Home » Archives » April 2005 » "Bitches'" Liberation? Whatever Happened to the Struggle for Women's Liberation?
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04/18/2005:
""Bitches'" Liberation? Whatever Happened to the Struggle for Women's Liberation?"
by Sherry Wolf"BITCH" HAS gone from a sexist epithet to the name of a popular feminist magazine. Liberal newspapers like the New York Times have declared that the latest women's "revolution" is to opt out of the paid workforce and embrace full-time motherhood. Many feminists defend the war on Afghanistan for delivering "liberation" to Afghan women. And now Democrats like Hillary Clinton call for finding "common ground" with opponents of abortion rights. What the hell happened to the struggle for women's liberation?!
Socialist Worker columnist and frequent CounterPunch contributor Sharon Smith doesn't just go after the low-hanging fruit of the right wing to account for the miserable state of working-class women in the U.S., she handily dissects the failings and limitations of the politics of liberalism in Women and Socialism: Essays on Women's Liberation (Haymarket Books, http://www.haymarketbooks.org). In a sharp departure from most current writings on women and sexism, Smith refuses to shy away from political theorizing and takes on debates in anthropology and foreign affairs with a journalistic style that is engaging, fact-filled, and often witty.
In her chapter on "The Origins of Women's Oppression," Smith challenges the main arguments against Frederick Engels' Origins of the Family, State and Private Property and defends the Marxist understanding of the "world defeat of the female sex" as an outcome of the rise of class society. Debates that raged in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s over the origins of women's oppression have long subsided and the view that sexism has always been with us because it is an innate feature of all men now reigns supreme. Many young progressives will be surprised to read that the theory of patriarchy is not the only--or even the most historically accurate--left-wing explanation for sexism.
Full Article: counterpunch.org
