It has been a crazy year, forget a crazy transition from the 20th to the 21st century as we careen into the digital and globalizing world with its watershed changes in technology, automation, and communications. But nowhere is this more evident than in the realm of gender relations and the cultural signifiers that help to drive them. And all of these changes are taking place in an advanced Capitalist Patriarchal society where Capitalism and Patriarchy have merged since the patriarchal constructs are so useful to capitalist goals.
In the advanced industrial countries, technological changes such as the development of birth control, cloning, computers, robots, and the internet have resulted in the need for less physical labor and less human labor period. In the broader picture this only minimally changes the gender dynamics of the majority of the world’s population (the woman who spends six hours a day hauling water) but the dominant culture always sets the agenda and is the portent of things to come.
Not only have these technological developments continued to push women into the formal wage labor market in increasing numbers, but have significantly altered the role of reproduction of the workforce in the home. Even while the question of reproductive rights (including the right to abortion and birth control) is just beginning to be confronted in some countries and is facing a backlash in advanced countries like America, the focus of women’s demands today has shifted away from the causative issue of reproductive rights to dealing with the more symptomatic issue of violence against women worldwide. It isn’t clear to me yet whether the shift in focus is actually women’s choice. Is it because we are actually well on our way to winning our reproductive rights or is it because the capitalist system no longer needs as many of us to function as reproductive workers? This year millions of women came out into the streets in larger numbers than ever before. But what are our demands and where are they taking us? As a catalyst to start the conservation, let’s consider the following recent examples through the lens of cultural signifiers:
The Pink Pussy Hat
Women are running around in the streets by the millions wearing hand knitted pink pussy hats that are supposed to represent our vaginas, as a response to our ersatz President’s comment that “you can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.” A bunch of women knitters (practicing a traditional female task) got together and knitted some hats to protest sexual harassment, sexual abuse and other forms of violence against women. The symbol spoke to many women and it soon became the symbol of the new movement against one of the oldest and most normalized abuses women face.
Some women have interpreted the “pink” as representing the color of women’s vaginas, causing a number of women to refuse to wear them because they excluded women of color and trans women because women of color don’t have pink pussies and trans women’s vaginas are shaped differently (point well taken). Others thought it represented the traditional color used by society to separate girls (pink) from boys(blue). But even that distinction isn’t as traditional as people think.
According to Jeanne Maglaty of the Smithsonian, the two colors were not promoted as gender signifiers until just before World War One. The social convention of 1884, when FDR was photographed at age 2 1/2, dictated that boys wore dresses until age 6 or 7, also the time when their flowing locks were sheared. Franklin’s all white dress was considered gender-neutral. What was once a matter of practicality—you dress your baby in white dresses and diapers; white cotton can be bleached—became a matter of ‘Oh my God, if I dress my baby in the wrong color or thing, they’ll grow up “perverted.”
To be clear, segregation of sexes in both production and reproduction has been with us since the beginning of recorded history in one form or another. In more recent examples, when Europeans arrived in the United States, they brought with them segregated job categories, whether on the farm or in cities; when unions first arrived from Europe in the 1770s, they were also segregated and remained so until the 1960s, for the most part, and are still somewhat defacto segregated today. The sexual division of labor in the African American community is culturally less patriarchal, both due to the matriarchal cultures which thrive in Africa and the history of African American slavery which distorted the traditional patriarchal and class relations of the dominant European culture in the African American community. We will try to be sensitive to this distinction throughout the discussion.
So what caused the need to “color code” the sexes?
According to Marx and Alexandria Kollontai (the most well known feminist theorist of the Russian revolution), Patriarchy would only be completely eliminated when there was a class revolution that would end Capitalism and private property so that the workers would have sufficient control over the resources of the state to provide all the social needs of society. However, they also believed that as women entered the capitalist workforce, they would be “freed” from many of the constraints of the home and nuclear family by having control over their own money and that this would further encourage them into class solidarity with their brothers and husbands. So they –well Kollontai, if not Marx, focused most of their efforts on the class struggle in the wage labor market and those social demands that would most free women to work in the workplace, like childcare and maternity leave.
In fact, when girls left the “home” to enter the public space (boys’ turf), this is exactly what happened. In America in the early 1800s, young girls left the farms to work in the mills and factories in cities where they were unsupervised, even though many of the girls stayed in dormitories. It is well documented in presses of that time that this led to the girls “bad behavior,” that women began to smoke and have “loose” sexual relations – and become involved in public political movements! This so upset the established patriarchal order that there were serious social efforts to reassert the patriarchal culture. Efforts to reinforce the separate roles of men and women occur whenever there is an massive new influx of women into the labor force. For example, up until the industrial revolution, abortion was a common midwifery practice throughout the world . Abortions were not illegal. In the 1840s, the Catholic Church fought strongly to make abortion illegal in the United States and it has been surmised that the this was done to encourage women to go back into their traditional roles as wife and mother in the home. (Similar dynamics have happened wherever women have become involved in the market economy throughout the world – in the maquiladoras of Latin America and the export zones of Asia and the Middle East, right up to this day.)
In the fifty years before World War 1 with the influx of women from Europe into the factories at the height of the industrial revolution, women were aggressively asserting their rights both in the workforce and the political sphere. In the early 1900s women initiated strong workforce actions (i.e., the strike against the garment factories and the Uprising of the 20,000 on the lower east side of New York). At the same time, the fight for women’s suffrage was gaining steam and was finally won in 1920 (even though it still did not apply to black women in the South as segregation still prevented blacks from voting). It was at that time that part of the cultural offensive to divide and conquer the working class was by keeping women in their place.This was when the idea of color-coding the sexes was first seriously floated.
But even when culture powers decided to “code” people more blatantly, how such coding was defined went through a number of permutations, so there is little essentialism in the color itself, though plenty in the underlying concept. A June 1918 infant clothing trade publication noted “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”
Today’s color dictate wasn’t established until the 1940s, after WW2 when society “needed” to return women to their “rightful” place in the home after they had taken over the factory jobs to support the men who had gone to fight the war. Many women had also joined the military and, although they were segregated and kept in support roles, their experiences abroad during the war liberated them in the sense of what their roles could be in life (black soldiers faced a similar racial awakening which was a catalyst for the Civil Rights movement upon their return.) After WW2 advertisers and merchandisers mounted a massive campaign to return women to their role as housewife and mother, part of which was using color coding.
So the baby boomers were raised in gender-specific clothing with pink for girls and blue for boys. The color could have gone either way. Boys dressed like their fathers, girls like their mothers. Girls had to wear dresses to school, though unadorned styles and tomboy play clothes were acceptable. Interestingly, boys couldn’t wear dresses (its ok for a girl to want to be like the superior boy, but if a boy wants to give up his power by dressing like a girl, he is betraying the master race and they will punish him for it). In 1959 Barbie appeared as pink’s most admirable promoter.
When the women’s liberation arrived in the mid-1960s and continued into the 1970s, with its anti-feminine, anti-fashion message, the unisex look became the rage—but completely reversed from the time of young Franklin Roosevelt. Now young girls were dressing in masculine—or at least unfeminine—styles, devoid of gender hints. In the 1970s, the Sears and Roebuck catalog pictured no pink toddler clothing for two years.
But when the movement lost its robustness, younger women started to revert to more feminine styles but kept the newly opened job options.The question is why?
One explanation is that there was a rise in consumerism among children at that time. According to child development experts, children are just becoming conscious of their gender between ages 3 and 4, and they do not realize it’s permanent until age 6 or 7. At the same time, however, they are the subjects of sophisticated and pervasive advertising that tends to reinforce social conventions. So they think, for example, that what makes someone female is having long hair and a dress.
Another explanation is now that young women have easier access to better paying previously male identified jobs, they don’t need to be so strident and single-minded in their pursuit for equality and that it is possible to keep their feminine identity and still have more substantial jobs and wages (which might even be helped a little if they wore a little cleavage to that law interview with an older male).
During this whole period another cultural feminist perspective developed which encouraged the promotion of the traditional woman’s skills and values of caring and nurturing (and decorating and bright colors) as our future vision, replacing traditional machismo. The only problem I have with this version is that along with the nurturing and caring, they also seem to enshrine the female roles of motherhood and the passivity of “nice” girls. I seem to remember Michelle Obama talking about how its all about getting men to respect and treat women nicely. Like if we just asked. Given some of the laws that have been passed against women in the past -- like don’t beat your wife after 10pm cause it makes too much noise. Or don’t beat your wife with anything thicker than your thumb-- I seriously doubt that will work. That has never been the way we got change in the past and I doubt if it will happen without some discomfort among the genders in the future.
So is a stereotypical Barbie female surgeon a feminist? Or are we still missing something? While I can see why running around in colorless practical clothes might be boring and alienating, I think we have to consider why women in the 1960s and 70s did it. Part of our presentation at the time was about downplaying our role as the “beautiful” sex so we could be seen for having a brain. That should be a no brainer (no pun intended) but that has been the age old ideological dichotomy in our history. Men get the brains to run society while we get to be sexual, a more lowly animal-like trait. Like a good pet to please and serve men. Why should a certain sexualized stereotype of women as either sweet, pure, nurturing but passive (the Madonna) or conversely, wildly sexualized for the men’s pleasure (the Whore, again passive – she does what she is paid for, though at least it is her own money) be the major representations we are allowed. Madonna became popular in the 80s by combining these contradictions, but still not creating a model outside these bounds.
The obsession with fulfilling our designated Barbie model of beauty forced women to be a one type fits all, causing other related effects. Barbie is white, blonde and amazingly skinny and had feet that are made to permanently wear six inch heels. Even when they started making some “black” Barbies, the body types were still only one type. Women of color were automatically disadvantaged. Women who are slightly overweight or stocky are viewed in surveys as lazy, slothful, etc. while men who are slightly overweight are viewed as more dynamic and forceful. And how does this effect their being hired or fired (it does)?
The question most young women seem to be posing today is why can’t we have it all (the power of our sexuality through our looks and the power of our brain)? I am one of those 60’s feminists and I think it was only through the method to our madness that we were able to open up the job markets women now enjoy (to the extent they have opened up) but has it really brought us equality and respect? Many of the women we see in power now did not get there by sucking up (even figuratively, if not literally). But even they usually have to put on a signifier (pearl earrings, low pumps, a tailored skirt) to show they are trying to fit into their “role”. Young people today seem to address the problem by having gender fluid roles(as did some of their lesbian feminist and lgbtq for runners in the 60s). You can either do this by being neutrally androgynous with no specific gender indicators or mixing it up (combining beards and earrings or combining dresses and combat boots)—and any sex can don any combinations. Do we really need that binary?
Does society have another reason that those who adopt the female gendered sex role must be kept in a submissive and separate role?
The “Me Too” and “Time’s Up” Movements Walk the Red Carpet at the Golden Globe Awards
Under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Title VII, the concept of a hostile work environment makes it illegal to promote any sexual activity in the workplace that would make subordinates feel pressured to respond in a sexual manner(even if some of the subordinates would be willing participants. Corporations and political campaigns have had to pay out millions of dollars in damages and settlements that require that the victim cannot publicly discuss the case. Even more frequently, women who file charges are fired and have a hard time finding other work. Until the last couple of years, most of these cases created as much sympathy for the men charged as for the women who were harassed because this behavior has been normalized over the centuries.
A few years back, a lawyer professor Anita Hill, was part of a widely televised Supreme Court hearing to nominate a justice to the Supreme Court. She testified that Clarence Thomas, the nominee, had harassed her when she worked for him suggesting that his attitudes on women made him unfit to judge cases on women’s rights that might come before the Supreme Court. Thomas was voted onto the Supreme Court and Anita Hill was driven out of Washington labeled as a “crazy lady” in the local press. Bill Clinton was almost impeached over the Monica Lewinsky case, but not because he broke the law but because he got caught. He went on to win a second term as president. After he was reelected, Hillary sat stoically in the balcony, standing by her man, listening to his second State of the Union message.
We can probably thank Donald Trump (and Hillary, but we’re only allowed to put her in a footnote) for the tide turning. In 2016, when Trump was caught bragging on tape about his sexual misconduct during his presidential campaign, a number of women came forward to legally accuse him. At the same time, the powerful Conservative Fox News Executive, Roger Ailes, and his right wing Newscaster, Bill O’Reilly were fired for sexual harassment and abuse. The fact that the abuse had been going on for a number of years and hundreds of millions were paid to cover it up, was the last straw. Women suddenly started speaking out.
Social activist Tarana Burke created the phrase “Me Too” on a MySpace in 2006 to promote
empowerment for women of color who have experienced sexual abuse, particularly within underprivileged communities. She was inspired by a young 13 year old girl who told Tarana about her experience with sexual abuse. Afterwards Tarana said she wished that at that time she had just told the girl “Me too.”
Women (and some men)found the site and started relating their stories. Suddenly people began to realize that these were not isolated cases of rich and powerful men abusing their positions, but that every woman (and many others placed in the female gendered “role”) had a story, that sexual harassment and abuse were part of the accepted behavior of the male role in general to a greater or lesser degree. In fact, it is not really something we just discovered if we’re honest, but something that we already knew. The societal complicity and denial was finally being exposed. Big time. But only in part.
When Harvey Weinstein, a well respected liberal Hollywood mogul became the next powerful figure to be fired due to numerous well-documented allegations of sexual abuse, the Hollywood left stepped up to the plate. A number of Hollywood celebrities started Time’s Up, a foundation to provide legal support to victims of abuse. They also coordinated an action to support less well known victims in other, less glorified areas.
On January 7th, some of the most famous and perfectly sexualized and commodified Hollywood divas such as Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep and Oprah Winfrey, walked down the red carpet at the Golden Globe awards in black dresses, hand in hand, with lesser known but longtime women’s rights and community organizers, to bring attention to the sexual abuse endemic among not only actresses at the hands of Hollywood moguls such as Harvey Weinstein, but less well known victims.
Rose McGowen from Charmed, who was one of the first to blow the whistle on Weinstein and was subsequently blacklisted from the industry, called the event a commercial travesty, but I saw it as the revenge of the part-time unemployed waitresses/actresses of yore subject to the cruel male casting director’s demand of sex or they wouldn’t work, who had clawed their way to the top by any means necessary, and who now had the power to bring attention to and demand change, not only for themselves, but for their sisters.
Among the women they brought to the stage that night were:
Tarana Burke, creator of “Me Too”.
Rosa Clemente, a community organizer focused on political prisoners, voter engagement and Puerto Rican independence,
Ai-jen Poo, who organizes immigrant women workers and is director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (Remember Arnold Schwarenegger, Ethel Kennedy and their live-in maid, Mildred Baena or Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then head of the IMF indicted for sexual assault and attempted rape by Nafissatou Diallo, the maid at his hotel, charges only dropped when he settled for 1.5 million),
Monica Ramirez who fights sexual violence against farm workers (a campaign begun among the United Farmworkers over 30 years ago in the fields).
Whether in the home or on the job, among the more glamorous actresses and models or more humble house cleaners or field workers, the story is the same.
Still, something felt off. The stars were still wearing masks of makeup and were adorned with jewelry if somewhat subdued for the occasion. Many claimed they were unaware of Weinstein’s 30 year history of abusive behavior until it was publicly exposed. Call me cynical but, given the casting couch culture, I find this difficult to believe and feel that it has all the usual marks of willful denial until people get caught. Also, no one was copping to being a “Me Too” victim. I noticed a tendency for people to blur together the more everyday incidents of sexual harassment and down and out rape. I think this occurs because we are still somewhat uncomfortable with the facts in these cases. First, the brutality of the actual crime of rape. And that we will still be seen as asking for it by our dress or as opportunistic if we let it happen “willingly”.
Three women wore more colorful sexualized Hollywood Awards gowns. Barbara Bianco wore a red gown with a slit up the side and a plunging neckline. When she was called out for it on twitter, she noted that this “shaming” was part of the problem. Model Barbara Meier, who supports the Time’s Up movement but wore a bright colorful gown said that she sees fashion as a form of self-expression. “If we want to be the Golden Globes of the strong women who stand up for their rights, I think, its the wrong way not to wear any sexy clothes anymore or let people take away our joy of showing our personality through fashion … We were fighting a long time to wear what we want to … if we now restrict this because some men can’t control themselves, this is a huge step back...”
Now I know, as these women do, that sexual harassment is not about what you wear, but a way to control and dominate women, to keep them in a subordinate position and that women should be able to wear what we want without getting abused. I’ve been on several slut walks myself. But have we reached the point where, for fear of being shamed as slut whores (the words have now been merged in the modern urban dictionary), we want to deny that we are still being bought and sold as sexual commodities and that we have been, since the first woman was traded for cattle or her father negotiated the dowry with the future in-laws. And until we can admit this aspect of the female gendered role, we will be unable to get to the cause of our abuse.
I was also the surprised reactions I got when I referred to some of the older Divas as comodified sex objects(i.e. they are clearly powerful women admired for their acting and entertainment talents as well as “sex” objects). The point is not,however, how well you fill that role or if you have other talents. All women are considered sex objects or the “beautiful” decorated sex and expected to do it as best we can. Because its not about how beautiful or sexual we really are, but that it is the role consigned to us. The amount of time, energy and money women (young or old) spend decorating ourselves for the presumed pleasure of men, certainly confirms this.
The question is, if originally, this “decoration” was to attract men for reproductive purposes, as reproduction becomes less important, what is the purpose of this “decoration”? I would suggest that if men are supposedly given the “brains” so they can serve and rule public society, in patriarchal (and our current) ideology it is the female gendered role to serve the men that run society not only as physical reproducers, but in all our other reproductive roles --house cleaner, sexual server, etc. So we are not marketing ourselves directly to the public society, but to specific men. And this is of major consequence. It puts women in the position of only gaining power, money and the means of survival through men.
I don’t want to come off as anti-sex. In a non-capitalist, more socialist society where everything wasn’t bought and sold, we would value sexual interactions as a necessary social release where we mutually and intimately give ourselves to each other. And we wouldn’t end up in the position where there is a subordinate party, (usually the female-gendered or younger, more vulnerable person) who due to their economic dependency, does all the serving and giving while the dominant (usually male gendered person) can just literally stick it to the other person and then walk away.
Interestingly, men also decorated themselves up until about the 1830s — the same time when people began to feel the need to strengthen the sex role division as a means of “control” over women as they entered the public workforce with the onset of the industrial revolution and became more independent.
It is also important to note that a main part of the function of women in Hollywood is not that of just any woman, but to promote the ideal sex-goddess model of the female-gendered role. In this sense Oprah is a particularly significant contradiction because her relevance to women is a little different. It has several factors. Oprah really was born to modest means and worked herself up on her own which women relate to as her independence. It is also important to note that her famed television show began right after she appeared in the movie “The Color Purple” in which she played a strong matriarchal women whose role was to challenge the patriarchal values of the older generation (she and her sister clan refused to let her husband beat her, then she was brought down by being brutally abused herself (in this case by the white man)and finally stood up for her daughter-in-law against her daughter-in-law’s sexually abusive father. Not only that, with her constant and public weight loss struggles in spite of her successes, she epitomizes all women trying desperately to fit into the “ideal” role.
One last jolt in the award show which put a dent in the masks we all hide behind was when Frances McDormand, walked out in front of the cameras unadorned, no makeup. The shock was visible to the women I was with, and the response from us was unadorned gratitude – a real woman representing as herself! What made it even more meaningful was Frances McDormand was the actress who played in Three Billboards, the story of a mother trying to get justice for her daughter, who was raped while dying -- an act so common on a Saturday night in a small town when a bunch of guys have a few and are out stumbling around looking for a good time and stumble onto a woman, walking home alone from work at night that its hardly noticed.
Once again, the Golden Globe action this year was one the best uses of bourgeois women’s power I can think of, but it still doesn’t get to the cause of why women find ourselves in this position – unless, hey, its just biology and therefore, maybe modifiable, but still instinctual and, hey, it’s just really boys being boys.
To Be Continued Next Month:
What are the causes of sexual harassment? Why is sexual harassment important to the maintenance of the nuclear family? Why is the nuclear family critical to the maintenance of patriarchal capitalism?
What are the best tactics for fighting gender inequalities? What are the different approaches to fighting gender oppression? Socialist Feminist vs. Lesbian Feminist vs. LGBTQ?