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Episode 69: No More Girl Bosses · Political Junkie Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_02: On October 12,
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SPEAKER_02: 2020,
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SPEAKER_02: Amy Coney Barrett,
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SPEAKER_02: a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit,
0:07
was sworn in for her testimony before the Republican Majority
0:11
Senate Judiciary Committee.
0:14
If you are a Democrat and a feminist,
0:16
it was a galling moment for so many reasons.
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SPEAKER_02: First,
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SPEAKER_02: the United States was on the brink of an election,
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SPEAKER_02: and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,
0:25
who had denied Merrick Garland a hearing in the final year of
0:28
the Obama administration,
0:30
SPEAKER_02: had contradicted himself,
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SPEAKER_02: handing President Donald Trump his third Supreme Court nomination,
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SPEAKER_02: one that would bend the court to the right for decades.
0:40
SPEAKER_02: But it was also galling because it was our seat,
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SPEAKER_02: one occupied by Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
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SPEAKER_02: a pioneer of feminist jurisprudence,
0:48
and a woman who had carved a narrow path of rights for women in
0:52
the 1970s by
0:54
SPEAKER_02: building case law around the idea of gender discrimination.
0:58
So many women like me had careers in economic security because
1:02
of Ginsburg and others like her.
1:04
SPEAKER_02: In fact,
1:05
Ginsburg became a law professor and then a civil rights
1:08
litigator at the ACLU because,
1:12
SPEAKER_02: despite her stellar credentials from Cornell,
1:14
SPEAKER_02: Harvard,
1:15
SPEAKER_02: and Columbia,
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SPEAKER_02: she couldn't get a job at a law firm.
1:20
SPEAKER_02: Amy Coney Barrett was where she was because of Ginsburg,
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SPEAKER_02: but also because,
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SPEAKER_02: like Ginsburg,
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SPEAKER_02: she had a husband,
1:28
SPEAKER_02: Jesse,
1:29
SPEAKER_02: who supported her career.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: As I said when I was nominated to serve as a justice,
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SPEAKER_00: I'm used to being in a group of nine,
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SPEAKER_00: my family.
1:39
Nothing is more important to me and I'm very proud to have them
1:42
behind me.
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SPEAKER_00: My husband Jesse and I have been married for 21 years.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: He has been a selfless and wonderful partner every step of the way.
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SPEAKER_00: I once asked my sister, why do you think marriage is hard?
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SPEAKER_00: People are always saying that.
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SPEAKER_00: I think it's easy.
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And she looked at me and said,
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well,
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maybe you should ask Jesse if he agrees with that.
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I decided not to take her advice because I know that I am far
2:11
luckier in love than I deserve.
2:13
Barrett then went on to say a few sentences about each of her
2:16
seven children.
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SPEAKER_02: It established her credentials as a mother,
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SPEAKER_02: but she failed to mention that she,
2:22
SPEAKER_02: as part of a power couple,
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SPEAKER_02: clearly had lots of household help.
2:26
SPEAKER_02: Instead,
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SPEAKER_02: she attributed her success to her strong belief,
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SPEAKER_02: inculcated by her father,
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SPEAKER_02: that girls and boys were intellectual equals.
2:35
I remember preparing for a grade school spelling bee against a
2:38
boy in my class,
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SPEAKER_00: and to boost my confidence,
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SPEAKER_00: my dad saying,
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SPEAKER_00: anything boys can do,
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SPEAKER_00: girls can do better.
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SPEAKER_00: And at least as I remember it, I spelled my way to victory.
2:49
SPEAKER_02: Confirmed to the court,
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SPEAKER_02: Amy Coney Barrett then voted to overturn Roe v.
2:53
SPEAKER_02: Wade,
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stripping the right to reproductive freedom from millions of
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working-class women,
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many of whom are doing care work for the children and parents
3:01
of other white women,
3:03
SPEAKER_02: conservative and liberal.
3:05
SPEAKER_02: Because let's get real.
3:07
The vast majority of women who are held up as exemplars of the
3:10
feminist meritocracy,
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SPEAKER_02: from the executive who works down the hall from you to Sheryl Sandberg,
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SPEAKER_02: have squads of well-paid,
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SPEAKER_02: moderately paid,
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SPEAKER_02: and poorly paid people caring for their homes,
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SPEAKER_02: children,
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SPEAKER_02: and elderly parents.
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SPEAKER_02: Door dashers shop for them.
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SPEAKER_02: Amazon warehouse workers stuff clothes,
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SPEAKER_02: toys,
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SPEAKER_02: and nutritional supplements into boxes to be shipped to them.
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SPEAKER_02: Grubhubbers deliver dinner made by line cooks.
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SPEAKER_02: What does girl boss feminism have to say about this?
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SPEAKER_02: Not much.
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SPEAKER_02: And now that Donald Trump is back in power,
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we've got more white conservative women telling us that women
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are full members of
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SPEAKER_02: the meritocracy.
3:51
SPEAKER_02: And Republicans have Barrett, Ivanka Trump, and Pam Bondi to prove it.
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SPEAKER_02: That's why I wanted to talk to feminist philosopher Serene Cater,
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SPEAKER_02: the author of Faux Feminism,
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SPEAKER_02: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop.
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Cater wants us to revisit the question of which women succeed
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and which ones are
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SPEAKER_02: forever invisible,
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SPEAKER_02: what feminism is and what it could be if it weren't so very white.
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SPEAKER_02: Join Serene and me for this episode of Why Now?
4:21
SPEAKER_02: where history and politics meet the challenge of today.
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SPEAKER_02: And I'm your host,
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SPEAKER_02: Claire Potter,
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SPEAKER_02: Professor of History Emeritus at the New School for Social Research,
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SPEAKER_02: a contributing editor at Public Seminar,
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SPEAKER_02: and the author of The Political Junkie Substack.
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SPEAKER_02: This is Episode 69, No More Girlbosses.
5:04
welcome to the show serene thank you so much for having me
5:07
claire i didn't tell you
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this when we spoke before but tenured radical was a huge part
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of my early career
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life and so i am very delighted to get to meet you and speak
5:16
with you today
5:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that was a long time ago and a lot of fun.
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SPEAKER_02: And boy, has technology changed since then?
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SPEAKER_03: Yes, it has.
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SPEAKER_02: And I guess I want to start with this concept of freedom feminism,
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SPEAKER_02: which is really a core concept in the book.
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SPEAKER_02: What is freedom feminism?
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SPEAKER_03: Freedom feminism,
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which I say is kind of the idea that is at the root of many bad
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forms of feminism,
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SPEAKER_03: like white feminism and neoliberal feminism,
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is basically the idea that feminism is a movement to free
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individual women from
5:51
SPEAKER_03: social expectations.
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SPEAKER_03: That's kind of the technical academic way to put it.
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But we see traces of freedom feminism everywhere in our
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everyday language.
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SPEAKER_03: I think a lot of people,
6:04
SPEAKER_03: when they come to feminism,
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hear that feminism is about breaking out of social roles that
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people expect you to adopt.
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SPEAKER_03: or defying expectations.
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And I think that's been a really big part of mainstream
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feminist discourse recently.
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And I'm trying to say in the book that we need to remember that
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feminism is not
6:25
SPEAKER_03: fundamentally that,
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SPEAKER_03: because if it's fundamentally that,
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SPEAKER_03: feminism isn't a movement that really is about deep social change.
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SPEAKER_02: Let's get to white feminism because it's in the title.
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SPEAKER_02: And I think a lot of people are going to look at this and say,
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SPEAKER_02: oh boy,
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SPEAKER_02: I want to know more about that.
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SPEAKER_02: What is white feminism?
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SPEAKER_02: Is it the same as freedom feminism or is it something a little different?
6:46
SPEAKER_03: Something a little different.
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SPEAKER_03: A big part of what I try to do in the book is to say,
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SPEAKER_03: look,
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SPEAKER_03: if you are deeply involved in feminism,
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SPEAKER_03: and I think especially if you're a millennial or younger,
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SPEAKER_03: you have heard terms like white feminism.
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I know that there's kind of some bad types of feminism that you
7:00
want to avoid.
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And so what I try to do in the book is to say,
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well,
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what's the moral core?
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What's the bad idea that we need to break up with to make
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feminism better?
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SPEAKER_03: And that's why I kind of coined the idea of freedom feminism.
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SPEAKER_03: But I think white feminism often takes the form of freedom feminism.
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SPEAKER_03: But at bottom, white feminism is...
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an approach to feminism that prioritizes the interests and the
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ideas of elite women,
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SPEAKER_03: especially white women of the upper and upper middle classes.
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SPEAKER_03: And so for example, people may have
7:37
heard that people's first image when they hear of feminism
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might be the image of
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this bored housewife in the 1960s and might think that what
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feminism is about is
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SPEAKER_03: the idea that liberation comes from a career.
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That's partly a white feminist idea because it comes from
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taking as your central
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SPEAKER_03: case of oppression the image of a person who is already quite affluent,
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SPEAKER_03: even if they were also a victim of sexist oppression.
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I want to take us back to that moment in the 1960s and maybe
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the 1970s too.
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SPEAKER_02: I probably didn't tell you,
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SPEAKER_02: but I'm writing a biography of Susan Brown Miller,
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SPEAKER_02: so I am heavily into white feminism.
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And it seems to me that one thing that was core to the white
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women who were part of
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that movement was their belief that they could establish a set
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of universal
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SPEAKER_02: principles
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SPEAKER_02: that meant it didn't really matter that they were white.
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What mattered was that there were these sort of core structures
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of oppression that
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SPEAKER_02: they could identify,
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SPEAKER_02: and then all women could use that as a route into their own liberation.
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SPEAKER_02: Why was that a bad idea?
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SPEAKER_02: I love this question.
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SPEAKER_03: I think it was a bad idea,
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SPEAKER_03: not so much because of the belief in universal principles,
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SPEAKER_03: but based on
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the belief that we could find out what the universal principles
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were or that the
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universal type of oppression we wanted to fight was by focusing
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on people who are
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SPEAKER_03: the most privileged people in a group.
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SPEAKER_03: So in the case of affluent housewives,
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SPEAKER_03: right,
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SPEAKER_03: I mean,
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SPEAKER_03: this was less the case in the 1960s than it is now,
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but certainly one needs a level of economic security in order
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to not be able to
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SPEAKER_03: work for an
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SPEAKER_03: income and to live in that gender arrangement.
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SPEAKER_03: Meanwhile,
9:26
SPEAKER_03: black women and working class women,
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the way that sexist oppression manifested and manifests in
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their lives is not
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SPEAKER_03: primarily by being prevented from working outside the home.
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SPEAKER_03: So I think that was a mistaken approach, basically because it
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took the experience of the most privileged group of people
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within the group and
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SPEAKER_03: said fighting for them will kind of trickle down to everyone.
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SPEAKER_03: And I don't think that that's actually the right way to do politics.
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One of the things I really try to emphasize in the book is the
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black feminist
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message that focusing on the most vulnerable people in your
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group is much more
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SPEAKER_03: likely to trickle up than the opposite strategy.
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SPEAKER_02: And that's a message that was really emphasized by Black Lives Matter,
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SPEAKER_02: which was created by not just women of color,
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SPEAKER_02: but queer women and trans women and so on and so forth.
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And so that reach to the margins for something that will work
10:21
for everyone is a key concept.
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It seems to me another key concept that has been part of Black
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feminism right from
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SPEAKER_02: the get-go is the emphasis on community rather than the individual.
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SPEAKER_02: Can you talk about that a little bit?
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SPEAKER_03: I love that you saw that in the book because that's a big part of where I
10:38
personally come to the book is through my experience as a woman
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of color being very
10:44
SPEAKER_03: deeply feminist,
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but sometimes alienated by strains of feminism that say
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feminism is about being all
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SPEAKER_03: out there for yourself.
10:53
SPEAKER_03: And I think one of the worries about that kind of feminism,
10:57
especially when we live in a white supremacist society and in
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global colonialism
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SPEAKER_03: and under capitalism,
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SPEAKER_03: is that those things are so easily,
11:07
this kind of individualism is so easily used against
11:10
communities of color and discrimination.
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SPEAKER_03: to support capitalism.
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SPEAKER_03: I talk a lot about,
11:16
SPEAKER_03: and I'm a scholar of the Global South,
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SPEAKER_03: and I think this is really like the lab where you see this,
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SPEAKER_03: where if I ask people to think about like,
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SPEAKER_03: how do you end the oppression of girls in the Global South,
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SPEAKER_03: black and brown girls,
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SPEAKER_03: ultimately the story you hear is,
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SPEAKER_03: well,
11:31
they need to earn an income and they need to separate from
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their family and their
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SPEAKER_03: community and their tradition.
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And that can have all of these other dark sides that people
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don't think about in advance,
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SPEAKER_03: including in an extreme form.
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SPEAKER_03: For example, the arguments in favor of the U.S.
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SPEAKER_03: invasion of Afghanistan had a flavor of,
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SPEAKER_03: well,
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isn't it just better for women if Islam is removed from the
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world or if we reduce
11:58
SPEAKER_03: women's attachments to Islam,
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even if it's also the case that the Taliban was and is a
12:04
disaster for women,
12:05
SPEAKER_03: a
12:05
A discourse that tells women that separating from their
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communities is going to be
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SPEAKER_03: the path to ending their sexist oppression,
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especially when imperialism and white society don't necessarily
12:18
have their
12:19
SPEAKER_03: interests in mind,
12:20
SPEAKER_03: isn't going to be a path to liberation.
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SPEAKER_02: And I would point our listeners to a book I like very much.
12:26
SPEAKER_02: I'd be interested to know what you think about,
12:28
SPEAKER_02: which is Joan Scott's Politics of the Veil,
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in which she talks about the mandate in France for women not to
12:37
cover their heads.
12:38
SPEAKER_02: And that produced a really...
12:42
complex,
12:43
nasty debate within feminism in which white feminists were saying,
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this is oppression.
12:48
SPEAKER_02: And Muslim women were saying, wait a second, this is a choice.
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And I actually want to choose to make it and it might make me
12:55
safer and happier if I did.
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SPEAKER_02: Can you talk a little bit about that kind of intractable debate?
13:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
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so one of the things that I kind of believe is that we need to
13:05
move away from
13:07
conversations about whether things are choices because that
13:10
kind of misses the fact
13:12
that we're all making choices within structures that can be
13:14
oppressive and focus
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SPEAKER_03: directly on questions about whether things cause and reinforce hierarchy,
13:21
SPEAKER_03: like structural hierarchy among genders,
13:24
SPEAKER_03: but also racial,
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SPEAKER_03: imperial,
13:27
SPEAKER_03: class hierarchies.
13:28
And so I think one way to think about countries that have and
13:32
localities that have
13:33
outlawed some form of hijab is that they are really focused on
13:37
this freedom
13:38
SPEAKER_03: feminist narrative that says tradition is women's enemy.
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SPEAKER_03: They associate wearing hijab with this flattened out idea of tradition,
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SPEAKER_03: even though it's actually the case that
13:50
SPEAKER_03: The politics of hijab are very complicated,
13:52
SPEAKER_03: and Muslim women don't all agree about the hijab,
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SPEAKER_03: nor do they all agree about whether the hijab is oppressive.
14:00
People have a variety of different reasons for wearing hijab,
14:03
but for white feminists,
14:06
SPEAKER_03: And freedom feminists,
14:07
the idea that tradition is the enemy is such a strong view that
14:11
it eclipses any
14:12
SPEAKER_03: claims about oppression.
14:15
And then if you add to that the fact that they're not aware or
14:18
have not fully
14:19
SPEAKER_03: processed the fact that Muslim women are facing intersecting oppressions,
14:23
SPEAKER_03: right,
14:24
like the oppression of racism and imperialism and the
14:27
oppression of gender.
14:28
they are not even registering the ways in which bans on hijab
14:32
end up serving as
14:33
SPEAKER_03: pretext for deep marginalization of Muslim communities.
14:37
SPEAKER_03: The extreme example that I brought up,
14:40
SPEAKER_03: but the real example was of the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
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SPEAKER_03: But I think the main effect that bans on hijab
14:47
actually have is one of spreading these pernicious stereotypes
14:51
of Muslims as of
14:53
Islam as a religion that is defined by gender inequality by
14:58
making it seem
14:58
SPEAKER_03: impossible to advocate for gender equality in Muslim terms,
15:03
but Muslim feminists all over the world are advocating for
15:06
gender equality in
15:07
SPEAKER_03: Muslim terms.
15:08
And excluding Muslim women from the professions in many of
15:12
these places,
15:12
right?
15:12
Like in Quebec,
15:14
the veiling ban says you can't hold a public office while
15:18
you're veiled.
15:19
And being a lawyer,
15:21
being a professor,
15:22
being a teacher,
15:23
these are all public offices.
15:25
The actual effect of these laws has been further
15:29
marginalization and harm of Muslim women.
15:32
People aren't able to register it that way because they think
15:35
feminism is about
15:36
SPEAKER_03: freedom from tradition and that and full stop.
15:39
SPEAKER_03: And it's gotten to such a point that now,
15:41
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
15:41
there are more countries and localities where it's illegal to
15:45
wear hijab than there
15:47
SPEAKER_03: are where hijab is compulsory.
15:49
Well,
15:49
and that sets the stage for an even broader,
15:52
broader kind of discrimination.
15:54
I'm thinking about this whole question of choice because one of
15:58
the things we
15:58
SPEAKER_02: haven't talked about yet is conservative feminism,
16:02
SPEAKER_02: which seems like a contradiction in terms,
16:05
but it's really something that emerged in the 1970s in the
16:09
United States around the
16:11
SPEAKER_02: abortion debate.
16:13
SPEAKER_02: And Faye Ginsburg wrote about this, about women in
16:17
SPEAKER_02: I believe it was North Dakota,
16:19
who said actually there should be an abortion ban because
16:22
otherwise women would be
16:24
forced by their husbands and fathers to have abortions that
16:27
they didn't want.
16:28
SPEAKER_02: And they call themselves conservative feminists.
16:31
SPEAKER_02: And we can look back in time and say,
16:32
SPEAKER_02: well,
16:33
there were a range of feminists who were always conservative in
16:36
our terms.
16:36
But this begins to kind of emerge as a brand and it too focuses
16:43
on women's choices.
16:45
So what kinds of choices do conservative feminists want women
16:50
to be able to make?
16:52
A core argument in the book and part of why it's called faux
16:55
feminism is that if we
16:57
SPEAKER_03: don't say that feminism isn't just about individual freedom,
17:01
SPEAKER_03: we will have to say that conservatives are feminists.
17:05
SPEAKER_03: And the book opens with this very
17:08
SPEAKER_03: kind of dark moment that I think many of us will remember,
17:11
SPEAKER_03: which was the confirmation hearing of Amy Coney Barrett.
17:13
SPEAKER_03: And in that moment,
17:15
SPEAKER_03: of course,
17:16
those of us who are feminists know that she was opposed to
17:19
feminism in many ways,
17:22
SPEAKER_03: denying rights to immigrant women.
17:24
She was clearly selected so that she would be the nail in the
17:27
coffin against Roe versus Wade.
17:29
And she,
17:29
in her own personal life,
17:31
was clearly adhering to a very sexist religious doctrine.
17:35
SPEAKER_03: But if you followed the media circus around that moment,
17:39
conservatives were very invested in presenting Amy Coney
17:43
Barrett as a new kind of
17:44
feminist and presenting anybody who would criticize her
17:47
policies even as somebody
17:50
who was not a feminist because they were judging her or because
17:52
they had narrow
17:53
SPEAKER_03: gender roles.
17:54
SPEAKER_03: So in the book,
17:55
SPEAKER_03: for example,
17:55
I talk about how one Republican senator says Democrats are the
18:00
ones who believe
18:01
SPEAKER_03: that only a certain kind of woman
18:04
SPEAKER_03: belongs in this hearing room.
18:06
SPEAKER_03: I feel like it's trying to do two kinds of work.
18:09
SPEAKER_03: It's trying on one hand to be like, yeah, we're feminists.
18:12
SPEAKER_03: We don't believe there's one right way to be a woman.
18:15
SPEAKER_03: And then also to say,
18:18
SPEAKER_03: so if you don't believe that there's a right way to be a woman,
18:22
then how can you criticize somebody for having these
18:25
conservative views about women?
18:27
So I think the real thing that we need to learn about
18:30
conservative feminists is or
18:32
SPEAKER_03: from conservative feminists,
18:34
SPEAKER_03: who I think are fake feminists or faux feminists,
18:38
is that feminism has to stand for something stronger and bigger
18:41
than individual freedom.
18:43
SPEAKER_03: If at the end of the day...
18:45
SPEAKER_03: Part of what it means to understand that society is hierarchical,
18:50
SPEAKER_03: divided into hierarchical structures,
18:53
SPEAKER_03: targets people because of the social groups that they're in,
18:57
SPEAKER_03: like gender and race,
18:58
that part of what it is to recognize that is to recognize that
19:02
you can be a member
19:03
of one of those groups and use your power to choose in ways
19:07
that throw other
19:08
SPEAKER_03: members of your group under the bus.
19:11
I think it's absolutely a political moment where we have to
19:16
understand that,
19:17
SPEAKER_03: partly because of the Amy Coney Barrett's of the world,
19:19
but also because we are seeing all these other faces of
19:22
conservative feminism now,
19:23
SPEAKER_03: like anti-trans people who claim that they're feminists.
19:28
SPEAKER_03: and anti-abortion folks who say that they're feminists.
19:31
SPEAKER_03: If feminism is just about individual choice,
19:34
there's no story to tell there really about why those things
19:39
are not actually gonna
19:41
smash the patriarchy or end white supremacy or stop deep
19:46
economic inequality.
19:48
In a way,
19:48
this faux feminism,
19:50
which calls itself conservative feminism,
19:53
feels itself easily.
19:54
I remember when Donald Trump was giving one of his campaign speeches,
19:59
he said...
19:59
I'm president.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: I want to protect the women of our country.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: They said...
20:12
SPEAKER_01: They said,
20:13
SPEAKER_01: sir,
20:13
SPEAKER_01: I just think it's inappropriate for you to say,
20:15
SPEAKER_01: pay these guys a lot of money.
20:16
SPEAKER_01: Can you believe it?
20:18
SPEAKER_01: I said, well, I'm going to do it whether the women like it or not.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to protect them.
20:24
SPEAKER_02: And that isn't feminism.
20:27
SPEAKER_02: It's patriarchy.
20:28
SPEAKER_02: Right.
20:29
SPEAKER_02: So what is the work we need to do as feminists,
20:33
SPEAKER_02: you and me,
20:34
SPEAKER_02: to uncover and counteract these faux feminisms?
20:41
I think the biggest thing is to recognize that feminism is and
20:45
always has been a
20:47
SPEAKER_03: movement against hierarchy and a movement for a group of people.
20:51
SPEAKER_03: And I think once we put those two things into place,
20:55
it becomes a lot easier to fight against a lot of the
20:59
conservative and reactionary
21:00
SPEAKER_03: forces that we're fighting against now.
21:02
Because I think when we recognize that feminism is about a
21:05
group of people,
21:06
SPEAKER_03: then it becomes much easier to raise the question,
21:10
SPEAKER_03: like,
21:11
is the activism that I'm pursuing actually going to advance the
21:15
interests of this group?
21:17
SPEAKER_03: Or is it going to advance the interests of me and women?
21:21
SPEAKER_03: those two things often come apart.
21:23
SPEAKER_03: Another thing I think we can see once we see that,
21:25
SPEAKER_03: especially when we recognize that there's more than one hierarchy,
21:28
SPEAKER_03: like there's race hierarchy,
21:30
SPEAKER_03: class hierarchy,
21:32
SPEAKER_03: in addition to patriarchy,
21:34
SPEAKER_03: then I think we can also get the Black feminist advice and follow it,
21:38
SPEAKER_03: which is you focus on the vulnerable people in your group,
21:41
SPEAKER_03: and you think about what would lift them up.
21:43
SPEAKER_03: And I think,
21:43
SPEAKER_03: I know you were saying it's easy to expose conservative feminists,
21:47
SPEAKER_03: and I think sometimes it is,
21:48
SPEAKER_03: and sometimes it isn't,
21:49
SPEAKER_03: right?
21:49
SPEAKER_03: Like,
21:50
One of the things that I think is a real challenge in our era
21:53
is that there's
21:54
SPEAKER_03: increased blurring,
21:55
SPEAKER_03: right?
21:56
Like,
21:56
I think in the 1970s,
21:58
people kind of knew what Phyllis Schlafly was.
22:01
SPEAKER_03: Now we have a group of,
22:03
SPEAKER_03: like,
22:03
SPEAKER_03: people who really are very close to the border between,
22:06
SPEAKER_03: like,
22:07
SPEAKER_03: what is the girl boss?
22:08
SPEAKER_03: Is the girl boss a feminist or is she a capitalist reactionary?
22:13
I think the answer is that they landed on both sides and it was
22:17
hard to tell the difference.
22:18
SPEAKER_03: And I think especially in this political moment where,
22:22
SPEAKER_03: for example,
22:23
we think about all of the horrific anti-trans executive orders
22:27
that we have seen
22:28
SPEAKER_03: President Trump
22:29
SPEAKER_03: issue in his first 10-ish days in office,
22:33
when we think about actually a long history of anti-trans
22:36
activism in the last kind
22:38
SPEAKER_03: of five years or so.
22:40
I think one of the things that those people are missing is this
22:44
idea that trans
22:46
SPEAKER_03: women are among the very most vulnerable women.
22:51
And so if we can start from the assumption that we want to
22:54
build our politics
22:56
SPEAKER_03: around what would make the world better for them,
22:58
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
22:58
SPEAKER_03: if you think about,
22:59
SPEAKER_03: for example,
23:00
how one of the very first things that Trump did was issue
23:03
executive orders that
23:05
SPEAKER_03: would require,
23:06
SPEAKER_03: for example,
23:07
SPEAKER_03: incarcerated trans women
23:09
SPEAKER_03: to be put in men's prisons.
23:11
I think one of the challenges of this time is to recognize that
23:15
our politics needs
23:17
SPEAKER_03: to really start with thinking about what would work for those people,
23:21
not just what would work for the person who is kind of sitting
23:26
in their armchair
23:27
thinking about what the word needs of all women and gender
23:30
expansive people are like.
23:32
I wanna note for our listeners that that order,
23:35
thank heaven,
23:36
has been stayed by a judge.
23:38
SPEAKER_02: along with a number of other orders,
23:40
SPEAKER_02: but is a really good example,
23:41
SPEAKER_02: Serene,
23:42
because one of my responses to this sort of weird coalition of
23:49
conservative women
23:51
SPEAKER_02: and liberal women who have come together as anti-trans feminists,
23:56
SPEAKER_02: whatever that is,
23:57
SPEAKER_02: is,
23:57
SPEAKER_02: well,
23:58
SPEAKER_02: There's the threat of rape.
24:00
And there's this kind of fear of the penis among some feminists
24:04
that I find quite baffling.
24:06
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
24:06
SPEAKER_02: as a lesbian myself,
24:08
SPEAKER_02: you would think I would be terrified of penises,
24:10
SPEAKER_02: but I'm not terrified of penises.
24:11
And so the idea that there is someone potentially with a penis
24:17
going into a women's prison,
24:18
SPEAKER_02: that entirely covers up the level to which
24:24
men and women who are incarcerated are constantly being
24:29
sexually assaulted.
24:32
SPEAKER_02: Can you talk about that a little bit?
24:33
SPEAKER_03: Well,
24:34
SPEAKER_03: I think part of it is maybe,
24:36
and maybe this speaks also to the question you were asking
24:38
earlier about white
24:39
SPEAKER_03: feminism and the white feminism of the 1960s,
24:42
SPEAKER_03: is I think a lot of feminisms began with focus on women's experiences,
24:46
SPEAKER_03: but I think that as analyses of power became more sophisticated,
24:51
SPEAKER_03: it
24:52
SPEAKER_03: became clear that gender doesn't just operate,
24:56
like we don't understand the operations of gender just by
24:58
looking at the lives of
24:59
SPEAKER_03: cis women.
25:00
SPEAKER_03: And I think once,
25:01
SPEAKER_03: especially of cis white women,
25:03
like if we zoom out and follow the power and think about this
25:06
as about structures
25:08
SPEAKER_03: and not just about experiences,
25:09
what we find is that trans women are incredibly likely to be
25:16
sexually assaulted.
25:17
for reasons that also speak to the oppression of all women and
25:22
gender expansive people.
25:24
We know that one of the reasons that trans women are assaulted
25:27
at such high rate
25:28
and also that queer women are assaulted at high rates or even
25:30
women who are queer
25:31
presenting is the idea that people need to be punished for not
25:36
acting out their
25:37
SPEAKER_03: gender in the way that patriarchy says they ought to.
25:41
One of the stories I tell in the book is of the amazing
25:45
movement in Argentina,
25:46
SPEAKER_03: Ni Una Menos,
25:47
which I really want to plug learning about that movement for
25:50
people because it's a
25:52
SPEAKER_03: movement born in response to very right-wing reactionary politics,
25:57
SPEAKER_03: kind of similar to the politics that we're experiencing now.
26:00
They began as a movement against femicide,
26:02
meaning killing of women because they're women.
26:05
SPEAKER_03: But as they engaged in deeper analysis,
26:08
SPEAKER_03: like one of the things they realized was,
26:12
SPEAKER_03: well,
26:13
SPEAKER_03: this is also largely about gender policing and we won't understand the
26:19
SPEAKER_03: subordination of even cis women.
26:22
SPEAKER_03: If we don't understand that,
26:24
SPEAKER_03: to use the words of a Latin American feminist theorist,
26:28
SPEAKER_03: Rita Segato,
26:29
SPEAKER_03: like,
26:29
SPEAKER_03: femicide works by this,
26:31
SPEAKER_03: what she calls a pedagogy of cruelty that tells all the women,
26:36
SPEAKER_03: you will do what the patriarchy demands or you will be nothing.
26:39
So I think one of the things that's really missing is a story
26:42
of how the fates of
26:44
SPEAKER_03: trans women and the fates of all women are very linked.
26:49
Another couple of places we see that in recent politics are one
26:53
of the anti-trans
26:53
executive orders claims that you are the sex that you were
26:57
assigned at conception,
26:59
SPEAKER_03: which
26:59
already is like so this is like I mean it's a biologically
27:03
meaningless designation
27:05
anyway but why is the word conception in there the word people
27:09
when when people are
27:10
wedging the word conception into the law we know it's because
27:14
they're attempting to
27:16
police abortion or if you think about all of the bathroom bills
27:21
and for example
27:22
most recently Nancy Mace trying to exclude her colleague from
27:27
using the bathroom in
27:28
SPEAKER_03: the Capitol well
27:29
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
27:30
SPEAKER_03: if you're really going to try to keep people out of bathrooms,
27:33
SPEAKER_03: how are you actually going to do that?
27:35
You're going to subject every person who goes into a bathroom
27:39
to inspection of their bodies?
27:42
And how do those kinds of laws that allow people's bodies to be
27:46
invaded actually
27:47
SPEAKER_03: work in the world that we live in?
27:50
SPEAKER_03: They are absolutely enforced in sexist and racist and classist ways.
27:54
So I think part of the challenge right now is for people to
27:57
understand that
27:59
SPEAKER_03: assaults on trans women are assaults on all of us,
28:04
SPEAKER_03: whether or not we are trans.
28:06
SPEAKER_02: And I think the point you keep coming back to,
28:09
SPEAKER_02: which is so important,
28:10
SPEAKER_02: is that of course it is trans women who are the object of assault.
28:14
SPEAKER_02: We really don't see trans men being mentioned in this,
28:17
including the various laws about bathroom use and locker room
28:21
use and so on and so forth.
28:23
I keep thinking,
28:23
do you actually want trans men in the women's locker room?
28:28
SPEAKER_02: Is that what you want?
28:29
So there's something specific that is about womanhood and the
28:34
preservation of womanhood.
28:35
I also want to say,
28:36
listeners,
28:37
that all fetuses,
28:38
all embryos are female until about six weeks.
28:42
So if,
28:42
in fact,
28:43
we are assigning sex at conception,
28:45
then everyone gets to be a woman.
28:47
SPEAKER_02: There's so much in this book that is important here.
28:51
I think the Amy Coney Barrett story that you begin with sort of
28:55
lays out all the
28:56
SPEAKER_02: complexities of what you're investigating.
28:59
I think we're also going to have some white women listening to
29:02
this and saying,
29:03
SPEAKER_02: well,
29:03
SPEAKER_02: wait a second,
29:03
SPEAKER_02: I'm a white woman.
29:04
SPEAKER_02: How do I activate not being a white feminist?
29:08
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
29:08
And that actually was a big part of the intention of writing
29:11
the book was to say,
29:12
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
29:13
SPEAKER_03: okay,
29:13
SPEAKER_03: I think there are a lot of people out there who are,
29:16
SPEAKER_03: including white women,
29:17
who are activated under the understanding that there is this
29:20
thing called white
29:21
SPEAKER_03: feminism that they want to avoid.
29:23
SPEAKER_03: Part of what I wanted to say was,
29:25
SPEAKER_03: look,
29:25
SPEAKER_03: a lot of people before me have come and said,
29:27
SPEAKER_03: the answer is to check your privilege.
29:29
SPEAKER_03: Obviously, I agree.
29:31
But I also wanted to say,
29:33
and there's a different moral vision you could adopt.
29:36
SPEAKER_03: And in order to move forward,
29:37
SPEAKER_03: we need to have a positive vision,
29:39
SPEAKER_03: not just the vision of check your privilege.
29:41
SPEAKER_03: And also,
29:41
SPEAKER_03: increasingly,
29:42
as women become spokespeople for the right and people of color
29:47
become spokespeople
29:48
SPEAKER_03: for the right,
29:49
we can't rely as heavily on these identity focused explanations
29:54
of how you should
29:55
SPEAKER_03: do things differently.
29:57
SPEAKER_03: I would say this book is kind of a manual on what you can think instead.
30:01
SPEAKER_03: Stop thinking feminism is a movement for individual freedom.
30:05
Start thinking it's a movement to end this hierarchy that
30:09
affects women and gender
30:10
SPEAKER_03: expansive people as a group.
30:13
SPEAKER_03: And recognize that this hierarchy is,
30:16
SPEAKER_03: and this is of course Crenshaw's insight about intersectionality,
30:18
recognize that this hierarchy affects different women and
30:23
gender expansive people
30:24
SPEAKER_03: differently because of how it interacts with these other hierarchies.
30:29
SPEAKER_03: And very specifically,
30:30
SPEAKER_03: if people want to know what to do,
30:32
SPEAKER_03: you know,
30:32
SPEAKER_03: the book ends not just with this prescription of,
30:36
SPEAKER_03: you know,
30:37
SPEAKER_03: focus on the most vulnerable people in your group,
30:40
SPEAKER_03: but also on movements that are doing the right thing.
30:44
SPEAKER_03: So in addition to talking about Miuna Menos,
30:46
SPEAKER_03: for example,
30:47
I spend a lot of time talking about domestic worker movements
30:51
that have been led by
30:52
SPEAKER_03: Black women from the 1960s up to now that say like,
30:58
SPEAKER_03: well,
30:58
SPEAKER_03: you want to do something about the oppression of all women?
31:01
Well,
31:01
maybe you should do something about the fact that our society
31:05
doesn't value care work.
31:07
And the way to do that is to start by thinking about the actual
31:11
most vulnerable
31:12
SPEAKER_03: care workers who,
31:14
SPEAKER_03: when women like me,
31:16
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
31:17
SPEAKER_03: some other people are watching my young children right now.
31:20
So women of the middle and upper classes who may have made it
31:23
into professions,
31:24
SPEAKER_03: there's still a gap in care.
31:27
SPEAKER_03: As long as that work remains unrecognized as work,
31:30
SPEAKER_03: the people who do it will be in the shadows,
31:34
SPEAKER_03: have poor wages,
31:36
SPEAKER_03: have bad working conditions.
31:37
SPEAKER_03: But this isn't something we have to accept.
31:39
There are movements saying,
31:41
like,
31:41
raise the floor that are led by these people.
31:44
SPEAKER_03: Right.
31:45
I think the book is trying to say there's a concrete mental
31:48
frame switch you can
31:49
SPEAKER_03: have and there are concrete things you can do.
31:52
SPEAKER_02: And of course,
31:53
it's not uncommon in the world of professional women who hire
31:58
other women to do
31:59
work that they either don't have time for or don't value to
32:02
actually fire those
32:04
SPEAKER_02: women if they ask for too much money.
32:05
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
32:05
SPEAKER_02: I can't tell you how many professional women have said,
32:08
SPEAKER_02: oh,
32:08
SPEAKER_02: yes,
32:09
SPEAKER_02: you know,
32:09
SPEAKER_02: I had so-and-so used to clean my house.
32:11
SPEAKER_02: She was really good, but she wanted too much money.
32:13
SPEAKER_03: I haven't actually heard this one before, so I'm also just stumped.
32:17
SPEAKER_02: It's because I'm white.
32:18
SPEAKER_02: People say these things to me.
32:20
SPEAKER_03: Maybe there was something to that.
32:21
SPEAKER_03: No one has ever said that to me before.
32:23
SPEAKER_03: But then I think there is also this larger systemic thing,
32:26
which is not to let these people who are saying what you're
32:29
saying off the hook,
32:29
that childcare is unaffordable because childcare is
32:32
unaffordable because we don't
32:34
SPEAKER_03: have public subsidies for it.
32:36
SPEAKER_03: It's too much for one family.
32:38
But to your point about white women treating their domestic
32:41
workers poorly,
32:42
SPEAKER_03: like,
32:42
SPEAKER_03: yeah,
32:42
SPEAKER_03: this is a long standing issue in this country.
32:45
It has its roots in slavery because we shouldn't forget that
32:48
the first domestic
32:49
workers in this country were enslaved black women and who
32:53
continue to be associated
32:54
SPEAKER_03: with this work.
32:56
SPEAKER_03: But in the book,
32:56
SPEAKER_03: I also include some kind of stories from the history,
32:59
including domestic workers in the 1960s that tried to have
33:03
employers collaborate
33:05
with the domestic worker movements by things as simple as like
33:08
the domestic workers
33:09
SPEAKER_03: can unionize and the employer can put in their window.
33:13
SPEAKER_03: This is a union household for our domestic workers.
33:17
We will only hire domestic workers who are organized and we
33:21
adhere to the labor
33:22
SPEAKER_03: standards that they want us to adhere to.
33:25
SPEAKER_03: There are possibilities.
33:27
There's this dark history and there's also real possibility for
33:30
collaboration and solidarity.
33:32
SPEAKER_02: And some of it, it's just not that hard to see.
33:35
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you don't have to read that much feminist theory.
33:37
One of the things that I came across is a great many people who
33:42
moved to the
33:43
country from New York during the pandemic and simply let their
33:48
domestic help go.
33:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
33:50
SPEAKER_02: Just, you know, so they were being paid.
33:53
SPEAKER_02: They could work remotely.
33:54
SPEAKER_02: Right.
33:55
the people who had worked for them and sacrificed for them and
33:59
kept their homes
34:00
SPEAKER_02: healthy and running in a welcoming way were left on their own.
34:05
And of course,
34:05
that is a feature of class,
34:08
but it's also a form of disconnection,
34:09
right?
34:10
SPEAKER_03: Yes, absolutely.
34:11
And this was a huge problem that also speaks to why it's a deep
34:16
problem that we
34:17
SPEAKER_03: have not incorporated domestic work and child care in
34:21
into our conception of labor because it's not just that these
34:24
workers were let go
34:25
it's that a number of them were excluded from the social safety
34:29
nets that came out
34:31
in the pandemic because they hadn't lost a job that was on the
34:34
books I think the
34:35
pandemic also brought up the many ways in which our ways for
34:40
distributing care work
34:41
SPEAKER_03: were untenable but one of them was the idea that like
34:45
we're going to pretend this work doesn't exist and treat it all
34:48
off the books
34:49
SPEAKER_03: approach really made this whole class of workers incredibly vulnerable.
34:54
SPEAKER_02: Right.
34:54
SPEAKER_02: They were vulnerable.
34:55
SPEAKER_02: And then of course,
34:56
SPEAKER_02: to come back to one of your early points,
34:59
we have the Amy Coney Barretts or the Claire Potters who have
35:05
choices and certain
35:07
SPEAKER_02: kinds of careers because of this work.
35:09
SPEAKER_02: And they're seen as having earned that value.
35:12
SPEAKER_02: through merit and hard work,
35:14
SPEAKER_02: which is not untrue,
35:15
SPEAKER_02: but actually there's a support structure under that.
35:19
SPEAKER_03: Yes, absolutely.
35:20
SPEAKER_03: And I think you asked about individualism and white feminism early on.
35:24
I think a positive way to think about it is we are deeply
35:28
dependent on other people.
35:30
SPEAKER_03: It's a lie that
35:32
patriarchy and capitalism and racism have told us that we are
35:37
these separate
35:38
individuals who don't actually need anybody else and i think
35:43
when you say this
35:44
stuff about getting by on your own merit like that sounds very
35:46
capitalist but i
35:47
don't think people necessarily always recognize the gender
35:51
implications of that
35:52
SPEAKER_03: like the truth is
35:53
We are the kind of species that comes into the world in need of
35:58
years and years of
35:59
SPEAKER_03: care from other people.
36:01
SPEAKER_03: That work has been historically assigned to women.
36:04
Like we dishonor all of the people who have given us care and
36:09
who we give care to
36:11
SPEAKER_03: when we pretend that fact away and try to say like,
36:15
SPEAKER_03: oh,
36:15
SPEAKER_03: now because I have a white collar job,
36:18
SPEAKER_03: it was all me.
36:19
SPEAKER_03: I'm the one who got here.
36:20
SPEAKER_03: I didn't need anyone else.
36:22
SPEAKER_02: So,
36:22
SPEAKER_02: Serene,
36:23
SPEAKER_02: I wish we could spend all afternoon talking about this amazing book,
36:27
but we've got a lot of really demoralized people out there who
36:31
are looking for answers,
36:33
looking for ways to think about how to help other people at a
36:38
moment when so many
36:39
SPEAKER_02: more people are becoming vulnerable.
36:41
SPEAKER_02: Why should our listeners read this book now?
36:44
I think they should read the book for a vision of what the deep
36:49
moral position that
36:50
SPEAKER_03: can oppose the right right now is.
36:53
SPEAKER_03: I think part of the challenge in front of us is to recognize,
36:56
SPEAKER_03: especially the challenge of fascism or things like it,
37:00
is to recognize that we will be asked to sacrifice the most
37:04
vulnerable people in
37:06
SPEAKER_03: our groups,
37:06
SPEAKER_03: not recognizing that in fact this affects all of us.
37:11
SPEAKER_03: And also,
37:11
I think we're in this moment with conservative feminism and
37:15
girl boss feminism
37:16
where it's hard to tell whether feminism is actually going to
37:21
make deep social change.
37:22
And so what I hope that the book will give people is a way to
37:27
spot the difference
37:29
SPEAKER_03: between an agenda that's really transformative and one that isn't.
37:33
People who are new to feminism might just get a better sense of
37:36
what feminist activism is like.
37:39
I also think we need the book in this moment because it's a
37:41
very activist book.
37:43
SPEAKER_03: I'm a theorist, but the book has a lot of what can you do solutions.
37:47
SPEAKER_03: It mentions specific organizations.
37:49
SPEAKER_03: And in general,
37:50
SPEAKER_03: I think to leave people on a hopeful note,
37:52
I think the most important thing that people can do right now
37:55
is just become organized.
37:58
SPEAKER_03: in almost any kind of organization.
37:59
Because one of the things that I think the book also shows is
38:02
feminism is not only
38:04
happening in organizations that have feminism at the center of
38:08
their name.
38:09
Find an organization that is actively fighting the oppressive
38:14
structures that
38:15
SPEAKER_03: structure our society.
38:16
SPEAKER_03: Join it and that will be a source of power.
38:37
SPEAKER_02: And that's it for today's show.
38:39
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening.
38:40
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38:44
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38:48
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38:53
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38:54
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38:57
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SPEAKER_02: Why Now is supported by the New School for Social Research and by paying
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39:22
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39:25
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39:26
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39:28
Claire Potter.
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39:34
SPEAKER_02: That's all for now.
39:35
SPEAKER_02: See you next time.