Maureen Dowd on Feminism

I feel like what she's getting at here is something like the difference between equality feminism and difference feminism--pointing out the price that each one has to pay. What strikes me, and fits with certain things that come up in our class discussions for Feminist Philosophy, is the price of the myth that women and men are the same. There still exists among children of children of the 60s the idea that women should be exactly like men in all respects--sexually, emotionally, aesthetically, motivationally, and so on. One should not, rationally, want attachment or emotional closeness. One should not wear makeup--because the only possible reason for doing so could be to please men (and, the men say, it doesn't please them); it indicates a lack of self-confidence, which men would never display. Or something. One should not find the concept of casual sex disturbing (I once had an hour-long conversation with a male roommate about this; he believed I had no rational grounds for my aversion to it).

But difference feminism has its price, too. If we embrace it, we run the risk of pigeonholing ourselves into stereotypical, if "different" roles. This makes me want to say that what is needed is communication--a raising of awareness about the ways in which women are not exactly the same as men (why does equality mean sameness, anyway?), and the beginning of a conversation in which both sides come to understand--as far as possible, and from the inside--how the other thinks and feels.