Susan
Cole and and Margaret Wente have one thing in common. They’re both in heavy
denial about what they really believe.
It’s a wily tactic. These days everybody wants
to appear hip, and most women want to appear as ‘post-feminist cool’ (whatever
that means). And yet certain women are able to get away with supremely
anti-feminist views without being branded as social conservatives. Margaret and Susan aren’t quite as bad as those niqab-wearing women who insist that by
swathing their bodies from head to toe in black fabric they achieve a special
kind of sexual equality and gender freedom -- but they’re basically up to the
same thing.
Wente
is an interesting case. Recently accused of plagiarism (but by no means exonerated)
she claims not to be right wing. Yet her columns betray a fundamental, – well –
fundamentalism, when it comes to issues of sexuality and gender.
In a recent Globe and Mail article
Wente attacked women pornographers. Her hate filled diatribe suggests that the
some feminists find porn empowering “especially if it’s produced by lesbians.” This is
patently not true. By allying lesbians with porn, she seems to thing she is
taking a cheap jab at lesbians, who Wente obviously dislikes. Wente also has
something against large women. She says that female pornographer Courtney
Trouble’s films “feature a lot of fat women with nipple piercings and
appliances.” And what, may I ask, is wrong with that?
But the essence of Wente’s argument
is also dangerous nonsense. She objects to students studying pornography at the
university level, and specifically targets feminist pornographers recently
visiting the University of Toronto. Obviously, for Wente, ignorance is bliss.
We live in a porn-saturated, sexism-saturated culture. We are bombarded daily with
explicit sexist images of women via the internet. These images are accessible
to everyone, even children. Does it make sense for universities NOT to teach
students how to cast a critical/ political eye on this cultural phenomenon?
Susan Cole and Margaret Wente may
sound like a strange bedfellows, however Cole shares the same anti-sex stance.
I have tried to confront Susan in person and in print, about her anti-male,
anti-porn position. It’s something she always denies. However in her latest pan
of Lars Von Trier’s fascinating and important film Nymphomaniac, she prefers to falsely label Von Trier a misogynist
instead of thoughtfully analyzing the thoughtful pro-feminist, pro-women stance
the film presents.
Susan Cole and Margaret Wente are
unfortunately not stupid. Cole knows
that if she were to attack Von Trier’s film for defending women’s rights to
their bodies, their sexuality, their promiscuity, and their ‘kink’ – she would
be ‘outed’ as the sex-hater she really is.
I’m not a fan of the pompous Von
Trier, but this somewhat preachy film, is evidently on the side of women, down
to the end (spoiler alert!) when the female protagonist shoots her so-called
male friend for attempting to rape her.
It’s not our fault that Margaret
Wente and Susan Cole are a tad dusty and rusty below the belt. And it’s time for them
to stop taking their own sexual frustrations out on their fellow women, ranting
against pornography, promiscuity and women who like sex.
And it’s time someone exposed them
for what they really are. Old-fashioned women-haters masquerading as modern
culture critics.
