Unknown Speaker  00:05
Okay people, I think we have the sound system more or less under control so if people could sit down we could get started.

Unknown Speaker  00:55
You if you don't mind. I'd first like to introduce Barnard's acting President Ellen Futter, who would like to say a few words to welcome everybody

Unknown Speaker  01:19
thank you, Hannah. On behalf of Barnard College, I'd like to welcome you to this year's the scholar and the feminist conference. As many of you may know, this is the eighth straight year of the scholar and the feminist conferences, each of which has been funded by the Halina Rubinstein Foundation, to whom we express our gratitude and appreciation. It may interest you to know that this conference has grown from some 250 participants in its first year to more than double that today. The success of the conference is attributable to its fine organization by the Women's Center, and to their almost uncanny ability to focus on urgent and critical issues concerning women to raise questions which pro but the intellectual, political and social significance of vital areas of concern and to promote an important and enriching dialogue among us. I am confident that today's conference on the dynamics of control will be as exciting and stimulating as it's for runners Thank you.

Unknown Speaker  02:36
For each of the seven preceding years, the scholar and the feminist conference at Barnard has used the examination of some aspect of feminist scholarship as the organizing device for presenting a spectrum of new research. In spite of a wide variety of themes over the years that the conference has been given. Each conference is in some sense, an outgrowth of the ideas and the issues raised in previous years. This year's planning committee made up of women from Barnard and from the wider feminist community decided that this conference should examine how and why women are controlled by the society around them. The planning committee saw this as a continuation and elaboration of ideas about race, sex and class about division and unity among women raised a year ago. That conference addressed itself to social issues affecting both women and the women's movement as well to scholarship. The emphasis on social issues reappears in this conference, which encompasses feminist activism as well as feminist scholarship, and looks in addition at the relationship between the two. This dual orientation has, in fact, always been a distinguishing characteristic of much American feminist thinking, which has had its roots in political struggle as well as in theory and analysis. In deciding to present recent research on control on how women are urged, persuaded, manipulated and even coerced into thinking and behaving in certain ways, the planning committee felt an urgency flowing from the current political climate. The control of women, the resurrection of traditional family institutions of patriarchy of mandatory heterosexuality are all key stones in the program of that loose coalition of forces called the new right. Some people have seen the resurgence of the right as a backhanded compliment and acknowledgement in opposition as it were, of the women women's movements success. For most of us however, it poses a very real threat, that the principles and the institutions we have cared most deeply about over the last 10 or 15 years will be dismantled some of the starkest examples of control Oh, are the multiple efforts of so called pro life groups to curtail not only abortion, but also sex education and contraception through legislation. What is clearly an issue is the right of women and girls to control their sexuality and the countervailing attempt to reassert the control of the family. It goes without saying a male headed family over women. Other forms of control are less direct, but no less drastic in eroding the gains that women have made over the past decade. For instance, while large numbers of women must enter the paid labor force to support themselves and their families. They're often confined to low wage, pink color, employment ghettos. Other women are denied the opportunity to work at all as affirmative action deteriorates as childcare becomes increasingly unavailable. If legislation public policy and the operation of a segmented job market operate overtly to control women, these mechanisms are augmented by ideological control, oblique but highly persuasive. It works through education through literature, the media, religion and the medical establishment. Women are presented with images, sometimes ambiguous and contradictory ones of what they ought or ought not to be. These images are internalized to a certain degree by all women by many men, and become very potent in leading women to control themselves and other women. The planning committee felt that these issues already turn to feminist activists are also the concerns of feminist scholars. Women are not, however simply passive victims of control and oppression. While some find themselves for complex reasons of race, class and ideology, unable to resist, others have mounted significant resistance to all forms of control. The ability of women to organize to create new institutions to forge new images of themselves is a central concern of feminist scholars. Ironically, the attacks from the right may strengthen women's ability to resist by creating a new kind of unity in the women's movement. It is becoming increasingly clear that right wing attacks against lesbians against poor women against women of color

Unknown Speaker  07:22
are linked together by right wing thinkers as part of a larger strategy for the control and domination of the entire female six. I'd now like to introduce the three people who are going to speak this morning on various aspects of control. Sila Eisenstein, on the end, is a feminist theorist and a political scientist. Although she says she doesn't like to admit that, who teaches at Ithaca College. Her published articles cover topics as diverse as socialist feminist theory and women's political participation in modern American society. She's the author of capitalist patriarchy and the case for socialist feminism. And Her most recent book is the radical future of liberal feminism, which is slowly becoming available in the United States and in New York. In the middle, Cheryl Townsend jokes, who is a sociologist who teaches at Boston University. She's done extensive work on the roles played by black women in their communities as community activists, in churches and in their professions. She has a Ford Foundation grant with a group of other social scientists and she's working on the intersection of race, sex and class. She's also working on a book titled growing up for the oppressed black women and their community work. Blanche Weisen cook here is a feminist historian who teaches at John Jay College of the City University of New York. She specializes in 20th century American history and military history, as well as the history of the radical women's movement. She's edited two books on Crystal Eastman, Crystal Eastman on women in revolution and toward the great change crystal Eastman and Max Eastman on feminism, anti militarism and revolution. Her latest book is The declassified Eisenhower a divided legacy. I would like to also lay out for you the format of the morning. The speakers are each going to speak for 20 minutes, then there will be a half an hour for the audience to ask questions. You come to the mic in the middle here, which we hope will be working at that point. After about half an hour of questions, I'm going to ask the questions to stop and give the panelists chance to comment on each other's work. So I would ask you, first of all, to make your questions as brief as possible. And secondly, to ask questions and not make announcements, because announcements will come in the afternoon just before the end, the beginning of the theatrical program. One way to make that easier is if people will come back from their workshops promptly. Here, there'll be more time for announcements. So we're asking everybody to do that. Then, the last thing is, I would like to urge you to take the lunch break, as a chance to look at the photograph exhibit generations of women, which is on the back wall, and which is lovely, and we're very lucky to have. Celia, would you like to begin? Hello,

Unknown Speaker  10:57
the one major thing that wasn't said about me is I'm presently working very hard on my tennis game, but to the more appropriate point of of today, which is to talk about the question of political control. And it seems to me the the dynamic involved there, the question of the dialectic is to realize that when people try to control, you should know one thing about those who they try to control, they try to control those who do have power. Now, basically, it would seem to me that no matter what your politics is, or are that you would recognize that we are in a stage of conflict in the United States today. Basically, what I want to talk about in the few minutes I have here is that is the fact that most often the crisis right now is being spoken of as a crisis of liberalism. I want to redefine that statement of the crisis and say that basically, we are focused on a crisis of the state today that derives from the conflict between capitalism, liberalism and patriarchy, and that those are three different systems interconnected, mutually dependent, but they are in conflict with one another, and that the state does not have a cohesive policy about how to deal with these conflicts. Now, when I speak about the fact that the state is in conflict as a patriarchal and a capitalist state, it seems to be the more difficult issue here is to try to say what I mean by the fact that the state is patriarchal, the state is capitalist, that seems to me is actually less mystified than the fact that the state is patriarchal. So basically, what I will argue here today, is that the state presently is trying to counter the challenge to its patriarchal base, that the 1980 election was an attempt at this, as are Reagan's economic policies right now. And that there is a significant difference between the patriarchal anti feminist priorities of the state, the new right forces and the American public in general. In other words, I would argue that the state is moving to the right has moved to the right, and that the American public as a whole has not moved to the right now the ultimate purpose of this discussion is to recognize that there is a systematic attempt by the state to de radicalize the women's movement by trying to dismantle the reproductive rights and pro abortion forces, because they are the most forceful arm of the feminist movement today. The non ratification of the era and the threat to draft women are being used as weapons to limit women's demands for reproductive freedom, and self determination. Abortion has become the central issue to the 1980s for the very reason, that freedom, the struggle for women's freedom. The struggle for reproductive freedom is directly at odds with the question of patriarchal control is this. I keep feeling as though I'm going up and down with this microphone. Does my voice do that too? Oh, God, well, it sounds really bad anyhow. And just not pretend it's not there. Is that better? Okay. The state is part of the struggles within society. And the activism of the state right now, it seems to me actually grows out of the era. confi lability of the conflicts between patriarchy and capitalism. Therefore when I speak of the state, I really mean, the forces, the conflicting forces that exist within society right now that that's when I use the state. That's really what I am talking about. So therefore, when I say that we're focusing on the status, patriarchal, what does this mean? The distinction between public as male and private as female life has been inherent in the formation of state societies, the formation of the state institutionalized as patriarchy, it actually reifies the division between public and private life as one of sexual difference. The state in other words formalizes the rule by men, because the division of public and private life is that one and the same time a male female distinction. The point I'm trying to make here is the state mystifies its very patriarchal base, by not only constructing, but also manipulating the ideology of public and private life as male and female. Therefore, the state enforces a political system of patriarchy at the very same time that it makes it invisible, if what we're talking about here is the separation of male and female life, the separation, the differentiation, and then the statement of the inequality.

Unknown Speaker  16:29
A quick way of saying what I'm trying to argue here is the state by definition reflects the separation of public and private life as male and female. Therefore, one loses sight that the state constructs this division as well. If it reflects it, then how can it construct it The point here is to argue the really the implicit structure of patriarchy rooted in the very definition of the state, so that it becomes invisible, or this is what I mean, when I argue that patriarchy is a mystified political system. Now, that's the way it works on the state level, on the individual level, what we really have is the manipulation of women's biology, that then is reified once again, on the state level. And what is meant here is the argument, that woman as a mother, defined as a biological concept really, is not what the system of patriarchy is about. The system of patriarchy is about setting up a system of controls, so that the options and choices for women disconnected from being a mother are not there for you, the closure of choice and the institutionalization of the role. And the the real politics of motherhood, in this sense, really speaks to the transformation of woman from a biological being to a political one, from a woman being able to bear children to the fact that woman not only is to bear them, but it's to rear them. And by rearing children, you become totally defined then in relationship to private life. And we're back to the ideology of the separation of public and private, which operates on the state level. Now, basically, then what does all of this has to do with the 1980 election and the president budget cuts that we're living that we're living through? Well, basically, it seems to me that what we see in the 1980 election, what we see what we're living through right now, is basically the state that the state has in patriarchal control. I just want to say one quick statement about the election in general, most people argue, I should say, most political scientists argue that, that Reagan had a mandate in this past election. And it seems to me that first of all, he didn't have a mandate. And he clearly didn't have a mandate in the way that it's been interpreted for his budget cuts, and particularly for the anti feminist dimensions of his budget cuts. Because basically, the turnout, as most of you probably already know, was 53%, which basically, even though I'm not one of your behavioral social scientists, I can tell you, that's about half the population. Reagan poll 27%. Once again, given my astute training, I say that's about a quarter of the population. Carter poll 22% Not a whole lot worse, not really, in any political sense. The point here is, again, ultimately, a quarter of the population voted for Reagan, which again, the other side of that is three quarters of the population didn't vote for him, which is the one that I think is actually more significant. The other point here is in terms of all of the polls taken, it is argued that when people were asked Why did you vote for Reagan In, only 11% of the people polled said they voted for Reagan as a conservative 38% said they voted for him against Carter, etc. But the point here is that we're down to about 10% of the population. Okay, well, now that we've taken care of this question of the mandate. So real tool, don't you think you just erase what you don't want? Anyhow? On this point, basically, it seems to me what we are what we are left with is the significant question, though, that the that the election did present us with really significant anti feminist policies. And basically, it seems that what needs to be understood is that there were anti feminist policies

Unknown Speaker  20:50
at the center of the election, although very few people voted, those who did vote, many of them voted for these anti feminist policies. And then what we're left to ask is exactly what does this tell us about the moves political moves in the United States right now? Well, what it tells us is that the new right is growing. And that fundamentally, these are the people who supported and pushed for certain policies presented by Reagan. Now, I think that just one other point about the election, is the fact that the way that feminism was attacked in this election was a very particular kind of way. It wasn't an attack over the most radical formulations of the feminist movement. It was basically an attack on the question of the era. And it was an attack on reproductive issues based in the issue of the individual freedom of choice. In other words, the real counter and the real conflict, and the real pressure put on the women's movement in this election was to the mainstream part of the women's movement. And part of my argument, which I can't defend here today, for lack of time, is to say the reason that the mainstream part of the movement was hit so hard by Reagan, is the fact that the mainstream movement of feminism in the United States is radicalizing and moving to the left, and that that needs to be understood and is as significant politically for us in the 1980s. As is the fact that the new right is gaining as much power as it is that there is a real dynamic and and a real conflict of forces in those two realms. There. Therefore, when we look back at the 1980 election, what we see is that the theme was primarily that we need to make America strong, by Re strengthening the family, the economy and the military. The Neo conservative analysis of the crisis of American democracy explains it as a crisis of the authority of the state and the family. Their answer to the problem is to reconstitute the patriarchal family and construct an authoritarian democracy, or what more recently has been called a friendly fascism.

Unknown Speaker  23:02
Pro family politics, which is basically anti feminist, anti detente, anti communist and anti affirmative action provided the ideological language for arguing for a strong America. The present instability of society, they argued, must be reconstructed by weed constituting the authority of the family and the state at home and abroad. In this sense, pro family ideology constructs the militarist mentality which seeks to justify the necessity of moral mothers enhance the traditional patriarchal family and moral wars, hence the new militarism. The point then, is not that sexual politics merely served as a gloss in the 1980 election for the real politics of the unstable economy, but rather that the reestablishment of the authority of the family was seen as central to reconstituting and re Strengthening America. Now, given that as as the the quick synopsis of the 1980 election, then what I'd like to do is just bring us to the present, which is to talk just very briefly about the question of the budget cuts and the and the new so called economic policy of Reagan. Reagan's budget is implicitly a sexual politics. It's explicitly an economic politics, but implicitly it is absolutely a sexual one. Because basically what is happening today is a struggle to realign the relationship of the family and the state. And that primarily the concept of get government off our backs. The idea that in the through the since World War Two then through the 60s and 70s, the fact that government has gotten too big one should not forget the fact that government has grown and developed very much in the same period of time that women married women have entered the labor force in large numbers that basically we are talking here about a change a transformation of the process of the patriarchal family, from what I would call the traditional patriarchal family to the advanced capitalist patriarchal one, and that there is a real argument here by the state about how best to try to reassert the patriarchal roots of the family in this setting nudges. To just give you a quick example of some of the discussion that is happening in the new right, I thought for those, those of you who wouldn't want to read Jerry Falwell's book called Listen, America, that I just give you a couple of quick quotes, which it seems to me does really support the argument that I've put forward. Basically, he says in his chapter on children's rights, he says, children have the right to have the love of a mother and a father who understand their different roles and fulfill their different responsibilities. Number two, to have the care of a mother who makes mothering her number one career, at least in the all important preschool period. Now, number three, I think is just ingenious in terms of really letting us know what the new right is so upset about. He says, a child has a right to live in an economic system that makes it possible for husbands to support their wives as full time mothers in the home, and that enables families to survive on one income instead of two. The new right is mad about the economy, they're angry, the economy is starting to whittle away at the patriarchal family. Let me just give you one other quick example of the arguments that Falwell puts forward. When he's talking about his anger towards big government. He says, The progression of big government is amazing. A Father's authority was first lost to the village, then to the city. Already, next to the stage, and finally to the Empire.

Unknown Speaker  27:15
Then he goes on to say, our government is trying to enact laws that I feel are contrary to the traditional American family. Now, it seems to me that basically what you really can see when you carefully look at what some of the members of the new right are involved in, they are extraordinarily angry. And that is true. And the point here is that their anger is very much complicated about really what the relationship should be between the family and the economy between men and women, between men and women, particularly in a heterosexual society. He then just in the end, because I don't think any of you should have to read the book, I just thought you'd like to know he does have a chapter on the feminist movement, and basically says, feminists are saying that self satisfaction is more important than the family.

Unknown Speaker  28:14
Our nation is in serious danger when motherhood is considered a task, that is unrewarding. unfulfilling and boring. I believe that a woman's call to be a wife and mother is the highest calling in the world. And the wonderful thing about this book is, of course, the highest calling is always in terms of Adam, he always comes back to Adam, and that Adam represents Christ. And that basically, he and Phyllis Schlafly share the point. When they say they say, when you obey your husband, you're not really obeying your husband, you're only obeying Jesus through your husband. Great. Therefore, in the end, the points that I am rushing to make here is basically the fact that we are talking here about outworn models. And I think that there is about as much luck involved here of trying to deal with inflation when you're pretending we have competitive capitalism, in the same way as when you think that you're going to be able to deal with the question of political conflict and crisis as we pretend to have the traditional American family which applies to 17% of American families today. So that basically in terms of the new right, we're in trouble for coherent politics. And it seems to me that that's part of the saving grace that we then as feminists can act on. In the very end here. What I am trying to say. You want to know what's in there. Anyhow, asked me about it later, given the growing power of the new right. Anti feminist power Oh, excuse me, given the growing power of new right anti feminist politics, one needs to understand that it is that it has developed in reaction to the changing nature of women's lives, the family and the feminist movement. at issue here, then are the conflicts which have appeared through the 60s and 70s. Between patriarchy and capitalism, just very simply the conflict merely between the fact that that woman has been defined in this society both as a mother and as necessitated as a wage earner in an inflationary society, and that those are coming into significant conflict with each other. Therefore, I argue that the assault against the new right can and must be launched most effectively by feminism, and possibly here, even by mainstream feminism to the extent that an organizational base does exist here. And that it is also here, the feminist movement is the most active political movement today, this force remains to be fully organized and directed against the new right. But if feminists of all different progressive political orientations, do not seek to use the radical potential that does exist for us within the mainstream movement, and with the possibilities of organizing this, the conservative forces within both feminism and the new right will win out. I would say then, just in final conclusion here, that one could argue that the feminist movement needs to become to the Democratic Party on some level, what the new right is to the Republican Party, scare the shit out of them. Next Cheryl

Unknown Speaker  32:10
jokes. Good morning. This morning, I will attempt to put into some perspective the kinds of problems that black women face and the consequences of those problems in terms of their struggle. I believe my title is listed as from slavery to social welfare, the control of black women. I've changed the title to racism and the control of black women. So it is still from slavery to welfare, but it's racism and the control of black women. The control of black women in American society requires special reflection in the light of their history in a racist society. For the mass of black people, America's recent turn to the right represents a reinforcement of traditional structures and attitudes shaped by racism. Black people, as perpetual outsiders in this society live in existence, exploitative ly separated from the mainstream of American society. Black women share in that separate existence, and their historical roles as workers, women and activists have been shaped by this separate reality, their actions behind the color line, and I mean, the term color line, in spite of the recent arguments around class, have contributed to an intergenerational legacy on behalf of the race, fostering relationships of a special character with each other and black men. The modifications of women's roles within the black community as a result of and as a response to racism, have exposed black women to a wide variety of ideological punishments. Part of these punishments, stereotyped images have developed as extra dimensions of control further isolating black women as punishment for their creative activism. The image of black people as dangerous and this is one of the core components of racial racist images and stereotypes in our society. The image of black people as dangerous takes a peculiar twist and turn when it is applied to black women. The special dimensions of the control of black women are important to understand in the light of the reflection of racial divisions in the mainstream of the women's movement. Over and over again, the question comes up about black women's role in the women's movement. And very often, many aspects of that movement do reflect those racial divisions in our society. There's a reason for that. And I raised this question does the reinforcement of traditional modes of racism and we end the retrenchment that the new right represents in the face of the gains under under civil rights mean that the gap between black and white women's struggles will widen further. The threat of the new right to the solidarity of women is a function of the degree to which the new right is able to reinforce the old rung of racism. This paper analyzes the nature of the problem of racism and the control of black women. By examining the structures and processes that control and determine the character of black women's struggles. I submit that the threat of the old rung of racism is one of the most important tools in the hands of the new right in its renewed war against women. When the votes of November 4 Would tally, black people ended up as the most conspicuous group of outsiders at the new government's victory celebration. However, black people presently are only more outside to a degree than they were before in recent years. While is the people fulfilling a role vital to the development of capital and the stabilization of class relations in the United States. Black people have historically been an isolated and contained community within white America. And this isolation and containment is essential in terms of the function that racism plays in our society.

Unknown Speaker  37:07
In the language of deviance and language of the analysis of deviance, outsiders, one sociologist uses the term outsiders to describe deviance who become subject to the processes of social control, okay? Outsiders are people who elicit reactions from others, designed precisely, to isolate them, and to separate them and to otherwise contain them in a morally stigmatized status. When society uses this process, in order to initiate a process of social control, a power contest develops and the aim of that power contest is to socially and physically confined the target group. So black people have been outsiders perpetual outsiders in American society. And that status as perpetual outsiders has been a function of their place in the system, the kinds of things that they do to shore up the class system in the society and make work relations in the dominant group a little bit more peaceful. The agents of social control in a racist society usually in the language of deviance, we talk about policemen, psychiatrists, and jail wardens in the language of understanding racism as a form of social control, we have to talk about a different set of agents of social control. So the agents of control in a racist society represent the principal focus of struggles by members of the subordinate community. For black people in America, in American society, their everyday lives, and their political struggles are defined by the specific techniques of repression associated with racism. So whatever white power is doing to black people, that is what they will respond to politically. The threat of the new right represents a resurgence and recreation of dominant culture strategies to maintain and reinforce the this historical isolation and containment. Black women are now and have always been pivotal figures in the black community's response to racism. And until recently, black women have been positively sanctioned by the total black community in their roles as resistors. And I say until recently because part of the strategy used to keep black people in their place in recent years has taken on a very patriarchal cat character and as I hope to show in my talk, patriarchy has been used to undercut the ability of the black community to force change in this society. Okay, in order to understand these dynamics of controlling The lives of black women, one must take into account the ways in which they experienced racism and racisms impact on their role as women, their role as women workers, and their role as the biological and social reproducers of the black community. Okay, occasionally they have been required. I shouldn't say occasionally, they have been required by force or by economic necessity, depending on which historical period we're talking about, to participate in the soul, the social reproduction of the ruling class as well. And some of the myths and images used to attack Black women are part of this role that they have played as the caretakers of ruling class children. Okay, the special relationship of black women to the dominant culture have made them special targets.

Unknown Speaker  40:55
of control because they represent a very special threat to the system. They represent a threat to the structure of racism, and they represent a threat to the structure of patriarchy, and the ideologies that maintain patriarchy. The work history of black women has been in total opposition in contradiction to the central themes of patriarchal ideology in our society, black women have a work history, over three and a half centuries old. And this is important to keep in mind, it's a central point of black women's history that they started out in the American labor market. And, again, it's important to consider slaves as workers, because we often do not do this. But they started out in the American labor market with 100% labor force participation. So we're talking about a labor history, three and a half centuries old. during slavery, black women participated fully in every facet of plantation labor, as well as town and city work. It's unfortunate that the narrative of Linda Brandt represents one of the central focuses of the analysis of slavery, because it is not the modal life experience of black women. And very often people read analyses of slave narratives and say, well, they talked about black woman's role biologically as mothers, but they don't talk about their work role, people often miss the point it was precisely the same role. Okay, the central point of the slave woman's existence, is that black women did precisely the same work as men. Their roles as biological mothers and children's caretakers were performed, in addition to their central tasks at the cutting edge of capitalism. Angela Davis has provided us with a very highly informative theoretical analysis of what the black woman's role in slavery has done. And she makes the point that the black the African woman was charged with domestic responsibility in the quarters, and that in fact, domesticity within the slave community became a central point of political struggle, because it was the only labor that the slave master did not really need and other analysts have shown that if slave masters had had their way totally black people would not have eaten their dinners together as families, they would have not lived in cabins together as as families, that whatever structure existed in the slave quarters was this resistance that was fostered within the quarters with the party participation of women. She also makes the other point that during slavery, and this has been a consistent point throughout history, that when black women participated in slave revolts, and within that analysis, she demolishes the myth that black slaves did not rebel. Okay, that when black women participated in slave revolts, when the men were executed, black women were the men were usually hanged. And to further repress the participation of black women, they were usually burned alive. So the Punnett physical punishments that were visited upon black women, when they did reach out rebel, often exceeded those of men for the sole purpose of cutting down that double danger that they propose.

Unknown Speaker  44:19
Black women as workers, one must analyze the experience of black women as caretakers of households of resistance. Okay, black women have had to as caretakers of children, socialize their children to survive in a racist society, while also socializing them to have a commitment to social change and to the corporate benefit of the entire black community. As a response to this separate experience, and these this double duty of black women, they have developed a legacy of struggle that is also three and a half centuries old. I won't go through the history of organized black womanhood, but let me leave it say this much In my own research on black women activists in a black community named Hampton Ville, I discovered by asking grassroots black people who in our community has worked hard for a long time for change, that they were able to name a wide variety of people in a wide variety of roles, who to the dominant culture appear to be black professional women. But when their life experiences were analyzed, they were women who had become black professional women, by becoming upwardly mobile, by stepping into an arena of struggle on the very specific issues that, that determine their lifestyles in terms of the negative consequences of racism, so that they may have gotten involved through work unions, or through those facets of their children's lives where they were able to perceive racism. So black women have played this role of the doubly dangerous insurgent historically. And their ties with other black women who have changed, things are intergenerational, and they transcend local communities. This was what I discovered, starting out to gather data through the center of the black community, asking the black grassroots themselves to name these people. So as a result, I talk about these women as going up, that is moving up professionally educationally for the oppressed, and over the careers of struggle, they have never given up this, this role. As a result, black women have made and I'm quoting Angela Davis, now in terms of her analysis of the black woman's role. As a result, black women have made significant contributions to struggles against racism, and the dehumanizing exploitation of a wrongly organized society. In fact, it would appear that the intense levels of resistance historically maintained by black people, and thus the historical function of the Black liberation struggle, as harbinger of change throughout the society are due in part to the greater objective equality between the black man and the black woman. And it is this modification of sex roles within the black community, not a total revolution, but a significant amount of modification that was attacked, as it was used by the Moynihan Report, to dampen the level of struggle within the black community. And let me just quickly go through that issue. The black women's response to racism their organization historically, has meant that they have been visited with a wide variety of stereotypes. And in defining people as deviant, and invoking social control and maintaining systems of racism or any other system, one must have very negative stereotypes of the target group in order to keep other people away from them. This is part of the politics of isolation. Every single stereotype of black women negative image of black women, these controlling images can be summed up in two sets of categories. They are stereotyped as dangerous women, and deviant mothers, dangerous women and deviant mothers. Okay, we can go from slavery with its images of mammy. And what Greta Lerner calls the bad black woman, the black woman who was willing to fight the one who as Angela Davis points out had to be burned alive through into modern times with the TV stereotype of sapphire, who excoriated her husband, and helped to participate in the castration. Of the black male. These stereotypes, the set of images and stereotypes was finally enshrined by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his now famous Moynihan Report.

Unknown Speaker  49:02
So not only have black women being required to resist the impact of racism in their own lives, resist the impact of racism in their children's lives, sometimes also resisting the directly the impacts of patriarchy on women's lives in general than these these contributions have been various, depending on how you're analyzing this, but they have also been forced to resist another set of images and stereotypes that have further isolated them from women who are also engaged in struggle and from the mainstream of the dominant dominant society. Because of the Moynihan Report, and I argue this I believe that the Moynihan Report was a political tactic, nothing more used to divide the struggle of black women divide black women from the main struggle of the black community. And it's important to look at precisely some of the statements that Moynihan made and I think in the light of feminist reflection, they become all the more shocking, and all the more damning. Okay, and I'm quoting from went ahead now, in essence, he says, the Negro community has been forced into a matriarchal structure, which because it is so out of line with the rest of the American society, seriously retards the progress of the group as a whole, and imposes a crushing burden on the negro male. Still, quoting now from went ahead. Ours is a society which presumes male leadership, and private and public affairs. The arrangements of society facilitate such leadership and rewarded a subculture such as that of the Negro American, in which this is not the pattern is placed at a distinct disadvantage. While the claims of the Moynihan Report were made on behalf of poor black families, the actual target groups in the Moynihan Report and I challenge you to go back and reread the statistics, or else look at Michelle Wallace's critique in black module and the myth of the Superwoman because it is one of the best critiques of the Moynihan Report, you will find for late for lay persons, that the actual target of the report where black working class and middle class women in intact families who were both involved in the struggle, as well as involved in the labor force, helping their husbands to support their family, and whose family patterns through research had been shown to be egalitarian. So that in actuality, it was not on behalf of poor black women.

Unknown Speaker  51:55
So what the Moynihan Report did was make a social science concept out of the vast complex of negative images and stereotypes of black women. And as stereotypes have a habit of doing, making the targets of that stereotype, stand back, look around and say, are maybe we doing too much. This is precisely at the same time that the women's movement is beginning to go forward in American society. And it is at the same time that one of the best organized lobbies to affect women's legislation that had had at that point in 1965, a 30 year history of monitoring Women's and Children's legislation and monitoring the Labor Department, a black women's group called the National Council of Negro Women, that they want to hand report had the effect of moving a chess piece to block the possible political impact of black women in shaping that legislation for the new society. So the meaning of the new right to black women in America cannot be separated from the meaning of the new right to all black people in America. Historically an isolated contained and deprived community in the political economy and institutional life of the nation. For black people in America. The new right represents a vigorous reassertion of the old wrongs, and particularly the old rung of virulent confrontational racism, that is lynching and other forms of violence, that this violence is compounded by the ideological consequences of a nation that has perpetually lied to itself, concerning the nature of racism, and which has, in the face of every change wrought by the black community, change the lie to fit the new facts, and yet preserve the old order. Thus, we have reached a fraudulent state of affairs in our society where the ideology of racial equality can be freely asserted, since the political and economic history of this nation has reached such such a fixed state of racial affairs. That with economically, with economic exclusion, one can effectively eliminate or may eliminate the participation of the black community in most of American life, and maintain the structural consequences of historical racism. It is no accident that we now have a president whose campaign was launched literally, almost literally, on the graves of murdered set of civil rights workers murdered in the state, which still represents the most vivid symbol of violent racial oppression. In Mississippi. The structural and historical racism which defines American society is ultimately a system of social control in the analysis of class in the society and not simply analysis of black classes, which has been invoked lately. But any holistic analysis of social class and class consciousness in the society must ultimately deal with the problem of the color line, and the role which the variety of expressions of racism Have has played in shaping and defining the existence the existing structures. The experience of black women as objects of control in this society cannot ever be separated from the facts of this history. Thus the victimization of black women because of their class, and their victimization, because of their sex must be interpreted, perceived and ultimately understood through the prism of racism. I submit that if we do not look at this system, the new right will effectively widen the gap between black and white women in struggle. And one of the major consequences of the new right will be an even more isolated black community of black women, a more isolated black community, and a gross misunderstanding on the part of feminism of the role of racism in our society, we must understand that experience Thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker  56:22
Blanche Wiseman cook

Unknown Speaker  56:31
just want to say that I'm really deeply moved to be here today, not only because it's perfectly clear that in every community, there's more of us than there are them. But it's also clear that we have better thinkers than they do. Now, to deal with how and why women are controlled in our society, I'd like to make some remarks that are supposed to be limited to 20 minutes, and you're gonna tell me every three minutes

Unknown Speaker  57:10
every other day.

Unknown Speaker  57:12
For the past few years with time off for an eight year project on Eisenhower in the Cold War. I've been working on female support networks and political activism and the political women of the First World War era. And I've used the Freedom of Information Act as well as several volumes of congressional hearings printed by the government printing office in 1975, and six with many deletions, to document and assess the intensity of the government's effort to destabilize and destroy every major movement for a progressive America. from World War One to the present, the FBI has kept dosi A's on women, black leaders, socialists, peace activist, and feminist reformers. There is really nothing new about the so called Moral Majority, which was founded after all, only in 1979. I first discovered, for instance, what crystal Eastman looked like, when she addressed large audiences from New York to California. I first knew of her flamboyant manner, her Wreden face when angry, her great tall presence, and her deep resonant voice from the FBI files, meticulously kept about her every public appearance. And 9019 then director of the FBI, J. W. Flynn, assign the bureau to a vigorous and comprehensive investigation of anarchists and Bolshevist along with Kindred agitations, advocating change in the present form of government, J. Edgar Hoover was placed in charge of that effort, which emphasize the avocation of change, and specifically included acts which might be enacted in the future. In 1922, the librarian because she was a woman, for the chemical warfare Department of the Army was assigned to work cooperatively with the FBI and to collect and I'm reading now from an FBI document that we got through the Freedom of Information Act, May 1919 22. To collect all possible data concerning the various women's organizations throughout the United States, particularly those which are interested in disarmament. It would appear that these organizations the document continue issues have taken up the disarmament movement at the investigation of such modern intellectuals as Sarah bardfield Emma Wald, Harry Brown and Jane Addams. The War Department is extremely interested in receiving all information which this bureau might have upon such organizations as the Women's International League for peace and freedom, and the National Woman's party of America. In 1935, the year of her death, Jane Addams was counted among the reds in America, and was considered the most dangerous woman in the United States. Isn't that touching? From 1917 to the present, every Women's International League for peace and freedom meeting on a local national and international level has been monitored and recorded. Today, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, which is under attack as you know, we have that splendid history in our office, boxes of history carefully preserved. Just think how fortunate our students will be to have our scintillating telephone conversations as well.

Unknown Speaker  1:01:28
But these surveillance activities do not merely document our resistance, our ability to organize and to survive, they document the fullness of our threat, a threat so real, that a vast American fortune has been expended in an effort to tell not to tyrannized us, to terrorize us into silence. And by us, I mean, all of us who believe in civil rights, civil liberties, decency, women's rights, peace, human rights, everything that is fine about our American traditions and values. And the documents related to the FBI is COINTELPRO program. COINTELPRO is the acronym for counterintelligence program, right? Those documents and the CIA's operation chaos, and operation chaos was the CIA's activities directed at domestic which is quite illegal. Even in terms of the CIA's charter domestic activities. They fully revealed the dimensions of their fear of us. Since 1939, the FBI has compiled more than 500,000 dose yeas on United States citizens. They added 65,000 to that total in 1972 alone. In addition to COINTELPRO, and operation chaos, government wiretapping and bugging and illegal means of surveillance of all kinds, including damaging fires and black bag job braking, was performed during the war in Indochina by agencies as diverse as the Customs Service, the Internal Revenue Service, the Postal Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. In the mid 1970s, a minimum of 26 federal agencies conducted surveillance of private citizens, but COINTELPRO goes far beyond surveillance. The goal and I'm reading from an FBI document was to expose disrupt myths direct, misinformed and otherwise neutralize the targeted groups. In 1956, the primary target was the Communist Party. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was to foster again from a government document to foster fractionalization bring the Communist parties and its leaders into disrepute, and cause confusion and dissatisfaction among rank and file members to work within the organization to infiltrate to feed and foster dissension to create personal animosities, jealousies and rivalries, from 1956 to today, everything mean minded and sleazy has been used to destroy people and to destroy organizations. After 1956. The primary target was the Civil Rights Movement. Now I'm going to read from two FBI documents relating to the civil rights movement because They're the most documented cases that we have. And because they remained today the model of what has been temporarily suspended, but is again in the wings, namely operation chaos and COINTELPRO. This is a 1968 March 1968 document to target a new black nationalist hate group COINTELPRO program. And the hate groups, black hate groups were considered everything that had a national constituency. In fact, how much hatred was involved with violence, depending on how national the organization was very specific about that. It's a long document, I'm only going to read a few paragraphs one for maximum effectiveness of the counterintelligence program. And to prevent long way long, I'm sorry and to prevent wasted effort. Long range goals are being set. One prevent the coalition of militant black nationalist groups. In unity there is strength, says the FBI.

Unknown Speaker  1:06:16
The FBI continues a truism that is no less valid for all its triteness. An effective coalition of black nationalist groups might be the first step toward a real Mao Mao in America, the beginning of a true black revolution to prevent the rise of a messiah. It's in quotes. Who could unify us before the Moral Majority now they wouldn't put it in quotes, right? Who can unify and electrified the militant that black nationalist movement Malcolm X might have been such a Messiah but we killed No.

Unknown Speaker  1:07:09
is a semicolon after that. He is the moderator of the movement today says the FBI. Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael and Elijah Muhammad are all aspiring to this position. Elijah Muhammad is less of a threat because of his age. King could be a very real contender for this position. Should he abandon his suppose, quote, obedience to white liberal doctrines, in parenthesis non violence, stay a parenthesis and embrace black nationalism. For prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining respectability by discrediting them. And we to discredit them. The FBI says there are three separate groups and we have to think of ways to appeal to each of those three separate groups. The goal of discrediting black nationalists must be handled tactfully in three ways. You must discredit these groups and individuals to first the responsible negro community. Second, they must be discredited to the white community. And then there are three lines deleted. Then it starts again after about three lines, both the responsible community and to liberals, who have vestiges of sympathy for militant black nationalists, simply because they are negros. Third, these groups must be discredited in the eyes of Negro radicals. And then there's a word of warning to the fellow agents who were reading this document. Now this last area requires entirely different tactics from the first to publicity about violent tendencies and radical statements merely enhanced black nationalist to this last group. So you change your five, a final goal should be to prevent the long range growth of militant black nationalist organizations, especially among youth. specific tactics to prevent these groups from converting young people must be developed. And then the FBI lists their primary targets for the counterintelligence program, which should be the most violent and radical groups and their leaders. And they on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, in the Southern revolutionary Action Movement, and the Nation of Islam. I just like to give you one example of the dirty two Rex the specific kinds of dirty tricks we have boxes of 1960 I'm sorry, 1970 document. And this has to do the Black Panther Party concerning the proposal submitted by the Detroit program, counter intelligence action by San Francisco, who's a national operation on Huey Newton. On Huey Newton's favorable stance toward homosexuals has already been authorized by the Bureau. That is to say, if you say something nice about quiz, you can really be zapped. The second Detroit proposal to consider directing and anonymous communication to Newton, accusing David Hillard of stealing Black Panther Funds and depositing them in foreign banks does have merit. And the Bureau does not concur with the San Francisco observation that this would would have little effect since it's not true. The FBI is very clear about that. The purpose of counterintelligence action is to disrupt the Black Panther Party, and it is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge if the facts are present, it aids in the success of the proposal. But the bureau feels that the skimming of money is such a sensitive issue. That disruption can be accomplished without facts to back it up. Now, women, as an organized group were surveilled all through the war in Indochina, all through the 60s. But they weren't the primary target group. There's lots of documents we have 1500 pages of documents on surveillance of the women's movement, which is known in the FBI. Argus is W L M.

Unknown Speaker  1:12:00
But it was not until 1972. When the era passed the House by a vote of 354 to 23. Let's remember these numbers we once had them and the Senate by a vote of 84 to eight that the radical right regrouped and seized upon the era as their Chief organizing tool, adding it to the John Birch Society his campaign against communist inspired sexual education. The anti woman movement was created by the fanatical anti communist right at the time when COINTELPRO and operation chaos went into Eclipse as a result of Watergate, and Nixon's resignation. If you remember, that was the time of the church committee hearings in the Rockefeller report, which condemned the excesses of COINTELPRO. And Operation chaos, and the radical right wanted to fill the gap with private organization of their own. Today, they seek to restore the halcyon days of McCarthyism, calling tell Pro and chaos through their new congressional purchase. And I would just like to point out that today, Senator Jeremiah Denton, the new Republican from South Carolina, who was one of the founders of the Moral Majority, heads, the new Senate subcommittee on security and terrorism. The new word today is terrorism. They can't use the word communism anymore. And they certainly can't use the word you know, why don't we go into Vietnam? We're gonna say freedom. So now it's terrorism. Oh, come on. I want to just say that the first set of hearings for that committee will occur. On April 21. Now, every time we are goaded into battling ourselves into disrupting and distrusting each other, we must remember COINTELPRO they are dedicated to our demise. Recently, I was told that there is an impending straight lesbian split in the organized feminist community. Just last night right here, I was told that lesbian feminists and straight feminists just can't get it on. Now that has never been my experience.

Unknown Speaker  1:14:43
Who planted that rumor? whose interests does it serve? Who are these reactionaries who hide behind our skirts, or pin their ideologies on a bifurcated garment? We need to name them fully and with all that connections, and we need to name ourselves fully and with all our complexities, and we need to ask why they have chosen the women's movement and the sexual freedom movement as the issues around which to drape themselves. We need to know who the women they get to front for them are and if they can have two more minutes, I'll tell you

Unknown Speaker  1:15:34
Phyllis Schlafly logged into US political life in 1964 when she wrote a choice not an echo, to promote Barry Goldwater his candidacy. But Phyllis Schlafly has left Barry Goldwater far behind a centrist Republican And alas, his social libertarian. But Schlafly report today is dedicated to defeating the era to getting women out of the workplace, and to building up an aggressive counter revolutionary military presence everywhere. In April 1972, our newsletter headline, our moral duty to build nuclear weapons. She has published four books with Admiral Chester award, who's such a hawk he's an embarrassment to the Pentagon to defeat the soul treaty, and to awaken America to the menace of quote the betrayers and strike from space. Those are the titles of two of her books. Appalling political warfare that urge 123 Many Vietnams everywhere. She and her husband Jay Fred Schlafly founded in 1962, a foundation to public the evils of atheistic communism, and they are closely associated with the John Birch Society. Eleanor Schlafly, the many of them Liddell Schlafly is all over. Fred Sr. is executive director of the cognomen zentih foundation dedicated to stimulating anti communism and international hatred worldwide. I can go on and on all these people. All the Schlafly 's have appeared on Dean Manion forum, the weekly radio TV John Birch Society special they work with Christian crusade, which in 1972 published Billy James hargus. His book catch this one women's live one way street to bondage there's a subtitle the communist effort to subvert women to bed the communists don't know that. Hodges of Tulsa, Oklahoma, is leader of Christian crusade and past president of We the People, a Birch Society front for white supremacist in Phoenix. That is until he was found out according to Gorby down quite accidentally, I'm quoting it DeVito I'm quoting. It was only after he performed the wedding service of two of his Bible college students that the bride and groom discovered he deflowered them both then says, Garvey doll, he got into terrible trouble. Now, all of these people are hypocrites. Let me be as precise as the Reverend Jerry Falwell. We do not hate homosexuals. Jerry Falwell said that. He said we are only against those who talk about it. They are against our public presence, isolated, mute, silent in the closet. There is no threat to order obedience rule. And that it seems to me is a key distinction. The moral majority doesn't condemn sin, or even deviance. It only condemns the public appearance of it. The politicized organizing of our support networks. If you repent, go silent, back into the closet. You can continue to do it. So long as you do it for Christ.

Unknown Speaker  1:20:04
They are the Archdeacon of our national hypocrisy, but they are more. They are the front runners for fascism, and they say so. They oppose freedom, diversity, individual rights. They oppose busing, the poor, all poor, all social programs, the arts, individual rights, socialist communist Democrats and independents spirits. But why have they targeted women? Why is sexual freedom? Why are women's rights the major organizing tools of repressive states? Why is the women's movement so threatening to repressive circles in both capitalist and communist countries? What is it about feminism and independent sexuality, to feel good to make choices based on individual need and chemistry? To know those choices are an act of bravery and defiance? Well, repressive states do not promote bravery and defiance. They promote obedience to authority and mindless conformity. They do not promote willful self fulfillment, willful self fulfillment i want to add, that is at once communitarian, and politicized. What they really hate is that we are politicized. We see our salvation in community with each other, we defy their authority, we threaten their hegemony, and we do so at the source. That place where the state and the church come together, representing the Twin Towers of their persuasion, and of their ability to preside over our minds and our bodies, to say that we do it for ourselves, and that we have freedom to do it, that we are everywhere. And even it would appear on occasion at the White House. To say that to love women is for many women a positive choice, and that all women will organize around our right to choose our right to choose whether or not to have children, whether or not to love each other. Why that is revolutionary. There is a little bit more one second. Last week, in Los Angeles, I heard that great hero of the 1930s organizing campaign, Dorothy Healy say, I don't get ulcers. I've never gotten ulcers, I give them

Unknown Speaker  1:22:47
and I'd like to point out that today, three generations of women cheered. women everywhere organized as never before. For the first time, we have refused to give up our own needs and wants as we continue to struggle for social change. Our support networks empower us and Women Empowered represent a mighty force for change.