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Is Feminism Dead?
But political allegiance is only part of the story. If women\'s leaders seemed to ignore some of the murkier questions raised by the Clinton scandal--for example, what does consensual sex mean between two people so unequal in power?--it is in part because feminism at the very end of the century seems to be an intellectual undertaking in which the complicated, often mundane issues of modern life get little attention and the narcissistic ramblings of a few new media-anointed spokeswomen get far too much. You\'ll have better luck becoming a darling of feminist circles if you chronicle your adventures in cybersex than if you churn out a tome on the glass ceiling.
What a comedown for the movement. If women were able to make their case in the \'60s and \'70s, it was largely because, as the slogan went, they turned the personal into the political. They used their daily experience as the basis for a critique, often a scholarly one, of larger institutions and social arrangements. From Simone de Beauvoir\'s Second Sex to Betty Friedan\'s Feminine Mystique to Kate Millett\'s Sexual Politics--a doctoral dissertation that became a national best seller--feminists made big, unambiguous demands of the world. They sought absolute equal rights and opportunities for women, a constitutional amendment to make it so, a chance to be compensated equally and to share the task of raising a family. But if feminism of the \'60s and \'70s was steeped in research and obsessed with social change, feminism today is wed to the culture of celebrity and self-obsession.
It is fair to ask why anyone should be worried about this outcome. Who cares about the trivial literary and artistic pursuits of a largely Manhattan-based group of self-appointed feminists? They\'re talking only to one another, after all. But the women\'s movement, like many upheavals before it, from the French Revolution in 1789 to the civil rights movement in the U.S. and even the uprising in Tiananmen Square, would be nowhere without the upper-middle-class intellectual elite. Feminism didn\'t start in the factory. It started in wood-paneled salons, spread to suburban living rooms, with their consciousness-raising sessions, and eventually ended up with Norma Rae. In fact, that trajectory is its biggest problem today--it remains suspect to those who have never ventured onto a college campus. A TIME/CNN poll shows what most people already suspect--that education more than anything else determines whether a woman defines herself as a feminist. Fifty-three percent of white, college-educated women living in cities embrace the label. Fifty percent of white women with postgraduate training and no children do the same. But feminism shouldn\'t be punished for its pedigree. We would never have had Ginger Spice if we hadn\'t had Germaine Greer.
女权主义，我的自白书（2）
但是政治上的忠诚是这个故事中唯一的一部分。如果女性们的领导者似乎忽视了一些克林顿丑闻引发的更深层次的问题——比如，对于两个在权力上如此不平等的人来说，两厢情愿的性关系有什么意义呢？——其中部分原因是在这个世纪最末尾的时候，在现代生活复杂的鸡毛蒜皮的小事中，女权主义变成了知识分子的事业，得不到关注，再加上一些新时代的受过媒体洗礼的女发言人们孤芳自赏的言论走得太远。如果你能讲述网络性交的冒险而不是写一些遭遇玻璃天花板（译者注：通常专指女性所遭遇的在工作中升级时遇到的一种无形的障碍,使人不能到达较高阶层）的书，你更容易成为女权主义的圈子的宠儿。
多么落魄的一个运动。如果女性们能在六七十年代提出她们的主张，波及面将更广，因为随着主张的改进，她们会把个人的变成政治的。她们用自己的日常经历作为批评大机构和社会安排的论据，这批评通常是学术性的。从西蒙·波娃的《第二性》到贝蒂·弗里丹的《女性的奥秘》再到凯特·米利特的《性政治》——一本变成全国畅销书的博士论文——女性们对世界提出了很大很明确的需求。她们为女性寻求绝对平等的权力和机会、一份确保它实现的宪法修正案、同工同酬的机会和家庭事务的分摊。但是如果六七十年代的女权主义者沉浸在研究中、为社会变化所困扰，今天的女权主义者则与名人文化和自恋紧紧结合。
为什么每个人都应该关心这一结果呢？这样问很公平。谁关心曼哈顿一群自己做主的女权主义者琐碎的文学和艺术追求呢？要知道她们只互相交谈。但是女性的运动和之前的一些巨变——从1789年的法国大革命到美国的人权运动——一样，都是由中产阶级的高端精英发起的。女权主义不会在工厂中产生。它起源于木板的沙龙中，发展到乡间的客厅里，终结于诺玛·蕾。事实上，这一轨迹是今天最大的问题——它仍然怀疑那些没有在大学校园里冒险的人。一份时代/CNN调查显示，人们仍然觉得教育比其他任何因素都更能成为一个女性是否把自己定义为女权主义者的决定力量。
53%居住在城市里受过大学教育的白人女性接受这一标签，50%研究生学历没有孩子的白人女性同样如此。但是女权主义者不应该因为血统受到惩罚。如果我们没有Germaine Greer，我们就永远不会有姜汁辣妹。
