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Ain't I A Woman? newspapers, June 1970-July 1971
1970-12-11 "Ain't I a Woman" Page 8
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DAYCARE CAMPAIGNS AND CO-OPS The following article was written by a sister in Bloomington: POLITICAL TENDENCIES IN THE MOVEMENT At Grinnell in November midwest representatives of Women's Liberation got an oblique view of what is happening in the movement. Oblique because the political positions expressed were not explicitly analyzed or compared. Nor was their meaning or direction shown. Differences were left in an inchoate form. Differences there were aplenty. A basic cleavage was hinted at the first night of the conference. Marlene Dixon, Shannon of Twin Oaks, and a Grinnell woman made up apanel supposedly on "Definition of Women's Liberation." This was an open meeting, open to men despite the topic, and the one which greeted visitors who had traveled from afar to Iowa. (Some felt uncomfortable to walk into a mixed meeting as their first contact with a woman's conference.) But the way the topic was handled was appropriate for a mixed audience--it was not really concerned with a definition of women's liberation. It was concerned with telling the women's movement what was wrong with it (from one point of view) or with (from another point of view) the "subversion of the women's movement by representatives of the male-dominated left," as the discussant, a woman from Iowa City, put it. During the panel presentations Marlene Dixon had called on the women's movement to join the "anti-imperialist front." She had belabored he "middle class" nature of Women's Liberation, called the various activities in which WL engages, such as abortion-law repeal or abortion counselling and day care programs, "counter-revolutionary." The one question from the floor that opposed her view was not answered by her, but by a woman in the audience who succeeded in confusing the issue. No one knew whether she agreed or disagreed, at that point, with the questioner. And after that question, the meeting ended. Perhaps it should be added than an earlier question, put by a visitor from Bloomington, Indiana, made Marlene qualify her statements about day care. She was willing to accept free, 24-hour child care as a revolutionary demand. At no other point in the conference was there an opportunity to explore the political differences that these exchanges represented. On Sunday when the final panel was trashed and suggestions were made for topics for small discussion groups, the subject of political tendencies and directions in the movement was offered. But those who might have participated in and benefitted from such a discussion followed Marlene into another place and another discussion. So the confrontation of different views, the study of the meaning of these differences, was avoided. Nevertheless, during Saturday's workshops on more specific topics and issues, differing politics were clear. The workshop on child care provides a good example. The politics of child care expressed there can be reduced to two positions. One, acceptable to Marlene, stressed the importance of free, 24-hour child care as a demand to be made on government. Childcare facilities set up by members of the middle class to meet their own needs were belittled by this position because of the class served. The nature of the care given, the nature of its organization went unregarded. In fact the idea of quantity instead of quality ruled--how many children, how many facilities, how much money. Money itself was rejected by one woman as a fraud practiced on the working class. "In this society time equals money," she said; "so if you ask parents to give time, you are asking them to give money." Child care campaigns started on these ideas boasted of the sums demanded: in Texas, $100,000. Such large sums were seen as necessary for the hiring of personnel to run the centers. With the perspective of free--absolutely free--care, the need for experts to staff the centers necessarily follows. And of course the great virtue of such centers is seen as their ability to take in working-class children. The other position on child care stressed the quality of care given, the kind of organization as the essential questions. It saw the cooperative principle as the heart of revolutionary change in the organization of life activities. Cooperative child care means that the parents themselves operate the center. It is not a matter of their attempting to control someone else who actually operates the center (does the work, makes daily decisions, has expertise, or gets a wage). Their sharing of the actual work is important not only in their own lives in that they learn to work in groups, to have enjoyment, understanding, and compassion for each other, but also for the lives of the children, who see a model in their parents for their own behavior. The children learn too that child care is not drudgery work assigned to the females of society. To the charges that cooperative centers are a luxury that only the middle class can afford, representatives from Bloomington, Indiana, offered their experience. After a couple of years and the establishment of four cooperative centers, interest in these actual, viable centers has grown to a point where is is now possible to make demands on the university as employer. The child care campaign now initiated there is demanding release time from work for employees who want to participate in the cooperative centers. Universities as corporate employers differ little from other corporations. Already workers from Westinghouse and G.E. in Bloominton are talking of applying the cooperate principle to their child care problems. The political positions inherent in these approaches to child care need to be made explicit. Twenty-four hour child care is not the ultimate in revolutionary demands even though one could not demand more in terms of hours. The time or the money (or the equation of the two) are not the essence of the question. The emphasis on money or on time as money can be seen as a bourgeois mind-set, the influence that all of us must fight in ourselves as its manifestations are revealed. But as important to theory are some of the implications of the 24-hour demand. In Iowa, cooperative child-care centers were put down because they served the middle class and therefore the "less oppressed" women. Working-class women were described sometimes as "more oppressed" and sometimes as "really oppressed." This distinction, or course, denies the validity of women's liberation as revolutionary movement. If only working-class women are really oppressed, then what need have we for any movement of women? The working class is oppressed--so what else is new? The new seems to be that women as a sex are not oppressed: after all these centuries, after Astell, Wollstonecraft, Mott, Stanton, etc., the women's movement discovers that women as a sex are not oppressed. And this, according to its left wing, which pretends to recognize and bless each new revolutionary battalion. If women and their self-activity are seen as non-revolutionary, how are the "really oppressed" seen? The implication behind all the patronizing work done "for" the working class is that owrkers are simply inert victims, incapable of self-activity, incapable of fighting their own battles or even of seeing their own needs. They must be taught, led, cajoled, or tricked into self-defense by revolutionaries, who will ride into power on the back of the hypothetical monster they have activated. The only transformation necessary for this event, this so-called revolution, amounts to a personnel change at the top of society. The good guys will be in instead of the bad guys. The good guys will decide on how to spend the money, who is to eat who is to work, how they are to work, etc. With this vision of history, with this concept of people and of classes, the 24-hour child care demand fits perfectly. What kind of politics is this? First of all it is bourgeois through and through. It is really counter-revolutionary. It is even worse than doing Nixon's dirty work for him--especially in the field of child care, though not only there. It is counter-revolution posing as revolution; it is the pretense of the thing in place of the real thing. It is the element of confusion which is the usual contribution of the middle class to a revolutionary situation. What else is it? It is distinctly male. Only men (or women intellectually dominated by men) could conceive of child care in such purely quantitative terms, could fail to see the dynamics of human relations and the need for revolutionary change there, could fail to see why women will never agree to turn their children over to the state (by whomever run). It is not the aim of women simply to get rid of the kids so that they can join the men on the barricades. They want to change the relationships between adults and children, between the sexes, content and form, so that the human qualities that make life worth living--joy, compassion, understanding, and growth--can live. That is the point of their revolution; it beings with their "everyday" lives. It may end with the seizure of state power--when the bourgeois state interferes with their revolution. But seizure will be a means to an end--not the end itself In Iowa City, Women's Liberation set up a child care cooperative in June. Since then there have been three other centers started as outgrowths of the first. Women's Liberation people have been involved to a great extent in only the first center. At the moment, things are going as well as can be expected considering we have no funds with which to work. The females and males have started to get together in separate consciousness raising groups after several very heated arguments about the value of separate meetings. It has been impossible to keep in very close touch with other centers because of lack of time and energy. With the exception of one other center; there isn't much feminist content in the centers. Among the other groups who have contacted us and expressed interest in setting up child care centers, there is little hope of anything but a typical nursery school atmosphere with traditional sex roles. WHAT TO DO ABOUT DAY CARE After having worked in child care (organizing and working in centers) only one thing is clear and that is that the issues of child care are not clear cut! There have been endless discussions in the women's movement about child care as a revolutionary or reformist demand. At this point, those discussions are useless. Child care is reformist in that we can only do so much in this society. It is revolutionary because it is a basic need of all women of all classes. (continue on next page) 8 Vol. 1, No. 10 Ain't I
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DAYCARE CAMPAIGNS AND CO-OPS The following article was written by a sister in Bloomington: POLITICAL TENDENCIES IN THE MOVEMENT At Grinnell in November midwest representatives of Women's Liberation got an oblique view of what is happening in the movement. Oblique because the political positions expressed were not explicitly analyzed or compared. Nor was their meaning or direction shown. Differences were left in an inchoate form. Differences there were aplenty. A basic cleavage was hinted at the first night of the conference. Marlene Dixon, Shannon of Twin Oaks, and a Grinnell woman made up apanel supposedly on "Definition of Women's Liberation." This was an open meeting, open to men despite the topic, and the one which greeted visitors who had traveled from afar to Iowa. (Some felt uncomfortable to walk into a mixed meeting as their first contact with a woman's conference.) But the way the topic was handled was appropriate for a mixed audience--it was not really concerned with a definition of women's liberation. It was concerned with telling the women's movement what was wrong with it (from one point of view) or with (from another point of view) the "subversion of the women's movement by representatives of the male-dominated left," as the discussant, a woman from Iowa City, put it. During the panel presentations Marlene Dixon had called on the women's movement to join the "anti-imperialist front." She had belabored he "middle class" nature of Women's Liberation, called the various activities in which WL engages, such as abortion-law repeal or abortion counselling and day care programs, "counter-revolutionary." The one question from the floor that opposed her view was not answered by her, but by a woman in the audience who succeeded in confusing the issue. No one knew whether she agreed or disagreed, at that point, with the questioner. And after that question, the meeting ended. Perhaps it should be added than an earlier question, put by a visitor from Bloomington, Indiana, made Marlene qualify her statements about day care. She was willing to accept free, 24-hour child care as a revolutionary demand. At no other point in the conference was there an opportunity to explore the political differences that these exchanges represented. On Sunday when the final panel was trashed and suggestions were made for topics for small discussion groups, the subject of political tendencies and directions in the movement was offered. But those who might have participated in and benefitted from such a discussion followed Marlene into another place and another discussion. So the confrontation of different views, the study of the meaning of these differences, was avoided. Nevertheless, during Saturday's workshops on more specific topics and issues, differing politics were clear. The workshop on child care provides a good example. The politics of child care expressed there can be reduced to two positions. One, acceptable to Marlene, stressed the importance of free, 24-hour child care as a demand to be made on government. Childcare facilities set up by members of the middle class to meet their own needs were belittled by this position because of the class served. The nature of the care given, the nature of its organization went unregarded. In fact the idea of quantity instead of quality ruled--how many children, how many facilities, how much money. Money itself was rejected by one woman as a fraud practiced on the working class. "In this society time equals money," she said; "so if you ask parents to give time, you are asking them to give money." Child care campaigns started on these ideas boasted of the sums demanded: in Texas, $100,000. Such large sums were seen as necessary for the hiring of personnel to run the centers. With the perspective of free--absolutely free--care, the need for experts to staff the centers necessarily follows. And of course the great virtue of such centers is seen as their ability to take in working-class children. The other position on child care stressed the quality of care given, the kind of organization as the essential questions. It saw the cooperative principle as the heart of revolutionary change in the organization of life activities. Cooperative child care means that the parents themselves operate the center. It is not a matter of their attempting to control someone else who actually operates the center (does the work, makes daily decisions, has expertise, or gets a wage). Their sharing of the actual work is important not only in their own lives in that they learn to work in groups, to have enjoyment, understanding, and compassion for each other, but also for the lives of the children, who see a model in their parents for their own behavior. The children learn too that child care is not drudgery work assigned to the females of society. To the charges that cooperative centers are a luxury that only the middle class can afford, representatives from Bloomington, Indiana, offered their experience. After a couple of years and the establishment of four cooperative centers, interest in these actual, viable centers has grown to a point where is is now possible to make demands on the university as employer. The child care campaign now initiated there is demanding release time from work for employees who want to participate in the cooperative centers. Universities as corporate employers differ little from other corporations. Already workers from Westinghouse and G.E. in Bloominton are talking of applying the cooperate principle to their child care problems. The political positions inherent in these approaches to child care need to be made explicit. Twenty-four hour child care is not the ultimate in revolutionary demands even though one could not demand more in terms of hours. The time or the money (or the equation of the two) are not the essence of the question. The emphasis on money or on time as money can be seen as a bourgeois mind-set, the influence that all of us must fight in ourselves as its manifestations are revealed. But as important to theory are some of the implications of the 24-hour demand. In Iowa, cooperative child-care centers were put down because they served the middle class and therefore the "less oppressed" women. Working-class women were described sometimes as "more oppressed" and sometimes as "really oppressed." This distinction, or course, denies the validity of women's liberation as revolutionary movement. If only working-class women are really oppressed, then what need have we for any movement of women? The working class is oppressed--so what else is new? The new seems to be that women as a sex are not oppressed: after all these centuries, after Astell, Wollstonecraft, Mott, Stanton, etc., the women's movement discovers that women as a sex are not oppressed. And this, according to its left wing, which pretends to recognize and bless each new revolutionary battalion. If women and their self-activity are seen as non-revolutionary, how are the "really oppressed" seen? The implication behind all the patronizing work done "for" the working class is that owrkers are simply inert victims, incapable of self-activity, incapable of fighting their own battles or even of seeing their own needs. They must be taught, led, cajoled, or tricked into self-defense by revolutionaries, who will ride into power on the back of the hypothetical monster they have activated. The only transformation necessary for this event, this so-called revolution, amounts to a personnel change at the top of society. The good guys will be in instead of the bad guys. The good guys will decide on how to spend the money, who is to eat who is to work, how they are to work, etc. With this vision of history, with this concept of people and of classes, the 24-hour child care demand fits perfectly. What kind of politics is this? First of all it is bourgeois through and through. It is really counter-revolutionary. It is even worse than doing Nixon's dirty work for him--especially in the field of child care, though not only there. It is counter-revolution posing as revolution; it is the pretense of the thing in place of the real thing. It is the element of confusion which is the usual contribution of the middle class to a revolutionary situation. What else is it? It is distinctly male. Only men (or women intellectually dominated by men) could conceive of child care in such purely quantitative terms, could fail to see the dynamics of human relations and the need for revolutionary change there, could fail to see why women will never agree to turn their children over to the state (by whomever run). It is not the aim of women simply to get rid of the kids so that they can join the men on the barricades. They want to change the relationships between adults and children, between the sexes, content and form, so that the human qualities that make life worth living--joy, compassion, understanding, and growth--can live. That is the point of their revolution; it beings with their "everyday" lives. It may end with the seizure of state power--when the bourgeois state interferes with their revolution. But seizure will be a means to an end--not the end itself In Iowa City, Women's Liberation set up a child care cooperative in June. Since then there have been three other centers started as outgrowths of the first. Women's Liberation people have been involved to a great extent in only the first center. At the moment, things are going as well as can be expected considering we have no funds with which to work. The females and males have started to get together in separate consciousness raising groups after several very heated arguments about the value of separate meetings. It has been impossible to keep in very close touch with other centers because of lack of time and energy. With the exception of one other center; there isn't much feminist content in the centers. Among the other groups who have contacted us and expressed interest in setting up child care centers, there is little hope of anything but a typical nursery school atmosphere with traditional sex roles. WHAT TO DO ABOUT DAY CARE After having worked in child care (organizing and working in centers) only one thing is clear and that is that the issues of child care are not clear cut! There have been endless discussions in the women's movement about child care as a revolutionary or reformist demand. At this point, those discussions are useless. Child care is reformist in that we can only do so much in this society. It is revolutionary because it is a basic need of all women of all classes. (continue on next page) 8 Vol. 1, No. 10 Ain't I
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