Newly updated, first North American edition — a paperback original — “Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love” by Naomi Wolf.

From New York Times bestselling author Naomi Wolf, “Outrages” explores the history of state-sponsored censorship and violations of personal freedoms through the inspiring, forgotten history of one writer’s refusal to stay silenced.

I never thought I’d be a professional feminist as a career choice; I certainly didn’t intend to be. Growing up in the Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, at the height of various social justice movements in the 1970s including the fight for LGBTQ rights and the agitation of the “second wave” of feminism, I thought that by the time I was an adult, all of these battles would surely be won.
 
Sadly they weren’t. When I wrote “The Beauty Myth” at 26, which happened to be published when a new generation was seeking a way out of the torpor and “backlash” of the evil 1980s, I named in the book, and engaged with, what became known as the “Third Wave” of feminism. (Writer Rebecca Walker coined the phrase at the same time).
 
This led me to an unusual life opportunity: I happened to have a seat as an observer of (and at times a participant in) the drama of Western feminism for the next thirty years.
 
The headline is that the women’s movement has gotten smarter and better, and that we are in what I’ve called elsewhere, a Renaissance moment for feminism.
 
This is hard at first, I am sure, to believe since mainstream media, which is still reactionary when it comes to women, rarely documents our vast successes. News outlets still like to feature the battle for women’s rights in a few stereotypical ways. At best a story will run about women’s systematic victimization – which is all too real; but the huge efforts that go into our effectively pushing back —  landmark court cases, giant settlements against employers, rapists put in prison, traffickers undone by good legislation, even gradual transfers of larger shares of wealth to women as they open businesses, drive companies’ profits and fight for equal pay – are downplayed or ignored. So women don’t see reflected in the news, many benchmarks of how very effective we are being accruing decades of revolutionary victories.
 
A reason that we are being so very effective as what is basically the most sweeping revolution in history also has to do with how feminism has grown and gotten smarter since the 1970s.
 
When I was in my twenties, a painful fact was that feminists of my generation had to start all over again simply explaining (and learning) what equity issues were; simply re-teaching and reiterating what most students who take gender studies today, see as Feminism 101; basic theory. In the 1990s, things were a mess: the first insight of feminism – it’s not my personal problem, it’s systemic, it’s Patriarchy  – was hard for many women to achieve, as the analysis had been swept away and they were being told that their problems were personal, not political. The accomplishments and analysis of my mom’s generation, the Second Wave, had been erased in a very short time. This left younger women to grope in the dark, figuring out the basics of body image issues, pay inequity, work/family balance struggles, sexual and domestic violence traumas. But when Third Wave feminism arrived, with books such as Susan Faludi’s Backlash and Rebecca Walker’s collection To be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism, younger women joined forces with enthusiasm.
 
Western feminism at the end of the 20th century, and into the 21st, had flaws. One central flaw was the fact that at first, white women’s issues and issues relating to women of more affluent economic classes, were often seen (or portrayed) as being central. An example of how simply bad a situation this created, from my own experience, is the fact that for a decade, I was invited onto panels – often made up only of white women – that were asked about “the conflict between mothers who worked and mothers who stayed home”, as if that was “feminism” – as if that the biggest problem that women of all backgrounds, faced.
 
A needed critique from women of color and women across the economic spectrum, forced a welcome upheaval in the form of a call for “intersectionality.” This critique was made easier by the fact that women’s (and later gender) studies programs had been established at many universities, thus giving feminist ideas institutional continuity that had eluded the Second Wave. One hugely positive result of this critique is that the image of the leadership of the women’s movement shifted, and more people became aware that women’s issues were diverse depending on whom you were, and that feminism was global; and that the most exciting advances and most important theory were being spearheaded by women in the Global South, and often presented by leaders of color.
 
Another problem in the past was divisiveness. During the Second Wave, sexual identity could be a battleground. Earlier feminism could be extremely Puritanical and judgmental about other women’s choices. Straight women such as Betty Friedan criticized lesbians, as in her famous 1969 warning about the “lavender menace.” https://www.thoughtco.com/lavender-menace-feminism-definition-3528970 Some groups, such as Radicalesbians, organized a reaction to this, and developed influential theories of “woman-identified women” that were exciting, but that also seemed to critique straight women for false consciousness. [https://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/wlmpc_wlmms01011/]. Women who identified as bisexual faced criticism too, for “not making up their minds.” This judgmental approach endured into the 1980s and early 1990s. Critique often turned women against each other.
 
Third Wave feminism was a huge step forward in that this group rejected the rigidity, divisiveness and judgmental tone of our moms’ era, creating a more inclusive discourse that was more open to the fact that women made different life choices and had different political agendas, and that there was space for all.
 
Fast forward to today. There’s never been a better time to be a young feminist, or a better feminism. The young women I meet today have rejected a lot of stupid binaries that have held people in thrall for the duration of history. They usually aren’t wedded to the idea that there are only two genders; they often celebrate the fact that gender is a spectrum, as they see it, and that it can be chosen.  They have the important language and concept that sexuality can be a specific identity and/or it can be what they call “fluid” – a word and acceptance that could have liberated so many people in the past, had it been in usage. They are self-aware about white privilege, very often, and scan their own positions for unintended (or intended) racism or class blindness – a self-awareness that is often mocked by the right wing, but that is so much better than the obtuse omissions caused by the narcissism of privilege that often afflicted my own generation.
 
Younger feminists today have little fear of power or of making a scene in a good way; they are rarely burdened with spectres of what “nice girls don’t do”;  they use social media, take to the streets, start blogs and businesses, out their harassers and rapists, choose their own body positivity, make their own family structures, decide their own fates, form their own alliances. I’ve never met a generation less impressed with others telling them what to do and whom to be. The world they are making for women – however you or they define that word – is going to be a world of radical freedom —  if only pandemics and oligarchs don’t stand in their way.
 
Feminism has grown up, in my view, with this generation; and become as fluid and inclusive and diverse as is the human family.
 
And that’s a victory we can all celebrate. 

Outrages

 
Dr Naomi Wolf received a D Phil Degree in English Literature from the University of Oxford in 2015. Dr. Wolf taught Victorian Studies as a Visiting Professor at SUNY Stony Brook, received a Barnard College Research Fellowship at the Center for Women and Gender, was recipient of a Rothermere American Institute Research Fellowship for her work on John Addington Symonds at the University of Oxford, and taught English Literature at George Washington University as a visiting lecturer. She’s lectured widely on the themes in Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love, presenting lectures on Symonds and the themes in Outrages at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, at Balliol College, Oxford, and to the undergraduates in the English Faculty at the University of Oxford. She lectured about Symonds and Outrages for the first LGBTQ Colloquium at Rhodes House. Dr Wolf was a Rhodes Scholar and a Yale graduate. She’s written eight nonfiction bestsellers, about women’s issues and civil liberties, and is the CEO of DailyClout.io, a news site and legislative database in which actual US state and Federal legislation is shared digitally and read and explained weekly. She holds an honorary doctorate from Sweet Briar College. She and her family live in New York City.

The post 30 years of feminism – and why today’s revolution is the best revolution of all first appeared on Lesbian.com.

BY FRANCESCA LEWIS

Lesbian.com

Borderline Personality Disorder is very common. One in twenty people in the US have a diagnosis, and studies have suggested that it is even more prevalent in the queer community. Yet it is one of the most stigmatized and least understood mental health conditions out there, with even clinicians struggling to understand and relate to patients. This matters to me, because I was diagnosed with BPD five years ago. I have a complicated relationship with my diagnosis and the inherent biases in the DSM, but I do identify with the struggles – and strengths – that the condition defines.

After recently watching the new Kristen Wiig movie, Welcome to Me, I began to think about representations of BPD in the media and how they don’t exactly match up with what I have experienced. On the one hand it’s an awesome movie – offbeat, funny, with Wiig in fine form, riding that line between silliness and pathos she does so well. On the other hand, well, it’s another in a long line of simplistic portrayals of the “bad borderline” who lacks empathy, is selfish, and is incapable of change. It is more nuanced than the bunny boiler or the out-of-control party girl we usually see, but this is still a black and white portrayal of the illness – rather apt, considering black and white thinking is a key symptom of BPD. In this climate of mental health awareness campaigns and neurodiversity, where conditions like autism are being destigmatized and embraced, this seems unfair.

Queer feminist writer and academic Merri Lisa Johnson, whose memoir Girl In Need Of A Touniquet explores her own experiences with borderline personality disorder, also had some opinions of the movie. She and I had a fascinating conversation about BPD, Welcome to Me and the radical new Neuroqueer theory we are both fascinated by…

As a person with BPD and a feminist who’s interested in pop culture’s complicated relationship with difficult women, what were you expecting from Welcome to Me and how did it conform to and differ from those expectations?

Any time I see a reference to borderline personality disorder, I have two opposite feelings at the same time: ooh, cool! And oh no. I want to see BPD represented, so the first part of my response is eagerness to see more, and more varied, representations of an illness category that I have identified with in my own work, despite the massive stigma attached to it. The second part is my fear that another representation will not necessarily mean a good, useful, or illuminating representation. The title alone gave reason for caution, and I winced a little at the self-involvement it promised. The main character is difficult in ways I could not intuitively understand.

I was very impressed with how the film fully captures the all-encompassing nature of BPD, how it is within the very fabric of a person’s being, very much a defining feature of their personality. Unfortunately, this made the film’s redemption narrative, in which she gives away all her money to her more “deserving” mentally healthy friend, ring pretty false and seem very stigmatizing and unfair. Can we have a satisfying Hollywood ending without humbling or punishing the crazy girl?

One way to look at her gesture of giving away seven million dollars is as an example of how little Alice changes in the film. It is a simplistic resolution of her relationship to her friend, Gina, but it is the kind of simplistic–and impulsive–resolution that vibes borderline. The screenplay writer, Eliot Laurence, says (in an interview with Writers Guild of America, West) that he wanted to be realistic in creating an ending where the protagonist has changed, but not much. I think she should have kept her money. But I don’t resent the plot trajectory toward humbling the character. Facing life experiences that bring humility is an important part of adulthood for everyone. It is right for her to atone for being insensitive, but writing a check skips the hard work of changing in subtler and more permanent ways.

Some mental health advocates are calling for a “neuroqueer” view of mental illness, in which brain differences are just differences, much like being gay or transgender, and ought not to be stigmatized. This is closer to how I currently view my own diagnosis. Do you subscribe to this idea and, if so, do you think Welcome to Me would have benefited from applying it?

My current project attempts to explore the idea of approaching BPD from a neuroqueer perspective, as a vibrant and unique way of being in the world, akin to work among autism theorists who reject a focus on curing or masking autism. I say “attempts to explore” because I am stuck right now. I read a short piece by feminist theorist Susan Cahn recently that described personality disorders as defects of character, not mental illnesses. I am stung by the distinction and still mulling it over.

This film is missing the strengths of BPD. Alice lacks interpersonal charm and creative vision. Alice is all deficits and no gifts. A neuroqueer depiction might balance this ratio a bit more.

The film is the only significant portrayal of BPD we’ve seen on screen since 1999’s Girl, Interrupted (itself an incomplete and somewhat problematic portrayal) and since the condition is so common and yet so misunderstood, this is unacceptable. Do you think we’re due for a mental health revolution, similar to those we’ve recently seen in LGBT rights and feminism? What adjustments would have to be made in the popular consciousness to allow this to happen?

A New York Times article in January 2014 called for “more granular language” in talking about mental illness and urged the public to renounce the generalizing phrase, “mental illness.” I was drawn to this idea and dismayed, though not surprised, to see others shouting it down on Facebook. There is a thick wall of defensiveness among those who identify as mentally healthy against the idea that the boundary between them and “the mentally ill” may be porous or perhaps even fictional.

The popular consciousness needs to know more about BPD than what is in the DSM. Instead of a character defect, researchers have proposed a biological/neurological basis for BPD and reframed it as an anxiety disorder or even an atypical form of bipolar disorder. It would be useful to see those proposals and debates find a wider audience.

The post BPD, Neuroqueer & Stigma: A Discussion with Merri Lisa Johnson first appeared on Lesbian.com.

BY FRANCESCA LEWIS

I am always trying to crowbar a queer feminist reading into every morsel of popular culture I consume. Imagine my surprise when I decided to turn my lens on new Netflix series “Orange is the New Black”, only to find that my trusty crowbar was no good here.  There are many reasons I feel that way: Not only is the show populated by women, it is also about women. Never has a show passed the Bechdel Test with such monumental flying colors. The only other example that comes to mind, Showtime’s “The L Word,” mainly passes on a technicality – there are very few men in the lesbian utopia that is fictionalized gay LA. What’s interesting about OITNB is that there are many male characters and many women who like men. However, the majority of conversations between these women are focused on their identities, their hopes, their fears and, most significantly, their relationships. The show puts female camaraderie at front and center, which is refreshing and, hopefully, precedent setting.

To say that the show contains a lot of diversity is a laughable understatement up there with “Ellen is funny” and “Portia is beautiful.” Television has come a long way (at least on cable) in terms of diversity, with Showtime’s “Homeland” featuring a woman with a mental health condition as its extremely competent protagonist and HBO’s “True Blood” consistently making sure at least three persons of color are in the main cast of every season. OITNB, however, takes diversity to a new level. Its large ensemble cast has a varied list of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, reminding us that there are many different manifestations of “black”, “white” or “Hispanic”, as well as a number of sexually fluid and queer characters, similarly diverse in their representation. It is also the first high profile show to feature a trans woman played by an actual trans woman, a milestone that feels woefully overdue. Not to mention the show’s reflection of every different economical background imaginable.

Read more at Curve

Curve, the nation’s best-selling lesbian magazine, spotlights all that is fresh, funny, exciting, controversial and cutting-edge in our community.

The post Feminism, queerness and ‘Orange is the New Black’ first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Tennis legend Billie Jean King. Photo via Stanford/courtesy of Billy Jean King.

BY ASHLEY LAUREN
Care2.com

With the Super Bowl approaching, we are all paying a lot of attention to athletes and their physical prowess. However, what might be even more important is the political views of those very athletes. Even though sports fields are not the first place we look to for gender equality, many athletes espouse extremely feminist views. What follows is a slideshow of five of the greatest feminist athletes of all times.
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Care2 is the largest online community of people passionate about making a difference.

The post Five of the top feminist athletes first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Choosing the perfect gift for someone can be a stressful task. For me what makes the best gift is something that is thoughtful and has meaning. In that light, check out the must-have holiday gift guide below for the fierce feminist on your shopping list.

1. Ten Thousand Villages

What if a gift you bought this holiday season helped support the work of an artisan in a developing country? That is the exact mission of Ten Thousand Villages — to improve the livelihoods of tens of thousands of disadvantaged artisans in 38 countries. They do this by building long term fair trading relationships with skilled artisans around the world that lack opportunities for stable income. Sales from their stores help pay for food, education, healthcare and housing for the artisans they work with.

Read more at Care2.com

Care2 is the largest online community of people passionate about making a difference.

The post Fabulous holiday gifts for feminists first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Photograph: Getty Images Europe.

BY KRISTINA CHEW
Care2.com

The Russian police have been hunting for other members of Pussy Riot, the feminist punk band three of whose members have been sentenced to two years in a prison colony after being convicted on charges of “hooliganism” motivated by religious hatred. The BBC reports that, according to the band’s Twitter account, two members of the feminist collective have fled Russia: “In regard to the pursuit, two of our members have successfully fled the country! They are recruiting foreign feminists to prepare new actions!”

Along with jailed Pussy Riot members Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, the two women who have fled Russia were among those who participated in a “punk prayer” at Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral in February.

Read more at Care2.com

Care2 is the largest online community of people passionate about making a difference.

The post Two Pussy Riot members flee; ‘Victims’ sue band first appeared on Lesbian.com.