"The Politics of Putting down other women"

I don’t mean to devote too much attention to what seems to be a minor quibble amongst celebrities, but I did see this article on Yahoo’s main page and found it kind of interesting. Basically the article is about how the artist Lorde dissed Selena Gomez’s song “Come and Get it” and said that she felt that it was regressive for feminism because it paints the picture of a woman who is at the disposal of a man, and whose soul goal is to please him. Gomez attacked back, stating that true feminism does not involve the putting-down of other women. While this is a minor incident, I think that it is exemplary of one of the most prominent divides in the feminist community “Can feminism be feminism when it is used to put down other women?” This is a sticky issue, but I would argue yes. I do not mean literature or publicity meant for the particular purpose of putting women down, but as I have learned through this course, women can often be the instruments of their own oppression. The rallying cry of feminism should not be “girls rule, boys drool.” This is what separates third-wave feminism from early versions of feminism; feminism is for everyone, and no one in particular. Feminism is not about supporting the specific actions of specific women, but rather about establishing a line between what is promoting equality and empowerment of the oppressed, and what is actually counter-productive.

http://www.mtv.com/news/1717083/selena-gomez-lorde-response/