Welcome to SheKos! SheKos is a diary series for all Kossacks to explore issues related to feminism, women's history, and equality. We seek to find solutions within and beyond the Democratic Party to improve the lives of women -- and men -- regardless of race, sexual orientation, or economic status. We believe that women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights.
As comments arrived for the original diary posted last weekend, I have re-thought some connections that were left out. I want to thank everyone who read and so kindly commented on the original diary. Hopefully this edition incorporates some of those very good comments.
Why are we interested in personal stories on a political site?
I think it’s because almost all of us find it first interesting and illustrative of why a political issue is important. After all, when people live together in large groups, there must be rules about behavior and responsibilities – hence politics. And that’s real personal.
Without getting into an esoteric discussion of either politics and rights and responsibilities, politics is always downright personal. Whether people have adequate healthcare, for example, comes down to one person having healthcare, children, older people, young, healthy people, control over their health and their bodies.
Not only is it the case that all politics are local, all politics are personal. Or as a commenter stated, "the personal is political and all politics are local."
A book called "Our Bodies, Ourselves" was published for the first time back in the day. It has just struck me that all through the history of feminism, the basic fight has always has always been about owning our own bodies and mind. Even voting rights is a mean to that end. Odd place for a footnote, but Part 2 of this diary will deal with that issue among other issues, of course from 'one woman's perspective'.
With that in mind, let me say that after I promised this first diary, I thought what the heck am I thinking? I am sure to get it wrong, to say too much or too little, to offend where no offense is intended. I thought about postponing this, a lot. Of course, I told myself, the diary itself won't mean anything to anyone but me, so it was a pointless exercise. On the other hand, I did promise.
OK, given that I will probably screw this up, remember that I am recalling history as I saw it. And that I am discussing feminism now, also as I see it. (NOTE: This diary is by no means is a prescription for the actions of young feminists - you have to determine what you want to do because it's mostly in your hands now.)
Forgive me if I start further back than may be necessary, but I am going to begin with where I came from going into Feminism.
I grew up on farms in AZ, alternately just poor and really poor. My father left when I was 9 so we were raised in a single-parent household, a physically abusive household.
I remember when we were in the really poor stage going with my mother to apply for welfare. It was a totally humiliating experience. They used to treat the poor as less than human. When we went for food surplus (no food stamps then), they threw the food at us. We never went back for any more. (God only knows how they treated Black or Hispanic women.) The stigma of poverty is applied to everyone who is poor in America.
My sister and I graduated 8th grade, then we waited. My sister had by this time been out of school for 2 years, me for 1 after 8th grade. We returned to school on welfare, my sister finishing in 3 years on the honor roll. She graduated when she was 20, I graduated at 19. While both of us went to junior college, she dropped out after 1 year.
I was obsessed with finishing. Along with working full time and scholarships and sheer will I was able to continue. I didn’t eat all the time, but I didn’t quit. I got married at 22 before I finished school and did leave school for a few years to work and support my husband through grad school. That's what was done in those days. When I returned to school I was 6 months pregnant with my second child.
Waddling along in the student union I encountered a (yes, pre-Roe v. Wade) table set up to sign petitions to allow legal abortions. I had never, ever thought about my position on legal abortion, so I discovered arguments that totally convinced me that it ought to be legal, and be solely in the hands of the woman who is pregnant. The woman who was working the booth that day told me she could not take birth control pills due to her health and was physically allergic to rubber. And even the sheepskin condoms were only 80% effective.
Even with the pill, birth control was still a little scary. At the time there were a lot more hormones in the pills than now. And one woman I know had the IUD travel through her uterus to her thigh. How much more personal can you get? The possibility of having access to safe and reasonable abortions was only a dream at that point in time.
BTW, I have never encountered any woman who took the decision to have an abortion lightly - it was always taken as a very serious decision for them to make.
I also discovered feminism – first with pro-choice, then with daycare. There was no daycare at UIC then - we had to fight for it, tooth and nail. The administration didn’t think our concerns were valid at first. In fact I don’t think they really accepted it until years later. It was a tough battle. Along with being mothers and going to school, it was a big burden to have to fight that battle. But we won.
You should understand that for a mother to have access to safe daycare for her children means that she can then finish school, find a job, and then be able to support her children with some confidence that they will be housed in a decent apartment, fed, clothed, and be safe while the mother works. It’s no small thing.
So while working part-time, having by then 2 children, taking care of the housecleaning, cooking, washing the clothes, etc., it was a full plate. It was a full plate that men did not have to share back then. They even used to call taking care of their own children as babysitting.
As we fought for childcare on campus, we were feeling a little empowered. At the same time, some female professors were talking about starting a Women's Studies Program.
WOW. It was exciting. They included all of us in the process, God bless them. They practiced as well as preached equality, in this case of rank and race. I was still an undergraduate but my ideas were considered as important as fully tenured professors. Those UIC professors should all be honored in all our memories. They had the guts to risk their academic reputations in an era where men held all the cards.
The courses began being taught around my first year in graduate school (OK, my degrees are in Philosophy). I was an unpaid Teacher's Assistant (TA) that first year, leading discussion groups and teaching some. Somewhere in my grad school period I became the first paid TA for a revolving quarter.
It was rigorously academic in that a student had to create more scholarly work than a regular course. And the discussion groups were great. Students of all colors and places in society were represented. We tried to help battered women's shelters, food banks, gay rights efforts, and others that I don't remember at the moment, all while we worked for own degrees. (Although the gay rights efforts were not as strong as they should have been.)
I learned so much from the other women involved and from the women in my own discussion groups as a TA. I learned about bulimia and anorexia and how lighter skinned black women were valued more in the black culture than darker women and how Asian women were discouraged from dating outside of their race. I re-learned about poverty.
We had speak-outs open to the campus. I remember one guy calling out 'dyke' at one of these, at which one of our members stood up and said "Yes?"
Another guy same topic screamed the same thing to me in front of my girl-child toddlers. My oldest wanted to know what it meant and I leaned down and told her it was a derogatory word aimed at women who loved other women, and that it should not be used because it was mean. The heckler lowered his head and walked away.
Another time I was in the Women's Studies office and I was physically threatened and pushed. I picked up the office chair and threatened back and that bully went away.
Some bullies didn't go away so easily. They said we were ugly and just needed a good fuck, and then we'd be happy. Some threatened rape. Other women were physically assaulted.
We kept at it. We wanted the ERA passed, celebrated after Roe v. Wade. We stood up for each other, regardless of race. We knew we didn't understand each other perfectly. But we kept at it.
There were some big disagreements. One time we were talking about revolution. I tried to tell a way left friend that a hungry child does not make the mother more political and want revolution. The mother's first and utmost priority is to feed the child.
Not only do we all approach politics from a personal perspective, we bring our personal experiences and listen to other people’s personal experiences and only then can we decide what to do. Who we are, what our personal needs are, what our personal values are, determine our political values.
We used to have 'criticism/ self-criticism' sessions. We agreed even if we desperately disagreed with one another, if we did not understand each other right away, we would continue to work at it, together.
I should explain what these sessions were like. If I thought someone was treating me simply as a member of a certain group, I said so in the criticism phase. Then I'd say my angry response was defensive and choked off what the other person was trying to say. Then I'd vow to listen better and not take things so personally, but to learn from what the other person was trying to tell me. Then the next person in the group did the same thing. We also discussed each issue raised.
And the white girls could not be in a Black woman's or Hispanic woman's shoes, then or now. There was no way to experience that. But we tried to understand. There were even ex-prostitutes in the group. If I couldn't walk in someone else’s shoes, the least I could do was to listen to their story and try to learn from it.
There was anger, there were tears, but we kept at it. The issues then were bigger than our individual anger.
One summer we went to a planning session for the next quarter at one of the professor’s summer houses. Those of us with children brought them. Some of us were discouraged at the slow or non-existent progress on things like equal pay for equal work, saying it would never be in time to apply to us.
An older woman agreed, saying "No it won't. But it will be for them," pointing to my 2 daughters and others playing in the back yard.
And a lot of it was.
I had to leave school due to a divorce - I had to raise my children and feed and clothe them. I had to put up with being paid a lot less, experiencing sexist behavior and harassment from male co-workers, bosses. Several years later I was up for a promotion - the male boss asked me what was more important, work or family. (Yes, it was actually part of the formal interview process then.) I told him that was an interesting question. What did he think was more important? Read very long pause with direct look puffing on pipe here. He said "I see what you mean, Sara." I knew he left early every Thursday to take his daughter to Indian Princesses. I got the promotion.
Come to think of it, another formal question when a woman applied for a job was to ask if the woman was on birth control pills - they didn't want to hire someone who "was going out to get pregnant." If some woman was getting married, they were supposed to ask us if we were going to keep working.
There was a lot to tackle. After school I talked feminism with other women in the workplace and confronted men with their behavior. Somehow I kept my job and thrived, as much as a woman could back then in the business world. Most of us who left school also worked in battered women's shelters after work, marched for civil rights and open housing, marched for peace, marched for gay rights, and worked at and gave to food banks.
We did this in heels, in flats, in tennis shoes, all while taking care of our families. We also taught our children, both girls and boys. That's probably why so many men today are not threatened by women who do the same work they do or by women wanting to control their own bodies. I even relented and got married again, but still had to work.
I have 2 daughters. Whenever there was a movie about women being equal in the workplace or anywhere else, I would watch it with them and talk about it with them. I did this about civil rights as well.
I stopped initiating conversations about the movies about women
working and having a family at the same time when my youngest looked at me and said "Yeah Mom, we already know that. That's what you do, duh, Mom." After that I just listened to my girls.
After my oldest daughter was in the workplace for a couple of years she told me "You always told us we could do anything we wanted to in life. You didn't tell us there would people who wanted to stop us."
Damn.
That's when I knew the fight would not be finished until women (all colors, of course), and in fact, all people, had equal rights, that we might have to wait for another generation where it would be taken for granted.
You see, that's what we wanted for our children, to have their equal rights be taken for granted.
We wanted to be history. We wanted all of you to never have to go through what we did – all of you, and that means everyone.
It is my sorrow that that didn't happen.
The fight is not over.
Women's rights must be fought for again.
It is at a different starting point, but the fight must be fought. This time, I hope that straight women and men and gay women and men and people of color will all fight together. IT IS THE SAME FIGHT!
Equal rights for everyone. Period. Nothing less.
One woman in a recent blog talked about maybe taking up the issue of battered women after the Stupak amendment is defeated. This old lady thinks that's great. Another spoke strongly about poor women and how we don't address how issues affect the poor. Often these two groups of women overlap because not only poor women get battered. We have to speak for everyone.
I cannot tell you all how to proceed. You would not want me to. But here are my thoughts:
While these and other issues that pertain to women and gays are universal in this country, they are also local. The internet is great for petitions and feedback. You cannot meet face to face. Battered women's shelters are local. Food banks are local. Equality in the workplace is local. All issues are local, too.
When a child is hungry, it is very personal and very local. When a poor woman needs an abortion, that is local as well, and very personal. How she will pay for an abortion when she can barely feed the children she already has becomes a burden too great to bear. When a middle-class woman, any woman, is treated like she is not capable of making her own decisions about her body, that issue is local as well.
All politics is local and all politics is personal.
Organizing is local as well as national.
Talk about your goals here, what you want to accomplish. Talk to each other here. Establish local groups to deal with issues locally, with national backup.
Remember you are on the same side. Try the 'criticism/self criticism' thing. If you get angry - OK. But talk about it. And keep talking about it until you have some mutual understanding. Do not give up on one another. Respect one another enough to keep trying.
Tension comes with the territory. Expect tension. Expect disagreement. But remember the issues are bigger and more important than tension and disagreement. The consequences of losing are too high. Be kind and tolerant of one another. And KEEP AT IT.
Forgive one another for not understanding your experiences. Keep on trying to understand one another. Remember that the issues are too big and the consequences too heavy on us all for you to give up.
Organize. Prioritize. Make goals. Work to achieve them. It's not easy. I know, I've been there with thousands of your mothers and grandmothers. Forgive each other and stay together, united.
I wish you all Godspeed.
SheKos is open to your submissions. If you have an idea, please run it by Angry Mouse, our fearless leader. Mail her at angrymouse.grrr@gmail.com