Feminism Without Women (Japanese Studies) by Tania Modleski

Feminism Without Women (Japanese Studies) Reviews

• 
  Oscar

  Modleski wrote that book that examines several of Hithcock's films through a feminist lens which I still haven't read. I came across this book by chance and when I started to read it, I couldn't put it down. This book as you may imagine from the title pays a lot of attention on the relationship that exists between gender roles, particularly that of the male gender role and feminism. Modleski shapes most of her arguments by examining pop culture with a strong emphasis on film. She looks at gender roles as they appear in war films (e.g. Full Metal Jacket, she examines males who blur gender roles such as Pee Wee Herman, she examines questions relating to pornography and sexual orientation, she also takes a look at motherless 'famlies' (e.g. Three Men and a Baby, among other things things. I really enjoyed reading this book and it definitely served as food for thought. I agree with a lot of what Modleski argued, but she lost me completely with her argument revolving around Three Men and a Baby. She argued that such film hinted at pedophilia, um, really? But worst of all, she argued that such film and a show like Full House are basically making the argument that mothers are not really necessary to raise girls, making such films/shows anti-feminist. I pretty much saw that argument as something silly on the same lines to Dan Quayle's argument that a show like Murphy Brown was saying that fathers are not needed to raise children. How about no? These shows in my opinion, are not making any argument that not having a certain parent is a good thing, but rather that families are different and sometimes a parent of a certain gender has to raise a child of another gender. But I do digress, interesting discussion, but that one argument about motherless families just lost me.
• 
  Teleseparatist

  Certainly a number of points Modleski makes can be argued with, but when push comes to shove, I found her argument concerning the ease with which anti-essentialism can reinforce the existing power relations by re-framing their discussion as obsolete quite convincing (at least as a call for caution, not as a call to return to essentialism). I think some of the points she makes against Judith Butler's arguments might be refuted by Butler's later writing.
  
  And I loved the straightforward anger at inequality and appropriation that was palpable in this book, even if I sometimes disagreed with its direction.
• 
  T.R. Ormond

  This book has a provocative title. It refers to the absence of "women" in feminism in two senses.
  
  1. Modelski balks at the claim that we now live in a post-feminist world. This is a convenient thesis raised by men in order to appropriate femininity in order to recentralize male subjectivity and undermine the fact that feminism is a political movement built on establishing female subjectivity and resisting male hegemony.
  
  2. Modelski also takes issue with the debate amongst feminists about 'essentialism.' Anti-essentialism is correct insofar as it refuses to define a totalizing 'feminine experience' for all women (and therefore risks being Eurocentric and elitist); but, for Modelski, anti-essentialism goes too far when it cringes at the word "woman" and attempts to write feminism without "woman" as its central concern.