Women’s solidarity
For much of American history women’s solidarity, the way women identified with each other, was grounded in the fact that all women were either mothers or potential mothers. This solidarity drove women’s political and social involvement outside the home. After the reproduction revolution of the twentieth century, women’s solidarity has become significantly eroded. Now, motherhood is strictly an option and potential motherhood is receding in the minds of many western women. The result is that feminism has lost its political traction. What is left of liberal feminism? Check out this article by Utne Reader entitled “Shelf Life: Feminism 2.0″ which surveys the blogosphere for the conversations that are taking place. Twenty first century feminism has become a form of tribalism where every issue is equally valid, and therefore no longer politically or philosophically compelling. Check out the blogs and let me know what you find.
March 19th, 2008 at 8:39 am
What I find interesting and rather disturbing, other than the fact that issues such as poverty don’t raise responses on feminist blogs, is that alongside this article were ads posted by Google for, “Asian Women For Love and Marriage.” Just click on one of these photos and a whole host of Asian photos of beautiful, young Asian girls pops up in front of you. Just “join free” and these girls are at your disposal. More clear evidence of the commodification of human beings…and most likely human trafficking here in the United States.
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:30 am
Fascinating post. I think women’s solidarity in the west has been eroded by the sexual revolution, which has meant that sex outside marriage has become the norm. It has led to an increase in competition for men at the same time that many men have become less responsible and failed to grow up. This was illustrated for me by a social worker who told me once that the young lone mothers who were her clients didn’t really have any friends apart from the men they slept with. I imagine that these women had no *female* friends because they no longer trusted each other to keep away from each other’s men, given the collapse of monogamous marriage as the norm.
This is why non-white women and religious women are so conflicted in western society. They know that the values of First Wave Feminism are positive, and they know that a number of the gains of subsequent waves of feminism are important, but they find themselves in opposition to a society that does not help women find lifelong stability. I would say that from a British perspective, a lot of the problems in the Islamic community are down to this. It is often older women and very young women who perpetuated customs like honour killings, female circumcision and wearing of the heavier forms of veil. These are desperate ways in which women try to police each other’s sexual behaviour and the signals they collectively give out to men about marriage and sexual ethics. In the absence of a gentler Christian ethic which starts from acknowledging people’s weaknesses, this is no surprise. The fascination that secular feminism has with power, and its fear of acknowledging weakness, meshes very well with this Islamic backlash.
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:07 pm
The feminist movement has been co-opted by men. Did you know that birth control products, aside from condoms, used to be illegal in many states? And that back in the 1950s, Hugh Hefner’s lawyers went to battle for legalization of birth control? Hefner also was involved in underwriting court cases that led up to Roe vs. Wade.
Question: Why would Hefner, and Playboy readers, want women to have access to birth control and abortions? I’ll let you figure that out. In the same vein, many women are now convinced that to dress provocatively in public — something in the past only prostitutes did — gives them power. Oh my.
Which is all why rather than seeing each other as the competition, women need to start talking to each other about all this. Then the jig will be up!
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:59 pm
While it’s true that the sexual revolution advocated by Hefner could not have been possible without the pill, the history of childbirth and birth control is a complex one. The history of child birth for women is not a rosy one. Many women died from multiple births. The debate about the benefits and negative consequences of birth control is highly debated with many good arguments on both sides.
The other thing is the question of power. When women do not feel that they have other forms of legitimate power they are more likely to turn to the old forms of power women have historically been assigned– sex and manipulation.