MORE BURK BASHING….Joel Mowbray is upset that one of our representatives to the Baltic Conference on Women and Democracy was ? gasp ? an actual feminist:
Taking a break from hounding Augusta National Golf Club for not admitting female members, infamous feminist Martha Burk heeded the call of the State Department last month to represent the United States as part of a delegation to a conference on women’s issues in Tallin, Estonia.
….[The conference] focused mostly on feminist agenda items ? “women in power and decision-making,” “women and economy,” and “women in media” ? as well as serious issues such as prostitution and violence against women. Not one to address the real concerns of ordinary women ? like the ability to golf at an exclusive club ? Burk stuck to the likes of the “sexualization of mass culture and our environment.” She did take the time, however, to branch out to bash Bush and the country she was representing.
I’m really tired of this kind of smug yapping from conservative columnists. The reason Burk harps on Augusta National is because no one pays attention to her when she’s talking about substantive issues. Make a speech about, say, the difficulty that single working women have finding decent childcare ? and the media yawns. And National Review ignores it. Start a campaign to get women admitted to their precious golf club, though, and you get attention that most organizations can only dream of. So if Mowbray really wants to cut down on the frivolity, maybe he should pay a little more attention to feminist substance.
And speaking of substance, exactly why does he think that the relationship of women to power, decision-making, the economy, and the media are unserious issues? I’m no big fan of academic feminism and its seemingly endless ability to dig up ever newer and more baroque examples of power relationships that nobody’s ever heard of before, but these four all sound perfectly serious and mainstream to me.
Now, it’s probably true that it’s inappropriate to make a toast in a foreign country ? as part of a State Department delegation ? expressing the hope that the president of the United States doesn’t get reelected. On the other hand, bemoaning the fact that we didn’t pass the Equal Rights Amendment or the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women seem like rather predictable positions for a feminist to take.
Unless, of course, you think Phyllis Schlafly is the right kind of feminist to represent us at international women’s conferences. Maybe that’s what Mowbray had in mind.
