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Ain't I A Woman? newspapers, June 1970-July 1971

1970-08-21 "Ain't I a Woman?" Page 8

THE RED WOMEN'S DETACHEMENT:

Revolting Rhetoric & Revolutionary Questions

The following three pages are devoted to consideration of some papers received recently from the Southern Female Rights Union and a draft constitution of the Red Women's Detachment, a part of the Marxist-Leninist Party. Nowhere on these pages have we considered the questions of the Red Women's organizational principles, the advisibility of willing a vanguard party into existence, or many other questions about the role of women in the structure of a Marxist-Leninist Party. We are interested in comments from other groups about the Red Women and the issues they raise. 

     Many of the issues raised by the Red Women have been avoided in other groups in our eagerness to spread the word and promote the growth of women's liberation. While we have always recognized such issues as abortion as two-edged swords, we rarely publish such doubts or actively discourage women from working in any way on women's liberation. 

     Some of the issues we have been groping with--for example, homosexual oppression--Red Women have made strong statements about. While our internal criticism has been carried on continually, the overriding principle has been that women must raise their own consciousness as women. Some of the issues we should be speaking to have barely been touched in Ain't I A Woman, although they have been considered extensively in cell meetings and discussion workshops. Such questions as the long term consequences of fighting for abortion reform, establishing day care centers, and developing an analysis of lesbianism compatible with women's liberation have generally been missing from the paper. One article on "The Lesbian in the Feminist Movement" (issue 2) raised the point that "it isn't good enough for straight women to say that they love women and then turn to give their ultimate love to their oppresser." It went further to say that "Lesbians have experienced women's oppression simply because they don't need men and haven't been 'protected' by being treated as a privileged sex." Both of these statements seemed politically wrong. The first because it sees individual men as the cause of oppression and avoids systemic causes; the second because it defines lesbian oppression as an exception to women's oppression. It says that lesbians experience oppression by being exceptions to those things other women experience: lesbian oppression begins where experience: lesbian oppression begins when they give up the "privileges" of other women. If the source of lesbian oppression is everything not shared with other women, a women's liberation may not be a useful means to ending that oppression. We think this definition of lesbian oppression is wrong and that lesbians and other women together must come to a better understanding. 

       One of our main considerations has been broadening the women's movement at the same time we work out an analysis of women's oppression that ensures a way to end it. We do not begin with the assumption of an inevitable proletarian revolution in this country in the same way Red Women do. We begin with a desire to figure the form and shape of a revolution in an industrially developed country, one for which no historical precedent will suffice. To do this all forms of expression have been exchanged and women speaking to their own oppression has been most important. Thus, gay women have been open in their statements to other women, and together women have been forming an analysis of lesbianism and the forms of sexual oppression in American society. If we want a larger strategy of revolution to ensure the end of lesbian oppression, working out that analysis seems crucial now. The needs of the people are not all material, and the structural changes brought about by a revolution can be better if we listen now. 

       The Red Women raise some important issues, but they raise them with a rhetoric hardly conducive to open discussion. The paper on Gay Liberation is one example. While it purports-to be a historical analysis of homosexuality, it is more a call to smash Gay Liberation and it is particularly offensive to lesbians. A reply from one member of the Gay Cell follows. While Red Women say near the end of the paper that lesbians are a different matter and they are only writing about male homosexuality, the paper was not helpful in any construction of an analysis of lesbian oppression. 

    While Red Women claim to be "the definite hard-core of the women's movement as a whole, the point at which leadership is being developed, serious political and ideological struggle is taking place, and new cadres are being prepared for struggle" their targets of attack are mostly other women. Hardly conducive to building a women's movement. Yet the issues they raise are important--abortion as genocide, the middle class nature of WLF, the importance of an international movement of women, the meaning of armed struggle--and are ones we should be dealing with. 

LINE BREAK

(The following article found on pages 8 and 9 is in response to the Red Women's Detachment paper concerning the Gay Liberation Front.) 
   
    The Red Women's Detachment has 
written a paper on Feminism, Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation which is being circulated within the Women's Liberation movement by the New Orleans Female Workers Union. We in Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Front have been trying to analyze the position of Gay Liberation in the revolution for a long time. This paper is a start in that it made us rigorously look at issues that concern Gay Liberation Front, but it was a false start because it is only destructive. The Red Women's Detachment urges revolutionary feminists to organize to smash the Gay Liberation movement because they see Gay Liberation Front as being promoted 
by the ruling class to destroy the revolutionary potential of the feminist movement. The Red Women's 
Detachment arrives at this analysis of GLF by using two different definitions of homosexuality. 

    The pillar of their argument is an analogy between feudal times and present day Imperialist society.  According to the Red Women's Detachment two things are common to both periods: The rise in homosexuality and the rise in the struggle of women. They say that in pre-feudal times homosexuality was a sexual practice, but during feudalism it came to mean the social relationship between men in the organizations that sprang up at that time--the guilds, the knighthood, the church. Homosexual relations, say the Red Women's Detachment, were the basis for the existence of these organizations and the predominant form of homosexual relationship under feudalism and imperialism is one in which one man is dominant and one submissive or passive. Accompanying the rise in male-dominated social organizations during feudalism was the greatest slaughter and oppression of women in history--the witch hunts. 

   The Red Women's Detachment sees the same thing happening (that is the rise in homosexuality and the increased oppression of women) in contemporary society. They see such homosexual relations in German, Italian and Japanese fascism and the native Amerikan fascism of the KKK and minutemen. The analogous 
rise in the oppression of women is what the Red Women's Detachment is afraid will happen if we do not stop the spread of homosexuality. The Gay Liberation Front, as a new organization of homosexuals is part of the present rise in homosexuality 
and must also be stopped.

 
    But I don't think the Red Women's Detachment's definition of homosexuality as a social phenomenon applies to the Gay Liberation Front. Gay Liberation Front is an organization of people (men and women, unlike the males-only organizations of feudalism) who are defined as homosexual because .of our sexual orientation. It may be homosexual in the social sense also in that the members relate to one another, but it has a definite sexual base. Gay Liberation Front is different in another way also. It does not 
wield the power that the feudal organizations did. They were the structures around which feudal society revolved. Out of all the words that could be used to describe a male supremacist society such as feudalism, the word "homosexual" seems to have been chosen by the Red Women's Detachment to aid their argument against Gay Liberation. The analogy may hold true if you stick to the social definition of homosexuality in both eras. Then the guilds etc. become analogous to the male dominated power 
structures of our society. But Gay Liberation Front in that it is not part of the power structure and not homosexual in the same sense is not to be feared in the 
same way. 

The Red Women's Detachment is not just saying that there is a similarity between feudalism and contemporary society, they are say-ing that gay liberation is being promoted by Imperialism and that it is a tool of the ruling classes to put down the revolutionary potential of the feminist movement. They arrive at this connection between gay liberation Front and the ruling class by a shabby use of Marxian economics. The predominant homesexual-feudal relationship, according to the Red Women's Detachment is dominant male/sub-missive partner, with the junior 
partner performing unpaid slave labor for the other. "The class role of the headmaster towards his pupil, the army officer towards his orderly, the older 'auntie' or 'queen' towards 'the inevitably 
younger men' is the same as the husband towards the wife. In all these cases the basis of the relationship is unpaid slave labor 

  8  VOL. 1, No, 4 
AIN'T I

Saving...

THE RED WOMEN'S DETACHEMENT: Revolting Rhetoric & Revolutionary Questions The following three pages are devoted to consideration of some papers received recently from the Southern Female Rights Union and a draft constitution of the Red Women's Detachment, a part of the Marxist-Leninist Party. Nowhere on these pages have we considered the questions of the Red Women's organizational principles, the advisibility of willing a vanguard party into existence, or many other questions about the role of women in the structure of a Marxist-Leninist Party. We are interested in comments from other groups about the Red Women and the issues they raise. Many of the issues raised by the Red Women have been avoided in other groups in our eagerness to spread the word and promote the growth of women's liberation. While we have always recognized such issues as abortion as two-edged swords, we rarely publish such doubts or actively discourage women from working in any way on women's liberation. Some of the issues we have been groping with--for example, homosexual oppression--Red Women have made strong statements about. While our internal criticism has been carried on continually, the overriding principle has been that women must raise their own consciousness as women. Some of the issues we should be speaking to have barely been touched in Ain't I A Woman, although they have been considered extensively in cell meetings and discussion workshops. Such questions as the long term consequences of fighting for abortion reform, establishing day care centers, and developing an analysis of lesbianism compatible with women's liberation have generally been missing from the paper. One article on "The Lesbian in the Feminist Movement" (issue 2) raised the point that "it isn't good enough for straight women to say that they love women and then turn to give their ultimate love to their oppresser." It went further to say that "Lesbians have experienced women's oppression simply because they don't need men and haven't been 'protected' by being treated as a privileged sex." Both of these statements seemed politically wrong. The first because it sees individual men as the cause of oppression and avoids systemic causes; the second because it defines lesbian oppression as an exception to women's oppression. It says that lesbians experience oppression by being exceptions to those things other women experience: lesbian oppression begins where experience: lesbian oppression begins when they give up the "privileges" of other women. If the source of lesbian oppression is everything not shared with other women, a women's liberation may not be a useful means to ending that oppression. We think this definition of lesbian oppression is wrong and that lesbians and other women together must come to a better understanding. One of our main considerations has been broadening the women's movement at the same time we work out an analysis of women's oppression that ensures a way to end it. We do not begin with the assumption of an inevitable proletarian revolution in this country in the same way Red Women do. We begin with a desire to figure the form and shape of a revolution in an industrially developed country, one for which no historical precedent will suffice. To do this all forms of expression have been exchanged and women speaking to their own oppression has been most important. Thus, gay women have been open in their statements to other women, and together women have been forming an analysis of lesbianism and the forms of sexual oppression in American society. If we want a larger strategy of revolution to ensure the end of lesbian oppression, working out that analysis seems crucial now. The needs of the people are not all material, and the structural changes brought about by a revolution can be better if we listen now. The Red Women raise some important issues, but they raise them with a rhetoric hardly conducive to open discussion. The paper on Gay Liberation is one example. While it purports-to be a historical analysis of homosexuality, it is more a call to smash Gay Liberation and it is particularly offensive to lesbians. A reply from one member of the Gay Cell follows. While Red Women say near the end of the paper that lesbians are a different matter and they are only writing about male homosexuality, the paper was not helpful in any construction of an analysis of lesbian oppression. While Red Women claim to be "the definite hard-core of the women's movement as a whole, the point at which leadership is being developed, serious political and ideological struggle is taking place, and new cadres are being prepared for struggle" their targets of attack are mostly other women. Hardly conducive to building a women's movement. Yet the issues they raise are important--abortion as genocide, the middle class nature of WLF, the importance of an international movement of women, the meaning of armed struggle--and are ones we should be dealing with. LINE BREAK (The following article found on pages 8 and 9 is in response to the Red Women's Detachment paper concerning the Gay Liberation Front.) The Red Women's Detachment has written a paper on Feminism, Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation which is being circulated within the Women's Liberation movement by the New Orleans Female Workers Union. We in Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Front have been trying to analyze the position of Gay Liberation in the revolution for a long time. This paper is a start in that it made us rigorously look at issues that concern Gay Liberation Front, but it was a false start because it is only destructive. The Red Women's Detachment urges revolutionary feminists to organize to smash the Gay Liberation movement because they see Gay Liberation Front as being promoted by the ruling class to destroy the revolutionary potential of the feminist movement. The Red Women's Detachment arrives at this analysis of GLF by using two different definitions of homosexuality. The pillar of their argument is an analogy between feudal times and present day Imperialist society. According to the Red Women's Detachment two things are common to both periods: The rise in homosexuality and the rise in the struggle of women. They say that in pre-feudal times homosexuality was a sexual practice, but during feudalism it came to mean the social relationship between men in the organizations that sprang up at that time--the guilds, the knighthood, the church. Homosexual relations, say the Red Women's Detachment, were the basis for the existence of these organizations and the predominant form of homosexual relationship under feudalism and imperialism is one in which one man is dominant and one submissive or passive. Accompanying the rise in male-dominated social organizations during feudalism was the greatest slaughter and oppression of women in history--the witch hunts. The Red Women's Detachment sees the same thing happening (that is the rise in homosexuality and the increased oppression of women) in contemporary society. They see such homosexual relations in German, Italian and Japanese fascism and the native Amerikan fascism of the KKK and minutemen. The analogous rise in the oppression of women is what the Red Women's Detachment is afraid will happen if we do not stop the spread of homosexuality. The Gay Liberation Front, as a new organization of homosexuals is part of the present rise in homosexuality and must also be stopped. But I don't think the Red Women's Detachment's definition of homosexuality as a social phenomenon applies to the Gay Liberation Front. Gay Liberation Front is an organization of people (men and women, unlike the males-only organizations of feudalism) who are defined as homosexual because .of our sexual orientation. It may be homosexual in the social sense also in that the members relate to one another, but it has a definite sexual base. Gay Liberation Front is different in another way also. It does not wield the power that the feudal organizations did. They were the structures around which feudal society revolved. Out of all the words that could be used to describe a male supremacist society such as feudalism, the word "homosexual" seems to have been chosen by the Red Women's Detachment to aid their argument against Gay Liberation. The analogy may hold true if you stick to the social definition of homosexuality in both eras. Then the guilds etc. become analogous to the male dominated power structures of our society. But Gay Liberation Front in that it is not part of the power structure and not homosexual in the same sense is not to be feared in the same way. The Red Women's Detachment is not just saying that there is a similarity between feudalism and contemporary society, they are say-ing that gay liberation is being promoted by Imperialism and that it is a tool of the ruling classes to put down the revolutionary potential of the feminist movement. They arrive at this connection between gay liberation Front and the ruling class by a shabby use of Marxian economics. The predominant homesexual-feudal relationship, according to the Red Women's Detachment is dominant male/sub-missive partner, with the junior partner performing unpaid slave labor for the other. "The class role of the headmaster towards his pupil, the army officer towards his orderly, the older 'auntie' or 'queen' towards 'the inevitably younger men' is the same as the husband towards the wife. In all these cases the basis of the relationship is unpaid slave labor 8 VOL. 1, No, 4 AIN'T I