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Sexual Politicsand After: Thinking with Kate Millett

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Sexual Politicsand After: Thinking with Kate Millett SPRING 2018 / BROWN UNIVERSITY Associates Newsletter Sexual Politics and After: Thinking with Kate Millett o mark the recent passing of Kate TMillett, author of the revolutionary text, Sexual Politics, and a key figure of feminism’s second wave, the Pembroke Center, partnering with Leon Hilton (TAPS), hosted an afternoon panel in February called: "Sexual Politics and After: Thinking with Kate Millett." In the context of today’s gender politics, from Stormy Daniels to the #MeToo movement — in which we are all arguably second wavers now! — the country is revisiting the politics of gender and sexuality as they operated in the middle of the last century. At the Pembroke Center, we do so conscious of the contributions and corrections of intersectionality, third wave feminism and more. Ms. Millett all but invented feminist photo credit: hank randall literary criticism, as Judith Shulevitz Panelist Kevin Quashie speaks with the audience and Victoria Hesford at our February program wrote in The New York Review of Books. "Sexual Politics and After: Thinking with Kate Millett" In the language of today, Millett’s Sexual Politics went viral when it was published, and sexuality gathered to pay tribute legacies of 1970s feminisms and their selling 10,000 copies in a fortnight. But it to Millett's work in relation to a range relevance to current struggles. had an unlikely beginning: it began as a of issues including: feminist celebrity The conference featured: Leon dissertation, which Millett wrote after she post-1970s, her involvement with was fired from her teaching position at J. Hilton (TAPS, Brown) on “Kate psychiatric survivorship and the politics Millett and the Feminist Aesthetics of Barnard College for her role in organizing of mental health, her resonance with student protests in 1968. Millett completed Anti-Psychiatry”, Victoria Hesford the work of Black feminist thinkers and (Stony Brook University) on “Kate the dissertation and passed her defense poets (particularly Audre Lorde); and her with distinction (although one adviser Millett: A Feminist Spectacle”, Sara involvement with international feminist complained that reading her work was like Mameni (CalArts) on “‘What Are solidarity movements (focused especially “sitting with your testicles in a nutcracker”). the Iranians Wishing For?’ Millett in on her trip to a revolutionary-era Iran Iran, 1979” and Kevin Quashie (Smith For "Sexual Politics and After: in 1979, but also to Ireland soon after). College) on “The Ecology of a Single Thinking with Kate Millett," four scholars The event yielded a particularly rich and Body: Kate Millett and Audre Lorde.” working broadly on gender, feminism urgent set of conversations about the From the Interim Director EVEN WHEN IT IS ABOUT US, IT IS NOT ABOUT US, OR: WHY WE STUDY INTERSECTIONALITY This year at the Pembroke Center the religious right,” by Margery Eagan argues, abortion was chosen as a reliable I co-organized with Tricia Rose of (Boston Globe, Feb. 5, 2018). I was mobilizing issue for conservatives and the Center for the Study of Race and surprised by the article’s claim that the community’s leaders adjusted their Ethnicity (CSREA), a speaker series abortion was not always a significant positions on the matter accordingly in on intersectionality. Intersectionality issue for conservatives in this country: the hope that their members would be looks at how gender or race alone “In 1971, two years before Roe v. Wade driven to vote, in the name of the “Moral are not quite adequate to capture the legalized abortion… the Southern Majority,” for representatives friendly to complexities of discrimination and Baptist Convention, supported its their schools and agendas. proposes we attend to their crosscutting legalization,” and its support did not Eagan thinks this history raises a impacts in combination (including waver through most of the 1970s. Indeed, moral issue. If this is all about race also class, geography, sexuality and Eagan notes, “Jerry Falwell, founder of and not gender, then, “How much of more). We invited in three scholars the Moral Majority, did not give his first antiabortion rhetoric is really about the (co-sponsored by CSREA and Pembroke) anti-abortion speech until 1978, five unborn and how much is a convenient … who considered the politics of years after Roe.” cover for white evangelicals to support intersectionality in the context of: Eagan draws on research by Dartmouth race-based exclusions?” she asks. And (i) sexuality and the racial politics Religious Studies professor, Randall what about the moral inconsistency, of reproduction in the welfare state Balmer, who claims that not abortion pointed out by black evangelical Cornell (Laura Briggs, UMass) but rather the politics of segregation William Brooks, of those who “wring their hands over the child lost in the (ii) the history of lynching in which mobilized the Right. According to Balmer, womb” but not over “the loss of the child, numerous women were also the the legal case that mattered was not Roe Tamir Rice” who, at the age of 12, was until-now unacknowledged victims v. Wade but rather Green v. Kennedy, a gunned down by police in Cleveland? of that brutal practice (Shatema 1970 decision that denied tax-exempt Threadcraft, Dartmouth) status to private Christian schools set Eagan is not wrong about the morals, up in response to Brown v. Board of but she is probably too quick to accept (iii) the promise and limits of Education. Called “segregation academies” Balmer’s either-or structure, which intersectionality, as such, as an by their opponents, these schools barred assumes the politics are either about ever-expanding approach to political black students and, until 1970, enjoyed gender or race, rather than both, as an and cultural analysis (Jennifer Nash, tax-exempt status. Opponents of the intersectional approach would suggest. Northwestern) Green decision saw the difficulty of Beyond that, however, there is also a I thought of our intersectionality publicly organizing around the protection second political lesson here for those of us work recently when I read “Race, not of race privilege, says Balmer, so several who study women, gender and sexuality: abortion, was the founding issue of proxies were floated. In the end, Balmer even when it is about us, it is not about us. PEMBROKE CENTER ASSOCIATES COUNCIL Officers Gwenn Masterman Snider ’83, P’13 PEMBROKE CENTER STAFF Victoria Westhead ’83, P’17 ’19, Chair Leah Sprague ’66 Bonnie Honig, Nancy Duke Lewis Professor Jasmine Waddell ’99, Vice-Chair Shawna M. Stark ’76, P’10 of Modern Culture and Media and Political Members (as of July 1, 2017) Judith Surkis ’92 Science, Interim Director Pamela Kumari Arya ’84, P’18 Leora Tanenbaum ’91 Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg P’19, Director Bernicestine McLeod Bailey ’68, P’99 ’03 Ex Officio Members (Sabbatical 2017–18) Joan Weinberger Berman ’74, P’05 ’11 Faith W. Baum, Communications Coordinator Nancy L. Buc ’65, ’94 LLD hon. Anne Buehl ’88 Denise Davis ’97 A.M., ’11 Ph.D., Joan MacLeod Heminway ’83 Emily Coe-Sullivan ’99 Managing Editor, differences Jean E. Howard ’70, ’16 LHD hon. Ryan G. W. Grubbs ’10 Donna Goodnow P’07, Center Manager Susan Adler Kaplan ’58, ’65 MAT Ulle Viiroja Holt ’66, ’92 A.M., ’00 Ph.D., P’93 ’02 Martha Hamblett P’17, Programs and Anne Jones Mills ’60 Nicole Israel ’00 Stewardship Coordinator Jean E. Miller ’49 Barbara Dugan Johnson ’83, P’16 Mary Murphy, Nancy L. Buc ’65 Diane Lake Northrop ’54, P’81, GP’13 ’16 Carol Lemlein ’67, P’90 Pembroke Center Archivist Chelsey Carrier Remington ’61, P’89 ’92 Robin Lenhardt ’89 Diane Straker, Administrative Assistant Eileen Rudden ’72, P’03 ’07 ’11 Joan Hoost McMaster ’60 Drew Walker, Associate Director and Phyllis Kollmer Santry ’66 Joelle Murchison ’95 Director of Gender and Sexuality Studies Leslie Newman ’75, ’75 A.M., P’08 ’12 Elizabeth Munves Sherman ’77, P’06 ’09 Sophie Waskow Rifkin ’07 Anita Spivey ’74, P’09 Carmen Garcia Rodriguez ’83, P’14 M.D.’21, P’17 Mary Aguiar Vascellaro ’74, P’07 PEMBROKE CENTER 2 Ava Seave ’77 Beverly Heafitz Zweiman ’66, P’01 Balmer’s argument reminds me of In her famous 1989 article in favor of women, no matter what we think about Kristin Luker’s Abortion and the Politics intersectionality, Kimberlé Crenshaw’s waiting periods and state interests, of Motherhood, which also argued, 20 aim was quite specific, and lawyerly: surely all 21st century women have years ago, that the politics of abortion to show how black women “experience reason to be concerned when we were a side-effect. Luker focuses on the discrimination in any number of ways,” find ourselves knocked down in the quest in the 19th century by American all of them hard to show when courts intersection, accidental casualties in a doctors to win “licensing laws that demand proof of only one wrong at a race we did not sign up for: Even when would … restrict the competition.” The time and ask: if race is the problem, it is about us, it isn’t about us. then why aren’t black men bringing competition they wanted to restrict “Even when it is about us, it isn’t about suit, too? If gender is the problem, why included various “healers,” women and us” means that when women of all races aren’t white women bringing suit? enslaved people with reputations for and backgrounds are just crossing For Black women, Crenshaw argued, healing knowledge, who often assisted the road trying to get to work, school, subordination is not a “disadvantage women with “menstrual irregularities home, or a protest march, we may be [that] occur[s] along a single categorical ‘from whatever cause.’” The doctors, and hit by a speeding car or two or three axis.” It is more like “traffic in an their organization, the AMA, claimed that we never saw coming.
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