A comment that should have been a post: the difference between the height of Women’s Lib and today
I’m in the habit of carrying on substantive conversations with people in the comment threads, so it sometimes happens that my Serious Opinions About Major Issues end up being expressed not in posts, but in off-hand comments. Which is fine, except that whenever people ask me stuff like “where did you say that thing about x?”, I can’t remember. It’s not in a post. It’s buried in some comment thread. So I’ve invented a comment rescue category, and whenever I run across (or someone points out to me) some comment that really should have been post, here’s where I’ll put it.
Yesterday Julia asked about what it was like during the Women’s Liberation Movement and how it was different from today. Here’s what I said:
*****
Julia, I became a feminist (an adolescent one) in 1971, when Women’s Liberation (as it was still called) was cresting. You know what it was like? It was like every single woman in the country was having an Ah Ha! moment, like HEY WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT? It was like the scales were falling from a million eyes.
The big question, though, which would take a long time to discuss, is why that happened THEN and not before and not since. Because what had always happened before — and what has always happened since — is that the scales-falling-from-eyes is instantly squashed by a million contradicting impulses and inputs, as I’m sure you’ve experienced yourself.
It’s not discrimination, it’s just nature and
no no you’re exaggerating and
ooh feminism is icky those women are scary and
you women belong with your menfolk (insert race or nationality) rather than ganging up with those other women, those other women (insert race or nationality) are our enemies and
what’s wrong with being sexy? and
why not learn to play the game and stop making a big deal? and
do you hate men or something? and
what are you complaining about, don’t you realize how good you have it? and
women don’t suffer nearly as much as (insert any other group) and
a better way would be to wait quietly and ask nicely instead of antagonizing men and on and on and fucking on.
So why didn’t that happen circa 1970? Zeitgeist. The pill plus the sexual revolution plus labor-saving devices multiplied by the Baby Boomer generation and then raised to the 10th power by a series of movements for human equality and justice beyond the traditional old tribal allegiances that usually keep women apart.
Will it ever happen again? I wonder.
*****
I’ve bolded the bit I want to expand on. We can’t re-create the social and historical conditions that gave wings to Second Wave feminism, but we can notice the extent to which women — most definitely including feminists — have subsided back into tribal and clique allegiances, rather than standing together as women.
Just today I was reading an essay questioning why on earth black women would support a white woman for President, even if Obama weren’t running. Yeah, it’s not as if black women and white women have anything in common.
That kind of anti-ecumenicism is perhaps the single most salient aspect of Third Wave feminism. To some extent it is a good thing, even a great thing: understanding that women’s experiences are different, that the black woman’s experience is different from the white woman’s, and from the Native American woman’s, and from the Iranian woman’s, and so forth. And the queer experience, that’s different too, and then there’s the poor woman’s experience, and the immigrant experience, and the disabled experience, and the fat experience, and all of it intersects in a zillion different ways: a Chinese menu of oppression and privilege.
All of which is extremely valuable and important. Give everyone a voice; let everyone tell her story. No shoehorning into a dominant narrative, no assuming that every woman’s experience is synonymous with that of the middle-class white women who spearheaded waves one and two and who themselves were the beneficiaries of several types of privilege built on the backs of less fortunate women.
What has been lost, though — and this is as plain as day to me, though it’s apparently bad manners to point it out — is the sense that we are all women and that we all suffer in particular ways as women. Feminism is supposed to be about combating the oppression of women qua women, and so for it to work we have to think beyond more immediate allegiances.
Look: women are not a natural group. There are no families of women, no tribes of women, no nations of women. Humans organize themselves around kinship and language and culture, and other types of alliances are inevitably weak in comparison. The Marxists discovered that a century ago, though they kept up the “workers of the world, unite!” self-delusion for decades more. German and French peasants in 1914 had vastly more in common with each other than with their parasitic overlords, but when war threatened all the German people — peasants and parasites together — voted happily to blow the fucking heads off all the French people. It was ever thus.
For all their differences — and women are as different from each other as men are — women all over the world share a set of common obstacles as women. And that will be true as long as patriarchy exists. But getting a bunch of humans to cross boundaries of culture and tribe and race and nation is hard. Way hard. I guess what disturbs me today is that almost nobody even seems to be trying. The Third Wave commitment to multiple feminisms seems to devolve all too often into the basest of human impulses, which is essentially fuck you, stranger.
And so we have the essayist who believes that black women and white women have no common cause. We have queer feminists who feel like they’re on a different planet than straight feminists. We have pro-porn feminists who seem to think that their worst enemies are anti-porn feminists. And don’t even get me started on the chasm between Western feminists and non-Western feminists.
Some people will tell you that it was like that even in the early 70s; that the ecumenicism of Women’s Lib was an illusion. That Women’s Liberation was just middle-class white girls and it only looked like universality because other women’s voices were silenced. In fact, I suspect that’s becoming the dominant narrative. Certainly it’s believed by a whole bunch of young feminists who weren’t even alive at the time.
All I can say is that in my experience it wasn’t like that at all. The feminist circles I was exposed to in the 70s were made up of women of all races and nationalities and backgrounds. What we talked about, what fascinated all of us, were the commonalities between us. A middle-class Jewish girl and a Lakota woman comparing notes. A privileged wife and a prostitute realizing that they were both fucking for their supper. Black women and white women talking urgently together about their menfolk, about the “race traitor” business and that whole godawful clusterfuck.
And through it all the realization that if women were ever going to be liberated, it would be because we’d done it ourselves, working together as women. That we couldn’t rely on any other justice movement to do it for us. Not humanism, not Marxism, not pacifism, not the civil rights movement — nothing. Because no matter how hard women worked or how much they threw their hearts into those other quests for liberation, at the end of the day it was mostly just the men who got free.
Yep, we knew all that then. And those days are gone. Gone, gone, gone. Gone, she said. Gone.
I have no idea how to bring them back. But I think we need to try. I think if feminism is going to have a fourth wave — if the dream of women as fully human is to survive into the permanent consciousness of the species instead of being embalmed as a quaint relic of the 20th century — then we’d better figure it out.
51 Responses to “A comment that should have been a post: the difference between the height of Women’s Lib and today”
-
therealuk says:
I was going to excerpt the bits I liked, and to note my agreement, but realised that it’s basically: “yes” to everything you said.
February 23rd, 2008 at 6:08 am EST -
Rebecca says:
Ditto — brilliantly said. I’m going to send the link to my feminist theory students!
-
Infidel says:
“…figure it out.”
THAT is a start. Will it require men to listen?
-
LadyVetinari says:
What has been lost, though — and this is as plain as day to me, though it’s apparently bad manners to point it out — is the sense that we are all women and that we all suffer in particular ways as women.
Wonderful–I completely agree.
What’s weird is that, in my experience, it’s usually young white Third Wavers who propagate this view that it’s bad manners to talk of oppression common to women. Furthermore, I’ve seen countless young white feminists assume that women of color are more likely to sympathize with the Third Wave than the Second Wave because the Second Wave is racist/imperialist/whatever and believes in the mythical notion of the universal woman while the Third Wave is aware of “intersectionality” and other such ideas. Frequently, I find myself and other women of color used as pawns in debates between young hip pro-porn Third Wavers and crotchety old Second Wavers with vaguely radical-feminist sympathies, with Third Wavers (usually) accusing the Second Wavers of sidelining us, ignoring us, etc. It’s like, there’ll be a debate about porn or some other tangentially related subject going on, and the Third Wave types will be like “you’re anti-sex and anti-fun and, oh, yeah, you’re RACIST and IMPERIALIST, too!”
Now, I’m in the right generation to be “Third Wave” and I’m of Iranian descent. And I don’t deny that quite a few white feminists have been racists. But I don’t see that Second Wavers are more likely to be so than Third Wavers. And I find myself far more likely to agree with, say, Catherine Mackinnon (depending on the subject) than with many of the third-wavers I find around the feminist blogosphere.
I guess the point of this long, rambling post is that I think the tribal division of feminism is very much implicated in generational fights and the desire of third-wavers to avoid the nasty image issues that second-wavers have. I think it’s also mixed up in the tendency among Western liberals to be more sensitive to race than gender–someone on another thread mentioned that she is more likely among her liberal friends to get sympathy for her racist experiences than her sexist ones, and I’m inclined to agree that this is a trend. Encouraging talk of the experiences unique to women of a particular ethnicity rather than women in general seems to go along with this disparity in sensitivity. (Though I don’t think the disparity exists outside liberal circles–the average white American is as racist as s/he is sexist, IMO).
-
Apostate says:
Absolutely agree. As a 25 year old with an Islamic background, a third-world passport and brown skin, I absolutely agree.
You’re a voice of reason in the feminist blogosphere.
Also, Violet, I think a lot of the whole women-of-color thing as a separator is a function of the blogosphere. I don’t see it reflected in my real-life feminist experience. I’m a board member at Planned Parenthood and I see women of all colors and backgrounds working together on concrete issues that affect women, without a thought to all this division that is supposed to exist.
Feminism has an image problem, but I’m not sure it has anything at all to do with race, honestly. I think it’s just everyone has internalized all the Republican/Christianist propaganda.
It’s very hard — because of American history — to ignore people when they bring up race as a major cause of a problem. You’re afraid of dismissing yet again, what you should have paid attention to. But I feel quite comfortable ignoring it, because it doesn’t reflect my thoughts and experience, nor do I see it happening (at ALL) in my real world experience with women of color.
-
Ann Bartow says:
I know a lot of younger feminists who experience and define feminism as a movement of women bound by their commonalities, across a host of other differences such as race, age, sexuality, etc. They are around! But they are not likely to be drawn to women whose “feminism” is a platform for blog wars or mean bullying. Nor are they likely to participate much at feminist blogs that have been colonized by “liberal” men.
Nor are they going to do anything but strenuously avoid women who obviously spend lots of time and money on their hair, clothes, make-up etc, to make themselves as attractive as possible to men and then pretend to be all affirming about “difference” and “accepting yourself for who you are.”
Feminism is not about being pretty or looking hot. It’s about knowing you have value as a person regardless of how you look, and valuing other women for who they are inside, and actions speak louder and far more truthfully than words in this regard. Anyone who mocks the bodies or hair or clothing choices of other women is being anti-feminist.
And feminists know that real power is power you hold yourself, not the advantages that may flow from who you are dating or who you marry. Some women work this out in their teens, others don’t “get it” until their 40s. They are all welcome additions to my feminism. And they are present in my life in reasonably high numbers. Which I know makes me very lucky.
-
Virginia Ray says:
And while all those leftist women were warning us about the horror of middle class white women and how they were really oppressing us ad nauseum; those middle class women were risking their hard won jobs to help us working and welfare women.
I remember an upper middle class women who drove to a bad part of town at 10 pm one night in 1971 because I had just got women’s liberation and needed to talk to someone. I remember middle class white women who had jobs as supervisors of govt programs that got me and my friends on programs that lifted us out of poverty and allowed us the ability to organize. I remember women reporters that made sure our events were covered and gave us the voice that did not always come naturally. I reached out to black women where I could and suffered their anger gladly so that we could help one another.
We reached across class and race lines as best we could, where we could. Just as white people had done during the civil rights movement. And that is the way movements happen as opposed to cliques.
People understand the oppression of other people and how it relates to their own oppression and believe that the rising of one, means all rise.
We used to say women are a caste more than they are divided by class or race. This was to teach our selves to do that reaching across lines drawn by men and our own ambition.
Yet we also believed it was good for sectors of the oppressed to meet together without “the other” in all black, all women or all lesbian groups so they could find their own voice and just experience a world of their own for wisdom’s sake, not as an end but as part of a healing process. To experience a world without the enemy or what is seen as the enemy so that the internalization of the enemy could be viewed and exorcised (not that it actually was exorcised).
It is important not to confuse that kind of movement with the cult of personality that is now being created around BO to defeat a woman of substance and record. I think big money has learned how to create the illusion of a popular movement. They started with the Harry and Louise anti Medical care ads and the marketing of the entertainment icons and they have reached perfection in the BO campaign. It is very likely we are going to get a pro nuclear industry, anti Israel, pro Arabist president from this mass marketing campaign. What will this mean for the rights of women, locally and globally?
One thing I am proud of as a feminist this time around. Real feminists blogs such as, RL here and E of Snakes and I blame the Patriarchy and Tenn Guerrilla Women and Men for Hillary, have exposed the misogyny and women hatred at work in this country with brilliant feminist analysis. If critical thinking can save us, we will prevail because of people such as these.
-
julia says:
I feel so grateful to be learning from all of you!
It seems to me as a white/jewish woman that white people are much more comfortable talking about racism than sexism. Which does not mean
they are willing to actually do anything about racism, or even confron their own internalized racism. But it must be less threatening than sexism, because it does not expose the way in which men abuse and use women every day, often for their leisure.One book that I love by Second Wave feminists is
‘Colonize This!’.I love the blogs, I am learning so much from reading everyone’s posts, but I need a group of feminist women to work with offline, as well. I often dream of a women’s forum and action group,
where we could do some study/discussion but mostly local political action. -
Amanda Marcotte says:
I think the people who exploit the differences between women are just a very vocal minority. My experience in the past few years as a member in the feminist blogging mini-revolution has been that it’s given me an opportunity to meet and befriend women across racial, class, sexual orientation, age, etc. in a way that wasn’t available to me before. It’s easy to focus on conflict, but if you think about the friendships made, the conversations had, I think feminism brings women together pretty well still.
-
Ann Bartow says:
Amanda, I admire your courage and certainly have enjoyed your writing, and you have always struck me as well intentioned and decent, even when I disagree with you. But your essay here wasn’t really intended to “bring women together,” was it?
-
julia says:
What are the issues most important to you today as a woman?
For me it is ending violence against women. I would love to know what it is like to walk at night and feel safe. To stay home at night and feel safe.
Ending poverty.
Ending job discrimination
Housing homeless women
And I am so sick of seeing the porn ads of women used to sell everything in local weekly newspapers and in almost all on line media.
On Father’s Day there was a very subtle black and white photo in the local weekly, of a naked woman with knives covering her crotch, their tips towards her. It was for a cooking utensil store. The caption said ‘What Dad Really Wants.
I had visions of getting ten women together for an emergency street theater protest in front of the store. We could paint blood and black eyes and bruises on ourselves and pass out fliers with statistics of the # of women men brutalize every hour. And carry knives. -
anna says:
I can’t stand all this talk about how “feminism is dead” when anti-feminism is always on the go. What about the Lily Ledbetter decision, what about the Partial Birth Abortion Ban, what about the Global Gag Rule, what about the fact that we still haven’t ratified ERA and CEDAW? Plus single-sex education based on gender stereotypes is becoming more popular and widespread, and we still have no national child care services. But people talk as though feminism folded up because it met all its goals, and now it’s just old-fashioned.
-
Maggie Jochild says:
I think you hint at the difference between then and now in your memory of how we talked across lines of difference: The key is that we were talking. In person. In small groups, usually some version of consciousness-raising groups. There’s nothing like a face-to-face conversation between WOMEN ONLY to clean the mucky scales off patriarchy.
Women’s space has disappeared. It existed before feminism, was understood to be valuable (for us, at least) even as men shied away from it, and feminism used that existing communion to introduce communication about other things. But the backlash has made women’s space impossible to set up or defend without being labeled anti-male or transphobic (funny how often those attacks get intertwined).
We don’t get to define our own reality any more because we have no clear air space in which to do just that.
-
Level Best says:
I’m 54, so I remember the 2nd wave very well. And I second Maggie Jochild in her observation that it is getting very difficult to find women’s spaces in real life; of course, her blog, and your blog, Heart’s blog, and a number of others are fine virtual women’s spaces in which women get to process experiences and develop strategies and ways for living in this sexist world.
Formerly, though, there were CR groups, women’s dances, women’s farms and communes, and so forth–in real life. You could go and see and talk with women about issues face to face. Now I don’t see announcements for meetings of women vis a vis conscious women very much at all. GOV has it right that the groups of women are aligning more along tribal lines, having segments of their lives, or preferences, that they elevate to essential identifications.
I like the concept of something The Portly Dyke wrote on Shakesville some time back: allies. Groups can be composed of allies and work together to bring about positive changes. It doesn’t mean that everyone who is an ally to you is someone you have to have lunch with or spend hours on the phone with, or count as a best friend. I wish women would work toward the concept of alliance. Hang out with whomever you wish, but be an ally to all women and fight injustice, cruelty, and deprivation of full human rights on the basis of sex!
-
Ann Bartow says:
If you don’t have enough women-only spaces in your life, build some. Start an all-woman book club, or a supper club, or a “Bunco” group. Or a walking club. Or a coffee and dessert club. It’s easier than you think. And so worth it. Just don’t talk about it in front of men, trust me on that one.
-
Ann Bartow says:
P.S. It’s easy to find great women who will want to join. I live in freakin’ South Carolina and have had no trouble finding members, as long as you are not some kind of bigot. Quite the opposite. My book club got so large, we spun off second and third editions. E-mail me if you want details or tips.
-
Ann Bartow says:
Oy, I need a proof reader. YOU will have no trouble finding members as long as YOU are not some kind of bigot. Let any interested woman join across age, race, religion, body size, etc. and you will have more members than you can seat in your house.
-
julia says:
I’ve been a part of women’s groups and have found companionship and support, but not feminists. I would love to start a feminist group, even if only one or two other women show up. It’s too hard being a feminist alone, and assuming that other women will be empathetic about sexism. Often they brush it off, don’t want to hear about it, change the subject.
That hurts as much as men who don’t believe me or get defensive. -
simply wondered says:
i can’t understand why it is such a big deal to some of us that women want time in the company only of other women feminists or not … what is the problem that we have to mock the concept?
sorry – you knew that already.
i know.
it’s just so stupid. arrrgh!i accidentally posted at heart’s place in ignorance (too stupid to read as usual…) that it was woman-only space. not even a quiet reproof. i bothered to read and realised – apologised and confined myself to reading. not a murmur. there is no threat here.
sorry – you knew that as well. -
Virginia Ray says:
“like the concept of something The Portly Dyke wrote on Shakesville some time back: allies…”
In the last years of the second wave, lesbian women insisted on calling them self and other women dykes which was a big turn off to me. I was out there saying women are not chicks, babes, foxes, girls, bitches etc, we are WOMEN and expect to be called women. Lesbians were insisting on calling women dykes and femmes and using that in whatever newspaper they became the majority of writers. Off Our Backs was particularly disappointing to me because I had used it a lot for national news.
It is hard to argue for the end of sex role stereotyping if one member of the coalition calls itself Portly Dykes. So much for feminist allies.
Soon “women’s space” became a code word for lesbian space and even 3 year old boys were excluded. I love womens space, led CR groups and was director of a woman’s center but there is no heaven on earth and women’s space was never an end goal for me. It was a neccessary transitional space in time. For some it was an end goal.
I still support born women only space at the Michigan Women’s Festival and in women’s rest rooms and in small groups organizing but with just a grain of salt. Now I know all lesbians are not feminists and all women’s space does not necessarily lead to liberation.
-
julia says:
Virginia Ray, I agree with you!
I hate being called ‘girl’.
I am 44.
Haven’t I graduated yet to womanhood?
How does it feel for men to be called ‘boy’?
I hate ‘you guys’.
I had to train myself not to say it.
I say ‘you all’ instead.
As Alice walker writes in her brilliant essay on the issue, how would men feel if we called them, in a group of men and woemn, ‘you girls’. I do not know one hetero man who wouldn’t complain or protest.
I also don’t say ‘actor’ I still say ‘actress’.
Since when do we have to masculinize everything?!
Until women become invisible? -
simply wondered says:
julia – actor actress? – my profession for 20 years and a really interesting call. many of the women i knew in the business preferred to be called actor because actress was held a diminution. actor to them was not a male term, it was a neutral term appropriated by/for maleness and they wished to have it made available for women as much as men. and at root it has no maleness – it is merely ‘one who acts’.
your wish to preserve actress (again as a term that carries pride in one’s identity) is a fascinating turnaround and the first time i have heard it. the same end by the opposite means. the death of the signifier?
-
Violet says:
many of the women i knew in the business preferred to be called actor because actress was held a diminution. actor to them was not a male term, it was a neutral term appropriated by/for maleness and they wished to have it made available for women as much as men. and at root it has no maleness – it is merely ‘one who acts’.
As a former circus performer myself, I just want to echo what Richard said. We preferred the term “actor” for everyone, though I admit that in everyday speech I and others often said “actress” because it’s just so much part of the language. But surely “actress” should go the way of “murderess” and “authoress.”
-
Virginia Ray says:
Yeah I have to agree – feminists in demanding that writers stop using man and he when writing about the human race, urged that the language move to pluraled pronouns and gender neutral nouns.
S/He they – actor, etc — tried to get away from distinguishing based on gender to help stop sex role stereotyping. Actress confines whereas actor broadens – whether or not that is reality is another issue.
Once again I recommend Mary Daley’s book GYNecology for treatment of this issue – start a feminist reading circle.
Violet – since you were a circus performer I have something you may like but not know about — Get Patty Griffin’s CD “Children running through” and listen to “Trapeze” Yes, my favorite song as I am the Lady of the Snakes.
“She started with us on the back of a horse. Just 17 and already divorced.”
-
Violet says:
Virginia Ray, I wasn’t really a circus performer. That’s how I refer to my life as an actor. Actually I believe circus work is more dignified.
-
Virginia Ray says:
I know this is a cliché but my father actually did run away to join the circus (to escape child abuse) – at least acting usually does not drag animals down and torture them, but I know what you mean and I am laughing.
-
lightly says:
Engels had a phrase, “the world historical defeat of women”. I think that was in a smaller, earlier work before Marx came out with Capital (the most unreadable book in the world, btw). So, I guess he and Marx were aware that women were oppressed. They just figured the situation was so bad that their economic insights wouldn’t be enough to fix OUR problems.
That defeat actually gets dramatic treatment in the Orestia Trilogy. Making that discovery sure turned an otherwise dull class in Comp Lit into something lively, at least for me.
Also, I’ve heard that when anthropolgists look at global cultures, male dominance isn’t even close to universal. I think it’s just that the cultures of the Big Three Daddy God Monotheisms are the biggest and most noisy.
Russell Means, an activist for American indigenous folk walked off of an NPR forum for discussion between representatives of minority groups. When he said he would advise his daughter NOT to marry outside of their tribe, the representatives from the Black, Latin and Asian groups went nuts and wouldn’t listen to him. He tried to explain that his tribe is a matriarcy, hence his hope that his daughter would marry within it. But the other folks in the group got so hysterical they wouldn’t listen to him.
I was around for those days of feminism before the backlash too. What I remember is that women everywhere started to be nice to each other. People now may talk about how the feminisms of various subgroups of women were repressed, but I call bullshit on that. How are we better off today now that women have gone back to treating each other like shit?
-
larkspur says:
Happy birthday to me. I just turned 56 and I remember the Second Wave, too, although certainly experiencing it in the U.S. Mid-West was different than on either coast.
Scales fell, no doubt about it. It was essential and often exhilarating. I’ve been a feminist ever since then; I’ll always be a feminist.
But you shouldn’t come to me for stories about the sense of solidarity or euphoria, because I remember too much that’s painful. A lot of the pain arose from the collision with leftist politics, the anti-war movement, racial civil rights, including the Black Panthers. And as always, class issues were ever-present.
I don’t miss the CR groups that either morphed into Maoist-style criticism (“trashing”), or stubbornly avoided acknowledging any conflict within the group. While I supported women-only space, I sure don’t miss the accusations of being “male-identified” if you, say, wanted to read something by a guy. I really wish we could have fought better. The groups I moved in could have really benefited from some screaming fights. We might have had an easier time crafting a feminist concept of teamwork and competition.
Nobody always agrees with everyone else. And it’s insane and counter-productive to say stuff like, “OMG, you are so fucking stupid if you believe that”. But many times we didn’t even allow ourselves to say stuff like, “I think your idea could prove to be disastrous, and here’s why….” You couldn’t trash a sister like that.
I don’t mean to be a buzzkill. My experiences are my own. I just want to encourage y’all to be kind, but always tell the truth. Especially to the people most important to you.
-
Virginia Ray says:
Larkspur,
No No you are not a buzz kill – you speak the truth – we trashed each other as well as helped one another — but those also were important lessons as painful as it was.
It is because of what you say that the movement ended. It became pointless to keep fighting when the battles became all internal.
However, we are going to have to join together again and those lessons will be important. Now I know what to say to leftist women who try to use class blaming to stop the work and take over groups. I also know that process is not very important and I am not going to argue over it. You either do the work or go home. I do not want to hear why you think Sally is oppressive, or hurts peoples feelings or is male identified. Criticizing other women’s styles was overdone. Vote with your feet not your mouth.
You know what would really be excellent is a forum on what we learned from that 2 wave organizing experience – what we would do differently today.
I tell you the Obama presidency is going to be a nightmare. The ugliest of Arabist and Muslim men will be his advisers and women will be oppressed in ways that we will not even be able to understand. It will not be the right which we understand but the left which most women view misguidedly as an allies. And this is coming.
It would be good to be prepared with the lessons learned from the pain of the mistakes we made in our organizing before. How can you say value unity over correctness to a person who has not lived through the sisterhood wars? How can you say, if you don’t like what is happening, you don’t kill the leader, you start your own group and see what you can do. You do not try to steal resources other women have gathered by leadership coups. Yet, you cannot let your volunteer time be exploited for the gain of a few instead of institutional change for all.
Hillary wanted to open a public service school for organizers. That will not be our place now. We need to share our lessons.
-
julia says:
About the word actor: I’ve never been in theater, I don’t know the meaning of it like those of you who have. My point is that it used to define men and now means men and women. We are using so many words that used to be for men for women as well.
And it is not an insult to us, but if do the opposite – use a feminine word to define a man -hold on tight, here comes the tidal wave!
‘Tennis player’, for example, is gender neutral.
‘You all’ is gender neutral.
Gender neutral, to me, is a word that does not mean male or female.
‘Mankind’ does not include me.
It’s time to invent new words and start using them, so that we all feel included.Go read Alice Walker’s essay on ‘You Guys’. It’s from her book of essays ‘In Search of our Mother’s Gardens’ and is delightful.
The other day I went to Rebecca Walker’s blog and the first sentence was “Hi Guys”.
What’s a mother to do?! -
julia says:
One more thing: I can not stand ‘they’re pregnant’.
They are not pregnant – she is pregnant.
That’s one thing they can not take away from us.
Makes me feel like telling him, “you stay home and have cramps, honey; I’m going hiking!”. -
simply wondered says:
julia
‘they’re pregnant’ – i don’t think i hear that in the uk. which is just as well because it would make me want to puke in so many ways. where exactly did i put my womb again?whichever way people want to reclaim their language, i am just glad they are doing it and i applaud their – and your – efforts. the myth of the neutrality of language should be history.
i love the orestaia – the way a society makes itself identifiably male and equates that with civilisation!!! them cheeky greeks – alienating all but the voting, free, male athenian elite and representing themsleves as the only humanity. all those scary female spirits causing death and destruction sanitised by a man (and a goddess of course – even they can’t deny the female entirely).
and it all begins with the common man (MAN):
‘a beacon gleaming in the misty dark … a dog on the palace roof; the house of the sons of atreus’ -
therealuk says:
I tell you the Obama presidency is going to be a nightmare. The ugliest of Arabist and Muslim men will be his advisers
Arabist and Muslim – wtf ?
I’d expect that the same ugly “Christians” and other nominally whatever (men) that are pulling his strings now will continue to be his puppet masters once he wins.
-
Violet says:
I second the wtf? on the Arabist/Muslim thing. That’s just a right-wing rumor with no basis in fact.
-
Virginia Ray says:
I left this on the Tina Fay post by mistake – if Violet could go over there and delete it I would appreciate it. VR
________________________________________No, except for the fact that ugly Christians will also be there, you are wrong – the media and the Obama campaign have carefully magnified the accusation of him “belonging” to the Muslim religion to obscure his substantive ties with the Arabist of the male left and their ladies auxiliary.
The cry of bigotry masks the left politics which shape his middle east position. Those positions are close to President Carter’s. Obama has adopted the Palestine /Hamas /Hezbollah political positions of the male left. Soros and move on dot org hold similar positions and they fund his campaign. Obama sees the Palestinian as victims of the invading and occupying Jews. Pretty much the way Obama see the US in Iraq. This is what is behind Obama’s peace platform and his immediate withdrawal regardless of what happens to the Muslims who have helped us. He has no sympathy for Muslims who help the US.
“As reported in the New York Sun,:
http://www.nysun.com/article/71373, Mr. Obama has chosen Zbigniew Brzezenski to advise him on Mideast policy,” sending this anti-Israel, anti-Semite, and in the words of one of my listmembers,
“this dinosaur resuscitated from the Jimmy Carter administration, a man who spent over 30 years attacking Israel, an Arabist who recently signed a letter demanding that Israel negotiate with the terrorist group Hamas, and a defender of the notorious Walt-Mearsheimer ideology that Israel and Jews have too much influence on American foreign policy against the interests of the U.S. ”
Obama is sending him to Syria!?”His top career sponsors include Goldman Sachs, Exelon (a leading Midwestern utility and the world’s leading nuclear plant operator), Soros Fund Management, J.P Morgan Chase & Co., a number of leading corporate law and lobbying firms (including Kirkland & Ellis, Skadden Arps, and Sidley Austin LLP), top Chicago investment interests (including Henry Crown & Co and Aerial Capital Management) and the like (Center for Responsive Politics 2007a).
Obama, funded by Illinois Nuclear power industry Exelon, supports the nuclear power industry by weakening bills to regulate them. BO will see middle east attempts to develop nuclear power as reasonable.Obama has homophobic Baptists in his entourage and on the stage with him. These are his ugly Christians. While loudly proclaiming BO’s Christianity they obscure the fact that BO’s mentor and church’s pastor has close ties to the anti semitic black Muslims and has himself called the Jews “gutter people”. Obama belongs to a church whose minister calls Jews “gutter people”.
[www.youtube.com/watch?v=Prhnc2fx…]
[www.youtube.com/watch?v=38I55mZu…]
Obama was absent for most controversial votes which later he uses to tell how he would have voted IF he had been there. He said one wrong vote and he was therein after trapped. Go tell it to Dennis Kucinich
http://www.zmag.org/content/sh.....emID=12687Go here and ask who is behind the veil.
http://obamamessiah.blogspot.com/Last week after the Jewish community began to stop contributing, Obama’s campaign is stating they are not REALLY using Zbigniew Brzezenski to advise Obama on Mideast policy. And as usual after one question, the media immediately dropped the subject without asking if Obama had met with Brzezenski, or talked with him about Syria. The media made no attempt to get the reporter from NY Sun who did the original article to comment on Obama’s denials.
Oh and by the way, Obama said yesterday that he does not support the right of return regardless of what Ralph Nader thinks. Nader said he was at a fund-raiser BO did for the Palestinian cause and said BO used to be for the right of return .
And did his pastor call the Jews gutter people – Really? He must have not been paying attention. Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement came out of left field – Obama has no idea why. Why would Nader say he supported the Palestinians – no more than is reasonable – really.
To point out it is actually Obama who will say anything to get elected, not Hillary who is NOT denying her past or her record, falls on deaf ears.
Obama is NOT Martin Luther King whose social change work gave an authenticity to his words that was genuinely powerful. No matter how many times BO states that he was an organizer,there are no achievements for the poor that came from it.
Women’s legitimate fears related to his acceptance of misogynist Muslim culture are being labeled racist by the Obama campaign who also tainted innocent remarks by the Clintons.
In general women are being silenced and ridiculed by Obama bullies everywhere.
http://www.politico.com/news/s...../8762.html
http://riverdaughter.wordpress.....-in-exile/
-
Violet says:
Obama belongs to a church whose minister calls Jews “gutter people”.
No. It’s Louis Farrakhan who has referred to Judaism as a “gutter religion.” Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is a friend and admirer of Farrakhan’s, but Obama has explicitly denounced Farrakhan’s views.
As for Obama’s Middle East views, basically you’re saying he’s on the same page as Jimmy Carter. And it’s fine to disagree with that position. But it’s a stretch from Jimmy Carter-style policy to “acceptance of misogynist Muslim culture.”
-
Virginia Ray says:
No violet -it was both of them – I forget where I heard the news but I will find it and be back – I think it is on one of the video links.
I have watched the boys on the left for 30 years support the Palestinians including Fatah,Hamas and Hezbollah and never once make any reference to how women are treated in that culture. Not one word -ever. You call it what you want – I call it misogyny.
-
Virginia Ray says:
Still havent found the quote but here is what I mean about the guys in his inner circle.
Farrakhan?
Ed Lasky
The New York Sun is reporting that Barack Obama repudiated the views of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan that were discussed in Richard Cohen’s Washington Post column.Cohen’s criticism regarding Obama’s ties to the Church and the Pastor that gave an award to Farrakhan were reaching a large audience that included potential Democrat voters who might be swayed to withdraw support from Obama. This statement by Obama is a political maneuver that should be given little credence.
Obama is very actively involved in his church; he knew of this award long before Richard Cohen publicized its grant to Farrakhan. Furthermore, Pastor Wright has had a long relationship and alliance with Louis Farrakhan. Obama did not object to these ties between Pastor Wright and Farrakhan before; nor has Obama rejected the anti-Israel diatribes of Wright.
Regardless, Obama adheres to a church and a minister that have long espoused positions inimical to the American-Israel relationship, let alone the trumpeting of black values and racial exclusiveness.
This follows a pattern for Obama: he shows extreme loyalty to a church and pastor whose controversial views eventually become publicized. Then Obama “disappears” the Minister and Obama’s campaign (not Obama himself) issues a statement that Obama does not agree with everything that Wright espouses.
He solicits and gains support from the controversial George Soros, a man whose anti-Israel passions and allegations regarding America’s Jewish community and Congress are well-known. When these ties become publicized, Obama’s campaign (not Obama himself) issues a statement that Obama does not agree with Soros on this topic.
When Obama articulates anti-Israel positions in off-the cuff remarks, his campaign (not Obama himself-stop me if you have heard this before) issues clarifications that attempt to explain away the plain English import of Obama’s (the supreme orator) expressed views. In other words, Obama only disavows when it is politically opportune to do so.
He seems to have never objected to these views before they become publicized and create a political firestorm because they belie his image of peace, compassion, unity. Obama is not a profile in courage and his disavowals are political pabulum.
http://www.americanthinker.com.....akhan.html
Barack Obama and IsraelBy Ed Lasky Here are some excerpts
consistent theme running throughout Barack Obama’s career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are anti-Israel advocates. This ease around Israel animus has taken various forms. As Obama has continued his political ascent, he has moved up the prestige scale in terms of his associates.
Early on in his career he chose a church headed by a former Black Muslim who is a harsh anti-Israel advocate and who may be seen as tinged with anti-Semitism. This church is a member of a denomination whose governing body has taken a series of anti-Israel actions.
As his political fortunes and ambition climbed, he found support from George Soros, multibillionaire promoter of groups that have been consistently harsh and biased critics of the American-Israel relationship.
There are literally hundreds of churches on the South Side of Chicago that Obama could have chosen from. He selected one that was headed by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Junior.
The anti-Israel rants of this minister have been well chronicled. Among the gems: The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for almost 40 years now. It took a divestment campaign to wake the business community up concerning the South Africa issue. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community up and to wake Americans up concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism
Pastor Wright is a supporter of Louis Farrakhan (who called Judaism a “gutter religion” and depicted Jews as “bloodsuckers”) and traveled with him to visit Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi, archenemy of Israel’s and a terror supporter.
Read the rest of this article here: http://www.americanthinker.com.....srael.html
-
Virginia Ray says:
Well I can’t find it and so i have to say you are right about Wright not actually calling Jews gutter people – but he has said every other code phrase for that sentiment – I am glad you made me look for it though because I have to withdraw this statement on one other blog also.
-
Violet says:
Let’s drop this subject on this thread, since it’s so far off the topic of the post.
We can revisit it some other time, but Virginia — Ed Lasky? American Thinker? Those people are extreme wingnuts, part of the Republican noise machine. Not a reliable source of information about any Democrat.
They’re also misogynistic as hell.
-
julia says:
Back on topic. I am having a very hard time buying a used car alone, without a man. What I mean is that the men who are selling cars are uncomfortable that I know something about cars, look over everything carefully, want to see maintenance records, ask questions about the car, know how to check the transmission fluid.
I wish I could rent a stand-in man; I’d probably have a vehicle by now. But I shouldn’t have to. Cars are still male territory, and when a woman enters, it’s a threat. And I have to say that a few months ago I knew nothing about cars, but I have been researching, reading, asking people who do know, and test driving. And when it’s time to make an offer, it seems like they won’t volley with me, either, the way two equals would, until you get to an agreement (or not).
If there’s a good deal to be had, and it’s btwn me and another man, I think it goes to the man.
This may be a little too personal for this post, but this is sexism in my life right now. -
Violet says:
Can you find a saleswoman instead?
When I bought my car I went to a dealership with a saleswoman. It was great, no hassle, straight up.
-
julia says:
I can’t afford to go to a dealer. I’m trying to buy from a private owner, and have seen some women’s cars, but they (the cars) needed too much work. The other challenge of buying from a woman is that it’s usually her boyfriend or husband who calls the shots.
So there’s still a man in the middle, and I am on the low end of the see-saw. It also doesn’t help that Portland has become a very high-priced, seller’s market for small foreign cars, even cars that are quite old, like toyotas, hondas and subarus.
But thanks for the suggestion. -
julia says:
More thoughts on feminism:
To be truly feminist, if you are heterosexual, you have to be willing to put your beliefs and values before any relationship.
It is so easy to slip into sexist ways in a relationship with a man; I find myself doing it all of the time; giving up too much of myself, too much of my space, even the space in my own mind. At the moment I feel very clear as a feminist, and part of this clarity is because I am alone. I have close male friends, but I don’t have to share intimate and psychic space with them like I would with a lover.
Another thing I’m thinking about is that although my three older sisters were the perfect age to be
a part of the Movement, none of them chose to. They were hippies, lived on communes, but didn’t talk much about feminism, and sometimes I’m shocked at how sexist their attitudes are. I was in elementary school at the height of the Movement, so I couldn’t go to groups and rallies, yet I have been a feminist for as long as I can remember. Ever since I saw how unfairly girls were treated, and how much freedom boys had.
People used to tell me I wanted to be a boy.
I did not want to be a boy – I wanted to be a girl
with freedom. -
Kali says:
Julia, did you try carsdirect.com? They have used cars too.
-
cgeye says:
I think big money has learned how to create the illusion of a popular movement. They started with the Harry and Louise anti Medical care ads and the marketing of the entertainment icons and they have reached perfection in the BO campaign.
This is the history of the Public Relations movement in big business, and it might have reached its apotheosis here. Why not have a campaign without those pesky people to create an accountable groundswell?
As long as journalists believe that their only career security lies in being nice to PR flacks, who might help in getting them a job with a nice corporation when the inevitable network or newspaper downsizing happens again, then we’ll never see a free press again — and business will have nothing to worry about in shoving the next series of fatal lies down our throats. Including the news that there’s no longer a need for feminism, since our creditor states think it’s icky.
-
Steven Mather says:
Dear Dr. Socks,
Thank you the enjoyable post. I distill these thoughts from your work and my research.
To focus on the essential, unknowable distinctness of each human life is to lose sight of the possibility of communion through empathy.
Our similarities are the grounds upon which we celebrate our differences.
Yours,
Steven. -
donna darko says:
Just today I was reading an essay questioning why on earth black women would support a white woman for President, even if Obama weren’t running. Yeah, it’s not as if black women and white women have anything in common. That kind of anti-ecumenicism is perhaps the single most salient aspect of Third Wave feminism.
These kinds of blog posts are why Clinton was pushed out and why Obama was nominated. He is unelectable and will lose. I blame patriarchy and the Third Wave.
-
Hedgepig says:
I’m starting a new movement: Old Post Revivalism.
This one’s nearly a year old, and it’s fabulous. Great comment thread too. -
Jamie W. says:
This is a brilliant analysis — of course, it represents a lifetime of observation! but I think you overlooked one thing.
Though women do not fall into a natural “tribe”, we have been treated throughout history as if we did. We have always been something of the “other”, the mysterious. Men’s fears of women have often been revealed in myth and story: Lysistrata and the world-wide Amazon myths come to mind, but I’m sure there’s much more than that. Knowing how women fight between themselves over nothing or men or, well, nothing, I’ve always been mystified by that tendency — yet there it is. And interestingly, men have frequently been surprised when I’ve expressed less-than-cohesive attitudes toward other women — as if they expect us to see one another exactly the same way they do!
(The fact that we give birth to men and raise them, I think, prevents us from seeing men in the same way. Hard to look at something as mysterious when you’ve changed its diapers.)
That fact alone — the difference in how men and women perceive women’s cohesion — may have cost us more than we ever realized.
-
Lexia says:
But how were men able to form bonds with each other so strong as to keep all women down, as they have.
If women aren’t a natural group, why are men? If it’s fear, as Jamie W. suggests, women have men’s real acts to fear, not some projection, so this should have been as effective. Why have men been able to form bonds with each other so strong women have nowhere to go?
