Dispatch #101 White Lesbian Age 71 Considers Normalization of Gender Oppression

January 16th 2023   

695 Days Since Inauguration of First Woman Vice-President

400 Days Until the 2024 Presidential Primaries Begin 

News Flash! The New York Times begins 2023 by launching another campaign to obfuscate the denial of women’s human rights and thereby normalize the War on Women.

When does life begin? The question at the heart of America’s abortion debate is the most elemental— and the most complicated.  www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/31/us/human-life-begin.html

Yup, this portentous headline appeared underneath this dramatic image of a hand suspended in a darkened space, splashed over a full page, perhaps intending to suggest someone desperately reaching out of the womb?

Elizabeth Dias, NYT’s national religion correspondent who spoke with scientists, philosophers and spiritual leaders over several months, concludes the introduction to her report with this comment: “America’s fight over abortion has long circled a question, one that is broad and without consensus: When does life begin?”

The “elemental question at the heart of America’s abortion debate” in reality involves women’s human rights. And yeah, this “question is the most complicated” to answer under the patriarchy. By consulting leaders in religion, science, and philosophy, Ms Dias suggests a wide-ranging inquiry as she effectively obfuscates the political power structure that demands the domination of women by any means necessary. The cult of misogyny embeds the view of women as less than human, the patriarchy demands control over re-production.

This subjugation of women is ubiquitous and normalized -- aided by narratives that constantly reframe and minimize their conditions of oppression and domination. “When does life begin” takes center stage while women’s lives as full human beings have never begun. 

Faithful Dispatch Readers you are familiar with my insistence that normalization must be constantly called out. The failure of most progressive activists to include gender justice with race and economic justice is a particular irritant. This omission apparently reflects the belief that strategies for race and economic justice will also achieve gender justice. Race, Gender and Class are intertwined foundational oppressions – each one requires recognition and analysis that can inform effective ongoing work for equity and justice.  

Darryl Pinckney is a thoughtful writer and I always look forward to reading his articles. A recent piece appeared in November 24th issue of The New York Review of Books titled “Georgia’s Battle Over the Ballot” with this subhead: “The New Georgia Project has been working for years on getting blacks to register and vote, but it must find ways to overcome the state’s long and complicated history of voter suppression.” www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/11/24/georgias-battle-over-the-ballot-darryl-pinckney/

Pinckney writes an informative and wide-ranging discussion, and takes a shot at considering how race and class dynamics might suggest new strategies to “overcome the state’s long and complicated history of voter suppression.” But, despite recounting the pivotal leadership roles of black women, Pinckney never considers gender dynamics. Ignoring gender oppression means ignoring the disabling of ½ the population, a likely fatal blind spot, especially when the battles are being led by black women. Pinckney notes the obstacles to creating new strategies. The failure to see structural gender oppression will create more obstacles for movement work. (And yes, I am writing a letter to the NYRB.)

Casey Hayden, a Force for Civil Rights and Feminism, died at 85. Do read the obituary about this fabulous foremother!  www.nytimes.com/2023/01/13/us/casey-hayden-dead.html

While working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the early 1960s, she helped write two memos that spurred the modern women’s movement:

In November 1964, S.N.C.C. leaders gathered to take stock after an exhausting year, and Ms. Hayden and several other women anonymously drafted a position paper that underscored sexism within the organization, listing grievances that ranged from women automatically being assigned clerical and minutes-taking duties to a shortage of women in leadership roles.

“Maybe sometime in the future,” the document said, “the whole of the women in this movement will become so alert as to force the rest of the movement to stop the discrimination and start the slow process of changing values and ideas so that all of us gradually come to understand that this is no more a man’s world than it is a white world.”

The next year, Ms. Hayden and a fellow activist, Mary King, circulated “Sex and Caste: A Kind of Memo From Casey Hayden and Mary King to a Number of Other Women in the Peace and Freedom Movements.”

“There seem to be many parallels that can be drawn between treatment of Negroes and treatment of women in our society as a whole,” the women wrote. “But in particular, women we’ve talked to who work in the movement seem to be caught up in a common-law caste system that operates, sometimes subtly, forcing them to work around or outside hierarchical structures of power which may exclude them.”

A common-law caste system indeed – words as true today as they were 58 years ago.

Casey Hayden, may you rest in peace and power!!