Yes! Here here. I had the awful sensation reading Molly Ivins article
that women just might prevail in capitalist society over and above any
man of color and the first thought that came to mind was why aren't men
of color pursing these same objectives? And then I thought that men of
color must know so much more when push comes to shove. /d
Washer Zine wrote:
> "What feminism boils down to"
>
> by Molly Ivins
>
> PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Women's History Month is upon us, which calls for a
> smart salute to the Founding Mothers and a little stock-taking by the
> rest of us.
>
> Personally, I still think the single most amazing thing about the
> women's movement in this country, both the first wave and the second,
> is that it's barely a blink old in the eye of history. Until long
> after the Civil War, American women really had no civil rights, no
> legal rights and no property rights. If you look at it with hstorical
> perspective, we have come such a long way in such a short time that
> you'd think we'd do nothing but celebrate.
>
> Isn't it odd how at the same time it can feel like such a long time
> passing with no progress at all, or, worse, that there's such a
> vicious backlash building that we not only have to refight old
> battles, but there is no guarantee we can win them anymore?
> I like to start in Texas -- it gives one such an appreciation for
> where we are now. We started off briskly with a burst of progress in
> 1890, when the Legislature raised the age of sexual consent for a
> woman from 7 to 10. Until June 26, 1918, the Texas Constitution
> mandated that all Texans had the right to vote except "idiots,
> imbeciles, aliens, the insane and women."
>
> We continued to bump along with legal disparities (women were not
> allowed to serve on juries until 1954; they thought it might upset
> us), the most notorious of which was Article 1220 of the state penal
> code. 1220 made it legal for a husband who found his wife and her
> lover `in flagrante delicto,' as we say in Muleshoe, to dispatch one
> or both of them to kingdom come without any legal consequence. And
> that was the law until 1972, when they changed it because Texas women
> started demanding equal shooting rights.
>
> And how have things changed since then? Well, I used to go on college
> campuses 25 years ago and announce that I was a feminist, and people
> thought it meant I believed in free love and was available for a quick
> hop in the sack with anyone who asked. Now I go on college campuses
> and say I'm a feminist, and half of them think it means I'm a lesbian.
> What I'd like to know is, how'd we get from there to here without ever
> passing "Go"?
>
> I'll tell you exactly what it means to be a feminist, and I know
> because I was there from the beginning of the second wave: It means
> you believe that women should get equal pay for doing equal work. This
> is not a real exclusive club. We don't have a lot of entrance
> requirements. You don't even have to be female.
>
> I can already hear a bunch of people muttering: "Oh, it can't be that
> simple; I've heard you have to have hairy legs or no bra or think all
> sex is rape." Nope, you just have to think women should get paid the
> same as men for doing the same job.
>
> You think that's already an established principle in law -- something
> that no one has had to worry about for years? Perhaps you didn't
> notice just a few weeks ago when female employees of Merrill Lynch,
> the financial services firm, won a huge settlement. Does Merrill Lynch
> strike you as some kind of hick, backwoods corporation that might have
> missed the news that it is illegal to pay women who do the same job as
> men less than those men?
>
> You'd be just as surprised by the other major employees that still
> discriminate. Welcome to 21st-century feminism. The fight's still on.
>
> Another thing that the second wave of the women's movement tried to do
> was open up opportunities for women, and in this I think we have been
> successful. I think girls today have a wider range of dreams; they can
> dream of being doctors as well as nurses, pilots as well as
> stewardesses, lawyers as well as court reporters, CEOs as well as
> secretaries to CEOs, astronauts, mountain climbers, professional
> athletes, orchestra conductors, presidents of the United States,
> electricians, carpenters, engineers, clergywomen and much, much more.
>
> And one more thing the women's movement set out to do -- I know
> because I was there -- was to change things so that women who choose
> to be full-time homemakers no longer introduce themselves by saying
> apologetically, "I'm just a housewife."
>
> We made our mistakes -- most dramatically in our failure to make
> working-class and minority women feel part of this movement. But there
> are mistakes that we get accused of that we did not make. We are not
> anti-male, anti-sex, anti-marriage or anti-motherhood. My late mother
> the Republican, at the age of 84, had a bumper sticker on her car that
> said: "Pro-child, pro-choice and pro-family." And she was.
>
> I recently read a column by that nincompoop Cal Thomas, one of the
> finest minds of the 15th century, in which he seized upon some extreme
> quotations of who-knows-what-vintage from radical feminists like
> Andrea Dworkin and tried to use them to discredit the entire women's
> movement. That is such a tired old ploy.
>
> Why is Dworkin more representative of the women's movement than, say,
> the late Erma Bombeck, a devoted feminist? I mean, who sold more
> books? Why Catherine MacKinnon rather than Ellen Goodman?
>
> There is more to be said on the state of the American feminism anon,
> but for now, let us say with Aunt Susan B. Anthony:
>
> "Woman has shown equal devotion with man to the cause of freedom and
> has stood firmly by his side in its defense. Together they have made
> this country what it is. We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that
> all civil and political rights that belong to the citizens of the
> United States be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever."
>
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