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TOWARDS A REVOLUTIONARY WOMEN'S UNION:A
Strategic Perspective by Terry R. and
Lucy G. (undated but probably 1969-1970)
(Editors Note: This essay was written as the Chicago Women's Liberation
Union was being organized.)
As the
growth of the Women's Liberation movement has so far produced very little
in the way of coherence strategy or organization, many radical women
have come to feel a need for a way to have contact with others interested
in doing similar kinds of organizing, in the context of a women's organization.
Experience has shown that the pattern too often is that Women's Liberation
groups become either vehicles for personal grievances or, if they are
activists are dominated exclusively by the needs of middle-class women
and without a political perspective. Thus many radical women (the "politicos")
turn back towards male-dominated political groups, and in doing so submerge
their skills and their potential to organize other women, and neglect
the struggle against male supremacy.
We now
have the opportunity to break this pattern. To do so we must develop
a theoretical-strategic perspective that will give our organization
focus, in helping us to decide who and how we want to organize, and
around what issues. What we present here are neither programmatic suggestions
nor a substitute for more thorough analysis, but a way of beginning
to build that analysis.
The oppression
of women is fundamentally tied to the same economic and social system
that oppresses blacks, launches imperialist wars, and values private
property above human life. -vie must deal with it not in isolation
but rather as it interacts with both race and class oppression. Women
are oppressed both culturally and economically and while it is false
to separate the two, it is crucial to understand the ways in which
each operates in different class and race groups. Women as sex objects,
women as consumers, women as a cheap and exploitable and reserve labor
force. Women as unpaid laborers in the home, women as transmitters,of
bourgeois ideology, women as social mediators between their families
and the system: the result is not a simple scaling of differences but
a complex interaction between sex, race and class oppression that we
are only just beginning to understand. Such an understanding would
be a step towards eliminating the barriers which militate against collective
action and class consciousness as well as against the liberation of
women.
In this
light we can begin to examine some of the dangers and pitfalls of an
organization for women's liberation whose constituency and membership
is based overwhelmingly in the middle class. The first problem is one
many of us are already familiar with. Middle class women who become
aware of their own oppression as women, still realize that they are
not, in fact, the most oppressed people around, and lacking a sense
of legitimacy in organizing, turn inward to focus on personal experiences.
Failing to make the connections between the heavier oppression of working-class
women and their own oppression with a political analysis, women sometimes
simply define "women's liberation" in terms of their own needs.
Their demands and the ways in which they raise issues will often not
appeal to working-class women, particularly black women, who have a
very different perspective.
Also, when
middle-class women get turned on to women's liberation from a subjective
focus, they may exaggerate the relative importance of oppression by
sex. They are "revolutionary," though not necessarily socialist
(since after all, they say, socialism has not yet fully liberated women).
But sometimes they believe the revolution they are working towards is
a female revolution and completely divorce themselves from any struggles
other than women's struggles. This is really a silly idea; but the fact
that anyone takes it seriously indicates the lack of hard thinking in
our movement.
These pitfalls
are made more serious by the existence of a huge constituency of women
that is now just waiting to be organized: the professional women who
are increasingly enraged at being fucked over in their jobs, and the
increasing number of college-trained young women who are finding they
were educated in high style to be full-time wives and mothers. In professional
organizations and universities, women's caucuses are being formed.
Groups like NOW that include quite militant women are growing and will
continue to grow. To many (not all) of these people, "women's Lib"
means little more than tenure for women professors, more women in certain
high-level positions, etc. (Female capitalism?) These groups are not
to be condemned, but we must see their shortcomings and construct radical
alternatives.
A movement
that does not have a broad base among working-class women, both black
and white, must constantly beware becoming a special-interest group
for relatively privileged women.
Okay. Okay,
one might respond, but we are really a bunch of serious radical women
who want to organize broad constituencies and who relate to anti-imperialist
struggles# anti-racism struggles, etc. Shouldn't we go ahead and get
ourselves together? The obvious answer is yes we should. And in light
of the above-mentioned problems, the following solutions are offered:
- Where possible we should work extra hard to broaden the base of
over movement by talking to working-class black and white women; in
addition, we must 'find a all -possible ways of trying to understand
the oppression of black and brown-women, and show in practice that
"women's liberation" is not a white thing, but a revolutionary
thing.
- When organizing in a student or middle-class constituency, to concentrate
on demands that both speak to those women and to their sisters in
the working-class (free day-care, free abortions, equal wage scales)
rather than those that,will simply sharpen the class differences between
women (tenure for female faculty, groovy day-care centers for affluent
communities).
- Our attitude about what liberation means, and what women need,
should be put forth tentatively, with the understanding that these
ideas will change as our movement grows and learns.
- We must constantly struggle against the artificial separation of
"women's issues" from the entire struggle for a new society.
This does not mean subordinating women's liberation to a bunch of
other issues. It does mean understanding the ways oppression of women
and other forms of oppression are mutually reinforcing, building a
clear and political analysis, and forming demands that bring these
connections home to people. Women are people;we deserve better than
to have to choose between women's liberation and ending the Vietnam
war; between women's liberation and socialist revolution.
Our growing
understanding of women's oppression can help us in raising all the basic
issues to women. And our experiences can help us in building a clearer
analysis and strategy; we badly need both theory and practice, and ,the
one will help us in the other.
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