Rad Trads and Rad Fems: Best Friends

A recent piece from my colleague Mr. John Goerke, reminded me how much I love David Foster Wallace. Any man who can write a pair of undergraduate theses on English literature and modal logic has my respect, and his writing isn’t half bad either. DFW’s profundity and nonconservative conservatism reminded me of the vast value of nonconservative thought. In fact, radical feminists most quickly came to mind.

That’s right. Those man-hating, angry, Bible-burning relics of times past are truly conservatives wrapped in antipatriarchal rhetoric, or something like that. Take Camille Paglia. She’s willing to stake her career on her assertion that “God is man’s greatest idea.” She’s written in Time about the ridiculousness of campus-rape epidemic rhetoric by attacking its inability to accept the existence of evil. She defends gender stereotypes almost to the point of absurdity and, on top of it all, is a lesbian radical libertarian. A complex case for sure, her radical feminism has strange tinges of traditional conservatism worthy of increased attention from the Right.

bell hooks (name intentionally not capitalized) is equally as perplexing. She has expressed unease at Nicki Minaj for her “Anaconda” music video, questioning whether naked dancing is truly liberation for black women or just the reinforcement of an oppressive power structure. Particularly, she asked if such behavior is actually helpful “or is it part of the tropes of the existing, imperialist, white supremacist, patriarchal capitalist structure of female sexuality?” Ms. hooks has also advocated transgressive education alongside transgressive sexual practice in universities. Another bag of interesting contradictions, conservatives would do well to pay her more mind, if only to understand her criticism.

Then there are the many feminists who have expressed offense at transsexualism. Individual feminist theorists have long asked if trans-people are not so mired in their previous “lives” so as to never be able to understand the experiences of those born women. On a larger scale, Michfest is a concert only for birth-women. Those offended have responded by protesting. As this discontent suggests, such people and events have largely been expelled from the mainstream feminist movement. They now exist at the margins.

But if postmodernism has taught us anything it’s to pay particular attention to those at the periphery.

And that is precisely where we should turn. Are these women conservatives? Are they even correct on these issues? Not necessarily. But that isn’t what matters. What matters is breaking outside of our comfort zones to experience the other side; another side with a strange amount in common with contemporary conservatism. And, if not, there’s certainly much jargon to be learned.