💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › bell-hooks-feminist-class-struggle.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 07:59:39. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Feminist Class Struggle Author: bell hooks Date: 2002 Language: en Topics: class struggle, feminist, Northeastern Anarchist Source: Retrieved on April 29th, 2009 from http://www.nefac.net/node/164 Notes: Published in The Northeastern Anarchist Issue #4, Spring/Summer 2002. This article has been edited for space. To read full text, see “Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics” by bell hooks; published by http://www.southendpress.org.
Class difference and the way in which it divides women was an issue
women in the feminist movement talked about long before race. In the
mostly white circles of a newly formed women’s liberation movement the
most glaring separation between women was that of class. White
working-class women recognized that class hierarchies were present in
the movement. Conflict arose between the reformist vision of women’s
liberation which basically demanded equal rights for women within the
existing class structure, and more radical and/or revolutionary models,
which called for a fundamental change in the existing structure so that
models of mutuality and equality could replace the old paradigms.
However, as the feminist movement progressed and privileged groups of
well-educated white women began to achieve equal access to class power
with their male counterparts, feminist class struggle was born.
From the onset of the movement women from privileged classes were able
to make their concerns “the” issue that should be focused on in part
because they were the group of women who received public attention. They
attracted mass media. The issues that were most relevant to working
women were never highlighted by mainstream mass media. Betty Friedan’s
The Feminist Mystique identified “the problem that has no name” as the
dissatisfaction females felt about being confined and subordinated in
the home as housewives. While this issue was presented as a crisis for
women, it really was only a crisis for a small group of well-educated
white women. While they were complaining about the dangers of
confinement in the home a huge majority of women in the nation were in
the workforce. And many of these working women, who put in long hours
for low wages while still doing all the work in the domestic household
would have seen the right to stay home as “freedom”.
It was not gender discrimination or sexist oppression that kept
privileged women of all races from working outside the home, it was the
fact that the jobs that would have been available to them would have
been the same low-paying unskilled labor open to all working women.
Elite groups of highly educated females stayed at home rather than do
the type of work large numbers of lower-middle class and working class
women were doing. Occasionally, a few of these women defied convention
and worked outside the home performing tasks way below their educational
skills and facing resistance from husbands and family. It was this
resistance that turned the issue of their working outside the home into
an issue of gender discrimination and made opposing patriarchy and
seeking equal rights with men of their class the political platform that
chose feminism rather than class struggle.
From the onset, reformist white women with class priviledge were well
aware that the power and freedom they wanted was the freedom they
perceived men of their class enjoying. Their resistance to patriarchal
male domination in the domestic household provided them with a
connection they could use to unite across class with other women who
were weary of male domination. But only privileged women had the luxury
to imagine working outside the home would actually provide them with an
income which would enable them to be economically self-sufficient.
Working class women already knew that the wages they received would not
liberate them.
Reformist efforts on the part of privileged groups of women to change
the workforce so that women workers would be paid more and face less
gender-based discrimination and harrassment on the job had positive
impact on the lives of all women. And these gains are important. Yet the
fact that privileged women gained in class power while masses of women
still do not receive wage equity with men is an indication of the way in
which class interests superceded feminist efforts to change the
workforce so that women would receive equal pay for equal work.
Lesbian feminist thinkers were among the first activists to raise the
issue of class in the feminst movement, expressing their viewpoints in
an accessible language. They were a group of women who had not imagined
they could depend on husbands to support them. And they were often much
more aware than their straight counterparts of the difficulties all
women would face in the workforce. In the early 1970s, anthologies like
Class and Feminism, edited by Charlotte Bunch and Nancy Myron, published
work written by women from diverse backgrounds who were confronting the
issue in feminist circles. Each essay emphasized the fact that class was
not simply a question of money. In The Last Straw, Rita Mae Brown (who
was not a famous writer at the time) clearly stated:
“Class is much more than Marx’s definition of relationship to the means
of production. Class involves your behavior, your basic assumptions, how
you are taught to behave, what you expect from yourself and from others,
your concept of a future, how you understand problems and solve them,
how you think, feel, act.”
These women who entered feminist groups, made up of diverse classes,
were among the first to see that the vision of a politically based
sisterhood where all females would unite together to fight patriarchy
could not emerge until the issue of class was confronted.
Placing class on feminist agendas opened up the space where the
intersections of class and race were made apparent. Within the
institutionalized race, sex, class social system in our society black
females were clearly at the bottom of the economic totem pole. Initially
well-educated white women from working class backgrounds were more
visible than black females of all classes in the feminist movement. They
were a minority within the movement, but theirs was the voice of
experience. They knew better than their priviledged class comrades of
any race the costs of resisting race, class and gender domination. They
knew what it was like to struggle to change one’s economic situation.
Between them and their privileged-class comrades there were ongoing
conflicts over appropriate behavior, over the issues that would be
presented as fundamental feminist concerns. Within the feminst movement
women from privileged class backgrounds who had never before been
involved in leftist freedom fighting learned the concrete politics of
class struggle, confronting challenges made by less privileged women,
and also learning in the process assertiveness skills and constructive
ways to cope with conflict. Despite constructive intervention, many
privileged white women continued to act as though feminism belonged to
them, as though they were in charge.
Mainstream patriarchy reinforced the idea that the concerns of women
from privileged class groups were the only ones worthy of receiving
attention. Feminist reform aimed to gain social equality for women
within the existing structure. Privileged women wanted equality with men
of their class. Despite sexism among their class they would not have
wanted to have the lot of working class men. Feminist efforts to grant
women social equality with men of their class neatly coincided with
white supremacist-capitalist-patriarchal fears that white power would
diminish if non-white people gained equal access to economic power and
priviledge. Supporting what in effect became white
power-reformist-feminism enabled the mainstream white supremacist
patriarchy to bolster its power while simultaneously undermining the
radical politics of feminism.
Only revolutionary feminist thinkers expressed outrage at this
co-optation of the feminist movement. Our critique and outrage gained a
hearing in the alternative press. In her collection of essays, The
Coming of Black Genocide, radical white activist Mary Barfoot boldly
stated:
“There are white women, hurt and angry, who believed that the ’70s
women’s movement meant sisterhood, and who feel betrayed by escalator
women. By women who went back home to patriarchy. But the women’s
movement never left the father Dick’s side. There was no war. And there
was no liberation. We got a share of the genocide profits and we love
it. We are Sisters of Patriarchy, and true supporters of national and
class oppression, Patriarchy in its highest form is Euro-imperialism on
a worldscale. If we’re Dick’s sister and want what he has gotten, then
in the end we support that system that he got it all from.”
Indeed, many more feminist women found and find it easier to consider
divesting of white supremacist thinking than of their class elitism.
As privileged women gained greater access to economic power with men of
their class, feminist discussions of class were no longer commonplace.
Instead, all women were encouraged to see the economic gains of affluent
females as a positive sign for all women. In actuality, these gains
rarely changed the lot of poor and working class women. And since
privileged men did not become equal caretakers in the domestic
household, the freedom of privileged-class women of all races has
required the sustained subordination of working class and poor women. In
the 1990s, collusion with the existing social structure was the price of
“women’s liberation.” At the end of the day class power proved to be
more important than feminism. And this collusion helped de-stablize the
feminist movement.
When women acquired greater class status and power without conducting
themselves differently from males feminist politics were undermined.
Lots of women felt betrayed. Middle- and lower-middle class women who
were suddenly compelled by the ethos of feminism to enter the workforce
did not feel liberated once they faced the hard truth that working
outside the home did not mean work in the home would be equally shared
with male partners. No-fault divorce proved to be more economically
beneficial to men than women. As many black women/women of color saw
white women from privileged classes benefiting economically more than
other groups from reformist feminist gains, from gender being tacked on
to racial affirmative action, it simply reaffirmed their fear that
feminism was really about increasing white power. The most profound
betrayal of feminist issues has been the lack of mass-based feminist
protest challenging the government’s assault on single mothers and the
dismantling of the welfare system. Privileged women, many of whom call
themselves feminists, have simply turned away from the “feminization of
poverty”.
The only genuine hope of feminist liberation lies with a vision of
social change which challenges class elitism. Western women have gained
class power and greater gender inequality because a global white
supremacist patriarchy enslaves and/or subordinates masses of third
world women. In this country, the combined forces of a booming prison
industry and workfare-oriented welfare in conjuction with conservative
immigration policy create and condone the conditions for indentured
slavery. Ending welfare will create a new underclass of women and
children to be abused and exploited by the existing structures of
domination.
Given the changing realities of class in our nation, widening gaps
between the rich and poor, and the continued feminization of poverty, we
desperately need a mass-based radical feminist movement that can build
on the strength of the past, including the positive gains generated by
reforms, while offering meaningful interrogation of existing feminist
theory that was simply wrongminded while offering us new strategies.
Significantly, a visionary movement would ground its work in the
concrete conditions of the working class and poor women.