With Friends Like These ...

A few weeks ago, Republican Club President Karen E. Boyle came out on the pages of Lighthouse magazine to announce that she was indeed a feminist. Or, as she goes on to explain, a "conservative feminist."

Plagued by the rhetoric of campus feminists, Boyle is tired of hearing so much about "terminology and text," about how "modern woman" in all her glory of Choice, Choice, and More Choice can't "have it all." Boyle claims that for campus feminists striking a blow for sexual equality means rejecting the "traditional' feminine roles" of mother and homemaker for the sake of succeeding in the work place." To her, being a feminist demands assuming these roles in addition to a career.

"To exclude either personal or professional role from my life experience," writes Boyle, "would be to reject my definition of feminism." For Boyle, being a "conservative feminist" means a career as "wife, mother, doctor, and soldier."

Boyle thinks she's saying something new-- or interesting, for that matter. Reacting against academic feminism, or what she thinks is academic feminism, Boyle concludes that being a "conservative feminist" means not only living the life of tinker, tailor, soldier, spy, but also wanting children and baking for them "the best cinnamon oatmeal chocolate chip cookies." (Did you get that recipe from Hillary, Karen?) To her, being a mother isn't enough, and a woman who wants to stay at home with her children simply isn't fighting the good fight. In short, it's difficult to place a distinction between her and the campus feminists with whom she says she disagrees.

Either Boyle doesn't know much about feminism or she didn't mean what she wrote. I suggest this, because as a conservative woman and someone who knows something about the various strains of feminism, I don't think there's any way to reclaim the term "feminist." Feminists (who without a doubt form a very disparate group) explain their cause as the fight for "equal rights." But the word "feminist" carries a lot more baggage than that.

For most feminists, men and women are equal because deep down men and women are the same. Not sort of the same, not basically the same, but the same. Scrape away the social conditioning, smash through the corporate glass ceiling, get rid of all the historical biases, and what you have are two creatures who are equally capable of doing whatever the other can do. For these feminists, sexual equality means a recognition of the androgynous ideal and a denial of gender stereotypes, or what Boyle calls, the "traditional' feminine roles." These stereotypes, the argument goes, have been artificially maintained specifically to keep women barefoot and pregnant, and especially to keep them from participating with the Big Boys downtown. By deconstructing the biases on which society has been built, feminists think they've finally enabled women to be liberated from the home--free to stay if they like, but nonetheless encouraged to spread their wings and fly off in triumph.

Hence, contrary to what Boyle thinks, the feminist movement maintains that women can have it all: marriage, children, career, and as many cinnamon-oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies as they can eat.

Conservatives, on the other hand, subscribe to a world view a bit more complex than a gigantic conspiracy theory of world-wide patriarchy. While the environment does play its part, gender differences have a lot more to do with biology than patriarchy. Even after the most egalitarian of educations, for instance, women tend to be more nurturing than men and to need things like security and commitment in order to be happy. Men, on the other hand, tend to be more aggressive and authoritarian. They also tend to revel in insecurity and shun commitment. Despite the many obstacles encouraging women to the contrary, women tend to want children and the chance to stay at home with them; men tend to do better competing in the workplace because of their different needs and dispositions.

All this could be why Boyle wasn't featured as one of Peninsula's "Women of the Year" or why no self-described feminist was, either. But my real interest in describing the misdirected efforts of Boyle and those like her is to defend those the Council did pick. In the centerfold of the most recent issue of Peninsula, we each selected the woman we thought deserved recognition. The winners were Abigail Adams, Mother Teresa, Maggie Gallagher and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

These women, of course, were not the women everyone would have chosen. In his opinion piece on this page last Saturday, "Here She Comes, Miss Peninsula," Michael K. Mayo is less than subtle in suggesting that we at Peninsula have not a clue what being a real woman in the '90s means. (And yet, like Boyle, Mayo seems to suggest that he does know.) Only two of our winners "have actually done something new since the Eisenhower administration," says Mayo. The four highlighted women--"a columnist, a future saint, a dead white woman, and group of women who revere a dead white cause"--represent nothing but the "humble, selfless, obedient woman." Mayo seems to prefer the woman whom feminists these days dress up in the flashier attire of pride, control and power.

Picking on Abigail Adams first, Mayo suggests that even though she's not the "submissive hausfrau" that the "lazy reader" would probably consider her to be, that's probably the only reason Council member Brent McGuire decided to choose her. Evidently playing the part of the "lazy reader" himself, Mayo ignores McGuire's explanation of why he chose Adams 300 years after her death, or even his praise of her strengths. What Mayo seems to focus on instead is the seeming contradiction that any strong female could "recognize the protective impulse in a man, [and] also invoke the name of God," as McGuire praises Adams for doing. What real women need men or God, anyway?

Next up for Mayo's questionable scrutiny is Mother Teresa. Now, if you missed Mayo's article, his critique of Mother Teresa is reason enough to go hunt this one down at 14 Plympton, because surely Mayo's is the first to find fault with a "future saint." Calling her "Miss Teresa," Mayo derides her selection on the basis of her being "a humble, selfless, obedient woman," saying that we conservatives probably didn't choose her for her true merits--that is, for her devotion to the poor. Never mind that Council member Brian E. Malone noted these characteristics in opposition to the "radical individualism" that feminists support, or that he noted that Mother Teresa's message was one which everyone--male and female--should follow.

Maggie Gallagher, a conservative columnist for New York Newsday and National Review, is the next subject of Mayo's derision. Since Gallagher holds something of the positions of power that feminists subscribe for women, Mayo doesn't have much to say here--so he makes something up. Quoting from my summary of Gallagher, Mayo writes, "Maggie Gallagher, a conservative columnist, believes that `women need the support of men...and it is only within the commitment of marriage that this support is guaranteed.'" Unfortunately, the sentence actually read, "Because of their desires, women need the support of men (as men need the support of women, though for different reasons), and it is only within the commitment of marriage that this support is guaranteed." Mayo's convenient ellipsis directly alters the meaning of the sentence I should know; I wrote the sentence Mayo mistakenly attributes to Gallagher.

Mayo's main objection to Council member Tom E. Woods' selection--the United Daughters of the Confederacy--was much loftier. Dredging up the whole Confederate flag ordeal, Mayo suggests that these ladies exist to offend the likes of Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, rather than to preserve Southern culture. Mayo responds to Woods' description of Moseley-Braun as an "arrogant elite" by suggesting that Peninsula is presumptuous in suggesting that a Black female could actually be an elite. I hope all of those who feel black women are unqualified to be members of the elite are, like Mayo, no longer part of the conservative movement.

With Karen Boyle on the "right," and Michael Mayo on the left, no wonder women are confused about the meaning of womanhood.