Subject to Debate

by POLLITT, KATHA

• ISBN13: 9780679783435
• ISBN10: 0679783431
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2001-02-06
• Publisher: Modern Library

Summary

Subject to Debate, Katha Pollitt's column inThe Nation, has offered readers clear-eyed yet provocative observations on women, politics, and culture for more than seven years. Bringing together eighty-eight of her most astute essays on hot-button topics like abortion, affirmative action, and school vouchers, this selection displays the full range of her indefatigable wit and brilliance. Her stirring new Introduction offers a seasoned critique of feminism at the millennium and is a clarion call for renewed activism against social injustice.

Author Biography

<b>Katha Pollitt</b> writes the bimonthly column, "Subject to Debate" for <i>The Nation</i>. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and Whiting Foundations, a grant from the NEA, a National Magazine Award in Essays and Criticism and a National Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: Feminism at the Millennium	xv
Clara Zetkin Avenue	3	(4)
National Tulip Conversation	7	(4)
The Last President	11	(3)
Communitarianism, No	14	(3)
Single-Sex Sexism	17	(4)
Opinionated Women	21	(3)
``Sex in America''	24	(4)
School Prayer? By All Means	28	(3)
Beggar's Opera	31	(4)
Deadbeat Dads: A Modest Proposal	35	(4)
Affirmative Action Begins At Home	39	(3)
We Are All Marcia Clark	42	(3)
Victoria's Secret	45	(3)
Opportunity Knocked	48	(3)
Is Marriage Like a Bran Muffin?	51	(4)
1945	55	(4)
Of Grass and Guns	59	(3)
Swish, Thwack, Boo	62	(4)
Facts and Pundits	66	(4)
The O.J. Verdict: While You Were Sleeping	70	(3)
Million Man Mirage	73	(4)
Where Are the Women We Voted For?	77	(3)
Kept Illusions	80	(3)
The Violence of Ordinary Life	83	(4)
No God, No Master	87	(4)
Village Idiocy	91	(4)
French Lessons	95	(4)
Sweet Swan of Avon	99	(3)
Take Back The Right	102	(3)
For Whom the Ball Rolls	105	(4)
Gay Marriage? Don't Say I Didn't Warn You	109	(4)
Pomolotov Cocktail	113	(4)
Adoption Fantasy	117	(3)
Utopia, Limited	120	(4)
The Strange Death of Liberal America	124	(4)
Of Toes and Men	128	(4)
We Were Wrong: Why I'm Not Voting for Clinton	132	(4)
First Wives, Last Laugh	136	(4)
Kissing and Telling	140	(4)
No Vote for Clinton? Readers Bite Back	144	(4)
Let Them Eat Numbers	148	(4)
Born Again vs. Pron Again	152	(4)
Can This Marriage Be Saved?	156	(4)
Paula Jones, Class Act?	160	(4)
Secrets and Lies	164	(4)
Go Figure	168	(4)
Heaven Can Wait	172	(4)
When I'm Sixty-Four	176	(3)
No Sex, Please. We're Killers	179	(4)
About Race: Can We Talk?	183	(3)
Get Thee Behind Me, Disney	186	(4)
Honk If You Like Art	190	(4)
Thoroughly Modern Di	194	(3)
Free Willie	197	(4)
Hello, Columbus	201	(4)
Women and Children First	205	(4)
Madchen In Uniform	209	(4)
Vouching Toward Bethlehem	213	(3)
Race and Gender and Class, Oh My!	216	(4)
School's Out	220	(3)
Far From Chile?	223	(3)
Masterpiece Theater	226	(4)
September Thong	230	(4)
Great Big Baskets of Dirty Linen	234	(4)
Poverty: Fudging the Numbers	238	(4)
Murder, Inc	242	(4)
Precious Bodily Fluids	246	(4)
Make Love, Not War	250	(3)
The People vs. Larry Flynt?	253	(4)
Let Them Sell Lemonade	257	(3)
Women's Rights: As the World Turns	260	(4)
A Bronx Tale	264	(4)
War and Memory	268	(3)
Natural Born Killers	271	(4)
No Males Need Apply?	275	(4)
Weird Science	279	(4)
Polymaritally Perverse	283	(4)
Catholic Bashing?	287	(4)
Home Discomforts	291	(3)
The Death Penalty in Theory and Practice	294	(4)
Regrets Only	298	(4)
Progressive Presidential Politics (Continued)	302	(4)
Abortion History 101	306	(4)
Underground Against the Taliban	310	(4)
Moms to NRA: Grow Up!	314	(4)
The Politics of Personal Responsibility	318	(3)
Freedom from Religion, ¡SI!	321	(3)
Social Pseudoscience	324	(5)
Notes	329

Excerpts

Clara Zetkin Avenue


Scurrying around Manhattan on a blustery morning a few weeks ago, I
happened to glance up while waiting for the light to change in front of the
public library. Beneath the green and white sign reading Fifth Avenue was
another, also green and white, and printed in exactly the same lettering:
Clara Zetkin Avenue. Gee, I thought for a split second, if Rudy Giuliani is
naming a street for the grande dame of German socialism, he can't be as bad
as I thought. But will New Yorkers really start telling taxi drivers to
make a right on Zetkin? Then I saw the bent wires fastening the sign to the
post, and realized what was going on: Some lefty prankster was reminding us
that the next day, March 8, was International Women's Day.


Well, the great day came and went with barely a ripple of attention here in
the United States?although I understand that, over at the United Nations,
Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali gave a speech about the need to do
more for women, which in the case of the United Nations shouldn't be too
difficult. Maybe the local indifference is why I find myself filled with
gloomy thoughts about the worldwide situation of women. Here we are, at the
end of the twentieth century, and not only have hundreds of millions of
women around the globe yet to obtain even the barest minimum of human
rights, but the notion that they are even entitled to such rights is
bitterly contested.


Consider, for example, the horrors documented in the State Department's
annual human rights report, which focused on women this year for the first
time: genital mutilation in Africa and the Middle East, bride burning in
India, sexual slavery in Thailand, forced abortion and sterilization in
China. Imagine the firestorm of international protest if any of these
practices were imposed by men on men through racism or colonialism or
Communism! Well, you don't need to imagine: Just compare the decades of
global outrage visited, justly, on South Africa's apartheid regime for
denying political, civil and property rights to blacks, and the
cultural-relativist defense advanced on behalf of Saudi Arabia and other
ultra-Islamic regimes for their denial of same to women. Nobody's calling
on American universities and city governments to disinvest in those
economies. In Iraq and a number of other Middle Eastern countries that are
not theocracies, a man can with impunity kill any female relative he feels
is "dishonoring" him by unchaste behavior; in Pakistan, the jails are full
of women and girls, some only nine years old, whose crime was to be the
victims of rape. I suppose Benazir Bhutto will get around to them after she
finishes persuading the world that her mother is trying to undermine her
government because of a sexist wish to see a son, rather than a daughter,
in power.

---

Excerpted from Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture by Katha Pollitt
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.