Реферат: The most radical feminism

This article will attempt to show that defining women as a class brings the Radical Feminists back to affirming the one thing all women do have in common – the female role; that the a-historical approach of personal politics is part of this female role, and that the lack of a strategy has meant the movement has reverted to those activities traditionally open to women – for example «self-help» which is no more than charity dressed up.

AFTER the initial stages of consciousness-raising, after the first rage had died down, the Women’s Liberation Movement had begun to question, to ask where the oppression had come from, and try to work out the wax forward. Radical in its belief that a new society was necessary, the movement was strongly influenced by the New Left with its emphasis on conscious and experience. The social group of which the New Left was composed – white, middle class, students and the intellectually inclined – had weighed the «affluent society» in the balance and found it wanting. The housewife epitomised this affluent world of gadgets, and in fact was one herself. As Betty Friedan put it, she found herself with a vague, inexplicable feeling of «Is this all?» Alienation and feelings of powerlessness provided the impetus for the growth of the Women’s Liberation Movement.

Consciousness raising groups were therefore the first tasksof the movement. Women came to understand that personal feelings of inadequacy and helplessness were shared, that they were related to the social situation of women. Alienation was discovered to be a result of lack of control over the conditions of your life. In Women’s Liberation terms this meant no abortion or childcare centres, restricted job opportunities and low wages, and above all the role expectation that whatever the individual propensities or talents, all women must become wives, mothers and housewives.

Betty Friedan’s organisation, N.O.W., had little trouble establishing a strategy consistent with its limited aims of improved status for women within the system, and followed the standard pressure group tactics. However the Women’s Liberation Movement, with its aim of fundamental change, required a strategy broader in scope. When the momentum of the movement slowed after the initial burst of enthusiasm, the movement had to face its own lack of social power, which is essential for change. In the absence of a strong and clearly radical working class movement, the movement turned inwards.

The movement at this stage had an extremely emotional, tense atmosphere. Many women, discovering the oppressive nature of the role with which they had always identified, suffered an identity crisis, and sought support and identity in the movement, in sisterhood. Many turned to the movement as if to a lover, seeking from this new relationship the fulfilment promised but never provided by the traditional role. In its inability to find a strategy, the movement rallied its one obvious strength – unity.

Radical feminism grew out of this search for a theory to unite all women, a search for a «female» culture to replace the «male» culture which was seen as being the main enemy. All those social realities which do divide women were ignored by the simple expediency of relegating them to the male domain, whereby they were made unimportant.

From the beginning, the movement had argued that many «female» characteristics such as emotions were in fact good and necessary for all humans. This gave way now to an advocacy of the female culture, which in turn amounts to the only thing that does cut across all class, race and national lines for women: the female role.

As Radical Feminism has grown and developed it has retreated more and more into the female role.

Just as so many men have told us in the past. Radical Feminists now tell us that women are earthy, un‑aggressive creatures, who think differently and whose sexuality is different – more diffuseandromantic.

Thus the constant pressure in the movement to be «sisterly», to have no disagreements, and to relate totally to everybody. Articles are written attacking thought and theory as «male». Women, «suddenly» develop an interest in crafts, particularly those not exactly traditionally regarded as unsuitable for females, e.g. weaving or crocheting. When an action is not completely successful the response of many Women’s Liberationists is to blame themselves.

It is extraordinary that Radical Feminist women, while complaining that males have written women out of history, will unflinchingly make these generalizations. To ignore politically powerful (and warlike) women such as Scrimavo Bandaranaike, Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir; or even the hundreds of women psychologists and sociologists who have studied sexuality – among them Margaret Sanger, Helene Deutsch, Margaret Mead; to ignore these women is to deny that women do have a history.

Furthermore, to maintain that women have been successfully and totally suppressed to the point where they have been completely unable to participate is to accept the idea that women are passive; and it is to deny that women have repeatedly been able to overcome theirconditioning so far as to break through to real activity.

The exceptionally elitist attitudes to their less famous contemporaries who participate in «male dominated» left organisations is not only insulting; it is inconsistent with any ideas of sisterhood to have such contempt for the sincerely held beliefs of socialist women.

The reaffirmation of the female role is taken to its logical conclusion by Jane Alpert. Her theory that women should rule and be worshipped by virtue of their potential motherhood brings us full circle, back to the gilded cage from which we have so desperately been trying to escape. But this time the purpose of the bars is not to keep women inside – instead the radical feminists waul to keep the world out.

The radical feminists have contributed important insights into what is wrong with capitalism. One of the most sophisticated radical feminist writers. Shulamith Firestone, analysed important questions, such as love, children, and the relationship between sex and racism. But Firestone, as do all the others, continued to suffer from the lack of a strategy. They had no idea of what to do. In the search for something to do, for social power, radical feminism looks towards models in past societies, where women ruled, or female groupings were powerful. Alternatively, the «key» is thought to lie in lesbianism, vegetarianism, or the occult.

In «The First Sex», by Elizabeth Gould Davis, the idea of the «noble savage» is given a new twist. This book very popular with Radical Feminists, advances the theory that the prehistoric matriarchies were ruled by physically and psychically superior, vegetarian women. Unfortunately, meat‑eating, lustful men took over, and today we see the consequences.

Medieval (and modern) witches and midwives are idealised, with their «great healing powers of skill in midwifery – (they) obtained skills through inborn psychic gifts, generations of experimentation – or perhaps being attuned to their natural instincts by living a quiet life in the woods.»

Again we find the Radical Feminists arguing that women are closerto nature!

The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world!

Short cut theories, proposing a single universal key to open the door to feminist heaven, abound.

Last year the key was Lesbianism. A large number of Radical Feminists became lesbians, not out of sexual interest, but as a point of political principle. It was argued simply that «feminism is the theory, lesbianism is the practice.» Lesbians maintained that they were the real revolutionaries, being women who had refused to submit to the female role. The realization was, however, not long in coming that relating to a woman can still be highly role-defined.

This year the key is fashion has been the question of health/nature healing/vegetarianism. Alienation, or lack of harmony between mind, emotions and body can be overcome by the amazing healing qualities of food. Furthermore, «Meat eating and male violence seemed locked together.» Institutional medicine will be superseded by astrological birth control, female nature healers and the healing crisis (or in more female terms, suffering).

The theories of matriarchy and witches, of lesbianism and nature healing lead naturally into an ideology enjoying growing popularity – female superiority. This is a very convenient solution to the searchfor power, since it suggests women are in fact powerful now.

More recently, female superiority is advocated quite openly. One writer has only minor reservations «about saying straight out that there are important innate differences between men and women, that biology is destiny, and that biology has made women infinitely superior to men.»

The advocates of female superiority lend to hesitate because of one consequence – if men are naturally inferior, it gives them a cop-out – they can’t help being bastards. However there are more serious political implications than this. Advocacy of female superiority is no less sexist or potentially oppressive than male chauvinism. It is authoritarian, elitist and reactionary. Furthermore, one logical conclusion is inescapable: if the female role epitomises all that is good in human nature, and females are superior to males, then women are not oppressed. How long will it be before we see an article pushing this line?

Before the industrial revolution, the family’s economic function was conspicuously productive. The family farm was the fundamental unit for production of basic necessities. But with the industrial revolution, the point of production was moved to the factory, and the family, at least in urban areas, lost any obvious productive function. The only remaining one, the production of labour power (the production and maintenance of the worker him or herself) is invisible, disguised as a personal service a wife does out of love for her husband. The function of the family, apart from the economic one of consumption, became mainly political. Training in authoritarian attitudes and sexual repression, socialization of children into the competitive, super-individualistic psychology of capitalism – that is the major task of the family.

Based on the apparent divorce of the family from economic production, the myth grew of the family as «outside» society, as a refuge, where personal life is carried on and where the man may recuperate from the pressures of the world. Despite the large numbers of women (and children who worked, this theory was developed particularly during the Victorian period. The Englishman’s home was his castle – his wife, in her peaceful sanctuary, formed the basis for capitalism’s version of a woman’s place.

Thus women’s oppression today is based on the role of woman as the centre and lynchpin of the family. The apparently personal nature of the family, separate from society, has meant that women tend to see their problems in a personal, particularist way. During its early stages, the Women’s Liberation movement concentrated on breaking down this false consciousness and through consciousness-raising groups helped women to perceive the social nature of their oppression. Thus the concept: «the personal is political».

The catchword now amounts to: «the political is personal». Everything must be looked at in a personal subjective way.