#MeToo Revives Non-Partisanship in the Women's Movement

[IMPress Polly]

From the 1920s through the 1960s in particular, what we today would call feminism was predominantly a Republican Party phenomenon. Women, in their majority, tended to vote for Republicans during that period. The Republicans were regarded as being more anti-war, more supportive of feminist goals like the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (e.g. the Republican beat the Democrats to making it part of their party platform in 1940; it took the Democrats until the next election cycle), and also, on a certain level, less supportive of domestic violence (as shown by their support of alcohol prohibition). The first female major party presidential candidate, Margaret Chase Smith, was a Republican who ran in the party's primary contest in 1964. Her campaign, not unlike the movement in general, was widely considered a joke, of course. The movement and its goals in general made few advances during this period and they were mostly subtle, behind-the-scenes types of advances. Then along came a new generation of young women in the 1960s and '70s.

The generation of women's rights activists that arose in the 1960s and '70s dominated the movement for a roughly 25-year period lasting approximately from 1970 through 1995. This generation of feminists called themselves at first women's liberationists and later radical feminists and "second wave" feminists. This group had been borne out of the Students for a Democratic Society -- the main group opposing the Vietnam War on America's college campuses -- in the 1960s. The SDS was a democratic socialist organization, and so one distinction of the women's liberationists from their predecessors was a tendency to embrace left wing economic views. Another notable distinction of the women's liberationists was their non-partisanship. Independence from the two-party system gave them bargaining power with the two leading political parties in a way that earlier generations of feminists had not enjoyed; bargaining power that produced numerous tangible results and which cultivated a more genuine consciousness of the interests of women as a class. This was the most vibrant period of women's activism in American history. The results this generation of feminists won were numerous: entry into the paid workforce, access to college campuses across the nation, Title IX (mandating equal access to athletics programs), the legalization of abortion and "the pill" nationwide, explicit prohibition of forced sterilization, domestic violence, sexual harassment in the workplace, and even pornography in some places can all be named among them. There was even a serious and high-profile campaign to at last ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. constitution, though it ultimately proved unsuccessful. (However, many state governments did ratify ERAs of their own during this period.) Without this "second wave" of women's movement led by the activists of the baby boom generation, life for American women today would be unrecognizable! Then along came EMILY's List.

During the 1970s and '80s, the Republicans and Democrats competed with each other for the support of women in general and the women's movement in particular on various issues and to varying degrees. That began to come to an end with the election of 1992, which saw the number of female Senators multiply from 2 to 10 in a single year, thanks overwhelmingly to a Democratic group called EMILY's List that had been created to help finance the campaigns of, as the group has always put it, "pro-choice, Democratic women", as female candidates tended, and still tend to, face a funding disadvantage. The Republicans did not echo this development by launching a parallel organization to get help get more Republican women elected to public office. The result? Really from this time onward, the politics of the women's movement began to be primarily, and increasingly, associated specifically with the Democratic Party. What have been the results? What exactly have the Democrats done for us over these last 20ish years since they came to feel assured of our votes besides try to take away most of our private spaces and re-legitimize the sex industry? Well...it's difficult to say. The number of female U.S. Senators has doubled and there have been a couple of failed presidential campaigns by Hillary Clinton (if that counts), but that's about it. Abortion has more difficult to access. Income levels relative to our male counterparts are about the same as they were 20 years ago. Etc. But we can now wear 'feminist' shirts and beauty products.

My point? Revisiting partisanship has resulted in the movement losing its populist edge. The women's movement has lost its teeth. Now along comes #MeToo, which gives (overwhelmingly anyway) women a platform around which to unite as a class again! #MeToo is the most potent and successful campaign the women's movement has launched in over two decades easily. By being non-partisan in its approach, recognizing that sexual predators can be Republicans or Democrats or neither, the movement has garnered the participation of millions and millions and millions, raised the subject of sexual harassment and abuse to a national profile in a way that we have never seen before, and taken down many of the most prominent men in America. I think the feminist movement should consider this a going mobilization model around all issues. It is time for this movement to get serious again about mobilizing as a class, rather than just along party lines.

[Private Pickle]

From the 1920s through the 1960s in particular, what we today would call feminism was predominantly a Republican Party phenomenon. Women, in their majority, tended to vote for Republicans during that period. The Republicans were regarded as being more anti-war, more supportive of feminist goals like the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (e.g. the Republican beat the Democrats to making it part of their party platform in 1940; it took the Democrats until the next election cycle), and also, on a certain level, less supportive of domestic violence (as shown by their support of alcohol prohibition). The first female major party presidential candidate, Margaret Chase Smith, was a Republican who ran in the party's primary contest in 1964. Her campaign, not unlike the movement in general, was widely considered a joke, of course. The movement and its goals in general made few advances during this period and they were mostly subtle, behind-the-scenes types of advances. Then along came a new generation of young women in the 1960s and '70s.

The generation of women's rights activists that arose in the 1960s and '70s dominated the movement for a roughly 25-year period lasting approximately from 1970 through 1995. This generation of feminists called themselves at first women's liberationists and later radical feminists and "second wave" feminists. This group had been borne out of the Students for a Democratic Society -- the main group opposing the Vietnam War on America's college campuses -- in the 1960s. The SDS was a democratic socialist organization, and so one distinction of the women's liberationists from their predecessors was a tendency to embrace left wing economic views. Another notable distinction of the women's liberationists was their non-partisanship. Independence from the two-party system gave them bargaining power with the two leading political parties in a way that earlier generations of feminists had not enjoyed; bargaining power that produced numerous tangible results and which cultivated a more genuine consciousness of the interests of women as a class. This was the most vibrant period of women's activism in American history. The results this generation of feminists won were numerous: entry into the paid workforce, access to college campuses across the nation, Title IX (mandating equal access to athletics programs), the legalization of abortion and "the pill" nationwide, explicit prohibition of forced sterilization, domestic violence, sexual harassment in the workplace, and even pornography in some places can all be named among them. There was even a serious and high-profile campaign to at last ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. constitution, though it ultimately proved unsuccessful. (However, many state governments did ratify ERAs of their own during this period.) Without this "second wave" of women's movement led by the activists of the baby boom generation, life for American women today would be unrecognizable! Then along came EMILY's List.

During the 1970s and '80s, the Republicans and Democrats competed with each other for the support of women in general and the women's movement in particular on various issues and to varying degrees. That began to come to an end with the election of 1992, which saw the number of female Senators multiply from 2 to 10 in a single year, thanks overwhelmingly to a Democratic group called EMILY's List that had been created to help finance the campaigns of, as the group has always put it, "pro-choice, Democratic women", as female candidates tended, and still tend to, face a funding disadvantage. The Republicans did not echo this development by launching a parallel organization to get help get more Republican women elected to public office. The result? Really from this time onward, the politics of the women's movement began to be primarily, and increasingly, associated specifically with the Democratic Party. What have been the results? What exactly have the Democrats done for us over these last 20ish years since they came to feel assured of our votes besides try to take away most of our private spaces and re-legitimize the sex industry? Well...it's difficult to say. The number of female U.S. Senators has doubled and there have been a couple of failed presidential campaigns by Hillary Clinton (if that counts), but that's about it. Abortion has more difficult to access. Income levels relative to our male counterparts are about the same as they were 20 years ago. Etc. But we can now wear 'feminist' shirts and beauty products.

My point? Revisiting partisanship has resulted in the movement losing its populist edge. The women's movement has lost its teeth. Now along comes #MeToo, which gives (overwhelmingly anyway) women a platform around which to unite as a class again! #MeToo is the most potent and successful campaign the women's movement has launched in over two decades easily. By being non-partisan in its approach, recognizing that sexual predators can be Republicans or Democrats or neither, the movement has garnered the participation of millions and millions and millions, raised the subject of sexual harassment and abuse to a national profile in a way that we have never seen before, and taken down many of the most prominent men in America. I think the feminist movement should consider this a going mobilization model around all issues. It is time for this movement to get serious again about mobilizing as a class, rather than just along party lines.
Well thanks for the admission that the goal of feminists is to take down men... Equality!

[IMPress Polly]

Private Pickle wrote:
Well thanks for the admission that the goal of feminists is to take down men... Equality!

I referred to sexual predators. :rollseyes:

If you've got nothing to contribute, please go away.

[Chris]

I will pretty much agree with your history and agree going partisan was a mistake, though that could actually be more then the entry of Democrats into the general Civil Rights movement where Republicans had always been, and I think some of the 70s-after issues reflect that, such as the conflict between pro-life Republican women and the pro-abortion Democrat women. I think that division may have contributed feminism drifting into identiy politics where the individual has no place. Is then #MeToo individualistic, rather than class or collective?

[Captdon]

From the 1920s through the 1960s in particular, what we today would call feminism was predominantly a Republican Party phenomenon. Women, in their majority, tended to vote for Republicans during that period. The Republicans were regarded as being more anti-war, more supportive of feminist goals like the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (e.g. the Republican beat the Democrats to making it part of their party platform in 1940; it took the Democrats until the next election cycle), and also, on a certain level, less supportive of domestic violence (as shown by their support of alcohol prohibition). The first female major party presidential candidate, Margaret Chase Smith, was a Republican who ran in the party's primary contest in 1964. Her campaign, not unlike the movement in general, was widely considered a joke, of course. The movement and its goals in general made few advances during this period and they were mostly subtle, behind-the-scenes types of advances. Then along came a new generation of young women in the 1960s and '70s.

The generation of women's rights activists that arose in the 1960s and '70s dominated the movement for a roughly 25-year period lasting approximately from 1970 through 1995. This generation of feminists called themselves at first women's liberationists and later radical feminists and "second wave" feminists. This group had been borne out of the Students for a Democratic Society -- the main group opposing the Vietnam War on America's college campuses -- in the 1960s. The SDS was a democratic socialist organization, and so one distinction of the women's liberationists from their predecessors was a tendency to embrace left wing economic views. Another notable distinction of the women's liberationists was their non-partisanship. Independence from the two-party system gave them bargaining power with the two leading political parties in a way that earlier generations of feminists had not enjoyed; bargaining power that produced numerous tangible results and which cultivated a more genuine consciousness of the interests of women as a class. This was the most vibrant period of women's activism in American history. The results this generation of feminists won were numerous: entry into the paid workforce, access to college campuses across the nation, Title IX (mandating equal access to athletics programs), the legalization of abortion and "the pill" nationwide, explicit prohibition of forced sterilization, domestic violence, sexual harassment in the workplace, and even pornography in some places can all be named among them. There was even a serious and high-profile campaign to at last ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. constitution, though it ultimately proved unsuccessful. (However, many state governments did ratify ERAs of their own during this period.) Without this "second wave" of women's movement led by the activists of the baby boom generation, life for American women today would be unrecognizable! Then along came EMILY's List.

During the 1970s and '80s, the Republicans and Democrats competed with each other for the support of women in general and the women's movement in particular on various issues and to varying degrees. That began to come to an end with the election of 1992, which saw the number of female Senators multiply from 2 to 10 in a single year, thanks overwhelmingly to a Democratic group called EMILY's List that had been created to help finance the campaigns of, as the group has always put it, "pro-choice, Democratic women", as female candidates tended, and still tend to, face a funding disadvantage. The Republicans did not echo this development by launching a parallel organization to get help get more Republican women elected to public office. The result? Really from this time onward, the politics of the women's movement began to be primarily, and increasingly, associated specifically with the Democratic Party. What have been the results? What exactly have the Democrats done for us over these last 20ish years since they came to feel assured of our votes besides try to take away most of our private spaces and re-legitimize the sex industry? Well...it's difficult to say. The number of female U.S. Senators has doubled and there have been a couple of failed presidential campaigns by Hillary Clinton (if that counts), but that's about it. Abortion has more difficult to access. Income levels relative to our male counterparts are about the same as they were 20 years ago. Etc. But we can now wear 'feminist' shirts and beauty products.

My point? Revisiting partisanship has resulted in the movement losing its populist edge. The women's movement has lost its teeth. Now along comes #MeToo, which gives (overwhelmingly anyway) women a platform around which to unite as a class again! #MeToo is the most potent and successful campaign the women's movement has launched in over two decades easily. By being non-partisan in its approach, recognizing that sexual predators can be Republicans or Democrats or neither, the movement has garnered the participation of millions and millions and millions, raised the subject of sexual harassment and abuse to a national profile in a way that we have never seen before, and taken down many of the most prominent men in America. I think the feminist movement should consider this a going mobilization model around all issues. It is time for this movement to get serious again about mobilizing as a class, rather than just along party lines.

All that to say nothing. It's just a social site thing that won't be around in six months. Hashtags won't get it done. It's going to take real action not words.

[IMPress Polly]

Capdon wrote:
All that to say nothing. It's just a social site thing that won't be around in six months. Hashtags won't get it done. It's going to take real action not words.

Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. There's a lot of fear in the movement that this moment won't last; that six months from now, the culture will have moved on. However, most of us feel like this moment really is different; that there is a cultural sea-change going on that won't fully go away with the hashtag. I think there is hope, and for ME to say that is something, as I think you well know. And yes, I'm also all for on-the-ground activism to accompany this!


Chris wrote:
I will pretty much agree with your history and agree going partisan was a mistake, though that could actually be more then the entry of Democrats into the general Civil Rights movement where Republicans had always been, and I think some of the 70s-after issues reflect that, such as the conflict between pro-life Republican women and the pro-abortion Democrat women. I think that division may have contributed feminism drifting into identiy politics where the individual has no place. Is then #MeToo individualistic, rather than class or collective?

I don't know why you perceive #MeToo to be individualistic in nature when the whole point of it is the cultivation of strength in numbers. Raising our voices together versus alone is the difference between now and two months ago. It's easy to see which approach gets better results.

Much of my point in the OP was that #MeToo represents a shift back in the direction of the cultivation of (primarily) women's collective interests as a group, where that had largely been abandoned during the "third wave" of the movement that saw most of it realign with the Democratic Party.

[Chris]

Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. There's a lot of fear in the movement that this moment won't last; that six months from now, the culture will have moved on. However, most of us feel like this moment really is different; that there is a cultural sea-change going on that won't fully go away with the hashtag. I think there is hope, and for ME to say that is something, as I think you well know. And yes, I'm also all for on-the-ground activism to accompany this!



I don't know why you perceive #MeToo to be individualistic in nature when the whole point of it is the cultivation of strength in numbers. Raising our voices together versus alone is the difference between now and two months ago. It's easy to see which approach gets better results.

Much of my point in the OP was that #MeToo represents a shift back in the direction of the cultivation of (primarily) women's collective interests as a group, where that had largely been abandoned during the "third wave" of the movement that saw most of it realign with the Democratic Party.


I don't know why you perceive #MeToo to be individualistic in nature

#MeToo

Individuals can group together. It need not be collectivist in nature.

[IMPress Polly]

Chris wrote:
#MeToo

Individuals can group together. It need not be collectivist in nature.

#MeToo

[Chris]

#MeToo


Individuals can group together. We cooperate all the time in the marketplace, work, sports, religion, etc.

[IMPress Polly]

Chris wrote:
Individuals can group together. We cooperate all the time in the marketplace, work, sports, religion, etc.

My point is that the previous trend in the movement valued the choices of each individual woman over the interests of women as a group, as aptly parodied in that now-classic Onion satire article, Women Now Empowered By Everything A Woman Does. Buying shoes was empowerment. That individualistic mentality, born out of the global trend toward neoliberal thinking that began around 1980 in earnest, is what has yielded tolerance of the sex industry and the disappearance of our private spaces, for instance.

[Mister D]

"Women" aren't a group in any meaningful way. It's like saying "mankind" or "humanity". Those are zoological terms without any historical or cultural content.

An individualistic mentality has pervaded Western cultures for centuries. It was only in such an atmosphere that a concept like "class" was even conceivable.

[Chris]

My point is that the previous trend in the movement valued the choices of each individual woman over the interests of women as a group, as aptly parodied in that now-classic Onion satire article, Women Now Empowered By Everything A Woman Does. Buying shoes was empowerment. That individualistic mentality, born out of the global trend toward neoliberal thinking that began around 1980 in earnest, is what has yielded tolerance of the sex industry and the disappearance of our private spaces, for instance.


Polly, individualism was a major part of Classical Liberalism arising out of the Englightenment, not something from neoliberalism.

So in that regard, I think you stretch things relying as you do on satire. I mean, really, how would individualism result in disappearance of private spaces!?!?

It's collectivism that yoielded that result.

[Mister D]

Polly, individualism was a major part of Classical Liberalism arising out of the Englightenment, not something from neoliberalism.

So in that regard, I think you stretch things relying as you do on satire. I mean, really, how would individualism result in disappearance of private spaces!?!?

It's collectivism that yoielded that result.
I'm convinced the real turning poitn was the Protestant Reformation.

[Chris]

"Women" aren't a group in any meaningful way. It's like saying "mankind" or "humanity". Those are zoological terms without any historical or cultural content.

An individualistic mentality has pervaded Western cultures for centuries. It was only in such an atmosphere that a concept like "class" was even conceivable.

And in parallel, since Rousseau, collectivism, a collectivism not the organic sort that predominated up to modern times, but the sort designed to assimilate people away from the old order and into the new statist order.

But true, I think #MeToo is part of the individualist mentality rather than the new collectivist one.

[Chris]

I'm convinced the real turning poitn was the Protestant Reformation.

That, but also the rediscovery of ancient Greek philosophy by the likes of Aquinas. The RC with its focus on the individual undermined itself as well.

[Mister D]

Private spaces have never been more intact. I thin she means private spaces for females as a (non-existent) group.

[Mister D]

That, but also the rediscovery of ancient Greek philosophy by the likes of Aquinas. The RC with its focus on the individual undermined itself as well.
I agree 100%. The intellectual conditions were present in Christianity from the beginning. I just think the Reformation turned a potentiality into reality.

[Chris]

I agree 100%. The intellectual conditions were present in Christianity from the beginning. I just think the Reformation turned a potentiality into reality.

The Reformation proclaimed individuals could read the Bible for themselves. Science, too, turned individualistic as it turned away from authority and to individual empirical observation.

But we stray. The important point is individualism didn't arise from neoliberalism.

[Mister D]

The Reformation proclaimed individuals could read the Bible for themselves. Science, too, turned individualistic as it turned away from authority and to individual empirical observation.

But we stray. The important point is individualism didn't arise from neoliberalism.

The proclaimed validity of private interpretation was a major factor in forming the modern self and, yes, that did spill over into science. We're speaking in very general terms. If anyone is actually interested I could recommend several excellent works on the subject.
We agree but I would suggest individualism has received full ideological expression in neoliberalism.

[Private Pickle]

I referred to sexual predators. :rollseyes:

If you've got nothing to contribute, please go away.

Only prominate ones? Whatever Freud...

[Chris]

The proclaimed validity of private interpretation was a major factor in forming the modern self and, yes, that did spill over into science. We're speaking in very general terms. If anyone is actually interested I could recommend several excellent works on the subject.
We agree but I would suggest individualism has received full ideological expression in neoliberalism.


I would place neoliberalism somewhere between individualism and collectivism. I think the term is misunderstood and used as a pejorative by the left, but..


Either out of actual reflective conviction on the nature of the market or political expediency in the face of a general rejection of laissez-faire liberalism in Western society, many of those who debated during the three days of the conference concluded that to counteract the collectivist trends and preserve the essential institutions and working of a relatively free market system, it had to be combined with aspects of the interventionist-welfare state that would make it palatable to “the masses.”

Neoliberalism was not born as an attempt to rationalize and restore a laissez-faire unbridled capitalism, but as an idea to introduce a wide network of regulatory and redistributive programs that would politically salvage of some of the essential elements of a competitive market order. The tricky task, in the eyes of most of the attendees, was to figure out how to do this without the interventionist system itself threatening to get out of control and degenerate into that type of piecemeal system of collectivist privilege, plunder and corruption that Walter Lippmann had, himself, said easily can be an incremental backdoor to a planned society.

In retrospect, the neoliberal agenda that was emerging out of the Colloquium Walter Lippmann was an attempt to square the circle: the combining of individual freedom and free-market competitive association with political paternalism and governmental commands and controls over how people may interact and the outcomes to be allowed from their interactions.

By doing so, those sincere friends of freedom and the market order ended up conceding all the basic premises of their collectivist rivals....

@ Neoliberalism Was Never about Free Markets (https://fee.org/articles/neoliberalism-was-never-about-free-markets/)

[Chris]

"Women" aren't a group in any meaningful way. It's like saying "mankind" or "humanity". Those are zoological terms without any historical or cultural content.

An individualistic mentality has pervaded Western cultures for centuries. It was only in such an atmosphere that a concept like "class" was even conceivable.

Right, prior to the modern age, there was hierarchy, a great chain of being, so to speak, but not class. One branch of the Enlightenment led to Marxist class analysis, but the class was an economic division, a division of oppressors v oppresseds. It was genderless, raceless, etc (though Marxist was racist). But as Maxism/Socialism proved a failure, the postmoderns pulled a slight of hand in applying class and oppression to identity groups pitter against other identity groups, women v men, blacks v whites, gays v straights.