Fire With Fire

I'm always reading at least one book at any given time. At the moment, I'm reading Naomi Wolf's Fire With Fire: The New Female Power and How it Will Change the 21st Century. As the inside cover puts it:

"Why, asks Naomi Wolf, has feminism become a dirty word, even among women? A chasm has opened up between the feminist movement and the lives of most women. Feminist orthodoxy is out of touch with the real world. In this passionate and incisive new book, the author of The Beauty Myth calls for a new kind of feminism and new female attitudes to power."

I've been a feminist for a long time, but I've only just started exploring feminism as a community and a political entity, particularly on the blogosphere. One thing I have gathered is that Naomi Wolf isn't always popular among her fellow feminists. So her claims that feminism needs to move away from a victim mentality and claim the power of capitalism and government - and that we only have ourselves to blame if we don't - undoubtedly raises some hackles.

It's always been my view that feminism is inherently uncertain and controversial. Every woman will define it differently for herself, so there's always the strong possibility that we'll argue with each other about feminist issues. And if we do it right, that's a good thing. It challenges us to broaden our perspectives and think about why we believe what we do. That's the whole point of it, really - individual women speaking for themselves.

The problem is, inherent uncertainty doesn't make for good politics. The people who are against feminism can put up a much more united front because they all agree on the same thing: they want to stay in power. In their eyes, uncertainty equals weakness, and an opportunity to score political points. And sadly, their tactics often work.

So I think my biggest challenge, and Naomi Wolf's biggest challenge, is this: How do feminists keep having a healthy debate with each other without leaving ourselves vulnerable politically?

At the very least, Fire With Fire helps bring this challenge into focus. Sometimes I worry that Wolf is glossing over the problems we still face, and I think she paints with too wide a brush when describing the "victim feminist" mentality. But on the whole, her definition of feminism is the same as mine:

1. Women matter as much as men do.
2. Women have the right to determine their lives.
3. Women's experiences matter.
4. Women have the right to tell the truth about their experiences.
5. Women deserve more of whatever it is they are not getting enough of because they are women: respect, self-respect, education, safety, health, representation, money.

Beyond these core beliefs, anything can happen.