History Through Female Eyes

...thanks to slick media tactics the women's movement established the fact of its existence Four years later however, the radical branch that was its original vanguard has fallen into a state of chaos, the result of incessant disagreement, leaderless-ness and unstructured organization The antibureaucratic ethic that contributed to the radical feminists' present disarray...

...Hole and Levme tell us, was deliberate policy Since abstract political theory was thought to evolve from the experiences of oppression common to all women, everyone's participation was of the utmost importance The only organizational unit that could be strictly egalitarian and still function was the very small ' rap" group But it seems now to have failed to foster sufficient class consciousness among its members Other radical groups, comprised ot women with like occupational interests, were also rendered immobile by battles over theory and strategy Today, organized feminism is dominated by highly structured reformist groups that, despite their accomplishments, appear unable to attract enough public interest to keep the movement alive The moral ot Rebirth of Feminism is that to succeed the contending factions must unite, thus combining the organizational efficiency of the reformists with the ideological courage and attention-gaining pizzazz of the radicals Perhaps the most forward-looking and cogent piece of feminist analysis yet to appear is Juliet Mitchell's Woman's Estate Unfortunately, its prose style is clumsy and often confusing, especially in the almost unreadable first chapter Part of the trouble is the author's affection for Marxian dialectics But her call for a Socialist revolution notwithstanding, most of what she has to say is remarkably original and astute The ideological and tactical battle dividing the women's liberationists is in Mitchell's judgment premature, because neither side has developed a structured theoretical and strategical position to fight over The "pol-lticos' have failed to elaborate an adequate Socialist analysis of women's oppression, the other radicals have raised to theory what is in reality merely their concrete ' experience of oppression, instead of explaining why it came about or how it operates In this vacuum, the ladi-cal feminists tend to devalue and disassociate themselves from reformist efforts without being able to judge whether or not they have any revolutionary potential Mitchell attributes the radicals' problem to traditional Socialism's refusal to recognize the complex nature of women's oppression or treat it in any way other than as an economic issue or "symbolic manifestation of the humane development of mankind The condition of women, she insists, must be seen as 'a unity ot different elements"—production, reproduction, sexuality, and socialization—interrelated in different ways at different times Hence, "the liberation of women can only be achieved it all four structures m which they are integrated are transformed,' for a modification of only one or two at a given moment "can be offset by [the] reinforcement ot another," thereby preserving the status quo Under both capitalism and Socialism, Mitchell asserts, society's preconception of the woman's role ties her to her husband and to the isolating family unit, preventing her from taking herself seriously as a producer and from forming political bonds with other women, whether she works outside of the home or not The family itself has become an institution of untenable contradictions Love is regarded as "spontaneous and uncontrollable," yet forms the basis of the monogamous marriage, the stability of which is essential to the nuclear family, liberalization of sexual mores tends to free the woman from former strictures and to increase the possibilities of "love," yet it simultaneously oppresses her as a sexual commodity This situation threatens marital stability on the one hand and reinforces woman's exclusively sex-based self-image on the other, encouraging her dependency upon man Moreover Mitchell points out that the woman bears the brunt of the pressures now pulling at the nuclear family "Each [member] is supposed to be for the other, but every encounter-school, college, work?makes him for himself alone The woman's task is to hold on to the unity of the family while its separate atoms explode m different directions " The course Mitchell recommends for feminists is to concentrate on changing woman's role within the family rather than attempt to preserve or abohsh it as an institution To this end, she stresses the importance of "the right to earn a living wage," an "equal educational system," and the "free state provision of oral contraceptives " What kind of organization and strategy would be most appropriate to insure this she does not say It is noteworthy, however, that so far the liberal groups have been the most successful in demanding and to some degree attaining such reforms...

...History Through Female Eyes Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings Edited by Miriam Schneir Random House 360 pp $7 95 Rebirth of Feminism By Judith Hole and Ellen Levine Quadrangle 488 pp $10 00 Woman's Estate By Juliet Mitchell Pantheon 182 pp $5 95 Reviewed by Katherine Olstein Women's Liberation has sought, among other things, to break the stranglehold men have traditionally had on the writing of women's history Beyond sharing that common purpose, however, these three feminist books-one a collection of readings, the second a contemporary historical survey, the third a theo retical treatise—are as diverse as the fragmented movement they chronicle In her introduction to Feminism The Essential Historical Writings, Miriam Schneir notes that she compiled the anthology to counteract the popular notion, propagated by men, that suffrage was the "sole concern" of the early American feminists Her selections reveal that the old feminist critique, like the modern one, was not a coherent, widely acceptable theory, but rather a conglomeration of disparate ideas articulated by individuals who were considered the most radical and unorthodox of their time Underscoring how little the condition of women has improved over the years, Schneir shows the gieat similarity between old and new feminist themes Recently, for example, it has been argued that scientific "proofs" of woman's biological and psychological inferiority have no more verity than the theological claims of centuries past, since both are founded on male-biased assumptions-said to have their origin in man's desire tor domination-that are used to keep women in their place The terminology may be mod ern, yet the substance ot the complaint is the same as it was in 1792, when Mary Wollstonecraft wrote that "man, from the remotest antiquity, found it convenient to exert his strength to subjugate his companion," or in 1838, when Sarah M Gnmke accused man of doing "all he could to debase and enslave [woman's] mind now he looks triumphantly upon the rum he has wrought, and says, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior " Gnmke also anticipated the view, currently in vogue, that marriage is the prune cause of women's oppression Though matrimony is presented to young girls "as the sine qua non of human happiness and human existence," she observed, the psychologically dependent wife "is looked at and acts through the medium of her husband and generally loses her individuality [and] her independent character " Furthermore, the process whereby woman's biological capacity as child-bearer determines her economically dependent role as Hausfrau, which modern feminists have called "the politics of housework," was recognized by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 189S "The labor which the wife performs in the household is given as part of her functional duty, not as employment As a natural consequence of [this] division of labor on sex-lines, giving to woman the home and to man the world in which to work, we have come to have a dense prejudice in favor of the essential womanliness of the home duties as opposed to the essential manliness ot every other kind of work " For one unacquainted with the history of feminism, reading Schneir's book can arouse a feeling of indignation not unlike that experienced by participating in a woman's consciousness-raising group Indeed, each selection is preceded by a short passage describing the life of its author or the immediate circumstances ot its writing, lending the same effect as the introduction of speakers at a woman's "rap session ' Nonetheless, there remains a certain discontinuity between sections that could perhaps have been overcome by departing from the strictly chronological organization and synthesizing the main ideological themes (as Aileen Kraditor did in Up fiom the Pedestal) Picking up where Schneir leaves off, Judith Hole and Ellen Levme's Rebirth of Feminism provides a comprehensive survey ot the modern women's movement based on extensive interviews and painstaking research into the mound of recent feminist literature This fact-crammed reference book includes summaries of pertinent governmental commissions, reports and proposals, descriptions of the various groups and issues that have become prominent, a 21-page "Selected Bibliography on Women", statistical tables, and a chronological listing of representative activities from 1961-1971 Of greatest interest to the casual reader are the chapters tracing the turbulent course of Women's Liberation since 1968, when radical feminists astonished the public with their protest against the Miss America pageant at Atlantic City Shortly thereafter, the phrase ' male chauvinist pig" invaded the language and...