what do you think is the greatest challenge facing politically left leaning women from within their own communities and comrades today?
I think the obvious, and unequivocal, answer is misogyny. "The women question" is often treated as secondary and less serious than the proletarian struggle as a whole, rather than integral to it. Within community, organising/activism spaces, and parties, women often end up protecting their abusers, those that are untoward towards them, toxic or creepy behaviour from male comrades, and often risk being shoved under the bus by their comrades when they do speak out. Some, as in the case of Cesar Chavez's sexual abuse of his comrade and UFW co-founder, Dolores Huerta, keep silent lest exposing what happened to her hurt the cause she "spent [her] entire life fighting for."
Femicide, sexual assault, chauvinism, quotidian sexism, blurred lines, the diminishing of reproductive labour and being used as an (emotional or physical) punching bag by a man who is the punching bag of the boss and wants to reclaim a sense of 'masculinity,' and not being seen as full and equal members of their communities or the revolutionary struggle. That is what is the greatest challenge facing left leaning women today.
Now, I understand the critiques (and even apprehension) some leftist women, especially those of colour, feel regarding the term 'feminism' and I think it's valid. A lot of feminist discourse is bourgeois or imperialist feminism, upholding the structures that oppress proletarian women (who are the world's most vulnerable women) and proletarian men alike. As Anuradha Gandy wrote, "Not understanding women's oppression as linked to the wider exploitative socio-economic and political structure, to imperialism, they have sought solutions within the imperialist system itself. These solutions have at best benefited a section of middle class women but left the vast mass of oppressed and exploited women far from liberation. The struggle for women's liberation cannot be successful in isolation from the struggle to overthrow the imperialist system itself."
This does not negate, in my opinion, that our biggest struggle within our communities and with our comrades is misogyny or male chauvinism, with all the different historic, ethnic, racial, and gender particularities it comes in.
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