I approached Steinem's work with trepidation. After all, the woman's reputation within politically correct circles is unparalleled. For the past twenty years, she has been the undisputed leader of the feminist movement, and her book must be filled with insights so stunning and logic so unflinching that I couldn't possibly hope to put a dent in it. How on earth could I even consider taking on the grand poobah of feminism herself?
But anyone who actually takes the time to crack open Steinem's book will find nothing particularly intimidating here. Moving Beyond Words is simply a collection of six long essays, each more scatter-brained than the next.
The first essay, "What If Freud Were Phyllis?," criticizes Freudian theory with particular regard to his view on women. In part by creating a mythical female version of Freud and performing a gender reversal on his theories. Interspersed in the narrative are copious footnotes, some scholarly in nature, some just pointlessly snide (including cutesy comments like, "Could you make this stuff up?" and "We're talking facts here."). The result is a strange mixture of criticism, exposé, parody, and just plain character assassination (Steinem is sure to mention Freud's use of cocaine and the fact that he was probably born illegitimate, though what any of this has to do with his theories is uncertain), all of which leads to a sort of intellectual bobbing and weaving that makes it somewhat difficult to even follow Steinem's line of thought, never mind criticize it.
I'm not for a moment going to try defending some of Freud's more bizarre theories, nor his penchant for outright misogyny. By now, he has been dragged through the mud by a host of critics -- feminist as well as legitimate scholars. But Steinem seems blithely unaware of this, relishing her perceived rebelliousness and launching into her attack as if she were the naughtiest girl in her freshman psych class. If she's trying to present herself as some sort of cutting-edge iconoclast by criticizing Freud, she's about ten years too late.
Steinem makes much of the "unfairness" posed by the fact that the health care system is utilized more by women than men, but that there are more male than female doctors and psychologists. Offhand, it's hard to know what to make of this. Is she suggesting that women choosing to see doctors more than men do is a form of discrimination? Or that a woman's gender should entitle her to greater representation in the medical establishment -- as opposed to such trivial things as, say, having earned a medical degree? "Women do use the health care system about 30 percent more than men do -- but you'd never know it from who's in charge," she states. "Logic is in the eye of the logician." I guess I'd have to agree since her "logic" makes no sense to me at all. (Actually, in Knights Without Armor, author Aaron Kipnis suggests that the preponderance of female psychiatric patients has led to the whole field of psychology being based on a female model rather than a male one, resulting in discrimination against male modes of relating.)
What really disturbs me about her lampoon is the gender reversal aspects of it. After all, Steinem could debunk Freud without resorting to this tactic, as she admits about halfway through. Her rationale is that "the reversal may ... help us to realize how surrealistic gender politics are." Of course. And it also gives her the opportunity to write an essay with statements like "men's lack of firsthand experience with birth...severely inhibited their potential for developing a sense of justice and ethics." (A comment that could as easily be applied to childless Steinem, herself!) Or my personal favorite, "Even the most quixotic male liberationist will have to agree that biology leaves no room for doubt about intrinsic female dominance."
In the preface to her book, Steinem describes this essay as "satire" and compares it to Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, the classic essay in which he suggests that the Irish eat their babies as a solution to hunger and a host of other social problems. Her comparison doesn't ring true. Satire is largely based on hyperbole, on presenting an argument and then so thoroughly overstating it that the effect becomes ridiculous. But hyperbole depends upon the intellectual context of society at that time. For example, if many of Swift's contemporaries had seriously advocated infanticide, it would not have been possible to read his essay as satire, since the hyperbolic effect would have been lost.
Guess what, many of Steinem's contemporaries are seriously presenting ideas similar to the ones Steinem puts into the mouth of Phyllis Freud. In fact, there was really no need for Steinem to invent Phyllis, since she already exists in such persons as Kate Millett, Andrea Dworkin and Mary Daly.
Coming from a canon of literature that includes such "serious" (i.e., not intentionally satiric) works as Intercourse and The SCUM Manifesto, how can we view "Phyllis" as satire? It's as if a German citizen wrote a thinly veiled pastiche of Mein Kampf, and then, claiming to know nothing of his nation's history, deflected all criticism by saying it was just a "joke." Steinem must realize that most of her feminist fans are going to read these passages not as a criticism of Freud, but as a condemnation of men. Defending such unmitigated misandry as satire is irresponsible, if not disingenuous.