The other day I was listening to Philip Adams interview Nancy Friday(?) and she commented what a change there was in Australia since she'd last visited in the early 80s, and how she had always thought of the place as a bastion of the progressive left on the basis of that visit.
I presume she meant in ‘Australian public life’, really. Nancy Friday wouldn’t be my favouritist of feminists, but her comments made me think how we’ve 'come a long way, baby’, largely in the wrong direction (in my opinion). How times have changed and how cautious people are of running the kinds of debates these days that they used to, often for fear of being branded 'politically correct'. In fact, there's a new version of of political correctness that dominates today, the Prime Minister's version.
Sigh! I kind of miss the good old days when we were the hot issue (before queer and post-colonial theory took over -- ah, those other others!) Philip and Nancy got very nostalgic indeed about the days of iconic feminists like Gloria Steinem and all that (when things moved on to Naomi Woolf, she was really a bit of wee wee, despite all her talk about 'power feminism'.)
I've actually been editing a men's report over the last few months. I don't begrudge the men their report at all, in fact I think it's a Good Thing, but it's made me wonder, am I now in the position of the original SNAG who wanted to support feminists? I should feel privileged in a way, as women aren't allowed in the men's centre. This is partly a cultural thing and I respect it as such, tho I've never been a great fan of separatism in any form (and it does have a vague ring of the ‘girls keep out’ male cubby about it). When one of my bosses heard that I was editing the report, she said: 'Typical! A woman ends up cleaning up after the men!'
When I rang the writer of the report today, I could hear guitars strumming in the background at the men's centre as men reclaimed whatever (sorry, this is getting a bit Nick-Hornby-in-the-desert). I said to himm, 'Things are sounding rather 70s in there.' I tried to explain how to perform a certain editorial function in Word, but it didn't seem to be working so I said, 'Well, you'll just have to ring IT support, wont you, because I can't come in.' Hmmm, separatism and its discontents. Still, things would be a lot worse in Saudi, I guess. I wouldn't even be allowed to edit the report.
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