Dominic,
In regard to this "once" that you argued with a young woman for several days about feminism, a couple of things strike me. First of all that you say "once" you remember arguing with a young woman. Only once? and how can that "once" be illustrative of anything but the narrowness of your experience? Isn't that the very criticism you placed upon the synthesizing imagination, that it sought out "illustrations" from reality? How much of an illustration can "once" be?
And also what I read in your argument is that this young woman, whatever her views on feminism, was insisting upon defining her own "condition" in her own terms. Rather than accepting the definition of that "condition" by a young man speaking about the "condition" of women in general. In that sense, it seems to me that she right to think your "dismay" at being born "as a girl child" as indicative of a dislike of women themselves, though again I wonder at the term "women themselves." But it doesn't seem very far from that ancient prayer said every morning in the synagogue, "Thank you God, for not having made me a woman."
Best,
Rebecca
Rebecca Seiferle
www.thedrunkenboat.com
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