The other thing that the right doesn’t want to talk about, and that the left seems too afraid to broach, is the fact that so-called pro-life women get abortions, too.* And then they go back into their faith communities and rail against the slutty slutty slut sluts who are “killing their children,” after having enjoyed a safe, clean, legal and therefore regulated abortion.

*A friend of mine used to perform abortions in this state, and she told me that fully 1/3 of her patients had notes on their charts that they had religious and/or moral objections to the procedure, but guess what? They demanded their abortions anyway.

But acknowledging the universality and the complexity of which women get abortions and why is difficult, and slut-shaming is sooooo easy!!!

Northern Barbarian, I think you’re right about the losses the right has obvs. suffered. I am just getting tired of cherchez les femmes as the default response mode. Anxious about the Reformation? Blame the women–all of them, the prostitutes AND the nuns AND the slutty married women! Troubled by the Age of Revolution? Round up the women and get them out of the public square. Yay for emancipation! Now, about all that female loaferism. . . . etc.

I think it’s interesting that you think gay students have it more difficult. That would be the one thing I would say had definitely changed for the better. Even at my current uni, there are a large number of out women & men, and trans students too. But I totally see LouMac’s point about the range of acceptable gender performances for straight women being narrowed.

I loved this in particular: Young white hetero women all have identical long straight hair because they choose it! For the past 10 years, I feel like I’ve been teaching in a Mod Squad episode when it comes to white women’s hair. And in the American West, long hair is kind of a regional identity statement for many grizzled men as well as older women. (Lots of guys with unkempt gray ponytails!)

That said, I also see at my SLAC the social enforcement of female sexual subservience, and I think that gay students here have a rougher time of it than I did in the mid-1980s. College culture makes as much of a difference as geography: I attended a Midwestern but very liberal SLAC, and now teach at an East Coast but more conservative SLAC. Anyway, the political attacks on women are sickening.

On this and many other issues I agree that women are experiencing a prolonged backlash. It’s all the more pernicious because the choices they make under increased constraints are believed to be freely-made choices (the problem with “choice feminism”). Women opt out of careers because they choose to! they are hormonally predisposed to nest and to eschew competitive environments! Young white hetero women all have identical long straight hair because they choose it! Women want babies and when they have them they choose to focus on nothing else!

Personally, as a queer, things have improved for me materially and culturally. But I think feminist straight women have it harder than they did 20 years ago. When I was a young women, my gender presentation did not automatically mark me as queer – women had all kinds of hair and clothing styles that were considered acceptable. As a kid I played with toy cars and climbed trees without too much adult ‘correction’. This was in the UK, but I think things were similar here, based on conversations with friends. Now, the constraints on normative feminine expression are considerably greater, and I count myself lucky to be out of that particular ideological economy (even though there’s a certain amount of femme fetishising going on among women who love women).

That said: I never knew anyone who had an abortion in college, because we were responsible and on birth control, and we damn sure knew we could get the off-label morning-after pills at the student health center.