FIGHTING THE BACKLASH:

The Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings coincided with another important revelation about women's experiences in the 1990s. Susan C. Faludi '81's national bestseller Backlash was published.

What has been called the Year of the Woman, because of the higher numbers of women running for Congress, is nearing a close, but Faludi says she will continue to pursue her inquiry into the reasons feminism has come under severe attack in recent years. In fact, she opposes the very term, saying it suggests women's progress is only temporary.

Backlash, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, deals with what Faludi calls the anti-feminist backlash against gains feminists have made over the past decade and a half. The backlash is out of proportion to the small gains women have made, according to Faludi, who cites the Republican Convention and the attacks on Hillary Clinton as recent examples.

In a recent interview with The Crimson, Faludi did not have much new to add to Backlash's primary arguments, because, she says, the intensity of the backlash remains unchanged. She still cuts out clippings of the latest attacks on feminism, and notes with frustration the absence of women's issues at the forefront of national debate.

Faludi, currently a Knight Fellow at Stanford University, has started research for a second book which deals with the topic of masculinity. Faludi will aim the as yet untitled new book, which is due for publication in two and a half years, at finding the roots of the counterattack identified in Backlash.

Q: Was there any particular experience which led you to write Backlash?

A: It had a lot to do with a male shortage study which appeared in Newsweek. I saw a lot of women I knew who went to Harvard sort of browbeaten for having made this terrible choice of seeking a diploma. Right after the Newsweek story came out I was at a wedding and it was "Topic A" at the wedding for all the single women.

I was actually approached to write a book on a guide to single women, how single women can muddle through and avail themselves of whatever opportunities there are. There was to be a chapter on the cities you can move to where the sex ratio is in your favor.

Q: What was your goal in writing the book?

A: I wanted to look at the new and increasing pressures and hostility toward independent women, which I actually first defined as being aimed at single women. [But I] quickly realized that they are seen as emblematic for modern, liberated, independent women in general.

I wanted to wake up other women. All these troubles we've been told are in our head are either mythical or the result of attacks on our rights, not feminist gains. The goal was educational and political.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: A book on masculinity. Backlash was sort of aimed at showing [that] there was this reaction. I'm looking at the more psychological aspect of where this reaction comes from.

In the demand for equal treatment and dignity, we keep thinking of the denials in equality as a female problem. It's really a man problem, a man question, not a woman question.

Q: How do you think the book will be received?

A: It's a much trickier book to write in that it inevitably will deal with the psychological issues which I'm less comfortable with than basic journalism.

Q: What kind of material will you be using? How will you collect it?

A: There will be some men who will be less than eager to talk to me. I'm already running across this with kind of humorous reactions, humorous and somewhat egotistical reactions [from] men who will make some comment in front of me and then say, `oh no, you're not going to put that in your second book.' I'm sitting here thinking: 'I wouldn't even think to write about you.' There's a fair amount of paranoia. It's also looking at the male culture within the traditionally male environment, where men feel the women are invading, like the army.

Q: Will you be looking at individual cases or general studies?

A: Individual cases are a part of it, but I'll also be looking at a lot of the research that's been done on masculinity--historical parallels in which masculinity has perceived itself as being in a crisis.

Q: What are you doing now, at Stanford?

A: Mostly what I'm doing is going to classes myself and preparing to do the historical research and consulting with feminist studies scholars.

Q: You criticize the media a lot. How do you reconcile yourself to being part of it?

A: Media goes through the sins of omission and commission, both by not reporting and by supporting the cliches about feminism. It presents the women involved in feminist causes as white upper-middle-class women with too much leisure on their hands, but fails to cover the grassroots movement, which is multi-cultural.

Q: What about being cited in Newsweek as a member of the cultural elite?

A: I mean, I don't think any of this is conscious. I've noticed the tendency to refer to Naomi Wolf, me and Gloria Steinem as the quote-unquote yuppie feminists. It's this phenomenon where two or three women are picked out as feminist spokespeople, are elevated and then trashed in hopes that 'well, we've attacked them, gotten them out of the way, so feminism itself can be discredited.'

[Media]'s turning feminism into a fashion trend, where feminism was `in' this year and women and politics are `in' this year. Saying it's part of a trend puts an expiration date on the movement, turns it into another consumer event.

Q: Will you go back into journalism?

A: I'll go back into it in some form. I don't know in what form, but it's more likely going to be through longer magazine pieces that relate to women's rights in one way or another.

Q: When do you think there'll be a woman in the White House?

A: There was a survey the other day where people were asked, 'Do you think we're likely to have a woman president by the year 2000?' And the majority of people said yes, which is encouraging. But a majority of them also said Jesus Christ would make his second coming [by then]. They seemed to think that it was slightly more likely there'd be a woman president.

You keep hearing 'America isn't ready for a woman president,' but what they're really saying is that men aren't ready. The party leaders and bosses aren't ready and aren't willing to take the chance of [supporting] a woman for a change.

Q: All of this doesn't sound very encouraging. Do you have any encouragement to a woman in college now?

A: I don't think it's a wonderful time. You're embarking into the real world and a period in which feminist questions are back on the table and the challenge is to keep them there.

Women have become more involved to speak up and blow the whistle. In another sense, it's a tricky and dangerous time, in that all this ferment over women's causes could be pushed out of public discourse by the media. We also have this economic situation which has the effect of making people more cautious.

Q: What was important in your life that somehow made you feel confident enough to combat the backlash?

A: Discovering journalism for me was very liberating because it allowed me to use the printed page in a way I was much more reluctant to do as an actual public speaker.

I think a lot of women have this experience of having two personae, the polite good girl who doesn't say much in class and the writing persona, which I think is the true one and which can be very opinionated and crusading. Writing is a way of speaking honestly without being interrupted.