Propaganda and Reaction
Hooray. Green Jenni found my provocative post! I was hoping this would happen. I actually started that post as response to her post. I figured my rant would be more effective if she found the back link on her own. Rather than my sending it to her.
Green Jenn's reaction to my rant was that I am clueless about the current assault being made on women by the right. I agree that there are regressive elements in our society. I currently live in Utah which is dominated by one of the most regressive belief systems ever conceived. I just have a different take on the CDC report and the Washington Post article. IMHO, the propaganda in the Washington Post and reaction to the propaganda are doing more harm to the feminist agenda at the moment than the far right.
We can see this point by looking at two different books. Who Stole Feminims (1995) is a work by Christine Hoff-Sommers. Ms. Hoff-Sommers might be described as a classical feminist. Her book details the way that radical feminists started playing propaganda games and became fast and loose with facts. Radical feminists had created a social network that was selectively filtering out truth and spinning arguments to create division.
The effect of this method of discourse was that the radical feministists had not only alienated the majority of women. They had alienated classical feminists.
The second book I want to look at came out in 2000. The work Baby Boon by Elinor Burkett shows how Bill Clinton, seeing that feminism had become a liability to the Democratic Party, intentionally sold out the feminism to win his 1996 re-election.
By engaging in negative discourse, the feminist movement eroded its base leading to the current political climate where women's rights are in peril.
"Forever Pregnant" article added with the flurry of alarmist posts on the internet shows a continuation of this negative trend. The CDC and March of Dimes came out with good health advice. This good health advice gets twisted and perverted by a propagandist rag. A social network of feminists blogs fume over the propagandist piece. What happens is that this fuming ends up alientating those people who see the good health advice from the CDC and March of Dimes for what it is: Good health advice.
Apparently, a few other bloggers like Health Riverside see the same thing I do. The WP article "Forever Pregnant was a piece of propaganda designed to create a strong negative response. Which it did.
Health-Riverside took the radical step and actually read the CDC report.
What she found is that actually CDC report was designed to fit a progressive agenda. The whole focus of the article is to use the rise in birth defects and infant mortality as a call to spend more health care dollars on poor women.
I agree with Green Jenni that our society is becoming regressive on women's issue. I see why women are really upset with what the WP wrote. What is happening, though, is that this report is simply repeating the dynamics that undermined feminism in the 90s. The fact that someone named Green Jenni argued against a plan to increase the recommended intake of whole foods is bizarre to the extreme.
Green Jenn's reaction to my rant was that I am clueless about the current assault being made on women by the right. I agree that there are regressive elements in our society. I currently live in Utah which is dominated by one of the most regressive belief systems ever conceived. I just have a different take on the CDC report and the Washington Post article. IMHO, the propaganda in the Washington Post and reaction to the propaganda are doing more harm to the feminist agenda at the moment than the far right.
We can see this point by looking at two different books. Who Stole Feminims (1995) is a work by Christine Hoff-Sommers. Ms. Hoff-Sommers might be described as a classical feminist. Her book details the way that radical feminists started playing propaganda games and became fast and loose with facts. Radical feminists had created a social network that was selectively filtering out truth and spinning arguments to create division.
The effect of this method of discourse was that the radical feministists had not only alienated the majority of women. They had alienated classical feminists.
The second book I want to look at came out in 2000. The work Baby Boon by Elinor Burkett shows how Bill Clinton, seeing that feminism had become a liability to the Democratic Party, intentionally sold out the feminism to win his 1996 re-election.
By engaging in negative discourse, the feminist movement eroded its base leading to the current political climate where women's rights are in peril.
"Forever Pregnant" article added with the flurry of alarmist posts on the internet shows a continuation of this negative trend. The CDC and March of Dimes came out with good health advice. This good health advice gets twisted and perverted by a propagandist rag. A social network of feminists blogs fume over the propagandist piece. What happens is that this fuming ends up alientating those people who see the good health advice from the CDC and March of Dimes for what it is: Good health advice.
Apparently, a few other bloggers like Health Riverside see the same thing I do. The WP article "Forever Pregnant was a piece of propaganda designed to create a strong negative response. Which it did.
Health-Riverside took the radical step and actually read the CDC report.
What she found is that actually CDC report was designed to fit a progressive agenda. The whole focus of the article is to use the rise in birth defects and infant mortality as a call to spend more health care dollars on poor women.
I agree with Green Jenni that our society is becoming regressive on women's issue. I see why women are really upset with what the WP wrote. What is happening, though, is that this report is simply repeating the dynamics that undermined feminism in the 90s. The fact that someone named Green Jenni argued against a plan to increase the recommended intake of whole foods is bizarre to the extreme.
posted by y-intercept at 11:45 AM
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