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NEWS & LETTERS, December 2001Young women activists challenge Left
Editor's Note: This month we turn the Woman as Reason column over to Jen
Bennett, a young woman involved in the anti-globalization movement. We look
forward to any responses or comments readers may have.by Jen Bennett In 1953 Raya Dunayevskaya wrote that women "wished to have not only
sexual but human relations" to men. She went on to say that "women
were out searching for a total reorganization of society. In that search, some
women also came to the radical parties. These radical parties failed to
recognize this new concrete revolutionary force in society, but that force
recognized them, for it had set up new standards by which to judge this
so-called revolutionary movement." Dunayevskaya wrote these words almost 50
years ago, but unfortunately there is still a tendency on the Left that would
like women to wait for our freedom until after the revolution. The anti-globalization youth movement, a movement I took part in, had been
working against the ever-expanding power and influence of multinational
corporations. It is against a backdrop of global activism supported by much of
the western world's populace that the events of Sept. 11 exploded. The Sept. 11
attacks and the subsequent police state in the U.S. have disoriented the
movement. This disorientation comes from a limited vision. Just like the capitalists
they abhor, many of the anti-globalization youth see only large structures the
organizations, the buildings, the tariffs and trades. The poor Guatemalan or
Mexican or Malaysian women that they invoke stand only as symbols, Madonnas of
poverty. The anti-globalization youth movement's relationship to women in its ranks is
similarly problematic. When I was at the university and belonged to an
anti-globalization group there, activism on behalf of local women was shunted
off to other organizations. The men in the group did not participate in the
local Take Back the Night rally, and the women participated, but under the name
of a different organization. One of the men in the group bragged about his
pornography usage and made a number of misogynistic sexual comments to me and
other women in the group. When I raised concerns about these incidents, I was
brushed off. This group would not take a stand against the mass rapes in Bosnia, nor would
they admit that Milosevic was a genocidal dictator. For this group, and for many
in the anti-globalization movement, any opposition to U.S. imperialism is good. This cultural and moral relativism hampers the progress of the
anti-globalization youth movement, combining the oppression-ranking of the old
Left with the cultural relativism of the new Left. In other words, the
anti-globalization youth movement believes both that class is the first
oppression, race is secondary, and women will have to wait until after the
revolution, and that "you can't judge someone else's culture." These
tendencies are to be mourned, because they are killing a movement that poses
exciting new challenges to capitalist hegemony. The anti-globalization movement is not going to be able to function in our
brave new world until they are working for freedom, and this includes freedom
for women in all parts of the world. As numerous feminist groups, especially
RAWA, have been at pains to point out, women are, distressingly, the canary in
the coal mine. When women are oppressed, further widespread oppressions are sure
to follow. When I pointed out this last fact to the anti-globalization group that I
belonged to, their response was, at best, muted. Similarly, when I asked them
what should happen after they succeeded in disbanding the IMF, World Bank, and
WTO, they were unable to give me even the most general description of what was
to come. In the face of these failures on the part of the Left, and in the face of threats from both fundamentalist terrorists and the U.S. government, we must work for freedom for all people. All people should be able to speak freely and be heard. All people should live free of rapes, bombings, genocides and poverty. I would like to see more leads on women and women's issues in News & Letters. And I would like to see more people challenging old, sexist assumptions wherever and whenever they appear on the Left. |
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