(Yet) Another Op-Ed Takes On Sheryl Sandberg and Lena Dunham’s Feminism. Meanwhile, in Ohio…
Amy Schumer Image by Getty Images
We have, on the one hand, an Ohio legislator, active in getting an anti-abortion “heartbeat” bill approved, offering the following response, in 2012, to a reporter who’d asked him why he imagines women opt to get abortions: “It’s a question I’ve never even thought about.”
(More context tells you that he gestured first at “economics,” which suggests maybe he had thought about it for a moment or two… but also that he chuckled and referred to himself as not being a woman, implication being, why should he be expected to know about such lady-matters? So there’s that.)
Ah, but on the other hand, there’s a brand-new Guardian op-ed making new and urgent point that Sheryl Sandberg, Lena Dunham, and Amy Schumer are not representative of the average woman’s concerns and, from this, concluding that “liberal feminism” (aka a certain former presidential candidate who I hear bravely goes without makeup these days) is effectively the same as conservative not-feminism.
Why am I juxtaposing these two items? Because I think it’s really, really important to address the limitations of glass-ceiling feminism in ways that don’t involve dismissing the need for women in positions of authority. Can this be our goal? Please? Just a suggestion.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy edits the Sisterhood, and can be reached at [email protected]. Her book, The Perils of “Privilege”, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017.
