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On 1970s (and Later) FeminismJuly 11, 2008 I was all ready to write about my little garden, but I got sidetracked. The article that knocked me off-course was actually friendly: it was refuting the notion that 1970s feminists were "out of touch." This particular notion usually comes linked to an understanding of 1970s feminists and feminism that is, to put it politely, incomplete. Having been around during the 1970s and well into the 1980s -- by some reckonings into the 1990s -- I have a hard time being polite. Sometimes the sheer, self-serving willfulness of these distortions of feminism gets to me. Like I need to know any more about how histories get erased and why we keep having to reinvent wheels? Here goes: When I think of "1970s feminism," Gloria Steinem isn't the first name that comes to mind. What first comes to mind isn't a name at all: it's the women's centers, grassroots shelters, feminist bookstores, publishers, production companies . . . "Sisters doing it for ourselves," in other words -- and benefiting plenty of brothers at the same time. When I do start coming up with names, among the first are Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, Barbara Smith, Mary Daly, Judy Grahn, Rita Mae Brown, bell hooks . . . If I kept going all day, I bet about 75 percent of the names would belong to women of color and lesbians and women who are/were both. Theirs/ours is a deeper, richer feminism than generally got heard in the mainstream media -- which we sometimes, not inaccurately, called the malestream media. Betty Friedan didn't care much for us either. ;-) Something else that comes to mind is consciousness raising. CR is still one of the best tools I've ever heard of for building an inclusive movement: when theory is built and issues developed from the ground up in hundreds and thousands of kitchens and living rooms, then many voices are included and many more of us have our experiences and interests and struggles represented. Feminism isn't a laundry list of "women's issues." Feminism is a way of looking at all issues (including the ones we haven't identified yet) with women's experience in the foreground. As we used to say in the 1970s -- and plenty of us are still saying today -- "Every issue is a women's issue." Women tend to realize this. That's why you'll find women playing vital, though often invisible, roles in just about every movement you can think of. The guys love having us around, and with good reason: we work like mules and we don't expect to get paid. But as soon as we start expressing views and priorities that the guys don't share -- Robin Morgan got it right in the late 1960s in her essay "Goodbye to All That," "all that" being the sexism of the New Left. None of this is new. An earlier version of "Goodbye to All That" might have been written by women in the U.S. abolition movement, but no, the men told them that "this is the Negro's hour" and, understanding the connectedness of issues, they subordinated their interests to the struggle at hand. When payback time came, well, the 15th Amendment didn't say anything about sex and it wasn't till the 19th was enacted fifty years later, after a long hard struggle, that women of any color got the vote. What's the problem here? Why does feminism keep getting watered down, even as the need for it grows ever greater and more urgent? Here's a hint: Did the abolition movement feel compelled to take direction from plantation owners and others with a stake in the slave system? Did the civil rights movement include southern sheriffs and senators and the owners of segregated lunch counters in its planning meetings? Nope. But an awful lot of women are awfully sensitive to male disapproval, often with good economic reason: we know what side our bread is buttered on, and no way are we going to give up butter. (I can't read Betty Friedan's post-Feminine Mystique books without gagging.) All anyone has to do is suggest that we're lesbians and it's "Not me! I love men." You don't have to be a lesbian to be a feminist, but you do have to be willing to say "So effing what if I am?"
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