Teaching '70s Feminism

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This has all been quite interesting to me, especially since I've been
working on it from the other end, looking at pre-"second wave" writers
who contributed significantly to feminism without themselves "belonging"
to a movement. (Beauvoir, but also Doris Lessing -- who bitterly
resisted being labelled a feminist, although the Golden Notebook is
mentioned over and over as an eye-opener by "second-wave" feminists now
writing memoirs and, for that matter, by one's quite unfamous friends of
all ages and waves!) So here I am, wave 2.3 or maybe 2.4, trying to
study 1.8 or 1.9 ... and feeling a little skeptical, I guess. One
question I have for the historians here is when the term "second wave"
began to be used -- is it one of those things like "heterosexual," where
the salience of a new term for marked category (here, "third wave")
draws into being a term for what had previously been unmarked (simply,
"feminism"?) Or was "second wave" a term actually used by people
belonging to "it" -- well, but we haven't decided what "it" was/is ...
oh heck. What if we went back to calling it the Women's Liberation
Movement? (I always liked that name anyway, even though I joined it
after it was "over.")

As far as metaphors go ... not just waves and trees, but mother,
daughter, sister... since as used to described kin relationships that
are fictive rather than biological, these are metaphors too -- metaphors
are terrific as long we we bear in mind that the map is not the world,
that every new metaphor reveals one aspect of reality by veiling
another. They are good to unpack and also to historicize, if we can.
"The meaning of a word is its use." (Wittgenstein, etc., but also I find
actually helpful). We scrutinize the metaphors that are used to name and
control us, we try to undo their power by making them literal ... we
make some new ones that suit us better ... you could substitute "myth"
for "metaphor" there, too. Nothing wrong with this process  that I can
see, especially if you're in favor of poems, and change ... but it's not
a bad idea to keep an eye on it.

Maybe I'm weird, but this discussion has made me realize that when _I_
hear "second wave," somewhere in the back of my mind is "the second wave
at Iwo Jima" --  in other words, "we" (I know, I know, but just let me
have it for a second, ok?) have been for some centuries or whatever
engaged in, uh, storming a beach, and the first wave didn't quite do it,
and in the second wave a lot of people died BUT we planted the flag, and
then, and now ... So the whole thing presupposes that there's some kind
of struggle going on, and that everyone on this list-serv (how's that
for "we"? hah!) is on the same side, at least vaguely.

Which is actually what I believe. (I'm funny that way.)

And if I say I can form a reading of  what generation people are, or at
least what generation they are, um, performing, by seeing what kinds of
metaphors, and generally what kinds of language they use -- not just
"fuckface," but "heteronormativity" -- that's not a putdown, or it
shouldn't be, either from a historical perspective, or from a sort of
literary one which is I guess what I am offering. It's just interesting.

On the other hand ... ok, now I'm going to say something that really
marks me as a member of a generation!  But it seems to me that
collectively those involved in this discussion are looking to write a
totalizing master narrative of feminism. Didn't we (ouch) -- ok, _I_ was
persuaded quite some time ago that intellectual and political critiques
of that were right. And that may be why I find this discussion most
engaging when it gets specific and is about some local thing, like
baseball, and why I agree with Laurie that archival work, and I'd add
studies of particular organizations in particular periods (like the book
about "Jane"), are really good to teach and think about.

Christine Delphy wrote over 20 years ago that writing the history of the
feminist movement isn't just documenting a struggle, it's a site of
struggle in itself ("une terrain de lutte en soi"). In the US that's
clearly visible as early as Sisterhood is Powerful, isn't it? (1970) One
other interesting aspect might be to think about the self-consciousness
about history that's embedded within a movement as it's going on, I'm
not sure whether feminism is unusual in this respect or if it's common
to many or all social movements ... But this is why, again I agree with
Laurie, it's a very good "site" to get for example first-year students
thinking about  _how_ to read and think about primary documents,
authenticity, truth, that having a stake in what you're writing about
isn't redicible to "being biased," etc.

But I think what I'm wondering about is, maybe we're using this to
argue  something else, which isn't a bad thing, but I want to know more
about what that something else is: I see race, class, US imperialism as
fault-lines in the thread so far ...  and then there's the fable
Gertrude Stein re-tells at the beginning of the Making of Americans. A
man decides that his father has become too old to work, is a useless
mouth to feed and an eyesore, etc., and he takes him by the foot and
starts dragging him out of the village into the forest. At first the old
man does not protest, but then: "Stop!" he goes, "I did not drag my
father beyond that tree!" Access to resources, access to institutions,
Bourdieu, etc. But now I'm back in the family metaphor, I suppose, which
wasn't my intention.

Sorry, I hope some of this made some sense to somebody.

--Meryl Altman

(PS. I'll be 42 on Monday, in case anybody feels that's important..)

There is a very brief bit of information on Mamie "Peanut" Johnson at
the website for Shadowball:
The address is: http://www.negro-league.columbus.oh.us/players.htm
They also include brief sketches of Toni Stone and Connie Morgan, two
other women who played
in the baseball in the Negro leagues.

Deb Hume

I feel the need to respond to the following distinction:

At 11:46 PM 7/11/2001 +0100, Sue McPherson wrote:
>What actually is reflected here seems to be the difference between
>academic feminism and feminist activism. One is objective, and
>distanced from the events, and the other is caught up in the middle
>of them, actually feeling them and experiencing the thrill/anger/
>distress of the lead-up and the culmination as it happens.
>

While I don't disagree that some aspects of academic feminism might seem
distant or abstract, I object to this dichotomy.  Many feminists who work
in the academy are also activists (both inside the academic structure and
outside it) -- and most of us are committed to contributing to and/or
enabling our students' interest and participation in activism.  To buy into
this binary -- that those of us who work in the academy are not activists
-- is unfair and inaccurate.


Donna M. Bickford, Ph.D.
dbi6066u  @  postoffice.uri.edu
University of Rhode Island
Women's Studies Program
Roosevelt Hall, #315
Kingston, RI 02881

Ann Mussey calls the list's attention to the new historiography on the
origins of contemporary feminism.  I want to re-emphasize that what the
past looks like depends on whose past is being recovered and which sources
we analyze. A host of historians (Dan Horowitz, Sue Cobble, Dennis
Deslippe, Kate Weigand, myself) now find the origin of 1960s feminism in
the 1940s among Communist and trade union women in particular, some of whom
have connections to the suffrage generation, some of whom have not been
called feminist because they opposed the Equal Rights Amendment before the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 included sex in Title VII.  Others have discovered
feminists among women of color, especially African Americans, of which
there is more research on than on other racial/ethnic groups within the
United States. Recent work on the liberal establishment in the 1950s also
finds feminists (Susan Hartmann, Kathleen Laughlin, for example).  Perhaps
the old categories of liberal, socialist, radical feminism have some life
in them for mid century US.  One problem with the wave analogy comes from
its conflating all who embrace women's advancement or liberation or rights
or emancipation or self-determination or human freedom into one feminist
wave when in fact there has always been political, ideological, strategic,
theoretical, and other divisions within US feminism.  The meaning of
feminism, then, requires contextualization and specificity even if some of
us may wish for an all embracing term for current political battles.

  Eileen

Eileen Boris
Hull Professor of Women's Studies
Women's Studies Program
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, California 93106
805 893 2727 (ph) 805 893 8676 (fax)
boris  @  humanitas.ucsb.edu

A note on the Second Wave's racism: This is a bit complicated, please bear
with me.

I am Latina (does my name give me away?) who became active in the women's
movement in the seventies. Eventually, I spent several years on the
California NOW state board, served as its action coordinator, was one of
the founders and presidents of the California NOW Foundation (I don't know
now if it still exists); served on the ACLU Board and on its women's rights
committee; served as state president of Californians for a Fair Share, a
welfare rights organization, and was involved with other organizations as
well. For much of that time, I was one of the two or three women of color
on the Cal NOW board; the only woman of color on the ACLU Board, etc., etc.
I mention these "credentials" so you know I'm not talking theory. I spent
eleven years in the mud and grime of feminist organizing. It was
exhilarating, frustrating, and a time of enormous growth for me. I
"retired" from that level of activism following a violent incident with the
police in which I was disabled and out of commission for a couple of years,
but that's another story. By the time I left, I felt that I had learned
everything I could from NOW, and was tired of trying to pull its agendas
over to support my priorities.

I will focus on NOW rather than trying to cover all my bases. I worked with
lots of white women; mostly white women. When I joined NOW in the
mid-seventies, NOW's platform was pretty much as it was to be throughout my
time with it.  One of its top-five priorities was the eradication of
racism. The women I knew were committed to that as they were to the other
planks of the feminist agenda.  Most of them were white, middle-class
women, but some were from working-class backgrounds. One of the first women
that I learned about the movement from was the late Johnnie Phelps.  You
might remember Johnnie; she was featured in the film "Before Stonewall"
because she had served on General Eisenhower's staff during World War II.

The problem was not that they didn't want racial equality, nor that they
actively worked against it, but rather that when priorities were set, the
available resources tended to go for priorities number one and two--ERA and
abortion--rather than racism, lesbian rights, or any other second-tier
issue. It made sense in a way; the argument was that there were
organizations for whom race was the primary issue, so it was better to work
in coalition with them rather than to put our limited resources into
working on race. This reflects Saul Alinsky's articulation of organizing
theory: If you want to have a broad coalition, pick a narrow agenda. If you
have a broad agenda, expect a narrow coalition.

In part, the fact that NOW is a membership organization, heavily dependent
on membership dues, defined its priorities. Members generally want their
interests attended to first. Altruism--putting others' needs first--is not
necessarily a characteristic of a non-religious organization.  During the
70s, there was much less of a black middle-class and Latino middle-class
than there are now. Most of the activists in those groups tended to join
membership organizations that had the most direct impact on THEIR
priorities. So if GETTING a job is your priority rather than breaking
through a glass ceiling; if infant mortality is your concern rather than
access to abortion, you will ally yourself with people who are struggling
for the same things. Critical mass is often needed to make one's presence
felt in an organization.

I don't think I ever met an activist who was just plain racist; no
card-carrying KKK women's auxiliary members came to our meetings. I met
white women who were focussed on getting their needs met; some who were
just plain clueless, and many, many who wanted racial equality but for whom
it was a second or third priority. When many notables were going to jail to
protest apartheid in South Africa, then-NOW president Judy Goldsmith went
to jail, too. She was criticized because it was a very gentrified arrest.
People joked that she'd made reservations to be arrested.  Be that as it
may, she did it; it wasn't an empty gesture.  It was a sign that feminists
opposed racism.

I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about Third Wave Feminism (my
primary occupation is as a Latin American historian) but it seems to me
that one reason that there is much more of a focus on racism by this
group/generation of feminists is that there is a heightened awareness of
racism in our country because of the work done by the Civil Rights Movement
and the court decisions on the issues of race, affirmative action,
desegregation, etc.(not all good for people of color), and because are more
women of color in the middle-class, making their priorities known, spending
their own money to make change. The strong multicultural organizations as
well as the increase of women of color on the boards of national women's
organizations reflect these changes.

None of the above is meant to denigrate Third Wave feminists but their
issues and efforts are not sui generis.

Incidentally, the new leadership of NOW is quite impressive. I was active
in NOW when the new president, Kim Gandy, was first in leadership positions
at the national level. She is very smart, savvy, and experienced. Olga
Vives (Action VP) is a Latina who lives in Chicago: I know her to be an
intelligent woman of great integrity and long experience in NOW. Karen
Johnson (VP Executive)is a retired Army officer and was for many years, the
only black woman on the National NOW board; she is very sharp and has
formidable administrative skills.  I don't know Terry O'Neill (VP
Membership).  For the first time, in over a decade, I'm rejoining NOW. I
never thought I'd say those words.

Rosie

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Rosa Maria Pegueros, J.D., Ph.D.
Women's Studies Program &       Washburn Hall, 217C
Department of History           E-mail:
University of Rhode Island      <rpe2836u  @  postoffice.uri.edu>
80 Upper College Road, Suite 3  Telephone: (401) 874-4092
Kingston, RI 02881                    Fax: (401) 874-2595
<http://www.uri.edu/personal/rpe2836u/>
<http://nick.uri.edu/artsci/wms/pegueros.htm>

"I have learned from my teachers and from my colleagues. But
I have learned the most from my students." --Rabbi Hanina

Both Pauline Bart and Beatrice Kachuck have indicated that students and/or
younger feminists have a hard time with "history" - as in "the history of
feminist movement."  I could respond that most younger people nowadays seem
to be less connected to history generally, but I am more interested in
asking other members of the list if they also find this to be the case, or
if like me, they find their students (I direct a women's studies program
and often teach historically based courses) downright fascinated by
feminist history and outraged when they realize that they "did not get this
stuff in high school"?  I wonder if the dismissal of seventies histories
pertains to only some populations and not others.  Best, Barbara Scott
Winkler, Director, Women's Studies Program, Southern Oregon University

At 06:21 PM 7/9/01 -0400, you wrote:
>    The question I raised about the study of history in Women's Studies came
>from comments indicating that students don't want to know about '70s
>feminism and other pasts. Perhaps I should have rephrased to say: 'Maybe the
>question to be discussed is why history is a problem in Women's Studies. '
>            beatrice

on 7/12/01 3:27 AM, ludi mequi at ludi.mequi  @  FREE.FR wrote:
 
> Also I am currently trying to see why some black women preferred being
> called womanist (because white feminists were racist ? Because of the
> typical thinking that feminism equates lesbianism ?).
> 
> Why did some black women who refused to be called feminist, agreed to engage
> in the feminist movement under the label womanist ? That is what I am
> looking for.
> If anyone has any answer to these questions, please let me know.



Check out some of these works, I have more if you need them.

Patricia Hill Collins, 1996. "What's in a name?: Womanism, Black feminism
and Beyond". The Black Scholar 26 (1): 9-17

Beverly Guy-Sheftall, 1995. Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American
Feminist Thought. NY: The New Press

Gloria T Hull, Patricia Bell Scott and Barbara Smith. 1982. All the Women
Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But some of Us Are Brave: Black Women¦s
Studies. NY: The Feminist Press.

Deborah King, 1988. "Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness: The Context
of a Black Feminist Ideology." Signs 14 (1): 42-71

Elizabeth Spelman, 1988. Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in
Feminist Thought. Boston, MA: Beacon Press

Lori Patterson
Independent Scholar
Portland, OR

Dear Listserve members

I am very pleased that the question I asked  about teaching 1970's
feminism(it really was a question) drew such a large response.  Given some
of the responses i want to clarify what I said.
First-many of the ideas, in my message about. teaching seventies feminism,
were suggested by other people.when I wondered why the class was not as
successful as my other classes.  Teachiing it in the middle of the course
was suggested by two other people, one of whom focusses on third wave
feminism for her classes.2.  When, at the international world congress on
women in Norway I organized a session on why the negative mythology about
seventies feminissm was so prevalent, the room that was given us was much
too small.  WOmen suggested we take over the mainly empty room next door
and have them take ours, but since they didn't want to I wouldn't do it  It
was a very popular session, which was not expected by the meeting
planners.  WOmen from England and Norway spoke in addition to me ,
confirming what one woman on this list said, that it was not a US
phenomenon but a Western Europe and US and Canadian phenomenon.

Wen i suggested the mother daughter metaphor as a metaphor,, the women
nodded their heads, so it had meaning at least for that group.  I was
trying to understand the intensity of the feelings that were expressed by
the people involved on whatever side.  it is just a hypothesis, and there
are a great many other possible reasons.
I use the waves phenomenon  following Karl Mannheim's work on generations
in his discussion of the sociology of knowledge.  Different generations
have different experiences (generally) e.g. the depression generation has
different views on saving money than those growing up in more affluent
times.  Those of us who  trod where no woman dared before in the groves of
academe of course had different experiences than those who didn''t deal
with the misogyny of the Left, and the idea that women's studies was only a
fad, like the hula hoop, or "only political" or not  serious,  or, as one
Berkeley professor said "is there really enough about women to teach a
whole quarter.  We had an entire network of womens alternative institutions
to support us. Most of us had engaged in consciousness raising  and  many
women came out in that atmosphere. Such experiences are not common among
younger women now. IWomen's Liberation was both radical and socialist
feminist.  The various women's unions  e.g. the Chicago women's liberation
union, the Cambridge women's liberation union were socialist feminist
feminists.  I don't remember radical feminists in the CHicago movement.  I
became one later.  The next generation has grown up with different
experiences.  They did not come to  feminism from radical politics and
protestse.g. the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement.  The one's who
were lesbian did so because of desire per se.  There was no political
dimension.(I believe that is why they  have more in common with gay men
than seventies feminists did). Sexual ideologies have changed.  Bisexuality
is much more accepted and supported among the third wave now.  The
weltaunschaung of the announcement several days ago on this list  using the
term fuckface  would  not have  been presented by a seventies feminist.
THere are many feminist books, both fiction and non fiction etc.  There
currently, at least in LA, hardly any feminist alternative institutions,
hot even a bookstore..  In D.C and in LA women-only events are frowned
upon.  The lived experience is different.  I am talking about Movement
Feminists.  Of course there were feminists between the suffragists and
women's liberation, as well as before either of them e.g. Abigail Adams
Some of those important women e.g. Beauvoir were active in the women's
movement later on in their lives.  Betty Friedan's background, which she
tried to hide, was in the labor movement.  Many of the women were "red
diaper babies".  But the lived experience of women in Women's Liberation
(I'm not talking about NOW or the Women's Political Caucus)  was very
different from the lived experience of feminists during the last
decade.  The happiest time of my life was during the seventies, and I am
anything but  happy in the past decade. There is no group in LA in which I
am comfortable while there was an entire sub culture in which I was happy
in the seventies. As I have said before, we have undergone the shift that
Max Weber and Robert Michels  said characterized social movements-the
charismatic leaders are gone to be replaced  institutionalized and
bureacratized "leaders" and institutions, whether we are looking at rape
crisis centers or women' s studies programs, now usually called gender studies.
In the seventies essentialism was neither named nor vilified.  Some of what
we believed was naive, but not all . And, inj retrospect, given how women
had always been criticicised  it wasn't so bad that we idealized women.

To return to the source of my question on teaching 70's feminism, I was
trying to figure out what went wrong with the class  in Advanced Women's
Sudies I taught at the Claremont Colleges. It could have been because the
college was off line for the entire week before school started and had days
after it started with no electricity, no heat, no computers etc. you know
about the California blackouts  I assume).  Since I had planned to set up
the course through the internet, because it was close to fifty miles from
where I lived, nothing had been done  which books were in the bookstore,
what was on reserve, kand I didn't know where the class would be held. and
I was rattled. The course was not  listed in the catalogue and  many
students already had their programs set up.without it. Afterwards I looked
at my teaching notes and there was nothing in them that I thought was
wrong. I thought using the table of contents of Sisterhood is Powerful was
show that we were concerned with the issues we are now being criticised for
not having included in our analysis.But the number of women in the class
dwindled.  So when I  had the idea that it might be because I started with
Seventies feminism and they were turned off.  I want to do better, and so I
put the question on the List.
I appreciate the many thoughtful responses my query.  I will write to
Women's Studies at UNLV to have a session on this topic.
In sisterhood, Pauline  pbart  @  ucla.edu

A rising tide lifts all yachts.
            Professor Lani Guanier
            NWSA Meeting, 2000

pbart  @  ucla.edu  310-841-2657

Concerning the messasge critical of a binary analysis of  feminist
academics and feminist activists, I am also critical.  KMany of us who are
and were activists are passionately involved  with the issues.  We do not
think anyone is objective although men usually think they are.  The
feminist law professors write and work for laws to help women's condition
(e.g. Catharine MacKinnon) as well as teach.
The topics i chose to research came from the exspressed needs of women e.g.
what to do if someone tries to rape you, and i always spoke with the media
and belonged  to anti rape groups.  The same is true of our analysis of
other  issues.
We were participant observors of social movements.

A rising tide lifts all yachts.
            Professor Lani Guanier
            NWSA Meeting, 2000

pbart  @  ucla.edu  310-841-2657

I've been away for 2 1/2 weeks, so I'm getting all of this wonderful
discussion on one day -- and saving it to re-read, more than once.

I've found some help in getting across the idea of the different world in
which we lived only  40 years ago from a film a friend recommended -- I use
the first section of _Berkeley in the 60's_, which centers on the Free
Speech Movement.  At this point, everyone is clean-cut and neat, but they
move from people attending classes to improve their future to people who see
that insisting that the Constitution must mean what it says is as important
as anything they can do, then or in the future.  Students get involved with
the film because they really don't know the outcome but they identify with
the issue and the students.  For many, the idea that they actually have
power has been buried so deeply that they are amazed and startled at their
own answers when I ask, "Who has the power?"  They haven't imagined students
speaking like Mario Savio.  Seeing non-violence being used, seeing police
haul students practicing passive resistance down stairs, listening to
administrators lie to save their reputations, power, and jobs introduces
them to a world in which 60s and 70s feminist style fits.  Because of all
the movies and TV they've seen, they seem to be able to move into that world
fairly quickly.

Obviously, they don't know all the issues, but as they discover new issues
of the same era, they seem to be able to fit the pieces together with a
little help.  For example, my last class was bothered by the traditional
feminist stand on abortion, which seems to them mostly an individual moral
issue.  I read several pages from _In Our Time_ and several from _The World
Split Open_ to an extremely attentive class.  It really was in many ways
another world, and once they can see that world, even in a limited way, they
can understand feminist reactions.  As Winifred Gallagher points out in
_Working on God_, we live in a time when personal connections are difficult.
We can use that need for connection, which our students feel and understand,
to help them feel the appeal of the "beloved community" of the radical
groups of the 60s and 70s and the enormous sense of betrayal radical women
felt when the men of their groups rejected their need for equality and
respect within the groups.  In _The World Split Open_ I find far more
dimensions to the movement than my personal nostalgia remembers -- some I
recognize when I read about them and some I missed altogether.  I've been
wondering what I and the class would gain by using it as a (not the only)
text for my intro class for a year or two. When students recognize that to
enter the world that made me a feminist requires a great imaginative effort,
they can see that great progress has been made.  They also need to see the
different ways in which women worked to create a more woman-friendly world,
and that many women who contributed in major ways did so for short times --
there are far more women involved in this movement than a superficial look
implies.

I do think teaching the 60s and 70s is vital.  Otherwise it is very
difficult for students to see the changes that have created their rather
different world.  I look forward to hearing what books, films, methods,
other people are using.

Marilyn Grotzky

    Why is it a problem, Sue, that Canada is so close to the US,
geographically and in culture? The geographical proximity is clear. I don't
know about cultural similarities.             Your uncertainty about the
effect on the history of feminism in Canada of nearness to the US makes it
seem an interesting question to study.
                beatrice

     I'd like to read Sonia Shah's article on the differences between
American  feminists and Afghani women in conceptualizing Afghani women's
oppression, Sevanthi. Where can I find it? It reminds me of  feminists in
India, where I worked for some time recently, who are very much concerned
about differences in conceptualizing women's lives in the US and India and
some US feminists' that their theories apply universally.
    Mapping multiculturism onto anything opens questions on how
multiculturalism is defined. It's a concept. What elements are in it?
gender? religion? class? caste? race? ethnicity? region? state? rural? small
town? city? family? proximal and distal community? How are each of these
defined? From whose point of view do we talk about multiculturalism? Can the
definition stand for all time or does it shift in time?
    Someone in this thread pointed out that political or power differences
are involved. Quite right. How is the power manifested? By whom? Who
responds how? What issues are at stake, for whom?
    You've pressed me to take a sharper look concepts and assumptions in the
project  I'm working on. now. Thanks.
        beatrice
            bkachuck.cuny  @  prodigy.net

The Sonia Shah article makes reference to the Physicians for Human
Rights 2001 report on Women's Rights and Human Rights in Afghanistan.
The full report can be found at
http://www.phrusa.org/campaigns/afghanistan/Afghan_report.html

and I would recommend anyone interested in the Shah article take the
trouble to read the report.  Actually, I'd recommend the report to the
list.

Yvonne Klein

Sorry if someone made this point already;  I've been saving the posts to
read later when it's not so beautiful outside.

Rather than decide which voices are "right," I've decided to use this
discussion in my Feminist Theory course, to "teach the controversy" as
it were.  The students can see that knowledge is active and pliable and
under construction, that feminist theorists are currently engaged in
historiography, that no single truth passes muster.  Seems like a great
way to engage the students, using feminist pedagogy to help them think
for themselves rather than imposing an either they cannot be exposed to
this issue or they need to be told what to think about it.

Diana Blaine
dblaine  @  usc.edu

> The next generation has grown up with different
> experiences.  They did not come to  feminism from radical politics and
> protestse.g. the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement.  The one's who
> were lesbian did so because of desire per se.  There was no political
> dimension.

You should be careful about making such sweeping generalizations,
especially when talking about "the next generation."  Which generation is
that, exactly?  From the early '80s through the early '90s, I was
repeatedly told by the media that my generation was the one that was most
like the youth of the sixties (though somehow as the '90s continued we
became "slackers" in the media -- an interesting shift) -- we were the
activists who were fighting for choice, who were starting recycling
programs at our school, and in the late '80s, who were beginning gay and
lesbian groups in high schools where, in the years previous, such a thing
had been unthinkable.  We were also against many of the excesses of the
eighties, which was evident in much of the "alternative" (back when it was
actually the alternative) music of this period.  Many of us who came to
feminism, or came to a stronger awareness of our feminism during the late
'80s, *absolutely* came to it through radical politics and protest.
Sexual identity did indeed have a political dimension, though those
politics were different from lesbian feminist politics in some ways.  (How
could anyone argue that in the late '80s and early '90s there was no
political dimension to sexual identity or desire?  What about ACT-UP?
Queer Nation?  Lesbian Avengers?  BI-NET?  The politics were *different*,
not *absent*.)

It is not the characterizations of what the seventies were like for
feminists or of what it's like to teach seventies feminism to students
that I have found frustrating about your posts, Pauline.  What frustrates
me is that you continue to talk about "the next generation" in a way that
suggests that you know little about us.  There are some very real
differences between these eras and between our feminisms and how we
conceptualize the connection between sexual identity/desire and politics.
But these differences are not so easily explained, and as with any
generation characterizations cannot easily be made that neatly capture the
whole of the group.  When you look at us (or at any group) purely to see
the ways in which we've failed to continue in your footsteps, you do us,
and yourself, a disservice.

Jessica

Jessica Nathanson
Doctoral Candidate, American Studies
Concentration in Women's Studies
State University of New York at Buffalo
janathanson  @  yahoo.com
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jan3

Your question goes back to a post I sent earlier, on July 10, in
response to Lisa Burke. I said then that much of our information,
as ws students, would have come from the US, but might not
have been pointed out as such. Canada's culture is the same in
ways, and yet very different from the US. Canada is multicultural
and western like the US (although leaning towards Europe)  but
doesn't seem to have the strong identity that the US puts out, and
is certainly not a world power the way the US is.  Over here, in the
UK, we rarely get news from Canada, in general, but we hear a lot
about the US.

Where feminism is concerned, again I think that Canada's identity
in the world is not very visible, but this might just be my own view,
partly due to my experience of that here in the UK.  I'm not the
one to write about seventies feminism as I was just an ordinary
person with a husband and kids in the seventies and eighties.
But I can relate to Jessica's message of the 14th, that some of
us who came to feminism in the late eighties and nineties did
so through involvement in radical politics. We learned about and
were active in issues such as pornography, abortion, domestic
violence, sexual harassment, and more.  I took part in marches and
protests, and all the rest of it, although my views on all of these
things have changed since then. Some things that were happening
would have been specific to our university and the city. People who
lived thirty miles away wouldn't know anything about it. I know the
US was an influence, but I can't explain how. I know a lot of women
went over to the Michigan Women's festival.  The 1989 Montreal
Massacre, of 14 women engineering students in Quebec, was a
major event historically but I don't know if it's memorable to
people outside Canada. For that matter, I don't know if people
ouside the UK are familiar with the Shipman case. Harold Shipman
was a doctor who was convicted in January, 2000 of murdering 15
women and has now gone to prison, but it suspected that he killed
literally hundreds* of older women, many of them in their own
homes, through overdosing them, over a 20 year period. He's
been called an opportunist who could also have killed men, but
there has been no feminist anaylsis of this case that I've seen.

Sue McPherson
sue  @  mcphersons.freeserve.co.uk


>     Why is it a problem, Sue, that Canada is so close to the US,
> geographically and in culture? The geographical proximity is clear. I
don't
> know about cultural similarities.             Your uncertainty about the
> effect on the history of feminism in Canada of nearness to the US makes it
> seem an interesting question to study.
>                 beatrice

The Massacre got a lot of mainstream media coverage in New York City at the
time. It was reported that the gunman said something about hating
feminists, but it was treated as the isolated act of a psychotic, not as a
political act or a consequence of institutionalized patriarchy and/or
mysogyny. I think it's memorable (quite literally - we remember it and
remember the shock and horror we felt at the time) to feminists in the USA,
but not to the extent that it is to Canadian feminists. For example, I
don't remember the date of the Massacre the way I remember the date of
President Kennedy's assassination and exactly where I was when I heard
about it. I was startled to realize that it's been 12 years since it
happened. It feels much more recent to me (but then I have that reaction
more and more frequently as I approach my 59th birthday in a few weeks.)

My impression is that most people in the USA, including most feminists,
have very little information about Canada and think of it as pretty much
the same as the USA but colder and less crowded and with "socialized
medicine". We aren't taught much about Canadian history, for example, or
about Canadian literature. We learn a lot more about English history and
literature because they're supposed to be "our" heritage.


At 7/15/2001 10:51 AM +0100, you wrote:
>The 1989 Montreal
>Massacre, of 14 women engineering students in Quebec, was a
>major event historically but I don't know if it's memorable to
>people outside Canada.

Clare Holzman
330 West 58th Street, 404
New York, NY 10019
phone 212 245 7282
fax 718 721 9313
clare.holzman  @  verizon.net

    Please note, Barbara, I did not indicate that students and/or younger
feminists have a hard time with history. I responded to the many comments by
others in the discussion who indicated that.
    In noting your students' fascination with feminists' history and outrage
that they didn't learn it high school, you remind me that I had the same
experience. That kind of reaction came up not only in reference to high
school, but also college courses. Undergraduate students sometimes asked me
about what they were learning outside our Women's Studies class in e.g.,
philosophy, as well as history compared to what we were studying. At the
doctoral level there were comments such as "In my History (or Political
Science) courses women don't exist. What a difference here. Women are
everywhere. I can connect with things."
            beatrice
           bkachuck.cuny  @  prodigy.net

I was away when the thread on seventies feminisms and waves began, but it 
still seems to be somewhat alive, so I take the liberty of re-announcing a 
book on feminismS that uses "waves" but only incidentally. What I do in 
this book is indicate the political stance of each form of feminism -- 
whether the ideas and strategies were reformist (of the gender system), 
resistant or rebellious. I make a point of showing how over the past 35 
years ideas got more complex, and while there were conflicts between 
feminisms, there was also a lot of building on what went before.

I think the book is a good history of recent feminism (it focuses on the 
last 35 years but it includes a chapter on "first wave" feminism) in that 
allows students to see each perspective's stance and ideas (there are two 
excerpts for each of the 11 feminisms -- one theoretical and one on 
praxis), and at the same time to see the sweep and complexity and vitality 
of recent Western feminist theories and politics. I also take the "story" 
further with some of my own ideas on 21st century feminist politics.

The second edition of  my book, GENDER INEQUALITY: FEMINIST THEORIES AND 
POLITICS is now available from Roxbury Press. If you are teaching and would 
like an exam copy go to --   http://www.roxbury.net/

GENDER INEQUALITY is a concise but comprehensive introduction to 
contemporary feminism, designed for undergraduates who are unfamiliar with 
current feminist perspectives and politics.The book focuses on current 
feminist theories on the origins of gender inequality, the policy 
recommendations they offer for achieving it, and the contributions they 
have made to raising the status of women in Western industrialized 
countries. Each discussion of a particular perspective outlines its theory 
as to the chief causes of gender inequality, what can be done about them, 
the perspective's contributions to social change, and theoretical 
limitations. It introduces students directly to original theoretical 
writings through the inclusion of two short, excerpted readings from 
primary sources for each of the 11 feminist perspectives presented.

The perspectives are organized into
Gender Reform Feminisms (liberal, marxist and socialist, post-colonial 
theories)
Gender Resistance Feminisms (radical, lesbian, psychoanalytic, and 
standpoint theories)
Gender Rebellion Feminisms (multicultural, men's, social construction, 
postmodern and queer theories)

NEW IN THE SECOND EDITION
+       Feminist Theories of the Body -- current feminist takes on the 
"nature-nurture" debates with 6 excerpts
+       Feminist Politics for the 21st Century  -- my own theoretical and 
political directions for feminism
Websites for research on women, men, and gender

****************************************************************
Judith Lorber, Ph.D.            Ph/Fax -- 212-689-2155
319 East 24 Street              judith.lorber  @  verizon.net
Apt 27E
New York, NY 10010
Facts are theory laden; theories are value laden;
values are history laden.   -- Donna J. Haraway
****************************************************************