Yes, I've done it too - let my perception of "chick flicks" and "chick lit" be faintly colored with disdain. I plead guilty, sistahs, and abjectly beg your pardon. It took this post and then this article for me to realize how the condescension was as oppressive as "universal" feminism snootering black, lesbian, third world women.
Genrization is necessary and inevitable in this age of information & sales. But genres can oppress, and we must, as thinking people, deploy them only after some thought, some questioning.
Fine. Go ahead and snooter works that do not qualify as "great" art, "great" literature. But be aware of that unconscious snigger - it's popular among women, ha! ha!
Equating women with frippery, with the laughable, pinchable, ignorable - they're not central, not "us", so what if they're half of the entire?
Here's the avowal - I'm a feminist. In all its broad, queer, non-postfeminist glory. Thanks, Ratna, for teaching me what can lie beyond the limiting definitions of feminism.
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