I think that sums up nicely the problem we face as feminists: being taken seriously. People don't acknowledge our oppression as "real" oppression -- so in that respect at least sexism is worse than racism (of course, racism can be worse in other ways). He makes a good point about MLK vs. Betty Friedan -- people universally acknowledge MLK's greatness. On the other hand, Friedan is vaguely maligned by most other than current active feminists. I'd venture to say you won't find a black person with many negative things to say about MLK, but you'll find *plenty* of women who'd have a mouthful of negativity about Friedan.

I wish I knew the answer. Bullshit like this *almost* makes me glad we have ridiculous things like South Dakota's ill-fated abortion ban and Maryland's free-rape law, since we can point to these *in this day and age* as problems we STILL face. Bear in mind, I said "almost."

wow, you think he wouldve done..some..research or something. if i were writing something that would appear publicily i sure wouldnt want to make myself look like an uninformed ass like that.

didnt bra burning never really even happen the way its portrayed today? i mean, c'mon people cant really still think the only thing women had to worry about were those "evil oppressive bra companys" (not quoting anyone, just trying to not be serious hah)

Only having read the quotes on this page and not the whole article, I don't see how his comments are reducing the women's movement to bras and aprons. I think he's saying that the way we oppress women in this country has always been more subtle than the way we oppress black people - slavery and fire hoses are much more visible symbols of repression than corsets and babies.

Hmmm... I recognize an attitude in the highlighted text that I think Jessica and LawFairy were also recognizing- that the women's rights movement was about kitchen politics rather than the systematic oppression of women in legal, social, and political contexts.
But, I think the author might have just been making an observational comment about how society views those movements comparatively, rather than his own view.
What was more disturbing to me was the ignorance and at times pure hate in the online comments following the article.

I realize that it's difficult wirting-wise to describe a whole movement in a paragrpah, I really do. But dismissing women's oppression as bras and aprons (as if violence, rape, etc never existed) just really fucking irks me.

ifsa, i didn't see the comments, i'm going to check them out now...

So, sexism then, for this guy at least. Ugh.

Reminds me of one of my questions on my comps--I basically had to write about the historiography and major events in women's and African-Americans' historical push for liberation. But I also had to write and support an opinion on whose movement had been more successful/who'd come furthest.
Strange question.

I'm not sure that the writer is attempting a summation of the feminist movement, nor dismissing oppression.

The article is about the electoral prospects of two candidates: HR Clinton, and Obama. Elections play out in a social and cultural context, and I think what the author is attempting here is a summation of the public perception surrounding two enormously important historical movements.

Pop culture ideas about these movements have been shaped by their respective media coverage. The black civil rights movement had its martyrs, and was attended by lots of lovely, photogenic violence. The only aspects of second wave feminism that got media attention were events like "bra burning".

For better or for worse, the contrast between fire hoses at Selma and mythic bra burnings has become a feature of the cultural landscape.

I had a wonderful (IMHO) comment to make, but the registration demon ate it.

ugh, sorry DAS! i'll see if i can find...

If you can find it, that would be wonderful, although I think my points were kinda made by the above posters.

I refuse to take seriously any journalist who doesn't know the difference between oppression and repression.

Of course, this poll is likely more instructive to the issue at hand than the pithy discussion offered by Wallace-Wells.

The main question: is the country ready for a non-traditional President: women (61% yes), African-American (58%), and then we get to Asian (33%), atheist (14%), and gay (7%). Damn, and I thought atheism was ready for the big time.

Of course, I think the poll was asked that way ("ready for" rather than "would be willing to vote for") because barely anybody admits to being a bigot straight up in a poll.

quieter stuff: bras, aprons and constitutional amendments.

Women's gains with issues such as domestic violence, rape, awareness of beauty standards and unequal domestic labor take place within the private as opposed to public sphere which makes them "quieter". It's easier to hide oppression and escape prosecution within the private sphere.

I think that comments like the one made in the article just prove that the feminist community has more work to do. Web sites like feministing play an important role, so do all of our discussions online. I think it's a sad-but-true fact that the opression of women is still seen as less violent and dangerous to society than opression of other groups.

Note, for instance, Bush's comment about helping Nancy Pelosi find a decorator for her office. No one, even a dumbass like Bush, would have made a stereotypical comment like that if the new speaker were black, gay, etc.

Sexual harassment and workplace inequity are public sphere issues but the former is still often regarded as a private sexual issue and not a prosecutable crime.

I'd venture to say you won't find a black person with many negative things to say about MLK, but you'll find *plenty* of women who'd have a mouthful of negativity about Friedan.

I hate that shit! There are too many women who still believe in traditional gender roles and essentialism.

Re: the poll--well, I would vote for a woman or an African-American president, but I would have voted "no" in that poll because I don't think the country's ready for one either.

Yeah, saying feminism is about bras and aprons is like saying the civil rights movement was about affirmative action in law school admissions.

I also love the obsession so many people apparently have with Bill Clinton's standing behind Hillary while she gave her victory speech. What, is he supposed to go stand next to her, when he's just a private citizen, and say, "Yo, I'm still the dude here"? Maybe with a sock stuffed in his briefs? I also love the idea that it's "manly" to constantly need to be the center of attention, like an especially spoiled two year old. Ah, bizarro gender roles. Where would we be without you?

And I'm afraid I couldn't figure out the meaning of this phrase at all: "like take-off-my-jewelry-and-put-vaseline-on-my-face-so-a-bitch-can't-scratch-me-up angry."

Sorry Heraclitus, it's a reference to how we girls fight in Queens. ;) Take off the jewelry so you don't get it caught or ruied, spread vaseline on your face so you don't get scratched up. It's very junior high styles...

I'd venture to say you won't find a black person with many negative things to say about MLK - The Law Fairy

Somehow I just managed to catch this. Define many ... I can think of many Black people with a few negative things to say about MLK.

However, there is a difference, you are right: The African-Americans I know with negative things to say about MLK might have some ad hominem remarks about his personal life, feel that he took too much of the spotlight, etc. ... but I don't know (personally anyway -- the self-hating, Ward Connerly crowd might be a different story, but I don't know anyone in that crowd) any African-American who would criticize what MLK stood for.

OTOH, indeed some women, even some who claim to be feminists, seem to have not a good thing to say about any real feminist.

Is part of the issue, though (and what the reporter no doubt was trying to get at, but he had to try and make it sound witty, so he ended up coming off as a jerk) that protestors for African-American civil rights faced such violence that they could be celebrated as martyrs (and which backfired on civil rights opponants by revealing how evil they were) whereas feminist protests did not allow for the same mantle of martyrdom on those protesting?

Of course, the journalist is buying into a narrative that also understates the role of legal action in the civil rights movement. The protests were important, but so was the legal action. That's what makes me personally so nervous about all this "activist judges" rhetoric from the right: if it weren't for activist judges forcing states to legitimize marriages that were not popularly accepted, we wouldn't have Loving v. Virginia, and I would not be allowed to marry my gf and have that marriage recognized in all states.

Perhaps it is true that the victories of the feminist movement were quieter than the civil rights protests (and did not generate the violent footage that made people sick -- so, alas, people are not sick of sexism in the same way that people are sick of racism), but there were some important "quiet" victories by the civil rights movement whose manner of achievement makes me very nervous about the rhetoric of the right, e.g. in re. gay marriage and abortion.

But alas, this guy had to try and sound "witty" and ruin his point by himself making a rather sexist statement. What do they teach in J-school nowadays anyway? Journalists are supposed to tell the story, not try to be witty or colorful ... if they are sufficiently colorful characters, their wit will show through ... but trying to be a prose stylist as a journalist just doesn't produce anything except really vapid prose that undermines the story at hand.

Hi, Jessica, I figured it had something to do with fighting. It's just kind of odd to imagine someone being all, "Oh, this shit is on...just let me get some Vaseline." Actually, it would be kind of funny/interesting to compare the traditional or usual rituals leading up to physical confrontation for each gender.

Heraclitus,

Actually, the threat used is "don't make me take off my jewelry".

DAS, right, that's pretty much what I was saying -- with very few exceptions, you don't meet many black people (or, frankly, many people) who have a serious ideological beef with MLK. There may be some who have problems with his adultery, or fewer who have a problem with his marriage of the Civil Rights movement and Christianity, or others who think civil disobedience is less than ideal... but it's *really* hard to find someone who would disagree with the content of his famous "I have a dream" speech. On the other hand, most major feminists are vilified by women, including some who identify as feminists.

As to this:

"Is part of the issue, though (and what the reporter no doubt was trying to get at, but he had to try and make it sound witty, so he ended up coming off as a jerk) that protestors for African-American civil rights faced such violence that they could be celebrated as martyrs (and which backfired on civil rights opponants by revealing how evil they were) whereas feminist protests did not allow for the same mantle of martyrdom on those protesting?"

I think the problem is that violence against feminists is simply less shocking, even though it's just as prevalent. If a guy gets rough with a woman in a bar because she was too uppity, she was asking for it by arguing with him. If a feminist is dragged away from a public gathering in handcuffs, it's because she was being too shrill and disruptive.

I had the amazing good fortune to take a law school class taught by one of my heroes, Catharine MacKinnon. Prof. MacKinnon is a brilliant academic, a first-rate attorney, and a remarkable human being. She gave a heart-wrenching talk one time at an open lunch meeting, discussing her experience representing women like Linda Lovelace. She takes on these women's cases pro bono, scrapping up funding from anyone generous enough to donate to a worthy cause, and paying for everything else out of her own pocket. She receives death threats daily. She is jeered at, mocked, and scorned while walking into courthouses.

But these sorts of things apparently don't sell papers. Thus, the feminist movement is about "bras and aprons."

I like my bra.

It's not really a good idea to compare racism and sexism by just looking at one attribute. All media portrayal will tell you is that people like to pretend they support Martin Luther King but are more candid about Betty Friedan.

The "Who is more oppressed?" game is just pointless. You can play it, in principle, but you need to consider a lot more factors than just the one, and even then it won't get you anywhere. The only possible application the outcome could have to social activism is issue triage, but before you do that, ask Kos what people said about him when he tried triaging abortion out of the netroots' list of core Democratic values.

Alon, we are talking about a particular arena *here* -- thus, one of the areas in which sexism is, in some ways, worse than racism. I'm not aware that anyone here is pretending the "which is worse" question is one-dimensional.

If you note, I stated earlier: "People don't acknowledge our oppression as "real" oppression -- so in that respect at least sexism is worse than racism (of course, racism can be worse in other ways)."

That's the point here. We aren't saying that we have it worse than minorities in every single aspect of life. We're just saying that, when it comes to getting credit for the shit you've been through, women get the short end of the stick. Our oppression is not respected as legitimate, whereas minorities' oppression is. Do you disagree?

I think a lot of you are stirring up a tempest in a teapot and are either intentionally misinterpreting what he meant by "bras and aprons" or just displaying extreme ignorance. The import of what he's saying is that LARGELY the struggle of feminism was one changing individuals perceptions of women. This is done in many ways, one is through legal means the other is through trying to inact a culture shift. The Civil Rights Movement, on the other hand, had to work to overturn NEGATIVE, LEGAL restrictions on blacks political involvement that just weren't equivalent(not "better" or "worse", just different) to what was facing women. THe major legal reforms for the civil rights movements was the removal of negative restrictions (getting rid of poll taxes, literacy tests, jim crow etc etc) Getting rid of these legal restrictions requires mass movements and popular support to push them through, ie protests and rallies.

The Women's Movement had comparitively fewer and less imicable legal reforms, in the sense of negative sanctions against women that prevented their POLITICAL invovlement. THis isn't to say that there's been some major women centered legal reform, there has (rape in marriage, roe vs wade etc as well as the enactment of postive legal reforms like Title IX). The biggest change brought on by the women's movement was one of CULTURAL reform, ie viewing women as more than mother or objects of desire without agency...thus BRAS and APRONS. The laws prohibiting and inhibiting agency for women, in the "political" or "public" sphere simply weren't as restrictive or inhibiting as those leveraged upon black americans, ie women could and did vote w/o poll taxes and the like.

What was mean by 'bras and aprons' was the connection of the "political" or public sphere with the "private" sphere, ie politics and power relations of the family. Is it not a feminist touchstone that the private IS the political. This is the message of the GREATEST import of the feminist movement, because while laws like Title IX certainly help along the women's movement towards full social, economic and INformal equality, it is the change in how society views women that is most important. Before say the 70s, there weren't that many widespread laws limiting women's negative agency (abortion bans would certainly be an exception) however there was/is widespread social and cultural perceptions of what women should/can do in society. Thus, legal reform is a necessary but nowhere near sufficient step. Would a society with an ERA, liberal abortion regime, Title IX etc etc yet without social and cultural recognition that the private sphere, where women are still viewd as basically domestic servants really be the end goal of feminims, is not the recognition that women should be able to define their own roles in society with as much legal, social and economic autonomy as possible the ultimate endpoint for the Women's Movement?

Wallace Wells was working with a limited amount of words and wasn't trying to give an exhaustive acount of the Women's Movement, ye his chosen descriptor of "bras and aprons" most aptly captures the most important and difficult to attain goal of the movement, of feminism itself.

It seems to me we are focused on the wrong issues and priorities. I don't think bra burning ever ocured, but it was a useful pictograph for the ERA. We need to get beyond that. Sexual slavery, DV and rape are real issues. They should be highlighted every day with real accounts from victims and as many pics as possible. We have to make this a national issue. MLK was able to do that with marches and non-violent protests. The image of fire hoses turned on the black victims, turned the tide. What can women use in place of fire hoses? Why am I, as a white male interested? Because I have twin daughters and if I caught someone attacking one of them, I would be all to happy to snap their neck so fast they wouldn't hear the pop. Quick way to end a fight, huh. Well, I don't believe in torture, contrary to President Bush, so I prefer to waste the fuckers quickly.
There are a lot of men out there with daughters and wives and girl friends that can identify with this cause, so stop emphasizing the fucking bras ok. We don't care about that, unless it's a double D! (sorry, just had to throw that in.)

It seems to me we are focused on the wrong issues and priorities. I don't think bra burning ever ocured, but it was a useful pictograph for the ERA. We need to get beyond that. Sexual slavery, DV and rape are real issues. They should be highlighted every day with real accounts from victims and as many pics as possible. We have to make this a national issue. MLK was able to do that with marches and non-violent protests. The image of fire hoses turned on the black victims, turned the tide. What can women use in place of fire hoses? Why am I, as a white male interested? Because I have twin daughters and if I caught someone attacking one of them, I would be all to happy to snap their neck so fast they wouldn't hear the pop. Quick way to end a fight, huh. Well, I don't believe in torture, contrary to President Bush, so I prefer to waste the fuckers quickly.
There are a lot of men out there with daughters and wives and girl friends that can identify with this cause, so stop emphasizing the fucking bras ok. We don't care about that, unless it's a double D! (sorry, just had to throw that in.)

You've got to be kidding with the idea that women didn't have legal barriers. The birthplace of the women's movement goes back to 1848 and women fought for the vote until 1920. Alice Paul and others starved in prison and were willing to die so that women could vote. Women only won the vote because the President at the time didn't like the negative publicity.

Re: bra-burning of course the male-run media focused on bras instead of girdles, cosmetics, high-heeled shoes which were also thrown into the trash can.

There are a lot of men out there with daughters and wives and girl friends that can identify with this cause, so stop emphasizing the fucking bras ok. We don't care about that, unless it's a double D! (sorry, just had to throw that in.)

Your daughters' double Ds? Sorry had to throw that in otherwise I like concerned dads like you.

I think you misunderstand my point, donna darko, I'm not denying that for the overwhelming majority of there being written law, women have been excluded as well as for most of the history of democracy. The point that the writer and I were making is that by the 60s and 70s, and the beginning of the organized, powerful, political "women's movement", that there weren't a lot of negative sanctions preventing women's participation in the public sphere, at least not comparable to the mass, legal, formal exclusion of blacks in the south. You can see the rest of my post that these are differences in type, not in severity or awfulness or conditions. Again, my only point is that the women's movement, as commonly construed, is more of a cultural and social one, not a legal one.

Does anyone else think this journalist was off in using Betty Friedan as example, or that he used her on purpose, because certain aspects of her feminism were problematic? For instance, it became clear to me half-way through "The Feminine Mystique," when she began talking about the problems around the "loss of the servant class," that she thought some women should get to be feminists, and some (lower income folks of color like me, maybe?)should get to clean toilets. I mean, I mean - I don't like the precious comment about "bras and aprons" either (yeh, male entitlement that leads to violence; that's SO incidental do my bras and aprons *sarcasm*). It's just don't think that Betty Friedan is the MLK of the feminist movement, so the comparison becomes meaningless. Or am I missing something?

(Please feel free to tell me I missed her point; I hurled the book across the room at that point, so you know, I missed what came after.)

Also, we could use a MLK. Any takers? Any thoughts?

Mattz, actually there were a lot of legal restrictions on women even in the 1960s and 70s. Kim Gandy, the President of NOW, became a feminist activist after finding out she was required by law to get her husband's permission to hold a job.

Tink, the largest difference between MLK and Friedan was in charisma (MLK was about fifteen leagues above Friedan). Temper was number two. Substance was a distant third: talking about a servant class is a lot less pernicious in light of things like daycare. It's likelier Friedan drew inspiration from Marxist-influenced childrearing à la the kibbutz than that she drew inspiration from Victorian England.

"...protestors for African-American civil rights faced such violence that they could be celebrated as martyrs (and which backfired on civil rights opponants by revealing how evil they were)..."

"The black civil rights movement had its martyrs, and was attended by lots of lovely, photogenic violence. The only aspects of second wave feminism that got media attention were events like "bra burning"."

These comments and others like them made me realize something. It's not that women have had "quieter" struggles, and certainly not less violent ones--it's not that we've not had the equivalent of dogs and fire hoses turned on us--it's that the violence inflicted on women is minimized or ignored by the media, seen as commonplace, or worse, as "entertainment." An example: An armed man walks into an Amish school, separates out all the male students, molests and murders multiple female students, and all the media has to say about it is, "Why would someone target the Amish?"
It's not that we don't have any "lovely, photogenic" violent images of sexism and misogyny in action--it's that those images have become so utterly commonplace as to have virtually no impact on the viewer.
Except of course on women themselves, who have to try and live without fear in a world where they're surrounded by constant, incessant reminders that they are weak, helpless, worthless...in a word, invisible.

This is not intended to in any way diminish the struggles of anyone suffering under other forms of oppression such as racism, antsemitism, etc. etc. I'm in no way suggesting women win the gold in the Oppression Olympics--just that much of the oppression women face is a result of attitudes that have permeated our cultural psyches. In my opinion, this is the hardest form of prejudice to surmout, and comparable to the equally less-overt and pervasive forms of racism that are also alive and well today, in spite of the laudable accomplishments of the Civil Rights movement.

It is a depressing thought to consider, though. The same person who would recoil in horror at the sight of footage of black protestors being set upon by dogs, thinking That's inhuman! has probably viewed dozens of "rape" scenes on TV and in movies and only thought, Gee, wish I had some popcorn...

Ugh. Sorry to be such a downer today.

I think the problem is that violence against feminists is simply less shocking, even though it's just as prevalent. If a guy gets rough with a woman in a bar because she was too uppity, she was asking for it by arguing with him. - The Law Fairy

These comments and others like them made me realize something. It's not that women have had "quieter" struggles, and certainly not less violent ones--it's not that we've not had the equivalent of dogs and fire hoses turned on us--it's that the violence inflicted on women is minimized or ignored by the media, seen as commonplace, or worse, as "entertainment." - Vervain

Well, pre-civil rights era, it was also true that much of the violence directed against African-Americans was perceived of as normative and "quiet" and "less shocking" in the same way that the violence against women is perceived today. But somehow, the particular Gandhi-inspired protest strategies were able to provide images that could not be stuffed into a somebody else's problem field in the same way society previously ignored the violence against African-Americans because of their race and still ignores the violence against women.

The problem is: how do you have a sit in for women's rights which would give the same clear, un-ignorable images? When African-Americans were being dragged away from a lunch counter in an organized sit-in, it was too obvious to ignore what was happening. But how do you have a similar sit-in at a bar which allows women to sit there already? It isn't as if women will be removed just for sitting there: even if they are removed for responding to violence directed against them, they are still removed for "something", no matter how wrong it is to blame the victim like that -- so the upshot is that the violence against women still remains ignorable in a way that the violence against African-Americans eventually could not so remain.

DAS,
try public breast feeding. women have been asked to leave many places and i even recall an article about a women almost being kicked off a plane (well not literally while it was in the air!) for breast feeding her child and the guy next to her had a problem with it.

elektrodot,

I think you may be on to something ... a "breast-feed-in" ... that's an idea ...

There have all ready been a few lactivist "nurse-ins." Lots of nasty response. Sadly, not a lot of support.

It reminds me of the people that say that gay marriage is not a civil right.

Nope, don't believe any bras were actually burned.

I believe some women demonstrating outside the Miss America pageant tossed some bras and girdles into a trash can, and tabloid reporters inflating that into the more alliterative and "militant" sounding "bra burning."

As a sidelight, the girdles of the period were more torturous and ridiculous, I remember somehow being convinced to wear a long-line when I weighed in at 90 pounds.

But it was either a girdle or a stupid garter belt to hold up your stockings.

Throw in the sanitary napkin belt necessary during menstruation and you can understand why women would want to trash all those torture device underpinnings.

Although that longline girdle did thoroughly discourage a handsy boyfriend at a time when I wasn't ready for sex.

You've got to be kidding with the idea that women didn't have legal barriers.games