That's not feminism! (Or is it?)

Twice in the last 24 hours, I've been stopped by middle-aged white women and regaled with stories of H. Clinton's right to the presidency. The first time, the woman was fairly kooky: she had made her own buttons that said "Clinton Now, Obama Later," which confused me (later meaning at the convention? In 2012?), and when Patricia asked her about HRC's militarism with regard to Iran, the woman said, "She'll get us out of Iran, don't worry." She was also explaining how middle America is so racist, they'll never elect "a black." Of course, she has no problem with him, except his supposed lack of readiness. It's the other people.

The second time, though, it was an ostensibly reasonable librarian who caught me off guard, after she had just exhaustively explained how she was going to present the library's resources to my students. (The only thing duller than a presentation of electronic databases on an overhead projector is hearing the plan for that presentation in excruciating detail.) She explained to me that we know sexism is worse than racism because rich white men are voting for Obama. And she kept doing this thing where she would say, "it's the boys club she's up against, all the white men, and then Hillary--oops, I mean, you know, Obama's not white, but still." She did this over and over--indicating that Obama's racial difference didn't matter? That we live in a post-racial society?

It's not that I didn't sympathize with her critiques of the virulent attacks on Clinton, attacks that seem to focus on her gender rather than her politics. Particularly, I think the media attention to her body and clothing is totally disgusting. I voted for Obama (after supporting erstwhile populist hopeful Edwards, despite his obnoxious comments about Clinton's clothing), but I wasn't full of hope or change, and I continue not to be. Neither candidate has convinced me that he or she will put the interests of people before the profits of corporations. I just thought Obama might be a tad less inclined to imperialism, and I still think so.

If it were just the kooky button makers and ostensibly reasonable librarians of Cambridge, it would be alright. Then I could explain to them that second-wave feminism is not about ranking oppressions; rather, I would say, it's about understanding how different kinds of oppression work together, and how women can be oppressed in certain ways while at the same time oppressing other women, or men, or themselves. That's why consciousness raising was so important to the movement, and why feminism is proto-deconstructionism: because feminism gives us the tools to understand and fight all kinds of oppressive systems.

Unfortunately, I might be wrong. Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem are also working hard to prove that sexism trumps racism, making horrific comparisons to hypothetical white-supremacist speech and action as if racism isn't happening in this country every second (see the previous post). And this really got me thinking: have I been wrong about radical feminism? Are its roots in the civil rights movement and the abolition movement, where white women made their claims to rights through analogies to racial oppression, perpetually reducing the debate and writing women of color out of the equation (or worse, arguing that they were already liberated because of the matriarchal culture Moynihan theorized in his classic synthesis of racism and misogyny), too strong to be overcome?

So, a few conclusions, in outline form:

I. We're living in an incredible moment of backlash against BOTH civil rights AND feminism. We need to think about how the right has connected their racist and misogynist agenda by

a)constructing deviance as both racially and gender/sexuality coded

b)pitting race against gender, as in endless discussions of "is hip-hop misognyist?" ( Of course it is, but not all of it, and no more so than 99% of prime-time TV and movies, and much less so than anything featuring Katherine Heigl.)

c) advocating "free trade" policies that displace, enslave, and endanger people all over the world, most of whom are nonwhite and most of whom are women

d) advocating militarism and war, often in the name of what Gayatri Spivak calls "white men saving brown women from brown men."

II. We need an an anti-imperialist, antiracist feminism that allows us to do complex analysis and activism. This is the only way feminism will survive. U.S. Feminists should never, ever allow "women's rights" to be attached to these imperial missions.

III. We need to rethink some of our ideas about representation.

(to be continued--Janet, feel free to add to this outline.)