Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (10 page)

Within white supremacist capitalist patriarchal cultures of domination children do not have rights. Feminist movement was the first movement for social justice in this society to call attention to the fact that ours is a culture that does not love children, that continues to see children as the property of parents to do with as they will. Adult violence against children is a norm in our society.

Problematically, for the most part feminist thinkers have never wanted to call attention to the reality that women are often the primary culprits in everyday violence against children simply because they are the primary parental caregivers. While it was crucial and revolutionary that feminist movement called attention to the fact that male domination in the home often creates an autocracy where men sexually abuse children, the fact is that masses of children are daily abused verbally and physically by women and men. Maternal sadism often leads women to emotionally abuse children, and feminist theory has not yet offered both feminist critique and feminist intervention when the issue is adult female violence against children.

In a culture of domination where children have no civil rights, those who are powerful, adult males and females, can exert autocratic rule of children. All the medical facts show that children are violently abused daily in this society. Much of that abuse is life threatening. Many children die. Women perpetuate this violence as much as men if not more. A serious gap in feminist thinking and practice has been the refusal of the movement to confront head-on adult female violence against children. Emphasizing male domination makes it easy for women, including feminist thinkers, to ignore the ways women abuse children because we have all been socialized to embrace patriarchal thinking, to embrace an ethics of domination which says the powerful have the right to rule over the powerless and can use any means to subordinate them. In the hierarchies of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, male domination of females is condoned, but so is adult domination of children. And no one really wants to call attention to mothers who abuse.

Often I tell the story of being at a fancy dinner party where a woman is describing the way she disciplines her young son by pinching him hard, clamping down on his little flesh for as long as it takes to control him. And how everyone applauded her willingness to be a disciplinarian. I shared the awareness that her behavior was abusive, that she was potentially planting the seeds for this male child to grow up and be abusive to women. Significantly, I told the audience of listeners that if we had heard a man telling us how he just clamps down on a woman’s flesh, pinching her hard to control her behavior it would have been immediately acknowledged as abusive. Yet when a child is being hurt this form of negative domination is condoned. This is not an isolated incident - much more severe violence against children is enacted daily by mothers and fathers.

Indeed the crisis the children of this nation face is that patriarchal thinking clashing with feminist changes is making the family even more of a war zone than it was when male domination was the norm in every household. Feminist movement served as the catalyst, uncovering and revealing the grave extent to which male sexual abuse of children has been and is taking place in the patriarchal family. It started with grown women in feminist movement receiving therapeutic care acknowledging that they were abuse survivors and bringing this acknowledgment out of the private realm of therapy into public discourse. These revelations created the positive ethical and moral context for children to confront abuse taking place in the present. However, simply calling attention to male sexual abuse of children has not created the climate where masses of people understand that this abuse is linked to male domination, that it will end only when patriarchy is eliminated. Male sexual abuse of children happens more often and is reported more often than female abuse, but female sexual coercion of children must be seen as just as horrendous as male abuse. And feminist movement must critique women who abuse as harshly as we critique male abuse. Beyond the realm of sexual abuse, violence against children takes many forms; the most commonplace forms are acts of verbal and psychological abuse.

Abusive shaming lays the foundation for other forms of abuse. Male children are often subjected to abuse when their behavior does not conform to sexist notions of masculinity. They are often shamed by sexist adults (particularly mothers) and other children. When male parental caregivers embody anti-sexist thought and behavior boys and girls have the opportunity to see feminism in action.

When feminist thinkers and activists provide children with educational arenas where anti-sexist biases are not the standards used to judge behavior, boys and girls are able to develop healthy self-esteem.

One of the most positive interventions feminist movement made on behalf of children was to create greater cultural awareness of the need for men to participate equally in parenting not just to create gender equity but to build better relationships with children. Future feminist studies will document all the ways anti-sexist male parenting enhances the lives of children. Concurrently, we need to know more about feminist parenting in general, about the practical ways one can raise a child in an anti-sexist environment, and most importantly we need to know more about what type of people the children who are raised in these homes become.

Visionary feminist activists have never denied the importance and value of male parental caregivers even as we continually work to create greater cultural appreciation of motherhood and the work done by women who mother. A disservice is done to all females when praise for male participation in parenting leads to disparagement and devaluation of the positive job of mothering women do. At the beginning of feminist movement feminists were harsh critics of mothering, pitting that task against careers which were deemed more liberating, more self-affirming. However, as early as the mid-‘80s some feminist thinkers were challenging feminist devaluation of motherhood and the overvaluation of work outside the home. Writing on this subject in Feminist Theory: From Margin to

Center I made the point that:

Working within a social context where sexism is still the norm, where there is unnecessary competition promoting envy, distrust, antagonism, and malice between individuals, makes work stressful, frustrating, and often totally unsatisfying … many women who like and enjoy the wage work they do feel that it takes too much of their time, leaving little space for other satisfying pursuits. While work may help women gain a degree of financial independence or even financial self-sufficiency, for most women it has not adequately fulfilled human needs. As a consequence women’s search for fulfilling labor done in an environment of care has led to reemphasizing the importance of family and the positive aspects of motherhood.

Ironically just when feminist thinkers had worked to create a more balanced portrait of mothering patriarchal mainstream culture launched a vicious critique of single-parent, female-headed households. That critique was most harsh when it came to the question of welfare. Ignoring all the data which shows how skilfully loving single mothers parent with very little income whether they receive state assistance or work for a wage, patriarchal critiques call attention to dysfunctional female-headed households, act as though these are the norm, then suggest the problem can be solved if men were in the picture as patriarchal providers and heads of households.

No anti-feminist backlash has been as detrimental to the well-being of children as societal disparagement of single mothers. In a culture which holds the two-parent patriarchal family in higher esteem than any other arrangement, all children feel emotionally insecure when their family does not measure up to the standard. A utopian vision of the patriarchal family remains intact despite all the evidence which proves that the well-being of children is no more secure in the dysfunctional male-headed household than in the dysfunctional female-headed household. Children need to be raised in loving environments. Whenever domination is present love is lacking. Loving parents, be they single or coupled, gay or straight, headed by females or males, are more likely to raise healthy, happy children with sound self-esteem. In future feminist movement we need to work harder to show parents the ways ending sexism positively changes family life. Feminist movement is pro-family. Ending patriarchal domination of children, by men or women, is the only way to make the family a place where children can be safe, where they can be free, where they can know love.

When contemporary feminist movement was at its peak the institution of marriage was harshly critiqued. The entrance of many heterosexual women into the movement had been sparked by male domination in intimate relationships, particularly long-time marriages where gender inequity was the norm. From the onset the movement challenged the double standard in relationship to sexuality which condemned females who were not virgins or faithful lovers and spouses while allowing men the space to do whatever they desired sexually and have their behavior condoned. The sexual liberation movement strengthened feminist critique of marriage, especially the demand for safe, affordable birth controL

Early on feminist activists focused so much attention on private bonds and domestic relationships because it was in those circumstances that women of all classes and races felt the brunt of male domination, whether from patriarchal parents or spouses. A woman might assertively challenge a sexist male boss or stranger’s attempt to dominate her, then go home and submit to her partner.

Contemporary feminists, both those heterosexual women who had come from long-time marriages and lesbian allies in struggle, critiqued marriage as yet another form of sexual slavery. They highlighted the way traditionally sexist bonds led to marriages where elements of intimacy, care, and respect were sacrificed so that men could be on top - could be patriarchs ruling the roost.

Early on many feminist women were pessimistic about men changing. Some heterosexual women decided that they would choose celibacy or lesbianism over seeking after unequal relationships with sexist men. Others saw sexual monogamy with men as reinforcing the idea that the female body was property belonging to the individual male she was bonded with. We chose non-monogamous relationships and often refused to marry. We believed living with a male partner without state-sanctioned marriage within patriarchal society helped men maintain a healthy respect for female autonomy. Feminists advocated demanding an end to sexual slavery and called attention to the prevalence of marital rape while at the same time championing the rights of women to express sexual desire, initiate sexual interaction, and be sexually fulfilled.

There were many heterosexual men who embraced feminist thinking precisely because they were unfulfilled sexually in relationships with partners who were not interested in sex because they had been taught virtuous women were not sexually active. These men were grateful to feminist movement for offering a liberatory sexual paradigm for female mates because it ensured that they would have a more fulfilling sex life. By challenging the notion that a woman’s virtue was determined by her sexual practice feminist thinkers not only took away the stigma attached to not being a virgin; they placed female sexual well-being on a equal par with that of men. Urging women to no longer pretend that they were sexually fulfilled when this was not the case, feminist movement threatened to expose male sexual shortcomings.

To defuse this threat sexist men continually insisted that most feminists were lesbians or that all any feminist woman needed was “a good fuck” to put her back in her place. In actuality feminist rebellion exposed the fact that many women were not having satisfying sex with men in patriarchal relationships. In relationship to intimate bonds most men were more willing to embrace feminist changes in female sexuality which led women to be more sexually active than those changes which demanded of men a change in their sexual behavior. The absence of sexual foreplay was a much discussed issue when feminist agendas first focused on heterosexuality. Straight women were tired of male sexual coercion and lack of concern with female pleasure. Feminist focus on sexual pleasure gave women the language to critique and challenge male sexual behavior.

When it came to sexual freedom women made great strides. The critique of monogamy has been forgotten as the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases has made it more difficult for females to choose sexual promiscuity. The prevalence of life-threatening diseases like AIDS, which tend to be more easily transmitted male to female, in a patriarchal culture where men are encouraged to lie to women, have made it harder for heterosexual women to choose a variety of partners. Clearly, when the emphasis is on monogamy in heterosexual bonds within patriarchy it is often harder for couples to break with sexist paradigms. Concurrently within patriarchy many individual feminist women found that non-monogamous relationships often simply gave men more power while undermining women. While women will freely choose to have sex with a man who is partnered with another woman, men will often show no sexual interest in a woman who is partnered. Or they will continually concede power to the male the woman is partnered with, even going so far as to seek his approval of their involvement. Despite these difficulties, women having the freedom to be non-monogamous, whether we exercise that freedom or not, continues to disrupt and challenge the notion that the female body belongs to men. Like all the positive changes produced by feminist critique of sexist notions of sexual pleasure it has helped create a world where women and men can have more satisfying sexual relationships.

At first it appeared that changes in the nature of sexual bonds would lead to other changes in domestic relationships, that men would also do an equal share of household chores and child care. Nowadays so many males acknowledge that they should do household chores, whether they actually do them or not, that young women see no need to make sharing chores an issue; they just accept this as a norm. Of course the reality is that it has never become the norm, that for the most part women still do most of the housework and child care. Overall men were more willing to accept and affirm equality in the bedroom than to accept equality around housework and child care. Not surprisingly, as individual women gained in class power many women deal with inequity by hiring caretakers to do the tasks neither they nor male partners want to perform. Yet when a heterosexual couple pays help to do the tasks sexist thinking defines as “female” it is usually the woman who employs the help and oversees this work.