Re: "Intervening"

[ermadog@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

On Fri, 24 Aug 2001, Richard Fidler wrote:

> > Comment:

> > I am not in a position to criticize the British SWP or the Australian
> DSP in this regard. But it seems to me that Lou is disputing the very
> idea that militants holding a particular view should caucus in advance
> of a meeting to ensure that their ideas are most persuasively advanced
> in that meeting. I would argue, on the contrary, that to the degree that
> the advance caucusing by these militants facilitates clarity in the
> ensuing discussion in the larger milieu, it is a positive contribution
> to the larger movement. To the degree that it helps to advance the
> conscious adoption of a correct line of march for the mass movement,
> likewise.

You bet your sweet bippie, Buddy! Especially when you are attending a
meeting in which you know darn well that many of the members will be
functioning as an undeclared bloc opperating by means of ties of personal
relationship; and especially if you want to actually get something
accomplished in such an antagonistic atmosphere.

These women were by no means innocent young virgins meeting the Big, Bad,
Trotskyist Wolf somewhere down a dark alley on a dark night. Many of these
women had originated in the New Left and become disenchanted with the lack
of recognition accorded them by their macho confreres in the anti-war
movement. They carried with them the same elitist and anti-democratic
attitudes with which Louis is familiar from the SDS participation in the
anti-war movement; and they had their redbaiting techniques down pat.

When the feminist movement was first getting started, the Trotskyists had
no orientation toward them beyond simple democratic demands such as equal
pay and equal job opportunity, which were better addressed in the labour
movement and in the political arena (here in Canada, that meant the NDP).
In the consciousness-raising groups, these New Left women were pleased as
punch to have the floor all to themselves and not have to address the
usual demands of the Trotskyists for concrete analysis and solutions to
concrete problems. They could get as touchy-feely as they wanted to and
they did.

What I remember most about them was an elitist attitude that I have since
come to identify as endemic, to one degree or another, in student
activists in North America. They had all read the same books and operated
on the same set of assumptions gleaned, I presume, from their liberal arts
education. I remember reading feminist books that all had exactly the same
analysis of exactly the same witers - people like Norman Mailer and Henry
Miller - that I had never heard of, didn't care about, and didn't know
anyone whom had been influenced by - and wondering what the heck these
women were on about.

These women had petty bourgeois attitude in spades, and in some of their
earlier meetings tried to establish a list of credentials women must have
before being allowed to participate. This was actually an about-face from
a previous position they had adopted when Trotskyists argued for
women-only meetings. We had argued this on the basis that people actually
in the struggle are the best judge of their own experience and are the
only ones entitled to demand redress of grievance. Those who don't
understand this point might benefit from reviewing Jim Craven's
complaint against this Arnette character.

They had the usual illusions equating democratic freedoms with their own
sense of personal freedom and their politics were mostly a rationalization
of their personal need for transcendance. They were really irritated by
any insistence on rational discourse, since this was a form of
male-dominated thinking, and they enjoyed feeling superior to us poor sods
who just didn't understand their subjective natterings. At one of their
conferences in Vancouver, they publicly discussed how to get rid of the
Trotskyists and suggested using an M16. Yup, sisterhood is really
powerfull, especially when you are operating as an undeclared bloc - oops!
I mean "networking".

The other threat to the peace of mind of these women were the various
lesbians who took a leadership role in the early years. They were a threat
for reasons similar to the "threat" of the Trotskyists - they were
effective, and they got things done. The history of the purges of lesbians
from the American feminist movement has been much discussed in the pages
of Ms. magazine, particularly with repect to the NOW organization, and I
refer interested readers there because I don't know much about the
American situation. Lesbians who do manage to survive in a patriarchal
world do so, in part, because they develop impressive skills in personal
organization, and they brought these skills with them to the various
feminist organizations in which they participated. This, of course,
disrupted the touchy-feely atmosphere of the consciousness-raising groups.

I guess I should say something nice about them; because they eventually
did get the domestic abuse issue into the public eye and this resulted in
the establishment of women's shelters - a very positive development.
However, I always got the feeling that this issue was more a cause celebre
type of issue - the feminist version of radical chic, I guess - and that
the shelters were a result more of the efforts of the middle class
feminists of the Status of Women variety, than of these ex New Left women.
I don't really know, because by then I had moved on.

I now have a permanent allergy toward any kind of identity politics, and
you can't get me to discuss gender-bias for love nor money.

Joan Cameron