JustASC

If I were Ms. magazine, I’d hurry to grab the shovel out of Executive Editor Katherine Spillar’s hand. Here’s an excerpt from her updated response to American Jewish Congress:

In Ms. magazine’s judgment, the ad submitted by AJCongress for consideration was inconsistent with this policy. Not only could the ad be seen as favoring certain political parties within Israel over other parties, but also with its slogan “This is Israel,” the ad implied that women in Israel hold equal positions of power with men. Israel, like every other country, has far to go to reach equality for women. As the Israel Women’s Network notes: “Women have consistently received symbolic representation in Israeli politics, at least sufficient enough to generate the myth of an open and egalitarian system.”

In other words, no boasting about women’s gains until your country is perfect. Four current supreme court justices, including its president? A female prime minister? A current foreign minister and speaker of the Knesset? All a ruse to obscure the oppression under which Israeli women live.

Indeed Israeli writers have reported in the pages of Ms. on the continuing efforts of the Israeli feminist movement to combat discrimination and achieve a larger voice for women in the country’s political arena.

Of course, Spillar brought up none of this in her first statement. There it was all about “politics” and favoring one politcal party over another. Now the chains have been moved — advocacy groups must now make claims that meet Ms.’s standards of feminist infallibity. If she said that from the beginning, at least, her claims might now be credible.

Spillar’s literal reading of the ad is laughable, and a willful misreading of a “This is…” ["This is my country," "This is SportsCenter"] trope that Ms. itself has used. AJCongress pointed out that when Nancy Pelosi was elected Speaker of the House, Ms. featured Speaker Pelosi on its cover with the words “This is What a Speaker Looks Like.” Spillar responds:

[W]e did not claim [in the Pelosi cover] that “This is what the USA looks like.” Far from it, since women comprise only 17% of the Congress, ranking 65th in the world in women’s representation, and continue to face discrimination in every aspect of American society.

But if we were to apply Spillar’s exacting standards, the cover line was misleading because, in fact, a Speaker is hundreds of times more likely to look like an old white guy than a middle-aged, brunette woman.

Using Ms.’s all-or-nothing citeria, they might also reject the famous “This is your brain on drugs” ad, because in fact the brains of many drug addicts do not look like a pair of fried eggs.

Jewish World Review has reprinted my fuller take on the Ms. affair.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 10:48 am and is filed under JustASC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.