Philosophical Trends in the Feminist Movement: A Transnational Review

By Anuradha Ghandy

The following is a text written by Anuradha Ghandy, also known as Avanti. She was spearheading the proletarian feminist movement in India, and was a central committee member of the underground Communist Party of India-Maoist. This text is considered to be one of the seminal proletarian feminist texts. It is quite long, so we have put up a 'table of contents' to make it easy to return to the right section another time.

Internationally one of the most remarkable developments in the capitalist era has been the emergence and growth of the women's movement. For the first time in human history women came out collectively to demand their rights, their place under the sun. The emancipation of women from centuries of oppression became an urgent and immediate question. The movement threw up theoretical analyses and solutions on the question of women's oppression. The women's movement has challenged the present patriarchal, exploitative society both through its activities and through its theories.

It is not that earlier women did not realize their oppression. They did. They articulated this oppression in various ways - through folk songs, pithy idioms and poems, paintings and other forms of art to which they had access. They also raved against the injustice they had to suffer. They interpreted and re-interpreted myths and epics to express their viewpoint. The various versions of the Ramayana and Mahabharat for example, still in circulation among rural women through songs in various parts of India, are a vivid testimony of this.

Some remarkable women emerged in the feudal period who sought out ways through the means available at the time and became symbols of resistance to the patriarchal set-up. Meerabai, the woman saint is only one example among many such who left a lasting impact on society. This is time for all societies in the world. This was a counterculture, reflecting a consciousness of the oppressed. But it was limited by circumstances and was unable to find a way out, a path to end the oppression. In most cases they sought a solution in religion, or a personal God.

The development of capitalism brought about a tremendous change in social conditions and thinking. The concept of democracy meant people became important. Liberalism as a social and political philosophy led the change in its early phase; women from the progressive social classes came forward as a collective. Thus, for the first time in history a women's own movement emerged, that demanded from society their rights and emancipation. This movement has, like all other social movements, had its flows and ebbs. The impact of capitalism, however constricted and distorted in the colonies like India, had their impact on progressive men and women.

A women's own movement in India emerged in the first part of the 20th century. It was part of this international ferment and yet rooted in the contradictions of Indian society. The theories that emerged in capitalist countries found their way to India and got applied to Indian conditions. The same is true in an even more sharp way in the context of the contemporary women's movement that arose in the late 1960s in the West. The contemporary women's movement has posed many more challenges before society because the limits of capitalism in its imperialist phase are now nakedly clear. It had taken much struggle to gain formal legitimacy for the demand for equality. And even after that, equality was still unrealized not just in the backward countries, but even in advanced capitalist countries like USA and France.

The women's movement now looked for the roots of oppression in the very system of society itself. The women's movement analyzed the system of patriarchy and sought the origins of patriarchy in history. They grappled with the social sciences and showed up the male bias inherent in them. They exposed how a patriarchal way of thinking colored all analysis regarding women's role in history and in contemporary society. Women have a history, women are in history they said..(Gerda Lerner) From studies of history they retrieved the contributions women had made to the development of human society, to major movements and struggles. They also exposed the gender based division of labor under capitalism that relegated an overwhelming majority of women to the least skilled, lowest paid categories. They exposed the way ruling classes; especially the capitalist class has economically gained from patriarchy. They exposed the patriarchal bias of the State, its laws and regulations.

The feminists' analyzed the symbols and traditions of a given society and showed how they perpetuate the patriarchal system. The feminists gave importance to the oral tradition and thus were able to bring to the surface the voice of the women suppressed throughout history. The movement forced men and women to look critically at their own attitudes and thoughts, their actions and words regarding women. The movement challenged various patriarchal, anti-women attitudes that tainted even progressive and revolutionary movements and affected women's participation in them. Notwithstanding the theoretical confusions and weaknesses the feminist movement has contributed significantly to our understanding of the women's question in the present day world. The worldwide movement for democracy and socialism has been enriched by the women's movement.

One of the important characteristics of the contemporary women's movement has been the effort made by feminists to theorize on the condition of women. They have entered into the field of philosophy in order to give a philosophical foundation to their analysis and approach. Women sought philosophies of liberation and grappled with various philosophical trends which they felt could give a vision to the struggle of women. Various philosophical trends like Existentialism, Marxism, Anarchism, Liberalism were all studied and adopted by active women movement in US and then England. Thus feminists are an eclectic group who include a diverse range of approaches, perspectives and frameworks depending on the philosophical trend they adopt. Yet they share a commitment to give voice to women's experiences and to end women's subordination. Given the hegemony of the West these trends have had a strong influence on the women's movement within India too. Hence a serious study of the women's movement must include an understanding of the various theoretical trends in the movement.

Feminist philosophers have been influenced by philosophers as diverse as Locke, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Derida, Nietzsche, Freud. Yet most of them have concluded that traditional philosophy is male-biased, its major concepts and theories, its own self-understanding reveals "a distinctively masculine way of approaching the world." (Alison Jagger). Hence they have tried to transform traditional philosophy. Keeping this background in mind we have undertaken to present some of the main philosophical trends among feminists. One point to take note of is that these various trends are not fixed and separate. Some feminists have opposed these categories. Some have changed their approach over time, some can be seen to have a mix of two or more trends. Yet for an understanding these broad trends can be useful. But before discussing the theories we will begin with a very brief account of the development of the women's movement in the West, esp the US. This is necessary to understand the atmosphere in which the theoretical developments among feminists grew.

Overview of Women's Movement in the West

The women's movement in the West is divided into two phases. The first phase arose in the mid 19th century and ended by the 1920s, while the second phase began in the 1960s. The first phase is known for the suffragette movement or the movement of women for their political rights, that is the right to vote. The women's movement arose in the context of the growth of capitalism and the spread of a democratic ideology. It arose in the context of other social movements that emerged at the time. In the US the movement to free the black slaves and the movement to organise the ever increasing ranks of the proletariat were an important part of the socio-political ferment of the 19th century.

In the 1830s and 40s the abolitionists (those campaigning for the abolition of slavery) included some educated women who braved social opposition to campaign to free the Negroes from slavery. Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Anthony, Angeline Grimke were among the women active in the anti-slavery movement who later became active in the struggle for women's political rights.

But opposition within the anti-slavery organizations to women representing them and to women in leadership forced the women to think about their own status in society and their own rights. In the US, women in various States started getting together to demand their right to common education with men, for manned women's rights to property and divorce.

The Seneca Fall Convention organized by Stanton, Anthony and others in 1848 proved to be a landmark in the history of the first phase of the women's movement in the US. They adopted a Declaration of Sentiments modeled on the Declaration of Independence, in which they demanded equal rights in marriage, property, wages and the vote. For 20 years after this Convention state level conventions were held, propaganda campaigns through lecture tours, pamphlets, signature petitions conducted.

In 1868 an amendment was brought to the Constitution (14th amendment) granting the right to vote to blacks but not to women. Stanton, Anthony campaigned against this amendment but were unsuccessful in preventing it. A split between the women and abolitionists took place. Meanwhile the working class movement also grew, though the established trade union leadership was not interested in organising women workers. Only the IWW supported efforts to organise women workers who worked long hours for extremely low wages. Thousands of women were garment workers. Anarchists, Socialists, Marxists, some of whom were women, worked among the workers and organised them. Among them were Emma Goldman, Ella Reevs Bloor, Mother Jones, Sojourner Truth. In the 1880s militant struggles and repression became the order of the day. Most of the suffrage leaders showed no interest in the exploitation of workers and did not support their movement.

Towards the end of the century and beginning of the 20th century a working class women's movement developed rapidly. The high point of this was the strike of almost 40,000 women garment workers in 1909. The socialist women were very active in Europe and leading communist women like Eleanor Marx, Clara Zetkin, Alexandra Kollantai, Vera Zasulich were in the forefront of the struggle to organise working women. Thousands of working women were organised and women's papers and magazines were published.

It was at the Second International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen that Clara Zetkin, the German communist and famous leader of the international women's movement, inspired by the struggle of American women workers, moved the resolution to commemorate March 8 as Women's Day at the international level. By the end of the century, the women's situation had undergone much change in the US. Though they did not have the right to vote, in the field of education, property rights, employment they had made many gains. Hence the demand for the vote gained respectability. The movement took a more conservative turn , separating the question of gaining the right to vote from all other social and political issues. Their main tactics was petitioning and lobbying with senators etc. It became active in 1914 with the entry of Alice Paul who introduced the militant tactics of the British suffragettes, like picketing, hunger strikes, sit-ins etc. Due to their active campaign and militant tactics women won the right to vote in America in 1920.

The women's struggle in Britain started later than the American movement but it took a more militant turn' in the beginning of the 20th century with Emmeline Pankhurst, her daughters and their supporters adopting militant tactics to draw attention to their demands, facing arrest several times to press their demand. They had formed the Women's Social and Political Union (WPSU) in 1903 when they got disillusioned with the style of work of the older organisations. This WSPU spearheaded the agitation for suffrage. But they compromised with the British Government when the First World War broke out in 1914. Both in US and in England the leaders of the movement were white and middle class and restricted their demand to the middle class women. It was the socialists and communist women who rejected the demand for the vote being limited to those with property and broadened the demand to include the vote for all women, including working class women. They organised separate mass mobilisations in support of the demand for the women's right to vote.

The women's movement did not continue during the period of the Depression, rise of fascism and the world war. In the post Second World War period America saw a boom in its economy and the growth of the middle class. In the war years women had taken up all sorts of jobs to run the economy but after that they were encouraged to give up their jobs and become good housewives and mothers. This balloon of prosperity and contentment lasted till the 1960s. Social unrest with the black civil rights movement gained ground and later the anti-war movement (against the Vietnam War) emerged.

It was a period of great turmoil. The Cultural Revolution that began in China too had its impact. Political activity among university students increased and it is in this atmosphere of social and political turmoil that the women's movement once again emerged, this time initially from among university students and faculty.

Women realized that they faced discrimination in employment, in wages, and overall in the way they were treated in society. The consumerist ideology also came under attack. Simone de Beauvoir had written The Second Sex in 1949 itself but its impact was felt now. Betty Friedan had written the Feminine Mystique in 1963. The book became extremely popular. She initiated the National Organisation of Women in 1966 to fight against the discrimination women faced and to struggle for equal rights amendment.

But the autonomous women's movement (radical feminist movement) emerged from within the student movement that had leftist leanings. Black students in the Student Non-violent Coordination Council (SNCC) (which campaigned for civil rights for blacks) threw out the white men and women students at the Chicago Convention in 1968, on the grounds that only blacks would struggle for black liberation. Similarly the idea that women's liberation is a women's struggle gained ground.

In this context, women members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) demanded that women's liberation be a part of the national council in their June 1968 convention. But they were hissed and voted down. Many of these women walked out and formed the WRAP (Women's Radical Action Project) in Chicago. Women within the New University Conference (NUC - a national level body of university students, staff and faculty who wanted a socialist America) formed a Women's Caucus. Marlene Dixon and Naomi Wisstein from Chicago were leading in this. Shulamith Firestone and Pamela Allen began similar activity in New York and formed the New York Radical Women (NYRW). All of them rejected the liberal view that changes in the law and equal rights amendment would solve women's oppression and believed that the entire structure of society has to be transformed. Hence they called themselves radical. They came to hold the opinion that mixed groups and parties (men and women) like the socialist party, SDS, New Left will not be able to take the struggle for women's liberation forward and a women's movement, autonomous from parties is needed. The NYRW's first public action was the protest against the Miss America beauty contest which brought the fledgling women's movement into national prominence.

A year later NYWR divided into Redstockings and WITCH (Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell). The Red Stockings issued their manifesto in 1969 and in this the position of radical feminism was clearly presented for the first time. "..we identify the agents of our oppression as men, Male supremacy is the oldest, most basic form of domination. All other forms of exploitation and oppression (racism, capitalism, imperialism etc) are extensions of male supremacy: men dominate women, a few men dominate the rest…" Sisterhood is powerful, and the personal is political became their slogans which gained wide popularity. Meanwhile the SDS issued its position paper on Women's Liberation in December 1968. This was debated by women from various points of view. Kathy McAfee and Myrna Wood wrote Bread and Roses to signify that the struggle cannot be only against economic exploitation of capitalism (bread) but also against the psychological and social oppression that women faced (Roses).

These debates carried out in the various journals produced by the women's groups that emerged in this period were taken seriously and influenced the course and trends within the women's movement not only in the US but in other countries as well. The groups mainly took the form of small circles for consciousness raising. It must be noted that all of these were following either the Trotskite or Cuban socialism within the left movement. They opposed all types of hierarchical structures. In this way the socialist feminist and the radical feminist trend within the women's movement emerged. Though it had many limitations if seen from a Marxist perspective, it raised questions and brought many aspects of women oppression out into the open.

In the later 1960s and early 70s in the US and Western Europe "different groups had different visions of revolution. There were feminist, black, anarchist , Marxist - Leninist and other versions of revolutionary politics, but the belief that revolution of one sort or another was round the corner cut across these divisions." (Barbara Epstein)

The socialist (Marxist) and radical feminists shared a vision about revolution. During this first period the feminists were grappling with Marxist theory and key concepts like production, reproduction, class consciousness and labor. Both the socialist feminists and radical feminists were trying to change Marxist theory to incorporate feminist understanding of women's position. But after 1975 there was a shift. Systemic analysis (of capitalism, of the entire social structure) was replaced or recast as cultural feminism.

Cultural feminism begins with the assumption that men and women are basically different. It focused on the cultural features of patriarchal oppression and primarily aimed for reforms in this area. Unlike radical and socialist feminism, it adamantly rejects any critique of capitalism and emphasises patriarchy as the roots of women's oppression and veers towards separatism. In the late 1970s and 1980s, lesbian feminism emerged as one current within the feminist movement. At the same time women of color (Black women, third world women in the advanced capitalist countries) raised criticisms about the ongoing feminist movement and began to articulate their versions of feminism. Organizations among working class women for equal treatment at the workplace, childcare etc also started growing. That the feminist movement had been restricted to white, middle class, educated women in advanced capitalist countries and was focusing on issues primarily of their concern had become obvious. This gave rise to global or multicultural feminism.

In the third world countries women's groups also became active, but all the issues were not necessarily 'purely' women's issues. Violence against women has been a major issue, esp rape, but alongside there have been issues that emerged from exploitation due to colonialism and neo-colonialism, poverty and exploitation by landlords, peasant issues, displacement, apartheid and many other such problems that were important in their own countries. In the early 1990s post-modernism became influential among feminists. But the right-wing conservative backlash against feminism grew in the 1980s, focusing opposition to the feminist struggle for abortion rights. They also attacked feminism for destroying the family, emphasizing the importance of women's role in the family.

Yet the feminist perspective spread wide and countless activist groups, social and cultural projects at the grassroots grew and continued to be active. Women's studies too spread widely. Health care and environment issues have been the focus of attention of many of these groups. Many leading feminists were absorbed in academic jobs. At the same time many of the major organisations and caucuses have become large institutions, absorbed by the establishment, run with staff and like any established bureaucratic institution. Activism declined.

In the 1990s the feminist movement is known more from the activities of these organisations and the writings of feminists in the academic realm. "Feminism has become more an idea than a movement, and one that lack the visionary quality it once had" wrote Barbara Epstein in Monthly Review (May 2001). In the 1990s the increasing gap between the economic condition of working class and oppressed minorities and the middle classes, the continuing gender inequality, increasing violence on women, the onslaught of globalization and its impact on people, esp women in the third world has led to a renewed interest in Marxism.

At the same time the participation of Women, esp. young women, in a range of political movements, as evident in the anti-globalisation and anti-war movements, has further helped the process of awakening. With this brief overview of the development of the women's movement in the West we will analyse the propositions of the main theoretical trends within the feminist movement.

1) Liberal Feminism

Liberal feminist thought has enjoyed a long history in the 18th and 19th centuries with thinkers as Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 to 1797), Harriet Taylor Mill (1807 to 1858), Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815 to 1902) arguing for the rights of women on the basis of liberal philosophical understanding. The movement for equal rights to women, esp the struggle for the right to vote was primarily based on liberal thought.

Earlier liberal political philosophers, like John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau who had argued for the rule of reason, equality of all, did not include women in their understanding of those deserving of equality, particularly political equality. They failed to apply their liberal theory to the position of women in society. The values of liberalism including the core belief in the importance and autonomy of the individual developed in the 17th century.

It emerged with the development of capitalism in Europe in opposition to feudal patriarchal values based on inequality. It was the philosophy of the rising bourgeoisie. The feudal values were based on the belief of the inherent superiority of the elite - esp the monarchs. The rest were subjects, subordinates. They defended hierarchy, with unequal rights and power. In opposition to these feudal values liberal philosophy advanced a belief in the natural equality and freedom of human beings. "They advocated a social and political structure that would recognize equality of all individuals and Provide them with equality of opportunity. This philosophy was rigorously rational and secular and the most power full and progressive formulation of the Enlightenment period. It was marked by intense individualism. Yet the famous 18th century liberal philosophers like Rousseau and Locke did not apply the same principles to the patriarchal family and the position of women with in it. This was the residual patriarchal bias of liberalism that applied only to men in the market.'' - Zillah Eisenstein.

Mary Wollstonecraft belonged to the radical section of the intellectual aristocracy in England that supported the French and American Revolutions. She wrote 'A Vindication of the Rights of Women' in 1791 in response to Edmund Burke's conservative interpretation of the significance of the French Revolution. In the booklet she argued against the feudal patriarchal notions about women's natural dependence on men, that women were created to please men, that they cannot be independent. Wollstonecraft wrote before the rise of the women's movement and her arguments are based on logic and rationality. Underlying Wollstonecraft's analysis are the basic principles of the Enlightenment: the belief in the human capacity to reason and in the concepts of freedom and equality that preceded and accompanied the American and French revolutions. She recognized reason as the only authority and argued that unless women were encouraged to develop their rational potential and to rely on their own judgment, the progress of all humanity would be retarded. She argued primarily in favor of women getting the same education as men so that they could also be imbibed with the qualities of rational thinking and should be provided with opportunities for earning and leading an independent life. She strongly criticised Rousseau's ideas on women's education.

According to her, Rousseau's arguments that women's education should be different from that of men have contributed to make women more artificial weak characters. Rousseau's logic was that women should be educated in a manner so as to impress upon them that obedience is the highest virtue. Her arguments reflect the class limitations of her thinking. While she wrote that women from the "common classes" displayed more virtue because they worked and were to some extent independent, she also believed that "the most respectable women are the most oppressed."

Her book was influential even in America at that time. Harriet Taylor, also part ot the bourgeois intellectual circles of London and wife of the well known Utilitarian philosopher James Stuart Mill , wrote " On the Enfranchisement of Women " in 1851 in support of the women's movement just as it emerged in the US. Giving stark liberal arguments against opponents of women's rights and in favor of women having the same rights as men, she wrote, "We deny the right of any portion of the species to decide for another portion, or any individual for another individual, what is and what is not their "proper sphere". The proper sphere for all human beings is the largest and highest which they are able to attain to…" Noting the significance of the fact that she wrote 'The world is very young, and has but Just begun to cast off injustice. It is only now getting rid of Negro slavery, Can we wonder it has n o t yet done as much for women?" In fact the liberal basis of the women's movement as it emerged in the mid 19th century in the US is clear in the Seneca Falls Declaration (1848). The declaration at this first national convention began thus: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain in alienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness…."

In the next phase of the women's movement in the late 1960s among the leading proponents of liberal ideas was Betty Friedan, Bella Abzzug, Pat Schroeder. Friedan founded the organisation National Organisation of Women (NOW) in 1966. The liberal feminists emerged from among those who were working in women's rights groups, government agencies, commissions etc. Their initial concern was to get laws amended which denied equality to women in the sphere of education, employment etc. They also campaigned against social conventions that limited women's opportunities on the basis of gender. But as these legal and educational barriers began to fall it became clear that the liberal strategy of changing the laws within the existing system was not enough to get women justice and freedom. They shifted their emphasis to struggling for equality of conditions rather than merely equality of opportunity.

This meant the demand that the state play a more active role in creating the conditions in 22 which women can actually realise opportunities. The demand for childcare, welfare, healthcare, unemployment wage, special schemes for the single mother etc have been taken up by liberal feminists. The struggle for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) has also been led by this section among feminists. The work of the liberal section among feminists has been through national level organisations and thus they have been noticed by the media as well. A section among the liberal feminists like Zillah Eisenstein argue that liberalism has a potential as a liberating ideology because working women can through their life experiences see the contradiction between liberal democracy as an ideology and capitalist patriarchy which denies them the equality promised by the ideology. But liberalism was not the influential trend within the movement in this phase.

Critique of Liberal Feminism

Liberalism as a philosophy emerged within the womb of feudal western society as the bourgeoisie was struggling to come to power. Hence it included an attack on the feudal values of divinely ordained truth and hierarchy (social inequality). It stood for reason and equal rights for all individuals. But this philosophy was based on extreme individualism rather than collective effort. Hence it promoted the approach that if formal, legal equality was given to all, and then it was for the individuals to take advantage of the opportunities available and become successful in life.

The question of class differences and the effect of class differences on opportunities available to people was not taken into consideration. Initially liberalism played a progressive role in breaking the feudal social and political institutions. But in the 19th century after the growth of the working class and its movements, the limitations of liberal thinking came to the fore. For the bourgeoisie that had come to power did not extend the rights it professed to the poor and other oppressed sections (like women, or blacks in the US). They had to struggle for their rights. The women's movement and the Black movement in that phase were able to demand their rights utilising the arguments of the liberals. Women from the bourgeois classes were in the forefront of this movement and they did not extend the question of rights to the working classes, including working class women.

But as working class ideologies emerged, various trends of socialism found support among the active sections of the working class. They began to question the very bourgeois socio-economic and political system and the limitations of liberal ideology with its emphasis on formal equality and individual freedom. In this phase liberalism lost its progressive role and we see that the main women's organisations both in the US and England fighting for suffrage had a very narrow aim and became pro-imperialist and anti-working class. In the present phase liberal feminists have had to go beyond the narrow confines of formal equality to campaign for positive collective rights like welfare measures for single mothers, prisoners etc and demand a welfare state.

Liberalism has the following weaknesses:

1. It focuses on the individual rights rather than collective rights.

2. It is ahistorical. It does not have a comprehensive understanding of women's role in history nor has it any analysis for the subordination (subjugation) of women.

3. It tends to be mechanical in its support for formal equality without a concrete understanding of the condition of different sections/classes of women and their specific problems. Hence it was able to express the demands of the middle classes (white women from middle classes in the US and upper class, upper caste women in India) but not those of women from various oppressed ethnic groups, castes and the working, labouring classes.

4. It is restricted to changes in the law, educational and employment opportunities, welfare measures etc and does not question the economic and political structures of the society which give rise to patriarchal discrimination. Hence it is reformist in its orientation, both in theory and in practice.

5. It believes that the state is neutral and can be made to intervene in favour of women when in fact the bourgeois state in the capitalist countries and the semi-colonial and semi-feudal Indian state are patriarchal and will not support women's struggle for emancipation. The State is defending the interests of the ruling classes who benefit from the subordination and devalued status of women.

6. Since it focuses on changes in the law, and state schemes for women, it has emphasised lobbying and petitioning as means to get their demands. The liberal trend most often has restricted its activity to meetings and conventions and mobilising petitions calling for changes. It has rarely mobilised the strength of the mass of women and is in fact afraid of the militant mobilisation of poor women in large numbers.

2) Radical Feminism

Within bourgeois feminism, in the first phase of the women's movement in the 19th and early 20th centuries liberalism was the dominant ideology; in the contemporary phase of the women's movement radical feminism has had a strong impact and in many ways, though diffused, many ideas and positions can be traced to the radical feminist argument. In contrast to the pragmatic approach taken by liberal feminism, radical feminism aimed to reshape society and restructure its institutions, which they saw as inherently patriarchal. Providing the core theory for modern feminism, radicals argued that women's subservient role in society was too closely woven into the social fabric to be unraveled without a revolutionary revamping of society itself. They strove to supplant hierarchical and traditional power relationships, which they saw as reflecting a male bias, with non-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian approaches to politics and organization.

In the second phase of feminism, in the US, the radical feminists emerged from the social movements of the 1960s - the civil rights movement, the new left movement and the anti-Vietnam war/peace movement. They were women who were dissatisfied with the role given to women in these movements and the way the new left tackled the women's question in its writings, theoretical and popular. At the same time none of them wanted to preserve the existing system. Hence in its initial phase the writings were a debate with Marxism, an attempt to modify or rewrite Marxism. Later on as the radical feminist movement became strong Marxism was cast aside and the entire emphasis shifted to an analysis of the sex/gender system and patriarchy delinked from the exploitative capitalist system. In this contemporary phase of feminism attention was focused on the origins of women's oppression and many theoretical books were written trying to analyze the forms of women's oppression and tracing the roots of this oppression. Yet one thing that needs to be kept in mind is that in all their writing they kept only their own society in mind.

Hence all their criticism, description and analysis deal with advanced capitalist societies, esp. the US. In 1970 Kate Millett published the book Sexual Politics in which she challenged the formal notion of politics and presented a broader view of power relationships including the relationship between men and women in society. Kate Millett saw the relations between men and women as relationship of power; men's domination over women was a form of power in society. Hence she titled her book sexual politics. Here she made the claim that the personal was political, which became a popular slogan of the feminist movement. By the personal is political what she meant was that the discontent individual women feel in their lives is not due to individual failings but due to the social system, which has kept women in subordination and oppresses her in so many ways. Her personal feelings are therefore political.

In fact she reversed the historical materialist understanding by asserting that the male female relationship is a framework for all power relationships in society. According to her, this "social caste" (dominant men and subordinated women) supersedes all other forms of inequality, whether racial, political or economic. This is the primary human situation. These other systems of oppression will continue because they get both logical and emotional legitimacy from oppression in this primary situation. Patriarchy according to her was male control over the private and public world. According to her to eliminate patriarchy men and women must eliminate gender, i.e. sexual status, role and temperament, as they have been constructed under patriarchy. Patriarchal ideology exaggerates the biological differences between men and women and subordinates women. Millett advocated a new society, which would not be based on the sex/gender system and in which men and women are equal. At the same time, she argued that we must proceed slowly, eliminating undesirable traits like obedience (among women) and arrogance (among men). Kate Millett's book was very influential for a long time. It still is considered a classic for modem radical feminist thinking. Another influential early writer was Shulamith Firestone who argued in her book Dialectics of Sex (1970) that the origins of women's subordination and man's domination lay in the reproductive roles of men and women. In this book she rewrites Marx and Engels.

While Engels had written about historical materialism as follows: "that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and great moving power of all historical events in the economic development of society, in the changes of the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and i n the struggles of these classes against one another."

Firestone rewrote this as follows: "Historical materialism is that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all historical events in the dialectic of sex: the division of society into two distinctly biological classes for procreative reproduction, and the struggles of these classes with one another; in the changes in the mode of marriage, reproduction and childcare created by these struggles; in the connected development of other physically differentiated classes (castes); and in the first division of labour based on sex which developed into the (economic - cultural) class system."

Firestone focused on reproduction instead of production as the moving force of history. Further, instead of identifying social causes for women's condition she stressed biological reasons for her condition and made it the moving force in history. She felt that the biological fact that women bear children is the material basis for women's submission in society and it needs a biological and social revolution to effect human liberation. She too was of the opinion that the sex/gender difference needs to be eliminated and human beings must be androgynous. But she went further than Kate Millett in the solution she advocated to end women's oppression. She was of the opinion that unless women give up their reproductive role and no longer bear children and the basis of the existing family is changed it is not possible to completely liberate women.

Hence, according to her unless natural reproduction was replaced by artificial reproduction, and the traditional biological family replaced by intentional family, biological divisions between the sexes could not be eliminated. Biological family is the family in which members are genetically connected (parents and children) while the intentional family according to her means a family chosen by friendship or convenience. She believed that if this change occurs the various personality complexes that develop in present society will no longer exist. Others wrote about how historically the first social conflict was between men and women. Man the hunter was prone to violence and he subjugated women through rape. (Susan Brownmiller).

These writings set the tone for the women's movement, the more radical section of it, which was not satisfied with the efforts of liberal feminists to change laws and campaign on such issues. They gave the push to delve into women's traditional hitherto taken for granted reproductive role, into gender/sex differences and to question the very structure of society as being patriarchal, hierarchical and oppressive. They called for a total transformation of society. Hence radical feminists perceive themselves as revolutionary rather than reformist. Their fundamental point is that the sex/gender system is the cause of women's oppression. They considered the man woman relationship in isolation from the rest of the social system, as a fundamental contradiction. As a result their entire orientation and direction of analysis and action deals primarily with this contradiction and this has taken them towards separatism. Since they focused on the reproductive role of women they make sexual relations, family relations as the central targets of their attack to transform society.

Sex-Gender System and Patriarchy

The central point in the radical feminist understanding is the sex/gender system. According to a popular definition given by Gayle Rubin, the sex/gender system is a "set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity". This means that patriarchal society uses certain facts about male and female physiology (sex) as the basis for constructing a set of masculine and feminine identities and behaviour (gender) that serve to empower men and disempower women, that is, how a man should be and how a woman should be. This, according to them, is the ideological basis of women's subordination. Society is somehow convinced that these culturally determined behaviour traits are 'natural'. Therefore they said that 'normal' behaviour depends on one's ability to display the gender identities and behaviour that society links with one's biological sex.

Initially the radical feminists, e.g. the Boston group or the Radical New York group, upheld Kate Millet's and Firestone's views and focused on the ways in which the concept of femininity and the reproductive and sexual roles and responsibilities (child rearing etc) serve to limit women's development as full persons. So they advocated androgyny. Androgyny means being both male and female, having the traits of both male and female, so that rigid sex defined roles don't remain. This means women should adopt some male traits (and men adopt some female traits.). But later, in the late 70s, one section of radical feminists rejected the goal of androgyny and believed that it meant that women should learn some of the worst features of masculinity. Instead they proposed that women should affirm their "femininity". Women should try to be more like women, i.e. emphasise women's virtues such as interdependence, community, connection, sharing, emotion, body, trust, absence of hierarchy, nature, immanence, process, joy, peace and life. From here onwards their entire focus became separatist, women should relate only to women, they should build a women's culture and institutions.

With this even their understanding about sexuality changed and they believed that women should become lesbians and they supported monogamous lesbian relations as the best for women. Politically they became pacifist. Violence and aggression are masculine traits according to them, that should be rejected. They say women are naturally peace loving and life-giving. By building alternative institutions they believed they were bringing revolutionary change. They began building women's clubs, making women's films and other forms of separate women's culture. In their understanding revolutionary transformation of society will take place gradually. This stream is called the cultural feminist trend because they are completely concentrating on the culture of society. They are not relating culture to the political-economic structure of society. But this became the main trend of radical feminism and is intertwined with eco-feminism, post-modernism also. Among the well known cultural feminists are Marilyn French and Mary Daly.

Sexuality: Heterosexuality and Lesbianism

Since man-woman relations are the fundamental contradiction for radical feminists they have paid a great deal of attention to sexual relations between men and women. Sexuality has become the arena where most of the discussions and debates of radical feminism got concentrated. The stand of the Christian Churches in the West. regarding various issues including sex and abortion has been extremely conservative. This is more so in countries like the US, France and Italy. Christian morality has defended sex only after marriage and opposed abortion. The radical feminist theorists confronted these questions head on. At the same time they also exposed how in a patriarchal society within sexual relations (even within marriage) women often feel a sense of being dominated.

It is in this background that questions of sexual repression, compulsory heterosexuality and homosexuality or sexual choice became issues of discussion and debate. The radical feminists believe that in a patriarchal society even in sexual relations and practices male domination prevails. This has been termed as repression by the first trend and ideology of sexual objectification by the cultural feminists. According to them sex is viewed as bad, dangerous and negative. The only sex permitted and considered acceptable is marital heterosexual practice. (Heterosexuality means sexual relations between people of different sexes, that is between men and women). There is pressure from patriarchal society to be heterosexual and sexual minorities, i.e. lesbians, transvestites, transsexuals etc are considered as intolerable. Sexual pleasure, a powerful natural force, is controlled by patriarchal society by separating so-called good, normal, healthy sexual practice from bad, unhealthy illegitimate sexual practice.

But the two streams have very different understanding of sexuality which also affects the demands they make, and solutions they offer. According to the radical feminist trend sexual repression is one of the crudest and most irrational ways for the forces of civilization to control human behaviour. Permissiveness is in the best interests of women and men. On the contrary the cultural feminists consider that heterosexual sexual relations are characterized by an ideology of objectification in which men are masters/subjects and women are slaves/objects. "Hetero-sexualism has certain similarities to colonialism particularly in its maintenance through force when paternalism is rejected and in the portrayal of domination as natural and in the de-skilling of women" (Sarah Lucia Hoagland)

This is a form of male sexual violence against women. Hence feminists should oppose any sexual practice that normalizes male sexual violence. According to them women should reclaim control over their sexuality by developing a concern with their own sexual priorities which differ from the priorities of men. Women, they say, desire intimacy and caring rather than the performance. Hence they advocated that women should reject heterosexual relations with men and become lesbians.

On the other hand the radicals believed that women must seek their pleasure according to Gayle Rubin, not make rules. For the cultural feminists, heterosexuality is about male domination and female subordination and so it sets the stage for pornography, prostitution, sexual harassment and woman-battering. Hence they advocated that women should give up heterosexual relations and go into lesbian relations in which there is emotional involvement.

Cultural feminists emphasized the need to develop the essential "femaleness" of women. Lesbianism was pushed strongly within the women's movement in the West in the early 80s but it receded a few years later. The solution offered by cultural feminists to end the subordination of women is breaking the sexual relationship between men and women with women forming a separate class themselves. The first trend are advocating free sexual relations, de-linked from any emotional involvement whether with men or with women.

In fact the solutions which they are promoting make an intimate human relationship into a commodity type of impersonal relationship. From here it is one step to support pornography and prostitution. While cultural feminists strongly opposed pornography the radicals did not agree that pornography had any adverse impact on the way men viewed women. Instead they believed that pornography could be used to overcome sexual repression. Even on questions of reproductive technology, the two sides differed. While the radicals supported repro-tech the cultural feminists were opposed to it. The cultural feminists were of the opinion that women should not give up motherhood since this is the only power they have. They have been active in the ethical debates raised by repro-tech, like rights of the surrogate or biological mother.

Critique of Radical Feminism

From the account given above it is clear that radical feminists have stood Marxism on its head so to speak. Though we will deal with Firestone's arguments in the section on socialist feminists some points need to be mentioned. In their understanding of material conditions they have taken the physical fact of reproduction and women's biological role as the central point for their analysis and concluded that this is the main reason for women's oppression. Marx had written that production and reproduction of life are the two basic conditions for human existence. Reproduction means both the reproduction of the person on a day to day basis and the reproduction of the human species. But in fact reproduction of the species is something humans share with the animal kingdom. That could not be the basis for women's oppression. For in all the thousands of years that people lived in the first stages of human existence women were not subordinated to men. In fact her reproductive role was celebrated and given importance because the survival of the species and the group depended on reproduction. The importance given to fertility and the fertility rituals surviving in most tribal societies are testimony of this fact.

Marxism understands that some material conditions had to arise due to which the position of women changed and she was subordinated. The significant change in material conditions came with the generation of considerable surplus production. How this surplus would be distributed is the point at which classes arose, the surplus being appropriated by a small number of leading people in the community. Her role in reproduction the cause of her elevated status earlier became a means of her enslavement. Which clan/extended family the children she bore belonged to, became important and it is then that we find restrictions on her and the emergence of the patriarchal family in which the woman was subordinated and her main role in society was begetting children for the family.

Radical feminists have treated historical development and historical facts lightly and imposed their own understanding of man-woman contradiction as the original contradiction and the principal contradiction which has determined the course of actual history. From this central point the radical feminist analysis abandons history altogether, ignores the political-economic structure and concentrates only on the social and cultural aspects of advanced capitalist society and projects the situation there as the universal human condition. This is another major weakness in their analysis and approach. Since they have taken the man-woman relationship (sex/gender relationship) as the central contradiction in society all their analysis proceeds from it and men become the main enemies of women. Since they do not have any concrete strategy to overthrow this society they shift their entire analysis to a critique of the super structural aspects - the culture, language, concepts, ethics without concerning themselves with the fact of capitalism and the role of capitalism in sustaining this sex/gender relationship and hence the need to include the overthrow of capitalism in their strategy for women's liberation.

While making extremely strong criticisms of the patriarchal structure the solutions they offer are in fact reformist. Their solutions are focused on changing roles and traits and attitudes and the moral values and creating an alternative culture. Practically it means people can to some extent give up certain values, men can give up aggressive traits by recognizing them as patriarchal, women can try to be bolder and less dependent, but when the entire structure of society is patriarchal how far can these changes come without an overthrow of the entire capitalist system is a question they do not address at all. So it ends up turning into small groups trying to change their lifestyle, their interpersonal relations, a focus on the interpersonal rather than the entire system. Though they began by analyzing the entire system and wanting to change it their line of analysis has taken them in reformist channels. Women's liberation is not possible in this manner.

The fault lies with their basic analysis itself. The cultural feminists have gone one step further by emphasizing the essential differences between males and females and claiming that female traits and values (not feminine) are desirable. This argument gives the biological basis of male female differences more importance than social upbringing. This is in fact a counter-productive argument because conservative forces in society have always used such arguments (called biological determinism) to justify domination over a section of the people. The slaves were slaves because they had those traits and they needed to be ruled, they could not look after themselves. Women are women and men are men and they are basically different, so social roles for women and men are also different. This is the argument given by reactionary conservative forces which are opposed to women's liberation.

Hence the basic argument they are putting forward has dangerous implications and can and will rebound on the struggle of women for change. Masculinity and femininity are constructs of a patriarchal society and we have to struggle to change these rigid constructs. But it is linked to the overthrow of the entire exploitative society. In a society where patriarchal domination ceases to exist how men and women will be, what kind of traits they will adopt is impossible for us to say. The traits that human beings will then adopt will be in consonance with the type of society that will exist, since there can be no human personality outside some social framework. Seeking this femaleness is like chasing a mirage and amounts to self-deception.

By making heterosexualism as the core point in their criticism of the present system they encouraged lesbian separatism and thus took the women's movement to a dead end. Apart from forming small communities of lesbians and building an alternative culture they could not and have not been able to take one step forward to liberate the mass of women from the exploitation and oppression they suffer. It is impractical and unnatural to think that women can have a completely separate existence from men. They have completely given up the goal of building a better human society. This strategy is not appealing to the large mass of women.

Objectively it became a diversion from building a broad movement for women's liberation. The radical trend by supporting pornography and giving the abstract argument of free choice has taken a reactionary turn providing justification and support to the sex tourism industry promoted by the imperialists which is subjecting lakhs (100.000s) of women from oppressed ethnic communities and from the third world countries to sexual exploitation and untold suffering. While criticizing hypocritical and repressive sexual mores of the reactionary bourgeoisie and the Church the radical trend has promoted an alternative which only further alienates human beings from each other and debases the most intimate of human relations. Separating sex from love and intimacy, human relations become mechanical and inhuman.

Further, their arguments are in absolute isolation from the actual circumstances of women's lives and their bitter experiences. Maria Mies has made a critique of this whole trend which sums up the weakness of the approach: "The belief in education, cultural action, or even cultural revolution as agents of change is a typical belief of the urban middle class. With regard to the women's question, it is based on the assumption that woman's oppression has nothing to do with basic material production relations. This assumption is found more among Western, particularly American, feminists who usually do not talk of capitalism. For many western feminists women's oppression is rooted in the culture of patriarchal civilization. For them, therefore, feminism is largely a cultural movement, a new ideology, or a new consciousness." (1986)

This cultural feminism dominated Western feminism and influenced feminist thinking in third world countries as well. It unites well with the post-modernist trend and has deflected the entire orientation of the women's movement from being a struggle to change the material conditions of life of women to an analysis of "representations" and symbols. They have opposed the idea of women becoming a militant force because they emphasise the non-violent nature of the female. They are disregarding the role women have played in wars against tyranny throughout history. Women will and ought to continue to play an active part in just wars meant to end oppression and exploitation. Thus they will be active participants in the struggle for change.

Summing up we can see that the radical feminist trend has taken the women's movement to a dead end by advocating separatism for women.

The main weaknesses in the theory and approach are:

1. Taking a philosophically idealist position by giving central importance to personality traits and cultural values rather than material conditions. Ignoring the material situation in the world completely and focusing only on cultural aspects.

2. Making the contradiction between men and women as the principal contradiction thereby justifying separatism.

3. Making a natural fact of reproduction as the reason for women's subordination and rejecting socio-economic reasons for the social condition of oppression thereby strengthening the conservative, argument that men and women are naturally different.

4. Making women's and men's natures immutable.

5. Ignoring the class differences among women and the needs and problems of poor women.

6. By propagating women's nature as non-violent they are discouraging women from becoming fighters in the struggle for their own liberation and that of society.

7. Inspite of claiming to be radical having completely reformist solutions which cannot take women's liberation forward.

3) Anarcha-Feminism

The feminist movement has been influenced by anarchism and the anarchists have considered the radical feminists closest to their ideas. Hence the body of work called Anarcha-feminism can be considered as being very much a part of the radical feminist movement.

Anarchists considered all forms of Government (state) as authoritarian and private property as tyrannical. They envisaged the creation of a society which would have no government, no hierarchy and no private property. While the anarchist ideas of Bakunin, Kropotkin and other classic anarchists have been an influence, the famous American anarchist Emma Goldman has particularly been influential in the feminist movement. Emma Goldman, a Lithuanian by birth, migrated to the US in 1885 and as a worker in various garment factories came into contact with anarchist and socialist ideas. She became an active agitator, speaker and campaigner for anarchist ideas. In the contemporary feminist movement the anarchists circulated Emma Goldman's writings and her ideas have been influential.

Anarcha-feminists agree that there is no one version of anarchism, but within the anarchist tradition they share a common understanding, on (1) a criticism of existing societies, focusing on relations of power and domination, (2) a vision of an alternate, egalitarian, non-authoritarian society, along with claims about how it could be organized, and (3) a strategy for moving from one to the other.

They envisaged a society in which human freedom is ensured, but believe that human freedom and community go together. But the communities must be structured in such a way that makes freedom possible. There should be no hierarchies or authority. Their vision is different from the Marxist and liberal tradition but is closest to what the radical feminists are struggling for, the practice they are engaged in. For the anarchists believe that means must be consistent with the aims, the process by which revolution is being brought about, the structures must reflect the new society and relations that have to be created.

Hence the process and the form of organisation are extremely important. According to the anarchists dominance and subordination depends on hierarchical social structures which are enforced by the State and through economic coercion (that is through control over property etc). Their critique of society is not based on classes and exploitation, or on the class nature of the State etc, but is focused on hierarchy and domination. The State defends and supports these hierarchical structures and decisions at the central level are imposed on those subordinate in the hierarchy. So for them hierarchical social structures are the roots of domination and subordination in society.

This leads to ideological domination as well, because the view that is promoted and propagated is the official view, the view of those who dominate, about the structure and its processes. Anarchists are critical of Marxists because according to them revolutionaries are creating hierarchical organisations (the party) through which to bring about the change. According to them once a hierarchy is created it is impossible for people at the top to relinquish their power. Hence they believe that the process by which the change is sought to be brought about is equally important. "Within a hierarchical organization we cannot learn to act in non-authoritarian ways."Anarchists give emphasis to "propaganda by deed" by which they mean exemplary actions, which by positive example encourage others to also join. The Anarcha-feminists give examples of groups that have created various community based activities, like running a radio station or a food cooperative in the US in which non-authoritarian ways of running the organization have been developed. They have given central emphasis on small groups without hierarchy and domination.

But the functioning of such groups in practice, the hidden tyrannical leadership (Joreen) that gets created has led to many criticisms of them. The problems encountered included hidden leadership, having headers' imposed by the media, overrepresentation of middle class women with lots of time in their hands, of lack of task groups which women could join, hostility towards women who showed initiative or leadership. When communists raise the question that the centralized State controlled by the imperialists needs to be overthrown they admit that their efforts are small in nature and there is a need of coordinating with others and linking up with others. But they are not willing to consider the need for a centralized revolutionary organization to overthrow the State.

Basically according to their theory the capitalist state is not to be overthrown, but it has to be outgrown, ("how we proceed against the pathological state structure perhaps the best word is to outgrow rather than overthrow" from an Anarcha-feminist manifesto - Siren 1971).

From their analysis it is clear that they differ strongly from the revolutionary perspective. They do not believe in the overthrow of the bourgeois/imperialist State as the central question and prefer to spend their energy in forming small groups involved in cooperative activities.

In the era of monopoly capitalism it is an illusion to think that such activities can expand and grow and gradually engulf the entire society. They will only be tolerated in a society with excess surplus like the US as an oddity, an exotic plant. Such groups tend to get co-opted by the system in this way.

Radical feminists have found these ideas suitable for their views and have been very much influenced by anarchist ideas of organization or there has been a convergence of anarchist views of organization and the radical feminist views on the same. Another aspect of Anarcha-feminist ideas is their concern for ecology and we find that eco-feminism has also grown out of Anarcha-feminist views. As it is, anarchists in the Western countries are active on the environmental question.

4) Eco-Feminism

Eco-feminism has also got close links with cultural feminism, though eco-feminists themselves distinguish themselves. Cultural feminists like Mary Daly have taken an approach in their writing which comes close to an eco-feminist understanding. Ynestra King, Vandana Shiva and Maria Mies are among the known eco-feminists.

Cultural feminists have celebrated women's identification with nature in art, poetry, music and communes. They identify women and nature against (male) culture. So for example they are active anti-militarists. They blame men for war and point out that masculine pre-occupation is with death defying deeds. Eco-feminists recognize that socialist feminists have emphasized the economic and class aspects of women's oppression but criticize them for ignoring the question of the domination of nature. Feminism and ecology are the revolt of nature against human domination. They demand that we re-think the relationship between humanity and the rest of nature, including our natural, embodied selves.

In eco-feminism nature is the central category of analysis - the interrelated domination of nature - psyche and sexuality, human oppression and non-human, and the social historical position of women in these. This is the starting point for eco-feminism according to Ynestra King. And in practice it has been seen, according to her, that women have been in the forefront of struggles to protect nature - the example of Chipko andolan in which village women clung to trees to prevent the contractors from cutting the trees in Tehri-Garhwal proves this point, according to them.

There are many streams within eco-feminism. There are the spiritual eco-feminists who consider their spiritualism as main, while the worldly believe in active intervention to stop the destructive practices. They say that the nature-culture dichotomy must be dissolved and our oneness with nature brought out. Unless we all live more simply some of us won't be able to live at all. According to them there is room for men too in this save the earth movement. There is one stream among eco-feminists who are against the emphasis on nature-women connection. Women must, according to them, minimize their socially constructed and ideologically reinforced special connection with nature. The present division of the world into male and female (culture and nature); men for culture building, and women for nature building (child rearing and child bearing) must be eliminated and oneness emphasized. Men must bring culture into nature and women should take nature into culture. This view has been called social constructionist eco-feminism. Thinkers like Warren believe that it is wrong to link women to nature, because both men and women are equally natural and equally cultural. Mies and Shiva combined insights from socialist feminism (role of capitalist patriarchy), with insights from global feminists who believe that women have more to do with nature in their daily work around the world, and from postmodernism which criticizes capitalism's tendency to homogenizing the culture around the world.

They believed that women around the world had enough similarity to struggle against capitalist patriarchies and the destruction it spawns. Taking examples of struggles by women against ecological destruction by industrial or military interests to preserve the basis of life they conclude that women will be in the forefront of the struggle to preserve the ecology. They advocate a subsistence perspective in which people must not produce more than that needed to satisfy human needs, and people should use nature only as much as needed, not to make money but satisfy community needs, men and women should cultivate traditional feminine virtues (caring, compassion, nurturance) and engage in subsistence production, for only such a society can "afford to live in peace with nature, and uphold peace between nations, generations, and men and women". Women are non-violent by nature they claim and support this. They are considered as transformative eco-feminists.

But the theoretical basis for Vandana Shiva's argument in favor of subsistence agriculture is actually reactionary. She makes a trenchant criticism of the green revolution and its impact as a whole but from the perspective that it is a form of "western patriarchal violence" against women and nature. She counterposes patriarchal western, rational/science with non-western wisdom. The imperialists used the developments in agro-science to force the peasantry to increase their production (to avoid a Red revolution) and to become tied to the MNC sponsored market for agricultural inputs like seeds, fertilizers, pesticides.

But Shiva is rejecting agro-science altogether and uncritically defending traditional practices. She claims that traditional Indian culture with its dialectical unity of Purusha and Prakriti was superior to the Western philosophical dualism of man and nature, man and culture etc etc.

Hence she claims that in this civilization where production was for subsistence, to satisfy the vital basic needs of people, women had a close connection with nature. The Green revolution broke this link between women and nature. In actual fact what Shiva is glorifying is the petty pre-capitalist peasant economy with its feudal structures and extreme inequalities. In this economy women toiled for long hours in backbreaking labor with no recognition of their work. She does not take into account the 40 condition of Dalit and other lower caste women who toiled in the fields and houses of the feudal landlords of that time, abused, sexually exploited and unpaid most of the time.

Further, the subsistence life was not based on enough for all, in fact women were deprived of even the basic necessities in this glorified pre-capitalist period, they had no claim over the means of production, they were not independent either. This lack of independence is interpreted by her and Mies as the third world women's rejection of self-determination and autonomy for they value their connection with the community. What women value as support structures when they do have any alternative before them is being projected as conscious rejection of self-determination by Shiva. In effect they are upholding the patriarchal pre-capitalist subsistence economy in the name of eco-feminism and in the name of opposing western science and technology. A false dichotomy has been created between science and tradition.

This is a form of culturalism or post-modernism that is involved in defending the traditional patriarchal cultures of third world societies and opposing development of the basic masses in the name of attacking the development paradigm of capitalism. We are opposed to the destructive and indiscriminate push given by profit hungry imperialist agri-business to agro-technology (including genetically modified seeds etc) we are not against the application of science and agro-technology to improving agricultural production. Under the present class relations even science is the handmaiden of the imperialists but under democratic/socialist system this will not be so.

It is important to retain what is positive in our tradition but to glorify it all, is anti-people. Eco-feminists idealize the relationship of women with nature and also lacks a class perspective. Women from the upper classes, whether in advanced capitalist countries or in the backward countries like India hardly show any sensitivity to nature so absorbed they are in the global, consumerist culture encouraged by imperialism. They do not think that imperialism is a worldwide system of exploitation. They have shown no willingness to change their privileges and basic lifestyle in order to reduce the destruction of the environment. For peasant women the destruction of the ecology has led to untold hardships for them in carrying out their daily chores like procuring fuel, water, and fodder for cattle. Displacement due to take over of their forests and lands for big projects also affects them badly.

Hence these aspects can and have become rallying points for mobilizing them in struggles. But from this we cannot conclude that women as against men have a "natural" tendency to preserve nature. The struggle against monopoly capitalism, that is relentlessly destroying nature, is a political struggle, a people's issue, in which the people as a whole, men and women must participate. And though the ecofeminist quote the Chipko struggle, in fact there are so many other struggles in our country in which both men and women have agitated on what can be considered as ecological issues and their rights.

The Narmada agitation, the agitations of villagers in Orissa against major mining projects, and against nuclear missile project or the struggle of tribals in Bastar and Jharkhand against the destruction of forests and major steel projects are examples of this.

5) Socialist Feminism

Socialist or Marxist women who were active in the new left, anti-Vietnam war student movement in the 1960s joined the women's liberation movement as it spontaneously emerged. Influenced by the feminist arguments raised within the movement they raised questions about their own role within the broad democratic movement, and the analysis on the women's question being put forward by the New Left (essentially a Trotskyite revisionist leftist trend critical of the Soviet Union and China) o f which they were a part. Though they were critical of the socialists and communists for ignoring the women's question, unlike the radical feminist trend, they did not break with the socialist movement but concentrated their efforts on combining Marxism with radical feminist ideas. There is a wide spectrum amongst them as well.

At one end of the spectrum are a section called Marxist feminists who differentiate themselves from socialist feminist because they adhere more closely to Marx, Engels, and Lenin's writings and have concentrated their analysis on women's exploitation within the capitalist political economy. At the other end of the spectrum are those who have focused on how gender identity is created through child rearing practices. They have focused on the psychological processes and are influenced by Freud. They are also called psycho-analytic feminists. The term feminist is used by all of them.

Some feminists who are involved in serious study and political activity from the Marxist perspective also call themselves Marxist feminists to denote both their difference from socialist feminists and their seriousness about the woman's question. Marxist feminists like Mariarosa Dalla Costa and others from a feminist group in Italy did a theoretical analysis of housework under capitalism. Dalla Costa argued in detail that through domestic work women are reproducing the worker, a commodity.

Hence according to them it is wrong to consider that only use values are created through domestic work. Domestic work also produces exchange values - the labor power. When the demand for wages for housework arose Dalla Costa supported it as a tactical move to make society realize the value of housework. Though most did not agree with their conclusion that housework creates surplus value, and supported the demand for wages for housework, yet their analysis created a great deal of discussion in feminist and Marxist circles around the world and led to a heightened awareness of how housework serves capital. Most socialist feminists were critical of the demand but it was debated at length. Initially the question of housework (early 70s) was an important part of their discussion but by the 1980s it became clear that a large proportion of women were working outside the house or for some part of their lives they worked outside the house.

By the early 1980s 45 % of the total workforce in the US was female. Then their focus of study became the situation of women in the labour force in their countries. Socialist feminists have analysed how women in the US have been discriminated against in jobs and wages. The gender segregation in jobs too (concentration of women in certain types of jobs which are low wage) has been documented in detail by them. These studies have been useful to expose the patriarchal nature of capitalism. But for the purpose of this article, only the theoretical position regarding women's oppression and capitalism that they take will be considered by us. We will present the position put forward by Heidi Hartmann in a much circulated and debated article, "The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union" to understand the basic socialist feminist position.

According to Heidi Hartmann Marxism and feminism are two sets of systems of analysis which have been married but the marriage is unhappy because only Marxism, with its analytic power to analyse capital is dominating. But according to her while Marxism provides an analysis of historical development and of capital it has not analysed the relations of men and women. She says that the relations between men and women are also determined by a system which is patriarchal, which feminists have analysed.

Both historical materialist analysis of Marxism and patriarchy as a historical and social structure are necessary to understand the development of western capitalist society and the position of women within it, to understand how relations between men have been created and how patriarchy has shaped the course of capitalism. She is critical of Marxism on the women's question. She says that Marxism has dealt with the women's question only in relation to the economic system. She says women are viewed as workers, and Engels believed that sexual division of labour would be destroyed if women came into production, and all aspects of women's life are studied only in relation to how it perpetuates the capitalist system. Even the study on housework dealt with the relation of women to capital but not to men. Though Marxists are aware of the sufferings of women they have focused on private property and capital as the source of women's oppression. But according to her, early Marxists failed to take into account the difference in men's and women's experience of capitalism and considered patriarchy a left over from the earlier period. She says that Capital and private property do not oppress women as women; hence their abolition will not end women's oppression. Engels and other Marxists do not analyse the labour of women in the family properly. Who benefits from her labour in the house she asks -not only the capitalist, but men as well. A materialist approach ought not to have ignored this crucial point. It follows that men have a material interest in perpetuating women's subordination.

Further her analysis held that though Marxism helps us to understand the capitalist production structure, its occupational structure and its dominant ideology its concepts like reserve army. Wage labourer, class are gender-blind because it makes no analysis about who will fill these empty places, that is, who will be the wage labourer, who will be the reserve army etc etc. For capitalism anyone, irrespective of gender, race, and nationality, can fill them. This, they say, is where the woman's question suffers.

Some feminists have analysed women's work using Marxist methodology but adapting it. Juliet Mitchell for example analysed woman's work in the market, her work of reproduction, sexuality and child-rearing. According to her, the work in the market place is production, the rest is ideological. For Mitchell patriarchy operates in the realm of reproduction, sexuality and child-rearing. She did a psychoanalytical study of how gender based personalities are formed for men and women. According to Mitchell, "we are dealing with two autonomous are as: the economic mode of capitalism and the ideological mode of patriarchy." Hartmann disagrees with Mitchell because she views patriarchy only as ideological and does not give it a material base.

According to her the material base o f patriarchy is men's control over women's labour power. They control it by denying access to women over society's productive resources (denying her a job with a living wage) and restricting her sexuality. This control according to her operates not only within the family but also outside at the work place. At home she serves the husband and at work she serves the boss. Here it is important to note that Hartmann makes no distinction between men of the ruling classes and other men. Hartmann concluded that there is no pure patriarchy and no pure capitalism. Production and reproduction are combined in a whole society in the way it is organized and hence we have what she calls patriarchal capitalism.

According to her there is a strong partnership between patriarchy and capitalism. Marxism she feels underestimated the strength and flexibility of patriarchy and overestimated the strength of capital. Patriarchy has adapted and capital is flexible when it encounters earlier modes of production and it has adapted them to suit its needs for accumulation of capital. Women's role in the labour market, her work at home is determined by the sexual division of labour and capitalism has utilized them to treat women as secondary workers and to divide the working class. Some other socialist feminists do not agree with Hartmann's position that there are two autonomous systems operating, one, capitalism in the realm of production, and two, patriarchy in the realm of reproduction and ideology and they call this the dual systems theory Iris Young for example believes that Hartmann's dual system makes patriarchy some kind of a universal phenomenon which is existing before capitalism and in every known society makes it ahistorical and prone to cultural and racial bias. Iris Young and some other socialist feminists argue that there is only one system that is capitalist patriarchy.

According to Young the concept that can help to analyse this clearly is not class, because it is gender-blind, but division of labour. She argues that the gender based division of labour is central, fundamental to the structure of the relations of production.

Among the recently more influential socialist feminists are Maria Mies (she also has developed into an eco-feminist) who also focuses on division of labour - "The hierarchical division of labor between men and women and its dynamics for man integral part of dominant production relations, i.e. class relations of a particular epoch and society and of the broader national and international divisions of labour."

According to her a materialist explanation requires us to analyse the nature of women's and men's interaction with nature and through it build up their human or social nature. In this context she is critical of Engels for not considering this aspect. Femaleness and maleness are defined in each historical epoch differently. Thus in earlier what she calls matristic societies women were significant for they were productive - they were active producers of life. Under capitalist conditions this has changed and they are housewives, empty of all creative and productive qualities. Women as producers of children and milk, as gatherers and agriculturists had a relation with nature which was different from that of men. Men related to nature through tools. Male's supremacy came not from superior economic contribution but from the fact that they invented destructive tools through which they controlled women, nature and other men. Further she adds that it was the pastoral economy in which patriarchal relations were established. Men learnt the role of the male in impregnation. Their monopoly over arms and this knowledge of the male role in reproduction led to changes in the division of labour. Women were no longer important as gatherers of food or as producers, but their role was breeding children. Thus she concludes that, "we can attribute the a symmetric division of labour between men and women to this predatory mode of production, or rather appropriation, which is based on male monopoly over means of coercion, i.e. arms and direct violence by means of which permanent relations of exploitation and dominance between the sexes was created and maintained."

To uphold this, the family, state and religion have played an important part. Though Mies says that we should reject biological determinism, she herself veers towards it. Several of their proposals for social change, like those o f radical feminists, are directed towards transformation of man-woman relations and the responsibility of rearing children. The central concern of socialist feminists according to her is reproductive freedom. This means that women should have control over whether to have children and when to have children.

Reproductive freedom includes the right to safe birth control measures, the right to safe abortion, day care centres, a decent wage that can look after children, medical care, and housing. It also includes freedom of sexual choice; that is the right to have children outside the socio-cultural norm that children can only be brought up in a family of a woman with a man. Women outside such arrangements should also be allowed to have and bring up children. And child rearing in the long run must be transformed from a woman's task to that o f men and women. Women should not suffer due to childlessness or due to compulsory motherhood. But they recognize that to guarantee all the above, the wage structure of society must change, women's role must change, compulsory heterosexuality must end, the care of children must become a collective enterprise and all this is not possible within the capitalist system. The capitalist mode of production must be transformed, but not alone, both (also mode of procreation) must be transformed together.

Among later writers an important contribution has come from Gerda Lerner. In her book, The Creation of Patriarchy, she goes into a detailed explanation of the origins of patriarchy. She argues that it is a historical process that is not one moment in history, due, not to one cause, but a process that proceeded over 2500 years from about 3100 B.C. to 600 B.C. She states that Engels in his pioneering work made major contributions to our understanding of women's position in society and history. He defined the major theoretical questions for the next hundred years. He made propositions regarding the historicity of women's subordination but he was unable to substantiate his propositions. From her study of ancient societies and states she concludes that it was the appropriation of women's sexual and reproductive capacity by men that lies at the foundation of private property; it preceded private property.

The first states (Mesopotamia and Egypt) were organized in the form of patriarchy. Ancient law codes institutionalized women's sexual subordination (men control over the family) and slavery and they were enforced with the power of the state. This was done through force, economic dependency of women and class privileges to women of the upper classes. Through her study of Mesopotamia and other ancient states she traces how ideas, symbols and metaphors were developed through which patriarchal sex/gender relations were incorporated into Western civilization. Men learnt how to dominate other societies by dominating their own women. But women continued to play an important role as priestesses, healers etc as seen in goddess worship. And it was only later that women's devaluation in religion also took place.

Socialist feminists use terms like mechanical Marxists, traditional Marxists to economistic Marxists as those who uphold the Marxist theory concentrating on study and analysis of the capitalist economy and politics and differentiate themselves from them. They are criticising all Marxists for not considering the fight against women's oppression as the central aspect of the struggle against capitalism. According to them organizing women (feminist organizing projects) should be considered as socialist political work and socialist political activity must have a feminist side to it.

Socialist-Feminist strategy for women's liberation

After tracing the history of the relationship between the left movement and the feminist movement in the US, a history where they have walked separately, Hartmann strongly feels that the struggle against capitalism cannot be successful unless feminist issues are also taken up. She puts forward a strategy in which she says that the struggle for socialism must be an alliance with groups with different interests ( e.g. women's interests are different from general working class interests) and secondly she says that women must not trust men to liberate them after revolution. Women must have their own 48 separate organisation and their own power base. Young too supports the formation of autonomous women's groups but thinks that there are no issues concerning women that do not involve an attack on capitalism as well.

As far as her strategy is concerned she means that there is no need for a vanguard party to make revolution successful and that women's groups must be independent of the socialist organisation. Jagger puts this clearly when she writes that, "the goal of socialist feminism is to overthrow the whole social order of what some call capitalist patriarchy in which women suffer alienation in every aspect of their lives. The socialist feminist strategy is to support some "mixed" socialist organisations. But also form independent women's groups and ultimately an independent womens movement committed with equal dedication to the destruction of capitalism and the destruction of male dominance. The women's movement will join in coalitions with other revolutionary movements, but it will not give up its organizational independence."

They have taken up agitations and propaganda on issues that are anti-capitalist and against male domination. Since they identify the mode of reproduction (procreation etc) as the basis for the oppression of women, they have included it in the Marxist concept of the base of society. So they believe that many of the issues being taken up like the struggle against rape, sexual harassment, for free abortion are both anti-capitalist and a challenge to male domination. They have supported the efforts of developing a women's culture which encourages the collective spirit. They also support the efforts to build alternative institutions, like health care facilities and encouraged community living or some form of midway arrangement. In this they are close to radical feminists. But unlike radical feminists whose aim is that these facilities should enable women to move away from patriarchal, white culture into their own haven, socialist feminists do not believe such a retreat is possible within the framework of capitalism. In short socialist feminists see it as a means of organizing and helping women, while radical feminists see it as a goal of completely separating from men. Socialist feminists, like radical feminists believe that efforts to change the family structure, which is what they call the cornerstone of women's oppression must start now. So they have been encouraging community living, or some sort of mid way arrangements where people try to overcome the gender division in work sharing, looking after children, where lesbians and heterosexual people can live together.

Though they are aware that this is only partial, and success cannot be achieved within a capitalist society they believe it is important to make the effort. Radical feminists assert that such arrangements are "living in revolution." That means this act is revolution itself. Socialist feminists are aware that transformation will not come slowly, that there will be periods of upheaval, but these are preparations.

So this is their priority. Both radical feminists and socialist feminists have come under strong attack from black women for essentially ignoring the situation of black women and concentrating all their analysis on the situation of white, middle class women and theorizing from it. For example, Joseph, points out the condition of black slave women who were never considered "feminine". In the fields and plantations , in labour and in punishment they were treated equal to men. The black family could never stabilize under conditions of slavery and black men were hardly in a condition to dominate their women, slaves that they were. Also later on, black women have had to work for their living and many of them have been domestic servants in rich white houses. The harassment they faced there, the long hours of work make their experience very different from that of white women. Hence they are not in agreement with the concepts of family being the source of oppression (for blacks it was a source of resistance to racism), on dependence of women on men (black women can hardly be dependent on black men given the high rates of unemployment among them) and the reproduction role of women (they reproduced white labour and children through their domestic employment in white houses). Racism is an all pervasive situation for them and this brings them in alliance with black men rather than with white women. Then white women themselves have been involved in perpetuating racism, about which feminists should introspect she argues. Initially black women hardly participated in the feminist movement though in the 1980s slowly a black feminist movement has developed which is trying to combine the struggle against male domination with the struggle against racism and capitalism. These and similar criticisms from women of other third world countries has given rise to a trend within feminism called global feminism. In this context post-modernism also gained a following among feminists.

Critique of Socialist Feminism

Basically if we see the main theoretical writings of socialist feminists we can see that they are trying to combine Marxist theory with radical feminist theory and their emphasis is on proving that women's oppression is the central and moving force in the struggle within society. The theoretical writings have been predominantly in Europe and the US and they are focused on the situation in advanced capitalist society. All their analysis is related to capitalism in their countries. Even their understanding of Marxism is limited to the study of dialectics of a capitalist economy.

There is a tendency to universalize the experience and structure of advanced capitalist countries to the whole world. For example in South Asia and China which have had a long feudal period we see that women's oppression in that period was much more severe. The Maoist perspective on the women's question in India also identifies patriarchy as an institution that has been the cause of women's oppression throughout class society. But it does not identify it as a separate system with its own laws of motion. The understanding is that patriarchy takes different content and forms in different societies depending on their level of development and the specific history and condition of that particular society; that it has been and is being used by the ruling classes to serve their interests. Hence there is no separate enemy for patriarchy.

The same ruling classes, whether imperialists, capitalists, feudals and the State they control, are the enemies of women because they uphold and perpetuate the patriarchal family, gender discrimination and the patriarchal ideology within that society. They get the support of ordinary men undoubtedly who imbibe the patriarchal ideas, which are the ideas of the ruling classes and oppress women. But the position of ordinary men and those of the ruling classes cannot be compared. Socialist feminists by emphasizing reproduction are underplaying the importance of the role of women in social production. The crucial question is that without women having control over the means of production and over the means of producing necessities and wealth how can the subordination of women ever be ended? This is not only an economic question, but also a question of power, a political question.

Though this can be considered in the context of the gender based division of labour in practice their emphasis is on relations within the heterosexual family and on ideology of patriarchy. On the other hand the Marxist perspective stresses women's role in social production and her withdrawal from playing a significant role in social production has been the basis for her subordination in class society. So we are concerned with how the division of labour, relations to the means of production and labour itself in a particular society is organized to understand how the ruling classes exploited women and forced their subordination. Patriarchal norms and rules helped to intensify the exploitation of women and reduce the value of their labour.

Supporting the argument given by Firestone, socialist feminists are stressing on women's role in reproduction to build their entire argument. They take the following quotation of Engels: "According to the materialist conception , the determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and reproduction of immediate life. This, again, is of a two fold character: on the one side, the production of the means of existence, of food, clothing and shelter and the tools necessary for that production; on the other side, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. The social organisation under which the people of a particular epoch live is determined by both kinds of production." (Origin of the family. Private property and the State).

On the basis of this quotation they make the point that in their analysis and study they only concentrated on production ignoring reproduction altogether. Engels' quote gives the basic framework of a social formation. Historical materialism, our study of history, makes it clear that any one aspect cannot be isolated or even understood without taking the other into account. The fact is that throughout history women have played an important role in social production and to ignore this and to assert that women's role in the sphere of reproduction is the central aspect and it should be the main focus is in fact accepting the argument of the patriarchal ruling classes that women's social role in reproduction is most important and nothing else is.

The socialist feminists also distort and render meaningless the concept of base and superstructure in their analysis. Firestone says that (and so do socialist feminists like Hartmann) reproduction is part of the base. It follows from this that all social relations connected with it must be considered as part of the base the family, other man-women relations, etc. If all the economic relations and reproductive relations are part of the base the concept of base becomes so broad that it loses its meaning altogether and it cannot be an analytic tool as it is meant to be. Gender based division of labour has been a useful tool to analyse the patriarchal bias in the economic structure of particular societies. But the socialist feminists who are putting forward the concept of gender division of labour as being more useful than private property are confusing the point, historically and analytically. The first division of labour was between men and women. And it was due to natural or biological causes - the role of women in bearing children. But this did not mean inequality between them - the domination of one sex over another.

Women's share in the survival of the group was very important - the food gathering they did, the discovery they made of growing and tending plants, the domestication of animals was essential for the survival and advance of the group. At the same time further division of labour took place which was not sex based. The invention of new tools, knowledge of domesticating animals, of pottery, of metal work, of agriculture, all these and more contributed to making a more complex division of labour. All this has to be seen in the context of the overall society and its structure ~ the development of clan and kinship structures, of interaction and clashes with other groups and of control over the means of production that were being developed. With the generation of surplus, with wars and the subjugation of other groups who could be made to labour, the process of withdrawal of women from social production appears to have begun.

This led to the concentration of the means of production and the surplus in the hands of clan heads/ tribe heads begun which became manifest as male domination. Whether this control of the means of production remained communal in form, or whether it developed in the form of private property, whether by then class formation took place fully or not is different in different societies. We have to study the particular facts of specific societies. Based on the information available in his time, Engels traced the process in Western Europe in ancient times, it is for us to trace this process in our respective societies. The full fledged institutionalization of patriarchy could only come later, that is the defence of or the ideological justification for the withdrawal of women from social production and their role being limited to reproduction in monogamous relationships, could only come after the full development of class society and the emergence of the State.

Hence the mere fact of gender division of labour does not explain the inequality. To assert that gender based division of labour is the basis of women's oppression rather than class still begs the question. If we do not find some social, material reasons for the inequality we are forced into accepting the argument that men have an innate drive for power and domination. Such an argument is self-defeating because it means there is no point in struggling for equality. It can never be realized. The task of bearing children by itself cannot be the reason for this inequality, for as we have said earlier it was a role that was lauded and welcomed in primitive society. Other material reasons had to arise that v/as the cause, which the radical and socialist feminists are not probing. In the realm of ideology socialist feminists have done detailed analyses exposing the patriarchal culture in their society, e.g. the myth of motherhood.

But the one-sided emphasis by some of them who focus only on ideological and psychological factors makes them loose sight of the wider socio-economic structure on which this ideology and psychology is based. In organizational questions the socialist feminists are trailing the radical feminists and anarcha-feminists. They have clearly placed their strategy but this is not a strategy for socialist revolution. It is a completely reformist strategy because it does not address the question of how socialism can be brought about. If, as they believe, socialist/communist parties should not do it then the women's groups should bring forth a strategy of how they will overthrow the male of the monopoly bourgeoisie. They are restricting their practical activities to small group organizing, building alternative communities, of general propaganda and mobilizing around specific demands. This is a form of economistic practice. These activities in themselves are useful to organize people at the basic level but they are not enough, to overthrow capitalism and to take the process of women's liberation ahead. This entails a major organising work involving confrontation with the State - its intelligence and armed power.

Socialist feminists have left this question aside, in a sense left it to the very revisionist and revolutionary parties whom they criticize. Hence their entire orientation is reformist, to undertake limited organizing and propaganda within the present system. A large number of the theoreticians of the radical feminist and socialist feminist trend have been absorbed in high paying, middle class jobs esp. in the universities and colleges and this is reflected in the elitism that has crept into their writing and their distance from the mass movement. It is also reflected in the realm of theory One Marxist feminist states, " By the 1980s however many socialist and Marxist feminists working in or near universities and colleges not only had been thoroughly integrated into the professional middle class but had also abandoned historical materialism's class analysis…"

6) Post-modernism and Feminism

The criticism of feminists from non-white women led a section of feminists to move in the direction of multi-culturalism and postmodernism. Taking off from the existentialist writer Simone de Beauvoir they consider that woman is the "other" (opposed to the dominant culture prevailing, e.g. dalits. adivadis, women, etc). Post-modemist feminists are glorifying the position of the "Other" because it is supposed to give insights into the dominant culture of which she is not a part. Women can therefore be critical of the norms, values and practices imposed on everyone by the dominant culture. They believe that studies should be oriented from the values of those who are being studied, the subalterns, who have been dominated. Post-modernism has been popular among academics. They believe that no fixed category exists, in this case, woman. The self is fragmented by various identities - by sex, class, caste, ethnic community, race. These various identities have a value in themselves. Thus this becomes one form of cultural relativism.

Hence, for example, in reality no category of only woman exists. Woman can be one of the identities of the self there are others too. There will be a dalit woman, a dalit woman prostitute, an upper caste woman, and such like. Since each identity has a value in itself, no significance is given to values towards which all can strive. Looked at in this way there is no scope to find common ground for collective political activity. The concept woman, helped to bring women together and act collectively. But this kind of identity politics divides more than it unites. The unity is on the most narrow basis.

Post-modernists celebrate difference and identity and they criticize Marxism for focusing on one "totality" - class. Further post-modernism does not believe that language (western languages atleast) reflects reality. They believe that identities are "constructed" through "discourse". Thus, in their understanding, language constructs reality. Therefore many of them have focused on "deconstruction" of language, hi effect this leaves a person with nothing - there is no material reality about which we can be certain. This is a form of extreme subjectivism. Post-modemist feminists have focused on psychology and language. Post-modernism, in agreement with the famous French philosopher Foucault, are against what they call "relations of power". But this concept of power is diffused and it is not clearly defined.

Who wields the power? According to Foucault it is only at the local level, so resistance to power can only be local. Is this not the basis of NGO functioning which unites people against some local corrupt power and make adjustments with the power above, the central and state govts. In effect post-modernism is extremely divisive because it promotes fragmentation between people and gives relative importance to identities without any theoretical framework to understand the historical reasons for identity formation and to link the various identities. So we can have a gathering of NGOs like WSF where everyone celebrates their identity - women, prostitutes, gays, lesbians, tribals, dalits etc etc., but there is no theory bringing them under an overall understanding, a common strategy. Each group will resist its own oppressors, as it perceives them. With such an argument, logically, there can be no organization, at best it can be spontaneous organisation at the local level and temporary coalitions. To advocate organisation according to their understanding means to reproduce power - hierarchy, oppression. Essentially they leave the individual to resist for himself or herself, and are against consistent organized resistance and armed resistance.

Carole Stabile, a Marxist feminist has put it well when she says, "Anti-organisational bias is part and parcel of the post - modernist package. To organize any but the most provisional and spontaneous coalitions is, for post- modernist social theorists and feminists alike , to reproduce oppression, hierarchies , and forms of intractable dominance. The fact that capitalism is extremely organized makes little difference , because one resists against a multivalent diffuse form of power. Nor, as Joreen pointed out over two decades ago, does it seem to matter that structurelessness produces its own forms of tyranny. Thus,in place of any organized politics, postmodernist social theory offers us variations on pluralism , individualism , individualized agency, and ultimately individualized solutions that have never - and will never - be capable of resolving structural problems." (1997)

It is not surprising that for the postmodernists, capitalism, imperialism etc do not mean anything more than one more form of power. While post-modernism in its developed form may not to be found in a semi-colonial society like India, yet many bourgeois feminists have been influenced by it. Their vehement criticism of revolutionary and revisionist organisations on grounds of bureaucracy and hierarchy also reflects the influence of postmodernism in recent times.

Conclusion

We have presented in brief, the main theoretical trends in the feminist movements as they have developed in the West in the contemporary period. While the debate with Marxism and within Marxism dominated the 1970s, in the 1980s cultural feminism with its separatist agenda and focus on the cultural aspects of women's oppression came to the fore. Issues of sexual choice and reproductive role of women came to dominate the debate and discussions in feminist circles. Many socialist feminists too have given significance to these questions though not in the extreme form that cultural feminists have. Transformation of the heterosexual family became the main call of the bourgeois feminist movement and the more active sections among them tried to bring it into practice as well. Though many of them may have envisaged a change in the entire social system in this way in fact it became a reformist approach which they have tried to theorize.

Postmodernism made its influence felt in the 1990s. Yet in the late 1990s Marxism is again becoming an important theory within feminist analysis. This critical overview of the way the feminist movement (particularly the radical feminist and socialist feminist trends) theoretically analysed women's oppression, the solutions they have offered and strategies they evolved to take the movement forward we can say that flaws in their theory have led to advocating solutions which have taken the movement into a dead end. Inspite of the tremendous interest generated by the movement and wide support from women who were seeking to understand their own dissatisfactions and problems the movement could not develop into a consistent broad based movement including not only the middle classes but also women from the working class and ethnically oppressed sections.

The main weaknesses in their theory and strategies were:

Seeking roots of women's oppression in her reproductive role. Since women's role in reproduction is determined by biology, it is something that cannot be changed. Instead of determining the material, social causes for origin of women's oppression they focused on a biologically given factor thereby falling into the trap of biological determinism.

In relation with her biological role focusing on the patriarchal nuclear family as the basic structure in society in which her oppression is rooted. Thus their emphasis was on opposing the heterosexual family as the main basis of women's oppression. As a result the wider socio-economic structure in which the family exists and which shapes the family was ignored.

Making the contradiction between men and women as the main contradiction. Concentrating their attention on changing the sex/gender system - the gender roles that men and women are trained to play. This meant concentrating on the cultural, psychological aspects of social life ignoring the wider political and economic forces that give rise to and defend patriarchal culture.

Emphasising the psychological/personality differences between men and women as biological and advocating separatism for women. Overemphasis on sexual liberation for women Separate groups, separate live-in arrangements and lesbianism. Essentially this meant that this section of the women's movement confined itself to small groups and could not appeal to or mobilize the mass of women.

Falling into the trap of imperialism and its promotion of pornography, sex-tourism etc by emphasizing the need for liberating women from sexual repression. Or in the name of equal opportunities supporting women's recruitment into the US Army before the Iraq War (2003).

Organizational emphasis on opposition to hierarchy and domination and focus on small consciousness raising groups and alternative activity, which is self-determined. Opposing the mobilization and organizing of large mass of oppressed women.

Ignoring or being biased against the contributions made by the socialist movements and socialist revolutions in Russia, China etc in bringing about a change in the condition of large sections of women.

How incorrect theoretical analysis and wrong strategies can affect a movement can be clearly seen in the case of the feminist movement. Not understanding women's oppression as linked to the wider exploitative socio-economic and political structure, to imperialism, they have sought solutions within the imperialist system itself. These solutions have at best benefited a section of middle class women but left the vast mass of oppressed and exploited women far from liberation. The struggle for women's liberation cannot be successful in isolation from the struggle to overthrow the imperialist system itself.

This piece originally appeared at Massalijn .

Hashtag Me Two: Reflections on Women's Solidarity

By Michelle Black Smith

When Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano tweeted #MeToo in solidarity with the all too many women who have been subjected to sexual assault and harassment, she started a firestorm, but not a movement. That distinction belongs to Tarana Burke, founder of the nonprofit Just Be Inc., an organization devoted to the "health, well being and wholeness of young women of color everywhere." Burke created the Me Too movement in 2006 after listening to young women speak of their experiences with sexual abuse. Burke, who has remained active in the fight for women's health and justice, raised the antennae of numerous women of color. Much to the chagrin of some, Burke was largely unacknowledged by many notable white feminists.

Burke's niche popularity and subsequent rise to prominence following research into the origins of the hashtag MeToo bring to the forefront a troubling but persistent state of being for white and black women in the struggle: how the former can be entirely committed to the equality of all women, and the latter become trustful of a group with members who have practiced betrayal in every movement central to the freedom of women, from the suffrage movement to women's rights to women's rights redux in 2016. This tension, existent since African girls and women arrived on American shores, shape shifts, becoming more or less easy to grasp with each decade but never abates. #MeToo is a powerful and galvanizing tool in the chest of women who wield it to assert voice while feeling support and safety in numbers. For her part, Burke has supported the hashtag with her own tweets. Yet, the movement Me Too, the #MeToo, and Burke's reaction to it leapfrog us backward in time to the mid-1800s when Sojourner Truth stood before a large conference of white women to assert her pain, her struggle, her femininity before a feminist gathering that recognized oppression through a narrow, exclusionary gaze. The "Ain't I a Woman" declaration by Truth has come under skepticism in recent years as histories of her direct quote and reaction to it at the 1851 Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio differ. What is certain: the "Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?" motto dates back to the British abolitionist movement of the 1820s, and the American abolitionist movement of the 1830s. Sojourner Truth, as her surname suggests, was in fact calling for a political landscape in which white men acknowledged the equality of black people and all women, and surrendered to the inevitability of power sharing. Fast forward to the present and Truth might be surprised to learn that the basic tenets of the struggle have not changed. White men and women are still fighting over power between themselves while black women are positioned in the middle, still having to determine who is an ally while carving out their own spheres of power and protecting their flanks.

The position of black women located between and behind white women and men is historical fact and contemporaneously significant. From the first wave of Africans landing on America's shores to the legal end of slavery in 1865, black girls and women were routinely caught between two brutal masters - the white men who owned and raped them, and the white women who commanded and resented them. There are documented examples of emotionally and spiritually mature white women who saw the enslaved woman's status as a moral dilemma if not a legal crime. Those legally free women sought to protect their sisters in bondage within their realms of power, their ability ranging from meager to substantial. That protection could take the form of bringing the enslaved woman from the fields to the big house, negotiating terms for the woman to grow special food or make extra clothes, or teaching her children - often the mistresses de facto step-children - how to read. More often, the enslaved girl or woman was seen as the "mistress," the adulterous female stealing affection and corrupting the slave master. Moreover, the enslaved woman was often a surrogate - the proxy sexual partner who relieved the slave master's spouse of her "wifely duties."

So, it is against this historical backdrop that I begin to examine my own unease with #MeToo, the hashtag and the movement. My black woman's cellular memory is wary, concerned that a repeat scenario of Sojourner Truth's experience in Akron is eminent. And it is. Witness the statistical majority of white women who voted for Donald Trump. While ninety-four per cent of black women voted for the over 60, flawed but unarguably qualified white woman, fifty-three per cent of white women voted to elect the over 70, sexually aggressive, "pussy-grabbing" unproven and underqualified man to the most powerful political office in the country. If white women cannot in a majority vote in their best interest, where does that place black women and other women of color in an ostensibly inclusive feminist struggle?

Simultaneously and increasingly, I am made uneasy by the number of complaints against prominent men concerning their sexually aggressive behaviors ranging from harassment to criminal assault. Are the accusations reported in the media indicative of actions by powerful men limited to certain professions, or are these pervasive behaviors that go largely unreported or unaddressed in spaces not commonly held in the public eye? Will the volume of complaints begin to desensitize a society to the grievances of wronged women? Will society become desensitized to the point of discouraging women from speaking out, thus victimizing the very population that deserves justice for the violence done to them? The feminist in me rejects any inclination to discount the legions of women who have come forward in the wake of the first Harvey Weinstein allegations, arguably the opening of the floodgate. My concern for humanity wants to place a protective arm around every niece, sister or girlfriend's daughter who might be a victim of the abhorrent and/or criminal behaviors named. The black activist in me struggles to understand how Bill Cosby is more dangerous and newsworthy than Bill O'Reilly and Roger Ailes. The womanist in me can't comprehend how so many of my white sisters could practice such an obvious act of self-hatred and sacrifice of self-interest that the result is a 21st century America that feels as perilous to me in my time as my grandmother must have felt in hers, as Sojourner Truth must have felt in hers. To be sure, Ms. Truth's life had none of the choices, freedoms or protections that I enjoy in mine. However, fear, like power, is both relative and real.

So, this January 20, 2018, I contemplate with apprehension whether to participate in the second national Women's March. Proximity is not an issue - I am an hour away from New York City. My late mother, a smart, progressive, self-loving and self-respecting black woman, was born on January 20th - I could march in honor of her. Or would she consider my marching honorable? A part of me thinks staying home will honor her as well. But, to stand in truth, and to stand with Truth is, for this black woman, the opportunity to wield my power, claim possession over my body, celebrate the black female aesthetic, and resist the simultaneous over-sexualizing and de-sexualizing of the black feminine form.

Let me be clear, I am not marching for the self-loathing, naval-gazing women who voted against their self-interests and mine. However, I will march for their offspring. If I march, I put foot to pavement to honor my mother and all the Sojourners of this world. I will march in support of the girls and young women and the vulnerable women who do not (yet) share my fully realized place in this world. I will march with the same pride I felt watching women of all colors, self-identifiers, cultural, ideological and faith backgrounds organize, lead and participate in the march of January 2017. I will not, however, accept the number two spot in a movement that only purports to empower and include all women. I will not proclaim "me too" at any white woman's latest ambivalent protest against a white male patriarchy where I am cast as the interloper in a marital spat. I can, however, walk alongside my white feminist sisters, as long as they are able and willing to walk alongside black womanist me.

Works Cited

Garcia, Sandra E. "The Woman Who Created #MeToo Long Before Hashtags." The New York Times 20 Oct. 2017 <https://mobile.nytimes.com>

Just Be Inc ., Tarana Burke <https://about.me>

Maternal and Child Health in the Face of Natural Disasters

By Cherise Charleswell

Ironically, just three months after the unqualified, unethical, and unstable narcissist who occupies the White House, decided to pull out of the Climate Accords/Paris Climate Agreement , the United States has been struck by a number of natural disasters from the uncontrollable fires raging in Oregon and California, and other parts of the west coast, to hurricanes Harvey and Irma in the states of Texas and Florida, respectively. Irma first wreaked her damage on the Caribbean islands, leaving a trail of devastation, where in some places, such as the tiny island of B arbuda, where there was a reported 90% destruction of all structures. Both hurricanes have been recorded among the worse or most virulent in recorded history, in the past 150 years. There has also been hurricanes, flooding, and horrific mudslides in the countries of Nepal, Bangledash, and India, as well as Sierra Leone; where poverty and the lack of sustainable infrastructure has resulted in the deaths of thousands.

What is clear, and what has been long understood by scientists and those in public health, is that "climate change and environmental degradation is real". We have been sounding the horn for many decades now, and there has been many attempts to silence and discredit us. However, despite being climate change deniers, such as Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Florida Governor Rick Scott , have both called for federal aid, and declared a state of emergency. All while refusing to to truly address the root causes of this devastation. These climate change deniers and the internet trolls that they help to create through propaganda, misinformation, lies, and false promises of re-opening mines - which have likely already been stripped of all of its natural resources., continue to convince enough members of the public that climate change is a hoax. 45 (One seriously cannot refer to that man as President) even went as far as to claim that it was a hoax started by the Chinese to undermine US business interests.

Americans are now learning that they should be doing more than sending "thoughts and prayers" when a natural disaster occurs, and should instead do something to prevent or reduce the harmfulness of the next one, by voting into office legislators that would enact the necessary policies that address climate change and environmental degradation. Recognizing that climate change has become the most pressing public health issue impacting the lives of people globally, the American Public Health Association (APHA), as well as a number of its affiliates, such as the Southern California Public Health Association (SCPHA) have choose to make climate change the theme of their 2017 conferences. In fact, in January APHA has declared that 2017 is the Year of Climate Change and Health, APHA actually has an ongoing climate change initiative that has included monthly themes, webinars, and resources for advocacy. While SCPHA just established its Resolutions, with the first titled Resolution on Oil & Gas Development, Climate and Health . Again, the experts agree that "climate change is real".

Another issue that is not being openly discussed in these responses to natural disasters is the fact that, like most aspects of life, intersectionality is at play, and having an identity that encompasses any combination of the following factors, increases the degree of impact that a natural disaster has on one's health and wellbeing: being located in the global south, being a person of color, having a disability, being an immigrant or refugee, being a woman, being a mother, and being low income.

Further, the fact of the matter is that while Western nations, especially the US, utilize most of the natural resources and carry out activities that have increased pollution, environmental degradation, and have hasten climate change, nations in the Global South are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change, and suffer the greatest degree of destruction and burden. And again, what complicates matters is that these nations are among those without the wealth and resources to protect and provide services to its citizens, fortified their structures, and readily rebuild following the devastation; putting citizens at risk for disease and injury.

Whether abroad or within the US, due to those aforementioned intersections, those who are the most impacted by natural disasters are women and children ; particularly mothers. During the wake of Hurricane Harvey there were images of many mothers trying guide their children to safely. One could not helped to notice that many were single mothers, or simply had no men in sight who were able to assist. On a CNN interview there was an African American mother who lashed out at interviewers for their insensitivity in wanting to know all of the details about the trauma that she and her children went through trying to navigate the storm, and there was the tragic story of a three year old child being found alive, grasping to the body of her deceased mother . It is easy to talk about evacuation when there is available income to readily do that, as well infrastructure that can accommodate a mass exodus of people from major metropolitan areas; however it becomes far more difficult when

All of this points to a subset of maternal & child health that public health truly needs to consider more intently, and that is wellbeing during and after a natural disaster. This consideration needs to ask the questions:

• Are communities being effectively assisted in preparing for a natural disaster?

• Are special considerations being given to helping to evacuate and shelter single mothers and their children, knowing that they do not have any other support in the home?

• Are resources to withstand natural disasters being made available to those who may not be able to afford the, or have access to reliable transportation to gather them? The central argument is that more resources need to be invested in disaster preparation and not just focus all monies and other resources to disaster response.

• Are shelters being stocked with supplies that will be most needed by mothers of infants, toddlers, and small children: diapers, bottles, etc.?

• Are precautions being carried out to accept pregnant women into shelters, and assist if they go into labor?

Of course, we would want to ask where are the fathers, and the answer may be that they work a distance from their homes, particularly in the global south, have fell victim to the natural disaster, which was the case with the 2004 tsunami that pulled millions of people into the Indian Ocean, or that they were literally off saving themselves; leaving women to fulfill the traditional role of nurturer and protector of their children. One that they are showing that they are ready and willing to give their own lives to fulfill.

Women Workers Versus Intersectional Exploitation: Striving for Working-Class Feminism

By Tatiana Cozzarelli

This article originally appeared at Left Voice .

Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi, an Indian American, is the CEO of PepsiCo, the second largest food and beverage business in the world. It produces products such as Pepsi, Lay's, Quaker, Dorito, Starbuck's Ready-to-Drink, 7UP, Cheetos, Aquafina, Mountain Dew, Gatorade and Tropicana. In 2016, it made $62.8 billion in sales, had a market value of $159.4 billion, and employed an estimated 264,000 workers. It is no wonder that as CEO of such an important global corporation, Nooyi was ranked among the world's most powerful women more than once.

Not only has Nooyi been able to achieve the highest levels of business success as an individual, but she opens doors to people of color and women within the corporation. Currently, 27 percent of senior executives at PepsiCo are women and 36 percent are people of color- more diverse than the average corporation without a doubt. In the UK, PepsiCo has been ranked one of the top 50 companies for women to work over six times. The Times and Opportunity Now say that PepsiCo "is leading the way in gender equality in the workplace," in part due to a Strategies for Success program that helps female middle managers reach senior management positions.

For some, Nooyi is a model of female empowerment, evidence that women, and even women of color, can knock down the barriers of racism and sexism to achieve anything they set their minds to. Some may go further to argue that her empowerment is not just an individual achievement because she opens the doors for other women as well, a model feminist.

Some would argue that Nooyi's life demonstrates that the barriers of the past that limited our grandmothers from the highest positions are long gone and that we have entered a new era of equality. Based on this logic, there are still difficulties women face, but women like Nooyi are shining examples that women can overcome these difficulties.

This kind of feminism is a meaningless dead end. While Nooyi stands as a beacon of progress, women all over the world suffer from illiteracy, violence, low wages, horrible working conditions. For every Nooyi, there are thousands of women whose bodies and spirits are crushed by the literal and symbolic weight of heavy machinery used to produce the products that make Nooyi a billionaire.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of PepsiCo in Argentina, a factory where a majority female staff are currently organizing a struggle against layoffs. This struggle highlights the faults of lean-in feminism and exemplifies a different kind of feminism - one that points to a real way forward for women around the world.

The Women of PepsiCo

For years, PepsiCo hyper exploited workers in the factory, hiring an overwhelmingly subcontracted female workforce that worked 12 hour days. Catalina Balaguer, a 10 year veteran of the factory and militant of the Partido de Trabajadores Socialistas (PTS) says, "A lot of us women didn't say that we had kids, because we thought they would fire us. In time, we learned that having kids, being single mothers was in some cases a guarantee that we would be even more exploited. They knew we needed the money." She describes the horrible working conditions - 12 hour days, working over the weekend, short breaks, low wages, and dangerous conditions. "If you got pregnant, you had to work just like any other worker to make sure you kept your job. We spent years doing the same monotonous motions; years of our bodies bent in the same position. We are an extension of the machines. The machines spit bags of chips at us that we pack into boxes over and over again until we die. Every day, the same work that ruins our bodies."

In 2001, Katy, along with several other co-workers, was fired for organizing in the factory. For a year and a half, Katy fought for her job with the help of a fellow PTS militant who is a lawyer. They took the fight outside the courtroom, seeking solidarity from universities and other sectors of workers. Katy says, "We did an investigation with people at the university, psychologists, and sociologists, where we talked about what it was like to be a woman worker. We were able to put out good material about the complexity of being a woman worker - how much you spend and how much you make, how much time we work at the factory, how much time we work at home, and it was a good way to talk to other women workers… It made other women workers de-naturalize the work conditions we had."

Katy not only won her job back, but forced PepsiCo to take measures to save face. They stopped super exploiting subcontracted workers and began to make special donations to charities and to hire people with disabilities etc. Yet the real victories were in the understanding of workers at PepsiCo. "The struggle cost us suspensions, firings and threats, but we would do it again a million times if it changes the consciousness of tons of women who are not willing to resign themselves to the misery of this system," said Katy.

"The abuse, the anger, and the pain taught us to fight and to organize" said Katy. She and other workers, some of whom are members of the Trotskyist Party PTS organized and won leadership of the shop floor committee. As shop floor leaders, they won several concessions: leave for pregnant co-workers, better and safer work conditions and the end of subcontracting. The shop floor committee organizes regular assemblies to vote and decide on actions, promoting internal democracy and participation in the factory.

PepsiCo Workers for Women's Rights

PepsiCo particularly fought for the rights of women workers at PepsiCo and at other factories. For example, in 2010, along with the women's commission at Kraft Foods, they organized a road blockage, holding a sign that said "Subcontracting and Precarious Work are Violence." The workers also organized a work stoppage on March 8 for the International Women's Strike, as well as every June 3 for the Ni Una Menos march. At Tuesday's massive march for PepsiCo workers, Katy wore a sweater that said "Ni Una Menos Sin Trabajo" - Not one more without work.

She says, "We working women know that violence doesn't just happen in the domestic sphere. It also happens at workplaces and at the hands of people who are supposed to represent us in the government. The government just defends their own interests and submits families to the worst humiliation and the worst living conditions."

In the workplace, men and women organize together for women's rights, as well as for their rights as workers. "We have advanced with unity between male and female workers because we understand that our enemy is the boss who has demonstrated, with a sign on the door, that gender doesn't matter when it is time to fire us. We decide, we organize ourselves, we have assemblies, we vote (in the assemblies) and fight alongside our male co-workers: not ahead of them, not behind them. At their side, standing firm for our rights." Male co-workers who regularly witness the discrimination, humiliation, and violence suffered by women struggle side by side their co-workers against the managers and the bosses.

The Battle at PepsiCo

In the midst of an economic crisis, government austerity measures, and a constant increase in layoffs, PepsiCo decided to close the factory in Buenos Aires. The 600 workers arrived at work to find a sign that fired them from the job that they had worked and organized in for years, the factory that many had given their body to, leaving them with aches, pains, and injuries that will never go away. These workers decided to do what they have always done in the factory: fight back.

Despite the lack of support from the union bureaucrats, PepsiCo employees voted to occupy the factory, defying the American multinational led by Nooyi. They won over support from the community, engaging in pickets, roadblocks, interviews, solidarity concerts and more, with hundreds of workers, academics, and students expressing solidarity within Argentina and around the world. They organized a high profile boycott campaign and movement of international solidarity (including a petition in support that you can sign here). Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, figures from the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, the massive Ni Una Menos movement, and thousands of activists from human rights, student, and worker organizations have come out in support of PepsiCo workers.

In mid July, the PepsiCo workers were violently evicted from their occupation. Armed with tear gas, rubber bullets, and batons, the cops attacked the workers and their supporters. The police attacks on workers and students was broadcast live on TV. A private consulting firm has estimated that the eviction of PepsiCo was livestreamed, tweeted, and read about by upwards of 20 million people - nearly half the total population of Argentina.

Two hours after the eviction and with media attention and public pressure mounting, a Labor Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the workers and ordered the company to reinstate them. However, PepsiCo has yet to comply with the court's decision.

The workers continue their struggle, even without the factory occupation. On July 18, 30,000 people marched to the National Congress representing combative union locals, student organizations, human rights activists, and the globally known #NiUnaMenos feminist collective. The hashtag #TodosConPepsicoEnLucha (Everyone With Pepsico in Struggle) was a trending topic for six hours. The workers set up a tent to coordinate the struggle against PepsiCo, as well as against austerity and layoffs.

Working Class Women on the Front Lines

The women of Pepsico demonstrates that women in the highest positions of society, whether they be in the government or in corporations, do not mean the liberation of working women; Nooyi of PepsiCo may be a woman of color, but that didn't make the conditions at PepsiCo any less exploitative. Changing the gender of those in power is merely a symbolic gesture, with no material consequences for the vast majority of women.

Nooyi's position as the CEO of PepsiCo, her super salary of $25,168,597, and the super salaries of all the women and people of color she seeks to put in management positions are built on the broken backs of Katy and workers like her around the world. Nooyi is wealthy because Katy is overworked and underpaid; Nooyi keeps her position as CEO by guaranteeing profits for shareholders, profits made by the labor of Katy and her co-workers. The longer Katy works, the lower her wages, the more precarious her job, the more PepsiCo makes a profit and the more Nooyi is a "good" CEO.

When Forbes ranked PepsiCo one of the best places for women employees, did they take into account the hundreds of thousands of women around the world like Katy who break their backs and spend their lives as the human extensions of machines?

Just last year, Hillary Clinton tried to convince American women that she was a symbol of female empowerment and that a Clinton Presidency was a victory for all women. It's the empowerment represented by the CEO of PepsiCo and the governor of Buenos Aires. It's empowerment that means nothing to the women workers of PepsiCo, to the partners of male workers, and to the women all over the world who are oppressed and exploited by "empowered women".

Yet, the PepsiCo struggle also highlights a different kind of feminism, a feminism rooted in the working class, in combativeness, and in refusing to accept symbolic gestures of equality. It is a feminism that understands that working women's enemies are the bosses, whether male or female, and their allies are their male co-workers who labor in the same working conditions as women PepsiCo workers. Today, there are more women than ever in history in the labor market. This can be a source of tremendous strength, as working class women organize themselves against labor abuses and sexism.

PepsiCo workers show a different kind of feminism, a feminism rooted in working class solidarity. A feminism that defends the working class and women against all violence by individual men, the capitalists, and the government. A feminism that does not seek individual empowerment but the empowerment of the working class as a class in defense of their rights and the rights of all oppressed people in society. A kind of feminism that understands that an injury to one is an injury to all; while one of us is oppressed and exploited, all of us are in chains. The kind of feminism that organizes in shop floor committees along with male co-workers for the rights of pregnant workers and for safer conditions for everyone.

While some argue that this kind of feminism is marginal, idealistic, impossible to take hold, I argue that this is the only kind of feminism that can realistically win rights for women - all women. This is the kind of feminism that wants actual victories, not symbolic ones; a feminism that wants to win the world for the working class and oppressed, not just crumbs for a lucky few.

California Values Bill SB-54: What It Is About and Why It is Important to Women

By Cherise Charleswell

California Legislation, particularly health policy and those dealing with public safety, is of great importance to the United States as a whole; and this is because California has always stood out as a leader and innovator. Other states, and even the Federal government, often look to the precedents set by California, and subsequently go on to pass the same or similar policies. As stated in a 2012 article , California sets trends in health regulation , "Some advocates tout the state as a forward-thinking vanguard in which its health and safety laws are routinely emulated by other states".

In short, California's laws shape and set standards for the rest of the country.

The California Values Bill SB-54 is often incorrectly referred to as the Sanctuary City Bill. The phrase "sanctuary city bill" is inaccurate because there is unfortunately no guarantee of sanctuary in the U.S. City officials do not have the power to outright stop the federal government from deporting people in their communities. Cities and States could merely choose to carry out a symbolic policy - which includes having local police abstain from helping federal authorities identify, detain, or deport any immigrants that entered the U.S. illegally.

What exactly is a Sanctuary City?

In 1996, the 104th U.S. Congress passed Pub. L. 104-208, also known as the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act ( IIRIRA ). The IIRIRA requires local governments to cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agency. Despite the IIRIRA, hundreds of urban, suburban, and rural communities have resisted and outright ignored the law, instead choosing to adopt and enact sanctuary policies.

A sanctuary city is a city that limits its cooperation with the national government effort to enforce immigration law. Essentially, sanctuary cities act as a protective shield, standing in the way of federal efforts to pinpoint and deport people at random.

According to recent reports from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, California has the fourth most counties and second most cities considered to have adopted laws, policies or practices that may impede some immigration enforcement efforts. The state of Oregon has the most, with 31 counties, followed by Washington (18), Pennsylvania (16) and California (15). Massachusetts has the most cities considered to be "sanctuary," and California follows with three. However, The Los Angeles Times reported that ICE suspended the recently adopted practice of reporting cities that don't comply with federal detention efforts following error-ridden reports.

The California Values Bill entails the following:

• Prohibit state or local resources from being used to investigate, detain, detect, report or arrest persons for immigration enforcement purposes.

• Ban state and local resources from being used to facilitate the creation of a national registry based on religion.

• Prevent state agencies from collecting or sharing immigration information from individuals unless necessary to perform agency duties.

• Ensure that California schools, hospitals and courthouses remain safe and accessible to all California residents regardless of immigration status.

Why this Legislation and Protection of Sanctuary Cities Is Important to Public Health & Safety

Consider a scenario where there is a serial rapist, but his initial victims were all undocumented and thus unwilling to contact police to report the crime, and this rapist then goes on to harm others - legal citizens.

Would we now find his crime egregious? Would we now want to remove this guy off of the streets so he can no longer harm others?

The logical answer would be yes, but it does not dismiss the fact that all other subsequent rapes could have been prevented if the first victim felt safe enough to come forward. This scenario describes the importance of sanctuary cities and the California Values Bill, in terms of public health and safety. It would help to ensure that those residing in the state of California, regardless of documented status, can come forward to report crimes committed against themselves and others to law enforcement.

Why this Legislation and Protection of Sanctuary Cities Is Important to Victims of Intimate Partner Violence

For the same reasons as described as above. Furthermore, abusers use the threat of reporting undocumented victims or even members of their families who may be undocumented, as a means to (1) ensure that they conceal the abuse and not report them to the police, (2) force them to return to abusive situations. And the end result of this may be continued abuse and even death at the hands of their abusers.

A civilized society should simply not allow members of their communities to be forced to remain in abusive situations.

Why this Legislation and Protection of Sanctuary Cities Is Important to Victims of Human Sex Trafficking

For transnational victims of sex traffickers (including those who were trafficked here against their own will), the threat of deportation and/or criminalization is used as a tool to keep them silent, subservient, and in bondage. Traffickers make every effort to discourage them from contacting law enforcement, who along with other first responders are among the people who are the first to come in contact with victims of trafficking, while they are still in captivity. Having this population live in fear of exposing their undocumented status simply helps to perpetuate human trafficking.

The following testimony and passage was included in the 2009 US Department of Health's Study of HHS Programs Serving Human Trafficking Victims:

"Fear of law enforcement and fear of retaliation. Next, respondents noted that fear is a significant deterrent to foreign-born victims coming forward and being identified, specifically fear of law enforcement and fear of retaliation from the trafficker. In most cases, it was reported that victims were taught to fear law enforcement, either as a result of experiences with corrupt governments and law enforcement in their countries of origin or as a result of the traffickers telling the victims that if they are caught, law enforcement will arrest them and deport them. The trafficker paints a picture of the victim as the criminal in the eyes of law enforcement. Additionally, the trafficker uses the threat of harm against the victim and/or his or her family as a means of control and a compelling reason for the victim to remain hidden. In some cases, these fears were in fact the ultimate reality for the victim. Service providers gave several examples of clients being placed into deportation hearings after coming forward to law enforcement."

So, why do we say "victims" of sex trafficking?

Well this has to do with various factors, including the fact that the domestic entry age is 12-14 years. When one is that young, surely they are unable to consent or engage in any decision-making regarding sexual activity. Further, no one is granted their freedom simply because they have had an 18th birthday. For this reason, victims can be held in captivity and exploited for many years, well into adulthood.

And each year involved in trafficking makes it more difficult to get out. These victims are dealing with stunted development, lack of education and job skills training, drug abuse and mental illness related to the complex trauma that they have endured, and threats of violence and death for even trying to escape. There is nothing sex positive about these circumstances, and those who are the most vulnerable are people of color, LGBTQ folks (especially transgender women who engage in survival sex), low-income individuals, and of course immigrants. The "Pretty Woman" fantasy does not apply here.

One has to keep in mind that, due to socio-cultural reasons and the effects of exploitation, victims of all forms of human trafficking do not readily identify as victims.

Traffickers use the following methods to recruit:

Traffickers and/or pimps rely on various methods of recruitment, and they include:

• Psychological manipulation - making a woman/girl fall in love

• Debt

• Drugs and drug addiction

• "Gorilla" Pimping - utilization of force, kidnapping, and physical harm to achieve a victim's submission

• Working with Those in Positions of Authority - parents, guardian, older siblings, foster parent, or an authoritarian figure who forces a victim into bondage.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 actually defines severe forms of trafficking in persons as that which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age; or the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery (22 U.S.C. § 7102).

What Next?

Whether you are a resident of California or not, you should contact California legislators and encourage them to support this Bill.

A list of California legislators can be found here .

For more insights and tips, see the guide H ow To Lobby The California State Legislature: A Guide To Participation .

Misoprostol, Coat Hangers, and Trump: Foreign Objects in Our Wombs

By Assata Baxter

In the United States, one in three of us has had one. We don't share this. In the midst of making hard decisions, we bear the vitriolic harassment of those who have never and will never carry children, or those who chose to project the insecurities of their own decisions on others, before we can get to the door. We are blamed and shamed in clinic parking lots with pictures of 56 week old dead fetuses. We enter clinics alone without our partners' knowledge, weighted with surprises in pink lines when it's not yet our time. Or our partners hold our hands and say that whatever we choose they are beside us. Or depending where we are in a low-income country, there may be no clinics. So, we ask our friends if anyone has a doctor in the family who can write a prescription; anyone who knows someone who knows someone who works at a pharmacy. We look up which combination of pills it requires, and pray that it works. We go to sangomas in another village. We put our lives in the hands of "surgeons" and hope that we wake up with use of our reproductive organs… or that we wake up period. There are no certain answers. No "do-it-yourself" manuals. And every 8 minutes in low-income countries, one of us will die of complications arising from it.

We don't announce our decisions on Facebook, or post pictures to Instagram of the sonogram, of the fetus we have chosen not to keep. We may tell some close to us, but often we don't tell our best friends, our parents, our siblings, sometimes our partners. We are afraid their religion or recently recognized righteousness will get in the way of them hearing us…that they will guilt us into thinking otherwise, or it may change forever how they see us. We fear scarlet letter branding. We talk in hushed whispers if at all. Sometimes we find support groups. Sometimes we continue life as usual. Sometimes we are forever changed. While our experiences are different, what remains consistent is that abortion sits squarely at the juncture of ethics, religion, morals, science, gender and politics. And yet the discussion of the experience remains taboo.

I have had two abortions; one in Kenya, one in Djibouti, both "back alley" in the sense that they lacked medical supervision or prescription. I was not raped. My health was not in danger. Simply, neither the birth control, nor the morning after pill worked. I give you these moderating factors for two reasons. One, because the myth often goes that underserved populations use abortion as birth control. This was not the case. Further these very factors had both an impact on my conscience and impacted accessibility to any legal type of procedure.

My period was a week late. But, my period was always a little bit hard to calculate. It didn't cross my mind that I could be pregnant until week two. We always used protection, and our one accident, I had taken the morning after pill. I bought a take-home pregnancy test at the nearby market. I remember crouching on the floor of my apartment in south B, Nairobi watching the Test line appear. The test was supposed to take three minutes, but positives appear faster… and even the few seconds it took, seemed like a lifetime. I rocked back and forth, hugging my knees to my chest, crying… I called my boyfriend, shaking, inconsolable, tears pouring down my face. He rushed over and held me as I cried myself to sleep. I wished it happened like in the movies. The girl who finds herself pregnant always magically miscarriages. She never actually has to make a decision. She can share her story freely, with whoever chooses to listen, because miscarriages are not of our choosing. They are not our fault or our choice. They are met with sorrow or pity or empathy, because they are God's will or the will of the Universe or whomever we believe in. We hold no "fault".

But it did not happen like the movies. I bought three more pregnancy tests the next week. I convinced myself I had ovarian cysts, that I kept contaminating the urine sample, or that the pharmacy by my house was selling expired tests. By the end of the week, I started having dizzy spells. I was beginning to feel nauseous quite often, but I had three days off work before heading to rural Uganda for work, and so the race against the clock started. The next day I woke up I felt awful, and depressed. I wanted to see a doctor. That would be the only way to know for sure. We made an appointment at a nearby hospital. I explained the situation and they too thought that pregnancy was unlikely, particularly given the dates of my last period and encouraged me to do an ultrasound. I agreed. For once and for all, I would know.

My memories of the next few moments that day are very blurred. I remember hearing a heartbeat. I remember crying and heaving in some corner in the hospital. I remember I went home with a sonogram as a parting gift, that I have never brought myself to discard. But I did not want to have a baby, even after heartbeats and sonograms. I was 24, living and working in Kenya on 2000 USD a month, with an ocean separating me from my family, and financially supporting a sick mother back at home. I was six weeks pregnant, and I did not want to be a mother, then… the same way I am unsure if I want to be a mother now. I knew immediately what I wanted to do, but had no idea how to do it, and having chosen to abort, there was nothing more that I wanted than to stop being pregnant. In my mind, I kept thinking the longer I waited, the closer the fetus came to viability, or to what in my mind was personhood. However, figuring out what to do was not easy. There is no "Planned Parenthood" in Kenya. I could not make an appointment to discuss my options. Abortion is and was illegal in Kenya, and only viable to save a woman's life or preserve her physical health.

I was not willing to wait any amount of weeks to try and fly to another country and come back. I also was not willing to literally have a back alley surgical abortion. I had one or two friends I confided in, who might have known someone who had "the surgery". I was not willing to risk my future reproductive health or a return to consciousness being unsure of what had been cut, or poked or inserted inside of my body. Here there was no RU-486. We had to find a doctor who would be willing to write a prescription for the pills I would need to give myself a medical abortion. We could not get it in the pharmacy without a prescription. We found a doctor who was willing to write a prescription however the dosage was not enough. It was for only 200mcg. We made copies of the prescription. We bribed pharmacists to give us more until we had 800mcg. There were multiple websites with multiple directions. I chose one and stuck with it. I put a pill under my tongue, wrote a letter to my unborn child, and asked for her forgiveness and to come back when it was her time. I wore a pad for the rest of the night. And in the morning, it was just as if I started my period. And that was it. I no longer felt nauseous. I just had what felt like period cramps... At least I thought that was it. I headed to Uganda for work. The secret safe between my boyfriend and I.

For the next two days life, continued as somewhat normal. However the third day, I had cramps far worse than any period I had ever had. They were so painful that I had to bite on a towel to keep from screaming out, every time I used the bathroom. I struggled through my work day, taking multiple breaks per hour. I was dizzy, sweating, and nauseous. Day four, I had what I realize now was probably Class Two hemorrhaging. I woke up to blood everywhere in the sheets. I wouldn't stop bleeding. In a town in far West Uganda, coming from the bathroom, too weak to walk, I tried to crawl back to bed, but could not make it. So, I lay on the cold floor of a hotel room, entering and exiting consciousness until morning; bleeding uncontrollably, until a friend found me in the morning. I never did see a doctor, but the process of healing from both the physical and psychological wounds was a long one. The psychological wounds remained because the physical damage to my body, the anticipated lack of support, my suffering in physical and emotional pain in silence, the battle of my conscience, and the feeling of utter loneliness did not leave immediately. But I survived… which makes me a lucky one.

International Access to Abortion

Imagine that approximately 310,000 women undergo abortions in secrecy each year in Kenya alone, according to the East Africa Centre for Law and Justice[1]. 21,000 women are admitted each year as a result of complications related to unsafe abortions, which are usually undertaken in back alley clinics. 2,600 of these women eventually die. Research from the Center for Reproductive Rights has found that unsafe abortions account for 40% of the maternal mortality rate[2]. I was fortunate enough to have a supportive boyfriend, and enough financial capital to be able to afford both seeing private doctors, and paying the costs of both prescriptions and bribes. I know that is a privilege not all women have in Kenya. Due to restricted abortion legislation, even with the new constitution, women, less than having access to a medically safe procedure, do not even have access to the human contact that would provide them with the support and empathy they seek, and the tools they would need to make an informed decision.

In sub-Saharan Africa, 98% of countries allow abortions to save the mother's life, however only 33% permit abortion in cases of rape or incest and only two allow elective abortions for any reason. But, I will point fingers neither at Kenya, nor the continent of Africa. Kenya is not the only country with restrictive abortion legislation. In fact the countries with the most restrictive abortion legislation are found in Europe, Central and South America. The Holy See (Vatican City), Malta, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Chile do not allow abortion under any circumstances, even if the mother will die from complications prior to or giving birth[3].

According to Pew Research Centre, although in Europe about 73% of countries allow abortions for any reason, Ireland, Andorra (between France and Spain) and San Marino (Italy) only allow abortions in order to save the life of the mother. In Ireland, illegal abortion carries a sentence of up to 14 years in prison. And therefore, more than 5000 women each year are forced to leave the country to have abortions outside of Ireland [4]. These same studies have revealed that 26% of countries in the world only allow abortion to save a mother's life; and 42% allow abortions only when the mother's life is at risk in combination with "at least one other specific reason, such as to preserve a woman's physical or mental health, in cases of rape or incest, because of fetal impairment or for social or economic reasons" [5]. According to the World Health Organization 21.6 million women undergo unsafe abortions every year [6]. Of those, 6.9 million women were treated for complications from unsafe abortions. I form part of the 40% of women who experienced complications but never received treatment. Unsurprisingly, almost all abortion-related deaths occur in low-income countries, with the highest number occurring in Africa. The Guttmacher Institute, according to recent studies have found that 8-18% of maternal deaths worldwide are due to unsafe abortion, and the number of abortion-related deaths in 2014 ranged from 22,500 to 44,000 [7].

What these numbers and percentages mean, is that beyond any discussion about population control in low-income countries, at what specific age human life becomes viable, if abortion is morally right or wrong, the after-life consequences of our actions, is that women are literally dying trying to get abortions, often of the surgical kind.

Trump in Our Wombs

The 1973 Helms Amendment , created in the wake of the Roe v. Wade decision, prevents the use of American foreign aid for abortions. The caveat being that the money could still be used to fund family planning, or educate women about abortions, but could not be allocated to the procedure itself. On January 23 rd 2017, beneath our noses, President Trump signed an executive order which reinstated the "global gag rule". Effectively this rule bans federal funding for international non-governmental organizations that offer abortions, advocate for the right to an abortion, or even discuss abortion as an option to mothers. In the past this order known as the "Mexico-City Policy", has been instituted by Republicans and struck down by Democrats multiple times. Yet the massive degree of funding that will be affected by this gag order is absolutely unprecedented. The gag rule will apply to about $9.5 billion dollars in global health funding which will effect organizations mostly in low and middle income countries. These cuts may even effect HIV prevention and treatment, and maternal health care. Conservative estimates by the Guttmacher Institute project that the result will be 38,000 more abortions. Marie Stopes International estimates that the global gag rule will lead to an additional 2.2 million abortions worldwide, and given the restrictive abortion policies in 68% of countries, a vast majority of these will be unsafe abortions.

Basta de Rosarios en Nuestros Ovarios (No More Rosaries in Our Ovaries)

While it is impossible to project definitively, I wonder how many more women will die this way, unaccounted for, afraid, hemorrhaging to death on the floor of a hotel room, or during surgery in the room of a back office with no windows, where her body may simply be disposed of, to ensure the continued financial gain of the "clinic". This unnecessary maternal mortality is a direct byproduct of desperation in environments that stigmatize and demonize women for unintentionally becoming pregnant, for whatever reason, and then punish them by restricting access to services. On top of this, with funding basically drained to international and national NGOs who specialize in family planning, pregnancy prevention, and pre- and post-counseling, women, especially in low-income countries are left very alone. I took years to heal from my psychological wounds. I never once regretted my decision. But I almost lost my life in the process. Reproductive rights belong to those who are doing the reproducing. Trump's new policies are invading our wombs, reaching into our bodies to yank away reproductive rights with fetal heartbeat bills and global gag rules. As has happened historically, when autonomy over our own bodies is taken away, we as women find a way to take it back. Banning abortion, or cutting funding to organizations that even discuss abortion will not make abortion disappear, it will only result in the unnecessary death of tens of thousands of women a year, by knitting needle, Misoprostol and coat hangers.

Notes

[1] http://eaclj.org/about-us/7-fida-and-kclf-landscaped-comparison.html

[2] https://www.reproductiverights.org/initiatives/maternal-mortality

[3] http://www.care2.com/causes/the-5-countries-that-would-let-a-woman-die-before-getting-an-abortion.html

[4] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/06/how-abortion-is-regulated-around-the-world/

[5] Pew Research Center http://www.pewresearch.org/interactives/global-abortion/

[6] http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/topics/unsafe_abortion/magnitude/en/

[7] https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-worldwide

Welcome to the Trump Era: Time To Rethink the Word "Allies" (Yes, White Women, We Are Looking At You)

By Cherise Charleswell

The Orange Empire Strikes

On January 20, 2017 we will be entering what some have begun to call the Trump Era, an era that will be post-facts, considering the disdain that Donald Trump seems to have for facts and truth . It will also likely be marked with attacks on civil liberties, civil rights, women's rights, and LGBTQ rights, along with cuts to social services and funding of government agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Health & Human Services, and Department of Education. When a President is elected on a platform of climate change denial and promises to end the Affordable Care Act, all of this should be expected. However, this clearly is just the beginning of attempts to erode democracy and the right to dissent. In fact, any form of dissent or disagreement has been viewed as an unforgivable slight that cannot be ignored by President-Elect Donald Trump, a man who is unable to control his emotions and "Twitter fingers," often rushing to provide 140-character responses with startling regularity. Then there is the scandal at the Department of Energy , where the Trump transition team sent a 74-point questionnaire to workers, requesting an inventory of all agency employees or contractors who attended meetings or conferences on climate change, and asking for a current list of professional society memberships of any lab staff. All this has raised fears among civil rights lawyers specializing in federal worker whistleblower protections, who say the incoming administration is at a minimum trying to influence or limit the research at the Department. And at worst, attempting to target employees with views that run counter to the president-elect. The incoming administration's and Republican party's anti-science stand has actually led to Scientists frantically copying U.S. climate data because of fears that it may vanish under the new administration.

Then there is the recent failed attempt of the Republican-majority House of Representatives to end the House of Ethics Office , which was swiftly and rightfully met with backlash.

There are arguably Dark and Dangerous days ahead, particularly for women and other minority groups (Latino- particularly Mexican-Americans, African Americans, Asians, Muslims, LGTBQ) in the United States, all of whom were individually attacked during Trump's campaign. Since the Presidential election there has been a reported rise in hate crimes and speech, where many of the offenders are actually referring to Donald Trump and "Making America Great Again" amidst their acts of hate. See here , and here - regarding attacks against Jews, despite the GOP's peculiar love affair with Israel. Proving once and for all that they view they view this "Greatness" as a throwback to the time when White Protestant Heterosexual men (and women) were the majority, and discrimination and segregation were the status quo.

His Administration, and the Republicans that are seizing this opportunity, with control of the Legislative and Executive branch of government, have already announced their priorities to defund, repeal, and cut programs that helped to ensure access to health for women and others, including what some may refer to as an all-out war on women's bodies:

· Supposed Man of Faith, Vice President Michael Pence's statement to the press explaining that the Administration promises to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and that it will be THE priority of the Trump administration. Now they have been saying this and attempting to do so for 8 years now, but still have yet to come up with a replacement. And on January 5, 2017, before Trump takes office and President Obama's final address the Senate voted 51 to 48 to repeal the Affordable Care Act .

· Promises to defund Planned Parenthood. To see what's at stake there, revisit my Ensuring the Right To Reproductive Health: The American Public Health Association Takes A Stand With Planned Parenthood .

· Mike Pence has actually positioned himself as an opponent of Planned Parenthood and has openly acted to dismantle the organization. In October 2016, during a speech at Liberty University, he promised that "a Trump-Pence administration will defund Planned Parenthood and redirect those dollars to women's health care that doesn't provide abortion services." In addition, in 2011, the House of Representatives passed a bill co-sponsored by Pence to defund the group.

· Making the Hyde Amendment permanent law to protect taxpayers from having to pay for abortions. Despite asking then mistress-Marla Maples to have an abortion , in 2016, Donald Trump stated that abortions are "not acceptable," and that women who try to obtain them should be subject " to some form of punishment ." Following a public outcry, Trump backtracked on his remarks , saying it's not women who should be punished for having an abortion, but the doctors who perform the procedure.

· Making open promises not to cut social security, while stacking his cabinet with millionaires and lobbyist who are Pro-Privatization . A lesson in believing what people "show you", not what they "tell you".

· Continuing to deny what scientist, public health specialists, human rights activists worldwide, and others agree is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century. Climate change and environmental degradation. The Trump administration is unfortunately a triumph for climate change deniers .

The Blame Game

Now that we are in this era we cannot make the same mistake as previous generations, and that is to dismiss history and not take the time to truly reflect on how we got here. This process of reflection should not solely be about placing blame, but accountability has to be done. In a previous article Bamboozled: On African Americans and Feminists Casting Their Votes for Hillary Clinton , I discussed many of the blaring problems with Hillary Clinton's candidacy, much of which has also been pointed out by many others, such as Michelle Alexander, author of the New Jim Crow. Yet, the DNC is still taking it upon themselves to deflect and blame Russia for hacking emails -while ignoring the fact that even if hacked, the Russians did not create the content of those emails. The Russians did not set out to sabotage Bernie Sanders' campaign and disenfranchise many Democratic voters. The DNC did that, and needs to take full responsibility for it and the fall out that it created, which includes the millions of dismayed voters who chose to sit out the 2016 elections all together. Seriously, constantly blaming and being upset with Russia for their deceit is the equivalent of being upset with a Woman who chooses to let her friend know that her husband is cheating on her. Maybe she decides to share a Tinder profile as "evidence" with her friend. Perhaps she got the information because the husband left his phone unlocked. None of this changes the fact that the husband - like the DNC-did the cheating.

But the DNC's blame does not stop there. It includes lashing out at those who voted for third-party candidates (again a foolish strategy that will only help to further distance and infuriate these voters), and then the DNC actually had the audacity to lash out against minority voters who did not show up at the polls. Those who have been left off the hook, who have seemed to be forgiven because they are part of this often-mentioned group, are "white working class" voters - the people who seem to be the only group that has a right to be angry and heard. The group who is just now feeling the effects of unchecked capitalism, high rates of unemployment, and poverty. And this is why a historical lens is always needed. Other historically disenfranchised groups could literally just leave the " Welcome" mat out for them. A welcome to their reality. Malcolm X once made the remark that when "America catches a cold, Black people catch pneumonia," and this speaks to the historical social disparities that continue to exist. For instance, one can consider the national unemployment rate (4.9), and that of Native Americans (11.3%), African Americans (8.8%), and Latinos (5.6%). For a further explanation of why this focus on the White working class voter in a country that has changed greatly in terms of demographics and attitudes is problematic, see here .

Still, the greatest problem with the DNC's misdirected blame game is that it goes back to asking groups of people whose issues are not acknowledged or addressed until it comes to election time - to mobilize and do the heavy lifting, and this is especially true of Black women, who were the largest voting block for Hillary Clinton. Malcolm X once described this problem in his speech Ballot or the Bullet . This is an issue that has been discussed in great detail by Black- and intersectional feminists.

Intersectionality: Seeing Beyond Privilege

But let's focus on this term intersectionality, coined by Kimberlee Crenshaw, Civil rights advocate, educator, and leading scholar. While Black feminists and other feminists of color have pointed out the relevance of an intersectional framework in politics and legislation, establishment feminism - including Hillary Clinton, her pants-suit nation, and the strategist at the DNC - focused on what seemed to be a revisionist history of Suffragists and Second-Wave Feminists., conveniently ignoring the racism and classism present in both movements. Yes, the part of history that most white feminists would like to forget, or have not even been taught about (conveniently not discussed and swept under the rug), includes historical facts such as - once it became apparent that the right to vote would either come first to Black men or White women, the White suffragettes quickly betrayed Black women who had worked beside them. Just reference the history of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and their treatment of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, many white feminists extended this indifference toward intersectional issues throughout the 2016 Primaries and National election - up until it was too late. Sure, they conveniently put on a "dog-and-puppy show" inviting the mothers of victims of state-sanctioned violence out to attend the 2016 Democratic National Convention, referring to them as " Mothers of the Movement" after previously refusing to provide a space for Black Lives Matter protestors or even have an open and honest conversation about the Clinton legacy and Hillary's use of the term "super predators" to describe African American children. Still, there was the concerns with Hillary's dishonesty, lack of sincerity, pandering, and bolstering of imperialist foreign policy that primarily negatively impacted women and children, people of color, and the poor through war, political de-stabilization and disenfranchisement, environmental degradation, and unchecked capitalism.

Again, there should be no surprise that we are in a Trump Era, given the DNC's support of a candidate as flawed and out-of-touch as Hillary Clinton, despite the electorate's demands for Change and a much needed rift between multinational corporations and those in government. I am not one to readily believe in psychic powers, and I do not believe they were needed to predict this win. It is something that I pointed out in my interview for the Hampton Institute's podcast, A Different Lens, entitled, False Feminists & Hillary Clinton.

Intersectionality has always been understood by Black feminists and other feminists of color, as well as women of color in general who do not identify as feminists or may not be familiar with the term. They literally LIVE the reality of intersectionality, leading lives where they do not have the privilege to ignore the impact of racism, sexism/misogyny, and classism on their lives; and it is this perspective and understanding which really sets them apart from white feminists (often referred to as allies) and certainly white women voters. In the 2016 election white women voted 53% for Donald Trump (compared to only 43% who voted for Clinton ), making it clear that they certainly do not view the world through an intersectional lens, and that white privilege for the most part " trumps" solidarity or womanhood/sisterhood.

A Closer Look at the 2016 Exit Polls:

There was a distinct racial gap between voters, which opened wider when age and religion came into play.

· 58% of White women voters ages 45-64 voted for Trump (perhaps they remember the days of blatant White supremacy - and thought that a Trump presidency would harken back to that and "Make America Great Again".

· And again, it was not just White working class women who supported Trump - 45% of White college educated women supported Trump.

· 64% of White Protestant women also voted for Trump.

· While 88% of Black voters supported Clinton.

· And 65% of Latino voters supported Clinton

Source: NBC News Exit Poll

Further, as much as the media likes to focus on the uninformed, uneducated, poor, working-class white voters, the fact of the matter is that the educated and more affluent voters came out in support of Trump. The median income of Trump voters was reported to be $72,000--- $16,000 more than the national average. Perhaps one can make the argument that when it comes to a platform characterized by racism and ran by a millionaire who will look out for corporate interest and that of the upper middle class - these people really may have believed that they were "voting for their own interests, and not against it."

The reality of who Showed Up to vote for Donald Trump sent Comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actress, media critic, and television host, Samantha Bee, to unleash a tirade that bemoan the country's decision, calling out the group responsible for his election: " The Caucasian nation showed up in droves to vote for Trump, so I don't want to hear a goddamn word about Black voter turnout…… How many times do we expect Black people to build our country for us? ........Continuing with " If all 3.3 million Muslims in America apparently have to be held accountable for every radical terrorist, then white people better be ready to take their responsibility for their peers, too. "

Then there is the fact that Trump's candidacy did not come into question, or begin to lose endorsements, until the "Grab Them By The Pussy" moment; because his crass remarks were specifically about White women, sending many to clutch their pearls and wag their tongues in disgust. Apparently, he had taken things too far! And this despicable reality was appropriately addressed by Sarah Ruiz-Grossman, in her article " Dear Fellow White Women: We Fucked This Up:

"After all the supposed progress we've made, painstakingly trying to change a white feminist movement into an intersectional one (and for that we have only the hard work of women of color to thank ), white women didn't show up to fight back against a man whose rhetoric and policies directly attack women of color , immigrant women , Muslim women , LGBTQ women and more ."

She goes on to add:

"So I am ashamed. I am ashamed of my country. I am ashamed of white people. But more than anyone else, I am ashamed of white women. Is this who we really are? Clearly ― and it is who we have always been ."

So, who really are these "White middle class, educated, women" supporters of Trump, who helped to usher in this era of despair?

I think that the following excerpt from the Buzzfeed article " Meet the Ivanka Trump Voter " provides a great description:

There's a Trump supporter you rarely see at rallies, but whose existence has been affirmed, again and again, through polling. Call her the Ivanka Voter. She lives in the suburbs. She has great highlights, most certainly not out of the box. She might be middle-aged, with kids in high school or college, or a stay-at-home mom; she might be an up-and-coming professional, not yet married. She lives in the well-to-do suburbs - places like Rochester, Michigan; Indian Hill, Ohio; Eden Prairie, Minnesota; and Haverford, Pennsylvania. She had to drive to get to the rally, because not enough people would come if he held one where she actually lived. She wears expensive jeans tucked into her cute boots. She doesn't wear a Trump shirt - but she might wear a button on her fashionable sweater. She shops at Nordstrom, and Macy's, and Marshall's.

This voter is almost entirely absent from the images that proliferate around Trump and his events, which are overwhelmed with obvious signifiers of class: the men and women depicted might be overweight, have bad haircuts, or wear crass T-shirts. They might have bad teeth. They might be worked up, red-faced, quoted spouting a racial epithet. They're the heavily mythologized "white working class": men and women who've been left behind by globalization, ignored by both parties, and magnetized by Trump

More about this group:

· They most likely do not consider themselves racist - and much of that is because they truly do not know what racism is. However, even if they do not see themselves as racist - they have no problem supporting a racist.

· They have the privilege of voting for Donald, even when they do not "agree with EVERYTHING" he's said. And as people of color and others are being openly attacked, based on his inflammatory remarks, that has emboldened bigots and racists --- they also have the privilege of knowing that they will not be attacked by these groups of people.

· They are certainly not all conservative, and may view themselves as socially moderate. It should not be hard to believe that white women also have abortions. The fact that there decision to vote for Trump jeopardizes this freedom-is one clear example of where they did vote against their own interest; regardless of socioeconomic status.

· They do not realize that the way that you vote, much like budgets are a reflection of morals. It is about what you prioritize and what you deem acceptable.

· They are dangerous - moving in silence, while secretly upholding white supremacy. Essentially the vote for Trump is just another example of the use of macroaggression against minorities. More about that here , here, and here.

· They are willing to look past blatant nepotism and cronyism when it comes to Ivanka Trump, and they actually believe that she is qualified to serve in her father's cabinet and hold a position of prestige and power. Why?? Because they like her, find her relatable, and think that she has phenomenal people skills. And we should note that this reflects the same mentality of the "Ol' boys club" that ensured that only those who one lives amongst and interacts with (other white people) would be those who were (are still) able to get the most prestigious positions, or employment period. But hey, why should we demand that Ivanka be qualified, when her father is grossly unqualified for the position that he was elected to serve?

Moving In Silence. Silence in the Face of Fascism

Let's go back to the issue of silence, and how these "Ivanka Voters" may not have openly taken part in the rallies, shied away from the cameras, and chose to not openly discuss their support from Trump. They told exit pollers one thing, and their actions reflected the exact opposite.

This tradition of doing things in "Secret" to uphold white supremacy is certainly nothing new. Just consider the KKK and their love of white sheets that serve as their cloak of anonymity. This practice of Secrecy helped to spawn the use of Dog Whistle politics, covert in nature, allowing for one to readily go back and deny charges of racism.

When looking closely at their actions, and the need to hide their true intentions, one can only assume that they went through all of these shenanigans because they knew Who and What they were supporting, a racist and bigot, and they did not want to admit it to themselves and colleagues. They didn't want to face judgment. They did not want to explain why they were casting their vote for a candidate who was openly endorsed by the KKK, and for whom the KKK held parades in celebration following his election. Leaving them with no way to pretend that they didn't notice that he was not a racist. Ultimately, what they have shown us all is that they are not to be trusted, that being women does not automatically make them an ally, and further that we must come to the realization that not all women should be viewed as minorities or "marginalized majorities." The Ivanka voter was not fighting to dismantle systems of oppression, racism, and discrimination; they were fighting to uphold them, because they believe they are part of and benefit from that power structure. In the words of the late Poet, memoirist, actress, dancer, and civil rights activist, Dr. Maya Angelou, "When people show you who they are, believe them."

What is clear is that there was a convenient narrative to Blame a certain subset of voters, particularly white, uneducated, "low informed" and working-class women; and that was done because it is more difficult to deal with the fact that even the more educated and affluent white women, those who benefitted the most from Affirmative action, the women's rights movements, and may (or may have identified) as Second Wave feminists, quietly and secretly casted their votes for Donald Trump. And they did so because they have the privilege -- white, affluent-- to look past his racist views, even his misogyny.

In terms of Pants Suit nation and the white feminists who could not understand why many women of color and others had such a visceral reaction and disdain for Hillary Clinton as a candidate-this image from Glamour magazine provides the best visualization of the problem . In describing this issue, which involved no use of Photoshop , Editor-in-chief Cindi Leive stated that "Gender equality is on all of our minds. It's really important to me that Glamour not just talk the talk about female empowerment, but that we also walk the walk …… So we've decided to support women in the most meaningful way we can: by hiring them. From first page to our last, every photo we commissioned for the February issue was created by women: photographers, stylists, hair, makeup, everything." However, in looking at the cover, it is quite clear that this is White Feminism, a wall of white women, who believe that their representation and presence reflects or represents ALL women.

The Trump ERa is in part brought to us by the toxic mix of Pants Suit nation and establishment feminism, and their quest for the first Female US President, which left them blind to her many flaws. From suburban soccer moms (60-70% of who stated that they viewed Trump negatively but found a reason to vote for him regardless), professionals who have successfully "lean forward" and push against the glass ceiling , and working class "angry" WHITE women - it is truly time to reevaluate whom are considered and called allies. It is time to redistribute the work being done, to counter oppression and yes, get candidates elected. Because those who overwhelmingly (many holding their noses) to vote for Clinton were again Black women, who for far too long been viewed as "mules of the earth," as described by Short story writer, folklorist, and anthropologist, Nora Zeale Hurston. In this Trump Era, if you want to really be any ally, checking your privilege will not be enough. You will have to literally put down and unpack that invisible knapsack of privilege . And this process begins with stepping forward, getting on the front lines, and being the first to resist and push back against the rising fascism of the Orange Empire, which now threatens the health, viability, security, and well-being of all Americans. Essentially, you caused the spill -- and simply cannot ask African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, Asians, Muslims, Jews, immigrants, those who are LGTBQ, and even the disabled (who were also openly mocked by the President Elect) to handle the clean up on Aisle 4 for you.

"How Much Do You Cost?": A Story of Sexual Neo-Colonialism

By Sonasha Braxton

I'll start at the beginning. Here is who I am…I am an African-American woman. I am 32 years old. I was born in the United States. My parents are from the United States. My parents' parents are from the United States and so on. Many of my ancestors were already here…Some of my ancestors were brought here in chains, and sold on auction blocks. I consider myself African by nature, American by nurture.

Once upon a time when I was 21 years old, I was a student at United States International University in Nairobi, Kenya. It was my first time in Africa. I had been there about for about two months, when I was out at a bar with my friends, very close to the campus. My friends and I were all college students, and dressed accordingly so. I walked myself to the bar and took 200ksh out of my pocket to buy my myself a beer. Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around. It was a Caucasian male in his late 40s with scraggly hair. This man was slightly out of place in a college bar, but not an unfamiliar sight in the Nairobi nightlife. The music was blaring. I couldn't hear him well, but he seemed to be pointing to another corner of the bar and making motions towards the beer I had already ordered. I side-eyed him and shook my head. Whatever it was I wasn't interested. I had what I came for. He tapped me on the shoulder again and motioned for me to bring my ear closer to his lips so he could tell me something without yelling. I sighed and conceded, bending down slightly. "My friend would like to buy you a drink," he said. I, beer already in hand, raised my beer and pointed to it. "I'm okay! I just bought myself a drink, but thanks!" I sashayed away back to my friends, and started dancing.

Scene 2. I was thirsty again. I walked back to the bar. The same 40-something white man with the scraggly hair was there. This time he stood up directly in front of the space I thought I would be able to squeeze into the bar. "My friend wants to buy you a drink! He wants to meet you!" he yelled, again pointing over to some dark corner. At this point somewhat curious, and one Tusker in, I replied "why can't your friend talk to me himself?". "He's shy," he responded. Amused that we had reverted to middle school interactions, and half expecting him to deliver a paper which said "will you go out with me" with "yes", "no" and "maybe" as boxes to check, I became curious. I thought, maybe his friend is a cute 20-something Kenyan banker, a gorgeous 30-year old Ugandan lawyer… I thought, who knows. "He's right over here" he insisted. I said "ok" and followed him just a few steps away from the bar, to a high top in the corner. The friend was an unattractive 50-something Caucasian- American. He greeted me, shook my hand, asked my name, and where I was from. I answered, recoiled my hand, said "nice to meet you, but I'm going to go back to my friends". He motioned for me to join them. I shook my head and hustled back to the table where my friends were.

Scene 3. Last drink. Same man. Same spot. Same question. Same refusal. Followed by the question, the first of many of the same design, with different accents, languages and configurations, that I would hear often while living in Kenya, "my friend wants to know how much". I said, "how much what?", totally confused. "My friend wants to know how much it would cost for him to sleep with you?". What happened next, is somewhat of a blur. I know that a fury engulfed me. I remember walking outside. I felt like I was suffocating. I remember coming back. I remember using a lot of expletives. But what I will never forget is how the situation was resolved. I was asked to leave the club… I was told I was making too much noise. I was disturbing business. This was not the last time something like this would transpire. It would go on to happen in Djibouti, and in Ethiopia, and in Ivory Coast. I Black woman, minding my own business, sexually propositioned by he, White man with a few dollars in his pocket, was at fault for disrupting a totally unacceptable and disrespectful attempted "transaction".

Since this first occurrence back in my 20s, I have learned to contain myself somewhat better, to learn to listen for the response to the question I now pose genuinely curious, "what makes you think you can buy me?". I have heard everything from "oh I'm sorry…I thought you were from (insert country here)" to "everything can be bought"; everything equally as insulting. All that these answers have amounted to is this, "as a Black woman, your body is a commodity, that I as a White man, have the right to purchase it/you". While this is a personal narrative, I do not share this burden alone. It becomes important as it makes the case of what I will call "sexual neo-colonialism", a legacy of the exploitation of the bodies of women of color. If we understand neo-colonialism, as the last stage of imperialism, as did Kwame Nkrumah, as its most dangerous stage; as a stage in which sovereignty is only a façade and that power is used for "exploitation rather than development", than we must too understand neo-colonialism as the most dangerous stage not just for the "developing state" but for its people, particularly its women. The African female whether in diaspora or continental stands to lose her sovereignty, and too be exploited, rather than space intentionally made for her to develop herself the way she sees fit.

Colonialism left in its wake the destruction of pre-colonial political, social and economic systems in which women ranked highly, and replaced them first with "native authorities" exclusive of women followed by clientele-patronage systems, which too excluded women. Women often lost tremendous power during the colonial period as well as economic autonomy. This resulted from women's exclusion from the global marketplace and new reliance of women's unpaid labor. Customary laws developed under colonialism and inherited from Europe, disadvantaged women favoring men. They accorded particular rights to men, such as the right to testify in trials, that were closed to women. Women were removed from power as heads of associations often with the final say over market or agricultural disputes, and replaced with men[1]. Simply colonial rule restructured family, sex, gender and sexuality by creating legal mechanisms to control women's positions in society, positions in their families, and expressions of their sexuality, for the sake of White Western capital.

The trickle-down effect of the disempowerment of the African woman has also emboldened the White hetero male to assume his place in the hierarchy of African affairs is one of superiority, and one in which any Black woman continues to be for sale. This is further reinforced often by the colonial mentality, the internalized colonialism of many members of African society, which favors and in fact protects unfettered white male hetero sexuality and promotes its unbridled exploits. It is this internalized colonialism, in actuality, the reaction of those around her, that asks the Black woman either to suppress her reaction to verbal sexual violence totally, or to react within the confines of what white hetero-males have sanctioned as polite gender normativity; to smile and say "no thank you", to gently brush away prodding hands, to repeat "no" quietly, avert our eyes, and meekly insist that we decline such advances. This internalized colonialism of its witnesses says she is "overreacting", when she yells, pushes away, tells, or even says no firmly. It says that "well, most other women would have said yes".

Someone will say that this will stop when African women stop having relationships with such men. Someone will say that when these women, who may find poverty less miserable than sex with the occasional dream peddling foreigner, simply say no, then all African women will stop being objectified. To which I would respond that until the system that has systematically underdeveloped not only Africa but the entire Global South, a system which has destroyed indigenous spirituality and replaced it with a White savior both hanging in the homes of its believers and walking the streets as sex tourists, is dismantled, then Black women, Brown Women, all women of color, will continue to be harmed by it.

This returns me to my story. The man in question was an American. There was no question of impoverished conditions. I clearly stated that I too was American, but this did not prevent the proposition, nor has it on multiple occasions. I, due to the intersectionality of my race and gender, was considered a commodity, buyable, and expendable. I am not the only woman of color who has had such an experience. I often exchange stories with my expat women of color friends, who have often witnessed and experienced the same. The globally internalized white hetero male superiority complex and systemic inherited exploitative North-South relations that support the continued effort to colonize, conquer and commodify the woman of color's body, as an economic enterprise, must necessarily change, and sexual neo-colonialism, must be destroyed and at last put to rest….

So I will finish at the beginning. I am an African-American woman. I am 32 years old. I was born in the United States. My parents are from the United States. My parents' parents are from the United States and so on. Many of my ancestors were already here. Some of my ancestors were brought here in chains, and sold on auction blocks. But, "How much do I cost?"…I am priceless. We are priceless. Not even on the auction block were my ancestors' souls for sale.

Ensuring the Right To Reproductive Health: The American Public Health Association Takes A Stand With Planned Parenthood

By Cherise Charleswell

On October 30th, I walked along 14th Street in the heart of downtown Denver Colorado, a notably Progressive city, heading to hear the Opening Address of the 144th annual American Public Health Association (APHA) Conference; and out of the many years of this organization's operations, this proved to be one of the most controversial opening sessions. Before reaching the convention center I was bombarded by protestors who were yelling, shouting through bull horns, attempting to shove flyers into my hand, and also standing next to quite large placards with graphic images on them. One of the protestors who reached out to me, couldn't have been more than 7 or 8 years old. They all had assembled to protest the invitation of keynote speakers, Cecile Richards, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood; and I was of course on my way, along with many other public health professionals - a mix bag of clinicians, social workers, researchers, scholars, and policy makers - who more so than others, know the importance of the critical services that Planned Parenthood provides.

I have attended the APHA Conference for a number of years, and I could not recall a scene like this before, and it led me to wonder about these protestors, who choose to choose to show up, at the largest public health convening in the nation; in an attempt to convince the professionals, those working on the ground to improve health outcomes - that they know what is best. Much like Presidential Donald Trump, who boasts about not having to consult with anyone, and that he "knows more than the Generals"; it was a moment where the ignorant and uninformed, once again decided that they "knew best".

I had to ask - where were these protestors, why were they silent when APHA has speakers and initiatives around the topics of climate change, health inequity, gun violence, and so on; since they are so concerned about the preservation of life? I wondered if they are even aware of the fact that the United States ranks 26th among the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, in infant mortality rates,

A new report reveals that the United States has the highest first-day infant death rate out of all the industrialized countries in the world. Further, the 14th annual State of the World's Mothers report, put together by non-profit organization Save the Children, ranked 168 countries, and found that the United States had the highest rate of First Day death; finding that about 11,300 newborns die within 24 hours of their birth in the U.S. each year, 50 percent more first-day deaths than all other industrialized countries combined. These statistics can be attributed to pregnant women's lack of access to prenatal care - services that Planned Parenthood and other women's clinics provide. It is all too typical for groups like this, who are often religiously motivated to "Love the Fetus, and Hate the Child". Somehow, being Pro Life stops at the point of birth, and a testimony to this nonsensical way of thinking is that cuts in social safety net funding, and human services budgets, that would help children, as well as adults, who are undergoing hardships, never seem to be met with the same level of outcry and protest. In stead, those type of policies are often championed by these groups.

Nevertheless, I considered this hypocrisy once again, as I made my way towards the Bellasco Theater of the Convention Center; and the line forming just to reach the entry doors was massive. For the first time, I witnessed as the increases security measures were put in place. I couldn't recall having what seemed like APHA's entire staff on-hand checking our Conference badges - with calls to make sure they are on and facing up - in order to enter.

The Conference's theme was "Creating the healthiest nation: Ensuring the right to health", thus it seemed perfectly fitting that they would invite Cecile Richards, an ardent champion of women's rights, human rights, LGBTQ rights, and the rights to health; which are all linked. To understand this interrelationship one needs to first realize that health is far more than just the absence of disease. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) it is defined as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. So, health encompases all the factors that allows us to have an optimal well-being. Further, according to the WHO health (and access) to health is deemed a human right. The WHO states the following:

The right to the highest attainable standard of health" requires a set of social criteria that is conducive to the health of all people, including the availability of health services, safe working conditions, adequate housing and nutritious foods. Achieving the right to health is closely related to that of other human rights, including the right to food, housing, work, education, non-discrimination, access to information, and participation.

The right to health includes both freedoms and entitlements.

• Freedoms include the right to control one's health and body (e.g. sexual and reproductive rights) and to be free from interference (e.g. free from torture and from non-consensual medical treatment and experimentation).

• Entitlements include the right to a system of health protection that gives everyone an equal opportunity to enjoy the highest attainable level of health.

So, what are human rights? The United Nations Human Rights Office defined them as "Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible". Unfortunately, and despite the general consenous across nations that states that there is a fundamental human to health; we still see opposition to this declaration at every turn, particularly when it comes to women's rights to reproductive health.

It is these issues that Cecile Richards was asked to come and speak about, and an APHA Conference was indeed a perfect place to address them. The American Public Health Association is a non-profit, non-governmental that champions the health of all people and all communities, strengthen the public health profession, and speak out for public health issues and policies backed by science. They are the only organization that influences federal policy, has a 140-plus year perspective and brings together members from all fields of public health; and their mission is "to Improve the health of the public and achieve equity in health status". In adhering to that mission, APHA has begun to increase and strengthen their efforts on advocacy around social determinants of ehalth, healthography (which links health outcomes to where one resides), and health equity. Out of necessity and the understanding that more than 75% of health and wellbeing is not attributed to genetics or biological factors, but social determinants of health, including health behaviors; APHA and many other public health organizations have stepped into this role. They have realized that the focus, outside of what is viewed as the "traditional" public health model are needed to effect change in health outcomes. And that change includes improving the social stauts of women and girls. This understanding aligns with the United Nations Millineum Development Goals, which includes stated Goals that directly impact this population. For example, Planned Parenthood's work actually (4) of the stated 8 goals:

• Goal 3 Provide gender equality and empower women.

• Goal 4 Reduce child mortality.

• Goal 5 Improve maternal health.

• Goal 6 Combat HIV/AIDS.

These goals come with the understanding that education, financial indepenendce, contraceptive use, and family planning options allow for social mobility; which is tied to improved health outcomes.

Much like the selection in speaker, the leadership of APHA couldn't have picked a more suitable city than Denver Colorado to host this 144th Conference. Denver - and Colorado in general - stands out as a Progressive Western state. In terms of public health and women's health, they are really excelling. There is an effort to maintain walkable communities, comprehensive and integrated mental health services; many of which focus on the specific needs of women, and more. Below is a short overview of how Colorado has led-the way or continue to excel in advancing public health:

· Colorado is the "thinnest" state having the lowest obesity rate. However, it must be noted that the rates in the State are still worse off than they were 20 years agp; which means that they are matching the alarming trajectory of obesity that is seen nationally. To understand why women, particularly women of color need to be concerned about obesity see the article Health Shaming: Feminist Rhethoric is in Need of An Intervention . Obesity is THE most critical obstacle to optimal health and wellbeing, and has a number of comorbidities that often lead to premature death, reduce function, reduce mobility, and reduced quality of life.

· Colorado is a pioneer in terms of birth control access.

· Walkable communities and a general focus on Active living

· Decriminlization of marijuana - and utlizing the $121 million in tax revenue to provide health services.

• · Baby -friendly hospitals.

A Look Back At The Status Of Women

In order to achieve or even consider this goal of "Creating the healthiest nation", there must be efforts that safe guard and work to improve the health of women and girls, who account for (50.4%) of the United States population. And doing so- is the main focus of Planned Parenthodd, which has offered life-saving services to women who would not otherwise be able to access care. Seventy-nine percent of our clients have incomes at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level. Planned Parenthood, like other organizations dedicated to women's health and reproductive justice, do so with the understanding that the clinical services that they provide are indeed linked to other health indicators. These indicators help to determine the "Status of Women" and much has changed in that status since the inception of Planned Parenthood 100 years ago. Consider the following:

· Family size declined between 1800 and 1900 from 7.0 to 3.5 children . In 1900, six to nine of every 1000 women died in childbirth, and one in five children died during the first 5 years of life.

· In 1916, the leading cause of death for women was tuberculosis and complications from pregnancy and childbirth.

· Now contrast that to the fact that in 2016, women in the US live 30 years longer thatn they did in 2016.

· In 1916, many women did not have a post-secondary education, but now women earn the majroity of Masters and Doctoral degrees conferred in the US. Even more amazing is that Black women, despite the historical legacy of racism, sexism, classism, and anti-Blackness that they have been subjected to, are now considered to be the most educated group in the US. However, this advancement in education has yet to materialize into improvements in social and health status for a number of reasons.

What Has Accounted For This Change In Status?

The recognition that women's rights are indeed human rights - and the orchestrated efforts of social justice and reproductive health activists, public health advocates, as well as clinicians who provide compassionate and quality services outside of a restrictive religious model, which help to sustain the problems of stigma and shame that is tied to women's bodies and sexuality. These are the people who have mobilized and continue to advocate for the human right to health care for women. And they represent those who realize something as simplistic as, abstinence being an unrealistic form of birth control, and further - they recognize that telling women that they should only practice abstience is actually offensive; and ignores the fact that women also enjoy sex as a pleasurable experience, not one that is simply tied to reproduction.

Thus, this change in status was aided by the disassociation of sex from reproduction through family planning and reduction in family size. The point that these factors have helped to improve health outcomes across the life trajectory, as well as in the health of babies, is well documented and understood. See here,here, and here.

For that reason many interventions efforts focus on the dissemination of condoms, increasing access to birth control, as well as working to abolish practices such as child marriage. The underlying framework is one of reproductive justice, which works towards women and girls having every opportunity to thrive. According to Dr. Camara Jones, President of APHA, this is the basis for health equity. Which she defines as "the assurance of the conditions for optimal health".

An Overview of Planned Parenthood's Services

All of the failed efforts to dismantle and defund Planned Parenthodd are extremely short-sighted and uninformed, in that they focus on only one aspect of the services that the organization provides: Abortion. Never mind this tidbit shared by Cecile Richards, "80% of US counties do not have abortion providers". With the way that those who try to trump on women's reproductive rights try to frame abortions as some kind of epidemic, you would think that there was milions of providers. And the attacks against the organization are filled with misinformation, and do not consider the fact that abortions are one of the safest medical procedures in the US, and that they are also performed to save the lives of pregnant women. Again, the fact that pregnancy complications use to account for the vast majority of premature deaths of women, cannot be ignored.

Still, Planned Parenthood provides a plethora of health and educational services to women - as well as men. Yes! Men actually go to Planned Parenthood for services as well, such as affordable vasectomies; realizing that family planning is not a responbility that is tied to gender/sex. Here is a list of services offered by Planned Parenthood:

· Health Care Services: STD testing and treatment, contraception, mammogram screenings, pap smears (cervical cancer screenings), and accompanying health care

· Prenatal Services

· Health Education services

· HPV vaccinations

Here are also other exciting and innovative services offered by Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health organizations:

· Skype accessible consultations for birth control prescriptions - provided online.

· Telehealth abortion services - with mailed medications.

· The "Spot On" (LINK) app that serves as a period tracker, but also teaches users about birth control. It will also "ping" users when it is time to take their pill. And it is available for free download.

In Conclusion

41% of unintended pregnancies actually occur due to inaccurate use of birth control, and this points to (3) things: (1) women continue to want and have a need for access to family planning services and resources, (2) most women are utilizing these serves, (3) far much more needs to be done in terms of education of both patient and clinicians.

Therefore, it is imperative that we approach women's health and human rights with the understanding that access will continue to be key. Access to care, resources, and education. We have far to go to make health care access a reality for all, thus ensuring this right to women's reproductive health will also require changes in sociocultural attitudes to help to remove stigma and shame; and guarantee equity in access regardless of gender, race/ethnicity, income, immigration status, and where one resides. There are 18 available birth control methods, and they are utilized by 90% of American women, which makes the Affordable Care Act's universal coverage of contraceptives for all women, regardless of insurer; another monumental public health policy that will ultimately help to further improve the status of women.

With gains in education, income, body autonomy, and other health indicators, and overall Status - the future may prove to be FEMININE.

To Live Among Broken Men: Theorizing Rape and Incest

By Danny Shaw

On April 9th, Ronald Savage rocked the hip hop world with his testimony about the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of Zulu Nation founder, Africa Bambaataa. Initially, the Zulu Nation dismissed the allegations "as nothing more than a continuation of the decades long HIP HOP COINTELPRO campaign to discredit and destroy the Universal Zulu Nation." However, as more survivors of Bambaataa's abuse emerged, the momentum shifted. It was clear that Bambaataa had abused children, other leaders had covered up for him and that a thorough investigation and process of healing was necessary.

While many people are understandably shocked that sexual abuse could penetrate the inner-most circles of pioneering Zulu Nation, this is also an opportunity for our communities to reflect on just how commonplace sexual abuse, incest, pedophilia and rape is.

The May 21st gang-rape of a 16-year-old girl in Brazil by 33 men and Brock Turner's rape of a 23-year old woman behind a dumpster at Stanford University are the latest high-profile examples of the everyday terror exercised against women.

Ronald Savage's story, my family's story, my story and so many other stories of survival highlight the need for a Marxist historical interpretation of sexual violence & incest. Marxism-the painstaking, socio-economic investigative method-does away with the vacuous theory that sick, depraved abusers are merely an aberration of the human spirit. The wide prevalence of sexual violence speaks volumes about the criminal, decadent nature of capitalism. There is a specific system that engenders the widespread abuse of women and children. The facts speak for themselves-one in four girls will be sexually abused before they turn 18 years old and one in five women will be raped at some point in their lives.[1] 40-60% of Black women are abused before they reach 18 . 3% of men report they were raped.

A political orientation towards sexual violence and trauma reveals that it is the product of a specific, temporal confluence of factors. The dialectical materialist method, a profound examination of the deep-seated causes of a social phenomenon, explains why sexual violence and incest are both widely prevalent and inevitable under capitalism.

This article will examine the connections between poverty, patriarchy, rape and incest both in my own life and family and in the writing of organic intellectuals and community leaders who have honestly grappled with this urgent issue.

My story

I am a survivor of sexual abuse. Two different AAU basketball coaches, Jim Tavares and Jack McMahon, whose teams I played on, were known pedophiles. A 1999 Sports Illustrated article , "Every Parent's Nightmare," outlined the sexual abuse that hundreds of us survived at the hands of Jim Tavares.

Tavares preyed upon me and other young boys who came from poor homes where there was only one parent trying to make ends meet. He gained access to our homes by giving us money and taking us on trips across the U.S. to play in national Junior Olympic AAU championships. If I had a father or a family with money, I would not have been an easy prey.

Just as the marksman knows how to hunt and snipe, the molester knows how to prey on children and attack.

There is no need for me to repeat the details as the article outlines Tavares' pattern of abuse. Predictably, the authors, William Nack and Don Yaeger treat Taveres and the other coaches as society's outliers, extremely demented individuals who went astray. This article argues a different perspective-that rape and incest are inevitable and predictable products of a specific social system that we have the power to unmask, confront and overcome.

Theorizing rape and incest

I was raised by woman warriors. Many of the women in my family survived horrific episodes of rape, incest and sexual terrorism which I have written on elsewhere. From my earliest memories, I felt the pain and trauma of my mother, my sisters, aunts, grandmother and other women in my family seethe through my own being. Why did my loved ones and I endure degrading, sadistic abuse? Their scars and my own have been formative in my story. With no strong male role models, I was mentored by the pain and survival of women. All of the suffering they experienced and survived made me question from an early age the source of so much horror.

Sexual violence is bigger than African Bambaataa, the priests convicted of child molestation within the Catholic church and the sexual violence that occurred within my own family. Sexual violence is an endemic, society-wide phenomenon that we must tackle and resist with a broad, revolutionary approach if we want to spare our children from the trauma so many of us survived.

My family of mixed Irish, Scottish, English and Finish roots was not unique in terms of the intensity of what we survived. As I discovered through my travels to other continents, hearts, islands and memories, there are survivors of rape and incest spread across the world. The U.S. has the thirteenth highest rate of rape in the world.[2] My family, then, was not an exception, but rather the very incarnation of larger social forces at work.

A critical view of rape and incest challenges the widespread view that men intrinsically act like "pigs" and "dogs." No one can dispute that many of us men act like pigs and dogs, but what explains the pigicization or dogification of male behavior?

Feminist sociologist Maria Mies explains that "human sex and sexuality have never been purely crude biological affairs. 'Human nature' has always been social and historical. Sex is as much a cultural and historical category as gender is" (Patriarchy and Accumulation 23). In more proletarian terms, men are not born as piglets but are rather pigified-or groomed to be pigs-over time. The inverse is also true; we can fight to undo patriarchal socialization and create a safer, healthier world to raise our children in. It is this political orientation towards sexual trauma that guides our work as revolutionaries. We fight for another world not just because of the pain of the present but because of the infinite promise of the future.

Scarred children

The social scientist seeks to unearth the nature of the childhood that the rapist / molester experienced. A baby is not born a rapist or a sadist. The mainstream media's dominant perspective that rapists are biologically-flawed, unredeemable sociopaths projects a pessimistic view of humanity. While there may be individual examples of perpetrators who were biologically or mentally engineered towards violence, this is a rare exception and not the rule.

According to Family Violence Interventions for the Justice System, men who witnessed their fathers' violence are 10 times more likely to engage in spouse abuse in later adulthood than boys from non-violent homes.[3]

Men who commit brutal violations of children's inner-sanctity most often experienced this violence themselves as children. They internalized their own skewed view of themselves and the world. They never knew what it meant to be complete, integral, loved or healthy. Broken from an early age, if not in the period of gestation, they learned to reproduce the insidiousness. Buried in their own self-torment and self-hatred, they struck out against what was most precious and vulnerable around them, children and women. Deprivation begat deprivation.

A system of patriarchy shapes the behavior of the rapist who shows an utter disregard for the humanity of women. The potent combination of poverty and patriarchy mold the acting out of the self-depreciation in a particular way. Having never known inner peace, the impoverished and unhealthy psyche annihilates the peace closest to it. Only a thorough exploration of the violator's childhood and formative years can begin to connect the missing dots.

Broken men

In addition to being criminal and perverse, sexual violence against children, women and men is a self-effacing behavior. To subject a defenseless child or woman to sexual abuse is the work of a broken man. The question before us is what overarching forces convert so many men into vile, demented creatures, who carry contempt for life itself in their fractured hearts?

Black Panther Soledad Prison Field Marshal, George Jackson asserted before white supremacy: "You will never count me among the broken men!"

A 25-year-old sociologist-with a PhD earned in the streets of LA and the prison cells of San Quentin-Jackson theorized about the outward reflexes of the broken man. Informed by a keen understanding of the wanton ruthlessness that surrounded him in America's internal colonies (ghettos) and prisons, Jackson refused to become ensnared in the trap that pitted Black on Black, man against woman, and oppressed against oppressed.

In Soledad Brother, Jackson charted the source of the broken reflexes-petty fights, alcoholism, rape and murder. From solitary confinement, within an 8-by-12 foot prison cell, Jackson sought to dominate the insidiousness so that it did not dominate him.

Like another great anti-colonial thinker, Frantz Fanon, who was writing in the same time period in Algeria, Jackson observed how his contemporaries acted out their trauma in reactionary ways because of their conditioning and precisely because they were deprived of a penetrating, revolutionary understanding of social reality.

The political economy of rape, Part I: The abuser

It is only in the social laboratory of intense class exploitation and misogyny that so many rapists can be called into existence. My analysis is not an attempt to justify Bambaataa's abuse nor apologize for the rapist but rather an effort to explore the malignant social forces that call so many rapists into existence.

In such a profoundly patriarchal society, different social-psychological forces act on men and women's psyches. Men are expected to be protectors and breadwinners. But what happens when their whole world-and with it their entire self-image-has been obliterated by material reality?

Too many men-conditioned by misogyny and deprived of employment and dignity-are broken men. In their deranged psyches, formed in the crucible of a materialist and patriarchal society, they seek to assert and insert themselves in twisted ways as "men" in a society that rejected and emasculated them. The inability to live up to their socially contrived ideals renders them depressed and broken.

Women in oppressed communities are hit the hardest by rape. Some 34.1% of Native American women have been raped. The next highest percentage was among mixed race women, 24.4% of whom reported being raped.[4] Incapable at this historical juncture of articulating their social rage in a revolutionary direction, the oppressed misdirect their fury in reactionary ways.

Rape is about power. Rape is one demented form of misdirected vengeance in which the oppressed assert power when they have lost control over their surroundings. Soldiers, under stress of battle, also often become ruthless perpetrators of rape, or gang rape, while pillaging the wealth of the conquered.[5] Alcohol and drugs-the traditional opiates of the oppressed-further distort reality, ensuring the stunting of proactive, revolutionary sentiments.

The origin of patriarchy

Two questions now confront us: what is the nature of the dog-eat-dog, patriarchal rat race that defines everyday working-class survival and how did we arrive at this point?

Bourgeois science argues that sexism and racism are inevitable. Because they see these learned behaviors as a product of man's nature, they seek to convince everyone that these systems of domination have always existed.

History proves otherwise, debunking the prevailing ideas of the historical defeatists.

Friedrich Engel's The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State documents the existence of matriarchal societies for thousands of years. Thoroughly researching what he calls "primitive communist societies," Engels shows that for the bulk of the human timeline, women were in positions of power in the family and community.

One prominent example was in the Taíno culture of Quisqueya, what is today Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The warrioress and cacica (chief), Anacaona, went off to battle and led resistance against the Spanish invaders, with her partner, Caonabo, taking charge of the home and raising the children. In 1503, upon capture she was publicly executed because she refused clemency in exchange for being the concubine of one of her captors. The Spanish colonizers were determined to eradicate the leaders of any resistance to their double enslavement of Native and African women.

Marxists pinpoint the emergence of private property, surplus and profits-or class society-as the origin of patriarchy. The origins of rape, incest and violence against women are the result of what Engels called the "world historic defeat" of women. With the development of private property and "the right" to inheritance, the son was elevated above the daughter as the heir to the estate. Just as the enslaved of the colonized countries existed as chattel property for the colonizers, women too were converted into their property; the masters and lords could do as they wanted with "their" women.

Under feudalism, the lord's "droit de seigneur" empowered him to take a "serf's wife" into his bed before she married and slept with her husband for the first time. In other words, the lord was allowed to rape the daughters and mothers of the exploited class because they were his property. This "droit" or "right" also entitled the lord of the estate to prey on peasant girls and to violate their virginity whenever he chose. This was often ceremoniously witnessed by male members of the court who were powerless to intervene.[6]

Social systems theory

Every social system merits its own analysis but feudalism, slavery and capitalism share these predominate features: 1) the sanctity of private property 2) the prioritization of profits over human dignity and 3) the relegation of women to a position of the slave's slave in the productive process.

Where does patriarchy fit into this exploitive economic base?

Maria Mies' Patriarchy and Accumulation tracks how for centuries women's unpaid, invisible work enabled the massive theft of the surplus labor of the wage earner. The productive process rested on the exploitation of the workers' labor which was not possible without the wife's behind-the-scenes toil. The woman then was the serf's serf, the slave's slave and the wage laborer's laborer.

To dig up the historical roots of the monstrous epidemic of rape and incest in the U.S. context requires a profound historical reckoning with one of its original sins-slavery.

The legacy of slavery

Through the dehumanization of Blackness, the slavocracy justified infinite predations upon the bodies of Black women and Black men.

The entire slave quarters were at the disposal of the slave traders and masters. The Portuguese slavers built their castles with a master bedroom that had two doors leading to two corridors. One corridor led to the slave quarters, where there was an army of slaves at the master's sexual disposal. The other corridor led to confession, where the slavers asked their priests and their gods for forgiveness for their acts, before committing the next round of transgressions.

W.E.B. Du Bois' masterpiece Black Reconstruction in Americacaptured the white Southerners' attitude toward the Black man and woman. In order to capture the dehumanization process, Du Bois cited a visiting German sociologist, Carl Schurz, who was hired by President Andrew Johnson to study the South: "Men who are honorable in their dealings with their white neighbors, will cheat a Negro without feeling a single twinge of their honor. To kill a Negro, they do not deem murder; to debauch a Negro woman, they do not think fornication; to take the property away from a Negro, they do not consider robbery."[7] In his gripping sociological portrait of the antebellum South, Du Bois breached theunbreachable and spoke the unspeakable: "Southerners who had suckled food from black breasts vied with each other in fornication with Black women, and even in beastly incest. They took the name of their fathers in vain to seduce their own sisters. Nothing-nothing that Black folk did or said or thought or sang was sacred" (p.125).

The very essence of slavery was the breaking of the Black mind, body and soul.

A culture of white rape of Black women-hiding behind its antithesis, the publicly-flaunted, genteel South and morally-robust Bible Belt-has traversed centuries. The myth of the "Black rapist" was used to mask the identity of America's original rapists-a wealthy class of roughly 60,000 white slave owners. The myth of the Black rapist served to deflect focus away from the slave master's abuse of Black and white women and funnel mass discontent into "populist" campaigns, such as lynching and state executions. Society was mobilized in pursuit of "the boogey man" while the true "boogey-man" held the noose.

Describing the typical slave master, Du Bois wrote: "Sexually they were lawless, protecting elaborately and flattering the virginity of a small class of women of their social clan, and keeping at command millions of poor women of the two laboring groups [Black and white] of the South" (p. 35).

Lawrence Konner's remaking of Alex Haley's Roots in June 2016 served as a vivid reminder that the slave owning class used rape as a weapon against the Black family.

Slavery birthed patterns of rape and incest that our society has yet to heal from.

Rape and brokenness in Beloved

Toni Morrison's Beloved is a gripping account of the twin terrors of sexual violence and slavery.[8] A cursory examination of the central characters of Beloved reveals the wanton, white supremacist terror unleashed on Black America.

Halle and Paul D represent generations of Black men pinned down and broken by slavery. Sexual violence against Black men, women and children was one of slavery's preferred weapons "to break" their slaves.

Halle was Sethe's partner and father of her children. After witnessing a gang of white men rape his wife, Sethe, and then drink her breast milk, Halle went crazy. Feeling powerless, he disappeared for ever from the family unit because what "he saw go on in that barn that day broke him like a twig" (68).

Paul D, Sethe's friend, confidante and a fellow slave, alludes to a rape he suffered on the Sweet Home plantation: "Saying more might push them [Sethe and Paul D] both to a place they couldn't get back from. He [Paul D] would keep the rest where it belonged: in that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be. Its lids rusted shut. He would not pry it loose now in front of this sweet sturdy woman, for if she got a whiff of the contents it would shame him" (73).

The scars from the whip, tattooed onto Sethe's back, form a chokecherry tree, symbolizing the slave experience. The barefoot, poor white woman Amy who helps Sethe deliver her fourth child, Denver, describes the scar: "A trunk-it's red and split wide open, full of sap, and this here's the parting for the branches. You got plenty of branches. Leaves, too, look like, and dern [darn] if these ain't blossoms. Tiny little cherry blossoms, just as white. Your back got a whole tree on it. In bloom" (79). According to Morrison's' poignant metaphor, "the fire on her back" is the Black nation, which despite the indescribable abuse, is strong and full of life, giving birth to future generations who will carry the scars but resolutely confront the slave master's terror.

Slavery and rape pushed Morrison's characters to extremes. When the slavecatchers came to abduct Sethe's four children and sell them out of state, Sethe resisted the only way she could. As she breastfed her youngest daughter, Denver, she simultaneously beat her other daughter, Beloved, to death, to save her from the horrors of slavery. Her two young boys and Denver were soaked in their sister's blood and only survived the grueling scene because of the intervention of another slave.

Toni Morrison recreated these tormenting images in order to bring slavery alive for the reader. Without understanding this original sin, little else can be understood in the American narrative.

Historical trauma

Dr. Joy Degruy Leary explored the effects of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome on generations of African Americans.[9] The slave system was a breeding ground for incest within the slave quarters, as well. Upsetting the traditions and stability of the family, slavery disempowered the husband figure and humiliated the father figure. Slavery was crafted to make the oppressed internalize a sense of shame and humiliation.

Men, women and children were packed into barns and stables unfit for human existence. In his autobiography, Frederick Douglas described the barbarism he was born into in Baltimore, Maryland.[10] Deprived of space and privacy and unable to clothe their children, the masters packed multiple families into shacks, without mattresses, blankets or adequate clothing. Slavery was a vortex of bestiality that spiraled out of control destroying human connections.[11]

Unable to stand down the oppressor, the emasculated slave-the trapped lion-projected his hatred towards those at home.[12] Sexual transgressions were the reincarnated transgressions of the master, once again unleashed on the double victims, Black women and children.

This historical trauma-set in motion-by a four-century long reign of terror reappears in families today. The conventional wisdom and oft-repeated, racist claim that "slavery occurred so long ago and Black people should just get over it" is designed to disconnect the terror of the past with the terror of the present. Sethe, Baby Suggs, Beloved and Toni Morrison's other characters remind us that the legacy of slavery lives within, and part of that legacy is sexual trauma.

History offers context for the harrowing fact that 40-60% of Black women are sexually abused before they are 18 . Failure to spiritually and consciously come to terms with the historical trauma damns the present fighters to wallow, unconsciously or semi-consciously, in the past. This is an apt metaphor for the survivor of sexual violence, whose only way out of the trauma, is through it.

From chattel slavery to wage slavery

The enslavement of Africans in the Americas was one branch of the patriarchal system Engels denounced and the most vicious reenactment of boss-worker relations which played out in other social systems. Slavery was America's original sin, upon which the descendant systems of exploitation were based.

The heir to slavery, capitalism-through its disempowerment of women-continues to be a breeding ground of sexual violence.

The following formula synthesizes the reproduction of the class system and the cycle it sets in motion. An exploitative economic base (i.e. serfdom, slavery, industrial and extractive capitalism) gives birth to internalized discord, self-hatred and a distorted sense of identity among the exploited, leading to the acute need to numb and escape (i.e. alcoholism) which is intertwined with violence projected outward and acted out at home, resulting in the victimization of the next generation, which grows up damned by both the exploitative economic base and a demoralizing family environment.

This exploitative economic base and internalized oppression again sets in motion a cycle that repeats itself with individualized symptoms that are reflective of the same disease.

The political economy of rape, Part II: The abused

The disempowerment of women is both economic and psychological and transcends national borders. Rape has a specific economic, not geographic, terrain. Not unique to the U.S., the dominant economic model-patriarchal capitalism-produces dependency.

Because housework is not compensated, the mother figure finds herself trapped.

Deprived of an empowering education, self-esteem and social and economic rights, many oppressed women cannot see beyond their immediate environs. The coterminous forces of women's oppression feed off one another, trapping women and children within the male-dominated, misogynist household.

Testimony

The testimonies and writing of organic intellectuals struggling against patriarchy and capitalism highlight the fact that the political economy of rape traverses national boundaries.

A scene from Germinal, Émile Zola's epic novel, captures the power dynamics within the miner's home. Half-starved and still sullen from the coal mines, the protagonist, Maheu arrived from the bowels of the earth demanding his dinner and sex. Showing total disregard for his wife, Maneude's humanity, he bends her over, raping her in front of the children, as they prepare to bathe in a basin. This scene from a French mining family's home was a snapshot of the twin evils of capitalism and patriarchy that have acted upon women for centuries.

In Don't Be Afraid Gringo, Elvira Alvarado described the typical social existence of the Honduran campesina (peasant woman). In her testimony, Elvira provides poignant snapshots of the cruel social terrain where patriarchy and economic disempowerment produce violence against women and children. Like the French miner a century before, the banana plantation worker existed to produce surplus value for transnational business. The housewife in the plantation worker family produced the conditions necessary for the exploitation of the wage laborer. She was doubly exploited. For both the boss and the sub-oppressor, for 365 days a year, it was open season on women like Elvira Alvarado.

Describing her everyday routine, Alvarado explained that she worked the land and attended to her husband and eight children: "Even when we go to sleep, we don't get to rest. If the babies wake up crying, we have to go take care of them-give them the breast if they're still breast-feeding, give them medicine if they're sick. And if our husbands want to make love, if they get the urge, then it's back to work again. The next morning, we're up before the sun, while our husbands are still sleeping" (p. 52). Robbed of autonomy in both spheres of her life, Alvarado existed to produce for the oppressor and sub-oppressor.

Enraged by his powerlessness, Elivira's husband subconsciously recreated his exploitation lower down on the social hierarchy where his violence had no repercussions. The state's monopoly of violence ensured that his humiliation had no positive, externalized revolutionary social outlet. Meanwhile, he was socially sanctioned to drink himself into oblivion and lash out at home. Family was the private domain where the exploiteds' pent-up anger crystalized. Having learned well from his boss, he recreated the violence onto his wife and children, the only social figures disempowered enough to tolerate the wanton abuse.

What the husband considered sex or "his marital right," constitutes rape for many women like Elvira Alvarado. Her words deliver the point home: "I've heard that there are men and women who make love in all different ways, but we campesinos don't know anything about these different positions. We do it the same all the time-the man gets on the woman and goes up and down, up and down and that's it. Sometimes the woman feels pleasure and sometimes she doesn't. We don't have any privacy either, because our houses are usually one big room so we have to wait until everyone is asleep and then do it very quietly. We just push down our underpants and pull them back up again" (47). For the Honduran housewife, sex, like cooking and cleaning, was a chore or an obligation. Stripped of her self-determination, both the home and the wider society were a forcing house of male domination.

'Stay in your place'

Employing the same literary genre as Elvira Alvarado, the Bolivian mining activist, Domitila Barrios de Chúngara, wrote Let me Speak! The Testimony of Domitila A Woman of the Bolivian Mines.[13]

Her autobiography deepens our understanding of patriarchy as a weapon to divide the miners. The misnamed "barzolas" were working class women employed by the mining bosses as reactionary shock troops to attack and humiliate the miners' wives.[14] When the Housewife Committee refused to stay quiet and confined in their homes and came into the streets to protest, the "barzola" shock troops threw tomatoes at them, accused them of sleeping around and physically attacked them.

The disempowerment of the Housewives' Committee was the disempowerment of the working class. Preoccupied with secondary contradictions, the exploited protagonists-the miners-lost sight of the primary contradiction between labor and capital. Blind before the oppressor's strategy to keep them in their confinement, they prevented the fruition of class unity. The divide and conquer strategy sought to confine women to the home, "shame" them and stunt their ability to make world-historic change.

"Women hold up half the sky" but when they are held back, the entire working class is confined to a social inferno. Capitalism and patriarchy have a codependent relationship; they feed off one another. The crushing of one hierarchical system necessitates the overthrow of its twin.

Women's liberation is humanity's liberation.

The role of class

Centuries of state-sanctioned and state-enforced rape established a legacy that continues to play out today.

Angela Davis' Women, Race and Class looks at the triple burden Black women confronted the span of American history.[15] Davis examined the rampant sexual abuse committed by white male employers within the home against Black women forced by poverty into domestic labor. How many bosses, supervisors, sex tourists and other men in high positions still believe they have unfettered access to Black and Brown women's bodies?

There is also sexual abuse in other layers of class society. Daughters and sons of rich families have survived sexual trauma. The widespread occurrence across class divides illustrates the omnipotence of sexism under capitalism. A rich woman may also find herself psychologically stuck. In contrast to a working-class woman, she may possess the economic resources to flee but may face the judgement of her family who will threaten to "cut her off" if she dares to forge her own independence. Raised to be pretty and thin, some upper class women may not possess the skills to move on. Patriarchy is pervasive and even privileged women-who from an outside perspective appear to have it all-struggle within their gilded cages.

A culture of impunity

In addition to raising the rapist, capitalism offers the rapist free reign.

The story of the anonymous young woman who was drugged and raped behind a dumpster at Standford is chilling. Although her rapist, Brock Turner was caught and found guilty by a jury, a judge only gave him six months in jail because "a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him."[16]

Turner's light sentence is not the exception. Factoring in unreported rapes, only 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in jail; 15 out of 16 will walk free.[17] Every 107 seconds a woman is raped in the U.S. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, twenty million women in the United States have been raped. The study asserts that the number could be three times as high because only 1/3 of sexual assaults are reported.[18] There is no accountability. There are no popular reprisals. In too many cases, no one dares confront the perpetrator. Often, the sadist moves from one generation to the next.

In my own abuse case, when I was 16, I contacted the Plymouth county District Attorney's office in 1997 to file a report. It was four years after the abuse. The DA said he had 73 similar complaints against the basketball coach, Jim Taveres. After hearing my statement, the public official concluded, for at least the 74thtime, that he "did not have conclusive proof" to put Jim Tavares back away in jail.

Capitalist society, from the U.S. to Brazil is, in essence, a school of unchecked patriarchy and pedophilia.

On May 21st on this year, a 16-year-old Brazilian girl was gang-raped by 33 men, some of whom then went on social media to boast about their acts. It is tragic that it took such a heinous case to re-highlight the rape culture that threatens every Brazilian woman.

In Brazil, the statistics are even more deplorable than in the U.S. According to the Brazilian women's organization, Rio de Paz, every 72 hours, 420 women are raped in Brazil.[19]

The liberal observer remains shocked at the harrowing rape statistics while failing to realize the very cause of the horror; a depraved system can only produce depravity. Incest and rape are not natural or inevitable phenomena, but rather symptomatic of the current economic and social order. Token efforts to raise awareness among children about their rights and to facilitate violence prevention workshops are important in the short run but will do little to erase the overall problem. An end to the suffering requires a systematic overhaul of existing class relations.

Denial is complicity

There is another rung in the social inferno that is oppression to which we must descend in order to more fully understand the plight of the survivor.

There are other social actors who become complicit in the crimes spawned by a criminal system. Many mothers-too traumatized to stare the truth in its eyes-became indirect apologists for the offender, giving cover to the crimes with their silence. Feeling powerless before the crime of the century, too many times they have internalized and projected their own subconscious guilt and self-hatred onto the victims. Instead of appearing on the historical stage as the ultimate defenders of their daughters, how many mothers have appeared as collaborators of the crime?

Silence, reproduced between generations, extends the lease life of the pain. Silence within the family is collusion. Denial is collusion. Covering up is collusion.

Sapphire's novel Push, brought to the cinema in the 2009 film Precious, graphically documented the complex relationships that resulted from incest.[20] Sixteen year-old Claireece "Precious" Jones is pregnant with her father's second child. The heartbreaking novel examined how Precious' mother, Mary, instead of protecting and defending her daughter from her rapist husband, Carl, turned the blame on her daughter. Precious was the object of her mother's scorn. Stripped of a childhood and her parents' affection, Precious had to learn to navigate society on her own.

The mothers, grandparents, aunts and uncles who looked the other way were knee-deep in the swamp of insidiousness. Patriarchy pervaded their lives; more concerned with protecting the reputation of the family before the good town-folks, they sacrificed their children's health and happiness-their childhoods-so they could keep smiling at church on Sundays. They too were deeply affected by patriarchy and rape culture. Converted into silent bystanders, enablers and perpetuators of the insidiousness, they ignored the truth and blamed the victim. They too were broken; the illusion of an "American dream" was worth more to them than truth and redemption.

Internalized blame

When we paint the entire sorry portrait, we see the convergence of the different social-emotional factors acting on the survivors. Overwhelmed by the insidiousness, the matriarch escapes into booze or god. The primary witnesses often subconsciously rewrite history. Denial buries the dagger deeper into the chest of the abused. Searching for acceptance and validation, they find blame and hatred.

Unable to externalize their anger; the pain consumes the survivor, resulting in the cyclization of the insidiousness i.e. heroin, addiction, cutting, anorexia, morbid obesity, alcohol etc. Every form of self-injurious behavior is an agonized cry for help.

Heroin, bulimia and other self-loathing behaviors are a giant middle finger to America; no one ever cared about me, so why should I care about myself? Heroin and bulimia are rebellions devoid of direction and grit, a quest without a compass.

Robbed of support from the patriarchal society, the survivor slips into self-torment. Nince Inch Nails' lyrics, famously covered by Johnny Cash, capture the "Hurt:"

I hurt myself todayTo see if I still feelI focus on the painThe only thing that's realThe needle tears a holeThe old familiar stingTry to kill it all awayBut I remember everything.

What have I become?My sweetest friendEveryone I know goes awayIn the end.And you could have it allMy empire of dirtI will let you downI will make you hurt.

The Somali writer, Warsan Shire writes: "Not everyone is okay with living like an open wound. But the thing about open wounds is that, well, you aren't ignoring it. You're healing; the fresh air can get to it. It's honest. You aren't hiding who you are. You aren't rotting."

The suppression of pain is ineffective because pain will only find other outlets. We, survivors, can run and escape all the way to the grave but until we cough up all of the pain, there can be no thorough-going healing. Silence is not an option. Some form of therapy is necessary to help survivors understand the roots of their self-harm and to find meaning in an alienating society.

Ronald Savage and other survivors of abuse are heroes. Protectors of future generations, the survivors fought to overcome "the shame" patriarchy imposed on them and tell their stories.

Digging up and speaking the pain is the first step but it cannot happen without outside support. Because class society seeks to atomize and isolate the survivor, there must be an effort to collectivize our pain in a supportive, conscious community setting. There are 12 step programs and support groups called Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous and Incest Survivors Anonymous. There are also research-validated treatments such as Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy that are effective for assisting those whose trauma has led to severely self-harming or suicidal behavior. These methods help the survivor see things differently and not blame themselves. Healing occurs when the survivor recognizes that they are good and beautiful and let's go of the poisonous negative thoughts and low self-esteem that the abuser and patriarchy have instilled within them.

As I argued in an article on trauma, addiction and capitalism, a survivor who is able to theoretically grasp the hell-hole they were born into, begins to empower themselves to turn on the class system, the source of their trauma. A revolutionary's work is to provide a political orientation towards trauma. If overcoming fear and denial is the individualized part of healing, revolutionary organizing against the monster, responsible for the crimes of the century, is the collective part of healing.

Therapy, support groups and the party, working together, all play their role in helping the survivor rise up on the society that violated them.

Our responsibility

Afrika Bambaataa was a pioneering hip hop voice who resisted injustice and capitalism, but this did not mean that he was beyond all of its insidiousness-patriarchy, white supremacy and homophobia.

On June 1st, 2016, Julien Terrell, cofounder of The Renaissance Zulu Chapter 64, issued the following statement condemning the covering up of Bambaataa's sexual violence against teenage boys and announcing the chapter's separation from the traditional Zulu Nation: "Many have said that Bambaataa's accomplishments in hip hop should not be included in the critique of his so called personal life. I say that any so called political and cultural commitment that does not transfer to your personal actions is NOT a commitment at all. It's nothing but talk and the time for putting ego aside has come. He [Bambaataa] is still lying but there is space for humility and compassion that the victims have offered despite the pain he caused. I hope those that are close to him support him in stepping to the allegations with integrity. That is what this culture is supposed to represent."

As revolutionaries and community leaders, we all carry the social baggage of the old world and must hold one another accountable for our actions. As Terrell explains, we have a responsibility to uproot and go to war with all of the contradictions, less they chaotically spill out and hurt others.

Socialism is healing

Experiments in rehabilitation in the U.S. are limited today because of the "lock them up and throw away the key" strategy of the state. In a transformed society, the abuser would undergo isolation, therapy, rehabilitation and slow reintegration. Reconciliation would involve the recounting of their own childhoods and the social crimes they went on to commit. There is no healing in denial. Anything short of a full, public admission and acceptance falls short of justice.

In a socialist society, inherited with all of social baggage of capitalism it will take generations to do away with all of the wicked inheritance-white supremacy, sexism, homophobia, individualism, consumerism etc. As the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and other socialist societies can attest, in a new world born of the old-with all of the birth marks of wickedness and depravity-there will be no shortage of challenges for nations reborn.

The ruling class vilifies these human experiments in social re-organization in order to contain our dreams and ground our visions, less we conceive of emancipation from the current social disorder. The unofficial religion of the U.S. today is anti-communism, for this very reason.

From the perspective of the extractors of surplus value, what has to be protected is not the right of a little girl to a childhood but their own unfettered access to profits. The anonymous survivor of rape at Stanford, the 16-year-old Brazilian girl, Ronald Savage and all of the nameless survivors-caught in the crosshairs of patriarchy and exploitation-demonstrate the urgency to organize for the toppling of the capitalist system.

Dr. Martin Luther King called for "a revolution in our nation's priorities." A socialist society would immediately and decisively intervene to halt and reverse the monstrous patterns of incest and rape.

Towards a culture of women's liberation

What would a world based on freedom-as opposed to necessity-look like? There is no way to predict the future but we can assert that it will not look anything like the degradation-what Engel's called "pre-history"-that today's oppressed communities and families confront.

In a healthy future, crystal meth, domestic abuse, and trauma itself will be remnants of a dark, distant past from which we will have emerged.

The goal then is to convert our current society into a school of women's liberation.

Society's superstructure must be torn up from the roots and reorganized to concretely confront the scourge of misogyny. The advertising industry sexually objectifies women. Viacom, General Electric and the entire mass media produce music and videos based on chauvinist caricatures of women as objects, shallow gossips, video vixens, hoes, thots and gold-diggers. Many actors in capitalist, consumer society are guilty in playing a role in the reproduction of rape culture. They cannot be let off the hook.

Socialist society will project empowering reference points through billboards, education, TV and social media.

In Cuba, where class relations are organized differently, the incidence of such crimes against women and children is far less common. After 1959, Cuba outlawed the exploitation of women in advertising. Housing, education, transportation, health care and a job were guaranteed social and economic rights. A society that had ceased to be a patriarchal, dog-eat-dog world took the bite out of the dog.

Though we can only make conjectures about the future, we can be sure that it will look nothing like this hell-on-earth that exists today.

Only a new, socialist society can provide real healing and in the words of martyred Irish revolutionary, Bobby Sands: "Our revenge will be the laughter of our children." We fight so that no little child or adult ever again has to live with what Ronald Savage and all survivors live with-the pulsating scars of incest, abuse and rape buried beneath their skin.

Thank you to Emmanuella Odilis for the feedback, edits and support. As the tears and truths emerge, the words and strength stream fourth…

This was originally published at Liberation School.

Notes

[1] "Statistics about Sexual Violence." National Sexual Violence Resource Center. 2015.

[2] Chemaly, Soraya. "50 Actual Facts about Rape." Huffington Post. December 8th, 2014.

[3] 1993.

[4] National Institute of Justice and Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. Prevalence, Incidence and Consequences of Violence against Women Survey. 1998.

[5] It is not uncommon for cops to use their batons to violently penetrate their captives. This has nothing to do with homosexuality, but are rather acts of aggression, power and contempt.

[6] Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's well-known opera Marriage of Figaro is about precisely this, peasants and servants, in the early dawn of the revolutionary movement in France, conspiring and outsmarting a philandering count who sought to prey upon the young women of an Italian village.

[7] Page 136. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1935.

[8] New York: Penguin. 1987.

[9] DeGruy, Joy. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. Uptone Press, 2005.

[10] Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Boston: 1845.

[1] Frederick Douglas' testimony conjured up images of what Haitian families endure today in exile in the Dominican Republic. According to my research living and organizing within the Haitian communities of the D.R., the results are eerily similar with women and children twice victimized - by a system of anti-Haitianismo and by the alienated male sub-oppressors within the exploited Haitian community.

[12] There is a reactionary, "nationalist" trend that posits that Black men are damaged because they were not allowed to play a "traditional" patriarchal role. This chauvinist position submits that the solution is to allow the Black male to assume their "proper" place as patriarchal protectors. It should be stated that patriarchal "protection" in any class society, including pre-colonized Africa, has its own antithesis of rape and abuse.

[13] Originally published in Spanish as Si Me Permiten Hablar. New York: Monthly Review Press. 1978.

[14] This group expropriated the name of Maria Barzola, an Aymara activist assassinated in 1951 by the Bolivian government.

[15]On the plantation, Black women were at the same time domestic, breeder and field slave. As she picked cotton, tobacco or sugar, she laid her baby down beside her just out of arm's reach. Still reeling from the pain of childbirth, she was forced to contribute to the productive process. She was thrice enslaved.

[16] Fantz, Ashley. Outrage over 6-month sentence for Brock Turner in Stanford rape case. CNN. June 7, 2016.

[17] Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) calculation based on US Department of Justice 2010 Statistics.

[18] "Raising Awareness about Sexual Abuse Facts and Statistics. U.S. Department of Justice.

[19] Bearak, Max. "Women's Underwear Strewn on beach in Rio to protest Brazil's rape culture." The Washington Post. June 8th, 2016.

[20] Vintage. 1997.