Disavowed
Will an exorcism bring the old Naomi Wolf back?
Michelle recently finished "The Beauty Myth," and attempted to pass it on to me. I told her I'd read it when it came out twenty-one years ago and she replied, "Well, read it again!" It's that vital a book; you know that other women need to hear it out. I've bought several copies as gifts. "The End of America" is similarly vital, albeit for entirely different reasons. Naomi Wolf is a national treasure. Or was.
I don't know who this pod person is who used to be Naomi. I don't recall which came first, her defense of purdah or her defense of Julian Assange, but it was one or the other of those positions that got me regarding her with a new wariness in recent years. I set the wariness aside when she was arrested in Zuccotti Park. She was one of the few progressive Big Names who allied herself with the Occupy movement and put her money where her mouth was. But that wariness is back with a vengeance, and it's blossomed beyond wariness, beyond dismay.
I've read reviews of the book that critics cannot help referring to as "Naomi Wolf's 'Vagina'" as they've come in. Katha Pollitt's rang in my head like a smoke alarm; something was very, very wrong in Feminismland. I wondered when my other favorite third-wave feminists were going to weigh in.
This morning they all weighed in at once. This piece in "The Millions" is a real ladyblogger who's who. The only obvious candidate missing is Jessica Valenti, who I assume is still lying on a fainting couch somewhere grumbling to herself.
I've relished takedowns structured like this one in the past, where liberals tear into a piece like a pack of left-wing jackals, leaving bloody gibbets all over the page. But the impala those jackals were disemboweling was never an impala that I used to love.
The viciousness is perhaps necessary. The movement has to shove away Naomi with both hands at this point. When someone says that vaginas have been scientifically proven to be magical, you really cannot ally yourself with that person without looking like you, too, have a screw loose.
I feel about this takedown the way I felt about Red Letter Media's review of "The Phantom Menace." All these points needed to be made. There is great joy to be had in the derision of lazy idiocy. It's still hard watching Wolf and Lucas get smacked around like piñatas. I'm never going to thoroughly enjoy watching that.