Ariel Levy's book "Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture" came out in hardcover about a year ago, and has been re-released in paperback. I guess promoting the paperback release is now a thing to do. Anyway, just the thought of this book and the stuff it stirred up makes me tired (like the fibromyalgia needs any help!). I found myself imagining having a dKos Supervixens book group to discuss it... the flames would char them thar tubes... anyway. This "Raunch culture" argument thing. I'm neither old enough, young enough, or straight enough for it to mean anything to me personally. It just seems to me to be the same old struggle to determine what's authentically "self" and what's culturally received/inculcated behaviour... and that's why I'm not saying any more about that. That philosophy degree was a long, long time ago...
I found a lot of reviews & commentaries about the book, many of which seemed to contradict each other (and there were a googleplex more pages I didn't get to). Viewpoints which I tend to trust are those at Pandagon, Feministing, and Susie Bright (scroll down), among others. I have a particular fondness for the Maoist interpretation -- talked about Wimmin in the United $tates -- ah, memories. There are reasons I ran away from the world of theorizing... So, Bookslut has what looks like a decent summary: Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs are, most basically, women who objectify other women as a way of trying to be equal with men. Regardless of the intention, female chauvinist piggery does not result in empowered women, but in a stunted sense of what constitutes power, sex, and freedom. Since men are seen as the measure of sexual liberation, women have to not only construct themselves as sexual objects, but be willing and able to objectify other women.
In subsequent chapters, Levy explores how teenage girls are acting out female chauvinism, and she details raunch culture's ties to consumerism. She is careful to underscore the ways this all connects to current train wrecks like abstinence-based sex education and the gay marriage controversy. And then, of course, there are her own words, but it's often the reinterpretations that form discussions, not what the original author actually said.
I think it's interesting that she's on the show. And, despite my eye-rolling, I think in general her book is the beginning to an important discussion. We'll see how the interview goes. |