Letters to the Editor
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Comments?
DEAD. !@#$ing. ON.
When I took women's studies classes in college, the only writers I had any respect for were the 'lesbian women of color' type put forth by the white chicks to show thier solidarity, but little else, as they always danced around the primary issues they were raising.
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the 60's were nicer?
Do you recall the Civil Rights Movement? The murders of the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior, President John Kennedy, and Senator Robert Kennedy? The Watts Riot, Washington DC riots, Vietnam War, and protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention? Lack of equity for women in every arena you might choose to name? I may not have a personal memory of the 60's, but I can read.
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It's nice to see so many people talking about this head-on.
The oppression against minority groups, whether they be homosexuals, African-Americans, Native-American, women, or others, all occurred differently. You cannot measure them against one another.
Yes, yes, exactly. Women didn't get lynched, but it was all right for a husband to rape a wife for many, many years. Steinem's editorial continues the zero-sum bullshit that won't let anyone get ahead, and ignores that some of Obama and Edward's policies and rhetoric are more 'woman friendly' than Hillary's.
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Additional Irony
Throughout the entire period of social transformation and the advancement of liberal ideals during the 20th century, the various movements for social justice studied, informed, and fundamentally depended on one another.
It's a great irony of Steinem's article, and the mindset it represents — early suffragettes drew crucially on the ideas and tactics of the Abolitionists (who in turn were just appropriating them from the revolutionary patriots, who themselves fought against injustice and the disenfranchisement of white American men).
In turn, mid-20th-century civil rights leaders and second-wave feminists alike learned from their antecedents, as well as contemporary third world liberation movements.
And black power drew explicitly on second-wave feminist theory and the idea that the personal is political in its conception of Afrocentrism, black pride, and a roots-based movement.
... which went on to inspire other militant movements of liberation, including third-wave feminism — as well as political correctness, which for all its faults forever raised our consciousness (we hope) of the relationship between language and identity.
And so on, and so forth. This is what the kids mean when they say "there is no hierarchy of oppression." Attack the advancement of liberalism anywhere and you attack it everywhere. Defend it for one group and you defend it for everyone.
But by the same token, if you cut your own movement off from everything else as Steinem does, you're doing harm to everything you believe in.
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I think many of you make Steinem's point - there's denial of the caste system in seats of power
I love it when feminists just barely out of college or blogging from their homes claim that feminists' battles are won. This is particularly odd coming from women no where near competing for an executive position in a non-female owned space or competing for an executive position in their late forties, fifties, or sixties write that the battles of the 1960's are over. Just let the editors of Broadstreet compete for a senior editor or VP position that is not a woman's page at any major media outlet.
Steinem also made the point that women get more radical as they get older. Younger women don't face the same sexist at entry level at they do when they climb.
So...feminist concerns are over...meanwhile, Obama can quote King and other civil rights leaders of the 60's...
What would it be like if Obama used a feminist story of the sixties as an inspirational vignette?
While Clinton and Edwards have in their speeches reached out and stated that the civil rights leaders are to be admired and racism is still and issue -- you never really hear Obama specifically reaching for the feminist vote by admiring feminist leaders in his speeches. Clinton reaches to the black vote; Obama carts out his wife to appeal to the ladies and is careful not to get to feministy. Sorta like he voted "present" for Choice issues, rather than overtly taking a stand supporting Choice on a number of occasions. He carefully doesn't get into specifics or take controversal stands in support of the left, women, and labor.
If King were alive today and did not endorse Obama, would he quote him? Could it be that King would not endorse him? By the way, is it a given that King would support him over Clinton?
If Obama supports feminism, could Obama quote Steinem in his speeches from her inspirational work in the 60's and 70's and beyond? Or would that be better if she were not around to challenge the usage?
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Only a Severe Beating
beuchel asked: 'how many blacks were lynched for voting, and where? women could not vote in most of the u.s. when my mother was born (1917)-- black men could.'
IMO, 'Attempted Voting While Negro' was not a lynching offense. They just beat the shit out of you & sent you on your way.
Yes, it was so much easier being a black man in 1917 than being a white woman.
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Things we love.
I love it when feminists just barely out of college or blogging from their homes claim that feminists' battles are won.
I love it when anons talk out of their asses to belittle claims that no one here has made.
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Gloria Steinem Spoke The Truth
Just as internalized homophobia is a huge problem in the gay rights movement, internalized misogyny is a massive problem for women. Obviously.
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My opinion
"Back in the 1970s the number one concern of women was access to affordable childcare..."
No, back in the '60s and '70s the main concerns for feminists were equal access to education and employment, and equal pay for equal work. When I enrolled at Duke University in 1969 they admitted 300 women for the Women's College and 1200 men for Trinity College, their undergraduate liberal arts schools. Classified ads for employment in my hometown newspaper (well regarded and liberal) had only recently stopped listing jobs offered by sex (male/female) years after they stopped segregating them by race (white/colored.)
I've discussed this with my doctor, who is my age, black and a woman. She told me that as a girl and then a young woman she had often been discouraged from pursuing an education in medicine not because she was black, but because she was female-- and that she was discouraged by blacks as well as whites. She was told that she was going to marry someday, anyway, and that in the meantime she would be keeping some man out of medical school. In her experience, as well as mine, sexism always trumped racism.
Bee