Welcome back to Feminism Concepts and Theories
and today we are going to launch into the
Second Wave of feminist theory, in continuity
with our last lecture which was the First
Wave.
If you remember, at the beginning of the lecture
on the First Wave, we had spoken a little
bit about when is it that these kinds of forms
of feminist theory even begin to be referred
to as Waves; and we had spoken about how is
it that it was only during the time of the
Second Wave that somebody brings up the metaphor
of the Wave.
So, the Second Wave is what we are talking
about today, and we are going to follow a
pretty much similar sort of strategy: we are
speaking about the discussion points during
the Second Wave; we are speaking about the
political atmosphere that gives rise to these
questions; and we are going to discuss and
read from a few key texts.
I find the Second Wave one of the most interesting
in these sets of discussions, primarily because
it addresses something close to holistic sense
of gender as an axis of difference.
And what I mean become will clearer as we
go through today’s content.
Therefore, like I mentioned, today’s lecture
is about the second wave, key concepts and
key thinkers, and some primary readings that
we will go through together.
Let us start with some very basic information,
primarily, periodization.
The Second Wave is broadly located from 1963
to 1980-s.
However, this is not a rigid classification,
this is just to indicate the time period when
the Second Wave found itself greatly productive;
that it produced the large set of thoughts,
and movements, and consequences that today
we identify with the Second Wave.
The Second Wave is also very-very clearly
distinguished from the First Wave in that
it moves towards social equality as a necessary
complement, and as a necessary deepening of
the goals of the first wave, which were political
equality; to that extent it is continuous,
it takes goals and the consequences and the
victories of the First Wave, and then asks
why is it that those victories have not let
to a gender-just society and explores the
reasons why.
The Second Wave also gives rise to something
that has become almost common-sensical in
its invocation today: the personal is political.
Let us pause a second to consider what that
means!
Does it mean that we need to politicise every
part of our personal lives?
Does it mean that every part of our personal
lives should come under scrutiny for its political
consequences and effects?
Not quite!
What it means is that, in order to understand
how women's personal lives are structured
the way they are, in order to answer the questions
that seem rather intimate and individual,
and consequences of the ways in which individual
women lead lives, on the contrary the Second
Wave and the thinkers of the Second Wave argue,
that whatever we consider personal is a direct
result of the ways in which the political
milieu is structured; and therefore, struggle
in the personal also means struggle in the
political; that the goals of modifying, changing,
improving personal life are deeply connected
which changes in the political milieu.
The politics of the personal are also about
large-scale change and unless we bring about
large-scale change, personal lives will not
change consequently; and as a result, it names
and seeks to do away with the casual sexism
ingrained in society, and the term “casual
sexism” seems almost casual as if it does
not matter much.
On the contrary, Second Wave feminist theory
argues that, that which we consider to be
minute and small is a symptom of the ways
in which society is organised in relation
to women and sexism towards women.
Let us speak a little bit then about the ways
in which Second Wave feminism reacts to the
surrounding political milieu.
This is a question worth asking: why is it
that we such a large time gap between 1920,
when you have an ostensible political equality
guaranteed to women, and the 1960-s, which
is when we locate the origins of the Second
Wave?
What happens in between?
Does it mean that for a period of about 40
years, women's problems in the US and the
UK and the global north have been solved?
And suddenly, there is a set of issues that
crop up.
Does it mean that in many a ways, women are
now unhappy with 40 years of improvement?
What exactly do we understand as continuity?
For this we have to go back to learnings from
the previous lecture, which is to say, that
term wave can be a little temporally misleading.
It does not mean that every wave builds on
successive wins and losses from the previous
wave.
It only means that it references the First
Wave.
That it learns from it without necessarily
thinking about itself as temporally and spatially
continuous.
It is not the same group of women, they have
not learnt together, and even when in specific
geographies many other things happened in
between, such as World War II.
So, from 1939 to 1945, most of the broad western
world, and as result often the rest of the
world connected to it through colonial consequences,
suffers the effect of the World War II.
In the US very specifically, one of the important
consequences for our learnings is that, you
are left with a country with no men, most
of who have gone to war.
As a result, you find large areas of work,
large work spaces, industries, everyday labour
unoccupied because there are no longer the
bodies that use to occupy them available within
the country.
And hence, economically, politically, socially
there is suddenly a gaping need for workers
of any kind, including women.
So, professions that were otherwise unavailable
to women, who were considered to be not strong
enough, not capable enough, not intelligent
enough are opened up.
This can be read through figures that were
popular during that time in popular media,
such as the Rosie the Riveter, and I will
come to that in just to second.
Factories and production lines open up work
spaces posing as war effort.
So, remember even the kinds of gains that
the feminist movement makes during this time,
access to women, access for work all of these
are not couched in the language of gender
empowerment, instead, they are posed as the
national duty for women; that they come and
occupy the spaces and keep the country running
in the absence of men.
In other words, women are merely proxy figures
during this time and they begin to experience
the fruits of labour, that then secure to
them economic independence of a particular
kind.
But, in 1944 when it becomes obvious who the
winners of World War II are going to be, government-sponsored
propaganda in the US, urged women to return
home.
It said well your work is done now the men
are back, so please return to homes and become
the housewives or tenders of home and children
like you are always meant to do.
Keep this in mind, because this is no small
thing: Often we think about feminist theory
as being produced in a kind of vacuum.
Women woke up one day and said, let me think
about empowerment; but, the truth is feminist
theory like all theory is also in a dialectic
with the world around it.
It borrows energy from ongoing contingencies,
accidents, happenstances.
Nobody if asked would have ever guessed that
World War II might lead to feminist empowerment,
but there you have it.
Let me show you a couple of examples from
public culture during the time.
And this figure may be very familiar to lot
of people, this is Rosie the Riveter, We can
do it!
You can see the kind of stance; you can see
the determined look on the Rosie’s face
over here.
You can see the ways in which the garb suggests
that somebody who is able to work in public
space, competently, intelligently, and be
a completely functioning worker, in spite
of being a woman.
So this kind of public culture during that
time is also a testimony to the ways in which
larger discourses often shape our understanding
of gender, sometimes in utilitarian, mercenary
fashion, but clearly with consequences that
far exceed the goals of the communication
at hand.
And here is another advertisement that is
very-very telling.
It says: “The more WOMEN at work, the sooner
we WIN!”
So, war effort, in a particular fashion, on
the inside; men can be war heroes; women are
the ones who are making sure the country is
running.
“Women are needed also as: farm workers,
typists, sales people, waitresses, bus drivers,
taxi drivers, time keepers, elevator operators,
messengers, laundresses, teachers, conductors,
and in hundreds of other war jobs.
See your local U.S. Employment Service.”
So interesting!
And can you imagine in the period of may be
five or six years when these ads are out and
women have taken up these jobs only to be
told in 1944 that it’s time to return home.
Can you imagine the ways in which this might
create ongoing waves of dissatisfaction…?
…And of resentment, and bitterness of this
kind of capacity of public discourse to use
women's labour at will, and throw it away
at will?
If nothing else, it also showed women around
that time that they were capable of doing
this; that a lot of the things that women
had been told until that time – that public
space was not suitable for them – was not
true thereby exposing the lie of gender roles
in private and public spaces.
Therefore, after 1948 a series of key texts
and key propositions become fundamental to
the Second Wave feminist movement.
Primary among them Simone de Beauvoir’s
The Second Sex from 1949 where she argued
that women are denied full humanity.
You will see strains of this also in First
Wave feminist theory that argues from different
stages about this kind of denial and what
it means when women are actually accorded
the right to be human.
Simone de Beauvoir goes a step further and
makes the radical proposition, that is then
built on by Third Wave feminist theory, that
one is not “born” but “becomes” a
woman.
Pause for a second!
What does that mean?
And why is it radical?
Why is it something that can shake the foundations
of society as we know it?
The author is suggesting in many ways that
the fact of biological sex itself is not enough
to claim womanhood.
Go back then to something we discussed in
our first lecture, which is the sex-gender
framework.
Sex is the biological body; gender is a set
of social rules imposed upon the body.
In 1949 a suggestion such as this was tremendously
radical.
It brought focus and attention to the ways
in which all forces in society are ordered
in the ways to allow biological sex to become
cultural gender.
In this time, women began to argue in continuity
in some ways as Margaret Sanger’s work for
example, on women's rights over self – reproduction
and body – and not just for the sake of
being good partners to men.
Like Wollstonecraft would have suggested not
to be able to be achieve political equality,
but just in order to claim full humanity.
Another influential text during this time
was Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique,
which spoke about this idea of the happy housewife
in the affluent, American suburbs as not just
a problem, but as creating something: “a
problem with no name” about the growing
dissatisfaction among seemingly happy American
housewives in the suburbs and what this dissatisfaction
was about and how it could be named.
As ever Second Wave feminism also borrowed
from the energy of anti-Vietnam protesters
and New Left activists.
Now, now remember post World War II is also
a time of tremendous doubts and cynicism.
The consequences of World War II are not necessarily
uniformly jubilant; you see the effects of
catastrophic social engineering such as the
holocaust; you see the ways in which genocide,
ethnic hate, all of these are important moving
forces in the ways in which the world was
brought to the brink of destruction.
And in such an atmosphere, a number of people
were propounding the force of feelings and
affects, such as love, and care, and friendship,
and kinship, and ask that the world re-examine
the ways in which it had organised itself
until that point.
Feminist theory in the Second Wave, similarly
asked for such a questioning of gender itself
as fundamental category of experience.
And there were number of key consequences
as a result of these struggles and a result
of all of this kind of discussion and debate.
Let me run you through a few of them, some
of which continue to be extremely influential
even in the current political milieu.
The Equal Pay Act of 1963 theoretically outlawed
the gender pay gap.
Now, this made the radical proposition that
men and women should be paid the same for
the same work.
To this day, and that is why we said theoretically,
to this day, even in countries like US, this
is not the case.
Pay often tends to be differential not just
for women but, very-very specifically for
women of colour, for people of colour, for
natives versus foreigners, for ethnic minorities.
So, pay gap continues to be one of the key
interventions that the Second Wave sought
to bring about.
Supreme Court cases through the 60s and 70s
gave married and unmarried women the right
to use birth control.
Now, this might seem surprising especially
in the case of Legislative measures in the
contemporary era, but, think about it for
a second; what does it mean to give women
the right to use birth control?
And a lot of panic stricken, anti-feminist
rights people always speak about the fact
that should women be given the right to use
birth control they will become sexually promiscuous,
they will have no responsibility, they will
have no commitment toward reproduction.
I do not have enough time to go into the ways
in which such discourses handle the idea of
women themselves, but, there is certainly
a societal view towards reproduction as primarily
a woman’s duty or role in life, that structure
these kinds of arguments.
So, therefore giving married and unmarried
women the right to use birth control was tantamount
to giving them full humanity.
Title IX gave women the right to educational
equality: very-very important.
And lastly, in 1973 Roe v. Wade guaranteed
women reproductive freedom.
And by this we mean the right to or not to
have an abortion, to have control over their
own reproductive rights and freedom.
To this day this continuous to be contentious
issue in countries across the world.
Another set of key consequences was very much
to do with the quality of women's lives.
So, for example second wave fought to get
women the right to hold credit cards under
their own names.
What does this mean?
It means that they have the capacity to be
consumers and rights-bearing citizens in the
economic sphere in their own right, and not
in their husbands or fathers name.
Legislated against marital rape – the idea
that providing the sexual relations is not
the duty of women who are married, their consent
must still be obtained and any form of sexual
activity sans consent whether in a marriage
or outside of it, it’s subject to action
through law.
Tried to raise awareness about domestic violence
– you will remember this from our discussion
around space and home; that homes were often
unsafe spaces for a lot of women and a number
of them in countries including those like
the US experienced domestic violence to a
heinous degree.
Second Wave brought about this awareness and
tried to build shelters for women fleeing
rape and domestic violence.
They also argued that providing such shelters
was the duty of the state; the state was responsible
for the safety of women as citizens in their
own rights, and it named and legislated, or
rather asked for the legislation against sexual
harassment in the workplace.
Many of you will recognise that these are
ongoing issues, not just in our country but
also in countries of their origin.
And therefore it demands asking why is it
that from the 1960s to now we are still talking
about the same issues.
This is not to suggest that Second Wave was
unsuccessful but to continue to ask the ways
in which women are boxed in in society, as
needing to perform certain kind of roles and
being restricted from particular kinds of
freedoms over self and body.
So broadly, just to summarize the kinds of
discussion in Second Wave, we are speaking
about body issues also; and body issues had
to do with questions like beauty and the ways
in which women were expected to confirm to
certain ideals of form, and presence, and
presentation in public space; and how these
roles had been so hard wired that women did
not know how to behave otherwise.
These also led into other questions of body
shaming, ideal bodies, fashion, so on and
so forth.
Just like Simone de Beauvoir suggested, it
also brought forth discussions on the “nature
of women”: Is there a fundamental nature?
Do we think about women as being one or the
other?
Must all women have the same nature?
Must they all want to reproduce?
Must they all have the capacity to care and
nurture?
Must they all be fantastic housewives?
Must they all be good mothers?
All of these were ongoing discussions during
this time.
Very importantly, and this continues in Third
Wave and to the present day, the discursive
construction of women.
We have gone over some definitions of discourse
in the first week when we spoke about conceptual
clarity.
So, let me just rehearse those arguments.
Discursive construction means that from biological
sex to social gender there are multiple discourses
that structure how one thinks of oneself as
a woman.
Across narratives, across platforms, in relation
to body, duty, role, comportment, behaviour,
discourses suggest to you, what are the ways
in which propriety is built into the idea
of woman, and how one needs to conform in
order to be seen by self and by others as
a woman.
This came under discussion during the Second
Wave.
Reproductive rights as we already discussed
and ongoing consciousness-raising that women
could only think about these things together;
that individual experiences had to be gathered
in order to be understand that these experiences
were not necessarily individual but were part
of a standard narrative about women.
Think about maybe ways in which sometimes
you thought of your own issues as singular.
So, that I feel so terrible today or I am
not sure why is it that I am being denied
access to certain things in public space because
I am a woman.
Why do people speak to me as if I do not know
what I am talking about just because I am
a woman?
And you think something is going on with you
or something is wrong with the ways in which
you presented yourself except when you meet
three other people, other women maybe, who
all share similar experiences, and then you
realise that each of you is bearing the brunt
of systemic problem.
Consciousness-raising was part of addressing
such a problem.
Said we could talk about these experiences
together and they are not merely arenas to
vent, but they also become important platforms
for us to understand the systemic nature of
the discursive construction of women.
Also under discussion were forms of male violence
and pornography as a necessary complement
to the ways in which women experienced violence.
In other words, if women are being typecast
as particular kind of bodies whose roles in
life are about providing sex, good homes,
good motherhood, what is the other side of
the issue?
What are the forms of male violence that are
abetted and included and encouraged by society
that then allows for these roles to continue
together.
In other words, we are making a structural
argument.
There were also some very important debates
on pornography during this time and the ways
in which it is fundamentally violent and therefore
objectifying of women.
There were also other kinds of arguments by
women that suggested that pornography can
also be very powerful for women to own their
own sexuality, but these were minor set of
arguments during this time thereby suggesting
through consciousness-raising that sisterhood
can be a powerful force.
And we read some of this in bell hooks and
that text is also an important kind of end
point of these discussions.
One of the things to remember however about
second wave is that it was rather limited
with respect to race.
There were multiple ways in which second wave
feminist theory is always seen as a white
women’s movement; There are the issues that
was central to it were central to white women's
lives, and did not include the particularities
or the exigencies of other kinds of disempower
populations, such as black women who experienced
that doubling of disempowerment through race
as well as gender.
And thereby black women's feminism decided
to take on a different set of discourses to
be able to suitably explicate their own experience
of gender injustice.
Now, these are broadly some of the key texts
during this period and I have chosen these
with very particular goals in mind.
They sort of speak to each other in multiple
ways, so we are speaking about The Second
Sex as one of the key texts of Second Wave
feminism, but I am not going to read from
it today because we are also going to discuss
The Second Sex in relation to next week’s
lectures, which are about the feminist body.
We will read a little bit from The Feminine
Mystique and I want to combine it with readings
from Madwoman in the Attic.
We will also read from the statement of the
Combahee River Collective, which were a group
of black lesbian feminists who argued that
both in terms of sexual freedom, race as well
as gender, the larger movement did not capture
their particular experience.
And lastly we will read from bell hooks because
she is wonderful, from a text called, Ain’t
I Woman?
Black Women and Feminism.
So, let us go through some parts of each of
these text and see what are the issues they
bring about.
Let us start with The Feminine Mystique which
is perhaps the most quoted works from the
particular time.
It is a tremendously compelling document that
speaks about the situation of American suburban
housewives.
At first go you do not think about these as
suitable feminine subjects because to all
understanding American housewives during this
time first was supposed to be happy a lot.
World War II had ended; despite the fact that
America was not in great shape, slowly the
nation was making its way to prosperity; there
was an understanding that there was a collective
building of middle class and middle class
values.
So, why is it that gender is a particular
problem for these housewives?
And this is what Friedan wants us to try and
understand and she writes it in a very-very
compelling persuasive fashion.
Let us look at a few excepts.
“The suburban housewife - she was the dream
image of the young American women and the
envy, it was said of women all over the world.
The American housewife – freed by science
and labour-saving appliances from the drudgery,
the dangers of childbirth and the illnesses
of her grandmother.
She was healthy, beautiful, educated, concerned
only about her husband, her children, her
home.
She had found true feminine fulfilment.
As a housewife and mother she was respected
as a full and equal partner to man in his
world.
She was free to choose automobiles, clothes,
appliances, supermarkets; she had everything
that women ever dreamed of.”
Pay attention to the language here: dream
image, envy of women all over the world.
So, there is already an exceptionalism to
the American women.
The American women as opposed to women all
over the world has a lot of choice.
She has the capacity to live like a true blue
American consumer, freed by science and labour-saving
appliances.
Here she’s also produced as the modern women
that she is been freed by the efforts of modern,
western technology from the drudgery, the
dangers of childbirth – developments in
medical sciences as well – and the illnesses
of her grandmother also through developments
in medical technology, and increase in mortality
rates for women all over the world hopefully.
She was healthy, beautiful, educated, all
interesting important things, and here comes
the zinger: concerned only about her husband,
her children, her home through which she had
found true feminine fulfilment.
Now, step back and look at this picture; at
first glance it does not look too bad, does
it?
You think about the argument that what’s
wrong with these women, they have everything;
do they only want to complain?
How much more can they want?
As a housewife and mother she was respected
as a full and equal partner to man in his
world.
Here that is clear separation she was respected
as a partner but only in her domain and man
has his domain.
You remember the alteration of weak feminism
of a particular kind that says women's values
are important and need to be brought into
the world.
This is not quite that, here there is a clear
demarcation.
Women to private, man to public everybody
knows their roles.
She was free to choose: automobiles, clothes,
appliances, supermarkets; she had everything
that women ever dreamed of.
Here, comes the important aspect, what should
be the appropriate nature of women's dreams?
Let us continue:
“The problem lay buried, unspoken for many
years in the minds of American women.
It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction,
a yearning that women suffered in the middle
of the twentieth century in the United States.”
Here, Freidan begins to name the nature of
the problem.
She says, the problem lay buried, unspoken
because ostensibly in the face of all of this
cornucopia, this plenty, women should not
experience dissatisfaction and if they did
something was wrong with them.
It was strange stirring, a yearning that women
suffered in the middle of the twentieth century
in the United States.
Here she is driving the point home; this is
the twentieth century, this is the United
States, how could you be unhappy?
“Each suburban wife struggled with it alone.
As she made the beds, shopped for groceries,
matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter
sandwiches with her children, chauffeured
Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband
at night – she was afraid to ask even of
herself the silent question – Is this all?”
How poignant is this passage, imagine reading
it for the first time, imagine that somebody
outside of you is naming the problem that
you are even afraid to call a problem.
This is why Friedan’s text was fabulously
popular during this time and became a way
for women to name their dissatisfaction as
valid.
Friedan identified the reason for this dissatisfaction
in what she calls the “feminine mystique.”
“The feminine mystique says that the highest
value and the only commitment for a woman
is the fulfilment of their own femininity.
It says that the great mistake of Western
culture through most of its history, has been
the under-valuation of this femininity.
It says this femininity is so mysterious and
intuitive and close to the creation and origin
of life, that man-made science may never be
able to understand it, but, however special
and different, it is in no way inferior to
nature of man; it may even in certain respects
be superior.
The mistake says the mystique, the root of
women's trouble in the past is that women
envied men, women tried to be like men, instead
of accepting their own nature, which can find
fulfilment only in sexual passivity, male
domination, and nurturing maternal love.”
Does this paragraph make you a little uncomfortable
in some ways to the ways in which Friedan
is, over determining the standard the understanding
of what somebody feminine should be like?
And how true happiness is an accepting and
conforming to that kind of femininity.
This is that reason why the feminine mystique
also allowed for suburban women to be angry.
To begin to come to understand for the first
time that the dissatisfaction they bore with
their roles was due to the fact of being boxed
into this understanding of were they women
only if they behaved in ways that society
considered to be appropriate to womanhood.
And this dissatisfaction is something that
comes to the fore again and again.
Think for example of the text Madwoman in
the Attic where the authors speak about certain
kinds of themes and literature in the nineteenth
century.
Let us read an excerpt and see what is that
they are arguing.
“Dramatization of imprisonment and escape
are so all-pervasive in nineteenth-century
literature by women, that we believe they
represent a uniquely female tradition in this
period.
Interestingly, though works in this tradition
generally begin by using houses as primary
symbols of female imprisonment, they also
use much of the other paraphernalia of “woman’s
place” to enact their central symbolic drama
of enclosure and escape.”
Now, here the authors are using a review of
nineteenth-century literature to try and understand
how is it that women were able to dramatize
their own plight through symbols, metaphors
and a large symbolic universe.
“Ladylike veils and costumes, mirrors, paintings,
statues, locked cabinets, drawers, trunks,
strongboxes and other domestic furnishing
appear and reappear in female novels and poems
throughout the nineteenth century and on into
the twentieth to signify the woman writer’s
sense that, as Emily Dickinson put it, her
“life” has been “shaven and fitted to
a frame,” a confinement she can only tolerate
by believing that “the soul has moments
of escape / When bursting all the doors / She
dances like a bomb abroad.”
Now, this is such a set of brilliant imagery;
you are looking at the ways in which women
writers try to escape their fate by writing
about it.
Or try to name their fate metaphorically because
they were not quite sure what is that they
longed for.
“Significantly, too, the explosive violence
of these “moments of escape” that women
writers continually imagined for themselves
returns us to the phenomenon of the mad double
so many of these women have projected into
their works.
For it is, after all, through the violence
of the double that the female author enacts
her own raging desire to escape male houses
and male texts, while at the same time it
is through the double’s violence that this
anxious author articulates for herself the
costly destructiveness of anger repressed
until it can no longer be contained.”
And this is beautiful!
What they are saying over here by analysing
literature is that often you find in the women
writer's works in the nineteenth and twentieth
century, the appearance of double figures,
where one is good, the other is bad; or one
is contained and moderate and appropriate,
and the other is monstrous.
And the authors here are suggesting that this
kind of doubling was a way for women to represent
their own repressed desires, to escape men’s
worlds and men's texts while at the same time
being aware of the dangers of allowing these
repressed selves to be out into the world.
And being aware that ultimately those repressed
selves would have to be contained, would have
to be killed in order to continue living in
the world.
“As we shall see, therefore, infection continually
breeds in the sentences of women whose writing
obsessively enacts this drama of an enclosure
and escape.
Specifically, what we have called the distinctively
female diseases of anorexia and agoraphobia
are closely associated with this dramatic
/ thematic pattern.
Defining themselves as prisoners of their
own gender for instance, women frequently
create characters who attempt to escape, if
only into nothingness through the suicidal
self-starvation of anorexia.”
So, they’re going further where identifying
the appearance of diseases or conditions like
agoraphobia and saying that, the central characters
are representation of women’s deepest fears
and possibilities for their escape by either
giving up body or killing of the characters
or destroying themselves.
“Similarly, in a metaphorical elaboration
of bulimia, the disease of overeating which
is anorexia’s complement and mirror-image
(as, Marlene Boskind-Lodahl has recently shown),
women writers often envision an outbreak that
transform their characters into huge and powerful
monsters.
More obviously, agoraphobia and its complementary
opposite, claustrophobia, are by definition
associated with the spatial imagery through
which these poets and novelists express their
feelings of social confinement and their yearning
for spiritual escape.”
Now, connect this to the goals of the Second
Wave movement.
What does it mean to want spiritual escape?
We are suggesting, the authors here are arguing
that, by reading literature, you begin to
understand that this problem that has no name,
according to Betty Friedan, and the ways in
which women writers are plotting their spiritual
escape, are indicating a very-very real issue
at the heart of the ways in which gender constructions
are forms of imprisonment and prevent women
from achieving full humanity.
At the same time, these seem to be problems
of a very-very specific set of racial and
classed women who are otherwise taken care
of; who otherwise do have homes with gadgets,
free from drudgery, free from disease that
is however, not the universal lot of women
even in the US.
So, as much as Second Wave feminism was very
much about recognising the lack of full humanity,
even to seemingly privileged women, there
were whole set of African-American writers,
theorists and activists, who are argued that
these kinds of theorization did not capture
their experience, or even accord to them the
possibility of gaining full humanity in the
same mode.
Their struggles were different.
So, the next half of this class, I want to
read from two different text written about
the experience of African-American women.
Let us start with bell hooks’ Ain’t I
a woman?
Hooks says, “At a time in American history
when black women in every area of the country
might have joined together to demand social
equality for women and a recognition of the
impact of sexism on our social status, we
were by and large silent.
Our silence was not merely a reaction against
white women liberationists or a gesture of
solidarity with black male patriarchs.
It was the silence of the oppressed – that
profound silence engendered by resignation
and acceptance of one’s lot.”
Here Hooks, is making a tremendously poignant
assertion.
She says that, the reason black women have
not joined this call for gender liberatio,
is not because they are throwing a tantrum,
it is not because they want to resist white
women’s understandings of liberation on
the one hand, it is also not because they
want to express solidarity with their own
men.
It is in fact something a lot more tragic.
It is the profound silence engendered by resignation
and acceptance of one's a lot: of racism on
the one hand and of sexism on the other.
“Contemporary black women could not join
together to fight for women’s rights because
we did not see “womanhood” as an important
aspect of our identity.”
When she says this you have to remember that
even for those who claimed womanhood, their
coming to consciousness is a fraught struggle.
It is not always easy and it is conditioned
by the particular aspects of women's lives
that allow or disallow them from understanding
woman as a primary part of identity.
“Racist, sexist socialization had conditioned
us to devalue our femaleness and to regard
race as the only relevant label of identification.”
And this is very-very particular to African-American
women's histories because for the first time
in their lives as when they think about identity,
race is a platform through which they were
taught to have any kind of value.
“In other words, we were asked to deny a
part of ourselves and we did.”
And this was important for African-American
solidarity at a particular point is the argument
that women were given.
“Consequently, when the women’s movements
raised the issue of sexist oppression, we
argued that sexism was insignificant in light
of the harsher, more brutal reality of racism.”
In other words, African-American women argued
that we can think about sexism later, we need
to address racialisation and its brutal violence
first.
“We were afraid to acknowledge that sexism
could be just as oppressive as racism.
We clung to the hope that liberation from
racial oppression would be all that was necessary
for us to be free.
We were a new generation of black women, who
had been taught to submit, to accept sexual
inferiority and to be silent” towards the
cause of racial emancipation.
“Just as the nineteenth century conflict
over black male suffrage versus woman suffrage
had placed black women in a difficult position”
because remember that their fight was between
white women’s suffrage and black men's identities,
in which case it would have been difficult
for African-American women to be able to side
with white women in the asking for gender
suffrage, “contemporary black women felt
they were asked to choose between a black
movement that primarily served the interest
of black male patriarchs and a women’s movement
which primarily served the interest of racist
white women.”
Look how beautifully hooks presents the quandaries
for African-American women.
“Their response was not to demand the change
in these two movements and a recognition of
the interest of black women.
Instead, the great majority of black women
allied themselves with black patriarchy they
believed would protect their interests.”
Between racist white women and black patriarchs,
black women in hooks’ understanding chose
black men because they believed that race
was the greater kind of affinity.
“A few black women chose to ally themselves
with the feminist movement.
Those who dared to speak publicly in support
of women's rights were attacked and criticised.
Other black women found themselves in limbo,
not wanting to ally themselves with sexist
black men or racist white women.”
And here hooks states the problems so succinctly
that you are caught between two very-very
difficult propositions and thereby asked to
deny either race, or gender, and as a result,
a lot of women found themselves in limbo denying
both, thereby leading to silence – the silence
of resignation!
Our last document for today, I want to read
a statement of the Combahee River Collective,
which spoke for the rights of black lesbian
women and said that from this marginal position
we can formulate a kind of agenda that combats
both race and sexism, specifically for sexual
minorities like lesbians.
The Combahee River Collective Statement reads:
“We are a collective of Black Feminists
who have been meeting together since 1974.
During that time, we have been involved in
the process of defining and clarifying our
politics, while at the same time doing political
work within our own group and in coalition
with other progressive organisations and movements.
The most general statement of our politics
at the present time would be that we are actively
committed to struggling against racial, sexual,
heterosexual and class oppression, and see
as our particular task the development of
integrated analysis and practice based upon
the fact that the major systems of oppression
are interlocking.”
In many ways this is the precursor to what
then becomes common-sensical knowledge during
the Third Wave, that systems of oppression
are interlocking, they work together.
“The synthesis of these oppressions creates
the conditions of our lives.
As Black women we see Black feminism as the
logical political movement to combat the manifold
and simultaneous oppressions that all women
of colour face.”
And this is an important kind of statement
that acknowledges the simultaneity of oppressions.
“We will discuss four major topics in the
paper that follows” and this is part of
statement, “(1) the genesis of contemporary
black feminism; (2) what we believe, that
is, the specific province of our politics;
(3)the problems in organizing Black feminists,
including a brief herstory of our collective;
an (4) Black feminist issues and practice.
Now, this is such a clear mandate because
it refuses to abandon either race or sex as
identity.
And in fact deepens the question of sex identity
itself, beyond the category of heterosexual
woman.
“A Black feminist presence has evolved most
obviously in connection with the second wave
of the American women’s movement beginning
in the late 1960s.
Black, other Third World, and working women
have been involved in the feminist movement
from its start, but both outside reactionary
forces and racism and elitism within the movement
itself have served to obscure our participation.
(Therefore,) [i]n 1973, Black feminists, primarily
located in New York, felt the necessity of
forming a separate Black feminist group.
This became the National Black Feminist Organisation
(NBFO).”
This might be a point also to reemphasis that
things that break away from feminist movement
are not breakaway movements.
They are very much part of the heart of feminist
theory and feminist mobilization.
And that is why the term wave again can be
slightly misleading.
“Black feminist often talk about their feelings
of craziness before becoming conscious of
the concepts of sexual politics, patriarchal
rule and most importantly feminism, the political
analysis and practice that we women use to
struggle against our oppression.
The fact that racial politics and indeed racism
are pervasive factors in our lives did not
allow us and still does not allow most Black
women to look more deeply into our own experiences
and, from that sharing and growing consciousness,
to build, (not a politics,) a politics that
will change our lives and inevitably end our
oppression.
Our development must also be tied to the contemporary
economic and political position of Black people.”
And I think the Combahee River Collective
statement is very important to read because
of the ways in which it so attentive to the
multiple ways in which, different forms of
their identities demand different forms of
struggle that must then all come together.
So, a couple of texts from Second Wave to
give you an understanding; I would encourage
you to go and read up more about it because
it is a tremendously productive period as
I had mentioned.
In summary, the second wave recognized and
sought to address the ways in which gender
was both a social and cultural axis of difference.
Now, this is a term you should know: what
do we mean by an “axis of difference?”
It is an axis along which there are different
consequences depending upon where you located,
the consequences for you will be different
and this functions in a social and cultural
fashion, as much as in a political fashion,
which is what First Wave was sought to address.
It responded to the cultural milieu of both
great cynicism and disappointment with the
current world order.
People thought of themselves as dissatisfied.
People began to see how dissatisfied they
were, whether it was with war or with genocide
or with housewife rules or with racism and
sexism writ large in society, which was not
necessarily addressed through political means
only.
It led to a specific politics of gender that
seemed unable to cope with the complexity
of other identities such as race, thereby
demanding that it be deepened, such as we
saw in the Combahee River Collective Statement.
So, this brings us to the end of Second wave
and for the last maybe ten minutes of this
lecture, I want to focus on Third Wave and
beyond.
Now, I am only going to spend a little time
on third wave because we will also talk about
it in the coming weeks as we go through other
sets of readings.
But the Third Wave in many a ways can be broadly
spoken about as a set of reactions also to
the end of the Second Wave, which created
very particular stereotypes of feminists as
being angry, as being out there to burn the
world order and a growing backlash against
the figure of the feminist.
Third Wave comes about in the comfortable
conservativism of the Reagan era in the US.
And this canonical image of the feminist was
angry, man-hating and lonely.
“I do not think of myself as a feminist,”
a young woman told Susan Bolotin in 1982 for
the New York Times magazine.
“Not for me, but for the guy next door that
would mean that I am a lesbian and I hate
men.”
We can see continued strengths of these forms
of thought even in the present day, where
people will say I am not a feminist; I am
humanist, I think men and women should have
equal rights and I do not hate men.
Think about these as originating in the Third
Wave and the 1980s; Third Wave aims for a
more modest feminism that works in multiple
ways through literature, through writings,
through theory, through cultural change, cultural
discourse, but, at the same time is not overarchingly
defined by anger, which might be construed
as a loss in many ways.
It works on questions of class, race, and
gender, but it also critiques Eurocentric
feminism and seeks to understand feminist
movements in other parts of the world as well.
It debates the effects of colonialism and
neo colonialism and seeks to include multiple
kinds of feminisms, including those of women
of colour and of the Third World.
There is a difference in the questions at
stake; since identities are not differently
positioned, it is not just about gender, but
it is about gender as intersecting with other
kinds of modes of oppression.
And there is no central issue; it is more
centred around ways to think about gender
and its impacts.
Some of the key issues around that time, and
some of the key consequences however are important
to consider.
For example, in the US, in 1992, the year
was dubbed The Year of the Woman after 24
women won seats in the House of Representatives
and three more won seats in the Senate.
There was an embrace of a term that has almost
become common-sensical now called, intersectionality
where Kimberle Crenshaw, a scholar of gender
and critical race theory coined the term,
to describe the ways in which different forms
of oppression intersect.
And now this has become a fairly required
way to operate in relation to feminist theory,
which is that, one has to understand that
identities are complex and you cannot front
end one at the cost of others.
Another important text during this time was
Judith Butler’s Gender and Performativity,
which I will not go into right now, but which
suggests that, gender is also a set of performances
and thereby can be unlearned although it is
not easy.
We will read more from the text in our week
on Queer theory and post-structuralism, so
hang on to that thought.
And in direct consequences of these forms
of thought, and in direct consequences to
the backlash that feminism received at the
end of Second Wave, there was also an aesthetic
embrace of girliness.
Girliness, third wavers are argued was not
inherently less valued or valuable than masculinity
or androgyny that one could embrace feminineness
without it being always oppressive.
The reaction was to second wavers’ anger
at all of ways in which feminine nature was
considered to be natural for women, and was
considered to be compelling for women.
They rebelled against that and third wavers
rebelled against this kind of rebelling.
Third wavers was argued that one should recognized
danger but also pleasure in patriarchal standards
of beauty.
So, third wavers often argue in many ways
that, women should be allowed to like makeup,
because they like it, and not because they
are oppressed by male standards of beauty
where they dressing up for men and the male
gaze.
Sometimes pleasure is important even for women’s
own sake.
Key texts during this time Beauty Myth, Gender
Trouble, Feminism is for Everybody.
Now, both of these we will go on to explore
in the coming weeks.
Feminism is for Everybody has of course been
your foundational text for this course.
The question that we have not addressed, which
we will address in our last week, where we
gather learnings and conclusions, is to ask,
“is there a Fourth Wave of Feminism in the
contemporary era?” and the answer is out
there.
So, will talk about that a lot more once we
have done a whole new set of key readings
on Third Wave.
And we will speak about post-structuralism
gender and Queer theory in continuity, with
the little bit that we have discussed today
on Third Wave.
Next week, we return to our key set of discussions
on the feminist body.
Until then….
