Analysis Of No More Nice Girls By Ellen Willis

Nishka Maheshwary
Jackie Reitzes
Writing the Essay Section 50
28 April 2015
Exercise 5
Dear Adya, Recently, I have been reading a collection of essays by Ellen Willis that I have found to be quite intriguing. No More Nice Girls explores sex, gender, and feminism over a variety of essays, and displays a strong tension between how most feminists/activists believe action should be taken and what the author herself believes should be done regarding the issue. In each essay Willis confronts liberal and cultural feminism, and critiques the progress that has been made over time through her diction and witty questions, thus allowing the reader to see her true intentions of the argument. Willis strongly opposes the idea of cultural feminism, as she

Rather than stating the argument, Willis poses it as a question, “Are the fetuses the moral equivalent of born human beings?” (Abortion Debate 76), thus showing how modern feminists can only support one side of the argument in their chosen stance, and cause limitations by doing so. In doing so, Willis shows how to some “extent… we objectify our enemy and define the terms of our struggle as might makes right, the struggle misses its point” (Ministries of Fear 210), which implies that feminists have completely missed the point of the argument by getting caught up in an answer. Rather than looking for a compromise or gray area, they exert their stance as the only solution that woman can have. Willis also shows how feminists fundamentally “see the primary goal of feminism as freeing omen from the imposition of so called ‘male values’, and creating an alternative culture based on ‘female values’” (Radical Feminism 117) through her diction. By using phrases such as

She sets up the essay so that proving her opponents wrong, in this case other feminist, will strengthen her proposed solution. Willis “somehow always imagined feminism was about rebelling, not adapting” (Lust Horizons 8), which differs from the idea of traditional feminists. Unlike cultural feminism, Willis believes that the goal of feminism is to create a change that allows sexual orientation to become irrelevant; men and women are the same and considered equals. By using the words rebelling and adapting, Willis creates a tension in the sentence that implies that feminism will be an ongoing conflict of rebelling and adapting, indicating that perhaps a solution lies in a compromise between the two. Willis believes in rebelling while traditional feminists argue that adaptation is key, thus showing that a mix of both will allow Willis and the feminists to reach an agreement on the debate. Perhaps the form of rebellion will become acceptable because it is familiar. Although Willis is passionate about the reform that current feminists try to achieve, she believes that they way that the feminists go about in doing so is incorrect. Rather, she argues that, “the conviction that moral victories are the only ones that stick, that over the long haul social change happens, and political conflicts are resolved, only through transforming people’s consciousness” (Ministries of Fear 210), which