April 30, 2013

New Reader Alert – this blog is a sequential release of a longer written piece. Each segment works hard to ‘stand alone,’ but inevitably, they make more sense in context, which means reading from the beginning post through to the latest post, which is actually the current ‘end.’ Thank you for stopping by – please leave a comment; it would be great to hear what you think about these ideas.  With appreciation, Laurie

Serfdom in Modern America:

Forging Our Own Chains

On Feminism: From Equal to Angel to Workhorse

Equity Feminism is rooted in classic liberal Enlightenment doctrines and aims for full civil and legal (sociopolitical) equality for women. Equity Feminism is a moral doctrine about equal treatment with no reference to biology, and most efforts by first wave feminists can be safely included under the equity umbrella, rather than the more contemporary gender feminism umbrella.  (Great quick read on Equity v. Gender Feminism for quick contextualization here.) 

First Wave equity feminists were responsible for most of the reforms to working conditions that affected poor women and children who had no legal protections from abuses by employers. Unfortunately, suffrage had barely been won when a new and radical form of feminism, Gender feminism, would change the nature of feminism (which had evolved to be a flourishing and protective union of women demanding sociopolitical equality) to the forebearer of what we see today.

Gender feminism, the darling of the second wave feminist movement, by contrast, is the “genocentric and misandric branch of feminism,” according to Christine Sommers, a contemporary equity feminist who believes that “most American women subscribe philosophically to the older first wave feminism whose main goal was equity for women, especially in politics and education.” Sommers faults contemporary (gender) feminism for ‘its irrational hostility to men, its recklessness with facts and its inability to accept that the sexes are equal but different.” Sommers, of course, is viciously attacked by the majority of gender feminists who currently monopolize the academic field on this subject.

By the time women had won suffrage, Alice Paul (a radical early gender feminist), leading the Women’s Party engineered the first version of the ERA in 1926 and suffrage leaders were outraged. Carrie Chapman Catt, a key coordinator of the suffrage movement, claimed it would strike down much of the needed protective legislation which protected women and children from working conditions in factories. Obtaining this much-needed legislation had been a life-long struggle for many of these women, who believed women needed special consideration because of their role as mothers. The ideal of women’s rights recognizes and promotes the role of motherhood and family in the lives of women; "equal rights" do not.

Fifty years later, inspired by the rhetoric of civil rights, and encouraged by a market-place that courts them, the great majority of feminists now believe that women should be treated as individuals, not as a sex, and that free and open competition with men in the market place is the goal. Gender feminism is a competitive model which asks for no special favors. Unfortunately for the majority of women and their children, the fact is that women cannot, ever, earn as much as men do in a market place where male wages are the standard unit of currency - ie - it takes $1000 'male' dollars to rent an apartment, but takes $1300 'female' dollars (courtesy of the wage gap and how much more time it takes her to earn an equal amount of spending power). 

Until women take the reins and use the suffrage that their equity feminist fore-mothers fought for, they are doomed to earn 'female' wages. Until and unless that happens, and I do not believe it will, we need to honestly appraise the landscape of biology, personal choice and family necessities and arrive at strategies that will give women and children, and families, a better cultural model which embraces the necessity and rewards of a culture which supports homekeepers.