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Ain't I A Woman? newspapers, June 1970-July 1971
1971-01-29 "Ain't I a Woman?" Page 6
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CON'T FROM PAGE 5 ... (Remember how they treated women?) These movements did not red-bait because they generally considered socialist and communist groups out-dated and irrelevant. Socialist theory as understood in America did not define the needs of youth, students, blacks, or 3rd world people - and that goes double for women. These movements grew by ignoring and at times throwing out the ideologues of a moribund American Socialist tradition.With no disrespect intended, no movement ever grew around the theories of Herbert Apthdeker or Bayard Rustin. Those struggles that took place grew by adopting a ruthless slogan, behind which was a reality we must recognize. Remember "Don't trust anyone over 30" - blacks and whites in their growing insurgent movements adopted that slogan because it was based on a reality - that the accomodations people make to survive can be damaging and the more vested interests in the established order one acquires, the less one's experiences can be trusted. The notion that we should seek out and become women-identified women is something of that same kind of awareness: that some experiences can be damaging, that marriage, a family, good jobs, male approval and all those things individual women have accepted in this system can make them less willing to risk an analysis that goes to the heart of the woman question. that does not make us elitists or man-haters any more than not trusting anyone over 30 made those young movements "over 30 haters". It did mean those movements found out their own possibilities. We intend to find out our own possibilities, not those possibilities defined by the SWP. How touching that they formally resolved to recognize the revolutionary potential of our independence and try to do all they can to undermine that independence. Kind of makes you wonder why they passed their resolution. Anyone seeking independent power for women will be accused of red-baiting - an accusation made of no other oppressed group which challenges the organizing principles of SWP. You don't get independent power for women by working in a mixed party and reporting back to your male counterparts on how good your organization has been - how obscene those body counts must be. We know the effects of party members trying to help our movement grow and the truth of Martha Shelley's claim that feminist literature has been moved out where party workers have moved in -- we've seen it with our own newspaper. While trying to regain control of our lives and knowing we must do for the sexual struggle what Marx did for the class struggle, while working everyday for changes so profound that a genderless society will be realized -- what can I care about resolutions of support stamped, signed and approved by any party's membership. Too little, too late. I'm a woman. Developing ou The assumption that building a mass movement is what women should now be doing, I feel, has to be questioned. When the priority in political work becomes that of involving as many numbers as possible there becomes no way to avoid liberalism and ultra-democracy or the lack of ideological struggle that occur; there becomes no effective way of working except single issue organizing. We have not as yet come very far in an analysis of how we end our oppression. We have recognized our position and concluded that we must have a revolution and have come some way in defining what the revolution must accomplish. What we have not been able to do is form any kind of analysis on how we get there. To engage in the "ideological struggle to fill the gap between our recognized position and the revolution we invision, we see as crucial--more crucial than the number of women we involve. It is the political content and the political accomplishments we have to be concerned with and this leads us to question everything we do in terms of our goals. We can't afford the stifling of ideological struggle that occurs when our main objective becomes involving as many women as possible. The tendency to try not to alienate too often leads to shuting out all ideological struggle, to altering a radical analysis lest we offend. To want to involve all women at whatever level on whatever they are willing to work on puts us in the position of not being able to engage in self criticism, to not be able to criticize projects and actions in terms of a radical analysis. To engage in this sort of criticism there must be some agreement on our ultimate goals. To question legislative reform in terms of how it fits into a revolutionary perspective we must agree on some revolutionary goals. We can't engage in this kind of struggle with women who see reform as a goal in itself. To form the analysis we need we will have to be able to question everything and to gain any real political change (to dare to struggle; dare to win) there will be risks to take. Unless we can recruit women around a political theory that will lead them to question and struggle with their class privileges and the hetersexual norm, the analysis we collectively reach could easily reflect the middle class, heterosexual, and racist thinking of the society we want to fight. Avoiding this reality under the guize of ultra-democracy will inhance our societal image but it will do little to achieve our liberation. As the women's movement has grown, so have the contradictions in our theory and practice or at least they have become more apparent. We used to talk about the stigma the single woman suffers in this society, about how difficult it is to remain alone. We saw the oppression of women as closely tied to our position in marriage and the family and seemed to conclude that women must get out of that position they are forced to hold. When individual women put that theory to practice - when some women choose to remain single and others choose to end their marriages they are seen more as a threat, accused of being elite and privileged. If we believe the theory we have voiced then the practice that should follow would be to support these women, not to isolate them or treat them with jealousy and suspicion. If we recognized that marriage is an oppressive institution for women, why do we attack women who are not married and why do we work on reforming the institution of marriage to make it more bearable? We allow single women to be crit - THE WRONG WAY A socialist woman is a socialist first and a woman - a feminist - second. Her priorities are to a socialist revolution first and then to a feminist revolution. Implicitly she has an allegiance to a party, which in this country is upholding and legitimizing this form of government, and the illusion that people participate in it. Socialism has not dealt with the Woman Question. A class analysis deals with workers, and in not dealing with their families, the women in their families, cannot deal with the existence of the institutions of marriage and the family. Socialism only offers women the chance to work for a feminist revolution once they have a socialist state. Women don't have to work for socialism; the society we want includes it. The feminist movement is composed of those women whose goal is the liberation of those women whose goal is the liberation of all women, those women who work towards meeting the needs of the most oppressed women. Any other women can not, must not, be included. Ruthann Miller talks about us casting out Angela Davis and Leila Khaled. They have chosen to work in another movement, seeing their oppression differently. To include these women, to speak as if they included themselves, is to use them. A different matter is to include those women who say they do want to be in the feminist movement, but have no place in it. You can call yourself a feminist, and use the rhetoric, yet still be working to uphold this system. The oppression of women is grounded in the oppression of other minorities - blacks, third world peoples, and homosexuals - yet Ruthann Miller seeks to organize women "no matter what views people may have on other topics." that is, dealing with single issues. We must not confuse groups fighting for liberation with those working for change. To speak of them in the same breath is to see all those working for change as similar. Socialist Workers Party cannot legitimize itself that way, nor legitimize their criticism of us in that way. Women have come to understand that support has both psychological and material parts to it. "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." This statement is not grounded in practice. SWP has expelled gay people from its membership. Their statement on women ends, "they will do it now, in their own way, and they are not willing to subordinate their demands to the need of any struggle." That is true. Yet SWP-YSA are working to prevent just that. This is the perspective from which Ruthann criticizes us 6 Vol. 1 No. 11 Ain't I
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CON'T FROM PAGE 5 ... (Remember how they treated women?) These movements did not red-bait because they generally considered socialist and communist groups out-dated and irrelevant. Socialist theory as understood in America did not define the needs of youth, students, blacks, or 3rd world people - and that goes double for women. These movements grew by ignoring and at times throwing out the ideologues of a moribund American Socialist tradition.With no disrespect intended, no movement ever grew around the theories of Herbert Apthdeker or Bayard Rustin. Those struggles that took place grew by adopting a ruthless slogan, behind which was a reality we must recognize. Remember "Don't trust anyone over 30" - blacks and whites in their growing insurgent movements adopted that slogan because it was based on a reality - that the accomodations people make to survive can be damaging and the more vested interests in the established order one acquires, the less one's experiences can be trusted. The notion that we should seek out and become women-identified women is something of that same kind of awareness: that some experiences can be damaging, that marriage, a family, good jobs, male approval and all those things individual women have accepted in this system can make them less willing to risk an analysis that goes to the heart of the woman question. that does not make us elitists or man-haters any more than not trusting anyone over 30 made those young movements "over 30 haters". It did mean those movements found out their own possibilities. We intend to find out our own possibilities, not those possibilities defined by the SWP. How touching that they formally resolved to recognize the revolutionary potential of our independence and try to do all they can to undermine that independence. Kind of makes you wonder why they passed their resolution. Anyone seeking independent power for women will be accused of red-baiting - an accusation made of no other oppressed group which challenges the organizing principles of SWP. You don't get independent power for women by working in a mixed party and reporting back to your male counterparts on how good your organization has been - how obscene those body counts must be. We know the effects of party members trying to help our movement grow and the truth of Martha Shelley's claim that feminist literature has been moved out where party workers have moved in -- we've seen it with our own newspaper. While trying to regain control of our lives and knowing we must do for the sexual struggle what Marx did for the class struggle, while working everyday for changes so profound that a genderless society will be realized -- what can I care about resolutions of support stamped, signed and approved by any party's membership. Too little, too late. I'm a woman. Developing ou The assumption that building a mass movement is what women should now be doing, I feel, has to be questioned. When the priority in political work becomes that of involving as many numbers as possible there becomes no way to avoid liberalism and ultra-democracy or the lack of ideological struggle that occur; there becomes no effective way of working except single issue organizing. We have not as yet come very far in an analysis of how we end our oppression. We have recognized our position and concluded that we must have a revolution and have come some way in defining what the revolution must accomplish. What we have not been able to do is form any kind of analysis on how we get there. To engage in the "ideological struggle to fill the gap between our recognized position and the revolution we invision, we see as crucial--more crucial than the number of women we involve. It is the political content and the political accomplishments we have to be concerned with and this leads us to question everything we do in terms of our goals. We can't afford the stifling of ideological struggle that occurs when our main objective becomes involving as many women as possible. The tendency to try not to alienate too often leads to shuting out all ideological struggle, to altering a radical analysis lest we offend. To want to involve all women at whatever level on whatever they are willing to work on puts us in the position of not being able to engage in self criticism, to not be able to criticize projects and actions in terms of a radical analysis. To engage in this sort of criticism there must be some agreement on our ultimate goals. To question legislative reform in terms of how it fits into a revolutionary perspective we must agree on some revolutionary goals. We can't engage in this kind of struggle with women who see reform as a goal in itself. To form the analysis we need we will have to be able to question everything and to gain any real political change (to dare to struggle; dare to win) there will be risks to take. Unless we can recruit women around a political theory that will lead them to question and struggle with their class privileges and the hetersexual norm, the analysis we collectively reach could easily reflect the middle class, heterosexual, and racist thinking of the society we want to fight. Avoiding this reality under the guize of ultra-democracy will inhance our societal image but it will do little to achieve our liberation. As the women's movement has grown, so have the contradictions in our theory and practice or at least they have become more apparent. We used to talk about the stigma the single woman suffers in this society, about how difficult it is to remain alone. We saw the oppression of women as closely tied to our position in marriage and the family and seemed to conclude that women must get out of that position they are forced to hold. When individual women put that theory to practice - when some women choose to remain single and others choose to end their marriages they are seen more as a threat, accused of being elite and privileged. If we believe the theory we have voiced then the practice that should follow would be to support these women, not to isolate them or treat them with jealousy and suspicion. If we recognized that marriage is an oppressive institution for women, why do we attack women who are not married and why do we work on reforming the institution of marriage to make it more bearable? We allow single women to be crit - THE WRONG WAY A socialist woman is a socialist first and a woman - a feminist - second. Her priorities are to a socialist revolution first and then to a feminist revolution. Implicitly she has an allegiance to a party, which in this country is upholding and legitimizing this form of government, and the illusion that people participate in it. Socialism has not dealt with the Woman Question. A class analysis deals with workers, and in not dealing with their families, the women in their families, cannot deal with the existence of the institutions of marriage and the family. Socialism only offers women the chance to work for a feminist revolution once they have a socialist state. Women don't have to work for socialism; the society we want includes it. The feminist movement is composed of those women whose goal is the liberation of those women whose goal is the liberation of all women, those women who work towards meeting the needs of the most oppressed women. Any other women can not, must not, be included. Ruthann Miller talks about us casting out Angela Davis and Leila Khaled. They have chosen to work in another movement, seeing their oppression differently. To include these women, to speak as if they included themselves, is to use them. A different matter is to include those women who say they do want to be in the feminist movement, but have no place in it. You can call yourself a feminist, and use the rhetoric, yet still be working to uphold this system. The oppression of women is grounded in the oppression of other minorities - blacks, third world peoples, and homosexuals - yet Ruthann Miller seeks to organize women "no matter what views people may have on other topics." that is, dealing with single issues. We must not confuse groups fighting for liberation with those working for change. To speak of them in the same breath is to see all those working for change as similar. Socialist Workers Party cannot legitimize itself that way, nor legitimize their criticism of us in that way. Women have come to understand that support has both psychological and material parts to it. "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." This statement is not grounded in practice. SWP has expelled gay people from its membership. Their statement on women ends, "they will do it now, in their own way, and they are not willing to subordinate their demands to the need of any struggle." That is true. Yet SWP-YSA are working to prevent just that. This is the perspective from which Ruthann criticizes us 6 Vol. 1 No. 11 Ain't I
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