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Some of these
distinctions are complex and difficult to explain in a
brief description, but I'll give it a try. Many people
think of feminism as a monolithic movement, but in the
past 15 or 20 years, feminist scholars have thought in
terms of feminisms, because there are so many strains
within the ideology.
First-wave feminism
(or suffragism) refers to the movement that emerged in
the 19th and early 20th century, with women such as
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who were
concerned primarily with the enfranchisement of women.
This movement culminated in 1920 with the passage of the
19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Now,
the reason why we should think in terms of the plural
"feminisms" is that Black women launched a feminist
movement much earlier, a movement that was closely tied
to the abolitionist movement and, later, the temperance
movement.
Its earliest
proponent was Maria W. Stewart, a domestic worker, who
called, in the 1830s, upon "Daughters of Africa [to]
awake! arise! distinguish yourselves." Other important
voices that emerged are those of Sojourner Truth,
Frances Harper, and Ida B. Wells. Initially, Black women
worked with White women on common issues, but, once
Black men were enfranchised, White women severed their
ties with women of color in order to attract Southern
White women to their cause.
Second-wave
feminism emerged—significantly on the heels of the Civil
Rights Movement—in the late 1960s and 1970s, and it is
associated with such women as Betty Friedan, Gloria
Steinham, Shirley Chisolm, Barbara Jordan, Eleanor
Holmes Norton; landmarks such as The Feminine
Mystique, Roe v Wade in 1972, MS Magazine,
Report on the Status of Woman, and the National
Organization of Women; and issues such as reproductive
rights, equal pay for equal work, legal rights of women,
and consciousness-raising about rape, incest, and
violence against women.
I intentionally
included such Black women as Chisolm, Jordan, and
Norton, who were very active, initially, in the Feminist
Movement. The publication of Toni Cade Bambara's
anthology The Black Woman in 1972, however,
articulated the concern of many Black feminists that
the Feminist Movement was not inclusive, that it
reflected the views and concerns of middle-class White
women and did not deal with the intersection of gender
with race, class, and sexual orientation.
Besides Bambara's
book, other landmarks of the Black Feminist Movement
were Sturdy Black Bridges, which included the
voices of Caribbean & African women, All the Women
Are White . . . But Some of Us Are Brave," the first
Black feminist manifesto, and the Combabee River
Collective, which included the voices of Black Lesbians.
Women of color such
as Barbara Smith, Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moraga, bell
hooks, and Carol Boyce Davies actually laid the
foundation for third-wave feminism in the late 1980s.
The term was first used by Rebecca Walker (Alice's
daughter) in an article that she published in 1992,
after the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearing. Walker and
other young activists, some of whom did not use the term
"feminist" to describe themselves, maintained that
second-wave feminism basically essentialized women; in
other words, posited a biological determinism that
limited the concept of "gender." (The same argument was
used by Skip Gates and other post-structuralists with
regard to the concept of "race.")
These young women,
like the 1980s women of color, were more concerned with
the intersection of gender, race, class, and sexual
orientation; they believed that the earlier movement had
become too academic and too theoretical, that it did not
deal with the day-to-day issues of poor and
working-class women, of Lesbians and transgendered
women, and of ethnic groups (Latinas, Natives, and
Asian-Americans, for example). They were very critical
of the elitist and anti-male image that was, fairly or
unfairly, associated with earlier feminists.
Gloria represents second-wave (Old
Guard) feminism, while Melissa reflects the views of
third-wave feminists.
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Responses
Other Aspects of
Feminisms—You might mention that there have always
been politically-minded black males (e.g., Frederick
Douglas) and scholars who supported the various waves of
feminism directly through their activism or indirectly
through their writings.
I think it’s
important to mention that Pauli Murray was one of the
founders of NOW. The second President was Aileen Clarke
Hernandez, a black woman. In fact, the idea of NOW came
from Pauli, who mentioned to Friedan that women needed
an NAACP to work on their issues.
Alice Walker coined
the term “womanism” to describe black women’s feminism
in the 1980s. She recognized that the term feminism had
become a barrier for women of color who sought to
address gender discrimination.—Patricia Bell-Scott, editor of
All the Women Are White . .
. But Some of Us Are Brave and
SAGE: A Scholarly Journal on Women
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The Race and Gender Debate—I just feel that we
have got to get clear about the fact that race and
gender are not these clear dichotomies in which, you
know, you’re a woman or you’re black. I’m sitting here
in my black womanhood body, knowing that it is more
complicated than that. African American men have been
complicit in the oppression of African American women.
White women have been complicit in the oppression of
black men and black women. Those things are true.
And so, to pretend
that we can somehow take them out of the conversation
when a white woman runs against a black man, when she
tears up at being sort of beat up by him, when her
husband can come in and rally around her and suggest
that we need to sort of support her because she’s having
difficulties, while Barack Obama is getting death
threats, basically lynching threats on him and his
family, these are—for a second-wave feminist with an
understanding of the complexity of American race and
gender to take this kind of position in the New York
Times struck me as, again, the very worst of what
that feminism can offer—in other words, division. . . .
You cannot both claim this sort of role as independent
woman making a stand on questions of feminism and claim
that your experience begins as First Lady of Arkansas.
You know, you simply have to stand on your own or not.
There are dozens of white women in this country who I
would be a huge supporter of for the American
presidency. The president of my own university would be
at the top of that list, but not someone who is making
this claim towards being president as her right as a
result of a relationship with a former president. I
think that’s exactly what we don’t need in third-wave
feminism.—Melissa
Harris-Lacewell
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Friedan Demystified Women's
Middle-Class Malaise—In the late 1950s, Betty
Friedan, journalist and mother of three, surveyed her
sister graduates of Smith College and found them
frustrated.
Her 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, analyzed
and documented what has by now become a cliché: the
plight of the educated white suburban housewife in
post-World War II America, trapped in domesticity,
consumer of a bill of goods that valued mothering and
vacuuming above all else for those whom French author
Simone de Beauvoir had already dubbed The Second Sex.
Friedan's book, with its incisive analysis of Madison
Avenue and the very women's magazines that the
43-year-old Friedan had been writing for, touched many
nerves.
While Friedan
articulated a malaise felt but not yet named, women in
the labor movement were already organizing against
gender inequality. Since 1961, women in labor unions,
doing double duty as working women and housewives, had
been calling for an end to sex discrimination in hiring
and wages and for subsidized child care. In 1961,
President John F. Kennedy also had established the
Commission on the Status of Women, with Eleanor
Roosevelt as chair. . . .
When Friedan
founded the National Organization for Women in 1966, her
allies came largely from the ranks of labor women and
members of the president's commission.
Although Friedan, who died in 2006, was considered a
radical by the press after her book's publication, a
generation of mostly younger women paid her little mind.
The new "problem that had no name," in Friedan's phrase,
may have applied to their mothers, but not to them. . .
.
. If that generation had a Feminine Mystique, it
was the 1970 anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful,
edited by Robin Morgan, an underground press writer and
one of the organizers of the 1968 Miss America pageant
protest.—Louise
Bernikow
Source: Women's
eNews,
editors@womensenews.org
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Hillary's Scarlett O'Hara Act—Black
women voters are rejecting Hillary Clinton
because her ascendance is not a liberating
symbol. Her tears are not moving. Her voice
does not resonate. Throughout history,
privileged white women, attached at the hip
to their husband's power and influence, have
been complicit in black women's oppression.
Many African American women are simply
refusing to play Mammy to Hillary.
The loyal Mammy figure, who toiled in the
homes of white people, nursing their babies
and cleaning and cooking their food, is the
most enduring and dishonest representation
of black women. She is a uniquely American
icon who first emerged as our young country
was trying to put itself back together after
the Civil War. The romanticism about this
period is a bizarre historical anomaly that
underscores America's deep racism: |
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The defeated traitors of the Confederacy
have been allowed to reinterpret the war's
battles, fly the flag of secession over
state houses, and raise monuments to those
who fought to tear down the country.
Southern white secessionists were given the
power to rewrite history even as America's
newest citizens were relegated to forced
agricultural peonage, grinding urban poverty
and new forms segregation and racial terror.
Mammy was a central figure in this
mythmaking and she was perfect for the role.
The Mammy myth allowed Americans in the
North and South to ignore the brutality of
slavery by claiming that black women were
tied to white families through genuine bonds
of affection.
Melissa harris-Lacewell
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Corporate vs
Grassroots, Global Feminism—The
sense of progress unraveling is profound. "What happened
to the perspective that the failures of feminism lay in
pandering to racism, to everyone nodding that these were
fatal mistakes—how is it that all that could be
jettisoned?" asks Crenshaw, who co-wrote a piece with
Eve Ensler on the Huffington Post called "Feminist
Ultimatums: Not in Our Name." Crenshaw says that,
appalled as she is by the sexism toward Clinton, she
found herself stunned by some of the arguments
pro-Hillary feminists were making. "There is a myopic
focus on the aspiration of having a woman in the White
House—perhaps not any woman, but it seems to be pretty
much enough that she be a Democratic woman." This
stance, says Crenshaw, "is really a betrayal."
Frances Kissling,
the former president of Catholics for a Free Choice,
attributes this go-for-broke attitude to the mindset of
corporate feminism. "There's a way in which feminists
who have been seriously engaged in electoral politics
for a long time, the institutional DC feminist
leadership, they are just with Hillary Clinton come hell
or high water. I think they have accepted, as she has
accepted, a similar career trajectory. They are not
uncomfortable with what has gone on in the campaign,
because they see electoral campaigns as mere instruments
for getting elected. This is just the way it is. We have
to get elected."
The implications of
all this for the future of feminism depend significantly
on the outcome of the primary, says Kissling. "If
Clinton wins, the older-line women's movement will
continue; it will be a continuation of power for them.
If she doesn't win, it will be a death knell for those
people. And that may be a good thing--that a younger
generation will start to take over."
Many younger women,
indeed, have responded to the admonishments of their
pro-Hillary second-wave elders by articulating a
sophisticated political orientation that includes
feminism but is not confined to it. They may support
Obama, but they still abhor the sexism Clinton has
faced. And they detect—and reject—a tinge of sexism
among male peers who have developed man-crushes on the
dashing senator from Illinois. "Even while they voice
dismay over the retro tone of the pro-Clinton feminist
whine, a growing number of young women are struggling to
describe a gut conviction that there is something dark
and funky, and probably not so female-friendly, running
below the frantic fanaticism of their Obama-loving
compatriots,"
wrote Rebecca Traister in Salon.
It's not just young
feminists who have taken such a nuanced view. Calling
themselves
Feminists for Peace and Obama, 1,500 prominent
progressive feminists—including Kissling, Barbara
Ehrenreich and this magazine's Katha Pollitt—signed on
to a statement endorsing him and disavowing Clinton's
militaristic politics. "Issues of war and peace are also
part of a feminist agenda," they declared.
In some sense, this
is a clarifying moment as well as a wrenching one. For
so many years, feminists have been engaged in a pushback
against the right that has obscured some of the real and
important differences among them. "Today you see things
you might not have seen. It's clearer now about where
the lines are between corporate feminism and more
grassroots, global feminism," says Crenshaw. Women who
identify with the latter movement are saying, as she
puts it, "'Wait a minute, that's not the banner we are
marching under!'"
Feminist Obama
supporters of all ages and hues, meanwhile, are hoping
that he comes out of this bruising primary with his
style of politics intact.
The Nation
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posted 28 January 2008 |
