For International Women’s Day 2010
I don’t know about you, but when I was younger I used to get incredibly irritated by older people who ranted on about what things were like in their day.
Well you’ll have to indulge me for a moment…
Revisiting the ’70s
In the 1970s, the excitement and energy of second-wave feminism had many women on a high. Our priestesses were Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer. We relished the extreme possibilities opened to us by Mary Daly and Andrea Dworkin.
We bought and contributed to vibrant feminist magazines, the polar opposite of those tedious home-making journals. There was a glorious explosion of feminist and lesbian fiction. Women met in consciousness-raising groups to discuss our lives.
The Personal is Political
We instinctively and intellectually knew the truth of it when Carol Hanisch wrote The Personal is Political. It all matters: what we wear, who we sleep with (or don’t), what we buy, how we raise our children, what we eat, the availability of contraception and abortion, our work, our financial independence, our religious beliefs and practices.
These ideas and ideals are still with us, translated by social justice groups to concepts like purchaser power, political boycott and workers’ rights.
Faith and spirituality
Most of us in the West at the beginning of the ’70s were familiar only with Christianity in all its patriarchal glory. Some had begun to flirt with Buddhism, and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had given us transcendental meditation via the Beatles in the late ’60s. Britain at least was far less multi-cultural than today, and few of us were familiar with Islam or Hinduism.
Around this time, groups of women were exploring the origins of goddess worship and the history of witchcraft. Starhawk first published The Spiral Dance in 1979, exploring and affirming ancient/new female spirituality.
Christian women were pushing back against the patriarchs, exploring new language in worship, and fighting for the ordination of women. We still have a very long way to go, of course, especially in the Catholic church.
What the hell are we women doing now?
The women I knew then wanted more than equality. We wanted to reinvent the paradigms, to change society. Hell, we wanted revolution! Kate Millett said It’s more about changing the recipe of the cake than getting an equal slice.
So with this richness behind us, what in the name of the Goddess are women doing?
A search on Amazon this morning gave me 48,000 books under the search term feminism and 105,000 under diet. Our society is addicted to the underbelly of celebrity as explored by the tabloid press (which would not exist if we didn’t buy the papers and celebrity magazines). Young girls are clamouring for pink plastic tat bought at shops catering specifically for them, encouraged by their mothers. Female corporate lawyers are aping their male colleagues, aiming to earn the big bucks by billing 2,500 hours a year (that’s 9.6 hours a day folks, not including holidays, lunches or essential work not billable to clients). Cosmetic surgery, for men as well as women, is rising inexorably and makeover shows are big business on television.
Why? In the West at least, we are mostly educated women. We have the history and tools to change ourselves and to change the world. We have the huge individual and collective power the internet gives us. Why don’t we change? Why do we allow ourselves to become indoctrinated? Why do I still hear women uttering that famous phrase Well I’m not a feminist but… as they protest injustice? Why on earth would any of us fear to be identified by the finest of the F-words?
Image of Egyptian Goddess statuette by ego technique
Elsewhere:
It’s not all hopeless. Natasha Walter’s book Living Dolls is making waves. Women for Women are helping women survivors of war. The BBC has a new series, Libbers, starting tonight. And I found out about the BBC series via this excellent exploration of feminism today at a blog that’s new to me, Everydaystranger. She also discusses an aspect I haven’t touched on above: the internecine fighting that is the less glorious side of feminist politics.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh Tess, how I agree with you! I am a feminist and proud of it, and as someone working in criminal justice can state confidently that the battle has not been won. Women as victims and/or perpetrators of crime still get a rough deal even though we are making progress.
My book shelves are still packed with Kate Millet, Simone de Beauvoir, May Sarton, Audre Lorde, Mary Daly, Starhawk – and many others who were guiding lights in my younger days, and reaffirm me now. I don’t know where I would be now without the company of my women friends, magazines like Spare Rib and its German equivalent Emma (Spare Rib no longer with us, Emma much more mainstream but still going strong), the then Catholic Women’s Network, Reclaim the Night marches … I feel a new second wave of feminist consciousness coming on. But it is easy to feel like a lone voice in the wilderness. Not quite sure what to do with all this – but am so pleased that you/ we are talking about it. Thank you.
Well, I am a feminist, Tess. I worked in the Gender Bureau of a UN Agency for some years, did a masters research on women’s leadership in the informal sector (with the Working Women’s Forum in now Chennai) and a master in pastoral studies with a focus on Feminist Theology.
My feminist friends wonder why I am still in the Catholic Church. Sometimes Catholic conservatives tell me I should leave.
I find there is much to do still today re. violence against women, teen pregnancies. And of course, women deacons, women priests.
I follow Feministing. Was horrified at the way Rosemary Radford Ruether was insulted by some Catholics on the NYTimes blog at the time of the Pope’s visit to NY.
I could go on and on on this. The entry which is probably the most read on my blog is the one on Sexism in the Catholic Church…
PS: Thank you for celebrating the International Women’s Day here. I did it, I think, in a subversive manner… by addressing women’s sexuality and spirituality — or tried to.
When I sat in a church in Kentucky in 1988 and the deacon of the week was named Edith, I knew I had arrived in a special place. It was awesome. We were members of an equally enlightened church in TX (yes, in TX) and I became a deacon there. How amazing that God calls women. But why should that be amazing? My affirmation that there was something amiss in the Protestant Church and its patriarchs came with reading “Dance of the Dissident Daughter” by Sue Monk Kidd. Where are the beloved matriarchs of the church? Surely a God who is worthy of worship loves women equally and fairly. Why doesn’t the Church?
I was a surgical nurse, so cared for my many patients in 30+ years in a less open environment.
Sending hugs and a readiness to dance with you all.
Ta, Tess!
Tess,
thank-you for this magnificent tribute to International Women’s Day. Your bright anger! Your memories are my own, perfectly. Yes!
“the beds to make and frying pans to wash”…. My Old Man …. Joni Mitchell, BBC, Live performance, 1970, YOUTUBE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1_PIuEmj8s
The more things change, the more they don’t … or the more things progress the more they regress … sometimes, anyway.
@Sib, I WISH we’d known each other then! We must compare bookshelves some time. Interesting re women and crime issues. I think there is a new wave of many kinds of awareness coming. I hope so.
I have so many question marks about my Catholicism. A discussion for another day perhaps. One of the many things I love about your blog is your spelling of Godde. Every time my eyes alight on the word it challenges all the passive gender assumptions of deity that were baked into me at a very young age.
@Claire, it never occurred to me that you were not a feminist – or a subversive
@Barbara Anne, Oh, Dance of the Dissident Daughter! I’m pretty sure it was via one of my online friends that I found that wonderful book. And I didn’t know you were a Texan Deacon – has a kind of gunslinger flavour to it doesn’t it! Keep on dancing.
@kigen, bright anger indeed – something pure about it. Thank you so much for sharing the video. It’s a great song. I’d never noticed before what beautiful hands she has.
@Roxanne, I think it’s partly to do with fear – we progress, we fear our potential, we regress. Like waves on a shore.
A dear friend emailed me about this post and said I could quote what she said about men, which I think is important:
“We have got to find ways of making common cause with the so many men who care about the same things that women do: for me feminism is for men too: so many of them desperate to spend more time with their children, fed up with culture in too many companies that values working long hours over anything else, treated abominably sometimes by their wives over custody and access after divorces that they didn’t choose.
This week, like every week, two women will be killed by abusive and violent partners, husbands, or exes: how many men think that’s OK? None of the men I know.”
Amen! We put so many burdens on both men and women.
Amen Tess – great post! Frankly I don’t know if there would have been a women’s liberation movement if it had been up to me. I was married at 19 and was so deeply indoctrinated with what “women’s roles” were to be that it took the (I thought it was at the time) – OUTRAGEOUS – behavior of the feminists to awaken me at all. I’ve talked recently with contemporary friends and they agree that it was crazy to them as well, but we’re are ALL so grateful for the women who had the nerve to stand up for us all!! I agree with you that we shouldn’t just be standing on others’ achievements but to stand up for our own rights and well being as women of this day and age and again, I say Amen!!!
SS: you were certainly not alone, it was very, very scary for so many women to change, or even want to change. Also, a lot of it was almost a continuation of the 60s counter-culture and lots of people didn’t think those crazy hippies were relevant to them. And the media knew exactly which buttons to push to make women afraid of ridicule…
Wow, love that statuette.
You know why we don’t? Because so many are asleep and it’s too easy to walk out the door and fall asleep again.
And because integrating and learning what it is to be a woman in this culture is the most painful thing we will ever do. Easier to just turn on the teev.
But oh, I do hope we start waking up soon. The earth needs us.
PS: Tess, I just love what your friend said. Yes, feminism is for men, too, who also need to reclaim their feminine. This cultural is patriarchal and male but oh, it eats men up just as surely as it eats women up.
Change the cake, not a bigger slice. Yeah, I like that
Sue: Yes we are all asleep, men and women alike. And yes, I remember seeing a man break down in tears at a workshop once after a lifetime of pressure to be strong and unemotional. He was trying to rid himself of hatred. It was a healing moment for all of us.
Ah, beautiful, Tess, this you just told and all of the above. Thank you.