Homophobia and Racism

In Enke's Finding the Movement it is evident that racism isn't the only oppressive force bearing down upon the black minorities in the U.S during the 1960s. Lesbian groups are discriminated against brutally, with children being alienated by other children, whose parents refuse to let their children hang out with homosexuals, fearing that their children will adopt homosexual tendencies.

The unique aspect of this particular feminist movement is the fact that these black women tried to take control of a public domain: a softball field. While this may not seem like a huge deal in a logical sense, one must think about the implications behind this tactic. These sports fields have been established by society as "men only" baseball fields. The idea of women trying to force their way into these fields shocked and confused a large number of white middle-class citizens, as well as these black women's fellow lower class citizens. Even black citizens thought that this was wrong at first, but eventually they warmed up to the courage of these young women and their athletic ability, so this softball team gained a large group of fans in Detroit(at the same time making quite a few enemies). The reason the public domain makes them unique is because before this, women had private spaces to reside, and society could safely leave them to their own devices, basically forgetting about this small minority. However, if these women are controlling public domains, they cannot be easily ignored. This high-risk/ high reward tactic can cause many outrages and internal conflict, but it also raises awareness to the public about the problems these lesbians/feminists face.

However, this turn of events also revealed more homophobic tendencies, this time in the softball team's coach! He refused to let them style their hair a certain way that was interpreted as being a lesbian style, the coach also separated the younger girls from the older girls, fearing that the older girls would influence the younger girls with the idea of being a lesbian. These irrational fears caused various internal conflicts in the team, and some of these girls rebelled against these rules. If they found out a certain element made them seem like a lesbian, they would intentionally reinforce and perform this element to drive their sexual identity home into the minds of others. They cared not for the consequences, they felt their very identities were being challenged so they lashed out at the offenders. In conclusion, these brave young women challenged their oppressors by taking advantage of their paranoid, homophobic(as well as sexist) ideas, and using them against them. This helped the lesbian feminist movement greatly as it rose awareness and helped give courage to oppressed women that had little hope to cling to

Passing

One of the first concepts I learned about in college was passing. At first it was in terms of African American Literature, and how certain characters would "pass" for white in order to avoid conflict or simply go through daily life. As time moved forward I also learned about it in terms of every day life - how people around me could be passing for white, black, straight, male, female, etc. While reading Anne Enke's Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism I was moved (however, not surprised) by the stories told of women who pass in order to live their lives. I was particularly struck by the story of Kathleen Thompson who was told by women at the University of Chicago that she was "too southern, too feminine, too much 'like Dolly Parton' to be welcomed at a northern feminist party where all of those things coded uneducated and unenlightened" (252). Throughout reading the book I made comparisons to my experiences in life, but had a strong connection to Kathleen. I attended a non-denominational, private, all girls' high school in Pittsburgh, and because of this fact I have been constantly labeled as both feminist and lesbian. The reason I thought of myself whenever I read about Kathleen was because of how easy it is to label somebody just based off of where they are from and their appearances. Because I wore a kilt to school, had predominantly female friends, and no boyfriend to speak of I had to be a lesbian. And not only did I have to be a lesbian, but I had to be a feminist because that's what they teach you to be at an all girls' school. At least, in their defense, people have assumed one thing correctly: I am a feminist. The problem that I ran into the most, however, was this: I am not a lesbian, but when I would deny this fact to people who used the term as a negative insult I was strengthening their argument that it was something bad. Faced with the challenge of either defending my sexuality and rewarding the person who challenged it with positive reinforcement of their insult I frequently chose to roll with the verbal punches and let it go. In my case I "passed" as lesbian in order to not support a negative connotation.

I think that the book made me think about my experience because it also centered entirely on space. Because I participated in all female education, an all female space all of my interests must have been focused on females. Obviously I have not contributed to the feminist movement in the same ways as Kathleen and the numerous women talked about in Enke's book, but I thought that my experience was an interesting parallel, and since I did not get to share most of it in class, I figured this final blog post was a good space.

Women's Spaces as a Company?

When we were reading Finding the Movement the examples of safe, open, progressive, spaces for women were somewhat privatized (in terms of a contained space). It was grassroots. The women who ran the bookstores and the coffee shops were interested in feminist language and shared experiences. They were local and home grown. It made me wonder if the same ideals and desires could be placed into larger businesses or corporations. It seemed from the class discussions that the answer would be no.  But I was still curious.

Take for example a bookstore. If a woman who wanted to publish a story sent it to an editor who was operating with the same desire to print materials for women to help create a sense of community. Then it was published by a company who solely printed these types of material. And finally it entered into a store like the Amazon Bookstore. Does a type of "horizontal integration" work for this?

This brings into question the idea of spaces for women. Does it have to be a physical space or can it be an intellectual space and do they even hold the same meaning?

I don't really have the answers to any of this. Maybe it isn't even feasibly possible. Just something to think about from our last reading.

Women creating their own spaces.

I was very intrigued when reading Finding the Movement by Anne Enke to discover that there were women working to either claim current spaces or make spaces of their own. It made me aware of an issue within the LGBTQ community that I've never noticed before. Even though our society still doesn't fully accept homosexuality, it still caters towards the males. When going into a big city, it is easy to find where the "gay district" is, and when going there you can find many clubs and bars usually tailored towards gay man, but not many towards women. I found interesting how at the time, there were many gay bars and none for women and that it even became a legal struggle for women a space they could call their own. Another issue that caught my eye was the fact that race also came into play within these clubs and sexist, and that these issues came from the LGBT community. Gay men would not allow women into their bars and at times the whites and blacks would be separate. I find it intriguing how even in a non-heteronormative setting, white males still had privilege over others.

Women combated not having their own space through the "creation of quasi-commercial alternatives such as dollar parties and warehouse parties" (Enke 28). They even began to own bars of their own and become visible to the public. Dollar parties and warehouse parties were hosted and attended mainly by black women seeing as they "used dollar parties...to build an alternative economy and elaborate a visible, black, queer community" (Enke 29). Gender restrictions placed on bars "pushed white women to illegal occupy warehouses for gender liberating gatherings" (Enke 29). Having their own spaces allowed these women to freely discuss other venues that would cater to their needs and wants. Also, by having their own space they could dance with each other and not have to worry about being kicked out. This allowed them to be free within a safe, confined space and allowed them to express their gender and sexuality in any way they desired. These venues later progressed into other things such as apartments that further provided space for lesbian women or expanded in their mission. For example, dollar parties started as a place for lesbian women to gather and socialize and later "Dollar parties provided food, drink, and shelter for large numbers of people" (Enke 35). Ultimately, the progression of women having their own space transformed into having spaces for feminist or lesbian feminist such as coffeehouses, bookstores, and clubs. It paved the way for women of either straight or lesbian to have their own space where they could gather and socialize their ideals and any other information they found significant.

The United States Threat to Peace

Alexander Tecumseh Duffy

Professor Shaw

20^th Century Political Movements

April 5^th, 2013

 The United States Threat to Peace

            Throughout the history of American the United States government has made significant efforts to hinder, slander, and in any way they can ruin women’s peace movements.  The reasons behind their attempts, which have varying levels of success, is the fear that they experience from the movements calls for peace.  The peace movements are in direct opposition of the colonial and militaristic nature of the post World War Two United States.  However, this Blog will not focus on the nature of the United States government.  Instead, it is intended to highlight the issues that the Women Strike for Peace movement, and its predecessors, addressed that caused friction between them and the United States government.

            The original women’s peace movment mentioned in Amy Swerdlows Women Strike for Peace stemmed from the 1836 request sent out by William Ladd, founder of the American Peace Society, to mothers urging them to push for the vote.  Ladd’s reasoning was that the responsibility of women to place their values in with those of the men running the country.  While Swerdlow makes no mention as to how Ladd’s call to arms affected women’s suffrage, or the United States government’s response, we know from the initial book of the semester, Southern Horrors, what the general feelings were.  Among Southern men, the fear was that since black men were already given the right to vote, having women’s suffrage would only intensify their fear of black equality.

            This small movement was a predecessor to the outbreak of movements such as the National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War in Interwar America.  Since the end of bloody slaughter called WW1, peace groups were sprouting up all across the nation.  The military wanted to put a stop to these groups in order to maintain the hold that they had over the nation and to stop the women from raising children who were unlikely to fight, not matter how isolationist the United States claimed to be.  The slander used in this case was a spider chart created by the head of the Chemical Warfare Service: General Amos A. Fries.  This chart warned citizens of the supposed links that women’s peace groups had to Communism and how they were attempting to subvert the power of the United States and capitalism. 

            After the nation was forced to witness the destruction and horror of World War 2, the peace groups that had barely survived the gung-ho attitude of Americans during the war began to flourish in the post-war years.  Movements like Women Strike for Peace that sprang up out of the fears of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War, and the path that the United States had taken towards giving into the military-industrial complex stood in opposition to one another.  The United States government would not stand for anyone to combat their efforts of building up a massive nuclear arsenal, and so the response their was to subject peace groups to the HUAC.  The McCarthy era witch hunt known as the Red Scare cast its gaze towards many peace groups, and attempted to label them communist as a way of discrediting them. 

            The book, Women Strike for Peace, informed us as to how the HUACs attempt at slander played out with the well-played reversal by WSP.  However, even though the HUACs plan was foiled, why precisely would they want to stop the WSPers?  Just as President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in his Farewell Address, “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influenced, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” (D. Eisenhower “Farewell Address”)  Eisenhower’s warning came all too true for the WSP movement.  Since they wanted to put an end to above ground nuclear testing due to the signs that the dangerous isotope Strontium 90 was getting into humans in higher doses.  While there was proof for the WSPs fears from a study called the Baby Tooth Survey which found that children born in 1963 had 50 times higher levels of Strontium 90 in their teeth and those born in the 1950’s.  The military, well aware of the ill affects of their testing were at the peak of the arms race with the Soviet Union, and in their eyes could not afford to give up the tests that were being conducted in order to further research as well as flex their nuclear muscle. 

            While the battle between the military and the WSP for nuclear testing ended in 1963 with President Kennedy’s signing the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty the war had just begun.  Throughout the rest of the century, the WSP and military would continue to butt heads, and while it would never reach as near a point to shutting down the WSP under the guise of communism the women and planet still do not have the peace we need. 

Powerful/Pushover: Femininity and roles in WSP and anti-draft housewives

It is an essential theme to the story of Women Strike for Peace that women embraced the role of motherhood. In order to be affective activists, they drew upon the position of mothers as wardens of the family to oppose health issues from nuclear warfare for the sake of their children, and opposed the draft for the sake of their sons and husbands. While reaffirming their status as wives and mothers, women also embraced their femininity and class status to reap the benefits of being treated as delicate, proper females.

One such example is in the women’s anti-draft activity. In chapter eight, Swerdlow describes women sitting in offices of men they had counseled because they were well aware that their presence as “respectable mothers” would help their cause. The idea of “respectability” at the time presumably connotes white upper/middle class housewifery to the exclusion of non-white women. In this, WSP enacted a relatively reformist movement that allowed them to take advantage of stereotypes and status quo ideas about womanhood.

For example, outside the white house in 1964, women were confronted by police relatively non-violently while the two men:

“…who had spoken at the rally and who had joined the women in the march were treated much more severely than were the WSP women. They were dragged on the pavement, beaten, and arrested. This only confirmed the women in their belief that middle-aged, middle-class mothers could get away with more militancy than young men and that WSP had to do even more to aid the resistance” (179).

In such circumstances, women benefitted from the oppressive view of women as fragile and passive, and were able to use it to their advantage in making a highly public scene. In the media criticism that followed this event, the national mainstream perception of the WSP’s behavior becomes clear. Newspapers wagged their fingers at women received for being too brash and not obedient enough to police demands. Swerdlow explains that “the unladylike confrontation with the police at the White House contradicted the image WSP had nurtured carefully for close to six years” (180). Their important and sought after image of mainstream, respectable, feminine housewives resonated with the country.

Despite Swerdlow’s summary of the reaction to their actions, It is not entirely clear within her text how consciously or not women preferred relatively reformist behavior. Such behavior is apparent in their emphasis on opposing war-mongering decisions made by men in government without opposing the power structure that encourages such violent and imperialistic activity. If they are not aware, I am not attempting to downplay the importance and value of their activism simply because it does not fit within modern objectives of progressive Western feminism.  In addition, their outspoken and persistent behavior certainly was not “ladylike,” but their concern over their image reflects their understanding that maintain feminine symbolism would help them. In addition, in her conclusion, Swerdlow addresses that the WSP, “…carried with it the heavy baggage of the political repression, , cultural conformity, and antifeminism that marked the Cold War consensus of the 1950s” (233). Acting within the means of their timeframe, women exhibited leanings toward radicalism in their non-exclusionary, local, non-hierarchical, female-dominated structure. Radicalism in terms of breaking free of assigned gender roles (or at least having the option) did not exist because they were unwilling, uninspired unaware or unable to incorporate it into effective activism tactics.

           

I am not attempting to scorn women who chose not to give up their roles as housewives or break from the bonds of femininity and class status required for societal respect, but I am attempting to understand the potential consequences (positive or negative) of doing so. Many may attest that without their upholding of many traditional values, they would not have garnered any support from mainstream women, the media, or been able to avoid more serious political and congressional reprimand (e.g: anti-draft DC protest, HUAC hearings, etc.). This was essential to their success, but a potential negative consequence that I see in their home lives is the inability of some women to have a choice in their role at home. It serves an example of female oppression, but also as an interesting manifestation of the very values that inspired women to join WSP.

Women were encouraged by traditional societal norms and persuasions to act as good, reliable and happy (and perhaps dainty) housewives, which empowered their role as a warden or protector of a household. This reinforces stereotypes about gender roles, and that women are seen as naturally inclined to protect nature, children and the Earth. However, the socially accepted role of mother that includes this idea gave them the to be seen as exemplary women making decisions for their family’s well being. The role of protector, however, also illustrates how women put immense energy into anti-draft activity that was all focused on the well being of men and not necessarily themselves. Even in this service of men, women still received resistance at home.

Much like the experiences of women in Common Sense and a Little Fire, expectations from the family can be a source of stress and tension for active women. Swerdlow describes many husbands as supportive of the cause and of their wives as political “surrogates,” especially because they felt less capable of accessing their political voice for fear of their jobs (185). Even these men, the ones allied with female activism, voiced concerns and distress over not having dinner ready, steady companionship, and an upkept home. Ultimately, Swerdlow says, men and families were anxious for the activism to end. Women had to devote energy to their WSP cause, caring for their families, and dealing emotionally with resistance from home.

Though Swerdow contends that lack of support from families did not curtail her own involvement or that of other prominent figures, the resistance still shows that women were still not acting within their intended roles.

In her conclusion of the chapter, Swerdlow resolves that when women are involved with and leading a struggle-ridden movement, they begin to understand their lack of personal and political power and begin to question it. In this, the lack of awareness or concern that women feel over their assigned role and place in society will only appear as a pressing issue once traditional courses of action have created obstacles.

The WSP women bore the burdens of accomplishing great tasks while never rejecting their role of housewives. By embracing the role, they garnered support from less-politically inclined women that may otherwise have not experienced the empowering struggle of power-relations and role-frustration. Whether intentional or not, the use of mainstream motherhood and the lack of rejection of traditional roles and femininity may have ultimately lead more women to join the cause of their own rights, and potentially promote further action. 

Motherhood OR Feminism? Dissolving Boundaries for Peace

Recently, an article in the liberal/feminist themed 'zine Jezebel surfaced on their website, indicating the fundamental difference between the statuses of feminist and housewife in response to an article in New York Magazine. In this story, two women who professed formerly satisfying personal careers in activism and social work are articulated as liberated in their choice to be stay-at-home moms. While many mothers choose to put their jobs on hold in order to rear children, the article flat out fibs that this choice is a trend for young American women. In fact, the more trending family adjustment is for men to take on the role of domestic manager and to become house husbands.

What's troublesome about the original article is that it touts postfeminist rhetoric and the liberation of the modern woman as being fulfilled within the domestic space. Now that women can have careers, they can also actively choose domestic life. What's troublesome about the Jezebel piece is that it scoffs at the very notion of the blending of feminist identity and housewifery, therefore alienating both housewives and feminist housewives from more mainstream liberal feminist rhetoric. The false dichotomy of feminism and homemakers as opposing creates regression for feminism, ignoring the role of the housewife as head of labor production from socialist and industrial or working class feminist perspectives. Intersectionally, this separation causes the erasure of many women's experiences.

In Amy Swerdlow's Women Strike for Peace, it is that precise blending of feminism (through the onset of radical individualism, not liberal feminism) and traditionally feminine roles of housewives and mothers that made the WSP movement as widespread and successful as it was. Like Clara Lemlich in Common Sense, the radicalization over time of motherhood and the appeal of the peace movement to mothers nationwide lead to a powerful resistance movement that included boycotts, successful evading of the Red Hunt/House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and deliberate rejection of female assimilationist (liberal) feminism. The WSP movement was based in deliberately feminine tactics as a protest to the brand of masculinized war-mongering capitalist patriotism that young American boys were raised on at the time.

The direct challenge WSP placed towards liberal feminism, the most recognized form at the time of patriarchal resistance, was to value more highly traditional femininity. In seeking equality with men, second-wave feminism alienated housewives by allowing internalized misogyny to proclaim that housewifery isn't enough for women to be fulfilled and so therefore is valueless. The reaction of WSP was to form a distinct discursive "women's culture" movement, operated in a non-hierarchal grassroots manner and geared towards a less radical, more common purpose of peace. Inciting and revaluing their roles as mothers, creators of life, and rearers of the future, women like Dagmar Wilson and Gerda Lerner, as stated here, created networks in which "the ground upon which women stand in their resistance to patriarchy and their assertion of their own creativity in shaping society, in other words, the ways in which women, as a group, have historically re-defined and recast male-imposed roles and tasks on their own terms and from their own vantage point"(234).

This reclaiming of feminine space and asserting its crucial importance, not just to peace, but to child-rearing and the betterment of society overall, was coded more subtly in the beginnings of the movement. It became clear, however, after the WSP's evasion of HUAC condemnations (116, 117), that their specific brand of radical individualism and the empowered feminist housewife spoke volumes in public spaces. The WSP movement rejects the binary that the Jezebel and New York mag places before us today, and we must remember the critical importance of housewifery in feminist discourse and calls to action. Housewives aren't liberated by anything other than the agency afforded by personal choice. The reason the WSP movement was so widespread, so appealing to so many, was that rather than invalidate the middle class white housewife the way the Feminine Mystique did, the movement revalued the role of the housewife and mother as stewards of culture and the nation's well-being.

Swerdlow addresses these tensions, as well as the effectiveness of "self-marginalizing" (234) feminized political tactics. The successful appropriation of femininity into the WSPers' personal politics is what she sites as the source of the movement's original success. Combined with the economic mobility afforded to them by their class status, the WSP ladies were able to combine direct action with indirect, using petitions to their congressmen and eventually Lobby by Proxy to demand disarmament (85) but also my staging a proactive, "feminized" educational campaign that involved a wildly successful boycott of milk (80). These combined with many more acts, revolutionized the role mothers played in political and public spheres and led to many reforms by congress in education and the prolonging of war.

So yes, I believe it's possible, if not just plain common sense, to be a feminist housewife. The WSP activists realized this and harnessed the power of the housewife as the head of child-rearing and familial consumption. By empowering women through their originally male-assigned roles, the WSP ladies reached new heights and made revolutionary strides towards a more feminine inclusive public American culture.