We are starting a group consciousness raising diary to deal with women’s similarities and difference on issues of race, class and gender. Each diary will run for one week, during which time you can participate. The next Saturday a new diary will start.
Everyday we encounter examples of how women and our history are manipulated, distorted, placated, etc. We note them, but never document them. Individually we brush them off – we are too busy or timid to stop and call the person or institution to account – besides it could make society uncomfortable if we do. Collectively, it is these small distortions that keep the stereotypes of women and sexism alive and well.
During the consciousness raising groups during the Second Wave of feminism, these moments were called “clicks.” When it clicks in our mind that we are actually being oppressed in subtle ways in in our day to day lives. Unfortunately, the Second Wave movement was dominated mainly by middle-class white American feminists. We hope to introduce a different kind of consciousness raising among women of different cultures and races, different class backgrounds and experiences. To this end, we have invited and involved a diverse group of progressive women.
We do not want you to back off because you see this as a “touchy feely” thing. We hope to look at our own personal experiences as a springboard to understanding the larger issues without getting into academic mind games or defensive discussions. If, through dialogue, we find ways to work together to move the lives of women forward, great. If not, we can at least learn to hear each others issues and be more sensitive to each others goals.
We want to make it clear that while we do recognise that there are feminist men that we know stand with us, that we think that women need to have a dialogue amongst themselves so that women will not feel inhibited, intimidated or threatened and can speak openly. We would like to ask men to respect this. Racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and class oppression will not be tolerated and called out.
In the case in which someone cannot see that their perspective is being conditioned by societal prejudice (rather than a situation where the person is using these to divide us), explaining and educating people will be a useful tool to build empathy and hopefully understanding. In the case of bona fide trolls, the chair and moderator will give one warning before asking them to leave; but we ask that people do not feed the troll, ignore it, do not respond and do not enable them to disrupt our discussion. If following the warning, the troll persists, we can deal with them using the tools available to us on the daily kos.
To give you an example of how this works, we are posting a couple of "clicks" that women experienced this week as the first entries in our ongoing diary. If you wish to post a comment or “click” just hit comment. When you’ve finished writing hit “Preview.” When you’ve finished editing, hit Post. If you have any problems, someone will be on the site from 4-7pm EST, to help you. Send a message to NY Brit Expat at the personal message center at DailyKos.
Diary Entry #1:
Every Wednesday I volunteer as an escort at Dr. Emily’s Women’s Health Clinic in the South Bronx, a primarily Latino neighborhood. The clinic is a full service women’s clinic, but has recently become a center for controversy because they perform abortions. Our job is to protect the women using their services from the antiabortion zealots who come to the clinic to harass the women as they enter or leave the clinic. I have become quite assertive in protecting the women after I saw them harass a woman until she burst into tears. Volunteering there has reminded me that this is not an ideological debate, but will have long term consequences and shape the future of the women seeking help.
Last week, I was standing out in the back parking lot where the women come out for smoke breaks and a young African American woman came up and asked me for a light. Her clothes were worn and she walked with a limp and her left arm hung loosely at her side. She told me she was 19. She told me she was waiting for her sister who was having an abortion so she could escort her home. She asked me where the subway was as she checked in her pocket to make sure she had enough money to get them home. We started to talk about how her sister got pregnant, boyfriends, the usual things that you get into when you’re at a women’s clinic. She told me her disability was from a brain bleed, and that she was lucky it hadn’t effect her mind. In the course of the conversation, she told me twice indirectly that “she shouldn’t have children.” I began to wonder who had programmed her to be this clear on this decision at such a young age and if there was a reason I didn’t know about.
I started to think about how, in the 1970s, while we were fighting to get the right to abortion, there was also a movement to stop the forced sterilization of poor women of color. I remembered researching a case in Oklahoma where all of the women of childbearing age on one Indian reservation had been sterilized and the famous case of the Puerto Rican government developing a program directed at sterilizing women in the working class. How women on welfare were pressured to get their tubes tied after one abortion. I attended a conference in the Southwest at one point where a white nurse practitioner was speaking to a roomful of Latina farm workers about how abortion gave them a choice, that they didn’t have to have a child if they couldn’t afford it. The room quickly became silent and quietly condemning.
Finally, there is the Hyde amendment which prevents poor women from using Federal Medicaid for abortions. Women frequently cannot find a consistent, effective or safe birth form of birth control (pills, IUDs and DeProvera all have substantial health risks and religious prohibitions or men often refuse at the last minute to wear condoms add to the problem). Women are then left, in most states, with little choice and often pressured to get sterilized if they don’t want more children.
Later that morning, I spoke with the clinic administrator and she told me that in New York and a couple of other states, the state Medicaid picks up the cost of abortion for up to 2 abortions in six months.(To be honest, the two in six months gave me pause for other reasons). Unlike most states, the New York law insisted on a one month waiting period before you could get your tubes tied. For women who couldn’t afford an abortion, the clinic generally uses funds from Abortion Access, a group set up to help women pay for the procedure. Although it sounded pretty good for women in New York, I couldn’t help wondering if pressure on women of color to be sterilized or the ability of poor women to pay for an abortion was still a problem and how come I hadn’t heard much about these issues in recent years? Had the problems been solved or, due to the extreme pressure to outlaw abortion altogether, had the movement just let these issues drop off the radar?
Dairy Entry #2:
I am certain that many women have heard of a new series of demonstrations organised by what is being hailed as the “new generation of feminists.” These demonstrations have begun in the US and having generated interests are now being organised internationally; the demonstrations are called “Slutwalks.” The idea behind them relates to the fact that women that are victims of rape and sexual assault are facing further victimisation at the hands of police, media and the courts and are forced to defend themselves from this in addition to the horror of the initial rape and sexual assault. Many of the accusations that victims are facing relate to the manner in which they dress or behave as though this is the reason for the rape and sexual assault. So, the organisers of these demonstrations (invariably white middle class women) have decided to conduct these demonstrations where women are dressed as “sluts” to express their anger at the situation.
While happy that there was an attempt to organise a response to the clear further victimisation of those that were raped and sexually assaulted, I was more than a bit wary of the organising principle that these women had chosen. This was compounded by an article in the Evening Standard in support of the demonstrations and the “new generation of feminists” which not only confirmed many of my initial questions but described precisely the attitudes that I found most disturbing in these series of demonstrations.
The first "CLICK"was in response to the first section where the writer’s mother described the struggle for women’s equality as irrelevant because it was a done deal. The women's movement did not collapse as its aims were successful; the limited successes covered the needs of white middle and upper class women and rarely addressed the needs of women of colour and working class women unless they were forced to do so. Moreover, the women's movement faced a bitter and vicious fight-back which is ongoing and trying to overturn even these limited gains.
My second click was that while this was an important issue, the manner in which they were trying to address the question disturbed me intensely. Turning the question around and raising the point that it is not a question of dress or how you look and stating that rape can happen to any women, irrespective of age, dress, or manner of behaviour. Rape is an act of aggression whose purpose is to demean and dominate its victims; it is not done due to how you look and the sexual component is part of the domination. Why accept the description of sexists that it is women that dress like sluts that are invariably raped? Why not address the use of rape as a weapon of war, a problem on the increase, which clearly demonstrates the true purpose of rape?
Children are raped, elderly women are raped, ugly and attractive women are raped, sex-trade workers are raped … rape has nothing to do with how you look or what you wear. Changing the nature of the way that rape is addressed is what is important, how does accepting the terms in which misogynists and sexists treat the victims help address the question?
Why accept the terms of sexists and misogynists and base your demonstration and organisation around this? The term "slut" has always been a pejorative, why march behind that term? How many women that have been raised in a socially conservative climate (e.g., South Asians and Muslim women in the UK) or women that do refuse to accept the perspectives of sexists would feel comfortable marching behind that term? By using that term you are excluding those that would support a more coherent discussion of rape, sexual abuse and domination.
We are in a period where women's rights are coming under aggressive attack on a world-wide level.The attacks on women’s healthcare, incomes and social services have been demonstrated to place far more hardship on poor and working class women, disproportionately women of colour. Why are the organisers of these demonstrations concentrating on their right to dress in a manner in which they please rather than raise the more substantive attacks on women as a whole?
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/...
(PLEASE GO TO THE COMMENTS SECTION TO ADD YOUR OWN "CLICK" OR COMMENTS)
IN ORDER TO PREVENT THE DOMINANCE OF ONE PERSPECTIVE, WE WANT TO HAVE A ROTATING CHAIR EACH WEEK. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO WRITE THE INITIATING DIARY ENTRY FOR NEXT WEEK AND MODERATE THE DISCUSSION, PLEASE SEND THE DIARY ENTRY AND THE BEST MEANS TO CONTACT YOU TO rap8643@aol.com.