#gerda lerner

[susansontag]

I adore this essay about emily dickinson and her place in feminist history by gerda lerner... you can tell emily is so important to her. from the creation of feminist consciousness.

[haggishlyhagging]

Isaac Newton, in his famous aphorism—which actually originated with Bernard of Chartres—"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants," expressed the mode by which the thought of men was shaped into the major concepts of Western civilization. Men created written history and benefited from the transmittal of knowledge from one generation to the other, so that each great thinker could stand “on the shoulders of giants,” thereby advancing thought over that of previous generations with maximum efficiency. Women were denied knowledge of their history, and thus each woman had to argue as though no woman before her had ever thought or written. Women had to use their energy to reinvent the wheel, over and over again, generation after generation. Men argued with the giants that preceded them; women argued against the oppressive weight of millennia of patriarchal thought, which denied them authority, even humanity, and when they had to argue they argued with the "great men" of the past, deprived of the empowerment, strength and knowledge women of the past could have offered them. Since they could not ground their argument in the work of women before them, thinking women of each generation had to waste their time, energy and talent on constructing their argument anew. Yet, they never abandoned the effort. Generation after generation, in the face of recurrent discontinuities, women thought their way around and out from under patriarchal thought.

-Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness

[femalethink]

In line with our historic gender-conditioning, women have aimed to please and have sought to avoid disapproval. This is poor preparation for making the leap into the unknown required of those who fashion new systems. Moreover, each emergent woman has been schooled in patriarchal thought. We each hold at least one great man in our heads. The lack of knowledge of the female past has deprived us of female heroines, a fact which is only recently being corrected through the development of Women's History. So, for a long time, thinking women have refurbished the idea systems created by men, engaging in a dialogue with the great male minds in their heads. Elizabeth Cady Stanton took on the Bible, the Church fathers, the founders of the American republic. Kate Millet argued with Freud, Norman Mailer, and the liberal literary establishment; Simone de Beauvoir with Sartre, Marx, and Camus; all Marxist-Feminists are in a dialogue with Marx and Engels and some also with Freud. In this dialogue woman intends merely to accept whatever she finds useful to her in the great man's system. But in these systems woman—as a concept, a collective entity, an individual—is marginal or subsumed.

In accepting such dialogue, thinking woman stays far longer than is useful within the boundaries or the question-setting defined by the "great men." And just as long as she does, the source of new insight is closed to her.

—Gerda Lerner, “The Creation of Patriarchy.”

[wmstonline]

[brittlefire]

Read something by Gerda Lerner today that pretty much sums up why we need feminism as a society:

Men and women live on a stage, on which they act out their assigned roles, equal in importance. The play cannot go on without both kinds of performers. Neither of them "contributes" more or less to the whole; neither is marginal or dispensable. But the stage set is conceived, painted, defined by men. Men have written the play, have directed the show, interpreted the meanings of action. They have assigned themselves the most interesting, most heroic parts, giving women the supporting roles.

[sappholyrics]

[feministdragon]

I'm looking for a pdf of Gerda Lerner's "The Creation of Feminist Consciousness"

here's a summary of the book

The Creation of Feminist Consciousness by Gerda Lerner

I wrote these notes about The Creation of Feminist Consciousness from the Middle Ages to Eighteen Seventy by Gerda Lerner some years ago and

If you have a pdf and are willing to share, or if you know where to download, please let me know!!

edited to add: I've found the book on Open Library, thanks to everyone.

[womenreads]

Gerda Lerner — Creation of Patriarchy. Lerner explains her realizations in her study on patriarchy. She thought the historical data would show the traditional Marxist perspective. But realized that the data did not make sense, when only looking at the economic questions, until specifically sex (sexuality & procreativity) was examined.

I would add that question of sex (sexuality & reproduction) are questions of economics.