#kathy scarbrough

[radfem-archive]

Female Erasure: What You Need to Know About Gender Politics’ War On Women, The Female Sex, and Human Rights ed. by Ruth Barrett (2016)

This anthology brings together voices of more than forty writers celebrating female embodiment while exploring deeper issues of misogyny, violence and sexism in gender identity politics today, demonstrating the intentional silencing and erasure of living female realities.

Google Drive / MEGA

[feministstruggle]

“Obviously, it is women’s bodies that provide nine months of incubation and birth, which no man can do, whereas there are no jobs (beyond ejaculation) in society that only men can do. Gestation and childbirth is not only a special form of labor, but often takes a toll on the female body and can even sometimes result in death.When socialist-feminists maintain, as Vogel states above, that the “kin-based social unit for the reproduction of exploitable labor-power in class society will also wither away – and with it both patriarchal family relations and the oppression of women” – we are left with many questions. For instance, how will women be compensated for reproduction and not discriminated against because of it?These writings by our socialist-feminist sisters also don’t take into account the fact that not all domestic labor can be socialized. There is some irreducible work in the home that must be shared equally, assuming there are homes with more than one adult in them. You can have community laundries and kitchens but are you really going to go to the community kitchen for a quick breakfast or a snack? If people find there is reason to keep food in their living quarters, who will go out and buy it and who will clean the frig? Furthermore, even if we imagine community house cleaning, shouldn’t every individual household clean their own toilets and divide up the work of the small messes of daily living? Will he pick up his own socks?Who will keep an eye out for those extra-curricular activities so important for a child’s development and make sure that this one gets to basketball practice and that one gets to where he or she needs to be on time?  There is a tremendous amount of domestic labor expended on planning and scheduling that is rarely noticed or counted as work. These examples, and many other aspects of childcare, need to be shared evenly between men and women.Just what will wither away and how? Will new economic foundations dissolve interest in genetic ties? Are there positive aspects of the nuclear family worth saving? Will men suddenly begin sharing “women’s work” under socialism that they have not been trained or pushed to do under capitalism? Will socialism end physical and verbal violence against women and bring about full respect?If one believes that men and women are not biologically wedded to “men’s work” and “women’s work” – that there is no “male brain” or “female brain” – one is free to ask whether the family can become a cooperative and emotionally satisfying institution instead of an oppressive one. Questions like those above show some existing differences between radical feminism and socialist feminism but simultaneously indicate how the two tendencies can strengthen one another and sharpen the overall analysis required for real women’s liberation. Whether we see capitalism or male supremacy or both as the root of our oppression, what is clear is that both must go.”

[seebster]

A Revolutionary Moment Session 2 How to Defang a Movement

These amazing women each have been active in the feminist movement for many decades. Redstockings, “dues-paying feminists,” speak here about organizing a female power base in a time of post-modern popularity in academia.

My favorite snippet from the program talks is from Carol Hanisch: “We can eliminate the binary in two ways: end male supremacy and therefore the oppression of women, or eliminate women by substituting gender.”

The official speakers are not the only valueable part of this video.

Fantastic first audience question - a Lesbian woman who articulately challenges the group’s historical stance on the inclusion of Lesbians and asks if the position has changed. The answer from the unprepared speaker was not really satisfactory. This was a sharp point of contention 40 years ago, a conflict in which each of the two women had direct involvement, and still is not resolved.

A number of younger women in the audience speak, with a varying amount of comprehension regarding the Radical Feminist analysis on gender, and it is obvious how their involvement in the “gender studies” and “queer” spaces has produced students that find organizing based on sex anathema, despite the lengths to which the speakers went to make it clear why such a distinction is necessary. The division this causes is somewhat painful to watch. Were these skeptical voices adding to the conversation and then being silenced, or were these issues that were detracting from the focus of female-specific needs and unnecessarily dominating the audience participation portion?

This video captures a group conflicted and brilliant and imperfect.

Moderated by Kathie Sarachild, session participants include Ti-Grace Atkinson, Kathy Scarbrough and Carol Hanisch. Topics include: The Descent from Radical Feminism to Post-Modernism, Women’s Liberation is Based on Sex Not Gender, and Telltale Words: Depoliticizing the Women’s Liberation Movement