Thank you Caitlin Flanagan!

We have just yesterday received a current issue of the Atlantic Monthly magazine. Late into last night I have been reading Caitlin Flanagan's essay on the casual oral sex among teens and tweens .

My strong recommendation to every mother is to grab the magazin from a local library, or shell out for subscription, for this essay alone. Read -- and weep.

Ms. Flanagan's writing is of impeccable taste, and her quirky style makes me laugh every time I read her essays (although this one is no laughing matter). She is a frequent contributor to The Atlantic, writing primarily on women's issues.

I plugged her name into Google just now and was surprised to find out that she is viewed by some as an anti-feminist writer. On of her previous pieces titled Nanny Wars has rattled a lot of people, who blamed her for undermining women's right to work. I don't want to get into a discussion about feminism in this blog (just yet, anyway). I will only say that IMO Ms. Flanagan seems to understand that modern women live in a complex world where you are damned if you do and damned if you don't, and where any real help is hard to come by.

As someone pointed out on the Ms Magazine's website discussion: 'Caitlin Flanagan states the sad truth. It points directly to our ugly culture—not the shortcomings of women.' I think the above applies 100% to her conclusions in her new piece. Says Caitlin Flanagan:

"As a parent, I am horrified by the changes that have taken place in the common culture over the past thirty years. I believe that we are raising children in a kind of a post-apocalyptic landscape in which no forces beyond individual households -- individual mothers and fathers - are protecting children from porhography and violent entertainment. The "it takes a village" philosophy is a joke, because the village is now so polluted and so desolate of commonly held, child-appropriate moral values that my job as a mother is not to rely on village but to protect my children from it."

I couldn't help recalling a quote by Maria Arbatova, a contemporary Russian writer, and the foremost Russian feminist. Note though that in Russia the common understanding of what feminism is, differs somewhat from the Wikipedia definition. Work was never a issue to debate since Russian women always worked. However, if your husband does dishes once in a while, then you are a certified feminist. Go figure.

Anyways, in her book 'I am 40', Ms. Arbatova describes her life, full of absurdity imparted by the no longer existing Soviet system. When she talks about raising her sons, she says (in paraphrase),

"As a mother, I felt that my duty to my children was to fight the system that was out to hurt them."

These two women come from geographically opposite ends of the world, live in socially and politically very different cultures, and bear opposite labels of 'feminist' and an 'anti-feminist', respectively. Isn't it ironic then that they hold a very similar, if not identical, views when it comes to their children's well-being, and moral and physical safety?

Christiane Northrup in her book 'Women's bodies, women's wisdom' suggests replacing 'patriarhal culture' with 'addictive culture', when discussing women's issues. Feminism then can be redefined as any aspect of human life and endeavor that seeks to replace the addictive system of life and relationship with a wholesome one.

This new definition would help understand why women from different cultures and views on feminism agree on some very important issues. It would also show that many of those who talk about feminism don't truly have its spirit at heart. While those who profess to hate feminism sometimes are, deep down, the biggest feminists of them all.