Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Bell Hooks recognises that thinking about feminism in this way is not constructive and will not enable a revolution or raise consciousness. To think that sexism is the root of all evil and if that oppression was eradicated, then all the other systems of oppression would also fall, is to let privileged women forget that they can be and are, perpetrators of oppression, and that the realities of oppression are different for everyone.
Hooks then describes how the oppression of sexism operates in collaboration with racism and classism, but she does agree sexism is a important form of oppression because it is the most likely to be encountered at home and in everyday life. She explains that to feel helpless in the home is to feel more helpless when confronted with multiple oppressions outside the home.
Ultimately Hooks tries to impress the importance of collective understanding and a meaningful solidarity for a feminist movement to be successful. Privileged, educated feminists need to make themselves aware of the realities of other women who might not have the same access to speak in the educated public and political area. Until feminists go back to the beauty industry, go back to women in feminist movement talked about long before race.
In the fashion, and create an ongoing, sustained revolution, we will not be mostly white circles of a newly formed women's liberation move- free. We will not know how to love our bodies as ourselves.
White working-class women recognized that class hierarchies were present in the movement. However, as feminist movement progressed and privileged groups of well-educated white women be- gan to achieve equal access to class power with their male counter- parts, feminist class struggle was no longer deemed important.
From the onset of the movement women from privileged classes were able to make their concerns "the" issues that should be focused on in part because they were the group of women who re- ceived public attention. They attracted mass media. The issues that were most relevant to working women or masses of women were never highlighted by mainstream mass media.
While this issue was presented as a crisis Reformist efforts on the part of privileged groups of women to for women it really was only a crisis for a small group of well-educated change the workforce so that women workers would be paid more white women. While they were complaining about the dangers of and face less gender-based discrimination and harassment on the confinement in the home a huge majority of women in the nation job had positive impact on the lives of all women.
And these gains were in the workforce. And many of these working women, who put in are important. Yet the fact that the privileged gained in class power long hours for low wages while still doing all the work in the domes- while masses of women still do not receive wage equity with men is tic household would have seen the right to stay home as "freedom. Elite groups of highly educated females stayed at home in an accessible language.
They were a group of women who had not rather than do the type of work large numbers of lower-middle-class imagined they could depend on husbands to support them.
And and working-class women were doing. Occasionally, a few of these they were often much more aware than their straight counterparts of women defied convention and worked outside the home perform- the difficulties all women would face in the workforce. In the early ing tasks way below their educational skills and facing resistance '70s anthologies like Class and Feminism edited by Charlotte Bunch from husbands and family.
It was this resistance that turned the is- and Nancy Myron, published work written by women from diverse sue of their working outside the home into an issue of gender dis- class backgrounds who were confronting the issue in feminist cir- crimination and made opposing patriarchy and seeking equal rights cles. Each essay emphasized the fact that class was not simply a with men of their class the political platform that chose feminism question of money.
Class involved your behavior, your basic freedom they perceived men of their class enjoying. Their resistance assumptions, how you are taught to behave, what you expect to patriarchal male domination in the domestic household provided from yourself and from others, your concept of a future, how you them with a connection they could use to unite across class with understand problems and solve them, how you think, feel, act. But only privi- These women who entered feminist groups made up of diverse leged women had the luxury to imagine working outside the home classes were among the first to see that the vision of a politically would actually provide them with an income which would enable based sisterhood where all females would unite together to fight pa- them to be economically self-sufficient.
Supporting what in Placing class on feminist agendas opened up the space where effect became white power reformist feminism enabled the main- the intersections of class and race were made apparent. Within the stream white supremacist patriarchy to bolster its power while si- institutionalized race, sex, class social system in our society black fe- multaneously undermining the radical politics of feminism.
Ini- Only revolutionary feminist thinkers expressed outrage at this tially, well-educated white women from working-class backgrounds cooptation of feminist movement. Our critique and outrage gained were more visible than black females of all classes in feminist move- a hearing the alternative press. In her collection of essays, The Coming ment. They were a minority within the movement, but theirs was the if Black Genocide, radical white activist Mary Barfoot boldly stated: voice of experience.
They knew better than their privileged- class There are white women, hurt and angry, who believed that the Ii comrades of any race the costs of resisting race, class, and gender '70s women's movement meant sisterhood, and who feel be- domination. They knew what it was like to struggle to change one's trayed by escalator women.
By women who went back home to economic situation. Between them and their privileged-class com- the patriarchy. But the women's movement never left the father rades there were ongoing conflicts over appropriate behavior, over Dick's side There was no war.
And there was no liberation. We the issues that would be presented as fundamental feminist con- got a share of genocide profits and we love it. We are Sisters of cerns. Within feminist movement women from privileged-class Patriarchy, and true supporters of national and class oppression, Patriarchy in its highest form is Euro-imperialism on a world backgrounds who had never before been involved in leftist freedom scale.
If we're Dick's sister and want what he has gotten, then in fighting learned the concrete politics of class struggle, confronting the end we support that system that he got it all from. Despite constructive intervention many privileged white sider divesting of white supremacist thinking than of their class elitism. Instead, all women were encouraged to see the eco- women from privileged-class groups were the only ones worthy of nomic gains of affluent females as a positive sign for all women.
In receiving attention. Feminist reform aimed to gain social equality for actuality, these gains rarely changed the lot of poor and work- women within the existing structure. Privileged women wanted ing-class women. And since privileged men did not become equal equality with men of their class. Despite sexism among their class caretakers in the domestic household, the freedom of privileged-class they would not have wanted to have the lot of working class men.
In the '90s collusion with the exist- class neatly coincided with white supremacist capitalist patriarchal ing social structure was the price of "women's liberation.
And this collusion helped destabilize feminist movement. The only genuine hope of feminist liberation lies with a vision When women acquired greater class status and power without of social change which challenges class elitism. Western women conducting themselves differently from males feminist politics were have gained class power and greater gender inequality because a undermined. Lots of women felt betrayed. In this country the combined forces nism to enter the workforce did not feel liberated once they faced of a booming prison industry and workfare-oriented welfare in con- the hard truth that working outside the home did not mean work in junction with conservative immigration policy create and condone the home would be equally shared with male partners.
No-fault di- the conditions for indentured slavery. Ending welfare will create a vorce proved to be more economically beneficial to men than new underclass of women and children to be abused and exploited women. The most profound ment that can build on the strength of the past, including the positive betrayal of feminist issues has been the lack of mass-based feminist gains generated by reforms, while offering meaningful interrogation protest challenging the government's assault on single mothers and of existing feminist theory that was simply wrongminded while of- the dismantling of the welfare system.
Privileged women, many of fering us new strategies. Significantly a visionary movement would whom call themselves feminists, have simply turned away from the ground its work in the concrete conditions of working-class and "feminization of poverty. That means creating a movement that begins education The voices of "power feminism" tend to be highlighted in mass for critical consciousness where women, feminist women with class media far more than the voices of individual feminist women who power, need to put in place low-income housing women can own.
Being true to feminist politics, the ways feminist struggle is relevant to all women's lives. Our experiences counter the assumption that women a patriarchal system that will ultimately re-subordinate them, they do can only gain economically by acting in collusion with the existing not just betray feminism; they betray themselves. Returning to a dis- capitalist patriarchy.
All over this nation individual feminists with cussion of class, feminist women and men will restore the condi- class power who support a revolutionary vision of social change tions needed for solidarity. We will then be better able to envision a share resources and use our power to aid reforms that will improve world where resources are shared and opportunities for personal the lives of women irrespective of class.
Instead they declared themselves liberated and therefore in the position to liberate their less fortunate sisters, especially those in the "third world. No wonder then that the "power feminism" of the '90s offers wealthy white heterosexual women as the examples of Individual female freedom fighters all over the world have single- feminist success.
Since In truth their hegemonic takeover of feminist rhetoric about the first people on the planet earth were nonwhite it is unlikely that equality has helped mask their allegiance to the ruling classes within white women were the first females to rebel against male domina- white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Radical feminists were dis- tion. In white supremacist capitalist patriarchal Western culture mayed to witness so many women of all races appropriating feminist neocolonial thinking sets the tone for many cultural practices.
That jargon while sustaining their commitment to Western imperialism thinking always focuses on who has conquered a territory, who has and transnational capitalism.
While feminists in the United States ownership, who has the right to rule. Contemporary feminist poli- were right to call attention to the need for global equality for tics did not come into being as a radical response to neocolonialism. It than any group of women globally, are "free" if they want to be, and did not matter how many working-class white women or individual therefore have the right to lead feminist movement and set feminist black women spearheaded the women's movement in radical direc- agendas for all the other women in the world, particularly women in tions.
At the end of the day white women with class power declared third world countries. Such thinking merely mirrors the imperialist that they owned the movement, that they were the leaders and the racism and sexism of ruling groups of Western men.
Parasitic class relations have overshadowed Most women in the United States do not even know or use the issues of race, nation, and gender in contemporary neocolonialism.
Most American women, par- And feminism did not remain aloof from that dynamic. When unenlightened individual feminist thinkers surgery wo.
When addressed global issues of gender exploitation and oppression they Issues are addressed in this manner Western imperialism is not did and do so from a perspective of neocolonialism. Significantly, reinscribed and feminism cannot be appropriated by transnational radical white women writing in Night-Vision: Illuminating War and capitalism as yet another luxury product from the West women in :!
Class on the Neo-Colonial Terrain emphasize the reality that" to not un- other cultures must fight to have the right to consume. In Hatreds: Racialized and Sexualized Conflicts in the white "power feminists" continued to project an image of feminism 21 st Century, Zillah Eisenstein shares the insight: that linked and links women's equality with imperialism. It is a feminism that concerns.
No one can dle East. The goal of global feminism is to reach out and join A decolonized feminist perspective would first and foremost global struggles to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. In many college classrooms today students both female and male will argue that feminist movement is no longer relevant since women now have equality. We know now that work does not liberate women from male domination. Indeed, there are many high-paid professional women, many rich women, who remain in relationships with men where More than half of all women in the United States are In the male domination is the norm.
Positively we do know that if a workforce. When contemporary feminist movement first began the woman has access to economic self-sufficiency she is more likely to workforce was already more than one-third female. Coming from a leave a relationship where male domination is the norm when she working-class, African-American background where most women I chooses liberation. She leaves because she can.
Lots of women en- knew were in the workforce, I was among the harshest critics of the gage feminist thinking, choose liberation, but are economically tied vision of feminism put forth by reformist thinkers when the move- to patriarchal males in ways that make leaving difficult if not down- ment began, which suggested that work would liberate women from right impossible. Most women know now what some of us knew male domination.
More than 10 years ago I wrote in Feminist Theory: when the movement began, that work would not necessarily liberate From Margin to Center. When we talk worked were 'already liberated. Clearly better-paying jobs with comfortable time schedules not liberate poor and working-class women from male domination. When reformist feminist thinkers from privileged class back- Masses of women feel angry because they were encouraged by grounds whose primary agenda was achieving social equality with feminist thinking to believe they would find liberation in the work- men of their class equated work with liberation they meant force.
Mostly they have found that they work long hours at home high-paying careers. Even before feminist movement encour- masses of women. Importantly the aspect of feminist emphas1s on aged women to feel positive about working outside the home, the work which did affect all women was the demand for equal pay for needs of a depressed economy were already sanctioning this shift. If equal work. Their success has der discrimination.
Women are wrong to "blame" feminism for not altered the fate of masses of women. Given the depressed economy central agenda for feminist movement in conjunction with efforts white middle-class families would be unable to sustain their class to obtain better-paying jobs for women and finding jobs for un- status and their lifestyles if women who had once dreamed solely of employed women of all classes, feminism would have been seen working as housewives had not chosen to work outside the home.
Feminist Feminist scholarship has documented that the positive benefits focus on careerism, getting women employed in high-paying pro- fessions, not only alienated masses of women from feminist masses of women have gained by entering the workforce have more movement; it also allowed feminist activists to ignore the fact that to do with increased self-esteem and positive participation in com- increased entry of bourgeois women into the work force was not munity.
No matter her class the woman who stayed at home wor. Had ing as a housewife was often isolated, lonely, and depressed. Whlle they looked at the economic situation of poor and working-class most workers do not feel secure at work, whether they are male or women, they would have seen the growing problem of unem- female, they do feel part of something larger than themselves.
While ployment and increased entry of women from all classes into the problems at home cause greater stress and are difficult to solve, ranks of the poor. White supremacist find solutions is not an isolated one. When men did most of the capitalist patriarchal attempts to dismantle the welfare system in our work women worked to make home a site of comfort and relaxation society will deprive poor and indigent women of access to even the for males.
Home was relaxing to women only when men and chil- most basic necessities of life: shelter and food. Indeed a return to dren were not present. When women in the home spend all their patriarchal male-dominated households where men are providers is time attending to the needs of others, home is a workplace for her, the solution offered women by conservative politicians who ignore not a site of relaxation, comfort, and pleasure.
Work outside the the reality of mass unemployment for both women and men, and home has been most liberating for women who are single many of the fact that jobs simply are not there and that many men do not whom live alone; they mayor may not be heterosexual. Most want to provide economically for women and children even if they women have not even been able to find satisfying work, and their have wages.
Yet economic self-sufficiency is needed which show their concern for and solidarity with women who lack if all women are to be free to choose against male domination, to be class power. Right now these individuals are a small minority, but their ranks will swell as their work becomes more well known. The path to greater economic self-sufficiency will necessarily Thirty years ago contemporary feminists did not foresee the lead to alternative lifestyles which will run counter to the image of changes that would happen in the world of work in our society.
They the good life presented to us by white supremacist capitalist patriar- did not realize that mass unemployment would become more of a chal mass media. To live fully and well, to do work which enhances norm, that women could prepare themselves for jobs that would sim- self-esteem and self-respect while being paid a living wage, we will ply not be there. They did not foresee the conservative and some- need programs of job sharing.
Teachers and service workers in all times liberal assault on welfare, the way that single mothers without areas will need to be paid more. Women and men who want to stay money would be blamed for their economic plight and demonized.
With advanced While much feminist scholarship tells us about the role of technology individuals who remain home should be able to study by women in the workforce today and how it changes their sense of self watching college courses on videos augmenting this with some pe- and their role in the home, we do not have many studies which tell riod of time spent in classroom settings.
If welfare not warfare mili- us whether more women working has positively changed male dom- tary spending was sanctioned by our government and all citizens ination. Many men blame women working for unemployment, for legally had access to a year or two of their lives during which they re- their loss of the stable identity being seen as patriarchal providers ceived state aid if they were unable to find a job, then the negative gave them, even if it was or is only a fiction.
An important feminist stigma attached to welfare programs would no longer exist. If men agenda for the future has to be to realistically inform men about the had equal access to welfare then it would no longer carry the stigma nature of women and work so that they can see that women in the workforce are not their enemies.
A growing class divide separates masses of poor women from Women have been in the workforce for a long time now. Indeed much of the class power elite Whether we are paid well or receive low wages many women have groups of women hold in our society, particularly those who are not found work to be as meaningful as feminist utopian visions sug- rich, is gained at the expense of the freedom of other women. Al- gested.
When women work to make money to consume more rather ready there are small groups of women with class power working to than to enhance the quality of our lives on all levels, work does not build bridges through economic programs which provide aid and lead to economic self-sufficiency.
More money does not mean more support to less privileged women. Individual wealthy women, par- freedom if our finances are not used to facilitate well-being. No intervention changed the face of American feminism more than the demand that feminist thinkers acknowledge the reality of race and racism.
They know this from the time they are little girls watching television and seeing , ", only their images, and looking at magazines and seeing only their im- ages. All white women in this nation know that whiteness is a privileged category. The fact that white fe- males may choose to repress or deny this knowledge does not mean they are ignorant: it means that they are in denial.
No group of white women understood the differences in their status and that of black women more than the group of politically conscious white females who were active in civil rights struggle.
Dia- ries and memoirs of this period in American history written by white women document this knowledge. Yet many of these individuals moved from civil rights into women's liberation and spearheaded a feminist movement where they suppressed and denied the aware- ness of difference they had seen and heard articulated firsthand in civil rights struggle.
Unlike our In many ways they were following in the footsteps of their abo- older black women allies we had for the most part been educated in litionist ancestors who had demanded that everyone white women predominantly white settings. Most of us had never been in a subor- and black people be given the right to vote, but, when faced with dinated position in relation to a white female. Most of us had not the possibility that black males might gain the right to vote while been in the workforce. We had never been in our place.
We were they were denied it on the basis of gender, they chose to ally them- better positioned to critique racism and white supremacy within the selves with men, uniting under the rubric of white supremacy. Con- women's movement. Some of these individuals claim that it was working were the most reluctant to acknowledge differences among women, on behalf of civil rights that made them aware of sexism and sexist differences that overshadowed all the common experiences female oppression.
Yet if this was the whole picture one might think their shared. Race was the most obvious difference. I was 19 years old. I had never worked a full-time job. I They entered the movement erasing and denying difference, had come from a racially segregated small town in the south to Stan- not playing race alongside gender, but eliminating race from the pic- ford University. While I had grown up resisting patriarchal thinking, ture. Foregrounding gender meant that white women could take college was the place where I embraced feminist politics.
It was center stage, could claim the movement as theirs, even as they called there as the only black female present in feminist classrooms, in on all women to join. The utopian vision of sisterhood evoked in a consciousness-raising, that I began to engage race and gender theo- feminist movement that initially did not take racial difference or retically. Individual black women who were change. When the feminist movement began racial integration In those days white women who were unwilling to face the real- was still rare.
Many black people were learning how to interact with ity of racism and racial difference accused us of being traitors by whites on the basis of being peers for the first time in their lives. No introducing race. Wrongly they saw us as deflecting focus away from wonder individual black women choosing feminism were reluctant gender.
In reality, we were demanding that we look at the status of fe- to introduce their awareness of race. It must have felt so awesome to males realistically, and that realistic understanding serve as the foun- have white women evoke sisterhood in a world where they had dation for a real feminist politic.
Our intent was not to diminish the mainly experienced white women as exploiters and oppressors. We knew that from all critical interventions on the issue of race. The only prob- there could no real sisterhood between white women and women of lematic arena has been that of translating theory into practice. While color if white women were not able to divest of white supremacy, if individual white women have incorporated an analysis of race into feminist movement were not fundamentally anti-racist.
Breaking through denial about race of color. Anti-racist interactions between women are difficult in a helped women face the reality of difference on all levels. And we society that remains racially segregated. Despite diverse work set- were finally putting in place a movement that did not place the class tings a vast majority of folks still socialize only with people of their interests of privileged women, especially white women, over that of own group.
Racism and sexism combined create harmful barriers all other women. We put in place a vision of sisterhood where all our between women. So far feminist strategies to change this have not realities could be spoken. This may seem like nothing significant at first, since it is also a very difficult thing to do as an ally, but with small increments over time this can challenge the status quo and begin to make a meaningful impact.
It was interesting hearing about how patriarchy is seen as the root of all the problems in the world. Hooks explains that some feminists believe that sexual politics is the origin of this issue that the different statuses of men and women is an indication of patriarchal domination.
If we eliminate sexist oppression, it would eradicate all forms of domination.
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