FEMINISM FOR ALL
RE: One Day at a Time [Oct 28, in which columnist Ann Romano comments on the wage-equality issues being brought to attention in Hollywood].
DEAR MERCURY—Ann Romano has written in this week’s One Day at a Time about how Hollywood actresses are complaining about not being paid as much as their male counterparts in recent films. That’s a good point—they should be paid as much. However, this strikes me as just the sort of opportunist, self-centered, narrow-focus feminism I was just reading about in Bell Hooks’ Feminism Is for Everybody. Hooks writes about the way the early feminist movement tended to be co-opted by higher class white women who used it as a means to demand more equitable income for themselves in higher paid professions, while turning a deaf ear and a blind eye to the plight of women of color and poor women. I would respect these millionaire Hollywood actresses more if they showed their true commitment to feminism by making a public show of support for, say, the $15 an hour campaign for fast food workers, rather than merely using one plank of feminist movement to aggrandize and enrich themselves.
Reed Bellhooks
- MARY CONTRARY
TOO CLOSE TO HOME
RE: “No-Cause Evictions Affect Monster Population” [Halloween Issue Feature, Oct 28] a guide to the city’s housing situations for freshly relocated monsters, and “The City Promises More Affordable Housing Funds. Will It Follow Through?” [News, Oct 28].
DEAR MERCURY—I know you are doing your cutesy Halloween spoof article thing, and I will give it to you that it was mostly cute. Gotta draw the line at the no-cause eviction spoof, though…
Why do you think 15 an hour should be for fast food workers? Are you yourself in the power elite? Office employees don’t make that much. And people will be more sympathetic to people making less than 15 dollars in jobs that sometimes require degrees. How many low tier workers in Oregon are actually making more than 15 an hour?