R o u tle d g e 2 0 0 0 - collective liberation

1 Routledge 2000! Feminism andClass PowerRevolutionary feminist thinking has always raised theissue of classism among women. From the onset, there hasbeen a struggle within feminist movement between thereformist model of liberation , which basically demands equalrights for women within the existing class struggle, and moreradical and/or revolutionary models, which call for fundamentalchange in the existing structure so that models of mutualityand equality can replace old paradigms. Just as militant blackliberation struggle calling for an end to classism was made toappear unnecessary, once black folks gained greater access tojobs, revolutionary feminism was dismissed by mainstreamreformist feminism when women, primarily well-educatedwhite women with class privilege, began to achieve equal accessto class power with their male contemporary feminist movement first began, itreceived mass media attention solely because of the presence ofprivileged class women rebelling against their class and patriarchalhierarchy within that class .

2 As a consequence, the issues thatreceived public attention were not those most relevant to workingwomen or masses of women. A small group of elite privilegedwhere we stand102class white women were the group Betty Friedan wrote aboutwhen she identified the problem that has no name, a phraseused to euphemistically describe the dis-satisfaction individualsfelt about being confined and subordinated in the home ashousewives. Their issue was informed by both the politics ofgender and class because while they were complaining aboutthe dangers of confinement in the home, a huge majority ofwomen in the nation were in the workforce. And many of theseworking women, who put in long hours for low wages whilestill doing all the work in the domestic household, would haveseen the right to stay home as freedom.

3 It was not gender discrimination or sexist oppression thathad kept privileged women from working outside the home; itwas the fact that the work open to them would have been thesame low-paid unskilled labor open to all working women. Thiselite group of highly educated females stayed at home ratherthan do the type of work large numbers of middle-income andworking- class women were doing. Occasionally, a few of thesewomen wanted to work outside the home and did so, performingtasks way below their educational skills, oftentimes facingresistance from their husbands. It was this resistance that turnedthe issue of their working outside the home into an issue ofgender discrimination and made opposing patriarchy the politicalplatform for change rather than class the onset, reformist white women with class privilegewere well aware that the power and freedom they wanted wasthe freedom they perceived men of their class enjoying.

4 Theirresistance to patriarchal male domination in the domestichousehold provided them with a connection they could useto unite across class with other women who were weary ofmale domination. Women who were lesbians, of all races andclasses, were at the forefront of the radicalization ofcontemporary female resistance to patriarchy in part becausethis group had by their sexual preference already placedthemselves outside the domain of heterosexist privilege andFeminism and class Power103protection, both in the home and in the workplace. No mattertheir class , they were social outcasts, the objects of patriarchalabuse and scorn. Concurrently, unlike their heterosexualcounterparts, they were not relying on men to support themeconomically. They needed and wanted equal pay for equalwork.

5 Much revolutionary and/or radical feminist thought wasproduced by lesbians who had a longer personal history ofchallenging patriarchal conceptions of women s feminist theorists were among the first to raise theissue of class in collective and consciousness-raising groupsexpressing their viewpoints in an accessible language. Well-educated leftist straight women writing about class oftenremained trapped in academic jargon that kept them fromsharing their message with the female masses. In the earlyseventies, anthologies like class and Feminism, edited byCharlotte Bunch and Nancy Myron, published essays writtenby women from diverse class backg rounds who wereconfronting the issue of classism in their feminist essay emphasized the fact that class was not simply aquestion of money.

6 In The Last Straw, Rita Mae Brown(who was not a famous writer at the time) clearly stated: Classis much more than Marx s definition of relationship to themeans of production. class involves your behavior, your basicassumptions, how you are taught to behave, what you expectfrom yourself and from others, your concept of a future, howyou understand problems and solve them, how you think, feel,act. Those women who entered feminist groups made up ofdiverse classes were the first to see that the vision of a unitedsisterhood where all females joined to fight patriarchy couldnot emerge until the issue of class was course once class was placed on the agenda, women hadto face the intersections of class and race. And when they did,it was evident that black women were clearly at the bottom ofthis society s economic totem pole.

7 Initially, well-educatedwhite women from working- class backgrounds were morewhere we stand104visible than black females of all classes in feminist were a minority within the movement but they werethe voice of experience. They knew better than their privileged- class white sisters the costs of resisting race, class , and genderdomination. They knew what it was like to move from thebottom up. Between them and their privileged- class comradesthere was a conflict over appropriate behavior. Describing howthese different class experiences were expressed in their essay Revolution Begins at Home, Coletta Reid and CharlotteBunch stated: Often, middle and especially upper middle classwomen for whom things have come easily develop a privilegedpassivity. Someone with privilege can conveniently think thatit s not necessary to fight or discipline herself to get will work out.

8 Because she has made it by followingnice middle class rules of life, she doesn t like for people to bepushy, dogmatic, hostile or intolerant. Within radical feministmovement, women from privileged- class backgrounds learnedthe concrete politics of class struggle confronting challengesmade by less-privileged women but also learning from themassertiveness skills and constructive ways to cope with reformist circles, however, privileged white women oftenmade it clear to the women who did not share their class statusand/or color that this was their movement, that they were incharge, and their needs would determine the agenda. Reformistfeminist issues centered on gaining social equality with privilegedmen within the existing social structure. These concerns neatlycoincided with white supremacist capitalist patriarchal fears thatwhite power would diminish if nonwhite people gained equalaccess to economic power and privilege.

9 Supporting what ineffect became white power reformist feminism enabled themainstream white male patriarchy to bolster its power whilesimultaneously undermining the radical politics of white feminist thinkers expressed outrage at co-optation in the alternative press. In her collection of essays TheComing of Black Genocide, Mary Barfoot boldy states: There areFeminism and class Power105white women, hurt and angry, who believed that the seventieswomen s movement meant sisterhood, and who feel betrayedby escalator women. By women who went back home to thepatriarchy. But the women s movement never left the fatherDick s There was no war. And there was no got a share of genocide profits and we love it. We are Sistersof Patriarchy, and true supporters of national and Patriarchy in its highest form is Euro-imperialismon a world scale.

10 If we re Dick s sister and want what he hasgotten, then in the end we support that system that he got it allfrom. Reformist white women were not alone in their betrayalof more radical feminist upwardly mobile women of color who had ambivalentattitudes toward feminism jumped on the bandwagon to reapbenefits (job promotion, status as leaders, etc.) garnered by strugglesfor gender justice. Like their white peers they used feminism toenhance their class status and power. The class -based academizationof American feminism created the context for its deradicalizationand for the takeover of gender studies by opportunistic womenand men who were simply not interested in radically changingsociety. Ironically, focus on race and racism was one of the newdirections in feminist thought that deflected attention away fromissues of class .