Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 12:44 am Post subject: Pages 69-79
I found it incredibly interesting that the only reason Title VII included gender in it was basically a freak occurrence. Howard Smith proposed including the word 'sex' in the hopes that "what he saw as a laughable inclusion to a set of employment regulations would give conservative Northern legislators a way to vote down the bill without looking racist" (69). The thought of protecting women in the workplace was so ridiculous in his (and probably many others') opinion that he tried to use it to stop the passing of this bill. It was actually kind of encouraging to read that, because it sort of showed that no matter how inconceivable something may seem it's always possible (in the least cheesy, annoying way possible).
The other main thing that stood out was focused on in the second half of the reading: the fact that "'[women] were doing the same work in the Movement as out of it: typing the speeches men delivered, making coffee but not policy, being accessories to... men.'" It's almost scary how easily people fall into their expected, traditional roles because that's just the way things have always been. Even "within an allegedly radical organization [their status] mirrored their status in society as a whole" (76).
On page 74 Dicker discusses the struggle within women's groups over the ERA. Do you think it would have overall been good for women, or would the potential abandonment of protection for women negate any gains it could have made?
"It's almost scary how easily people fall into their expected, traditional roles because that's just the way things have always been." Steph, that was so well put and exactly the way I felt the entire time I was reading.
But anyway, I'm gonna have to argue that the ERA didn't necessarily do any good for women. The use of the word "equality" was used to simply satisfy women, not help them- the ERA in actuality, only opened doors for more mistreatment and discrimination on the basis of sex. Women believed that they would now be capable of all the things that men were and be given just as many opportunities. This also meant that the acknowledgement of things such as mothers’ and infants’ health, child and women’s labor laws, abortion rights and other things pertaining to women, would disappear because they did not apply to men. The protection of the rights of women (as mothers and wives) soon became an issue as the importance of these rights proved to be greater than the importance of having women in workplaces. The role of women as wives and mothers was more strongly defined, and men and women were further seperated.
Along the lines of what Steph said earlier…. “Although 36 percent of women aged sixteen- sixty five worked outside the home at the height of World War II, once the war ended many women left the workforce and returned to lives of domesticity…” (Dicker, 64) I can’t really come up with a question pertaining to this, but I really want to hear other people’s thoughts about why/how this was so.
I agree with Asha's answer to Steph's question. I'm going to write about something that Steph brought up which was on page 69 when Smith said that "what he saw as a laughable inclusion to a set of employment regulations would give conservative Northern legislators a way to vote down the bill without looking racist."
Smith's idea seems to be a common one. In our past readings, Dicker mentioned that often times people in power would pass a law or bill with a sneaky intention. Instead of the bill addressing the problem it was trying to change, political figures would manipulate the wording in order to benefit themselves. This shows how close-minded the people in power were, further demonstrating why it was so hard to change the way things were at the time.
I also found it interesting to read what the meeting's chair told Firestone (pg 7 which was "Move on, little girl; we have more important issues to talk about here than women's liberation."
What kind of issues do you think he was talking about?
How do you think his wording ("little girl") affected what he was trying to say?
My main question, though, is on page 77, it mentions that some black women "recognized that white women had cause to complain" when they were being abused. This got me thinking. Do you think that white women would have done the same if the situation was reversed? Why or why not? And why did the black women recognize this instead of just focusing on their racial and gender struggles?
Umm, well simply put, if the roles were reversed, which seems impossible at the time, white women wouldn't have acted the same. Well, thats a hard hypothetical to address given white women had more power and therefor would've have no reason to recognize the struggle of black women as well, which is kind of what happened. But on the other hand, some white women did recognize the struggle black women were facing as well, but as we've learned so far, not many.
That was a pretty simple answer, not sure if i really addressed the question too well. But I think the question was kind of answered in history, like, the roles have been reversed in some senses, and many white women refused to recognize black women's struggle as well.
So my question is kind of huge, and it came off Martha's originally asked question, so we read about the progression of feminism in the recent years, well past like 60, and that seems pretty recent to me. And Dicker talked about how there was a pause in feminist action after the first wave, do you think there's a pause right now? Will there be more progression? Laws have seemingly created equality, though kind of like steph was saying, we still see inequality between sexes all the time. Whats next? What would be the end, what equality would suffice?
It seemed like the last couple of pages that white women were given a bad name by the African American, especially men who thought they were easy. Even African American women were aware of this, it says on page 77, “negro girls feel neglected because the white girls get all the attention…[t]he white girls are misused.” It felt to be that black women were really coming out of after the second war ended. I was amazed at how many organizations keep forming, and it just made me wonder like “how many things were women unhappy with?” I didn’t understand the purpose of having so many groups, and I know we said that the groups worked for a different situation but still…that’s was my main thought.
To answer Laurels question, I don’t ever think the there will be an end. I feel as if when is come to racism and sexism there is no end. There is always a battle to educate people who are racist and sexist. I feel as that could be the reason so many groups keep getting formed.
What were the positive and negative qualities of the group NOW? I’m wondering because people went from loving it to hating it.
First off, in a brief answer to the question about the ERA, I really disagree that it wouldn't have been a positive change.
From the amendment's website, it reads as such: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."
In my opinion, by using words like "abridged" or "denied", this amendment speaks solely to rights being withheld from people (women) based off of their sex. This does not negate the already legal legislation that has been made to protect mothers etc.
This amendment pretty bluntly gets to core of the issue- in a way that I think made a lot of people uncomfortable. Legitimate equality, which is what this amendment is going for, would have meant a whole new ballgame for american women, men, and feminists. Thats a lot of responsibility.
p.s. the ERA is still alive- it was reintroduced in the House of Representatives on July 21, 2009. check the website if you're interested: http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/
Aside from that, the vibe I got from this meeting was basically a narrowing and expanding and narrowing and expanding group of "feminists". Also, that specifically white women advocating for any kind of rights seemed to be continually shunted from every cause- including feminism.
Maybe some vague sort of karma from how exclusive the suffragers were?
Regardless, Helen, I think thats why so many groups were created. If the realm of american political women is a tree, this tree kept growing exclusive branches in ways people didn't expect, even exclusive twigs on branches like feminism about abortion and the ERA... but then broader branches, too, like SNCC and SDS.
As all of these groups narrowed, more and more activisty women found themselves homeless, so they created a new group.
QUESTION: The ERA is still going today- What if it got passed? Would it be better now than it would have been then? Vice Versa? If we're currently in sort of a lull of feminism, would this be a new step forward or would it just be redundant? OR would it be harmful?
Wow. Lots of good questions on this reading. Before I answer Olivia's question, I want to agree with her view that the ERA would have been a good reform that would help to ameliorate all forms of sexism as they exist in American society. I think that, despite the ERA's call for total equality, it would also extend to special women's issues. After all, women's maternity leave is not that different from a man's sick day-except that it's for a longer period of time. In addition, women's equality to their husbands would benefit her as a wife, because laws concerning domestic violence, marital rape, marriage and divorce financial/property divisions, and custody of children would have to be put into effect.
Now, to answer Olvia's question: I think that, without a doubt, the passage of the ERA would be no less useless for women today than it would have been 50 or 100 years ago. Sexism still exists in our society, and as long as there are federal laws that encourage or accept acts of sexism, the ERA can still solve many problems for women. The passage of a modern-day ERA would insure that women of all socioeconomic positions and in all locales have access to safe abortions, would finally equalize women's and men's pay in the same jobs, would allow women to go into combat in the military, and would transform the marriage and adoption rights of nonheterosexual women. There are probably more changes I'm forgetting, but, nonetheless, we can still invest in the ERA as a vehicle of change.
On page 77, in the section about women's discrimination within the SNCC, it says that, "...Stokely Carmichael, a future chair on the SNCC, quipped that the 'position of women in SNCC is prone.' " Like the meeting chair who, on page 78, calls Shulamith Firestone a "little girl", I find this comment incredibly offensive. The book said that Carmichael wasn't really responding to the paper put forth by Mary King and Casey Hayden, and yet it doesn't draw attention to the real problem with the comment. Although radical feminists like King and Hayden tried repeatedly to get their voices heard, the rest of society consistently used the language of sexual objectification to dismiss their complaints. In addition to the langauge of sexual objectification, the languages of immaturity ("little girl"), domesticity ("wife/mother's roles"), and religion (Divine, natural order) were used to keep women's views from being truly heard.
Question(s): Do you think that various types of sexist language are used to negate women and their views? What phrases/words in use today are sexist and how can we eradicate them from the popular lexicon? Likewise, what other groups suffer from the manipulative, discriminatory terms coined by the rest of society? Are there any words or phrases (I know they're harder to think of) that demean men or can be used as a transparency that manipulates men's views?
This may seem trivial to a lot of people compared to the hard core relevancy of the prior points made, but I feel the need to say it anyways:
"Radical feminists wanted to break down these hierarchies and see the world anew," (page 75.)
In different words throughout the Dicker thus far, these "radicals" and "complete social reformers" have existed within, as well as opposed every major group mentioned. (NOW, EEOC, SNCC, etc). Yet why has the word anarchy and anarchist never been mentioned once? I won't pretend to be the anarchy expert, but I have studied it a bit and that's definitely what these sentiments (as well many others stated earlier,) sound like.
At first I wondered if it was because the term didn't exist yet. But then I realized this wasn't the case at all, as during the case of Sacco and Vanzetti were considered "card carrying anarchists" in the 1920's.
So why doesn't Dicker use the word here? I would understand if some women simply didn't consider themselves anarchists, but that never stopped anyone else from slapping a person with a label. Especially during the Cold War, with McCarthyism rampant---why's no one crying "anarchist" on these women?
This may not seem that important, but honestly its just a major point of confusion for me. And the fact is..this is a forum. Not class. If Martha thinks this is the place we can "talk about cats," I'll use it to talk about anarchy.
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OH ALSO---- I've had this window open forever and didn't see Hannah's post o questions.
Lets talk about bad words toward women and how to remove them from the lexicon----
bitch, cunt, slut, whore....we all know the list. I often grapple with the idea of if there's any value in "taking back a word" (i.e. the Magazine "Bitch," the book "Cunt," the application of "Nigger" so frequently in rap...) Sometimes I think it's a good idea, and sometimes I just think of it as going from someone else punching you in the face to YOU punching yourself in the face and therefore "winning."
I think the best way to remove these words from modern lexicon, (which won't entirely happen over our life time,) is simply to not tolerate this kind of linguistic sexism.
Sometimes people are jerks. assholes. But see, we hall have assholes. Its gender and race neutral as far as insults go. When a girls a bitch its mean, and when a boys a bitch its means like a girl in some respect which is inherently bad.
I guess all I can say is theres nothing really to actively do on a large scale. On a smaller scale, which if everyone does it can become HUGE is to refuse to use these sexist words/refuse to listen to other people who do.
I really liked that NOW incorporated black women right from the beginning.
I'm not really sure what to say to Rachel's questions about anarchists, but does anyone else find some of Dicker's filler-facts about different figures to be rather trivial? For instance on page 79; "Kathie Amatniek..who would change her name to Sarachild to honor her mother" why does that matter at all? If Dicker's not gonna go into a whole bio on them, and they're a peripheral figure anyway, why do i give a crap whether they later adopt a hippie name?
I guess this was more of a rant than a question, (haha) so i'll move it along:
What were the differences between liberal feminists and radical feminists?
And why were they all working in such separated groups?
Branch off Olivia’s question on what the difference is between liberal and radical feminists and why they are separate, I want to bring us back to the first wave feminist movement. I think that the forming of groups in the second wave feminist movement was very similar to that of the first wave. They seemed to mirror each other well. In the first wave feminist movement there was the NAWSA and the AWSA who shared the same final goal but differed in techniques. The NAWSA was also considered to be the more radical of the too.
This is similar to the interactions of NOW and WEAL in the second wave feminist movement. In both there was disagreement over the way to achieve their goals causing a split in the groups.
I thought it was interesting how this seemed to keep recurring and I think it ended up helping the women achieve what they wanted. It framed their issues by providing a more radical view point making the more liberal one seem reasonable to the people who were originally against what women wanted at the time.
My question is: Do you think that the groups that formed in the second wave feminist era were successful in changing any of the stereotypes of women at the time?
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which was "Move on, little girl; we have more important issues to talk about here than women's liberation."
