The Element of Surprise

     For the Enloe reading, I was at first a bit disappointed. In reference to chapter one she initially discussed her hatred of predicting the future, and then in response to some people asking her to discuss the future of feminism in the 21st century, she simply said "surprise". I was disappointed because at first I almost thought she was being lazy. She had just said she didn't like predictions and so of course she got the predictions out of the way by saying that we should just prepare for an element of surprise. I thought that it was just an easy answer in response to question she wasn't too keen about.
     However, as the chapter progressed I began to understand what she meant by the element of surprise. While on the one hand it means the obvious. A don't try to predict the future, events that you would never expect to happen do happen sort of surprise. This was demonstrated by various events that Enloe did not think would happen such as the rise of the Kosovo Liberation Army or the Columbine high school massacre. However what Enloe also wanted surprise to mean was that all feminists must be aware that the surprise events that do happen may not fit into their ideologies or thoughts about the current world in a feminist mindset. I found this to be particularly interesting. She says that while you could probably interpret every event that happens into your own views on patriarchy, gender roles or any aspect of feminism, maybe you shouldn't. Feminists should be open to the idea that as time progresses and more events occur, they might need to change the way they think and interpret things. They need to take the courage to stop and say, maybe that doesn't fit into what I had thought about this topic, and maybe I should think and adjust myself so that how I interpret feminism fits to the time and present age I am in.
     I really think that this would be a good idea because then we will hopefully not be faced with as many outdated feminists and feminists pieces which try to relate new current issues into historical molds. It reminded me too of the Gaga Feminism chapters we had to read for Tuesday. Halberstam at the start of her book was discussing how there was an annoying outdated feminist, Faludi, at the conference who was interpreting current issues into old models. Because she was using these out-of-date definitions and ideas, she left out a lot of women who were essential to the current issue at hand, for example all races except for white.