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Ain't I A Woman? newspapers, June 1970-July 1971

1970-10-30 "Ain't I a Woman?" Page 9

ERSION
WOMEN'S
EMENT:
to be
done?
M. Shelley

[hand drawing - WOMEN identified WOMEN]

sense. They basically appeal to liberals who wish to hide their liberalism behind radical rhetoric.
   Our resources are limited. To spend all that energy and time to raise $100,000 for one woman who is then supposed to "free" us when she steps out of jail in return for our dollar contribution, to spend all that on a woman whose Party affiliation requires unquestioning obedience to the Supreme Commander (male) - is that the way to make a woman's revolution? The Black Panthers can't be our paid mercenaries - we have to liberate ourselves and fight in our own cause. 
   Why not admit it, the purpose of that campaign was to prove to the Black Panthers that we in Women's Liberation aren't racists. As if we could ever prove it, because we are racists by definition. And there they've got us - we will always be giving money, proving our worth, sewing shirts for soldiers, until we stop taking this bullshit and organize a revolutionary women's movement.
   
The Socialist Worker's Party
   The Socialist Worker's Party is highly attractive to male-oriented women who have swallowed the line that a socialist revolution will automatically bring about the liberation of women. Any careful examination of the status of women in nations that have already gone socialist will give the lie to this pleasant fantasy. In such nations, women's roles are defined by men, and restrictions on political activity make it much more difficult for women to achieve liberation. When the Party decides that an increase in population is desirable, heroic mother medals are awarded. When women are needed in the factories, heroic working-woman medals are minted. When women are needed to nurse soldiers, as in the USSR after the Second World War, the medical profession is opened to them - at least on the lower levels.
   The Socialist Worker's Party, whose membership is 75% male and whose leadership is almost entirely male, has moved with frightening success to infiltrate and take over sections of the women's movement. They have moved full-time workers into the women's centers of New York, Boston, Baltimore and Los Angeles, attempting to take over jobs, moving in SWP literature and moving out feminist literature. Check it out sister, if you live in these cities. 
   The SWP has a policy of infiltration, which is described in their handbook - a handbook issued only to loyal party members. I am attempting to get hold of this handbook, which was described to me by a disillusioned ex-SWP woman, and will publish it as soon as possible. 
   The SWP is also backing the Equal Rights Amendment, a deceptive piece of legislation which will strip away protections from working women. So this is a Socialist Worker's Party?
   At the Women's Strike in New York, control of the speakers platform was in the hands of Ruthann Miller, a long-time member of the SWP. A lesbian, who was attempting to tell her sisters in Bryant Park about the pig harrassment coming down on gay women in the streets, had to get permission to speak from Ruthann - since the Socialist Worker's Party has a long term policy of expelling gay people from its membership, our gay sister found this a humiliating experience.
   SWP has considered gay people to be counter-revolutionaries and a "danger" to the party. Seems like it's bad enough to be called a Commie without being called a Commie Pinko Queer to boot. Some of the expelled gay people are now in Gay Liberation Front; and sadly enough, some of them are wistfully trying to get SWP to change its mind and readmit them now that they have proved they can be "revolutionary." Maybe Huey's seal of approval will cause the SWP to have a change of heart. 
   It's difficult to place one's faith in a so-called vanguard - whether it's a black vanguard or a white vanguard - when the members can't think for themselves, when they can't even notice your oppression until it is spelled out in blood on the streets and cleared by the Central Committee. 
Male Orientation in Women's Groups
   This subversion and co-optation of the women's movement by the male-oriented left would not be possible if so many women were not male-oriented, and if the left were not so full of liberal tendencies. Women have a difficult time in getting rid of the need for male approval, particularly straight women. They find it almost impossible to put their own needs first, tending to act as if women's needs are trivial. This is compounded by a tendency to see men as simultaneously strong and weak - too strong for poor weak women to successfully fight them, and too weak in their dear little egos for us to criticize them in any way.
   Since men are always getting into fights, and since they present every situation as a life-or-death crisis (or carefully engineer such a crisis), for us to take time out to criticize them or demand that they change their behavior is pure sabotage. They haven't got the time for trivial gabble about women's problems. Our job is to relate to their struggles.
  For example, women took over a male-dominated newspaper - RAT - and have been running it for eight months. A look at a recent issue (as of this writing) is an example of the continuing inability of some women to relate to their own needs. It is my impression, having worked on RAT, that while many of the women on it are happy working with other women on paper where they are allowed to run it themselves, they can't get it together enough to publish something which isn't basically a report on the doings of the male movement.
   The front and rear cover of the issue are pictures of two women who are guerilla warriors in male-dominated movements, Angela Davis and Leila Khaled. Nothing new about that - women fighting for male causes goes back as far as Judith, who in the Old Testament, entered the camp of the enemy (some other Semitic tribe) and slew their general in his sleep. As I recollect, that didn't do much to liberate Jewish women.
   A great deal of coverage is expended on the Panthers and on the "Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention", with no mention of the way women were fucked over at that convention. The right on to the Panthers is automatic by now. The Women's Strike of August 26 is covered without any attempt to distinguish between liberal and radical politics, without any attempt to take a feminist stance against the cooptation by various socialist groups as well as various establishment groups. A great deal of coverage consists of a right on to bombings, rip-offs, various forms of violence, without any analysis of what constitutes random violence and what constitutes revolutionary violent action.
   The following issue contains a lengthy article on Korea. For some months now, the Panther Party has been extolling Kim Il Sung and the Korean Communist Party. I'm glad to see that RAT has finally caught up. The RAT interviewer asked the people who visited Korea what happens to homosexuals over there. Who knows? That doesn't relate to Korea or the Korean culture. There are no homosexuals in Korea. Anyway, why should anyone want to embarrass the Koreans by asking such a question? What straight person would think to ask? They might think I was queer...

Liberalism on the Left
   The unwillingness of left-wing groups, particularly women's groups, to engage in criticism and analysis of political groups and events stems from a kind of liberalism which says that anything left-wing is good, and that public criticism of a left-wing group can only do harm to the movement.
   No successful male revolutionary has felt it incumbent upon him to refrain from criticism of other left-wing groups whose principles or actions seemed contrary to the interests of oppressed people.
   The fear to criticize other left-wing groups results in wishy-washy, vague politics, and an uncritical acceptance of behavior which can be actually counter-revolutionary. It destroys any attempt to organize a movement around sound ideological principles, permits oppression to flourish within the movement, alienates potentional converts, and saps the spirit of women who would otherwise be willing workers for our liberation.
   This fear, at least among whites, springs out of guilt politics and a martyr-like attitude, an attitude which says that if you haven't been hit by a billy club or killed a cop or bombed a building, you're not good enough.
   If you're white, your ideas are useless, and the best thing you can do with your life is to sacrifice it in the struggle to destroy honky culture and allow the emergence of a black nation. This idea was presented to me and passionately defended by a sister who is now underground. Another white sister informed me that as a white person, I am necessarily a racist (I agree to that definition), and that I am like all other white people including her. We all hate non-white people to the extent that we will all commit any atrocity whatsoever in order to defend our white skin privileges, including torture and genocide. As a working class lesbian one generation removed from Dachau, I find such politics unspeakably funny. I could die laughing.
 
What is a Revolutionary?
   We seem to confuse people who are fighting simply to end their own oppression - regardless of what happens to other people - with genuine revolutionaries.
   I believe that the true revolutionary is a person working, in whatever capacity - as a soldier or a distributor of leaflets or a worker in a day care center - to end all forms of oppression. She (he) does not fear criticism from comrades, because she recognizes the limitations of her own
experience and wishes to broaden her understanding of all forms of oppression in order to struggle more successfully against them.
   She struggles for understanding and pays attention to an idea rather than to the source of the idea. An idea is not correct simply because it issues from the mouth of Mao or Che or any other leader.
  A person is not automatically defined as a revolutionary simply because she is poor, female, black, or a member of any other group by the circumstances of her birth. She is defined by her conduct, by the manner in which she relates to people. If she demonstrates a willingness to liberate her own group while attempting to oppress other groups, or if she judges a person's politics by the circumstances of their birth or occupation, she is simply engaged in a struggle for power for her own faction, not engaged in revolution.
   At the present time, almost all males are only to willing to oppress women while they issue a few patronizing statements about women's liberation. They have no standard of humanity - only a standard of manhood, and that standard is the cock and the gun. They show almost no willingness to deal with their own sexism or their own liberalism towards so-called radicals who practice sexism, that is, who oppress women and gay men. Nor are they particularly interested in examining the autocratic structures of their own groups and the ways in which they oppress each other.
   It is obviously necessary - has always been necessary - for there to be a strong, separate women's movement whose members are dedicated to struggle for their own liberation and the liberation of all people; women who will band together in strength and not run too quickly to form alliances with oppressive men; women with self-respect who will not be diverted into being female auxiliaries and fund-raising organizations for male power structures.
   It is necessary for such a movement to have a principled, coherent ideology, and to cast out of its ranks opportunists who are seeking approval and favors from the Establishment, as well as women who are willing to sell themselves short in order to gain radical credentials with male groups. It is necessary for such a movement to have within it skilled political economists, because the United States is in an economic situation unlike any other nation past or present, and this is not the place for a revolution modeled after those which have occurred in agrarian societies. We have a lot to figure out before we can move intelligently.
   Since women have been oppressed longer than any other group in history, men have a very heavy investment in continuing to oppress us. Their very sense of "manhood" is defined by their continuing to oppress us. As a result, such a movement will be attacked viciously from both the right and the left, and attempts at subversion will continue. Our only hope will be a clear understanding of what must be done in order to make a woman's revolution.
   We must have control of all the avenues of power in accordance with our numbers - that means 51% control of everything! All power to the sisters! Forward to the World-Wide Women's Revolution!

A Woman?   Oct. 30, 1970    9

Saving...

ERSION WOMEN'S EMENT: to be done? M. Shelley [hand drawing - WOMEN identified WOMEN] sense. They basically appeal to liberals who wish to hide their liberalism behind radical rhetoric. Our resources are limited. To spend all that energy and time to raise $100,000 for one woman who is then supposed to "free" us when she steps out of jail in return for our dollar contribution, to spend all that on a woman whose Party affiliation requires unquestioning obedience to the Supreme Commander (male) - is that the way to make a woman's revolution? The Black Panthers can't be our paid mercenaries - we have to liberate ourselves and fight in our own cause. Why not admit it, the purpose of that campaign was to prove to the Black Panthers that we in Women's Liberation aren't racists. As if we could ever prove it, because we are racists by definition. And there they've got us - we will always be giving money, proving our worth, sewing shirts for soldiers, until we stop taking this bullshit and organize a revolutionary women's movement. The Socialist Worker's Party The Socialist Worker's Party is highly attractive to male-oriented women who have swallowed the line that a socialist revolution will automatically bring about the liberation of women. Any careful examination of the status of women in nations that have already gone socialist will give the lie to this pleasant fantasy. In such nations, women's roles are defined by men, and restrictions on political activity make it much more difficult for women to achieve liberation. When the Party decides that an increase in population is desirable, heroic mother medals are awarded. When women are needed in the factories, heroic working-woman medals are minted. When women are needed to nurse soldiers, as in the USSR after the Second World War, the medical profession is opened to them - at least on the lower levels. The Socialist Worker's Party, whose membership is 75% male and whose leadership is almost entirely male, has moved with frightening success to infiltrate and take over sections of the women's movement. They have moved full-time workers into the women's centers of New York, Boston, Baltimore and Los Angeles, attempting to take over jobs, moving in SWP literature and moving out feminist literature. Check it out sister, if you live in these cities. The SWP has a policy of infiltration, which is described in their handbook - a handbook issued only to loyal party members. I am attempting to get hold of this handbook, which was described to me by a disillusioned ex-SWP woman, and will publish it as soon as possible. The SWP is also backing the Equal Rights Amendment, a deceptive piece of legislation which will strip away protections from working women. So this is a Socialist Worker's Party? At the Women's Strike in New York, control of the speakers platform was in the hands of Ruthann Miller, a long-time member of the SWP. A lesbian, who was attempting to tell her sisters in Bryant Park about the pig harrassment coming down on gay women in the streets, had to get permission to speak from Ruthann - since the Socialist Worker's Party has a long term policy of expelling gay people from its membership, our gay sister found this a humiliating experience. SWP has considered gay people to be counter-revolutionaries and a "danger" to the party. Seems like it's bad enough to be called a Commie without being called a Commie Pinko Queer to boot. Some of the expelled gay people are now in Gay Liberation Front; and sadly enough, some of them are wistfully trying to get SWP to change its mind and readmit them now that they have proved they can be "revolutionary." Maybe Huey's seal of approval will cause the SWP to have a change of heart. It's difficult to place one's faith in a so-called vanguard - whether it's a black vanguard or a white vanguard - when the members can't think for themselves, when they can't even notice your oppression until it is spelled out in blood on the streets and cleared by the Central Committee. Male Orientation in Women's Groups This subversion and co-optation of the women's movement by the male-oriented left would not be possible if so many women were not male-oriented, and if the left were not so full of liberal tendencies. Women have a difficult time in getting rid of the need for male approval, particularly straight women. They find it almost impossible to put their own needs first, tending to act as if women's needs are trivial. This is compounded by a tendency to see men as simultaneously strong and weak - too strong for poor weak women to successfully fight them, and too weak in their dear little egos for us to criticize them in any way. Since men are always getting into fights, and since they present every situation as a life-or-death crisis (or carefully engineer such a crisis), for us to take time out to criticize them or demand that they change their behavior is pure sabotage. They haven't got the time for trivial gabble about women's problems. Our job is to relate to their struggles. For example, women took over a male-dominated newspaper - RAT - and have been running it for eight months. A look at a recent issue (as of this writing) is an example of the continuing inability of some women to relate to their own needs. It is my impression, having worked on RAT, that while many of the women on it are happy working with other women on paper where they are allowed to run it themselves, they can't get it together enough to publish something which isn't basically a report on the doings of the male movement. The front and rear cover of the issue are pictures of two women who are guerilla warriors in male-dominated movements, Angela Davis and Leila Khaled. Nothing new about that - women fighting for male causes goes back as far as Judith, who in the Old Testament, entered the camp of the enemy (some other Semitic tribe) and slew their general in his sleep. As I recollect, that didn't do much to liberate Jewish women. A great deal of coverage is expended on the Panthers and on the "Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention", with no mention of the way women were fucked over at that convention. The right on to the Panthers is automatic by now. The Women's Strike of August 26 is covered without any attempt to distinguish between liberal and radical politics, without any attempt to take a feminist stance against the cooptation by various socialist groups as well as various establishment groups. A great deal of coverage consists of a right on to bombings, rip-offs, various forms of violence, without any analysis of what constitutes random violence and what constitutes revolutionary violent action. The following issue contains a lengthy article on Korea. For some months now, the Panther Party has been extolling Kim Il Sung and the Korean Communist Party. I'm glad to see that RAT has finally caught up. The RAT interviewer asked the people who visited Korea what happens to homosexuals over there. Who knows? That doesn't relate to Korea or the Korean culture. There are no homosexuals in Korea. Anyway, why should anyone want to embarrass the Koreans by asking such a question? What straight person would think to ask? They might think I was queer... Liberalism on the Left The unwillingness of left-wing groups, particularly women's groups, to engage in criticism and analysis of political groups and events stems from a kind of liberalism which says that anything left-wing is good, and that public criticism of a left-wing group can only do harm to the movement. No successful male revolutionary has felt it incumbent upon him to refrain from criticism of other left-wing groups whose principles or actions seemed contrary to the interests of oppressed people. The fear to criticize other left-wing groups results in wishy-washy, vague politics, and an uncritical acceptance of behavior which can be actually counter-revolutionary. It destroys any attempt to organize a movement around sound ideological principles, permits oppression to flourish within the movement, alienates potentional converts, and saps the spirit of women who would otherwise be willing workers for our liberation. This fear, at least among whites, springs out of guilt politics and a martyr-like attitude, an attitude which says that if you haven't been hit by a billy club or killed a cop or bombed a building, you're not good enough. If you're white, your ideas are useless, and the best thing you can do with your life is to sacrifice it in the struggle to destroy honky culture and allow the emergence of a black nation. This idea was presented to me and passionately defended by a sister who is now underground. Another white sister informed me that as a white person, I am necessarily a racist (I agree to that definition), and that I am like all other white people including her. We all hate non-white people to the extent that we will all commit any atrocity whatsoever in order to defend our white skin privileges, including torture and genocide. As a working class lesbian one generation removed from Dachau, I find such politics unspeakably funny. I could die laughing. What is a Revolutionary? We seem to confuse people who are fighting simply to end their own oppression - regardless of what happens to other people - with genuine revolutionaries. I believe that the true revolutionary is a person working, in whatever capacity - as a soldier or a distributor of leaflets or a worker in a day care center - to end all forms of oppression. She (he) does not fear criticism from comrades, because she recognizes the limitations of her own experience and wishes to broaden her understanding of all forms of oppression in order to struggle more successfully against them. She struggles for understanding and pays attention to an idea rather than to the source of the idea. An idea is not correct simply because it issues from the mouth of Mao or Che or any other leader. A person is not automatically defined as a revolutionary simply because she is poor, female, black, or a member of any other group by the circumstances of her birth. She is defined by her conduct, by the manner in which she relates to people. If she demonstrates a willingness to liberate her own group while attempting to oppress other groups, or if she judges a person's politics by the circumstances of their birth or occupation, she is simply engaged in a struggle for power for her own faction, not engaged in revolution. At the present time, almost all males are only to willing to oppress women while they issue a few patronizing statements about women's liberation. They have no standard of humanity - only a standard of manhood, and that standard is the cock and the gun. They show almost no willingness to deal with their own sexism or their own liberalism towards so-called radicals who practice sexism, that is, who oppress women and gay men. Nor are they particularly interested in examining the autocratic structures of their own groups and the ways in which they oppress each other. It is obviously necessary - has always been necessary - for there to be a strong, separate women's movement whose members are dedicated to struggle for their own liberation and the liberation of all people; women who will band together in strength and not run too quickly to form alliances with oppressive men; women with self-respect who will not be diverted into being female auxiliaries and fund-raising organizations for male power structures. It is necessary for such a movement to have a principled, coherent ideology, and to cast out of its ranks opportunists who are seeking approval and favors from the Establishment, as well as women who are willing to sell themselves short in order to gain radical credentials with male groups. It is necessary for such a movement to have within it skilled political economists, because the United States is in an economic situation unlike any other nation past or present, and this is not the place for a revolution modeled after those which have occurred in agrarian societies. We have a lot to figure out before we can move intelligently. Since women have been oppressed longer than any other group in history, men have a very heavy investment in continuing to oppress us. Their very sense of "manhood" is defined by their continuing to oppress us. As a result, such a movement will be attacked viciously from both the right and the left, and attempts at subversion will continue. Our only hope will be a clear understanding of what must be done in order to make a woman's revolution. We must have control of all the avenues of power in accordance with our numbers - that means 51% control of everything! All power to the sisters! Forward to the World-Wide Women's Revolution! A Woman? Oct. 30, 1970 9