Comments Elsewhere

Echidne: But it is odd that some take advantage of the gains while doing their utmost to make sure that there will be no more gains in the future, or for other women even today. I think that is what some of us find a little upsetting, because it looks two-faced.

Sure, and it is two-faced, and it is maddeningly frustrating. Just to be clear, I wasn’t objecting to anything you said in your post along these lines. I think you’re completely right. What I was objecting to is the way that some of the things comments that other people made, which seemed to go from making that point, to making the vindictive claim that some women don’t have a right to complain about sexism, or deserve to benefit from feminist achievements, because they are on the wrong side of the political line.

Echidne: I am not sure what you are referring to here. Dowd was criticized for doing sloppy research for an article. Maybe you are talking about something else.

Nancy was referring to specific post at Bitch Ph.D., where Bitch Ph.D. objected to the sexism that she saw in some of the common criticisms of Dowd. Nancy seems to be suggesting that this was foolish or wrong because of Dowd’s role in attacking or undermining feminism. (As it happens, I think a lot of other comments in this thread also expressed similarly vindictive attitudes towards the appallingly sexist assaults on Ann Althouse.) Nancy said that Bitch Ph.D.’s position was hard to understand; I think it’s easy to understand: she objected to rhetoric that she saw as sexist because sexism is wrong, even if the woman targeted by that rhetoric isn’t an objective ally of feminism and even if the position she has taken really is mistaken or weakly argued. That’s not to take any particular stance on whether or not Bitch Ph.D. was right to think that the criticism of Dowd was tinged by sexism. It’s just to say that she’s pretty clear about her reasons, and if you accept that the attacks are sexist, they’re pretty good ones, even if the target of those attacks is Maureen Dowd. And there are similarly good reasons to object to the way that Ann Althouse was treated at LGF (where there just isn’t any quesiton at all that the attacks were sexist). Broadly speaking, sexist attacks are wrong no matter who the victim is, and we shouldn’t be telling women “You’re on your own, sister” out of partisan spite.