The 9/11 backlash against women
Terror swept women back into the kitchen, argues Susan Faludi, and tore open the worst scar in American history. But it's Bruce Springsteen who makes the fear so real.
By Rebecca Traister
Read more: Books, Bruce Springsteen, Feminism, Susan Faludi, Books Features, Rebecca Traister
Oct. 3, 2007 | It may be pop culture heresy to rope together Susan Faludi's new book, "The Terror Dream," and Bruce Springsteen's new album, "Magic," both released this week. Faludi, author of 1991's "Backlash," is a diligent chronicler of the country's gender problems. Springsteen is a swaggering blue-collar cult hero whose critical thinking about American culture has made him an international rock star. Yet there is a neat perfection in the pairing of these two uniquely American storytellers, as if Mars and Venus had conveniently weighed in simultaneously, after six years of consideration, on what exactly has unfolded in this country, with which they are each so critically obsessed, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Springsteen, of course, has already made one contribution to the national artistic accounting of 9/11 with "The Rising," his 2002 album that Faludi might crankily write off (as she does movies like "United 93" and "World Trade Center") as a piece of art that "seemed to have no purpose but to repeat what we already knew." On it, Springsteen gave voice to those whose lives had been damaged by 9/11: a firefighter who died, one who survived, widows both American and Arab. Five years later, he and Faludi are on related missions: to step back from the firsthand experience of events and attempt to pick out the patterns in all that's gone down since.
Faludi is characteristically grim in her reading of the country's tea leaves; she is unsurprised to report that the cultural signifiers are, as always, oppressive. Springsteen's music has always been buoyed by American symbolism; he's never been shocked by its misuse, but on this record, his grief and anger over its twisted meanings are palpable. Both "The Terror Dream" and "Magic" employ images of surrealist dread to describe the post-9/11 manipulation -- by media and politicians -- that has left us warped and brainwashed, and both deploy terrifying visions to make their points. On the title track and throughout his record, Springsteen describes the creepy carnival tricksterism of the Bush administration and the sinuous ways it has distorted his vision of America, while Faludi sees a vast national conspiracy to put women back in the kitchen and alpha males like John Wayne (or perhaps Bruce Springsteen) back in their lost positions of power.
Before she can pursue the big picture, Faludi must start where everyone else in America did: her personal experience of Sept. 11. There is her prophetic dream on the night of Sept. 10, in which she is shot while on a plane, a bullet lodged in her throat; she wakes only to discover that the world is under attack. Before the end of the day she has received the phone call that provides her book with its foundation myth: A reporter asks for her reaction to the tragedies, crowing to Faludi, "Well, this sure pushes feminism off the map!"
Not 24 hours out, and Faludi has been handed the key to how this plot will unfold: To her mind, Sept. 11 will give the nation, uneasy with the strides made by women in the decades leading up to the attacks, an excuse to stuff them back into traditional boxes. That first gleeful caller is soon joined by others, all anxious to know how quickly women will abandon their corner offices and get back to tweaking their meatloaf recipes.
Apparently, Faludi has spent the past six years writing down the license plate number of every drive-by offense against gender parity, and the first two-thirds of "The Terror Dream" is her obsessive catalog -- a simply staggering one.
There are the media stories promoting a never-realized post-9/11 baby boom and the "return of the cowboy/superhero" trend pieces. Here are the fawning portrayals of the macho Bush administration (she's looking at you, Graydon Carter), the newscasters heralding the death of the "girly-man," the breezily patronizing "We're at War, Sweetheart" headlines.
You'd almost forgotten the feeling of impotence provoked by 9/11? Faludi hasn't. Here's her recounting of the people lined up at the blood banks with no one to give blood to, the police faking "live saves" to cheer up rescue dogs on the pile, because even the canines were depressed. There's the adoration of the firefighters and of the "Let's Roll!" male heroes of Flight 93 -- remembered always for their college sports achievements and their regular-guy toughness -- while the stewardesses who boiled water to throw on the terrorists were written out of the myth.
Just when you think there can't be more, Faludi concludes Chapter 3 by asking, "If women were ineligible for hero status, for what would they be celebrated?" Well, see Chapter 4: "Perfect Virgins of Grief." From here on out you'll find the victimization of Jessica Lynch, and the tale of how widows -- especially stay-at-home-mom widows, and especially widows who were pregnant -- became the golden geese of the morning shows. She recalls articles about how lonely all those haughty, self-satisfied single career women were now that we'd been attacked by terrorists and they had no one to snuggle up with at night; the Bush administration's phony interest in women's rights in the Middle East; makeup tips on how to look like a pale, pure angel; the decrease in female bylines; the nesting obsession.
All the most shoot-yourself-now memories of 2001 (and 2002 and 2003 and 2004 …) collected in one long slog through the jingoism and overreaching proclamations made by anyone with a voice box. Each chapter makes you want to bang your head against the wall harder in the hopes that you may lose consciousness and forget all this stuff again.
It's a complaint that has been lodged against Faludi before: that she's a cherry-picker, rounding up the juiciest anecdotes that suit her argument and leaving the rest to languish. On the other hand: What a bumper crop of cherries! Like the MensAction.com blog entry about how "the phallic symbol of America has been cut off ... and at its base was a large smoldering vagina, the true symbol of the American culture." Oh. My. God. How about Frank McCourt's turgid ode to firemen: "They man a hose that could be a wild animal ... They hack and smash and isolate and drown that other wild animal, the old god fire."
Faludi faithfully records the outrageous assaults against female critics like Susan Sontag, Arundhati Roy, Barbara Kingsolver and Katha Pollitt, who dared to consider America's role in the attacks or express ambivalence about the ensuing patriotism. "Pollitt, honey, it's time to take your brain to the dry cleaners," went one headline, while the New York Post's Rod Dreher expressed his wish to "walk barefoot on broken glass across the Brooklyn Bridge, up to that despicable woman's [Sontag's] apartment, grab her by the neck, [and] drag her down to ground zero."
She more than makes her point: 9/11 unleashed a torrent of pent-up rage against women and feminism. Kingsolver tells Faludi that while the accusations hurled at her and her peers were meant to be infantilizing and patronizing, "if we were so silly and moronic, why was it so important to bring us up and attack us again and again and again? The response was not the response you would expect toward a child. It was more like we were witches." Post-feminist women had become scary, and the fury directed at them was symptomatic not simply of relief at returning them to the domestic sphere, but of the fear that they might not be willingly contained.
This collection of media moments is an invaluable document. And yet. One can't help thinking that, as in an ugly fight between lovers, some of the things that were said in the heat of the moment -- about the goodness of Rudy Giuliani; about how the attacks were retribution against the pagans, abortionists, feminists and gays; about "the end of irony" -- are better left unpacked, because if we dredged them up again, we might never get past them.