Think '70s Feminists Are Out of Touch? Not So Fast.

By Heidi Schnakenberg, AlterNet. Posted July 11, 2008.

As William Kristol famously said during the primary season, "White women are a problem, that's -- you know, we all live with that."

Indeed, it seems that a lot of people have problems with white women, from our presumptive presidential nominees to feminists who are engaging in increasingly uncomfortable infighting over the implications of sexism vs. racism that emerged this year. There is a great post-primary feminist divide at the moment, and it has raised crucial questions about feminism and its origins, and why feminists and women in general remain so divided. Some of our traditional feminists like Gloria Steinem and Linda Hirshman have come under fire for sounding absolutist as they decry the rampant sexism of the campaign and express frustration over intersectionalism -- a brand of feminism that often buries gender issues in its efforts to highlight other forms of oppression.

In defense of Steinem, Hirshman and our so-called "bourgeois" members of the old feminist guard, I think their sense of urgency has less to do with this campaign and more to do with deep disappointment that the ol' "divide and conquer" thinking among women is so firmly in place. Sexism is still far behind the curve in beating the oppression game, and the feminist establishment is very worried. It is sending out calls for women to focus and adopt what I like to call "unity feminism."

These older white feminists are quickly written off as out of touch and even racist by intersectionalist feminists who say that women have a wide variety of problems to worry about, such as class, race and economics, and feminism must adopt many facets and causes to improve women's lives. Women of color have responded more specifically by saying that, frankly, they feel white women don't experience a fraction of the pain and suffering that women of color go through and it's difficult for them to relate. The overall sentiment is, "Hey, you privileged feminists, you don't get it. Move out of the way with your old-fashioned white feminism." As a reformed intersectionalist feminist, I say, not so fast.

Picture this: A young, privileged white woman grows up in an all-white, homogenous, Midwest community in the 1950s and '60s. She is beautiful and well-educated. She is middle-class, has no immediate economic worries and seems to have a bright future ahead of her.

Forty years later, she approaches retirement with permanent, debilitating brain damage from domestic violence that has robbed her of her memory and ability to care for herself for more than 20 years. Her Social Security benefits are routinely taken away on technicalities, and she doesn't qualify for Medicare. She receives a meager double-digit monthly income that isn't enough to fill a tank of gas, and she must rely on her kids for additional support. This woman happens to be my mother.

You can imagine how jarring it is for me to hear people say white women are too privileged and classist to understand the plight of less fortunate women. There is an assumption that white women are out of touch with the needs, suffering and pain of non-white women and therefore that "white women's" feminism is irrelevant. This is one of the biggest myths in feminism, and it must be dismantled or none of us will ever gain the rights, equality and safety we all deserve, and we definitely shouldn't discount Steinem and Hirshman so quickly. In fact, they have issued important warnings that we should heed.

Like many women, I too, have an eclectic and complex history of experiences. I'm ethnically Caucasian, and my family is from a small rural town in Western Europe, but I strongly identify with my Latino family by marriage, and my child is considered a person of color. I've lived in extremely varied environments -- a small town in West Africa, a rural farm in the Midwest, the projects in Manhattan, next to crack houses in Brooklyn, in a posh, gay neighborhood in Southern California, and even a temporary stint on the obscure island of Malta. I tell you this: Women have as much, if not more, in common with each other than they do with the men in their respective communities, countries and demographics. I've also come under fire from intersectionalist feminists for making statements like this. They say this type of thinking diminishes other problems that women of varied backgrounds face. I say no, all those other problems diminish the unique plight of women, who all exist under male power and oppression.

I once knew a Ghanaian woman named Ivy who lived in a small beach village on the shores of the Gulf of Guinea. She was very poor and lived hand to mouth in a way that I can never understand. She struggled with back pain from constant hard labor. And every night she cried. Not because of the work or the poverty, but because of her husband's beatings and relentless infidelities, and the frightening exposure to sexual diseases as a result.

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Heidi Schnakenberg is a writer and activist whose work has appeared in the Des Moines Register, Women's eNews, and several national and international publications. As a screenwriter, she has worked with Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope. Her latest project is an original screenplay based on Spanish Harlem in the 80s and 90s, called El Barrio Del Sol.

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