The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability | Laura Kipnis

The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability | Laura Kipnis | Dirt, Sex, Envy, or Vulnerability... Kipnis explores (western) female identity

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The Female Thing: ...

	The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability Laura Kipnis Pantheon, 2006 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

In the female psyche nowadays, ?contradictions speckle the landscape, like ingrown hairs after a bad bikini wax.? So writes Laura Kipnis, author of the widely acclaimed polemic Against Love. With ?the gleeful viperish wit of Dorothy Parker? (Slate), Kipnis now offers a fresh and provocative assessment of the female condition in the post-post-feminist world of the twenty-first century. For every advance toward sexual equality on the part of women in recent years, she argues, some new impediment just ?seems? to appear. Ironically, feminism ran up against an unanticipated opponent: the inner woman.

An ambitious and original reassessment of feminism and women?s ambivalence about it, The Female Thing brims with bracing and funny social observations informed by psychological acuity. For all the upbeat ?You go, girl? slogans, women remain caught between feminism and femininity, between self-affirmation and an endless quest for self-improvement, between playing the injured party and claiming independence. Feminism is bedeviled by the same impasses and contradictions it seeks to rectify. But rather than blaming the usual suspects?men, the media?Kipnis takes a hard look at culprits closer to home, namely women themselves and their complicity in upholding male privilege, even as they resent men deeply for it. Which makes relations between the sexes rather thorny at the moment, and Kipnis serves up the gory details of the mutual displeasure between men and women in painfully hilarious detail.

In the tradition of The Feminine Mystique and The Female Eunuch, this is a pathbreaking work. As audacious as it is historically and socially grounded, The Female Thing explores age-old quandaries: the war between the sexes, what women ?really? want, and to what extent anatomy is destiny after all.

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This is a real conversation starter...

This book is a valuable attempt to summarize the state of "the female psyche...in the aftermath of second-wave feminism and partway to gender equality." After a brief preface, Kipnis explores the paradox of female compliance/complicity existing simultaneously with feminism's demands for equality. This exploration unfolds within four chapters, which compose what Kipnis calls "a catalog of fetters, a chronicle of impasses."

Holding a professorship in media studies at Northwestern University, Laura Kipnis is known for her aggressive humor and honesty regarding gender issues. Some reviewers, perhaps most notably Alexandra Jacobs in the New York Times, have criticized this book for its brevity and lack of theoretical density, but these critics are imposing inapplicable standards of judgment. An earlier book--Against Love: A Polemic--offers a way to understand Kipnis' intention in this new book. She is less interested in constructing an air-tight logical case than in using selective logic to reveal the ambivalence and indecision that many women feel about "the female situation."

The chapter entitled "Envy" offers a hilarious parody of the cult of femininity while still challenging the tendency to focus all female disappointments on men (as the scapegoats) and raising the possibility that feminism inadvertently aided "scorched-earth labor practices." In "Sex," Kipnis explores some willingly forgotten realities about the history of medicine (e.g., genital massage as a treatment for unhappy/depressed women). In "Dirt," she shows how the cult of domesticity coupled with the association of home-and-body cleanliness with virtue traps women (and men) in a no-win situation.

"Vulnerability," the last and most controversial chapter, walks an argumentative tightrope. Kipnis argues persuasively that living with the constant awareness of rape inevitably shapes female behavior and psychology. On the other hand, she examines whether female victimization rhetoric is blinding many people to the possibility that "as many men as women are probably raped every year in the United States, and possibly more." As Kipnis writes, "Okay, most of these men are incarcerated at the time--but it's still rape."

Armchair Interviews says: This book offers a provocative introduction to the debates percolating in many households and classrooms.

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Dirt, Sex, Envy, or Vulnerability... Kipnis explores (western) female identity

Well, that "Female Thing." Does it lead to backlash or ambivalence? Feminism or femininity? What is the "inner woman"?

In this book, The Female Thing, Kipnis explores what it is like to be a women (in western culture, and particularly in the US) in today's society. Have "we've come a long way, baby?" Or, as Linda Hirshman claims in Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World, are women continuing to miss the boat?

Kipnis more or less issues a report card here: where are women now in regards to social status and equality? My interpretation of her analysis is that the report card would be a "C-".

She looks at 4 primary issues that she calls Envy, Sex, Dirt, and Vulnerability.

Envy: "If you're a modern female, unfortunately something's always broken" (p. 9). Women are obsessed, for complex reasons, about their "imperfections." [Note: read I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron for an example of this.] Kipnis summarizes this concept in her phrase "...voluntary servitude to self-improvement" (p. 10). There is a huge focus on looks instead of health, by the way. This commands women's attention to the detriment of other issues in their lives.

Sex: Suffice it to say that women are told they don't need it, or they deserve more, or there are tricks of the trade that are either hidden from them or that fool them, or something! To borrow a title from Star Trek IV, sex for many women is "The Undiscovered Country."

Dirt: Your various "apertures" make you vulnerable to nasty things in life. Women in many societies take the major role in managing dirt (internal and external). "Needless to say, being in charge of all the dirt has not made women particularly jovial" (p. 91).

Vulnerability; Kipnis' bottom line is that the "custodianship of a vagina really is the female Achilles' heel..." (p. 124). She discusses whether female anatomy is fundamentally vulnerable and perhaps "overvalued". Rape is the quintessential vulnerability, and she discusses the effects of sexual trauma (for example, experiences of Andrea Dworkin) in detail.

And then the book ends! I really was expecting a concluding synthesis at the end of these four sections.

All in all, this was a well-written, interesting discussion of the plight of many women in search of their various identities... as individuals, as members of family groups, and in societies. It is not a discussion of all the plights, nor all the opportunities. However, Kipnis focuses on the cages surrounding "free women." I expect this book will be an interesting one to discuss in your local book club.

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The conflicted female psyche (3.75 *s)

THE FEMALE THING is an irreverent look at the conflicted and contradictory female "thing" - that is, the female psyche. Achieving equality with and independence from the male of the species has been the goal for feminists for the last forty years, and while somewhat achieved, there is a sense of dissatisfaction, of things missing.

At least for heterosexual women, men do have something that women want - the possibilities of love, etc. Apparently those needs have driven a tremendous consumption of advice and self-enhancing products and procedures, even among the most ardent feminists. Self-acceptance seems to be in short supply.

Attaining financial independence by entering the workforce also has its problems: the loss of time and being subject to the rules of workplace regimes. Now in the name of empowerment, some younger women are opting for child-rearing - eschewing careers. The drive for equality and independence is indeed taking strange directions.

Women are also conflicted over the nature of sex. According to the author the location of orgasmatic centers and the assignment of technical responsibility for achieving such is engendering debate among frustrated women. And then there's dirt. Women have been in charge of dirt ever since the rise of domesticity and men are generally oblivious. But the female anatomy itself has, through the centuries, been considered "dirty" by some elements creating no small amount of consternation even today.

The author also considers the hysteria that can surround even the potential for rape, while acknowledging female vulnerabilities. She strongly questions a couple of well known feminists who have either forgotten their complicity in unwelcome advances or fabricated the same.

Kipnis' appraisal of the female psyche, actually female sexuality, is intended to be provocative. Her writing is difficult, at times, to follow - just as in her other recent book, Against Love. But it's worth the effort. She forces a re-examination of issues that many may have thought to be settled.

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Respect from a non-feminist man, with a daughter.

As a man, there were many parts of this book that caused me an eye-roll or two. But I had to concede by the end that I found "The Female Thing" to be an enjoyable and enlightening read on balance. Guys will be able to read this because it has ample doses of humor and doesn't take itself so deadly seriously as most women's books do. Kipnis examines four topics in women's culture (a term introduced to me by Kipnis herself, just what the heck is women's culture?) :Envy, Sex, Dirt and Vulnerability.

Women want more. More of what, they are not sure but they want more of it; and men seem to have it, whatever it is. Power seems like a good thing to have and money seems to be the key to power so maybe women should get more money. But that just feeds capitalism and that can't be good (eww!) And if women earn more and men relatively less and women continue to rate men based on how much they make, won't women thus be denied one of the very things they've always wanted i.e. rich men? What women really want is not to feel inadequate. Or maybe just for men to feel inadequate too. Maybe if men started worrying about tummy fat and laugh-lines and their hair and using the right lotions and...wait a minute...metrosexuals... Never mind. Let's look at Sex.

Women are faced with an uphill climb to sexual fulfillment, there are physical and social barriers to satisfying recreational sex. Or so Kipnis tells me. My own field research suggests that women who write books about women's sexual problems are over-thinking the thing but I will take her at her word (so to speak.) Then there is pregnancy and childbirth. The profound asymmetry between men's and women's participation and investment in procreation poses socially insurmountable barriers to an equitable distribution of rights and responsibilities. Only technological and legal changes can change outdated paradigms and...wait a minute...designer babies, family law crisis... Never mind. Let's look at Dirt.

In what is by far the most readable section for men, Kipnis concedes what men have known all along: women are crazy. Okay, to be fair she offers a lucid examination of the economic, technological and social trends that have shaped modern women's feelings and attitudes toward hygiene and cleanliness and how those feelings and attitudes have presented an obstacle to women's equality (cukoo.) Kipnis fails to mention a well-known truth about the housework wars: A woman will be mad if her man does not enough housework, she will be ballistic if he does too much or does it too well or, worst of all, does it too publicly. Couldn't women ditch these images of feminine perfection and adopt a utilitarian mode of dress and hairstyle more like men's in order to...wait a minute...Rosie O'Donnell... Never mind. Let's look at Vulnerability.

Kipnis wades bravely into the issue of rape (you didn't think she meant emotional vulnerability, did you?) Referring grudgingly to statistics, she goes on to talk about the fear of rape being a bigger issue than the actual incidence of rape. She lays out a wide range of what has been written by feminists about rape and the fear of rape that plays such a large role in women's lives and makes a deft observation: "The opposite of desire isn't aversion, it's indifference..." At what the author concedes is a Freudian (ergo discredited, outmoded) level, women are fascinated by the idea of surrendering to the powerful rogue archetype. (Hey, she said it, not me!) The upshot of decades of loud talk about the socio-political gender ramifications of the fear of rape is a raft of laws and rules that make every sidelong glance a potential train-wreck. Kipnis ends the chapter and the book with the following endearing sentence: "A full accounting of the female situation at the moment would need to start roughly here." Some clever typesetting leaves most of that last page invitingly blank. It is simultaneously humble and defiant; I like it.

Someday, anthropologists will discover a tribe that has no word or concept for gender. When visitors point out that some people have one kind of plumbing and some another, some bigger shoulders, some bigger hips, they will shrug as though the distinction were no more important than the shape of one's earlobes. They will have suitably elaborate mating rituals which allow the necessary mechanics to be glossed over while still allowing procreation. And we will set up discrete viewing blinds in order to make full use of this gender-neutral laboratory. Until then, we are muddling through and, for me anyway, Kipnis' subtext seems to be that we are making progress.

As a man who likes women and wants them to be happy (along with everyone else) I hope so.

Comments invited.

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The Evolution of the Feminist.

Perhaps the best way to educate an audience about a particular subject is to outline the uniqueness of its properties, which is most easily done by juxtaposing its essence alongside what it is not. Professor of Media Studies at Northwestern, Laura Kipnis, in her new book, The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability, uses this strategy to illuminate intrinsic female qualities via the four emblematic areas listed in the title. While it may sound rather popish, her brisk essays succeed in their goal. The author has produced a competent, intelligent, and valuable narrative.

It may surprise conservatives that a book written by a leftist-feminist could possibly appeal to them, and undoubtedly some will disagree with this reviewer's assessment. Although, The Female Thing's central theme is key to my reasoning. Kipnis believes that it is their own "inner woman," as opposed to men or a global conspiracy, that acts as the biggest barrier to women realizing the progressive utopia they deserve--a utopia for which, the author concedes, many women are not even interested. Females have certain refractory predispositions and fascinations which cannot be propagandized away. This is revealed in the female longing for men, the way in which feminine personality types persist despite their sometimes being cloaked in feminist garb, and the world's assigning to women a higher worth based on their bodies. By identifying Woman as a free-thinking agent, Kipnis infuses the opposite sex with responsibility, and this immediately places her on a plane far above her peers. Hopefully, more non-equity feminists will agree that, socially and psychologically, our "respective anatomies produce different situations." That's not to imply that she is a biological determinist, however. What she does state is that, "what kind of anatomy you've been assigned invariably structures the female experience here on earth." These views are a major advancement for feminism as they eschew the lie that only social construction makes us who we are.

The book's greatest strength are the arguments produced by the author's iconoclastic and insightful mind. Many novel ideas are on display. She clarified that women's empowerment came with a cost because much was lost in the process. Furthermore, has not femininity been on its own, from its earliest beginnings, an incredibly effective strategy for the acquisition of resources? From there, we turn to a major dilemma for the modern woman: one can't really be feminine and a feminist at the same time for they are mutually exclusive conditions. The former denies weakness and frailty while the latter promotes it. We find that the root of women's ever-increasing resentment of men--a resentment which is largely not reciprocated--is their own disavowal and self-deception. Their over expectations can be attributed more to a lack of personal fulfillment than to the inadequacies of men.

While The Female Thing may not be a precise fit for conservatives, it undeniably marks an advancement in our relations with feminists. Its pages are steeped in argumentation and debate as opposed to calls for castration and lesbianism. Laura Kipnis is her own woman and not a slave to dogma which is all we can ask for. When leftist-feminists desire truth over propaganda they become allies or worthy opponents instead of buffoons walking around blaming "the other" for their own poor decision making. If her peers follow her example, political correctness will join the gargoyle that sired it, Marxism, upon the list of intellectual viruses which only history will remember.

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