The Problem with Pussyhats
As if I didn’t have enough reasons to be irritated with Donald Trump, there is now the fact that half the people in my Facebook feed are using the word “pussy” with reckless abandon. In their efforts to “take back” this word from the Donald and sexist pigs everywhere, they have decided that we all need to start talking like porn stars. It’s like when you tell your three-year-old to stop saying poop and she laughs and runs around the house yelling poop-poop-poop-poopie-poop. Yes, she has reclaimed the word, but to what end?
Does feminist empowerment mean we all need to have potty mouths now? Evidently so, and we will reach peak empowerment, apparently, when thousands of women march on Washington this weekend wearing pink “pussy hats.” These head coverings, which are made to look like kitten ears but which many people assume are meant to look like vaginas, will show that women “stand together, united.” It is hard to believe that in 2017, the best idea women could come up with to rally political sentiment is knitting a hat that resembles genitalia.
I went on the website for the Pussyhat Project to find out what they were thinking. Apparently, the idea is to remind people of an old tradition — knitting circles. You may have thought these were gatherings where women gossiped about others or traded recipes, but in fact, according to the Project, “These circles are powerful gatherings of women, a safe space to talk, a place where women support women.” So knitting circles were the original “safe spaces,” setting women away from men who say mean things. And now women can retreat back into them. It sounds less like a protest and more like a group cuddle.
Or maybe it’s an undergraduate seminar. The organizers explain,
In this day and age, if we have pussies we are assigned the gender of ‘woman.’ Women, whether transgender or cisgender, are mistreated in this society. In order to get fair treatment, the answer is not to take away our pussies, the answer is not to deny our femaleness and femininity, the answer is to demand fair treatment.
So we are “assigned” the gender of woman even if we don’t want to be women but we should embrace womanhood anyway? Whatever.
The problem with the pussyhats is not simply that they follow in Donald Trump’s footsteps of degrading our language and culture. It’s that they are silly.
It reminded me of a conversation I had recently with Amy Wax, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who also happens to hold a medical degree from Harvard. She told me that she thinks this younger generation of women is intellectually weak. In part, she blames it on political correctness. A young Ivy League graduate told her she objected to Trump’s planned “wall” because it was “mean.”
Wax says, “I just see women completely paralyzed because the only principle is they cannot say or think anything that is not nice. Niceness becomes the paramount task.” Wax finds this “astonishing.” “When women are supposed to be taking their place as intellectuals, policymakers of weight and influence and people of ideas, there is barely any woman on scene who is worth reckoning with.” If there were, you can bet she won’t be wearing a pussyhat.
Originally published at acculturated.com on January 20, 2017.
