MSN just gave me some terrible whiplash this afternoon with their juxtaposed slideshows on 10 Amazing Women You’ve Never Hear Of,  and their witch counterparts, 10 Women Who Make Us Cringe.  Ruth Simmons vs. Lindsey Lohan, how very Crystal v. Alexis for the new millennium (thanks, Susan Douglas!). More to the point: this is probably the first and only time that Linda Hirschman, Phyllis Schlafly, and Paris Hilton have shared a categorization (“cringe,” in case you were confused).

What’s most interesting is how precisely these presentations demonstrate Lisa Jervis’s insightful thesis on “femmenism:”  the popular but misguided notion that feminism should concern itself exclusively with what how females behave and achieve in the world rather than systems of domination and oppression. 

You see, almost all of the women in the “good girls” slide show (to whom I mean no disrespect, for I have only the highest regard for their accomplishments) have directed their efforts at helping other women.  Emme, the plus size model who speaks out against eating disorders, Waris Darie, the anti-female genital mutilation activists, and Zainab Salbi, founder of Women for Women International, are three obvious examples.

Now, I do find most of the “bad girls” disturbing.  Ann Coulter is a longtime menace to women and to intellectual discourse in general.  Britney is, well, Britney (of course, no one brings up questions of why young female celebrities might receive conflicting messages about their self-worth being tied to their public sexualities from their pimps/corporations).  But Linda Hirschman? Talk about one of these things being not like the others…until you realize the intent to put all the radicals together to undermine the validity of any innovative arguments about gender.   Anyone whose read Hirschman’s Get to Work knows that she’s calling for a more egalitarian arrangement of the household as well as the marketplace, which requires some changes for men as well as women. 

Red alert, red alert, we have a system-changer, folks.  Can’t fete those rabble-rousers, so just stick with those who respond to women who are already victims.  At least we know that’ll always garner dissociated sympathy, especially from the powerful people who victimized them in the first place.