1968: Lessons Learned Did the left learn from 1968? Dissent asked veterans of a turbulent year
Rubin, Lillian B.
IT'S IMPOSSIBLE to look back on the sixties without thinking, What a time that was! Politics and culture intermingled in a heady mix, the personal was political and the political personal; every...
...In one of the most shameful incidents of the time, men at the national convention of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) jeered women who sought a voice in organizational policy off the stage with catcalls, suggesting that their place was either on their backs or at the coffee machines...
...It does get the girls invited to the next party, though, where they get to do more of the same...
...She is a sociologist, psychologist, and author of numerous books, including, most recently, 60 on Up: The Truth about Aging in America (Beacon Press, 2007...
...22 n DISSENT / Spring 2008 When former Republican candidate Fred Thompson seemed too laid back, the pundits explained that he didn't have the fire in the belly to go the distance...
...A joke, he explained later...
...And we enforced a kind of political correctness on ourselves that blinded us to ways of building a broader, more universal coalition...
...True, there was the exhilaration of rebellion, of breaking the sexual rules that had bound earlier generations so tightly...
...And as in the past, it's unlikely that there's much sexual pleasure for girls in the hasty couplings or the blow jobs the boys so eagerly seek...
...STILL, WHATEVER issues remain in private and domestic life—and there are many— feminism's successes are visible in every corner of public life, from bus drivers to CEOs to television anchors to doctors, lawyers, and college professors...
...Stokely Carmichael, a leader in the civil rights struggle replied to a question about the position of women in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) with the single word "prone...
...Yeah, right...
...Yet, even among the young male revolutionaries of the New Left, equality didn't mean the women with whom they worked, studied, and slept...
...Why is Clinton's "likability" factor so important...
...IT'S NOT ONLY in passive listening that we see the tension between stated belief and public behavior...
...Maybe...
...Perhaps older women do...
...Forty years later the parallels between then and now in sexual relations among the young are striking...
...White men were no better...
...Nor, when he was still in the race, did he feel impelled to defend himself on that score...
...Nevertheless, the legacy we have left to our children and grandchildren has been visible in our newspapers and television screens every day for the past year: A woman is a leading contender for the Democratic nomination to be president of the United States...
...His description of their predatory sexual behavior, their sense of sexual entitlement, the rapes, the contempt for women is chilling...
...If she doesn't smile, she's too serious, has no sense of humor...
...I'm no fan of Hillary Clinton, not because of her dress or demeanor but because I prefer a more progressive politics...
...Surely women now make more autonomous decisions about when, whether, and with whom to have sex...
...The civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, the women's liberation movement, and the counterculture were all demanding changes that would alter the social landscape forever...
...If she looks cool and tough, she's not "womanly" enough...
...Certainly, it's novel...
...We SYMPOSIUM were blind to class-cultural differences at the outset and were quickly labeled as irrelevant to working-class women and women of color...
...Or is it just stuffed in a closet where all the other politically correct DISSENT / Spring 2008 • 2 1 SYMPOSIUM mandates live...
...Witness the fifteen million Americans who listen to Rush Limbaugh every day and chortle happily at every sexist thrust, as he dares to say what they can only think...
...if she lightens up and laughs a bit, the airwaves are inundated with analysis of what it means and how she "cackles...
...It was an event that gave impetus to what was then the infant Women's Liberation Movement, tagged derisively and dismissively by male commentators as "Women's Lib...
...Has sexism in the public arena gone to its final resting place then...
...Is it sexism when we watch Senator Hillary Clinton held to a different standard at the same time that she's scrutinized far more relentlessly than her male rival...
...It's evident in the electoral process as well, where we have seen what we've come to label "The Bradley Effect," named for the first black mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, who later ran unsuccessfully for governor of California...
...But when the votes were counted, Bradley went down to defeat because many white voters couldn't make themselves pull the lever for a black man when they were safely behind the curtain...
...But when push comes to shove, the inner voice too often rules the public silence...
...Like all revolutionary political movements, feminism had its successes and failures, its excesses and mistakes...
...Sexual freedom for women, however, was defined by the male model, and young women were caught between participating in men's vision of female sexual liberation or risk being seen as retrograde prudes...
...Or is it just the novelty of her candidacy...
...But Michael Kimmel's forthcoming Guyland, a groundbreaking account of the culture of young men in America today tells a different story...
...Think there's more to it than that...
...And if nominated, she could win...
...As one woman who lived through those years said to me recently, "The whole ethos was 'If you're sexually free, you'll sleep with me,' and women bought it...
...Would he have dared," Morgan asks, "reply similarly to `How do we beat the black bastard?'" Now that is an excellent question...
...We were so concerned with our own cause that we didn't fully grasp the pitfalls of the movement toward cultural relativism, multiculturalism, and the identity politics that flowed from that...
...Whether in the private arena or the public one, then, sexism lives, although it shows itself differently today than it did yesterday...
...In our anger at the hierarchical nature of the family, we failed to grasp sufficiently the hunger for family and connection that animates most people, and in doing so, gave over the "family values" issues to the radical right...
...Every poll reported that people said they had no problem in voting for an African American...
...and he answered, "Excellent question...
...No one thinks Rudy Giuliani is a particularly likable or nice guy, yet no moderator of a nationally televised debate ever asked him to comment on why people don't find him likable...
...if she presents a softer side, she's not ready to be commander in chief...
...Why does Carl Bernstein think it's relevant to remark on her "thick ankles...
...Yes, but this is 2008...
...But when I hear the tales about hooking up, the dominant form of socializing in the culture of so many young people now, it seems to me that the pressure to sexual conformity is no less today than it was yesterday...
...every act—whether demonstrating against the Vietnam War, smoking dope, having sex, or listening to rock and roll—had meaning beyond itself...
...Why does the New York Times feature a halfpage, over-the-fold article by Patrick Healy devoted entirely to a derisive accounting of what he calls Hillary Clinton's various personas, without once mentioning her intelligence, her position on the issues, or her qualifications for the presidency...
...True, they became the beneficiary of our struggle, but to this day they still abjure the feminist label, even while living its gains...
...Like so many questions about modern social life, there is no easy yes or no answer...
...True, women haven't reached parity, but young girls today take for granted what earlier generations only dared dream about...
...On your knees or on your back...
...Yet he hasn't come under the same unremitting gaze—at least not for his personal characteristics or his dress...
...By 1968, the sexual revolution was in full flower, and sex was everywhere, especially on college campuses...
...When Hillary Clinton displays that fire, they complain that she's too fueled by raw ambition...
...But unlike forty years ago, that's only one part of the story...
...Still, I suspect it's impossible for many women, as it is for me, to watch the campaign coverage without some empathy for the classic double bind she faces...
...That's the slogan these "guys" live by, while even those who aren't active participants stand by and watch without a murmur...
...Peace, freedom, equality, justice were the watchwords of the time...
...The 2008 primaries have already brought tantalizing suggestions of what could be a "Hillary effect," where many men who say, and undoubtedly believe, they have no sexist prejudice, have similar qualms when asked to vote for a woman for the highest office in the land...
...every poll showed him winning by substantial margins...
...But there were also enormous social pressures to "go along to get along," to comply or be left out...
...True, also, there's still often a glass ceiling, but now, not only is a woman one of two leading contenders for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, I, along with other women, was asked to join with the men in this symposium about politics...
...Why is the silence deafening when, as Robin Morgan wrote in a recent post, the Clinton-hating Citizens United Not Timid (note the acronym) asked John McCain, "How do we beat the bitch...
...The blatant expression of the kind of sexism we knew in 1968 is now frowned upon in many, if not most, quarters of the land...
...That is, until the same commentators turned to wondering whether the mist was just another manipulation by a calculatingly cold candidate...
...Indeed, men's contempt for women, their refusal to take their female comrades-in-arms seriously, was legendary...
...LILLIAN B. RUBIN is with the Institute for the Study of Social Change, University of California, Berkeley...
...Instead, he staked his candidacy on playing the hardball street fighter, the guy who's tough enough to protect us from any threat, while Clinton was applauded for getting "misty" and showing her softer side...
...But then so is the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama, the first African American ever to be seen as a serious contender for the presidency...
...Cackles: the sound a hen makes after laying an egg...
Vol. 55 • April 2008 • No. 2
