steeped in argumentation and debate as opposed to calls for castration and lesbianism. Laura Kipnis is her own woman and not a slave to dogma, which is all we can ask for. When leftist-feminists desire truth over propaganda they become allies or worthy opponents instead of buffoons walking around blaming “the other” for their own poor decision-making. If her peers follow her example, political correctness will join the gargoyle that sired it, Marxism, upon the list of intellectual viruses which only history will remember.
The Female Thing is available on Amazon.com.
Endnotes
1. This is the description on the book’s back cover. Online she is described as a Professor of Radio/Television/Film.
http://www.communication.northwestern.edu/rtf/faculty/Laura_Kipnis/
2. Indeed, Kipnis expressed surprise when I emailed her to let her know how much I enjoyed the book.
3. Quotation from an email exchange Ms. Kipnis had with the author on 12/3/06.
veritaseducation@gmail.com
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%22chapin%27s+inferno%22&search_type=
Read more articles by Bernard Chapin
"…their own 'inner woman' … acts as the biggest barrier to women realizing the progressive utopia they deserve."
Why do women deserve to live in a utopia, progressive or otherwise?
Comment by sedonaman | December 20, 2006
Thanks for stealing my comment, sedonaman. :) I cringe when people use the word 'deserve' when they really mean 'want'. Those tv commercials about mortgage loans ("Get the loan that you deserve!") make me want to change the channel. You don't deserve a loan and you don't deserve a utopia. You can ask for both, but you certainly don't have a right to either.
Well, I must admit I'm impressed that a reviewer here didn't just pan the book and nitpick the things he didn't like about it. It seems a fair review.
Comment by Ron S. | December 20, 2006
Uh, maybe I'm missing something here. Although it's mildly interesting that conservatives might find some miniscule patch of common ground with an avowed Feminist, I'm still not sure why I would benefit from reading even one page of a book that could be summed up as:
A) A Feminist utopia is a worthy objective…
B) …but we Feminists have only ourselves to blame for not achieving it.
I simply can't get past A). It's a show-stopper as far as I'm concerned.
Comment by nevadamistermom | December 21, 2006
I thought it might be interesting to see how Ms. Kipnis' book fares among fellow feminists. If, as Chapin alleges, she has skewered some feminist beliefs, I’d expect more dogmatic feminists to take her to task. There are, of course, more moderate feminists who can be expected to agree with her, but that’s because they’ve said the same things long ago. Then there are those who can be counted on to praise her regardless simply because she firmly declares herself a feminists, and are blind to the things she says so long as it doesn’t mock them. Another possibility is Chapin has it all wrong; that she is every bit the feminist she claims to be and her point is women are too much hung up on men and need to shuck us to succeed. Or, as at least one reviewer has it, should use and discard men (see 3 below). Certainly, some of Kipnis’ fantasies support this last interpretation. Here are a few typical samples of what’s out there:
1. http://arlindo-correia.com/051106.html only critical reviews to be found
2. http://www.salon.com/books/review/2006/10/18/kipnis/index_np.html defends work without ever telling us what’s in it
3. http://www.myhusbandbetty.com/community/showthread.php?goto=lastpost&t=6372 favorable with content - similar appraisal to yours
4. http://www.bookforum.com/bentley.html supports Kipnis is ranting against men
5. http://www.motherjones.com/arts/books/2006/11/the_female_thing.html describes work as the musings of a feminist without any particular conclusions.
6. http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375424175 publisher’s blurb describing it as “provocative assessment of the female condition.
7. http://www.observer.com/20061023/20061023_Sheelah_Kolhatkar_pageone_newsstory4.asp
8. http://www.nypost.com/seven/10152006/entertainment/what_a_girl_wants_entertainment_sara_stewart.htm even the NY Post finds her witty
9. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1724462/posts even the freepers don’t see it (maybe)
The one thing I come away with from all these discussions of her work is ‘women, feminists notwithstanding, are horribly preoccupied with sex and with all of its mental contortions’, far more than are men. Men may exhaust ourselves satisfying a particular infatuation or tie ourselves in knots convincing that special woman to marry us, but beyond that and maintaining the relation we go on to other stuff. What I have to wonder is that feminists like Kipnis complain repeatedly of running into inexplicable barriers everywhere (e.g., glass-ceilings, declining rates of women entering workforce, urges to clean toilets, &c) without ever considering they might be bucking human-nature more than it is capable of yielding. It may be asking too much to also expect them to see the damage done in pursuit of their feminist utopia, but I’d be happy knowing they’re infusing a bit of realism.
The other thing I’d comment on is Kipnis herself. This is a woman who has built a career on undermining other people’s values. She puts doctor in front of her name and has written four books (The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability; Against Love: A Polemic; Ecstasy Unlimited: On Sex, Capital, Gender, and Aesthetics; Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America), all of which appear focused on lustfully dysfunctional relationships infused with feminist thought, often with herself cited as exemplar. Her university bio (http://www.communication.northwestern.edu/rtf/faculty/Laura_Kipnis/) describes her as a “cultural theorist/critic and former video artist” with the Northwestern University, School of Communication, Radio/Television/Film department. None of her books appear to be more than personal observations and self-analysis. She has spent her career studying and interpreting how the world operates only through the lens of Hollywood (film/theater/television). She cites no academic publications and none of the credentials you’d expect of an academic (but, then, neither do half her fellow faculty). Turns out she is not a doctor, only a professor who has been dubbed “Dr. Laura” by some enthusiast. Anyway, my point is she is about as much an expert on her chosen topics as I am on politics. The adage goes: “Those who can do, those who can’t teach.” Kipnis appears to have been one of the latter until she discovered writing. She is one more overpaid enthusiast with sufficient (if unexceptional) writing skills and time on her hands to pen a series of polemics sufficiently lurid of subject to garner notable profits while avoiding damage to her pseudo-academic standing.
She may appear the rank-breaking moderate (and I’m sure she cultivates the image), but she’s got all the earmarks of a radical anti-traditionalist who wants to keep them coming back for more. No, I don’t see that she has much to teach us. The wonder is not that she asks questions; the wonder is she doesn’t come up with answers that make any sense. Her faux-iconoclasm may lull us into thinking ‘finally, here’s a feminist with a reasoning and reasonable mind’, but I don’t think so. She goes just so far proffering an olive branch before using it to whip us into her way of thinking. She doesn’t want to acknowledge the gulf between feminine and feminist, she wants us to abandon the solid ground of values for the quicksand of anything goes.
Comment by Robert W. Stapler | December 25, 2006