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How Feminsts Review Backlash the Undeclaired War Against American Women

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1991 book by Susan Faludi

Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
Backlash, first edition.jpg

Comprehend of the commencement edition
Author Susan Faludi
Country United States
Language English
Subject Feminism in the United States
Published 1991
Publisher Crown Publishing Group
Media type Print (hardback and paperback)
Pages 552
ISBN 978-0-517-57698-4

Backlash: The Undeclared War Confronting American Women is a 1991 book by Susan Faludi, in which the author presents show demonstrating the existence of a media-driven "backlash" against the feminist advances of the 1970s in the U.s.a..[1]

Faludi argues that the backfire uses a strategy of "blaming the victim", by suggesting that the women'south liberation motility itself is the crusade of many of the bug alleged to be plaguing American women in the late 1980s.[2] She besides argues that many of these problems are illusory, constructed by the media without reliable evidence.

Faludi also identifies backlash as a historical trend, recurring when women accept fabricated substantial gains in their efforts to obtain equal rights. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award for non-fiction in 1991.

A 15th anniversary edition was released in 2006.

Summary [edit]

Backlash is Susan Faludi's 550 page analysis of social, economical and political inequities and resulting difficulties American women faced in the 1980s. The volume was hailed as "the most vehement and unapologetic telephone call to arms to upshot from the feminist camp in many years",[3] and "a rich compendium of fascinating information and an indictment of a system losing its grip."[iv] that "has already done much to ignite a revolutionary "national" consciousness".[v] Published within a year of several other loftier-profile feminist works – Naomi Wolf'southward The Dazzler Myth (1990), Gloria Steinem'due south Revolution From Within (1992), and Marilyn French's The State of war Against Women (1992) – Faludi's book garnered front folio attention in national newspapers and magazines, and interviews of its writer on television and radio.[6] As a best-seller, Backlash rejuvenated feminist word in the media, and established Faludi as a leading spokesperson for women's problems in the 1990s.[seven]

Publication [edit]

Faludi was inspired to write Backlash after investigating the statistics backside a 1986 Newsweek comprehend story that reported on a Harvard-Yale study detailing the dour marital prospects for single, educated career women. The statistics were in fault and did not reflect the reality, so Faludi began to examine other sensationalized stories about women that were beingness promoted past the media. She believes that her book started to attract the attention it did because women relegated to - and writing for - the arts and culture sections of journals and newspapers, frustrated with internal job discrimination and believing the volume addressed the problem, helped to get initial coverage.[eight] Faludi also says the 1991 autumn publishing date was an reward because during the originally planned spring date "we were in the middle of a war, information technology was boys' fourth dimension" and the book "would accept dropped like a stone", whereas the "fall was girls' time because of Anita Loma."[9] As well, two publishing companies, Crown Publishing Group (Faludi's Backlash) and Little, Brown and Company (Gloria Steinem's Revolution From Within) made an unusual conclusion to promote the two books together, which proved commercially successful in heightening attending for the authors, the books, and the bailiwick matter. Faludi and Steinem were together on the cover of Fourth dimension, in ads, in interviews and in the "reams of commentary on both books".[x]

Public and critical response [edit]

A staple topic on the editorial opinion pages of newspapers and magazines, Backlash drew strong and conflicting responses, including meaning "backfire", such equally comments where Faludi was accused of feminist "sulking on the bestseller lists" and ignoring the gains of the women'due south motion.[eleven] Faludi was hailed as "the all-time thinker of the year",[12] "a crackerjack interviewer",[13] and praised for her documentation, journalistic thoroughness, and empathetic interviewing skills. Paul Shore, in the Humanist, writes that Backfire has done "more than whatever other recent piece of work...to hogtie us to run into the forces decision-making and crippling women for what they really are: forces working against the interests of anybody."[14]

In a 1992 cover-story and review for The American Spectator, Mary Eberstadt expands on what she feels are breathy contradictions in Backlash, and cites alleged incidences of flawed data and erroneous logic. Peggy Phelan, writing for American Literary History, points out Faludi, having faith in her own statistical analysis data, does not account for the partiality and distortions of statistics, and Phelan says "[o]ne cannot both assail "bad" numbers and neutrally present "good" numbers."[15]Michael Crichton stated in a 2002 speech- "Susan Faludi's book Backlash, which won the National Volume Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction in 1991, and which presented hundreds of pages of quasi-statistical assertions based on a premise that was never demonstrated and that was almost certainly faux".[16] One reviewer claims Faludi "builds a well researched and carefully documented case",[17] while another thinks she "skews data, misquotes main sources and makes serious errors of omission".[18] Nancy Gibbs, a announcer with Fourth dimension magazine, calls Backfire "ane of the landmark books that shaped the opinions of the stance shapers."

Responding to criticism of the book's details, choice and utilize of data, Gibbs quotes "The big movie is at that place, and the big film is accurate" in her defense of Backfire'south aggressive scope and mass of information.[nineteen]

Race, class and gender criticism [edit]

In a review of Backlash for the journal The Nation, Gayle Greene discusses Faludi'southward documenting of factory closures, the motion to a service oriented economy and the millions of lost jobs for bluish-collar workers. She says "Faludi's analysis accounts for non only anti-feminism but for the resurgence of racism and explains why the most virulent expressions of both take tended to come from those hurting from social and economic dislocation."[xx] In contrast, Peggy Phelan, writing for American Literary History, says "Faludi'south "America" is emphatically white and heterosexual" and points out the overwhelming apply of white, middle-class people in Backlash's examples. Interview participants and detailed anecdotes are of whites, while people of colour are only mentioned as statistical categories. She accuses Faludi of forgetting race as a statistical signifier, and too of failing to consider and connect sexism, race, and homophobia in her analysis.[21] Phelan finds "these are shocking omissions in a 'feminist' manifesto for the nineties" and believes it reveals the "real target audience is the very mainstream media market place [Faludi] relentlessly critiques." Mary Eberstadt is critical of what she perceives to be Faludi'due south hypocrisy, proverb that as a successful woman with a Harvard education she is cavalier of poor and working-grade people in her descriptions of them in Backlash.[22]

Conservative criticism [edit]

Reviewers writing from conservative perspectives were concerned with what they understood to be Faludi's endorsement of single-minded feminist interests at the expense of traditional family unit values. Maggie Gallagher, writing for the National Review, claims "the biggest danger facing usa today comes not from discrimination in the workplace simply from the collapse of the family unit",[23] while another conservative writer claims the women'southward move, and Backlash, chronically practice non address the fact of women having husbands and children.[24] Gloria Steinem suggests that talking virtually 'family' rather than 'women's' problems "renders women invisible", and Faludi says that "all family issues should not be women'due south bug...they should be human bug.[25] To confound feminism and family unit promotes the thought that women only exist when they take husbands and children."

Influence [edit]

Writing from a legal perspective, Rebecca Eisenberg of the Harvard Law Review, says of Faludi's book that "[a]lthough written for the full general public, Backlash can benefit the legal community as well. Faludi's incisive accounts of women'south lives provide a meaningful and authentic basis for legal redress of social inequality".[26] She feels when the status quo is seen by the judicial arrangement to be a event of gender hierarchy, "the many ways in which the law ignores the reality of women's lives" will get apparent, and the "affirmative transformation of the legal organization becomes a reasonable step towards equality." In Backfire, Faludi points out that among industrialized nations, simply the United States has not institutionalized basic child care and go out for working parents.[27] Of this, Eisenberg says "at that place is virtually no case law on the inequality of depriving women of equal opportunities to balance both a family and a career" by this failure to provide necessary childcare or parental leave.[28] Praising Faludi's "tenacious investigative journalism" equally well as her anecdotal writing and personal interviews, Eisenberg says "her snapshots of women's experiences provide a basis for realistic anaysis of the legal status quo."[29]

Synopsis [edit]

Introduction – Arraign it on Feminism [edit]

1 chapter (one) - The main premise of the book is that there are two overarching media messages regarding feminism's gains for women since the 1980s: The feminist fight for equality has largely been won, and at present that women have this equality they accept never been so miserable (ix). Faludi contends that women are not yet equal and there is a counter-set on to halt or reverse the hard-won gains in the quest for equality. By reporting statistically unsupported ideas of how feminism has negatively afflicted women, the media has helped to create a 'backfire' that encourages women to reject the gains and the struggle for existent equality. Reports of "the man-shortage", "the infertility epidemic", "female burnout", and "toxic day-care" are not the actual weather of women's lives, but are simulated images portrayed past the media, popular culture and advertising.(xv)[xxx]

Part One – Myths and Flashbacks [edit]

Consisting of two chapters (two & iii), this portion documents the unsubstantiated statistics that form the properties of myths about women beingness more than unhappy in their lives now. Faludi presents counter-evidence to several media myths which include: that there is a shortage of potential spouses for women; that new no-fault divorce laws are negatively affecting women's finances; that professional and career women are increasingly infertile and accept more than mental illnesses than their non-working counterparts; and that working women's reliance on daycare subjects their children to permanent adverse effects academically, socially and emotionally. Faludi shows that none of these are true.

She also charts the incidences of similar backlashes in American history, focusing on the women's movements of the Victorian era and subsequently - the late 1840s, and the early 1900s, 1940s and 1970s. She shows that the same media reporting of adverse furnishings was present in each of these eras, as well as the same pressure to contrary women's gains. She quotes American scholar Ann Douglas, "The progress of women'due south rights in our culture, different other types of 'progress', has always been strangely reversible." (46)

Part Ii – The Backfire in Popular Culture [edit]

Consisting of five chapters (4, 5, six, 7& 8), this part covers the media delivery of a backfire through the reporting of 'trends'; the bear witness of a counter-assail on feminism in Hollywood's portrayal of women in the 1980s; television's projection of the backfire in its changing roles for women; the modify of focus in the fashion industry from the concern suits of the 1970s to 'feminine' and impractical lingerie in the 1980s; and the cosmetic industry'south emphasis on unnaturally accentuating features and its promotion of cosmetic surgery.

Faludi describes 'trend journalism" of the 1980s, where newspaper articles gained authority through repetition rather than evidence-based reporting (79). Reporting on trends such every bit "cocooning ", "the new abstinence", "the new femininity", "the new morality" and "the new celibacy" pretended to be about facts while offering none. Trend stories contradicted each other, and served a political agenda past implying women's experiences had nothing to do with political events or social pressures (81).

Likewise documented is the change in Hollywood's screen images of women from the 1970s independent unmarried women to the epitome of anti-feminist sentiment in the vengeful and frightening portrayal of a unmarried career woman in the 1980s movie Fatal Allure.

Although less virulent than Hollywood, goggle box toned down the strong independence of women in 1970s shows such as The Mary Tyler Moore Testify and The Bionic Woman, returned actress Mary Tyler Moore to the 1980s screen as a burned out divorcee with a bleak career and being in the short-lived Mary (157) and cancelling its extremely popular and laurels-winning series Cagney & Lacey because the characters were "inordinately abrasive, loud, and lacking warmth."(152). Co-ordinate to Faludi, a "good" female graphic symbol was Hope, the angelic stay-at-abode mom in the series thirtysomething, who was envied by her careerist female friends.

Faludi describes the manner and cosmetic industries "piddling girl" vesture designs and the emphasis on frills, flounces and "feminising" every bit an eruption of resentment by the way industry towards the increasingly independent buying habits of female shoppers. The rising prices caused a "manner defection" past women who wouldn't practise what the industry told them to and the manufacture replied with corsets and bustiers. "In every backlash, the way industry has produced punitively restrictive clothing and the way printing has demanded that women wear them" Faludi claims. (173)

The harsh beauty standards of the belatedly 1980s are also detailed, describing the force per unit area on women to expect young when past their youth, and the promotion of cosmetic surgery as a ways to this cease.

Part Iii – Origins of a Reaction: Backlash Movers, Shakers, and Thinkers [edit]

Consisting of 3 chapters (nine, 10 & 11), this portion deals with the "New Right" motility and its pro-family unit, although anti-feminist, agenda; the Reagan presidency and its reversal of feminist gains of the 1970s; and the mainstream thinkers and writers whose views aided the public acceptance of the backlash.

Faludi discusses the New Right's intention to "turn the clock back to 1954" and their articulation of the idea that women's equality is responsible for women'south unhappiness (230). She traces the rise of the New Right and their attacks on feminists and the Equal Rights Amendment, and describes how some of the about politically active anti-feminist women of these organizations were really benefiting from feminist ideas of self-determination, equality and freedom of choice (256).

Feminism'southward fortune under the Reagan administration is examined, and the driblet in numbers of women in federal part, as well as the decline in federal programs that supported women's equality during those years, indicates information technology did not fare well. By the end of the decade, one survey found, the National Organization for Women (NOW) were the political body the majority of women felt represented their interests best - better than either the Republican or the Democratic parties. NOW might have formed a third political party but for the outrage, anger and derision this idea drew from the media and press (277).

Faludi besides profiles ix men and women, some anti-feminist, and some neutral, just all "the backlash's emissaries" for their views and positions in the mainstream media: George Gilder, Allan Flower, Michael and Margarita Levin, Warren Farrell, Robert Bly, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Betty Friedan, and Carol Gilligan. Faludi's avowed intent in these cameos is to illustrate the less recognized factors, from professional grievances to domestic strain, that may have influenced their approach to feminist concerns (283).

Part Four – Backlashings: The Effects on Women's Minds, Jobs, and Bodies [edit]

Consisting of three chapters (12, thirteen & xiv), Faludi'due south 4th function deals with the fallout of cocky-aid books directed toward women; the misinformation and disinformation campaign of the Reagan assistants regarding women's loss of condition in the workplace; and the bourgeois attempt to reverse the results of legalized ballgame (Roe vs. Wade).

Faludi outlines the views of pop psychology books urging women to sympathise all the reactions of the backfire as originating in themselves. (337) According to Faludi self-help manuals of the 1980s suggested women'southward power was rooted in surrender and submission to their men and Faludi says that the 1980s therapy books "blot out the most basic premise of feminist therapy – that both social and personal growth are important, necessary, and mutually reinforcing." (338) In 1985 the American Psychiatric Association (APA) added "pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder" (PMS), and "masochistic personality disorder" to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM), thereby, Faludi asserts, causing women's fluctuating hormone levels and socially enforced pleasing of others to become diagnostically determined illnesses (362).

An increased deviation in the average pay of men and women, and falling rates of women'due south employment opportunities and job promotions, were facts downplayed or ignored past the Reagan assistants; while the media reported corporate claims of record highs in jobs and promotions for women (363). Faludi reports statistical proof of a decline in chore condition and an increasingly sex-segregated work force, with wages for women falling throughout the 1980s, all areas in which the media claimed the reverse. She also describes sharply contracting opportunities for women in journalism, the retail industry, and skilled blue-collar jobs.

In the last chapter, Faludi relates the story of Randall Terry, the founder of Performance Rescue, an activist anti-abortion group, and discusses the unspoken sub-text of the right-to-life campaign – the shifting of the balance of sexual power and "the patriarch's eclipsed power to brand the family decisions"(403). Faludi states that the rate of ballgame has not increased significantly over the past 100 years, but that legalization has increased the condom of the women choosing the procedure. She charts the increase in the rights of the fetus and decline in the rights of the mother through the 1970s and 1980s, and describes how at least fifteen of America's largest corporations drafted "fetal protection policies", which effectively excluded women, pregnant or not, from higher paying jobs that involved exposure to chemicals or radiation (437).

Epilogue [edit]

Faludi concludes by suggesting that although the 1980s was a decade that "produced one long, painful and unremitting campaign to thwart women's progress" women pushed dorsum. She states that although in that location have been periodic attempts to reverse women's gains, women take resisted. Faludi wonders how effective the resistance of the 1980s has been, claiming women seemed unaware of their real political ability and vitality in that decade, and missed an opportunity to make a "dandy leap frontwards" (459).

Preface to the 2006, 15th ceremony edition [edit]

Faludi believes that although at that place is no longer a backlash, this may not be a good thing. She notes that nosotros are existence told that feminism's goals have been achieved, and immature women no longer demand to identify as feminists(x). Through the 1990s women fabricated political and economical headway that brought them closer to equal representation and pay, but Faludi believes it is a distorted view of feminism that is present in mainstream America today. She claims feminism has been co-opted by capitalism, and economic independence has become ownership power; cocky-decision has become commodified self-improvement of "physical appearance, self-esteem and the fool'southward errand of reclaiming 1's youth"; and public bureau has been transformed to publicity (xv). Faludi says we have nonetheless to find our way to the "more meaningful goals of social alter, responsible citizenship, the advancement of man inventiveness, [and] the edifice of a mature and vital public world." Her business concern is that our social construction and cultural ideology have not fundamentally inverse – "Nosotros have used our gains to gild our shackles, but not break them."(xvi).[31]

Run into also [edit]

  • Third-moving ridge feminism

References [edit]

  1. ^ Wilson, Emily (December 12, 2005). "Backlash by Susan Faludi". The Guardian.
  2. ^ Snodgrass, Mary Ellen (2006). Encyclopedia of Feminist Literature. New York: Facts On File. pp. 44–45. ISBN978-1-4381-0910-vii.
  3. ^ Eberstadt, Mary. "Wake Up, Trivial Susie." American Spectator 25.ten (1992): 30. Bookish Search Premier. Web. 22 Oct. 2014. p.
  4. ^ Greene, Gayle, "The Empire Strikes Back, a review of Backlash: The Undeclared War confronting American Women", Nation, Vol. 254, No. v, Feb 10, 1992, pp. 166ff.(5).
  5. ^ Phelan, Peggy. "Radical Democracy and the Woman Question" American Literary History, Vol. 5, No. iv (Winter, 1993) 750-763. p. 755
  6. ^ Gibbs, N., and A. Blackman. "The War Against Feminism. (Cover Story)." Time 139.10 (1992): l. Bookish Search Premier. Web. 24 Oct. 2014.
  7. ^ Gibbs, N., and J. McDowell. "How To Revive A Revolution. (Embrace Story)." Fourth dimension 139.x (1992): 56. Bookish Search Premier. Web. 24 October. 2014.
  8. ^ Booknotes. "Backlash: The Undeclared State of war Against American Women" - Susan Faludi interviewed past Brian Lamb. CSPAN The Film Archives, April 1, 2014 original program air date: October 25, 1992. http://world wide web.booknotes.org/Watch/33591-1/Susan+Faludi.aspx Archived 2016-08-05 at the Wayback Car accessed October 24, 2014.
  9. ^ Gibbs, Northward., and J. McDowell. "How To Revive A Revolution. (Cover Story)." Time 139.ten (1992): 56. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 October. 2014.
  10. ^ Eberstadt, Mary. "Wake Upwardly, Little Susie." American Spectator 25.10 (1992): 30. Academic Search Premier. Web. 22 Oct. 2014.
  11. ^ Eberstadt, Mary. "Wake Upwardly, Piffling Susie." American Spectator 25.10 (1992): xxx. Academic Search Premier. Web. 22 Oct. 2014.
  12. ^ John McLaughlin as quoted by N. Gibbs in Gibbs, North., and A. Blackman. "The State of war Confronting Feminism. (Cover Story)." Fourth dimension 139.x (1992): 50. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 Oct. 2014.
  13. ^ Greene, Gayle, "The Empire Strikes Back, a review of Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women", Nation, Vol. 254, No. 5, February 10, 1992. p.169
  14. ^ Shore, Paul. "Review: Backlash: The Undeclared War confronting American Women", Humanist. Sep/Oct92, Vol. 52 Effect 5, p47.
  15. ^ Phelan, Peggy. "Radical Democracy and the Woman Question" American Literary History, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Winter, 1993) 750-763. p.751 Published past: Oxford University Printing
  16. ^ Crichton, Michael (April 26, 2002). Why Speculate? (Speech). International Leadership Forum. www.michaelcrichton.com. La Jolla, CA. Archived from the original on June xxx, 2006.
  17. ^ Shore, Paul. "Review: Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women", Humanist. Sep/Oct92, Vol. 52 Issue v. p47
  18. ^ Barbara Lovenheim quoted past M. Eberstadt in "Wake Upwardly, Little Susie." American Spectator 25.x (1992): 30. Academic Search Premier. Web. 22 Oct. 2014.
  19. ^ American scholar Ann Jones quoted by N. Gibbs in "The War Against Feminism. (Encompass Story)." Fourth dimension 139.10 (1992): 50. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 Oct. 2014.
  20. ^ Greene, Gayle, "The Empire Strikes Back, a review of Backfire: The Undeclared War against American Women", Nation, Vol. 254, No. five, February 10, 1992. p169.
  21. ^ Phelan, Peggy. "Radical Commonwealth and the Woman Question" American Literary History, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Winter, 1993) 750-763. Published by: Oxford University Press
  22. ^ Eberstadt, Mary. "Wake Upwardly, Little Susie." American Spectator 25.10 (1992): xxx. Academic Search Premier. Web. 22 Oct. 2014.
  23. ^ Gallagher, Maggie, "Review of Backlash: The Undeclared State of war against American Women", National Review, Vol. 44, No. 6, (March 30, 1992) p42.
  24. ^ Eberstadt, Mary. "Wake Up, Lilliputian Susie." American Spectator 25.x (1992): 30. Bookish Search Premier. Web. 22 October. 2014.
  25. ^ Gibbs, Due north., and J. McDowell. "How To Revive A Revolution. (Cover Story)." Time 139.10 (1992): 56. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 Oct. 2014.
  26. ^ Eisenberg, Rebecca, 50. "An Unladylike Response to Legal Conceptions of Women," Harvard Law Review. Jun92, Vol. 105 Issue 8, p2106.
  27. ^ Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared State of war Against American Women. New York: Crown. 1991. p.xiii. ISBN 0517576988
  28. ^ endnote #27 in Eisenberg, Rebecca, L. "An Unladylike Response to Legal Conceptions of Women," Harvard Law Review. Jun92, Vol. 105 Issue 8.
  29. ^ Eisenberg, Rebecca, L. "An Unladylike Response to Legal Conceptions of Women," Harvard Police Review. Jun92, Vol. 105 Issue 8, p2104.
  30. ^ Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War Confronting American Women. New York: Crown. 1991. Print ISBN 0517576988
  31. ^ Faludi, Susan. "Preface". Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. New York: Iii Rivers Printing. 2006. Impress. ISBN 0307345424

External links [edit]

  • Booknotes interview with Faludi on Backfire, October 25, 1992.

kellnerfloace.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backlash:_The_Undeclared_War_Against_American_Women

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