Although she takes quite a while along an uneven, pothole-strewn path to get here, conjuring the voices of Betty Draper, Nurse Ratched, Marlin Perkins, and RuPaul along the way, Flanagan’s central premise is not only worthwhile, it’s exactly the sort of argument that so few in media dare to make, butting up against both liberal notions about freedom of speech and pornography and the free-to-be-you-and-me universe that most middle-class feminists of a certain age grew up in. And that makes it all the more disappointing—and bizarre—when Flanagan lets herself off the hook, yet again.That’s right, folks: Mothers fretting over the sexual precocity of their sons can just sit back and relax.If I were to learn that my children had engaged in oral sex—outside a romantic relationship, and as young adolescents—I would be sad. But I wouldn’t think that they had been damaged by the experience; I wouldn’t think I had failed catastrophically as a mother, or that they would need therapy. Because I don’t have daughters, I have sons.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
3 comments:
I know that Flanagan's thing is to provoke, but it starts to seem like with this installment, she's benefitting from name-recognition as an anti-PC contrarian, but hasn't said anything that's worth getting worked up about. It's unclear who's arguing that young girls should be "servicing" boys without respect/reciprocation, that kids should take all their cues from porn, etc. I suppose it's provocative just to say that things were better Then than Now, but I can't imagine that this type of tired "hook-up culture" argument would get any press at all if someone like Flanagan - known for being provocative and interesting, weren't behind it.
Yeah, I go back and forth on this. On the one hand, talking about this book seems like a clear violation of the sensible internet directive "do not feed the troll." She's just angling for a response; ignore her; etc.
On the other hand, it seems worth pointing out that she's arguing for positions no one is actually against (a dude on The Hairpin correctly identified her imagined interlocutor as someone who believes "Oh, I don't know that fathers are terribly important in raising a child. And look, if my daughter wants to give some blowjobs on the bus or whatever, then that's her journey, I guess. I am mostly into keeping a healthy diet, personally."), and that her conclusions in no way follow from the problems she identifies. For a certain sort of public intellectual, a few rounds of expected humiliation vis-a-vis their shortcomings can do a lot to push them off the spectrum of opinion. So a slight amount of crankiness, and then forgetting all about this next week (as seems likely), seems about the right pitch to hit.
Your approach makes sense. There's not going to be a massive discussion, so discuss or not, it'll be over by the end of the week.
I guess I don't see Flanagan as so much a troll as someone everyone expects and so desperately wants a provocative argument from, that they're willing to almost invent a better one for her. I don't think the goal here should be to render the evil Caitlin Flanagan irrelevant. It should be to point out to her that this installment wasn't so much controversial as stale and pointless. If she wants to provoke, she needs some new material.
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