I do and don't agree with you about The Beauty Myth.
I tended to take the moments where the patriarchy is personified to be just that - a momentary personification of something we know can't be so easily understood (death, deities), for rhetorical ease or emotional power. Of course, this is a more problematic thing to do when the patriarchy is more commonly misunderstood to actually be a conspiracy theory; but I found it effective.
Your point about referencing is a more thorny one. I remember there being points where I was so enraged that I *desperately* wanted to do some background reading, and was frustrated not to find a reference. I think I remember a couple of successful google-searches, but it's been a while now and that hardly mitigates your original point.
What I would say, though (and I DON'T think that this makes up for the entire thing, I DO remember my own frustration) is that some things that marginalised groups (tm) experience are just not going to be documented in the same way as those that other groups experience. Sometimes, all we have is anecdata - the knowledge that most other women we know have experienced this at some time. People of the Ben Goldacre school (..like me) can want to approach this dismissively - anecdata is what's used to promote homeopathy etc - but when we're talking about lived experience the subjectivity is all there is. Carrying out double-blind studies on, eg, street harrassment or cumulative semi-conscious feelings of inadequacy when faced with media representations is.. difficult to say the least, even if the funding/interest were there. (But as I say above it's been a while since I read it, so I can't remember what proportion of missing citations might fall into this category.)
Thank you for bringing the word prospiracy to my attention! I shall almost certainly steal that explanation for the next time I post about "the patriarchy".
I do and don't agree with you about The Beauty Myth.
That's a better reaction than I'd dared hope for :-)
Patriarchy as conspiracy: I wouldn't have minded it as an occasional rhetorical flourish, but she talks that way the whole damn time - to my mind, obscuring the (more interesting, and more useful) truth. Interrogating the constructs of power should involve being honest with oneself about what those constructs actually are and how they arise.
Lived experience and anecdata: excellent point! (And oddly reminiscent of Goldacre's recent column on subjective experiences of pain and libido... as you may have guessed, Bad Science is IMHO a great example of well-referenced popular writing). That kind of thing doesn't account for all the citations I'd have liked to see, but probably at least some of them (I can't remember much detail - this review's been spinning around in my head for at least a month, now).
Prospiracies: yes, I think it's a very useful concept. Glad to have been of service :-)
[I once tried to create Patriarchy Membership Cards as a joke/awareness-raising device: "This card entitles the bearer to improved odds in job applications, especially for more prestigious jobs..." I gave up after fighting with OpenOffice started destroying my will to live.]
I tended to take the moments where the patriarchy is personified to be just that - a momentary personification of something we know can't be so easily understood (death, deities), for rhetorical ease or emotional power. Of course, this is a more problematic thing to do when the patriarchy is more commonly misunderstood to actually be a conspiracy theory; but I found it effective.
Your point about referencing is a more thorny one. I remember there being points where I was so enraged that I *desperately* wanted to do some background reading, and was frustrated not to find a reference. I think I remember a couple of successful google-searches, but it's been a while now and that hardly mitigates your original point.
What I would say, though (and I DON'T think that this makes up for the entire thing, I DO remember my own frustration) is that some things that marginalised groups (tm) experience are just not going to be documented in the same way as those that other groups experience. Sometimes, all we have is anecdata - the knowledge that most other women we know have experienced this at some time. People of the Ben Goldacre school (..like me) can want to approach this dismissively - anecdata is what's used to promote homeopathy etc - but when we're talking about lived experience the subjectivity is all there is. Carrying out double-blind studies on, eg, street harrassment or cumulative semi-conscious feelings of inadequacy when faced with media representations is.. difficult to say the least, even if the funding/interest were there. (But as I say above it's been a while since I read it, so I can't remember what proportion of missing citations might fall into this category.)
Thank you for bringing the word prospiracy to my attention! I shall almost certainly steal that explanation for the next time I post about "the patriarchy".
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That's a better reaction than I'd dared hope for :-)
Patriarchy as conspiracy: I wouldn't have minded it as an occasional rhetorical flourish, but she talks that way the whole damn time - to my mind, obscuring the (more interesting, and more useful) truth. Interrogating the constructs of power should involve being honest with oneself about what those constructs actually are and how they arise.
Lived experience and anecdata: excellent point! (And oddly reminiscent of Goldacre's recent column on subjective experiences of pain and libido... as you may have guessed, Bad Science is IMHO a great example of well-referenced popular writing). That kind of thing doesn't account for all the citations I'd have liked to see, but probably at least some of them (I can't remember much detail - this review's been spinning around in my head for at least a month, now).
Prospiracies: yes, I think it's a very useful concept. Glad to have been of service :-)
[I once tried to create Patriarchy Membership Cards as a joke/awareness-raising device: "This card entitles the bearer to improved odds in job applications, especially for more prestigious jobs..." I gave up after fighting with OpenOffice started destroying my will to live.]
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