Unknown Speaker 00:05 organize social feminism occurred in a context of what popular culture has of course labeled the sexual revolution. What we've come to think of is the heterosexual revolution. US Mary Ryan's from the citizenry the heterosexual imperative. The heterosexual imperative had two separate but interrelated Posad. One was the rise of companionate marriage between women, and the other was the outcast in a female centered sociability as lesbian and immature. From the 1890s on heterosexuality was discovered as an area of study and meditation. While earlier generations of women had internalized notions of sexual difference and distance between women and men. The writings of the New sexual moderns like habarana LSG, Stanley Hall Floyd and battery of female power is in the pudding and we're gonna go into the how to construct a new normative image of the Female Orgasms proclaimed to be a natural inherited a release to be sought by women as well as by men. Yet early sexual surveys revealed an epidemic of female virginity within marriage. repressive nature of Victorian marriage was been critiqued in favor of a vision of marriage in which partners might view one another as friends as well as lovers. The image of maternity and women's ultimate function was replaced by that of her sexual partnership. During the 20s new categories were suggested by sexology, within which women were taught to think of themselves. Lack of orgasm with male partners indicated resistance to fully adult tender sexuality. Frigid women were labeled immature or even masculine. Indeed, psychologists routinely labeled feminists as an erotic sublimating status and so they're homeless social liaisons as compensation for their lack of hetero erotic success. The 19th amendment might bring women and men together in the political sphere, but it remains the norm of psychologists and sexologist to bring them together in the domestic sphere. The new focus on heterosexuality took place in a context of material and ideological, the spread of vulcanized rubber Congress and diaphragms made birth control more trustworthy. By the late 20s, about 80% of upper middle class families reporting using birth control, and by the 30s, a third of working class women interviewed reporting using at the same time, social scientists and journalists examined the institution of marriage, advocating divorce, serial marriage and even trial marriage for problems of sexual incompatibility. Adolescents took on a new cultural meaning, and was increasingly seen as a period of preparation for full heterosexuality. That's the point you'll get back. In such context, the rate of non marital heterosexual activity doubles. As many feminists have pointed out, the sexual revolution was a double edged sword. While women undoubtedly benefited from the open discussion of the problematic nature of heterosexuality. They also lost the diffuse homosocial and homosexuals, within which earlier generations of women lesbianism became the subject of intense speculation and pathologize ation. survey after survey revealed that college educated women had had rich experiences with homoeroticism. Catherine Davis's very famous questionnaires were published in 1929. And they said that 25% of college women that was experienced those women who kept their social distance from continue to live in what was popularly known as the Boston marriage, in which women depended on one another emotional fulfillment was seen as an obstacle to the growth of companion marriage companion that is, Unknown Speaker 03:44 by turns cajoled and encouraged to give up their immaturity by turns castigated for the rejection of Mail Sender coins, lesbians became a negative social and scientific. Christina Simmons points out in her article about the growth of lesbians in consciousness and sexology. In cultural terms, lesbianism represented women's autonomy in various forms, feminism careers refusal to marry failure to adjust to American sexuality. It became a symbol in a cultural context of increased expectation and evaluation of sexual activity for women as well as, as the heterosexual revolution progressed, prior homo social institutions can be viewed as old fashioned and lost their social legitimacy. The proportion of single sex colleges declined continuously as coeducation became more popular. By the end of the 20s. greater numbers of women were being educated, but the context and content of their education has been transformed. Home Economics, for example, became the most popular major in college. The rise of sororities eclipsed earlier civic and reform clubs on campuses, focusing social attention on popularity on sex appeal and becoming an ideal wife can. At the same time settlement houses decline in social and financial 2014 as social work became a profession, rather than a living vocation, young women were no longer encouraged to devote a lifetime to social housekeeping. restricted immigration quotas passed in 1921. Because the pool of prospective clients tended to dry up in their place, black southern migrants began to fill poor urban neighborhoods and their social needs were not considered fundable in a period of racist research. It's important to note that black women's clubs continue to be very active and Unknown Speaker 05:31 above all, the Unknown Speaker 05:32 focus on companion marriage, we organize the most prevalent of all homes, social institutions, the family itself, generations of women have been connected to one another through mutual ties in the lifecycle of domesticity, and productive work within their families. This is the context which Nancy Conte and Sally and Carol Smith Rosenberg so excellently described for the middle classes of 19th century. It's also the basis of urban working class family life as reported by LC cludes Parsons, and the anthropologist who studied New York tenements in 95. There she found a female center and helping networks of kin and neighbors who organized survival and sociability under conditions of Republican. But the public schools settlement houses dance halls, and streetlighting also made claims on immigrant daughters that separated them in the world that their mothers through these institutions working class girls sooner that the focus of their attention and their paychecks should be on attractiveness. Bolstered by the influence of advertising and movies, girls learn they might catch and keep and attractive husbands by buying and using a myriad of American products of pure culture began to replace multi generational single sex cultures. This was true for boys as well. It's a period of the rise of boys clubs and sports clubs of the Boy Scouts in order to replace skills that are no longer transmitted from father to son. So that's also part of the Americanization experience. 50% of the nation's youth was attending high school so their 20s and high school was the environment within which heterosexual youth culture really flourished. in Middletown, a city of 35,000 there were 14 Girls Clubs to sponsor dances and high school events, and dozens of boys clubs promoting athletic mass mobilization and hysteria surrounded the endless cycle of basketball, football, baseball, accompanied by cheerleading and boosterism. Such activities replaced prior Family Centered forms of entertainment, like visiting picnics, ocean talk or lecture series in favor of pure culture events. Also important to the reorganization of the social and peer groups was the invention every contemporary parent recognized as family shaking. If you want to know what's changing here in Middletown one informing common wins let's build a huge team of motoring by us replace court sitting and picnicking by families as autos bought on credit spread. By 1923 4 million cars were manufactured in America and they were two of them for every three families in the autonomy applied in autos created great social upheaval. Use of the car was listed as one of the most serious causes of family disputes among middle class teenagers, and the majority of what of what juvenile courts handled as girls sex in 1924, taught for listening to things like the car. In the same period, the movie industry produced a mass culture consumed across the continent. It was popular in all classes but one study revealed that working class families spend twice annually what what middle class professional family spends on going to uni even though they have much more the popularity and impact in Middletown, for example, programs change frequently you can see 300 Different screenings during the year and teenagers in high school already going 123 cleanse and BPH while Wild West vary. By far the most admired financial society romances with titles like married there's the daring years blaming youth old wives for new Why change your wife such movie produced a revised social anatomy of romantic heterosexuality. Girls reported to survey researchers that they have learned details of making love from the movies like what to do with both pairs of arms and embrace. Unknown Speaker 09:29 117 year old put it no wonder girls have the older days before movies were so modest and bashful. They had never seen Clara Bow and William Haynes. We did not see such examples. Where would we get the idea of being hot? We wouldn't. As he points out, such films had major impact on the Americanization of urban immigrant girls was assimilation, like bourgeois fantasy, consumption and heterosexuality, all experiences that were to be had outside of there among the natives Word of Middletown, you'll be advertised girls, if you want to know what love really means. It's exquisite torture. It's overwhelming raptures see and the domain what this means. And it's one working class mother told the lens, I send my daughter because a girl has to learn the ways of the world somehow, and the movies are a good safe way. Others discipline. Judges in towns considered movies linked to juvenile delinquency, and some high school teachers to early sophistication when their students peer culture shaped by the spread of consumerism in autos and moving houses was a powerful force in D mobilizing the homosocial intergenerational world within which social feminism has flourished as one thoughtful except for just remarked in 1928. The feminist movement just isn't all that smart among the juniors, sold on celluloid male oriented images of glamour, young women were no longer recruitable to what appeared to them to be our unit closers. And so they really were the 1920s witnessed the rise of government, corporate and academic surveys and consumer tastes, the growth of mass advertising and the evolution of widespread credit arrangements, including the ubiquitous installment plan. By the end of the decade, there were 25 million cars registered in America and 75% of them have been bought on a new system of print fixed monthly mortgage payments, helped spur the homebuilding industry which profited from the housing shortage. homeowning so essential to the profits of banks and an industry was lauded in patriotic terms. No greater contribution could be made to the stability of the nation and the advancement of god its ideals than to make it a nation of homeowners proclaims Calvin Coolidge. Inside these newly owned homes, the cult of installment plan consumption flourished. During the 20s 70% of American homes had electricity. appliances were advertised through sometimes what I'm credit from and repaired gratis by the power companies who sold them like that to lose their use rates. 70% of gas stoves and 90% of the washing machines and sewing machines for a decade were purchased on credit. packaged foods also ruled by 1920. Most Americans consume packaged bread and during that time, Campbell's Kellogg's and Quaker Oats became a household word. Most Americans also switched to storebought readymade clothing, purchase from mail order houses and department stores. American businesses similar the 80% of domestic consumption funds were spent by women sexologist of an earlier generation had earlier on had argued that the new family would be strengthened, not torn apart by increased passion instead of restraint. The new market research is similarly argued that it will be strengthened by learning to spin and not to say Christina Frederick's popular 1929 book selling business consumer made a strong case for diffusion of domestic science and marketing research. And by the end of the decade in home economics courses in high school and colleges, it was buying not through gallon that became defined as the civic duty and when in the 1920s, the general confederation of women's clubs offered their membership lists for both consumer and sexual surveys. The fusion of the two topics was anything that answered Ladies Home Journal label the decade of the 20s not the sexual revolution, but the cosmetics revolution, as the popularity of products that was producing both heterosexual imagery and home work is for industry. Mass circulation of journals full of avons cons and would very clearly created needs for products which constructed the women who use them. By the late 20s True Romance had a circulation of two nines, and like Ladies Home Journal, and good housekeeping, legal sex and sales, what Mary Ryan's described as the sexy sales later became a standard cultural image in this period, full of energy and beauty. She put her feminine views to the service consumption. By the end of the decade beauty pageants and taken on a standardized popular format. Women had been trained not only to do the consuming but to be consumed as well. Unknown Speaker 14:10 With the formal legal equality of the 19th amendment in the mirage of writing that sought to transform the woman question into a psychological issue. Much that passed for feminine thought that was individual choices and personal fulfillment. Lifestyle feminism replaced its activist predecessor, Ruth Pickering, one of those modern women's stories was printed in the nation in the 1920s and reprinted in a in a Feminist Press position that's very terrific wrote, I have traded my sense of exhilarating defiance. Parentheses, she says, shall we call it feminism or an assurance of free and unimpeded self expression, or shall we call that feminism and she asks, In other words, she goes on, I have grown up with fashions from feminist new style as they are sometimes called, we've given up employment for domestic life, wrote about their choice in articles like I gave up my law books or a cookbook. Or you may have my job, a feminist discovers her home articles which focus on their own choices and their rewards, but never analyzed the enormous material difficulties involved in women's double shifts at home or at work are the obstacles even professional women face on the job. Female self assertiveness word existed at all took on political forms. We're not out to benefit society. One young woman told an interviewer in 1928 were up for Mary's job and wellness, art and barbers independence and the rest of our individual careers and desires. Themes of female independence even militancy remained throughout the 20s but they were thoroughly co opted, researching resurfacing and advertising. The most impressive example of which was staged in 1929 by advertising consultant Edward Bernays Freud's nephew, in that year's Easter parade, and accompanied by enormous publicity Bernays organized a contingent of smoking women, in aid information aping the suffrage demonstrations of an earlier decade. Why not a parade of women lighting torches of freedom, smoking cigarettes, he had suggested to the American Tobacco Company, he organised this thing, we had indeed come a long way. By way of conclusion, we'd like to give you our sense of some of the political lessons to be learned through the study of this first round of feminist demobilization in the 20s, or the 20s. And the 80s are very different. That what seems similar is that they're both periods of backlash on many levels, political and personal, conscious and also unconscious, like us, feminists in the 20s face the rise to control in Washington of a government totally hostile to feminism, and other progressive causes, representing capital in all this form, and moving to label their opponents are cumbersome and unAmerican, as in our own period, in the 20s, the economy was being restructured, there's toward massive, massive growth are started towards contraction, in part, by reconstructing families in the minds and activities of women within. We'd like to leave in our presentation with five issues that to us are raised by this study of the 20s, which we hope can be the focus for our discussion. And then we'd like people to discuss these issues for the present, using the materials that we've presented and stuff from your own political experience in this morning, and so on. And we don't we really not especially because we're not experts on this period, we really would not like people to would not like to spend their time analyzing the 20s particularly so. This is the first of the issues that we want to lay out for you. Red baiting can have the effect as it did in the 20s of breaking up political coalition's and paring away waivers to support lesbian invading part of the 20s backlash process as well, may be more central this time around. We are especially concerned about a growing government infrastructure, the Senate Committee on internal terrorism being one big piece of it, which is very likely to link the two that is anti feminism, anti Americanism. Any read seems to us any read and lesbian may be used against any opposition group, not necessarily ours needs to be combated because it could easily be used Next, on a home. Unknown Speaker 18:51 The second of these issues while many women today are hoping to survive the coming dark age through strengthening their friendship and personal networks, we were particularly sober to conclude that personal networks and active activist groups are closely intertwined. But it's not easy to think of maintaining the personal networks without the activists on the settlement houses of the 20s. The women's colleges, the women's union, local women's there were women's locals in the textile, early 20s. Unknown Speaker 19:21 These were simultaneous personal and political networks and they're undermining the shirt to weaken feminism. But the third issue that we found in thinking about what happened in earlier feminist is that burnout, that is the loss of feminist energy is not simply a psychological issue. Feminists in the 20s experienced the loss of momentum in at least three locales. One was that they Kate got tied up in terrible legal defensive battles in hostile courts at the cost of time and money and political isolation for the women who have to go into fight. We know that we must fight such struggles right now in the courts, but it seems very wanting to maintain a larger political perspective and a political community. While we're in those struggles, less, we ended up isolating. The 20s was a time in which feminists were unable to recruit later generation. They got to have the image of being stodgy to the young. For ourselves, it seems extremely important to defend the institutions that we have managed to date to build up to make sure that we have a base for recruiting young innovators. I know many people in this room have been through the pros and cons of women's studies programs, and we've all hit the limits and said, No, this is not enough and the critique of what's wrong with them. Nonetheless, during this research in so many ways, convinced us of the relevance of that base as a place from which young women in fact are continuing to be recruited. And that's absolutely crucial at the current period. What Cheryl pointed out this morning about the pessimism and the optimism involved in thinking about racism, and women's movement is absolutely central to the fact that the National Women's Studies Association this year declared its national program to be on the link between racism and running a conference for feminists, black, white and any other group on racism is absolutely part of Unknown Speaker 21:11 your possibility. Unknown Speaker 21:13 Other words, out in the next minute percentage of organized women workers declined in the 20th. Wednesday generally lost a major area for recruitment. Right now, what is the most obvious host of feminism is that in the labor force and organizing the country continued to push organized clerical, the unionized workforce, days to book expanding and transforming. Our current care does not mean workers and talk about the New Yorker trade union movement, but it's absolutely in our self interest. All of these groups that I'm referring to them wherever they are, to you as for survival. And the other point, as we move into store, the family has become increasingly pervasive. Some feminist groups have made efforts to become part of the party to try and make feminism compatible with notions of traditional formula seems a very bad idea. Because the core of our family as as Unknown Speaker 22:24 the decline of the so calm, Unknown Speaker 22:27 the fears of the so called decline of the family are largely an orchestrated, rather than a spontaneous capillary. Of course, there are genuine popular fears as a management service. And we need to develop a more coherent vision of what human relations across genders and generations might look like our division of labor, which I guess you would argue, is the first time in history that Unknown Speaker 22:53 the division of labor Unknown Speaker 22:56 around not only material, emotional and psychological, that critique with what the future faces and we can't give up Absolutely. Millions of women we should have assaulted by that division at home and workforce strong and identified. Finally, lifestyle feminism, as an aspect of political and social control, getting yours certain his training recipe for success Unknown Speaker 23:34 are all ways of getting women Unknown Speaker 23:35 to look after their individual interests, while offering political freedom and individualism. That takes the form of being anti patriarchal, we need to see that the forces have been generated in the middle of what's really the hardest. So, this class it would be nice to be generated as a part of but we can do that for example well, we raise these issues because the challenge of the age Unknown Speaker 24:16 but to grow existing cultural heroes Unknown Speaker 24:19 by keeping your political analysis discussion people should Unknown Speaker 24:34 comment obviously. I think Unknown Speaker 24:54 of feminist Unknown Speaker 24:56 organizations, run by feminists It's application to making issues appealing and relevant to women generally, I think is much less Unknown Speaker 25:09 clear. And I have some Unknown Speaker 25:09 concerns because I'm in contact with a lot of lifestyle, feminist organizations and Unknown Speaker 25:22 isolation Unknown Speaker 25:23 between people wanting to leave and not deal with it and invest not just with people in school, there was a lot of resistance to my handing out the choice literature, because the local church as a representative on the board of the women said, somebody's going to do it. The other thing I found him dealing with mass organizing is the the institution to get not just use those programs, but to help them crisis centers. We find in in a suburban area where people are geographically diffuse, that the only way that we're not going to come out to meetings and not going to come up with your speakers about reproductive ties, and academic papers about Unknown Speaker 26:26 job related issues. Unknown Speaker 26:29 Self advancement, Unknown Speaker 26:30 with a fundamental way to get people Unknown Speaker 26:34 to be able to get there is by providing, Unknown Speaker 26:37 providing those services that they need. Unknown Speaker 26:43 It is struggling to survive, and they have jobs, children has been extending the three hours of your life to anybody. Morning Unknown Speaker 27:17 I just want to question one aspect of your presentation, which was really quite mind boggling the breadth and depth and the periods of the 20s and 30s. While they do begin to doubt the fact that feminism feminist activities seem to be so to have declined during that period. The fact is that this was also a period of the growth of leftist political groups, when feminists were absorbed, and since feminism always had this dual base of liberal tradition and radical tradition from the very beginning. I think that this is what what happened was that people who were radical in their feminism had probably because of the tremendous tensions in the society, the act of Russia, and of course, feminism, in the beginning in the western revolution was a very important mission and early ultrabooks made some very earth shaking the beginnings of family law. I'm not sure that we say that there was therefore that kind of Unknown Speaker 29:07 two very important issues have just been put on the table and we can discuss neither of them are aimed at one or the other. And you just reminded one was about what happened and was not such demobilization has moved into activists directly working Unknown Speaker 29:20 on the mobilization of the feminist Park, Unknown Speaker 29:23 right. Which Unknown Speaker 29:24 then you never surfaced as specific feminine. And the other thing is that she has contemporary recruiting of women through the ongoing social services and finally, Unknown Speaker 29:34 how to deal with myself Mike, can you hear us? Maybe? You know, I've Unknown Speaker 29:56 been doing some work on women in the 30 tracing Some of the feminists, certainly or the activists, social feminists, in the 30s, back to the progressive period, and have found a large Women's Network existing from the progressive period into the 30s. And central to that were five particular women will send that to progressive period. But nevertheless, there was a very strong net, which had to do with connections with the women's work with the New Deal connections with the with Molly. So yeah, I wouldn't social feminism was I think it was kind of was in the 30s. And it might have been much worse in the 40s, and that kind of set everyone all the way back. For that, I wonder whether the other thing Unknown Speaker 31:10 was that Unknown Speaker 31:11 the attack on in the 20s by the Display Network, and the War Department also took place in the 30s. On it took place us up attacks on women, particularly, she was one of the leaders of the US. And it took place on Mali, against. The women's movement in very poor. Unknown Speaker 31:52 One of the times we had a quick editorial come Unknown Speaker 31:54 in here with Feminist sisters within this amazing job of getting us in sort of a decade or 15 years of work from the Unknown Speaker 32:00 hardening of the Earth's crust through the beginning of the 20th century. The work of our mothers Unknown Speaker 32:06 and our grandmothers directly into us absolutely crucial. And whatever whatever you hear you're going to do, that there's so much that can be known and to figure out what didn't immediately mobilize and what strategic questions about how women support them. Unknown Speaker 32:29 Which doesn't. And I think you'll understand the importance of Thursday's by funding sources today into tonight. Unknown Speaker 32:43 Yeah, it's probably Unknown Speaker 32:46 very much very much, very much Unknown Speaker 32:49 happening today, even though honestly, though, we're not against abortion funding, right. Now, my second point is that on Unknown Speaker 33:04 many boards, Unknown Speaker 33:07 are those congregations does not support positions that are pro choice. And I think we have to recognize the power of the people that are on board funding sources personal level and how they can mobilize Unknown Speaker 33:25 using nations as additional sources Unknown Speaker 33:30 of enterprise national network. Unknown Speaker 33:31 It was a really good discussion Unknown Speaker 33:38 about what you do about being Unknown Speaker 33:40 in coalition's which are very progressive on some Unknown Speaker 33:42 social issues that include a strong anti abortion component, and how do you stay in coalition and raise your public and not allow yourself to be quiet and because when the meeting was being held in the Catholic Church, and the rights group was told they couldn't come to that El Salvador meeting, and bring their literature and they said quite recently, we've been in the mind since March, you know, we'll find another place to meet we have to discuss this. You can't tell us to fly our politics we want to be in this coalition. But we also want to send dual level is one of those Unknown Speaker 34:22 just a tiny example of that in terms of coalition's we're in a perceived sense of women's issues can be used to break up the coalition's you talked about the split between the National Women's party women's congressional committee and became vicious you underplanted. Do you know how incredibly vicious it got? And you don't need to call it you're running around the lie that because it will be personal hostility? Yes, both groups of people were absolutely certain that they had women's best interests in mind. And so that they were, you know, it was not a case of one being anti woman. Both were very proud woman. Yes, the perception was allowed to diverge to the point where they wasted most of them. And the same kind of thing happened where everybody was quite, quite certain that they have fake news. Unknown Speaker 35:17 Yes, I questioned whether or not service organizations are an effective way of recruiting women, I'm, I don't have that many examples. And I know that in terms of a health center in Massachusetts that I've worked with in terms of my own counseling of young Latin, in East Harlem, the women go to these organizations when they need to secure services, they really don't care about whether the way in which your organization is structured websites are collective and not hierarchical, as participatory or anything like that. I mean, the 15 year old goes in to get an abortion. I mean, I can remember sitting with a woman and saying, read this thing on contraception to Yeah, I know about that. She is never going to contact that. Organization, again, she's not really interested, I'm not affected. Unknown Speaker 36:13 Think what we were thinking of not so much is that people come in to use the services would be recruitable. But that the services function, and the people who work for them, they found their function as nuclei and neighbors, I mean, it's a much smaller recruiting pool that you're talking about, like in the reproductive rights movement, a tremendous base does seem to be in the women's in the women's clinics, you know, who worked there and volunteer there and stuff like that organized out of the residents, the vast majority people who of course, Unknown Speaker 36:44 just, you know, just Unknown Speaker 36:49 fortunate lifting. Unknown Speaker 36:52 The women who are receiving services, and those who are providing the services may never Unknown Speaker 36:57 get to address the question of appeal. Unknown Speaker 37:04 Issues, for instance, training Unknown Speaker 37:09 has more appeal for women who feel that they have some stake. And, for instance, the nuclear family, as they know it, disintegrating are people who are afraid of being called murderous by taking a coalition stand in a way that's visible or public. And that's something that I don't know that we address very carefully, and that we have the alternatives that we presented. Well, this is why therefore you've got to overcome these things on your own terms, and then come to us and other kinds of things rather than I mean, I don't have I don't have very well thought out ideas on how to approach people who are only interested in becoming their self interested feminists, but on the other hand, something that concerned me very much about the culture this morning, was people raising issues of problems that we've had. Unknown Speaker 38:20 And the appeal of serious issues as a conservative and interests, which presents the questions about lesbian, gay splits, the questions that people raised about one question about black woman needs to share all kinds about, well, if you were going to prioritize which which we thought would be more important issue of Unknown Speaker 38:48 sex, which would you Unknown Speaker 38:50 respond to which which would you prioritize? The answers to all of these questions were incredibly live, and we're, we're not very thoughtful. And we're very, very simplistic and reductionist. Unknown Speaker 39:01 And that I think is going to the price we're going to pay in terms of recruitment on both of those directly here as we begin to enter more thoughtful way as Unknown Speaker 39:26 I said, I'd like to say as well towards the end of itself, and that is, in terms of how women first candidates within this movement, looking at what to do about the future, that is recruiting more women, I think, important to try and see sort of how that came about that is long before first wave suddenly came through those personal contacts. I'm not really sure if we can replicate those for the future, but I do think it To the courts recognize that we're talking about bread and butter issues. Now, there's less money going around, less people are getting it. And I think bottom line, things are coming to the fore. So it would be important to me in a way to look at how the constituent assembly, and suddenly, I'm not really sure, I'm one of those people who has not read all that hard on women's studies as such, because I feel a part of that women say this is really feminism in disguise. That is, right. And it seems clear to say that's my opinion. At the same time, I also feel that we should leave go the past, and not recognize how the entire vision is kind of set this map, we talked about specific issues, I really don't think that's gonna, I mean, I just don't, but at the same time to not have a future vision with high efficient COVID, we're gonna be saying, we're really talking about fitness, when we're talking about when the stakes are really not being political, we're seeing visual about the situation. I want to become the present case, Manhattan, so I'm gonna stand with things like that. I just want to say is, as we get more and more, right, I think we're gonna see more. And at the same time, if we have to face the fact that if we're talking politics, and so I, I guess I'm wondering how to do that his face was in the 60s and 70s. And since I'm Cameron, Howard, probably. I guess the one thing we were Unknown Speaker 41:52 arguing until it is it seemed to us that the more and more we looked at what women did, Unknown Speaker 41:58 and what they had in earlier times, we share a lot of your feelings about women's studies, and a lot of conflict around it. But But it became absolutely crucial how central Unknown Speaker 42:07 that work is. Unknown Speaker 42:08 And I will say that about all the surfaces. And maybe I'm being naive here. But it is the base that we have at the moment and to let that disintegrate. Given what we know about what happens. One of the reasons a base seems extremely dangerous to us, although we absolutely agree. I mean, how you keep it from becoming individually individualized, and fragmented. And people don't have enough fun. It's not just women who aren't already committed, it's plenty of women who are community don't have enough time, that period of increasing economic cutbacks, and those are all real. Unknown Speaker 42:37 Yeah, I would also argue, for example, at a conference in DC, on academics, women's academics and activists, that is fairly clear at that time, that there was a very strong source of strength coming from the fitness community from the accuracy into studies, the reverse was not absolute. And so we're gonna have situation where when you say just giving off, excuse the phrase, then that would mean the dues have to be paid back. So that we talked about really being conservative to get tenure, and that's important. But if people don't realize where they came from, and how they got to where they are, then we're gonna get Unknown Speaker 43:21 one of the West Wing studies programs can do a little of that is by staying political and feminist and the pressure to not is so enormous, because like at our school, Ramapo in New Jersey, the funds come from student services, it's another student service, and the students do demand. And I think, need also a lot of the surplus they need, they come to certain training programs, and, and so on, and so on. And for that to be for our program to be turned into that service is a constant, it's a constant strain, and yet without you know, and yet, that the women who want those services, some of them really do get politicized, they actually do get to be feminist and go beyond those services. So I mean, I find it absolutely, totally confusing and, you know, different every day, and so on. But certainly this one on one simple level, the Women's Studies programs need to acknowledge their political ties and feminism. And that's how not to do as it is. Yes, yes, you Unknown Speaker 44:30 agree with that one of the things that may impede a political and active feminism is this idea of straight feminist movement. Do you think that that really is a threat and you think that there needs to be some kind of really strong overall fatigue by active political candidates Come on, I think Unknown Speaker 45:05 who can Unknown Speaker 45:06 answer your we've started Unknown Speaker 45:11 because I want to, I didn't want to, I guess it's inherent. And I just want to tie that into what I think is Unknown Speaker 45:28 one of the places in which we are coming as having done a number of papers together. And then in the reading of Adrienne Rich's case, in time, we'll clear that it's not enough to be general feminism in the extended time, the transformation of compulsive heterosexuality back into every other aspect of the transformation you're looking at, you've got another piece that you're isolating, and it works the same way that was moving, as Cheryl was describing about racism, that is it creates an outsider community was more available to be stomped on, and more available to stigmatize. And then you can talk about more reversibility on inside of whatever it is. That points you will clear, I would say to swim around the women's movement has been less mystified by that, because it's it's got a longer history. And for whatever the reasons we've been through that split so many times my own feeling is that we resolve it in practice and resolve it by everybody taking the side of lesbians right now, when that doesn't happen. That's a real breakdown. But it does seem to me that we do have that as a strategy in a very large spectrum, including, again to the west of Zealand. Of course, they look like the mainstream, but have been forced to move very, very far on that issue of the course. And that's really important as kind of a history course. Yes. Unknown Speaker 46:45 Well, I was just gonna say that I thought that article was representation. It's been received in such open arms, by academia. But it's something that people in the field have been saying for 10 years. And now all of a sudden is being said, Oh, well, original idea. I think academic is is the, the can be the albatross, or the anchor, the weight thing that holds you down. Most cases, it's the one that catches up 10 years later, not the other way around. Unknown Speaker 47:18 But what are the this is the article and Unknown Speaker 47:22 wasn't heterosexuality by Adrian reg that was signed on sexuality summer summer. Unknown Speaker 47:30 2.1 was about worrying about whether Women's Studies Program stay sort of clean. And maybe it'll reassure people who are worried about it, that there's a lot of women's studies programs in this country that are falling apart. And they're falling apart because they're being attacked by the very male institutions often that they sit within that are saying there's no need for women's studies. And people within those programs are very political, because they need to be in order just to defend their existence. So there are a lot of programs and I think you can almost put born and colleges within that particular plot who aren't doing so well, and they're not sort of coasting while the feminist movement, you know, needs their support. The second thing was in response to your look at the 20s and protective legislation. Um, I don't know whether you wanted to put it as a controversy, whether protective legislation was progressive for women are not. But it is interesting when you read the discussions of the testimony, particularly I was I was thinking here about the night work laws. And a lot of the desire to regulate women's night work was specifically because men didn't like they're women going out to factories, and spending the night there. And there was particular reference in the Brandeis testimony to the bad language that the women were using. And they're sort of what you might call today sort of sassiness when they came back, and it sheds a bit of sort of a different light on that kind of protection that was being offered was a very, very paternalistic protection. Unknown Speaker 49:25 I mean, I think, minimum wage for women, which Unknown Speaker 49:29 was one that was clearly more, more or less controversially, again, it wasn't a minimum income level for women, it was just a minimum wage. So it didn't mean that they had enough to live on after those laws. They computed the minimum wage by figuring out what it took a horse to eat in a day. To learn about Unknown Speaker 49:59 it audition. But I do think it's really important to look at certainly to the writer. And the fact that of all the organizations that are around now that mass media, I mentioned that particular because the emphasis on the era, which is super close to it wsa is emphasis on national emphasis on something in the 20s. And how close are those other issues go to the wayside. And I think that, even though people get to know that there are many other organizations besides that, that's the case. And it seems to me that that's the rest of the leadership actually, immediately. It will seem important to find some pressure on now to recognize that one issue, Politics are not necessarily useful is that is, it will be a lot of theory. I'm sure that was set in the 20s, when, Socrates. But it seems to me that all those others who spoke Unknown Speaker 51:21 I think, basically, you're right about now. But that's, that led me to get back to something. That sweater said before that the community and as the Women's Studies program was perhaps behind the community. And I think that this term, I realized at the moment, she's talking about completely different community than I'm talking about. She's talking about the community of active feminists. I'm, at this point, much more interested in the community of all these non political women who have all kinds of needs, and may not are not in a position to put their needs in feminist language. They know they have needs, but they're not going to express them in terms that fit in with feminist theoretical categories. And I think that the the question of now kind of ties in with that, because now is I have some experience with now and I basically are very frustrated, but now is a very, it's a hybrid organization. And it's national organization is very separate from global organization. Everything is national. Now, I think it's absolutely true. I had a terrible time trying to, I tried to get a local national chapter to do an employment project and I couldn't get I couldn't get national matter return my phone calls or my letters or anything like that. I think everything you say about that is proven local now, because of the middle grade separation from national now, some of that is very active in other ways, and some of it is not, there is mostly, I would say in defense of New York State now, their position on lesbian rights has been very strong over the last couple of years and they Unknown Speaker 52:48 have no intention of giving it up. I know that Unknown Speaker 52:50 and they do work on they've been very active on there is now chapters, mobilized a lot of people to go to Albany to lobby on Medicaid funding for abortion. So that I think you can your your community varies to your organization there in your community is there anything that you have realized, have their political Unknown Speaker 53:38 not sure if I Unknown Speaker 53:39 haven't completely integrated but that I've had to come through this afternoon. Workshop is a feeling within critiques of the women's movement of a denigration of individual knees as if that somehow something shameful and people talking of appealing more broadly to women who are not, quote, politicized. I think one of the things that happens is that very denigration of doing something in quotes for yourself. So if you're thinking of your job, your family, your sexual needs, your motive bringing up your children, whatever it is, and not seen as a broadly political movement is often dismissed. One of the things that came up this morning that I thought of, is over the 10 or 15 years that I've been involved in the women's movement, hearing people talk about employment, in a sense, where it only counts if you have quotes, have to work the new economic situation. So that woman with constant position of thinking behind the identify persons at work, and I couldn't be supportive. In being kicked out. I see that women have retreating and say If you're not taking care of mining, suddenly there's no place for me to find middle class on white, I'm educated. And I don't think that the way to get water is to, to ridicule and to denigrate the individual needs. But to make a coalition of say, we're working for you if you're working because that self actualization if you're working put you eat bread on your table, and that's what says to the lesbian group, to the black mothers through to the educated white, whatever group it is, this individual needs, and underneath that has to be supported. And there's nothing wrong with you being service organizations, we've been concerned about whether you're going to need an abortion, that's going to be limited, what kinds of contraception, you can use, whether your child or you can get an education. One of the terms that I've heard increasingly that makes me very uncomfortable is that concept of it's only valuable if it's for a general political stance, as opposed to an individual needs. And truthfully, I think there's a very small body of women that continues in a purely political play. And something that diminishes as you get older, I watched my friends, when we were in college are much more close politicized than we are in our 20s 30s and 40s. People do get involved much more than they are now our narrow more personal world and wants feminism addressed to that, and then I'm going to get fit back into the feminist movement, as opposed to being attracted to your school years, to quote, the movement, being an anti war, you know, that sort of lychee kind of feeling of being part of the anti war movement, the women's movement, really, truly begin to diminish. In some way. Unknown Speaker 56:54 You zone enrich complex take apart, I want to say for myself, we did not intend to demean people's individual needs, but to point us at all such as visually or socially constructed, and his family will enhance changing. And we are in a period when there was a concerted effort to change them once again, part of that means that for a certain group of women with absolutely legitimate needs, their needs are increasingly going to be defined as narrower and narrower and more and more individual in a way that will split those that have one possibility to be the worst of the best of the middle class. That is to get what lower middle class and middle class women get in relation to their men of their class, those women are going to be fed a bill of goods that says individual solutions in relation to what is really a resurgence of certain kinds of attacks against the masses of women, and how you work out the tension between individual leads and political communities. Unknown Speaker 57:44 And that's something since the 18th century feminism Unknown Speaker 57:46 are trying to Unknown Speaker 57:48 question feminism, some come back, because if there's something shameful that rather than saying, Look, this is collapsing you we are and we own the watch, we rent these needs. But this is the other way to fulfill that need, as opposed to who cares if you have a job, that's not important thing, or whether your kid gets a fancy education. Unknown Speaker 58:09 I just wanted to want to extend I've done some workouts professionally. Historically, it seems to me, if you can craft to a professional 30 Unknown Speaker 58:26 Just make it louder to see Unknown Speaker 58:27 some of the dangers of a purely individual approach. Unknown Speaker 58:32 I don't think that the speakers will Unknown Speaker 58:34 attack people's aspirations. But, for example, people with doctors in the 20s did not want to be as women doctors, they now thought they had gotten to the point where they could just be a doctor, because there's a bunch of doctors based on this kind of support for patronage, financial backing. And what happened. What happened was, if you look at the decline of the women's institutions, outside those institutions, women did very badly in the university setting as one example, without the networks without the kind of women's networks, which I think did go into many different directions. Unknown Speaker 59:24 They the tenure Unknown Speaker 59:25 track system was initiated in many places which were that were ran out Unknown Speaker 59:31 of the system, and particularly the nepotism. Unknown Speaker 59:36 Now no individual woman with their aspirations really saw that. But without that kind of accommodation that the separation of professionalism from from the movement was really most devastating things you didn't allude to that very much, but and that's that's to me what what I see is an argument for studies programs. Today one of the arguments Unknown Speaker 1:00:01 that is without that kind of neutral base Unknown Speaker 1:00:05 ties between women who are interested in their own advancements, but I think you can witness many of these things. Again, just to each generation of students is kind of de novo coming in, we all assume certain things, but they come in. And the discoveries are obvious Unknown Speaker 1:00:29 to us. And I think if they can get some of that commitment through the tourists, in terms of not just seeing themselves as a doctor, but to try to Unknown Speaker 1:00:39 have that experience. Unknown Speaker 1:00:43 Yes, I'm tempted to say that, as a psychotherapist, I wonder kind of dealing with people's individual needs. And what really continues to amaze, the disappointment is the complete denial or excess reluctance of most of the people that are see my clients to to look at any of the difficulties that they have, as people forget something constructive, shared with others? Unknown Speaker 1:01:19 An insistence on, you know, it was my particular family, as no one, understand what are the individuals that might be an individual understand it? And then in terms of individual solutions, I suppose they're much more satisfying in some ways, because then you don't have to face the powerlessness or why extendable depressions, like, if I just get, you know, a little assertiveness training, then I'll be okay. All I'm missing, and it's just me, am I missing this little piece rather than there's something very big Unknown Speaker 1:01:54 happening here. And about their corresponding piece, which is Unknown Speaker 1:02:06 going to lead based on your own experience, you're the person that was right, at that moment, and you are the person that's going to want it somehow there's always going to be a correlation between what you do and what you experience. I think equally, you know, the whole issue of self esteem among women, is it because we've come to a conference like this, you have the other unaddressed piece of today? Or how influencing it, don't think that you can vote to the day when you get to experiencing. Unknown Speaker 1:02:44 I'm not saying that. I'm not even saying looking out there, you know where it comes from, but just say, either, just like, isn't it interesting that so many women have been through that same year. And that's why we need a certain basic and simple. Unknown Speaker 1:03:11 One more word about individual solutions. As a feminist, I have a lot of problems with that, because I think it ignores the relationship between the individual and the larger group, which I think is a very American experience. Because of the way our economy has grown, it has been true that I can get more out decreasing your share and unfortunate unfortunately, we haven't had certain experiences that have been common in Latin American countries ie there is there are lots of things for which there is a zero sum game for me to get more or less one of you have to give some up and therefore your individual solution or your your individual goal does affect me, I'm thinking specifically in terms of something along the lines of a blocky decision or in a country where the different disenfranchised groups are pitted against each other such that your desire to be a doctor is conflicting head to head with mine desire to attain the same thing for us to approach it in an individual manner really leaves us Unknown Speaker 1:04:30 both powerless. Unknown Speaker 1:04:37 Well, of course, there are many feminists problems obviously. Important in many feminist problems with many different levels. One of course, a very important problem for the women's movement is obviously how to continuously fight for one participant agree to participate in a more equal participation in politically and economically. At a time when you may have a deep he accelerating or even contracting labor market as over against a period of an expanding labor market. Now, actually, of course, in the 20s, the 30s represented a period of a contract the labor market, and that's well, within declined and within we put in the professions and everything else as a men who had the political power began to keep for what few jobs that were four men. But at the same time, of course, the issue of the individual woman cannot be overlooked if you kind of, if you look even in your presentation of the kinds of things that were happening in the 30s with romances in the movies and everything else. If you see this in a slum somewhat different light, which which you will perspective about in terms of the boys club, but not really what the women's activity during this point in that, yes, it is true that more pure way with the separation of work and home and better. Boys had fewer opportunities to understand or learn about male role models and therefore the importance of boys, golf clubs, etc. Unknown Speaker 1:06:32 Well, Unknown Speaker 1:06:34 perhaps true romances in the movies were also Unknown Speaker 1:06:36 important in teaching