Teaching '70s Feminism

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At 15:20 10/07/01 -0500, Lisa Burke wrote:

>To avoid "beating a dead horse," as the saying goes, I will simply say that
>generational issues, the context of the times, have relevance, but they do
>not define or epitomize the difference between the two waves.  Therefore, an
>enormous amount of time should not be spent on theorizing the waves as only
>generational constructs.  I do wonder, however, if there is usefulness
>possibly in exploring communication between second and third waves
>feminists, particularly in the context of defining the waves, that might
>yield useful insights for feminism and Women's and Gender Studies today.

I think that it is useful to remember that the First Wave--the Suffrage
Movement--lasted from 1848 until 1920--72 years encompassing at least three
generations.

One of the reasons that the mother/child metaphor is salient is that each
of the waves--the second and third--have two different things going on. On
one hand, the third wavers are a different generation with different
concerns and different cultural memories. On the other hand, they need to
establish a separate identity, even if it temporarily alienates the older
generation.

We err in seeing the two generations in opposition to each other; evolution
is at work here. One hopes that the wheel need not be invented again and
again.

Then again, my degrees are in history, so chronological metaphors are my
daily bread.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
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

In addition to Alice Echols Daring to Be Bad, I have found that using Flora
Davis' Moving the Mountain to be very useful in introducing younger
feminists to the feminist movements of the seventies.  While we can
critique the book, it is highly readable, captures many of the differences
and conflicts among feminists of differing backgrounds and political
perspectives and noting the difficulties, while not trashing the period.
Re Pauline Bart's comment: I do not find that I have to first skip over the
seventies when I teach my course on women's movements (which is now
International Women's Movements); instead I ask students to engage in the
debates of the period while looking both back and ahead and beside (ie.,
outside U.S.) to best understand why what was happening in U.S. was taking
place.  And yes, as with Max Dashu, I make sure to introduce the oral
history of working class feminists, of which I am/was one.  Best, Barbara
Scott Winkler, Director, Women's Studies, Southern Oregon University

Sue McPherson wrote:

>You can say that the 3rd wave is a lateral movement, and not one
>coming after* the 3rd wave, but it does* follow the 2nd wave historically
>and that cannot be denied.

Well, that all depends on what you are defining as the third wave.  The
term originated in the middle of the second wave, when women of color
began using it to describe a feminism that looked at race, poverty, and
other issues as central to their brand of feminism (and this was NOT
simply in response to "white" feminism, as an exploration of the
development of womanist and Black feminist thought will show).  (I'm not
saying that second wave feminists didn't look at these issues, but I think
we can probably all agree that these approaches were different.)  One of
the reasons Emi offered her analysis of the third wave as not being
grounded in a particular generation was exactly because the third wave has
existed for so long and has its own traditions and theories -- it is not
new, and it was not invented by Jennifer Baumgartner and Amy Richards.
What a lot of younger feminists are calling the third wave DID come after
the second wave, but there's a lot of disagreement over what third wave
feminist really means in this context (help me out here, Emi).

>That has to be acknowledged, but at the
>same time younger feminists have to make their mark in their own way.
>And the mother/daughter relationship symbolizes that. It is the daughter
>rejecting her parents' values and figuring out where she stands in this
>world. It is a normal part of growing up - of testing the waters and
>making mistakes.
[snip]
>And like the mother/daughter relationship, it is not
>unusual for "daughters" to avoid dealing with their "mothers", perhaps
>because their mothers have so much real power, or perhaps because
>they are so close that their faults are so easily seen, and it is only
>when they are farther in the distance that it is possible to examine
their faults and their strengths.

This is beginning to make me a little crazy.  If a younger feminist says
that the mother/daughter analogy doesn't cut it, apparently that is proof
that she is a rebelling daughter (and that she wants nothing to do with
second wave feminists -- something I have NEVER heard a younger feminist
say, BTW).  I agree that, as someone else wrote, it might be useful to
explore the mother/daughter analogy since both "sides" have such strong
feelings about it, but meanwhile I think it is important to keep in mind,
even if only for the sake of facilitating dialogues between older and
younger feminists, that continuing to use this terminology uncritically is
clearly insulting to many younger feminists -- as has been said,
repeatedly, both on this list and in "third wave" feminist writings.

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

The point I am trying to make is that generalizations about "the movement"
focus on its most privileged members: it's really common to hear people say
flat out, "feminists did," "feminism was," [really bad things]. To include
in the grand narrative women who did and said otherwise does not require
anyone to "whitewash" (that kind of word was a real flashpoint back in them
days) or deny patterns of race and class privilege. We've made some
progress, but let's face it: those patterns are not just a thing of the
past. However, they also were being challenged then, by feminists, who
deserve to be counted in summations of what "feminism" was then. We fought
hard to make those changes in what was a very intense and tense time. No
less than the third wave, we "cannot be neatly packaged into the limited
space of possibly essentialist generalizations," generalizations of a
different sort, that machine us all down into an unflattering, even
stigmatized picture.

>Besides the documented exclusionary practices of "the movement" (and that is
>not to say that there weren't women of color or working class women present
>and acting, but we cannot minimize or whitewash the fact that exclusionary
>policies, practices, and perspectives *did* exist), another challenge to
>teaching about 70s mainstream U.S. feminism is the historic look back that
>marks it as "second wave" and allows for the potential marking of today's
>*young* feminists as "third wave" feminists.

P.S.
I don't find the mother - daughter analogy helpful, since it carries so
much baggage about authority. But I do feel that we of these different
radio waves of feminism have kinship with each other.

Max Dashu   <maxdashu  @  LMI.com>
<www.suppressedhistories.net>
Global Women's Studies

In response to Jessica, but answering to Daphne along the way -

On 01.7.10 8:42 PM, "Jessica Nathanson" <janathanson  @  YAHOO.COM> wrote:
> Sue McPherson wrote:
>> You can say that the 3rd wave is a lateral movement, and not one
>> coming after* the 3rd wave, but it does* follow the 2nd wave
>> historically and that cannot be denied.
>
> Well, that all depends on what you are defining as the third wave.
> The term originated in the middle of the second wave, when women
> of color began using it to describe a feminism that looked at race,
> poverty, and other issues as central to their brand of feminism

But of course second wave has "looked at" race, poverty, and other
issues, as Pauline Bart and others pointed out. To repeat the part
2 of my proposal (part 1 being that the third wave is "outside of"
or "besides" the second wave, rather than "after"), I wrote that
third wave feminisms are feminisms that start from the realization
that there are power imbalances among women that are as serious and
important as the power imbalance between women and men. Acknowledging
this in theory and in practice would lead to very different set of
politics than simply acknowledging diversity among women or the
existence of racism, classism, etc.

> One of the reasons Emi offered her analysis of the third wave as
> not being grounded in a particular generation was exactly because
> the third wave has existed for so long and has its own traditions
> and theories -- it is not new, and it was not invented by Jennifer
> Baumgartner and Amy Richards.

I had dinner with Jennifer and Amy last year, and I do love them
very much and I'm glad that their book is out - the problem is that
their book is too often represented as *the* third wave feminism,
rather than one of many third wave possibilities. That, of course,
is not their fault, but I wish that they are more aware of this
tendency and did more to counteract it.

The term "third wave feminism" was used in early 80s. But aside
from the use of a specific term, Ednie Garrison (who was to co-host
the third wave "research cafe" with me at NWSA but couldn't get to
Mpls) points out that the third wave thought can be traced back to
earlier works such as _The Black Woman_, which was published in the
same year as _Sisterhood is Powerful_ (which raises the quesiton
*why* _Sisterhood_ is considered paradigmatic and for whom).

Of course you may question if the 70s-80s "third wave feminism" is
really related to the 90s-00s "third wave feminism" - after all, it's
not hard for two isolated groups of people to come up with the phrase
considering the fact that there had been first and second waves already.
I am willing to argue that they are related/connected - at least until
mid-90s - but explaining how that is so would require a full paper.
My two-part proposals, of course, is an attempt to make these
connection more explicit, not just as an observer, but as a player
also.

> What a lot of younger feminists are calling the third wave DID come
> after the second wave, but there's a lot of disagreement over what
> third wave feminist really means in this context (help me out here, Emi).

I think that these days "third wave" is often used as a short hand
for "young women" without reference to its historical roots or
theoretical significance, and I view that as a problem because it
once again privilege the dominant group experience of being in the
certain generational group (and besides that, it makes third wave
feminisms palatable to the second).

I had considered abandoning "third wave" label, as I witnessed some
young women of color reject the term because they viewed third wave
as a white middle-class movement - I've heard comments like "third
wave feminism is like white girls throwing eggs at their mothers"
and "I can't be a third wave feminist because I'm still struggling
with the second wave issues." As I said in the research cafe, in
some ways we are becoming our mothers (okay, okay, I don't really
like this "mother-daughter" analogy but you know what I mean). That
is why I feel that there needs to be more critiques of third wave
feminist work for the sake of itself - and it doesn't help that we
are continuously forced to participate in endless "cross-generational
dialogs" instead of talking among ourselves (maybe the new third
wave mailing list could be the forum... see http://www.nwsa.org/twf.htm
for more info).

> This is beginning to make me a little crazy.  If a younger feminist
> says that the mother/daughter analogy doesn't cut it, apparently
> that is proof that she is a rebelling daughter

It is by design an irrefutable claim - which generally means that it
is not worth consideration. Can you see why I asked "how is that
different from arguing that feminism is a manifestation of penis
envy?" when Pauline Bart mentioned it?

Besides, it's ironic that I am seen as the rebelling daughter -
why, because most of the feminist activists and theorists I admire
and cite are from 70s on - only that they tend to be women of color,
working class women, etc. Sometimes I feel that I'm betraying women
of color, working class women, etc., from my own generation, because
I rely too heavily on older feminists for inspiration and in my
writings. In connecting 70s/80s and 90s/00s "third wave" feminisms,
it's important that we are not just talking about feminisms of
women of color and working class women from 70s/80s and young white
middle-class women from 90s/00s, but to make conscious effort to
listen to voices of younger women of color and working class women.


Emi K. <emi  @  eminism.org>

Activist-in-Residence, Intersex Society of North America (http://isna.org)
Community Board Chair, Survivor Project (http://survivorproject.org)
--
http://eminism.org/ * Putting the Emi back in Feminism since 1975.

>>But of course second wave has "looked at" race,
>>poverty, and other issues, as Pauline Bart and others
>>pointed out. To repeat the part 2 of my proposal
>>(part 1 being that the third wave is "outside of"
>>or "besides" the second wave, rather than "after"),
>>I wrote that third wave feminisms are feminisms that
>>start from the realization that there are power
>>imbalances among women that are as serious and
>>important as the power imbalance between women and
>>men.

Didn't socialist feminism always start from this point?  This conversation
is beginning to make me less rather than more clear about how "Third Wave
Feminism" is a distinct perspective.

On 01.7.11 7:32 AM, "Oboler, Regina" <roboler  @  URSINUS.EDU> wrote:

> Didn't socialist feminism always start from this point?

That is the objection I always hear whenever I talk about the third
wave in the way I did above. In response, I argue that *in general*
socialist feminism does not go far enough in recognizing the
impossibility of a coherent "united front" or united agenda - that
is, instead of embracing the multiplicity of political organizing
and agenda, it attempts, perhaps prematurely, to present a universal
solution - which to me suggests that it did not recognize various
power imbalances as equally important.

> This conversation is beginning to make me less rather than more
> clear about how "Third Wave Feminism" is a distinct perspective.

I never said that third wave feminisms have a "distinct" perspective
that has never been expressed. I'm trying to articulate third wave
feminisms for itself rather than in contrast to another feminism
or feminisms. I do think that "third wave" as I define it is pretty
distinct from the second *in general*, but that is obviously not to
say that second wave feminists all think alike (or for that matter,
that third wave feminists all think alike).


Emi K. <emi  @  eminism.org>

--
http://eminism.org/ * Putting the Emi back in Feminism since 1975.

> I think that it is useful to remember that the First Wave--the Suffrage
> Movement--lasted from 1848 until 1920--72 years encompassing at least three
> generations.

This reply to the above statement is in no way intended to attack anyone.
I believe, however, that it's important for all of us to continually be
aware of how we categorize and define in exclusionary
ways (often unintentional).

As Beverly Guy-Sheftall's *Words of Fire* makes clear, African-American
women were writing, speaking, and acting against gender and race
oppression *before* Seneca Falls.  Following is from the introduction to
*WOF*:

"The struggle for black women's liberation . . . is a continuation of both
intellectual and activist traditions whose seeds were sown during slavery
and flowered during the antislavery fervor of the 1830s" ([1]).
Guy-Sheftall goes on to name Maria Stewart, Sojourner Truth, and Frances
 E.W. Harper as African-American women who spoke and/or wrote for women's
rights, and to say that the history of African American feminism began
with them (although black women had been struggling and resisting in
diverse ways from the beginning).  Cooper identifies "a woman question and
a race problem" in the 1830s.  Guy-Sheftall continues:  "[t]hough ignored
by historians attempting to document the development of feminism in the
mid-nineteenth century, black women's self-help, abolitionist, and other
reform activities . . . contributed to a climate of discontent which
foreshadowed the historic women's rights gathering at Seneca Falls in
1848" ([3]).

My point is that we can say that the "first wave" was racist if we limit
it to Seneca Falls, Cady Stanton, Susan Anthony, et al.  But if we include
Harper, Truth, Stewart, and other unnamed women who struggled for black
women's rights, then we have to say that the first wave included people who
said and did racist things but that the first wave was not limited to nor
defined by them.  And indeed, as has been said on this list before, Native
American women before contact with Europeans had status and power within
their tribal communities that influenced the Seneca Falls organizers.

In the same way, we can say that the "second wave" included racist words
and deeds (since it took place in a racist society), yet to define it by
these is not doing good history.  To say that the only anti-racist work
done by 60s and 70s and 80s feminists was against the racism of white men,
as someone said earlier, is simply inaccurate.  I encourage people to look
at archival materials such as the women's collections at Duke or at
Georgia State to see what the women's liberation movements were actually
doing.

And the above is not an attempt to exonerate anyone from our racism, only
to point out that, at the same time that there were exclusionary actions
and words, there was also an enormous amount of work done against racism.
And of course it was not eradicated.  That work remains, and I hope that
the next generation or the lateral movements will be able to be more
successful in eradicating it.

M. Charlene Ball, Academic Professional
Women's Studies Institute
Georgia State University
Atlanta, Georgia  30303-3083
404/651-4633
404/651-1398 fax
wsimcb  @  panther.gsu.edu
http://www.gsu.edu/womenpower

    I have been following this discussion with much interest and
want to add another perspective, from a historian,  on the question
of waves and teaching (and writing) the history of 70s feminism.  I
find the wave  metaphor an inadequate way of thinking about the
history of  feminism, and very much prefer thinking of the history of
feminism as rhyzomatic, as having multiple sometimes intersecting,
sometimes clashing roots and shoots.  (This metaphor comes from
Deleuze and Guattari who oppose ryzomatics to the tree metaphor,
which is an emblem of both linear progression, ordered systems and
irreconcilable division through branching. )

      Coexistent shoots can have different rhythms, growths,  and
textures.  THey can intersect, and then come undone.    The oceanic
wave metaphor lacks a good way to conceptualize simultaneous, yet
different feminisms.   I  want a metaphor that draws out how
differently situated groups of women were affected by different
historical rhythms and developed different modes and practices.  For
example,  I have been living in Berlin for 2 years and here feminist
activism has been on a different temporal rhythm from the U.S., one
connected to events in Eastern Europe, where one can draw a triangle
of feminist coalitions between Berlin, Belgrade and Budapest.  Unlike
the U.S., in Berlin, the 1980s saw a swell of feminist activism up to
the fall of the wall.   I find waves a stiffling metaphor, one that
implies, first, that there is a common body of water (context);
second, a single rhythm; and third, a consistency to the contents of
the wave.
    For me, the problem of using  a wave metaphor to teach 1970s
feminism is linked to some problems with what has become the
canonical way of teaching the history of women in 20th century
American.  Even though feminist historians have done a good job at
adding diversity to the curriculum of 20th century U.S. women's
history, I have found that the general narrative of waves and
periodization (progressive era, depression, WWII, backlash 50s,
feminist radical 70s, backlash 80s), doesn't grapple with the  the
multiple rhythms and roots of history.   For example, rarely does a
U.S. women's history course deal with the Great Migration, or the
Mexican Revolution.    The politics of white feminists of both the
suffragettes and of the 1970s need to be contextualized, not only in
the standpoints of the women developing these political positions and
their immediate cultural conditions, but also in terms of the other
historical threads that surrounded them (slavery and colonialism,
transnational migration and globalization).  In this way 1970s
feminism can be seen as 1) constrained and partial, 2) having
produced significant effects, 3) as roots contemporary feminists
build through, react against, and transform.    As some one who
writes about the history of post 1945 U.S. feminism (and has learned
alot from it) I've come to believe that it has to be contextualized
by the fact that  the U.S. in this period became a dominant world
power that profoundly shaped the practices of postcolonial power
relations and global capitalism.  Without doing that, it is analogous
to teaching the history of women in 19th century Britain without
dealing with empire.  The metaphor of rhyzomatics, I find, helps to
capture the proliferation of feminisms that were diverse and how they
were complicit (both oppressively and productively) in each other.
Though it doesn't necessarily help to get at the issue of placing
U.S. feminism in a transnational history, polyrhythmic history.

By the way, I very much liked the idea of radio waves, not least of
all because the are made artifacts and not natural phenomena.

Michelle Murphy
History/Women's Studies
University of Toronto
murphy  @  mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

I caught just a little of a women's sports history this morning on HBO,
just in the middle of it, and I didn't take time to look on the schedule
to see what it was called.

However, there was a very interesting segment on the role black American
women played in the development of women's participation in competitive
sports.  After WWII, through at least the early sixites, the societal
ideal for white women did not include her being athletic.

The documentary noted that black men did not construct that idealized
barrier around black women, and it gave employment-financial reasons for
the difference between the two racial views on athletic women.

So, when the Second Wave white feminists came along, they were having to
break out of the "intramural" level sports competitions, while black
USA women athletes were leading the way on the Olympic track and field
teams.

Anyway, it seems the HBO documentary would be a very interesting film to
share with a women's studies class.  It covered women's softball teams in
the 1930s, when they had to wear bloomers, the All American Girls'
Baseball League during WWII, and profiles major female athletes'
contributions, with oral histories from some of their peers who were still
alive when the documentary was made.

fyi,
Betty
________________________________________
Betty J. Glass, Humanities Bibliographer
University Library/322
University of Nevada, Reno
1664 N. Virginia St.
Reno, NV  89557-0044

(775) 784-6500 ext. 303
(775) 784-1751 (fax)

glass  @  unr.edu

I know at least one African American woman played professional baseball in
the Negro League --Peanuts Johnson.  I have seen photos of her, although I
haven't been able to find much information. She was a pitcher.

marge piercy hagolem  @  c4.net

    On the topic of 70s feminism.... While much of the discussion is
focusing on the wave image, I think we need to revamp the dominant
narrative of "second wave" altogether.  I just read Roz Baxandall's
article in the latest issue of Feminist Studies in which she focuses on
recovering the history of African-American feminisms of the 60s and 70s
and looks at several black feminist organizations that she and Linda
Gordon discovered as they collected documentary sources of the second
wave. Her article creates a whole new horizon of possibilties for looking
at 70s feminisms that do not center the activism of white, middle-class
women. In the same corrective vein, historians like Dorothy Sue Cobble
have been documenting the feminist activities of working class women in
the 50s, 60s and 70s--again forcing us to rethink what 70s feminism was
all about.
    We make a great error by reducing the rich history of 60s and 70
Feminisms to a few strains of feminist activism that have to this
point dominated historical narratives. There were many feminisms at
mid-century, and relegating the beginning of "second wave" feminist
activism to the decade of the 70s (Baxandall and Cobble both date their
respective research to earlier periods) and to particular strains of
feminism that have gotten the most press in dominant media as well as in
Women's Studies classes is very troubling.
    Histories of the period will continue to lead us to the conclusions
that "second wave" was dominated by white, middle-class women if we
continue to center the documentary sources produced by white, middle-class
women with the voices of a few women of color thrown in. Historical
correctives which enable us to look at "second wave" feminisms from other
vantage points are coming beginning to develop. The definitive history of
this period has yet to be writte. We need to totally revamp how we think
about the "second wave"  which I think must start with changing the dates
we use, the organizations we focus on, and the sources we use as evidence.
We must treat the current historical narrative of "second wave" which
dominates in Women's History as merely provisional until some of this new
research can be integrated.
    At the very least, read Baxandall's article.

Ann Mussey
Women's Studies
Portland State University

    Sevanthi, your idea complicates the topic in an interesting way. You
refer to  multiculturism in the USA and point to an article about the
Taliban and their dress code for women. This points out a problem in the
discussion. Multiculturism in the USA is more complex than has been
acknowledged. African-Americans are a major part of this issue but not the
only one. How about defining multiculturism. It doesn't mean just a
collection of diverse groups. What are the political ramifications,
political in the sense of the distribution of power? and the material and
psychological dimensions? Shouldn't the definition include gender as a
feature of culture within and across the multi groups in the country?
    Also, the concept of multiculturalism would be well served by
considering how it works in other countries, including Afghanistan. Surely,
in this period when multiculturism is creating storms in so many places in
the world (has for a long time), we should get some critical distance for
discussions of it in the USA by considering what it means in other
countries, how it's manifested in there and interactive effects in the USA.
Sevanthi's reference to the Taliban provides an example. Afghanistan is a
multicultural country. (in religion and ethnicity at least)  How do we react
to it? The discussion should include USA cultural interventions in other
countries where that is evident, shouldn't it?
    I don't mean to complicate the topic so that it's overloaded and drowns.
But I think we need a more rigorous discussion of it.
            beatrice
           bkachuck.cuny  @  prodigy.net

>     Sevanthi, your idea complicates the topic in an interesting way. You
>refer to  multiculturism in the USA and point to an article about the
>Taliban and their dress code for women.


Actually, Sonia Shah's article was about the differences between American
feminists and Afghani women in conceptualizing Afghani women's oppression.

You're opening up a huge topic.  My point was only that I wondered if
arguments within feminist discourse about multiculturalism could be mapped
onto the second wave/third wave distinction.  I'm not sure if it works--it
of course depends on how one defines second wave feminism.

I should think any metaphor used to symbolize the feminist movements
would be inadequate in some way or other, just as any one theory
can never satisfactorily explain every phenomenon.  The tree metaphor
is a good one, especially visually, laying things out so one can get an
overall picture, as well as the way you describe, with branches and
shoots, intersecting and spreading out.

But the oceanic wave metaphor is the one that captures the emotion
of feminist and social movements, in a way the radio wave and tree
metaphors do not.  Activism leading up to the fall of the wall, and
feminist activism related to Greenham Common, which I mentioned
before, and the Suffragist movement, were all highly emotional times.
The oceanic-wave metaphor reflects a natural force, sometimes a
force that cannot be held back because of its strength, and
associated with a chorus of thundering sounds, and so on, and
very much associated with feelings and embodied experience.

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.

Sue McPherson
sue  @  mcphersons.freeserve.co.uk
http://samcpherson.homestead.com/homepage.html

Jessica Nathanson wrote :

" [...] that all depends on what you are defining as the third wave.  The
term originated in the middle of the second wave, when women of color
began using it to describe a feminism that looked at race, poverty, and
other issues as central to their brand of feminism (and this was NOT
simply in response to "white" feminism, as an exploration of the
development of womanist and Black feminist thought will show)."

I am writing a thesis on consciousness raising in relation to the black
feminist movement.
The fact that the term "third wave" could have been used by women of color
in the middle of the second wave, aroused my curiosity. As this idea is very
new for me, I wondered if anyone on the list could clear up this issue for
me.

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.

Thanks,
Ludivine Mequinion
Doctoral Candidate, American Studies
ludi.mequi  @  free.fr

Sorry about the error in my previous message, in which I took
rhizomes for trees. I was thinking in general terms only, how
different they are from ocean waves.  But this does relate to
another issue, and another post I have meant to respond to:

Beatrice Kachuck said that Canada is not the only country
marginalized in the approach to feminist history. But one
problem Canada has is that it is so close to the US,
geographically and in culture that often they are not
distinguished between. I am not sure, though, how this
affects the history of feminism in Canada.

Sue McPherson
sue  @  mcphersons.freeserve.co.uk


>     I have been following this discussion with much interest and
> want to add another perspective, from a historian,  on the question
> of waves and teaching (and writing) the history of 70s feminism.  I
> find the wave  metaphor an inadequate way of thinking about the
> history of  feminism, and very much prefer thinking of the history of
> feminism as rhyzomatic, as having multiple sometimes intersecting,
> sometimes clashing roots and shoots.  (This metaphor comes from
> Deleuze and Guattari who oppose ryzomatics to the tree metaphor,
> which is an emblem of both linear progression, ordered systems and
> irreconcilable division through branching. )
(snip)
>
> Michelle Murphy
> History/Women's Studies
> University of Toronto
> murphy  @  mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

My understanding was that women who took the "womanist" label were saying
not only that white-dominated feminism did not speak to their race and class
concerns, but also that because it did not it was liberal and reformist, and
not really radical -- did not go far enough.

Recall Alice Walker's formulation:  feminist is to womanist as lavender is
to purple.  (Of course, lavender could be code for the lesbian theme, but it
seems doubtful that that is Walker's intention, since she also was at the
time writing about lesbian relationships in a sympathetic way.)

For those interested, I've recently received a flyer for a conference on the
subject at York University (UK). At this stage they are still calling for
papers...

The Seventies, 27 April 2002

a summary of teh blurb: 'focus particularly on UK and wider European
experiences' ... 'also welcome contributions from further afield' 'One
strong theme will be a concern with the legacies of the seventies'

Send abstracts of 300 words by 30 October 2001 to
Seventies conference (abstracts), Centre for Women's STudies, University of
York, York, YO10 5DD, UK
e-mail: hcg101  @  york.ac.uk

You can contact them first for more information or to discuss and idea
before submitting an abstract.

That's all I know about it so don't reply to me, please.

Dr. Jo VanEvery
Dept. of Cultural Studies and Sociology
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
0121 414 3730
j.van-every  @  bham.ac.uk