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First off, I have to say that I'm glad that, for all her complaints,
Susannah Breslin was able
to achieve a climax on reading the "Writing (Post)Feminism" issue of ebr.
What troubles me
the most about her review of this issue, however, is that she worries
extensively that ebr has
repressed postfeminist writings by not including poetry, fiction, songs or
manifestos directly
in the text. The simple answer here is that
the electronic book review is just that--a review journal. The beauty of an e-journal is that while it is only reviewing material, it can provide direct connections to the
primary sources. Thus, Todd Napolitano's essay links to e-diaries; Susan
Taylor's interview essay
links to the geekgirl's journal; and Greg Dyer's review links to
experimental writing sites.
Alas, some of the reviews/essays refer to forms of writing which are not on
the web: George
Landow's review of Shelley Jackson's hypertextual Patchwork Girl, August
Tarrier's review
of the film Bad Girls, Martin Rosenberg's essay on Kiki Smith's artwork (which we did not reproduce because her gallery didn't grant us permission).
While primary
sources do not appear directly in ebr in the form of writing, I have tried
to showcase them in
their visual forms--note the reproductions of works by Jacqueline Jacovini,
Susan Hagan, and
Sharon Horvath, among others. We have no intention, therefore, of shunting
written
productions by women into the "basement," but to direct the harried and
overly busy reader
to sites which we have found to be particularly
essential to an understanding of
postfeminism.
Breslin acknowledges what I point out in my introduction to this issue of
ebr: there is no single
definition of postfeminism. She admits that "a social movement created by
and for women
may be more multiple in its meanings and definitions" and so may be less
easy to pin down.
What Breslin misses, however, is the basically inclusive nature of
postfeminism, an attitude
which I have tried to capture in this issue. By interviewing women whose
response to
postfeminism is not necessarily predetermined, I tried to open up views of
feminism and
postfeminism to embrace people of varied backgrounds, of varied artistic
professions, of
varied sexual proclivities. So, when Lynn Breedlove says, "My clit has a
mind of its own,"
she is essentially supporting Eurudice's remark which Breslin identifies,
that postfeminism
means that it's o.k. to be a woman and to enjoy it, that women are not
transgressing a
politically correct agenda if they do not act on ideological beliefs all the
time.
Breslin's main definition of postfeminism appears to be constrained to a
timeline: first there
was feminism, but that is "menopausal," and now there is postfeminism. I
think that this
attitude is a mistake, because it condones prejudgmental treatment of women
according to
their age. It's the type of attitude which feminism itself has suffered
from in excluding
women who are "breeders," for instance. Instead, I propose a view of
postfeminism which is
more accepting of difference and, most importantly for me, which admits a sense of humor.
When Dodie Bellamy describes her adolescent search for the "dirty parts" in
literature, she
allows us to laugh while she stresses her point that the writer is a
seductress and that
"writing is a sex act in itself, creating a romance between writer and
reader. This romance
transcends gender and sexual preference." What is important to Bellamy is
that writers are
always trying, more than to represent sex, to represent "physical
sensation," and this task is
an impossible but inescapable one. What is important to me about Bellamy's
argument, and
which I wish were more important to Breslin, is that postfeminism allows us
to think about
ourselves as women beyond sexual attitudes, beyond the prehistoric days of
women as
victims, and to acknowledge and embrace the heterogeneity of the female
population. Having
a vagina doesn't have to determine how one thinks or acts.
Elisabeth Joyce, Edinboro University
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