SIVACRACY.NET

More than usual, I mean. A few days ago Linda Hirshman published an article entitled "Homeward Bound" at The American Prospect. There was a lot of reaction by feminist bloggers, such as:

Bitch, Ph.D.'s "My Radical Married Feminist Manifesto", and 11D's "We Hate Mommies" and Half Changed World's "Hirshman's Rules" and The Republic of Heaven's "The Perils of Womenhood" and Angry Pregnant Lawyer's "Settle In" and Blogging Baby's "Feminism Has Failed. Why? Women Are Staying Home With Kids."

Update #1: Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon has some valuable input too.

Everyone at the links above, and in comments to the linked postings, has her own distinct reaction to Hirshman's article, and I'm guessing, just guessing, mind you, not being a social scientist or having miraculous mindreading powers, that this is because they are all very different people! And here's a crucial data point that will surprise exactly no one: I'm different too!

Hirshman's analysis is driven by observations about her students, and some women who married in 1996 and had their wedding announcements published in the "Sunday Styles" section of the New York Times. Well, I have students as well, and many married friends and family members, a handful of whom married in 1996 and/or had their wedding announcements published somewhere ritzy. Some of them have children, others do not. I also have numerous single friends, some childless, others not. But I'm not going to write a long, seemingly scholarly article about the women who stop working outside the home, or step off the fast track, by generalizing about them. Instead I'm just going to write this marginally coherent blog post about how little credence I give Hirshman's observations, based on my own self-serving personal observations:

1. The happiest lawyers I know earn less than the unhappiest lawyers I know. Their work engages them, and they find ways to build satisfying personal lives around the jobs they choose, even though they forfeit some income by working at smaller firms, working as in-house counsel, operating their own practices, working part-time, working for the government in some capacity, or entering academia (like, one might note, Linda Hirshman did). I could more than double my salary by becoming a law school dean (assuming any law school would be crazy enough to offer me such a position) but that would not be nearly enough money for me to even consider giving up teaching and writing for a life of raising money and trying to tell tenured faculty what to do.

2. "Elite" women are not a monolithic group, and they scale back professional careers for a wide variety of reasons. Some get tired of the sexism and stress of the workplace; some find the work they are doing boring, or the travel debilitating; some like to spend their days with their children; some are lazy and like to watch a lot of television. I'm not even close to "elite," just don't have the hair or shoes for it, but I have a great job that I love. Jobs that I didn't love, I left. I'm accountable only to myself on this, as I see it.

3. Supporting other women's choices is the very essence of feminism, at least as I define it. E.g.: Go to medical school if you want! Women make at least as good physicians as men do, and I'd rather have a female doctor any day. Choose nursing school over medical school if that's what you want! It's not a choice I'd make if I had the grades and test scores to get into medical school, but I'm not you! And I'd be thrilled to have you as my nurse, though you may not be equally pleased to have me as a patient, because I get fairly grumpy when I'm sick and I tend to throw up a lot. And speaking of vomit...

Under the section entitled "The Failure of Choice Feminism," Hirshman wrote:

"Great as liberal feminism was, once it retreated to choice the movement had no language to use on the gendered ideology of the family. Feminists could not say, “Housekeeping and child-rearing in the nuclear family is not interesting and not socially validated. Justice requires that it not be assigned to women on the basis of their gender and at the sacrifice of their access to money, power, and honor.”

"The 50 percent of census answerers and the 62 percent of Harvard MBAs and the 85 percent of my brides of the Times all think they are “choosing” their gendered lives. They don’t know that feminism, in collusion with traditional society, just passed the gendered family on to them to choose. Even with all the day care in the world, the personal is still political. Much of the rest is the opt-out revolution."

Emphatic note to Linda Hirshman: Feminists can say anything they damn well want (even "Fuck you!" when we are so moved, which is not a random observation here); most elite women DO "choose" the trajectory of their lives, at least as much as the rest of us do, thanks in large part to the triumphs of feminism; and feminism as I understand and experience it is not "in collusion with traditional society." We are subverting the patriarchy one day at a time by living as we want to, rather than following instructions dictated by men, or by you.

Update #2: Someone purporting to be Linda Hirshman has e-mailed me to ask whether my Dean is aware of this blog entry. For someone who explicitly advocates that feminism return "to its early, judgmental roots" that sounds a tad thin-skinned to me. But hey, having opted out of pursuing partnership at a large law firm, I guess I deserve all the "guidance" she can dish out. I do need to emphasize, though, that I do not know whether the e-mails were really from Hirshman, and it is rather hard to believe she would be that petty and threatening. I've logged the IP address and would be interested in hearing from anyone else who received similar e-mails.

Update #3: Here are a few words from Miriam Peskowitz of Playground Revolution:

"The Linda Hirshman piece in the American Prospect is getting emailed around, and got a spot on AlterNet. More tendentious lies, as in: the workplace changed enough. Oh, please. I was interviewed for that piece, and totally distrust the author's assumptions and her willingness to be honest and truthful. I'm so exhausted by ideologues. Her database: three weeks worth of couples who advertised their June weddings in, yes, the Sunday New York Times. She's trying to find a book contract for this, god help us all. And she's a scholar too, she should know better about how to use evidence. Enough, enough, enough. We've got a whole country out here trying to make ends meet, and this is the crap we get, again and again and again."

Whew, I hope she has tenure!

Update #4: More links! Mothers Movement Online's The Glass Ceiling Is At Home; Alas A Blog here and here ; Echidne of the Snakes; Official Shrub.com Blog; Rebeldad.com; Packed in Saccharin; Expectant Waiting; MUBAR.

Update #5: Still more links: Majikthise; Metamanda; Hugo Schwyzer; Literary Mama; Half Changed World; Rants For The Invisible People; Random Outlaw; After School Snack; Phantom Scribbler.