First off: I think this post is absolutely brilliant, and admire the way in which you construct it (I am such a sucker for good writing!).
I agree totally that there is an important relationship between what is called radical and what is called liberal ideologies and pratices in every movement for social change: women voting! How radical! What is radical in one generation is "normal" for the next. There must be multiple, ongoing, varying types of feminisms in debate at the same time for anything to happen: feminist movement (where the emphasis is one the movement) cannot be achieved by one "true" approach.
In other words, fantastic post, and I especially like how you handle the gender and feminist issues.
However. Let's move to the next level.
First, some personal history. After discovering feminism in the early eighties, and become a self-described radical feminist (and spending a lot of time explaining to people that it didn't mean I was going to become a terrorist and bomb all male spaces), I found myself stomping away from the academy after telling the graduate director of the playwriting program that he was sexist. Note to grad students: never tell a graduate director off unless you are prepared to leave. In my exit interview with the dept. head (do I need to say this dept. was all male except for an adjunct who taught dance), he told me that they knew the director had problems with women, that no female students ever did the playwriting option on the undergraduate level, that I was the only female student to get as far as I had on the graduate level, but they could not do anything because he had tenure and becauase his stance was that he could not be sexist because he was Jewish and a member of the ACLU (I LOVE your analogy between OTW and the ACLU, btw, but it is funny in the context of this story).
And even had they made someone else graduate director, it probably wouldn't have made any difference to the overall sexism in place.
The program, not surprisingly, was even more racist (during the time I was there, there was one African-American undergrad student; all the grad students were white).
So I left. I was unemployed a while which sucks. I lived with my mom. I found clerical jobs (for the federal government which taught me that the feds have a much better tenure system than academics do--three years, and you're in, and they cannot fire you--they can get rid of your job, but they cannot fire you).
And I joined groups/volunteered: environmental, small struggling radical literary types, and bisexual. (The only feminist group I could learn of that was active in the area at the time required a commitment to both Marxism and vegetarianism and had come about a result of fierce internal philosophical struggles.)
I worked the crappy clerical job and threw my heart and soul into the groups.
A few years later, I stomped back into academia, pissed off beyond measure at the groups and frustrated with their inability to do anything beyond fight with each other. At that time I evolved my theory of groups: any group no matter how marginalized/oppressed will immediately, upon formation, look for some 'scapegoat' who can be expelled to show the greater purity of the group. NOW expelled lesbians. There are lots of other examples. I am so not a group person, I learned. And that applies to every group I've been in from Campfire groups to the Bisexual Support Group.
no subject
I agree totally that there is an important relationship between what is called radical and what is called liberal ideologies and pratices in every movement for social change: women voting! How radical! What is radical in one generation is "normal" for the next. There must be multiple, ongoing, varying types of feminisms in debate at the same time for anything to happen: feminist movement (where the emphasis is one the movement) cannot be achieved by one "true" approach.
In other words, fantastic post, and I especially like how you handle the gender and feminist issues.
However. Let's move to the next level.
First, some personal history. After discovering feminism in the early eighties, and become a self-described radical feminist (and spending a lot of time explaining to people that it didn't mean I was going to become a terrorist and bomb all male spaces), I found myself stomping away from the academy after telling the graduate director of the playwriting program that he was sexist. Note to grad students: never tell a graduate director off unless you are prepared to leave. In my exit interview with the dept. head (do I need to say this dept. was all male except for an adjunct who taught dance), he told me that they knew the director had problems with women, that no female students ever did the playwriting option on the undergraduate level, that I was the only female student to get as far as I had on the graduate level, but they could not do anything because he had tenure and becauase his stance was that he could not be sexist because he was Jewish and a member of the ACLU (I LOVE your analogy between OTW and the ACLU, btw, but it is funny in the context of this story).
And even had they made someone else graduate director, it probably wouldn't have made any difference to the overall sexism in place.
The program, not surprisingly, was even more racist (during the time I was there, there was one African-American undergrad student; all the grad students were white).
So I left. I was unemployed a while which sucks. I lived with my mom. I found clerical jobs (for the federal government which taught me that the feds have a much better tenure system than academics do--three years, and you're in, and they cannot fire you--they can get rid of your job, but they cannot fire you).
And I joined groups/volunteered: environmental, small struggling radical literary types, and bisexual. (The only feminist group I could learn of that was active in the area at the time required a commitment to both Marxism and vegetarianism and had come about a result of fierce internal philosophical struggles.)
I worked the crappy clerical job and threw my heart and soul into the groups.
A few years later, I stomped back into academia, pissed off beyond measure at the groups and frustrated with their inability to do anything beyond fight with each other. At that time I evolved my theory of groups: any group no matter how marginalized/oppressed will immediately, upon formation, look for some 'scapegoat' who can be expelled to show the greater purity of the group. NOW expelled lesbians. There are lots of other examples. I am so not a group person, I learned. And that applies to every group I've been in from Campfire groups to the Bisexual Support Group.