THE FEMINIST FROM PLAYBOY: JULIETTE FRETTE: MISS JUNE 2008
As you can imagine, the last issue of The Progressive Republican stirred up quite a controversy. “The Denial Continues: The GOP and Abortion” ruffled quite a few feathers. The article was reprinted in many other newspapers, including the California Congress of Republicans’ newsletter Grass Roots. Consequently, there was a lot of discussion about the article on blogs and in other parts of the internet. I must say controversy is fun.
So I thought it would be fun to stir up more controversy and talk about Feminism. And too make it even more controversial, I thought I would interview a Playboy Playmate about her views on Feminism. So here we go…..
SEXISM IN THE LAST PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
In the last presidential election, many feminists felt that the mainstream media bent over backwards avoiding reporting on or legitimizing any racist attacks on Barack Obama but reported and legitimized many sexist attacks on Hillary Clinton. Whether or not that is true, I do believe that Sarah Palin was subject to attacks that were blatantly sexist and completely unacceptable.
The most obvious sexist attack was the accusation from many corners that she had too many children to take care of to have time to do an effective job if she became President. Many male presidential candidates have had many children and never has such an attack been made against them. Yet I did not hear a peep of complaint from the feminist community about this sexist attack or any others. And there were many opportunities for feminists to come to her defense. While I did not agree with many of Ms. Palin’s positions, her treatment illustrated the hypocrisy of many feminists, for whom partisanship trumps principles. So in this issue I would like to address feminism and what feminism really means.
THE CALIFORNIA REPUBLICAN LEAGUE AND FEMINISM
The California Republican League (CRL) is a socially progressive organization. We support a woman’s right to choose, support equal rights for woman and, in general, support the feminist cause.
However, its current president (me) since his halcyon days in college has not considered himself a feminist. Truth be told, since college I have considered myself an enemy of the feminist cause. This may cause many to question my qualifications for holding the position of President of this venerable organization, but at least hear my case. When I entered college I considered myself sympathetic to feminism and feminists, but after going through the “Political Correct” meat grinder of a liberal arts institution, I came out the other end very much a skeptic of feminists and feminism.
FEMINISM AND AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING
My college, like many others during the mid 1980s, was going through a phase of shedding its white male-dominated curricula that it had used for over a century and was embracing a new curriculum that exposed students like myself to “alternative studies” courses. So instead of fulfilling my general education requirements by studying Plato, Locke, or Nietzsche, I found myself in a “woman studies” course.
It soon became apparent that the purpose of this class was to purge my “chauvinist programming” which had been indoctrinated in me since birth. Part of this reprogramming regime was to extricate the use of the words mankind, he, him and history from my vocabulary. But the most important goal of this class was to sweep away the smoke screen that had blinded me my whole life and get me to embrace an incontrovertible truth: every aspect of our modern western culture either directly or indirectly, aided and abetted in, the subjugation of and discrimination against the fairer sex.
I was taught only a complete overhaul of the entire system would enable us to purge our vile culture of its intrinsic chauvinism. Capitalism and Feminism could not coexist because Capitalism was a system created and engineered by white males to keep white males dominant. Therefore Capitalism needed to be replaced by a more “socialized” system that could insure gender equality. I was also taught that 95% of all sex was rape, and that fraternities (one of which I was a member at the time) were simply organizations designed with the exclusive purpose of raping and exploiting women.
I left college, and immediately entered a joint JD/MBA program, where much to my surprise my feminist reeducation continued. I had “feminist professors” who imbued their courses with this new progressive thinking, which was an amazing feat considering not one of the classes I took in law school or in business school had the term feminist, feminine, women – or even the term equal rights – in their title. I had a torts professor who taught us that the bonds created through female relationships were much stronger than any familial bonds and supported the idea that socialism was the only way to cure the inequality between men and women. I had a management professor in my MBA program that pretty much treated her class as a sexual harassment sensitivity training program. The main task of a business seemed to be gender sensitivity, rather than making some money.
After suffering through these classes my opinion still remained that the basic goals of feminism – i.e., of letting a woman have control over her own body (through the right to choose and through access to contraceptives) and to be treated equally under the law – were goals I should support. But as an avowed Capitalist, I treated any feminist who wanted to end Capitalism as the enemy, and any woman that wanted to institute affirmative action as the enemy.
Then there was the whole issue of the objectification of woman.
A FEMINIST PLAYMATE? YOU MUST BE JOKING.
Quite through chance, a friend of a friend turned out to be a recent Playboy Playmate. Not only is she a Playmate, but she considers herself a feminist. And not only is she a feminist, but she has the credentials to back it up. She graduated as a “woman’s studies” major from UCLA. So she had gone through the same indoctrination I had gone through in college, but unlike me, this indoctrination was repeated in many classes (in the double digits) and she wrote a thesis about feminism.
During my brief encounter with feminism, I had learned that Playboy was an evil institution created to further the exploitation of women through objectification, and its existence encouraged rape and the degradation of women. So here was the seeming paradox of a woman who had majored in feminism, considers herself a feminist, and at the same time supports Playboy as an institution. So it seemed to me she was the equivalent of an African American being part of the Aryan Nation.
I had the lucky opportunity to meet Ms. Frette to find out her view of this seeming paradox. She is not only a Playboy Playmate, but is a professional artist (yes, she has really sold some paintings) and is a paid writer who has written critiques and articles about other artists and their work. In other words, she is a published writer and professional painter by the age of twenty-four. (By way of comparison, at twenty-four I was still in graduate school honing my drinking skills and pickup lines.)
With Ms. Frette, not only was I able to confront my issues with feminism with an actual credentialed feminist, but I was able to confront a credentialed feminist who was being attacked by other feminists for being a traitor to the cause.
The first big issue we tackled was the Objectification of woman.
THE OBJECTIFICATION OF WOMEN
Objectification, according to Ms. Frette, was any time a woman was treated as a mere object as opposed to a thinking rational being. Obviously, women are objectified in Playboy, but then again they are also objectified by most of the great artists of the world. How many nude women are portrayed in famous works of art? These models were not chosen for their high IQs.
According to Ms. Frette, objectification is fine when women are being appreciated purely for their beauty and their feminine form. According to Ms. Frette there is nothing wrong with the appreciation of beauty. Therefore, objectification is fine as long as women are not being degraded while they are being objectified.
When posing for Playboy, Ms. Frette always felt she was treated with respect, and the work she was posing for celebrated the female form and beauty. At no time when working with playboy has she ever felt degraded. The kind of objectification she finds objectionable is objectification that is degrading, which Ms. Frette has certainly experienced. For example, when she was applying to be a host for a TV program and the producers discussed her physical shortcomings in front of her, it was degrading. They treated her as if she was not there, and that her feelings did not matter. This was degrading objectification.
So Ms. Frette felt that objectification, as long as it was respectful and celebrated beauty and the feminine form, was not degrading and therefore does not conflict with the feminist cause. However, if the woman who is the subject of the objectification is not treated with respect, and her body is not treated with respect, then Ms. Frette asserts that this sort of objectification is degrading and harmful to the feminist cause. Obviously there are a lot of feminists that disagree with her, but I found her reasoning compelling. She clearly had put in a lot of thought into the subject, and probably more thought than most of her feminist detractors.
SEX, CAPITALISM AND FEMINISM
Much to my relief, Ms. Frette did not consider ninety-five percent of all sex to be rape and did not consider all men to be the enemy of feminism. Ms. Frette does have a boyfriend that she is in a committed relationship with, and does not feel used or abused in that relationship. (I got the feeling from our conversation that her boyfriend is a Republican, which unfortunately she is not).
Also to my relief, Ms. Frette does not consider Capitalism to be in direct opposition to feminism, as she believes a well-working Capitalist system provides equal economic opportunity to all. Our system may not provide equal opportunity to men and women, as there is a wage gap and glass ceilings scattered throughout our system, but these problems do not exist because we have a Capitalist system. We just haven’t made our system as truly efficient as it could be. Our system, by not providing equal opportunities, is inefficient and has distorted markets because resources are not being utilized to their fullest extent. In many cases, the best person for the job is not getting that job (the glass ceiling) and in certain places less efficient producers are earning more than more efficient producers (the wage and salary gap). This is a distortion of Capitalism, not a natural consequence.
Therefore once feminists help cure these inefficiencies, it will improve the system for everyone. The problem is not Capitalism, just American Capitalism, which is a good system, but we can improve upon it. I certainly couldn’t argue with that position.
WOMEN IN COMBAT
One interesting conversation we had was about women in the military; specifically, should woman be allowed in combat roles where they might be potentially harmed or captured?
I have to admit that I am against woman serving in combat roles for three reasons. First, female casualties are especially hard on army morale (among the men). Second, it is hard for men to leave women casualties behind in a strategic retreat. Lastly, woman prisoners are more often subjected to sexual abuse and exploitation than their male counterparts.
Ms. Frette insisted that if a woman wants to fight for her country, the perspective of other people or the actions of the enemy should not deprive her of that right. Her position reminded me of the movie Glory where the African American soldiers were told that if they were captured by the Confederate Army, they would not be taken prisoner but would be immediately shot as “rebelling slaves.” The white officers that led these men were also told that if they were captured they would be treated as men inciting slave insurrection and would be immediately shot upon capture. However, most of the African Americans and their officers chose to remain and fight.
Ms. Frette pointed out that just because the enemy might abuse woman more, or men might have a problem fighting alongside woman, women should still have the right to fight for their country just as the African Americans did in the Civil War.
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
The last subject we discussed was a subject on which I was sure we would disagree: affirmative action. Of course I do not oppose the hiring of qualified women and minorities, but I do oppose preferences and quotas. I believe preferences and quotas based on race or sex are reverse discrimination and make our system inefficient. Surprisingly (at least to me), Ms. Frette’s views on the subject are as follows: “I support equal opportunity – affirmative action at best is an imperfect temporary solution to a long-term problem. The best person ultimately should get the job; however, I do not oppose aiming to hire more women in certain job categories if there are deficiencies. In other words, you can endeavor to find more female applicants to add to the field of applicants, as long as in the end, the most qualified person from the field of applicants is hired.” So it seems on that one subject we agree.
There were many more subjects we discussed that I just don’t have the space in this periodical to address. However, Ms. Frette did make me seriously reexamine my ideas about feminism, and hopefully this article did the same for you. If you are interested in further reading about Ms. Frette, you can visit her web page at www.juliettefrette.com. Her web page has clips of many of her writings and pictures of her artwork.
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