The XX Factor: What women really think.

Felled by "The Ten-Year Nap"

I'm sure Marjorie is right that we don't know the half of the Walkers' feud—how can we, since we're only hearing Rebecca's side? And I agree with Marjorie and Maureen that feminism should entail a little effort to think from the perspective of a woman who makes a choice that's not your own.

I also think, as others have pointed out, that Rebecca Walker's critique makes us uncomfortable (or at least makes me uncomfortable) because it entwines being an ardent feminist with being a bad mother, at least in one daughter's eyes. I can't stop myself from rushing to state the obvious: Lots of feminists are great mothers! Devoted! But I also have admitted to myself since I started work after my first son was born that there's a cost as well as a benefit from having a job that takes me away from my kids for a good chunk of the day. Tonight (after they went to bed) I picked up Meg Wolitzer's new novel The Ten-Year Nap, and the passage below jumped out at me. Amy, the 40-ish napper of the title, is talking to her second-wave feminist-novelist mother Antonia, who is forever disappointed that her daughter hasn't worked (as a lawyer) since her 10-year-old son was born.

"Oh come on, you're very smart," said her mother, "and very capable. You've always been that way."

"And I expected things of myself," Amy said. "But not everyone is that driven. And not everyone is really talented. And also," she said, "sometimes it's too difficult to make it happen."

Amy recalled herself and her sisters standing outside their mother's door, banging with their fists, telling themselves they were undermothered, when in fact for so long they had been so well and fully mothered by their intellient and creative and adoring mother that surely her mothering would have a long half-life.

But all they knew, then, was that Antonia had said. "This is my time," and that she'd gently closed her door. The girls played Jane Eyre once in a while over the years: they imagined themselves orphaned by their wonderful mother and even, somehow, by feminism itself. 

This, I confess, makes me want to cry. Am I falling down the guilty-mother rabbit hole?

Mommy Wars

What any of this has to do with the feminist movement, I don't know. Isn't feminism all about women having choices, the freedom to live our lives as we choose without having to stay within some circumscribed set of societal parameters? Can't both of the Walkers' lifestyle choices be considered just that, choices? Rebecca chose to live as a lesbian without a biological child, and now she chooses to be married to a man with whom she has a biological child, fine. I doubt very much that she checked with the Misguided Angry Feminists Council before she made either of these decisions. The feminist movement never made me want to swear off motherhood, burn my bra, hate men, or denounce women who made choices different from mine or choices with which I disagree. The last time I checked the feminist movement has never tried to control my womb, so why is it the feminist movement's fault that Rebecca allowed her mother to solely shape her image of motherhood, and for that matter womanhood and self? I love my mother but I am not my mother, my worldview and life experiences are very different from hers. Did she make some mistakes in how she raised me? You bet. Does she also get credit for the better parts of me? Absolutely. Our mothers may define us as little girls but we define ourselves as women. My mother could never make me want or not want children, and if I were to solely blame her for either of those choices, it would be intellectually dishonest. I would never give one person so much power over me but if I had, I would also give myself some of the blame for allowing it to happen. I'll leave it to others to decide if Alice Walker deserves all of her daughter's criticisms, but I think if Alice had just supported and respected Rebecca's choices they probably wouldn't be where they are now. Women supporting and respecting one another's choices has everything to do with feminism.

Easier Said Than Lived

I find it a little ironic that we're so ready to tear Rebecca Walker apart in the same forum where some of us sympathized with the plight of Ashley Dupree. No matter how gross the lot of prostitution, Dupree chose that (although we didn't know until later that she didn't need to. Still, there are other ways to pay the bills). No one chooses their parents, nor the messages those parents send about whether they were happy to have you (or, in this case, allegedly weren't. I'd say it takes a rare someone who's the pillar of self-confidence—and how do you get to be that with a mother who supposedly ignores you?—to survive the message from your own mother that you are, essentially, nothing but a burden.)

Yes, there are parts of the younger Walker's essay where she plays enough of a martyr that you want to go get a cross for her. ("A neighbour, not much older than me, was deputised to look after me. I never complained.") And she's a pretty preachy about motherhood. ("I am my own woman and I have discovered what really matters-a happy family.") Still, if there really is a tenet of feminism that "all women are sisters and should support one another," as Walker says her mother believes, why are we, if we believe that we indeed are feminist, so eager to rip her apart? I'm not suggesting everyone needs a group hug, but I do think it's hard to label her as completely anti-feminist because she has some critiques of the movement.

The Whole Race Deck

Welcome, Kim, and I’m glad you brought up Alice Walker's “womanist” position. Her Root essay last March, “Lest We Forget: An Open Letter to My Sisters Who Are Brave,” endorsing Barack Obama stayed with me a long time. Not just because I found Walker’s trademarked word womanism to describe only “feminist women of color” a little exclusionary. 

I do agree that Hillary Clinton is not, as Walker reminds us, "colorless, race-less, past-less," and she escapes racial scrutiny as "a woman" while Barack Obama is always "a black man." Furthermore, playing the race card (whether she then withdrew it or not) was inexcusable. But, although it is true that Hillary has benefited, as have I and other white women (particularly of our generation) from innumerable educational and economic advantages to being Caucasian in this country, I got a little uncomfortable when Walker wrote that Clinton carries "all the history of white womanhood in America in her person." Perhaps wrongly, until reading that, I had not personally considered myself an exploiter of racial inequality. To be clear, I am deeply ashamed of the abomination of slavery and the century of discrimination that followed. I just didn't think simply by being white and of a certain age, I was part of the problem.

I saw Florida recently joined the queue of states that have apologized for slavery. I posted a "Hot Document" a few months ago when New Jersey did the same thing. A lot of Slate readers Frayed for weeks declaiming the emptiness of that state’s gesture while many others wrote angrily that the official apology wasted resources and was not owed by the geographical descendants of New Jersey’s 19^th-century citizens. Personally, I think it’s never too late to apologize. In fact, I now want to apologize to Alice Walker on behalf of myself and all white women who believe in equality. Really. Can we be womanists now too?