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ACTUAL CONSERVATIVE MAGAZINES: ALSO BAD. This Jonah Goldberg post on Linda Hirshman is really pretty revealing. And I'd like to say, for the record, that contra Jonah, I think her arguments should be taken seriously because they deserve to be taken seriously and not as part of some marketing ploy. At any rate, Jonah writes:
[Hirschman] says that unless women work, they aren't fully human beings. We're supposed to take this seriously? I thought feminists were supposed to be champions of personal choice, self-empowerment, constructing their own inner-narratives, defining "me" on my terms, not seeking standards in the "male paradigms" of the partiarchal eurocentric capitalistic system yada yada yada yada, blah, blah, blah.This is the whole point! Hirshman is arguing that feminists shouldn't be champions of personal choice. She's arguing that, instead, feminists should be champions of equality and that getting from the status quo to an egalitarian world will require people -- men and women alike -- to make some decisions which are different from the ones dictated by narrow self-interest in a social context deeply shaped by the enduring legacy of sexism. Jonah may not find that compelling, but when someone offers a critique of the current popular understanding of feminism, it doesn't make very much sense to turn around and accuse Hirshman�s argument of failing to conform to the current popular understanding of feminist goals.
--Matthew Yglesias
