I should point out that at least one person isn't very happy about my book (or at least the extracts they've read of it). Jessica Valenti responds: 'First of all, why anyone wouldn’t want feminism to be the latest must-have accessory is beyond me – because that would be awesome.' There's some mention of some kind of leggings, and she's cross that I didn't mention feministing or her latest book, The Purity Myth (I don't think it was out when I put my book together, though). I'm an elitist apparently - and attacking 'upbeat' feminism is just mean, mean, mean.

But I am mean!

I'm not putting up with accusations of elitism, though: it's just not true, neither in the book, the blog or my teaching and paper-giving life. This claim just strikes me as a cheap, tired trick, a rhetorical cop-out whenever you think someone might be about to use a long word. I think it is possible to be perfectly clear without being a patronising git, and there's really no need to make complicated ideas overly simple in the name of some misplaced and misunderstood populism.

I think the major difference between what I'm saying and Valenti's approach really comes out in this point she makes:

'By ignoring how important and transformational it can be for women to see the world through a feminist lens and recognize everyday personal inequities, Power disregards how this kind of individual realization often leads to collective action and activism.'

This goes back to older debates about consciousness raising and the like, and to Gloria Steinem's feminism as self-help (in books like Revolution From Within): whilst I wouldn't completely disregard this kind of 'individual realisation', I think if feminism is somehow supposed to 'follow on' from self-esteem, then it runs the risk of not being able to recognise larger structural inequalities. The 'upbeatness' I object in much mainstream US feminism just looks exactly like the capitalist imperative to have fun, be perky...because you're worth it, baby! Perhaps I am a embittered old bastard, but I'd rather start from the realisation of a kind of collective misery, rather than build a movement upon the happiness of individuals. Ha!

But...I'm sorry, Jessica: I was perhaps unduly mean - if you ever come to London, I'll buy you a beer and tell you why I'm such a churl.

UPDATE: Andrew says 'She should buy you a beer for failing to comment on her website’s logo.' Ha! What is up with that Feministing logo? I always assumed that the design of Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs was a kind of pisstake of it:


Levy

Feministing

It's certainly an odd image to use if you're trying to encourage women to feel better about themselves: 'what, you have to be sassy and thin?! Sod this for a game of soldiers, I'm going to eat some pies and feel miserable indeed...mmm...much better.'

UPDATE: There's a discussion of the logo in Full Frontal Feminism: It is, apparently, 'an ironic mudflap girl giving the finger'. So that's alright then. On Dominic's site, Zed says:

'“Elitists” are those whose thought is abstract because it is concerned with the deadly abstractions which dominate our lives, and because it aims at a future incompatible with our dominated present”

Exactly. Their trouble is they have no analysis of Capital, it’s just considered a background feature. The problem is therefore reduced to being a longue durée misunderstanding – if only we could realise how profitable reducing sexism could be for everyone!

Except of course it wouldn’t be for capital, for which the division and differences have proved functional (and so been incorporated and reproduced) in the course of its development.

All of the ‘empower yourself’ stuff is of a piece with all the post-68 libertarian discourses found in management theory, silicon valley and every other (especially US) middle class redoubt where the cool and comfortable polish their beautiful souls whilst thinking others should tighten their bootstraps.

Of particular note is these people’s continual confusion of civic action with collective action – their strategies always amount to the former, but they like the aura of the latter term.

(There’s something to be said here on the massive currency the term ‘justice’, often prefixed, has acquired in recent years. Not to mention ‘the movement’ as branding for what couldn’t be less mass-based activities, and the appeal to the individual so-called ‘political act’ as a signalling of preference like setting a price, no collaboration required.)

They remain caged in the institutions and discourses that sustain the continual reproduction of their enemy, and accept without negotiation the strategic field presented to them by that enemy – because they can’t see they’re prisoners.'