Feminism: A House Divided

...Early feminist activists and theorists proclaimed sex solidarity, carving up the social universe into two grand, global categories: women and, or versus, men...

...And it is on these issues that feminists have sided with academic radicals and Marxists, liberals, and the new intellectual elite against the open or tacit resistance of the working class, lower middle class, and ethnic, religious, and racial minorities...

...But to dream of unity at the moment is to conjure up an implicitly repressive vision: The matters that divide us are too important, and run too deep...

...Feminists view women on the one hand as a minority group, subordinated, even victimized, and on the other hand as a numerical majority, the latent dominant group that could coalesce to elect a President, to promote peace, or to champion social justice...

...Constitution that few could have anticipated the vigorous and ultimately successful effort to block its enactment...

...Indeed, the battle brought to the surface something that most Americans tend to forget or deny: the existence of profound class divisions in our society...

...But paradoxically, feminist practice tends to highlight class differences...

...ERA opponents, with women in the forefront, saw in feminist efforts a move to impose on them an alien vision of personhood and family life...

...High-quality day care is the preferred alternative...

...feeling threatened, they mounted an effective defensive strategy...

...The abortion issue, for example, is painted as only a question of women's reproductive freedom: individual choice versus forced reproduction...

...Feminism's foreseeable future is one of continuing tumult, pitting woman against woman and, at times, feminist against feminist...

...They invite reflections on who we are...

...The overwhelming majority of full-time feminist activists and theorists are well educated, upper middle-class, and relatively affluent...

...But resistance to the ideas of this new class has been keen and, at times, singularly unattractive: Witness the rise of militant evangelicalism, the clamoring for harsh discipline of the young, and the call for fierce punishment of all criminal offenders...

...who, after all, could openly oppose equal rights for any group in this day and age...

...Jean Bethke Elshtain, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, writes frequently on issues of social policy...

...Pro-ERA forces tended to view their opponents as right-wingers, religious fanatics, or simply unfortunate souls who did not understand what they were doing...

...The struggle over ERA was not a war between the sexes but a social battle that pitted two loosely defined groups or classes of women (and their male allies) against each other...

...The ERA was so consonant with the spirit of the U.S...

...But that constituency dissipates on cultural issues...

...As if having a son so delivered were somehow more tolerable...

...Feminist activists seemed genuinely befuddled—even embittered—by this anomaly...

...Not only were women divided along racial, ethnic, religious, class, regional, and political lines, but feminists, too, were fragmented into many parts...

...In addition, a universal condition of oppression was imputed to all women, with some women subject to double oppression if they were black or, sometimes, if they were from the working class...

...They speak to deep moral and political concerns...

...I can attest to the heat our cultural controversy generates among feminists, for I am frequently involved in it...

...In this view, traditional mothering breeds male dominance and must be weeded out...

...The class base and bias of feminism are central to any assessment of its analysis and program...

...Strident," "a great leap backwards," "political reactionary developments," "a reactionary political trail," "romantic antimodernism," "arrogant," "mean-spirited," "waffles on questions of abortion, co-parenting, and day care"— all these accolades were heaped upon me by one critic in a single essay...

...Both perspectives contain the same flaw: By proclaiming "woman" as the determinant category for social practice and theory, they paper over the stubborn realities of social class in American life...

...The debates over abortion, sexuality, and the family will not go away, and for good reason...

...Along with other cultural radicals, feminists increasingly have focused on questions of sexuality, morality, and the family, thereby highlighting in sometimes startling ways an American cultural war...

...On its face, the measure looked like a sure bet...

...This struggle of women against women would have been almost unimaginable ten or fifteen years ago...

...But who is this "enemy...

...And anyone who cavils at the rigidity of these alternatives is peremptorily consigned to the reactionary bin...

...Through such polemics, the burden for social ills—in this case, sexism and male dominance—is shifted onto working classes, ethnic groups, and minorities whose way of life falls short, and must fall short, of the standard celebrated by the more privileged who alone have the possibility of attaining it...

...Feminism: A House Divided Class differences pit women against women BY JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN The failure of the Equal Rights Amendment marked a watershed for American feminism...

...Most puzzling to ERA supporters was that many women opposed the amendment...

...The group most consistently in favor of abortion on demand is white, upper middle-class males...

...Sisterhood was evoked, historic hopes pronounced...

...Perhaps at some point, feminism's now uncertain trumpet will sound with a single, unmistakable note...

...It appears that the real worry is other women...

...At the moment, women are about evenly split on the ERA, while men favor it by a margin of three to four percentage points...

...Though lower middle-class and working-class Americans usually cannot set the terms of political debate, they do participate once the battle begins— at times, with surprising vigor...

...if, additionally, one insists that there is much that is humanly vital, morally significant, and politically important in inherited images of the family and that these images in themselves require neither male dominance nor patriarchal excess, then one must be prepared for an onslaught of criticism...

...They presumed that one's gender was primary and overriding—no matter who one was or what one identified with...

...Not men—certainly not all men, anyway—since many males share the same social goals and express the same political beliefs as the dominant feminists...

...Still, the issues that sparked this reaction—sexual identity, the moral development of children, the nature of communities—are all deeply important...

...They proclaimed the amendment to be a right, a necessity, a weapon for all women...

...Thus, one distressed mother proclaimed to a television reporter that she did not want to see her daughter "shipped home in a body bag...

...For their part, anti-ERA activists voiced fears of uniformity between the sexes, of women losing their traditional role and their ostensible privileges within marriage, of dangers to the family that threatened the foundation of American society, and of the possibility that women would be drafted into the military and called into combat...

...If one does not greet as good and progressive all the mixed fruits of sexual liberation and alternative intimate arrangements...

...Any idea or ideology that promises to unite us, to minimize our differences and to mute our divisions, taps genuine human longings for a universal identity, for a brotherhood and sisterhood that transcends special interests and parochial limitations...

...The implication was that I, as a woman, had more in common with all other women than I had, or could possibly have, with any other individual or group...

...The large and militant opposition to ERA dispelled hopes that all women could be united under the liberal feminist banner and their various interests uniformly served...

...I've drawn fire primarily because of my conviction that a substantive vision of family life is essential to our humanity and that feminists, thus far, haven't thought through their notions of socialized child care...

...Feminist politics referred as often to the strife inside the movement (over whose ideologies, organizational strategies, and rhetoric would hold sway) as it did to calls for a united front against male domination...

...On questions of the use of force in foreign relations, or the withdrawal of social entitlements, women tend to unite: This is a cross-class constituency...

...But not all or even a majority of women saw it that way, and during the ERA debate any semblance of sisterly solidarity broke down...

...If the issue is the family, men and women are enjoined to uproot male domination by establishing a symmetrical family in which mother and father interchangeably play nurturant and instrumental roles...

...Men will line up variously, depending upon the issue and what is at stake...

...Such diverse social commentators as Christopher Lasch and Peter Berger note that class conflict in contemporary society tends to be fought out in the cultural arena...

...Heady stuff, indeed...

...But the notion of an already extant "universal class"—women as such—collapsed quickly...

...If one is a member of the intellectual elite, as I am, and a feminist thinker to boot, one's criticism invites charges of bad faith and suggestions that one is giving aid and comfort to the enemy...

...if one insists that we do not know, really, whether the shared child-rearing of upper middle-class professionals is clearly better for children than traditional arrangements...

...If the issue is sexual liberation in its many forms, the same dynamic holds: All discussion devolves to rights versus domination, freedom versus constraint...

...In this way, abortion opponents are labeled sanctimonious, antifreedom, antiwomen, or just plain ignorant, and the class dimensions of the abortion issue are obscured...

...For such men, apparently, easy abortion promises fewer restrictions on sexuality and reduces the risks of financial and personal dependency...

...In the decades following World War II, innovations in technology and communications have helped establish a new intellectual class...