This morning, while my students took an exam, I made use of my time by catching up on email and checking out some news sites and a few other sites that I tend to check out regularly. One sight was the NOW website. Let me begin by writing that I am becoming increasingly disillusioned with NOW, primarily because their brand of feminism is becoming dated. But that is a topic for another post.
This morning's annoyance comes from an analysis of the recent New York Times cover. Here is the article on NOW's site. I'm annoyed because this is the first time (at least that I can remember; I didn't troll the archives of the site to make sure I am indeed 100% correct) that NOW has offered analysis of the racism present in the Presidential Campaign. Until now, their analysis of the media has focused almost exclusively on sexism as it has been leveled against Hillary Clinton. To me this--the failure to recognize that racism and sexism are so often linked--demonstrates one of the primary problems with mainstream feminism, if NOW's brand of feminism can, in fact, be seen as mainstream.
4 comments:
Historically in the United States, when one political minority progressed in society, this was not necessarily a call for other political minorities to advance. When the lower class and unpropertied class received the right to vote, it was not extended to women & blacks; when blacks received the right to vote, it was not open to women; when women received the right to vote, well, blacks still could not vote.
If you believe that politics consists of a fight over limited resources and each group fights for those resources, then it makes sense for one group to avoid fighting for another group.
During the Democratic Primary, NOW decided who to support. When Clinton did not win, now needed to switch allegiances to save its access to resources.
All very true, Solon. In fact you just explained why Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass split very publicly in the latter-part of the 19th century. But it is still annoying, nonetheless.
I, of course, mean that Anthony and Douglass split politically as each was supporting the others political activism.
"Let me begin by writing that I am becoming increasingly disillusioned with NOW, primarily because their brand of feminism is becoming dated."
I've really been thinking this lately, too, and I'd love to hear your thoughts in a post. (In fact, I've avoided posting too much on the feminist issues in the past few months b/c I'm realizing that my brand of feminism has shifted somewhat and I need to get a handle on it before I can use it as a cultural critic.) To sound like a true academic feminist, NOW is so second wave.
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