( – promoted by buhdydharma )
Linda Hirshman, not everybody’s favorite feminist made an interesting and provocative state during an on line interview about the Democratic party in general and by inference, progressive men. The on line conversation talked essentially about the future and challenges of “feminism.”
As my young friend Jill Filipovic put it in her interview, the progressive white men who run the Democratic Party do not have to pay attention to women, because they know we always will come back to them. And we lower our value even further by adopting their causes — civil rights, the environment, etc. — as our own, whole cloth, without any trade off.
Oddly enough, I both agree and disagree with her. She welcomes ire and controversy and has established a career out of it.
I disagree that issues like civil rights and the environment are “their” issues, clearly they belong to all of us. But I do wonder about the first part of her statement.
Is that accurate? Nobody in this campaign has mentioned for example that affordable day care for families who have two working parents is rarely discussed. For good reason. Mention the words “daycare” in this country and critics on the left and the right will jump in with a haughty opinion about “who should be raising children”. Mention the pay gap that exists and pundits will blah blah on about how women leave the work force to have children and that explains it quite nicely than you. HRC is being touted as “proof” that the ceiling has cracks in it and several self described feminists have actively supported Barack Obama.
In many ways there is not an actual feminist movement in this country in the same way that a progressive movement does not actually exist. The feminist movement has largely been castigated as a group of middle class white women who have not been attuned to issues of class or race or particularly respectful to women who actively chose more traditional roles. Feminism has been blamed for making women unhappy and alienating men in much the same way that people who discuss class have been accused of fueling “class hatred and resentment.”
I admit I have called myself a feminist just to watch people twitch and spit. But I am not a fan of prescribing, I don’t believe other women “ought to” consider themselves feminists and most of the women I work with don’t. That is a journey one must take on one’s own and the very experiences that led me to conclude I am a feminists might well lead to the opposite conclusion for another. If you attach the word “radical” to any description, so and so is a radical feminist, a radical activist, a radical thinker or actor, disapproval is sure to follow. Oh well.
Hirshman addresses two key issues that have been addressed as critiques against the feminist movement in her interview.
The entire exchange can be read here.
A questioner asks why family issues have been neglected by certain strains of feminism.
Hirshman responds…..
Because the heterosexual reproductive family is a fount in inequality. I think motherhood and family should be a central concern of feminism, starting with insisting that men shape their lives with the expectation that they will bear half the burden of child-rearing and homemaking forever. Now there’s a family value I can support without caveat.
Hirshman must be aware that the strains of equality that reverberate through a family unit are often mediated by personal expectations and perceptions about what equality means. In other words, it is more important for me personally that I there is an assumption that share I power and the ability to make decisions than who cooks dinner. I don’t do well in a relationship where there is a pattern of unilateral decision making on the part of the other person. Indeed, in my life that has been the central reason why I have left or ended relationships. But my own experience cannot be assumed to be a universal one which is why I think Hirshman misses the mark slightly with her paradigm. At the same time the spirit is worth discussing, is the concept of the heterosexual family an actual foundation in inequality? I am unconvinced but willing to admit that from an ideological point of view I might be self interested.
Years ago in a sociology class, a project partner and I did a presentation on alternative child care practices and quite deliberately attacked the nuclear family primarily to disturb the majority of early childhood education majors in our class. They assumed we were attacking the actual concept of family, we assumed we were attacking the premise of a nuclear family as the right and true way to raise children. It never even occurred to us to consider gay parenting issues something feminists often tend to side step largely leaving that fight to gay and transgendered Americans. If feminists agree with Hirshman’s assertions that progressive men simply assume that the women will get on the “right” side in the end, then gay and transgendered people must also think that straight progressives automatically assume they will also get on the “right” side in the end, whatever that may be.
Hirshman also address critiques from women of color.
I think you unfairly are blaming the focus on intersectionality for weakening the feminist movement. Why would it be the fault of black women for walking away from a movement that doesn’t represent them? Shouldn’t the onus be on the feminist movement to address the needs of all women? Furthermore, why play this zero-sum game where intersectionality means banishing older, affluent, white women? When did anyone say we should do that?
Linda Hirshman: My point is that black women should walk away if the movement does not represent them, but should not walk away if the movement does not represent black men. Thanks for letting me clarify that.
Regardless of why they walk away, the solution is to offer bargained-for compromises in which their interests are traded off for the interests of white women in a way that produces the optimum achievable outcome for both. Instead, women selectively ally with men, producing the situation Jill Filipovic described in her interview with me
My belief, she gave the short and easy answer to that one, and class was never overtly discussed in the interview. Hirshman seems to believe that women of color in the end have the same interests. It appears that for her race and class are secondary. Indeed she even seems to say that isn’t her fight….
Anyway, I think a woman’s movement should focus on the problems of women. If women are poorer because they bear the burden of child care, for instance, focus on child care. I’d leave bringing down capitalism to Barbara Ehrenreich and the others
Ultimately, I am left wondering whether Hirshman simply assumes capitalism itself is not a problem, in other words feminist concerns can be mediated within the confines of capitalism.
Hirshman irritates a significant number of people with her pronouncements, I am not in agreement with her on many issues and I am not a big believer in traditional frameworks in which certain individuals are automatically appointed “spokespersons”. That process is, I believe a largely invented one: the MSM needs access to articulate people who hold a certain point of view and who make themselves available. The MSM tends to focus on “national” spokespersons rather than do the research to discover local and regional activists who may have different priorities or agendas that appear to conflict.
Indeed, I would argue that it is often the media and not the participants who expect a movement to be completely unified.
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We are sometimes told to change our way of thinking in order to “get on the right side.” More often, we are told to shut up until some nebulous, perhaps even fictitious, later time.
capitalism as a critique to how our feminism is so often defined.
I have always felt that most of feminism these days relies on too shallow of a foundation or certain policy objectives (ie, child care, pay equity, choice), all of which are important, but there is something deeper that needs to inform the goals we’re looking to achieve.
For me, that means getting away from a hierarchical “power over” way of framing the world of both our personal and political relationships.
It is in this sense that I’ve never seen Hillary as the kind of feminist to which I could hitch my bandwagon. Of course, that would be true of most folks the MSM give us as “spokespeople” as you have said.
here’s to the human movement.
to all of us…
is such a politically loaded concept that it is to me to be a reason to reject any one who tell me such a thing, anytime I have gotten on the ‘right side’ in the end I have woken up with no direction in sight.
On the other side I find single issue politics especially one that singles out any group of peoples interests women, race, class, sexual orientation, as more important or places their issues above others in a weird pecking order to be the opposite of liberation. Policy replaces the actual overarching universal principles for real change.
The fact that Hillary, a woman thinks that breaking corporate glass ceilings is the main goal of feminism just makes my jaw drop. It takes a village of women and children slaves to fill a shelve at Wal Mart so that poor single working woman here can afford to clothe their children. It’s Liberty for All I work for and not special interests which co-opt all our interests under the cloak of the corporate elitist version of equality and make money off the disenfranchisement of all our rights as humans.
I find Obama to be twice the woman regardless of his gender. He does not confuse empowerment with aping the worst qualities in a testosterone riddled world which replaces equality and human rights with fighting and winning. Empathy is a quality which enables us to be our brother or sisters keeper.
“As the son of a single mother, I don’t accept an America that forces women to choose between their kids and their careers. You shouldn’t have to lose your wages or quit your job to care for a newborn baby, or a sick child, or an elderly parent. That’s wrong for America’s children. It’s wrong for America’s women. And it’s wrong for families..” Senator Obama.
and I mean that sincerely, ucc.
Why does the Hisrchman automatically assume that the “Progressive Men who run the Democratic Party?” (apparently Nancy Pelosi doesn’t count) will not listen to and act on women’s issues?
Has there been an identifiable feminist movement since the backlash? On the national scene?
I am inclined to quote undercover here:
I would just add the rider: not anymore, anyhow. There used to be both. Now we have to settle for a first lady running for the White House as some kid of pinnacle of feminism, and for progressivism we all look to Dennis Kucinich. Nothing wrong with Kucinich, of course, but . . . I mean come on. There used to be a time where there were ways of getting attention other than running for president. Now it appears to be the only way.
Black equality? Better run for prez to get heard. (Sharpton.)
Feminism? Better run for Prez. (Clinton.)
Workers’ rights? Better run for prez. (Edwards, Kucinich.)
Then for a few weeks everyone will talk about how crazy and angry you are. Which I guess is better than not getting talk about at all.
The MSM stranglehold on message is far, far more complete than it was 30 years ago. The internet notwithstanding. The internet just doesn’t have national voices yet. Or, better, in keeping with undercover’s theme of avoiding looking for single spokespeople, the internet doesn’t yet have the force as a medium to present voices in the same way TV and the media powerstructure did and does. The media powerstructure used to let progressive voices of various strips, “spokespersons” or no, onto the stage. They are much more disciplined now.
“So what about Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow?” I hope no one is inclined to ask. Olbermann and Maddow are not spokespeople or representatives of movements. They are TV pundits. Let me repeat that: they are not leaders of movements — They have jobs on TV.
Leaders of movements, or members of movements, do not get on TV. There are trained professional TV people, now, to do that for them. This is much more predictable and better for the MSM than, say, putting actual citizens on.