A Collaborative Essay

What is this page?

This all started (late last night) with my exploring a possible article "Are you a feminist?" targeted at young people. Concepts connected up into unexpected shapes, as they sometimes do. And I ended up with a fuzzy set of ideas on feminism and history which I wanted to explore in a collaborative context. I went looking for feminist wikis, but didn't find much. Exploring here seemed the best bet. The connection with SF is a bit tenuous, but with alternate history and such, seems at least vaguely existent.

A "one liner" to provide some context might go something like this: You are a feminist. Also a humanist, republican, algebraist, mercantile. Even if you are a neo-nazi fascist pentecostal who hates women, math, and business.

Contributions, questions, all welcome and encouraged.

A pile of ideas

• The original concept for an article was that people forget history. And misremember it. Forget past battles. That if you look back, even currently "anti-feminist" views are, from a broader perspective, fringe revolutionary feminist ones. So the idea was to take a couple of areas, Education, Commerce, Politics, Sex, Athletics, and show how things, now taken for granted, were once radical feminist fringe ideas. Touching lightly on how several of the fights continue, but avoiding current controversies, mainly focusing on "whatever you think of the current state of the revolution, you are a radical", when you look at the big picture. Illustrating positions with historical quotes. And recent quotes and examples. A collection of things current US kids take for granted, and show the "oh my god, that's weird", often quite recent, often current, anti-feminist arguments that it can't exist or shouldn't be.

• Historical quotes can be powerful. They can bring home past perspectives in a high impact way.
  • I remember years ago, reading a 1700's british officer's letter home about the americans aiding him. He was utterly bemused. The american officers were, like, talking with their men. Asking their opinions. As if, they, like, had ideas worth hearing. He was finding it mind bogglingly strange. And I got a taste of how differently people can think, and a window into the british class system.
  • A Massachusetts senator(?), 1700's, elaborates on his support for broadening the vote. It was restricted to rich,male,white,non-kids whose wealth was in land. He was supporting a bill broadening it to rich,male,white,non-kids whose wealth was in business. He explained how 'if he thought for one moment that America would ever be anything but an agrarian country, would ever develop industry, he would, of course, oppose the bill. But since there was no doubt that America would remain a strictly agrarian for two or three centuries to come...'. Nicely written. The right to vote was broadened by mistake.

• "You are a revolutionary. In any large revolution, some of the revolutionaries end up thinking the revolution reached the right point years ago, and has since gone too far, or gone the wrong way. But that doesn't mean they are not revolutionaries. Even if they are then called reactionary by their peers." And the last few decades, and the last few centuries, have been big revolutions. However retrogressive your views are, you are still, from a historical perspective, a revolutionary.

• Even if you now oppose Title IX, and think professional women's sports a joke, you likely don't agree with the original opponents of IX, that girls would be unable, uninterested, and unhealthy, to do sports.

• During WWII, Life magazine had a full page picture of generic pretty wife waiting at home. Holding the sweet gift her man sent back from the Pacific, to show he was thinking of her. A Jap skull. There was apparently an industry of boiling the flesh off the bodies of Japanese solders to provide souvenirs. This was considered unremarkable. Can you see this week's Time magazine having a human interest photo of the pretty wife of an American serviceman. Holding the sweet gift of a boiled Iraqi "Raghead" skull? America's so called "greatest generation", some still alive, a mere two generations and half century ago, took things for granted that now would appear only in extreme nut-wing hate rags.

• "Are your a feminist? Well, if you are female, then yes[1]. If male, and you would consider sharing this web page with a female, then yes. ([1] Caveat - this argument hangs on: you can read; you believe yourself capable of thinking about politics; you think it appropriate. Which isn't quite right. You might be a woman who, in general, does not think women can or should think about politics, but for most readers of this page...)." [quotes from the US national enfranchisement of women debate, re can't/shouldn't think about politics; current quotes]

• Are you an american pentecostal home schooling your daughter out of rejection of contemporary culture? Planing on taking her to six grade or further? Reading anything non-religious? In some current societies, your radical feminism and humanism would endanger the life of you and your daughter. [quote, data]

• A racist neo-nazi skinhead, simply by having seen the last half century, could easily get into an argument with a WWII northern american officer. "Yeah, it turns out blacks can be good solders. Officers even. No, really. I don't like it, but it's true. Really. God, you are such a disconnected from reality racist.", And have perspectives on race which, in the 1800's, would be shared only by the fringe of the northern abolitionist fringe. "Blacks can succeed in college. Are capable of being doctors even.".

• Think you aren't a sexual liberation radical? Think a family is disgraced by a teenage collage student being sexually active? How about so disgraced you have to leave everything behind and move out of town? Think it's ok for her brothers and cousins to make things right by killing her? [recent quotes from mediterranean honor societies]

Various others.

• The general outline is: For each topic, a series of battles. Each battle made real by quotes by the opponents. And current, 200x, quotes, showing any current adherents. US, or elsewhere. Quotes and data on any non-US societies which currently follow the anti-feminist side. More "just the facts", brutal, dryly-presented, well-cited facts, than my paragraphs above. End result, no matter how reactionary you are, you end up thinking "god, maybe I am a feminist".

• The usual line is you can't judge historical people by current standards. The argument of this page is actually, you can. and it can be useful. Under the skin, we're all flatworms. Under the skin, we are all radical feminist humanist republicans.
  • I have reservations about this argument. There are certainly many ideas which don't follow this tale of historical progress and triumphalism. Am I just cherry picking a few ideas to make a propaganda piece? Or is there some principled way to select the ideas considered, and a real shift in the center of gravity of the associated conflicts.

Well, that's it for this afternoon. Random thoughts.