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

1971-01-29 "Ain't I a Woman?" Page 5

(cont from p.4)

We believe that all feminist literature should be available at women's centers, including socialist views concerning women's liberation. Does Martha Shelley think that the views of feminists who are socialists should be excluded from women's centers?
She also charges that the "SWP has considered gay people to be counterrevolutionaries." Again, this is completely untrue. We think that homosexuals are unjustly discriminated against and oppressed in this society, and we fully support the struggle of homosexuals to eliminate all laws penalizing them and all oppression of them.
I believe it is an insult to the intelligence of women in the movement to say that they are being "co-opted" or "infiltrated" by socialists. Rather than making such charges, it would be more fruitful and beneficial to the movement for Martha Shelley to deal instead with the political ideas that the YSA and the SWP have stood for in the movement.
In the New York Women's Center, Martha Shelley voted with about 30 other women to exclude YSA and SWP women from all leading bodies of the Center on the grounds that they were "male-dominated." A Black woman from the Phoenix Organization of Women also left the Center meeting, feeling that she was excluded too.
It became clear in New York that the YSA and SWP and the Phoenix women were excluded from full participation in the Center because a small section of the movement who worked around the Women's Center disagreed with the ideas that the YSA, SWP, and POW women have concerning what the New York women's movement should do.
In the New York movement at this time, women from a broad spectrum of around 30 organizations, from the YWCA to campus women's liberation organizations to the SWP, have decided to unite to form an action coalition, to plan demonstrating and other actions that could bring to bear the weight of the whole movement. Women around the Women's Center disagreed with the perspective of building such an action coalition, and disagreed with the first action projected by the coalition: a mass march of women and their children on Mayor Lindsay's home demanding public abortion clinics and childcare centers. Many of these women opposed building any demonstrations at all, and felt that August 26 accomplished nothing. 
But rather than discuss these two perspectives openly within the movement, the women from the Women's Center, including Martha Shelley, resorted to the charges of "male-domination" and "infiltration" by the people they disagreed with, in an attempt to discourage women in the movement from even considering the ideas held by the so-called "male-dominated" groups. Their ideas on mass action--when they did present them at a meeting of 300 women to form the women's coalition--were not accepted by the vast majority of women. Neither were their ideas on exclusion of women accepted. The coalition decided to welcome the participation of all women.
The question of what is the best and most effective perspective for the women's movement is very important, and must be seriously discussed in an atmosphere of free exchange of ideas and democracy. This cannot be accomplished in an atmosphere of purges and "casting out" any "unpure" women.
Only with the full participation of all women who want to fight against their oppression can our movement grow and be strong.

Ruthann Miller
Socialist Workers Party
Young Socialist Alliance

Too Little Too Late

Martha Shelley was asking how to build a revolutionary women's movement. If we're interested in answering that, our theory must come from our practice, not from the practice of officials of any party. Quoting resolutions of support for the struggles of women and gay people from the SWP is about as meaningful as Richard Nixon calling for the 2nd american Revolution. I can hardly get excited about the fact that a party which is 75% male and whose leadership is mostly male has decided to grant women's liberation revolutionary potential. That Ruthann Miller is a socialist is beside the point, so is Martha Shelley by any reasonable definition. That Ruthann has a liberal attitude toward the women's movement because she's primarily interested in building socialism is directly to the point. The kind of all purpose organization she wants W. L. to be best servcies the interests of those who are not motivated out of any special sense of oppression other than the general issue of living in an oppressive society. How much can one want to end the whole system of sexist oppression while working in an organization which is 75% male, not having risen up and taken control of that organization?
To say that a socialist revolution will not be completed until women are free is to put a priority on working for socialism and to keep women from gaining a consciousness as women. To want to build a mass movement without ever questioning marital institutions, domestic relationships and the whole system of patriarchy is the most reformist of politics. Building a mass reformist movement is the surest road to single issue politics where everyone can be united on the most meaningless reform with the least struggle.
To what end, this mass movement? "To end this whole system of sexist oppression." But that level of abstraction is a sham and for SWP sexual oppression is an afterthought. How could it be otherwise? Women and gay people didn't just start being oppressed - it's that we finally got together and made enough noise that the obvious became recognized. Now the SWP resolves to fight laws which oppress gay people, but not to re-examine their ideology which allowed them to expel gay people for years from membership. Now the SWP supports the Equal Rights Amendment for women because their attitude toward women's liberation is so liberal they compete with NOW for their constituency.
If we want to broaden our understanding of what it will take to make a women's revolution we'd better start building a theory that has some understanding of the history of women organizing in America before.We'd better understand that women have worked in many ways against oppressive conditions and avoid the pitfalls we can.
We must also look at our own time, at the roots of our new consciousness which came out of the condition of living in the heart of the monster at this time.
Tentative thoughts on these things:
First things first -- The women's movement in the 19th century started to make a radical analysis of the condition of women. Radicals like Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony questioned the domestic institutions and marital relationships - questioned how women could ever be free until these relations were radically reconstructed. They knew that so long as most women were economically and emotionally tied to men the struggle would be inadequate. They were the radicals of the time when Karl Marx was being published in the N. Y. Tribune. But their radical analysis was never completed. Many women who did not share that perspective joined the women's movement when suffrage became the goal. It was so much easier to work for what men had assumed as their right.
A mass movement was built around the issue of suffrage and women got what they asked for - the vote - precisely at the time when the vote was becoming meaningless in America's so-called democracy. Suffrage was no victory for women - it was a long pause in our struggle for freedom and it was a meaningless reform. Having failed to raise women's consciousness of their oppression as women - appealing to women to ask for only what men assumed as a right - the suffrage movement never prepared the ground for women to ask the revolutionary questions about the condition of women. In part, that failure left generations of women who have labored to keep from asking those questions until now. Radical feminists in women's collectives, in women's publications and in consciousness raising groups are asking those questions. Socialism to us is as the vote was to radical women in the 19th century - too little, too late. Of course a sane society operates on socialist principles - those same principles of sharing and concern for other human beings that women have always been taught. Men should learn them - we were born socialists. But we don't get that society by voting in socialism. We become a single issue movement when we see socialism as a precondition to freedom as women - the precondition becomes the end.
We can find little comfort in the history of socialist movements per se. They can be racist, sexist and imperialist, especially when they see legal reform as their road to power. We should look to Rosa Luxemburg for an example of revolutionary consciousness to alert us to the dangers of organizing a mass movement for legislative reform. "The true dialetic of revolution is not through a majority to revolutionary tactics, but through revolutionary tactics to a majority -- That is the way the road runs." That must be the road of our practice- our collectives, our thoughts, our groups.
We must read and understand Stanton , Anthony, Gilman and all those women who labored while suffrage became the single issue and death of feminism. Radical women lost not because a mass movement was built on shoddy politics. Everywoman will lose again if we refuse to take risks and are afraid to work for a radical reconstruction of the patriarchal system.
Something about the new consciousness of movements which grow - SNCC, SDS, 3rd world liberation movements - were not formless, open and fair minded the way Ruthann Miller would have you believe
continued on next page

A Woman?   January 29, 1971   5

Saving...

(cont from p.4) We believe that all feminist literature should be available at women's centers, including socialist views concerning women's liberation. Does Martha Shelley think that the views of feminists who are socialists should be excluded from women's centers? She also charges that the "SWP has considered gay people to be counterrevolutionaries." Again, this is completely untrue. We think that homosexuals are unjustly discriminated against and oppressed in this society, and we fully support the struggle of homosexuals to eliminate all laws penalizing them and all oppression of them. I believe it is an insult to the intelligence of women in the movement to say that they are being "co-opted" or "infiltrated" by socialists. Rather than making such charges, it would be more fruitful and beneficial to the movement for Martha Shelley to deal instead with the political ideas that the YSA and the SWP have stood for in the movement. In the New York Women's Center, Martha Shelley voted with about 30 other women to exclude YSA and SWP women from all leading bodies of the Center on the grounds that they were "male-dominated." A Black woman from the Phoenix Organization of Women also left the Center meeting, feeling that she was excluded too. It became clear in New York that the YSA and SWP and the Phoenix women were excluded from full participation in the Center because a small section of the movement who worked around the Women's Center disagreed with the ideas that the YSA, SWP, and POW women have concerning what the New York women's movement should do. In the New York movement at this time, women from a broad spectrum of around 30 organizations, from the YWCA to campus women's liberation organizations to the SWP, have decided to unite to form an action coalition, to plan demonstrating and other actions that could bring to bear the weight of the whole movement. Women around the Women's Center disagreed with the perspective of building such an action coalition, and disagreed with the first action projected by the coalition: a mass march of women and their children on Mayor Lindsay's home demanding public abortion clinics and childcare centers. Many of these women opposed building any demonstrations at all, and felt that August 26 accomplished nothing. But rather than discuss these two perspectives openly within the movement, the women from the Women's Center, including Martha Shelley, resorted to the charges of "male-domination" and "infiltration" by the people they disagreed with, in an attempt to discourage women in the movement from even considering the ideas held by the so-called "male-dominated" groups. Their ideas on mass action--when they did present them at a meeting of 300 women to form the women's coalition--were not accepted by the vast majority of women. Neither were their ideas on exclusion of women accepted. The coalition decided to welcome the participation of all women. The question of what is the best and most effective perspective for the women's movement is very important, and must be seriously discussed in an atmosphere of free exchange of ideas and democracy. This cannot be accomplished in an atmosphere of purges and "casting out" any "unpure" women. Only with the full participation of all women who want to fight against their oppression can our movement grow and be strong. Ruthann Miller Socialist Workers Party Young Socialist Alliance Too Little Too Late Martha Shelley was asking how to build a revolutionary women's movement. If we're interested in answering that, our theory must come from our practice, not from the practice of officials of any party. Quoting resolutions of support for the struggles of women and gay people from the SWP is about as meaningful as Richard Nixon calling for the 2nd american Revolution. I can hardly get excited about the fact that a party which is 75% male and whose leadership is mostly male has decided to grant women's liberation revolutionary potential. That Ruthann Miller is a socialist is beside the point, so is Martha Shelley by any reasonable definition. That Ruthann has a liberal attitude toward the women's movement because she's primarily interested in building socialism is directly to the point. The kind of all purpose organization she wants W. L. to be best servcies the interests of those who are not motivated out of any special sense of oppression other than the general issue of living in an oppressive society. How much can one want to end the whole system of sexist oppression while working in an organization which is 75% male, not having risen up and taken control of that organization? To say that a socialist revolution will not be completed until women are free is to put a priority on working for socialism and to keep women from gaining a consciousness as women. To want to build a mass movement without ever questioning marital institutions, domestic relationships and the whole system of patriarchy is the most reformist of politics. Building a mass reformist movement is the surest road to single issue politics where everyone can be united on the most meaningless reform with the least struggle. To what end, this mass movement? "To end this whole system of sexist oppression." But that level of abstraction is a sham and for SWP sexual oppression is an afterthought. How could it be otherwise? Women and gay people didn't just start being oppressed - it's that we finally got together and made enough noise that the obvious became recognized. Now the SWP resolves to fight laws which oppress gay people, but not to re-examine their ideology which allowed them to expel gay people for years from membership. Now the SWP supports the Equal Rights Amendment for women because their attitude toward women's liberation is so liberal they compete with NOW for their constituency. If we want to broaden our understanding of what it will take to make a women's revolution we'd better start building a theory that has some understanding of the history of women organizing in America before.We'd better understand that women have worked in many ways against oppressive conditions and avoid the pitfalls we can. We must also look at our own time, at the roots of our new consciousness which came out of the condition of living in the heart of the monster at this time. Tentative thoughts on these things: First things first -- The women's movement in the 19th century started to make a radical analysis of the condition of women. Radicals like Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony questioned the domestic institutions and marital relationships - questioned how women could ever be free until these relations were radically reconstructed. They knew that so long as most women were economically and emotionally tied to men the struggle would be inadequate. They were the radicals of the time when Karl Marx was being published in the N. Y. Tribune. But their radical analysis was never completed. Many women who did not share that perspective joined the women's movement when suffrage became the goal. It was so much easier to work for what men had assumed as their right. A mass movement was built around the issue of suffrage and women got what they asked for - the vote - precisely at the time when the vote was becoming meaningless in America's so-called democracy. Suffrage was no victory for women - it was a long pause in our struggle for freedom and it was a meaningless reform. Having failed to raise women's consciousness of their oppression as women - appealing to women to ask for only what men assumed as a right - the suffrage movement never prepared the ground for women to ask the revolutionary questions about the condition of women. In part, that failure left generations of women who have labored to keep from asking those questions until now. Radical feminists in women's collectives, in women's publications and in consciousness raising groups are asking those questions. Socialism to us is as the vote was to radical women in the 19th century - too little, too late. Of course a sane society operates on socialist principles - those same principles of sharing and concern for other human beings that women have always been taught. Men should learn them - we were born socialists. But we don't get that society by voting in socialism. We become a single issue movement when we see socialism as a precondition to freedom as women - the precondition becomes the end. We can find little comfort in the history of socialist movements per se. They can be racist, sexist and imperialist, especially when they see legal reform as their road to power. We should look to Rosa Luxemburg for an example of revolutionary consciousness to alert us to the dangers of organizing a mass movement for legislative reform. "The true dialetic of revolution is not through a majority to revolutionary tactics, but through revolutionary tactics to a majority -- That is the way the road runs." That must be the road of our practice- our collectives, our thoughts, our groups. We must read and understand Stanton , Anthony, Gilman and all those women who labored while suffrage became the single issue and death of feminism. Radical women lost not because a mass movement was built on shoddy politics. Everywoman will lose again if we refuse to take risks and are afraid to work for a radical reconstruction of the patriarchal system. Something about the new consciousness of movements which grow - SNCC, SDS, 3rd world liberation movements - were not formless, open and fair minded the way Ruthann Miller would have you believe continued on next page A Woman? January 29, 1971 5