The Descent from Radical Feminism to Post-Modernism
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1 The Descent from Radical Feminism to Postmodernism by Ti-Grace Atkinson Presentation on the panel “How to Defang a Movement: Replacing the Political with the Personal” at the conference A Revolutionary Moment: Women’s Liberation in the Late 1960s and the Early 1970s organized by the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program at Boston University, March 27-29, 2014. deas have real world consequences. What Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex—her struc- II want to do today is to compare the ideas turalist account—gave us a start. Beauvoir in radical feminism with those in feminist Post- understands women’s oppression by analyzing modernism, especially as regards two concepts: the particular institutions which define women’s class identification and the difference principle. I lives: marriage, family, motherhood, etc. Family will illustrate how these two notions played out in law encompasses several institutions but some the case of the Equal Employment Opportunity of us determined that the critical point of entry Commission v. Sears Roebuck (1973-1988). for women is marriage: this involves a state- governed legal contract. The “family” has The central question for feminists has always no separate contract, although reproduction been: how does the oppression of women naturally falls out of the marriage contract under work? Where does it come from and how is it its sub-construct of conjugal rights. maintained? We can’t dismantle any structures that we do not understand. Effecting change I broadened Beauvoir’s discussion in order to depends first on our analysis of the problem. respond to the question of why, if women were not naturally inferior, our oppression had continued The period that this conference is devoted to (the fundamentally unchanged. The traditional institu- late 1960s and the very early 1970s) was the one tional analysis accounts for the mechanics of in which the very difficult theoretical work, which women’s oppression but not the dynamics (what had never been done before, was begun. This has kept it going). Since women are half the work was never completed. population, these dynamics had to feel intrinsic to women’s identity and thus be embraced, not When we embarked on this project in early 1968, resisted, by women. The obvious candidate for we faced two apparently overwhelming obstacles: this was “love”. And for men, an obsession with women have always been oppressed throughout sex and conquest. history and all over the world. It seems “natural”. How could something so universal be explained In late 1968, I published an article on “The as an injustice? Institution of Sexual Intercourse.” This was an attempt to challenge the necessity of hetero- RADICAL FEMINISM sexuality and, by implication, those institutions Radical feminism emerges in early 1968 as a which are based upon this assumption. response to deeper understandings of women’s oppression. To speak of “oppression” instead So “radical feminism” was/is a tendency to under- of “discrimination” is a significant shift in stand the oppression of women on the deepest terms of scope and depth. We needed a more possible level. The goal of this analysis is to comprehensive analysis of women’s oppression pinpoint the crucial points at which women might than the civil rights model. attack the edifice of our oppression as a whole. 2 Institutions are by definition artificial, but no less in the early 1970s: AT&T, Colgate-Palmolive, powerful for that. The notion of a “class” is artificial the Stewardesses. In 1973, Roe v. Wade came in any “natural” sense since it is a construct which down. However, if a woman cannot independently is meant to do certain work. For the oppressed, support herself financially, she has few other live “class” awareness is essential for resistance. It’s options, including reproductive rights. the commonalities between formerly differentiated individuals which form the basis for solidarity The cases which had been brought initially in and political change. Oppressed individuals by the late 1960s had all been brought by a few themselves are relatively powerless; together, it’s brave plaintiffs and serious retaliation against a different story. these women always followed. The Sears case broke new ground because the raw statistics The one assumption no one questioned was that concerning the patterns or practices of sex women formed a class and that this class was an discrimination were overwhelming. Individual artificial one and designed for political purposes plaintiffs did not have to be offered up as to oppress women. We called this artificial class sacrificial lambs. “gender.” Our mantra was Beauvoir’s dictum: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” The numbers spoke for themselves: 5 geograph- ical regions; 920 stores; 380,000 employees. This central assumption that women form a Sears was the largest employer of women in political class and is the bottom half of a sex-class the country and the majority of its salespersons system never precluded the existence of other were women. However, although over 60% of class systems, equally artificial: systems based the full-time sales applicants at Sears were upon race, or economics, etc. We generally women, women made up only 1.7% of full-time agreed that the sex-class system was the first commission sales hires in 1973. The result was class system and that the other class systems that men made three times as much as women were generated out of this initial bifurcation of at Sears. the human species. Each system was built upon the one before until we have ended up with a The important distinction here is between non- pyramidal social structure defined by depriving commission sales jobs and commission sales one group after another of their humanity. jobs. The non-commission sales jobs are for small-ticket items; these jobs are paid by the THE SEARS CASE hour—piece work. The commission sales jobs The Sears case begins in 1973, when the Equal are for big-ticket items and are paid a basic Employment Opportunity Commission filed sex salary PLUS between 6% and 9% of sales made discrimination charges against Sears, Roebuck over the goals set by the company. Women were & Company. Sears was the largest retailer of tracked into the non-commission sales jobs. general merchandise at that time in the United States. This case was not finally decided until Sears was the most massive sex discrimination 1988, when the Seventh Circuit ruled against the case ever brought—before or since. And we women and for Sears. lost it. We lost it because the political climate in which it worked its way up through the courts What were the historical, legal and political had shifted, and not for the better. At heart was contexts in which the Sears case arose? Title this issue: Did women in fact constitute a political VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was the one class? This is what the case was about: money legislative ground women had to stand upon. and fair play: a woman’s equal right to earn her And women had won a number of Title VII cases own living on the same basis as a man. 3 What the case gradually evolved into—led by This is basically what Rosalind Rosenberg, the the Sears defense, with some help from a Post- Women’s History professor, claimed as a witness modernist Women’s Studies historian—was not for Sears: it’s always been this way for women; a human rights issue about equal treatment. ergo, women must have different values— Instead, the case was lost because men and “higher” values—than do men when it comes to women were “different.” monetary compensation for their labor. Of course, every individual is different in various Professor Rosenberg must be no doubt referring ways from every other individual. However, the to the Sears’ Personnel Manual for her evidence issue in an employment discrimination case turns in support of her position: “Male employees on “differences” related to bona fide occupational may be granted a day’s paid leave when the qualifications.How are such “differences” relevant employee’s wife gives birth, however, female to selling Sears products? THIS is the question. employees are not granted a day’s paid absence when she GIVES birth.” Can anyone imagine a The Seventh Circuit’s judicial decision cited two more perfect instance of “unpaid labor”? primary justifications for the pay discrepancy between men and women at Sears: (1) women POSTMODERNISM did not demonstrate “interest” in commission- The Sears case is such a travesty that we have to sales; and (2) women were risk averse. The ask how this could have happened and why the “interest” angle had to do with the products being Women’s Movement was not clearer about the sold. Considering that the bulk of Sears big- import of this case. The seminal essay to read ticket items are household appliances, such as for the theoretical underpinnings of this period refrigerators, stoves, washing machines, clothes as it concerns women, using the Sears case dryers, dishwashers, and so forth, it seems as illustration, is Joan Scott’s “Deconstructing strange to assert that women lack expertise Equality-Versus-Difference: Or, the Uses of with such products or an interest in selling them. Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism” (1988). And, what does “risk” averse mean? Perhaps skydiving was involved? No, the reference to risk In 1975, Simone de Beauvoir warned me in Paris: involved the fact that commission sales jobs did “Watch out for the anti-feminist differentialists.” not have fixed compensation. However, since the I finally understood, in the late 1980s, what compensation—even at the base salary—was Beauvoir was talking about. Postmodernism is so superior to that for non-commission sales, a profoundly reactionary political theory.