Everyday People

We're going back. waaayyyy back. Back to when Lubu was a cub, back when songs like "Everyday People" and "Troglodyte" were still being played on the radio. Now, apparently Linda Hirschman would like to return to those halcyon days of feminism, when women like herself fancied themselves the leaders and originators of feminist movement, and shame on those lesbians (the lavender menace!), women of color (womanism?! but your back makes such a nice bridge!) and/or working-class women (you people sure can cook!) who couldn't just put up, shut up, and wait their turn as Elizabeth Cady Stanton wasn't willing to do when it came to seeing black men gain the legal right to suffrage ahead of her. (head nod to Jill at feministe for that odious swill of Hirschman's.)

So. This isn't new. Geological faults, indeed.

See, once upon a time, there was an essay that critiqued the Movement (meaning: the Left as practiced in the United States and other English-speaking nations in the sixties) called The Grand Coolie Damn. And damn if some of us can't write our own essays with Feminism taking the place of the Movement (come to think of it, that's part of the problem right there---too much "movement" has moved out of feminism).

I have figured out why mainstream feminist groups do not represent feminism for me. The mainstream groups are not focused on the front-burner issues of everyday life.

In everyday life, I have to have a job. I need rights on that job, rights that will actually be recognized by an employer, not just placed on some paper in a theoretical way as some kind of 'suggestions' that everyone nudge-nudge, wink-wink knows aren't going to be recognized. Not to mention that everyone knows most women can't afford to hire a lawyer to pursue it.

In everyday life, I have to eat. Cook dinner, buy food, pack lunches, that sort of thing. Have any of the bigtime mainstream feminists like Hirschman been to the grocery store lately?! Haven't they noticed that the price of food has skyrocketed, but paychecks have stayed the same (if you're still getting one, that is)?

In everyday life, I need to get to work. In my area (and with what I do---I'm not at the same place all the time), that means the price of gas is having an impact. Why haven't mainstream feminist groups mentioned the price of gas and lack of alternatives for many of us?! Don't they realize not everyone lives where there's a subway or an el train to get to work? And that the average working woman can't afford the gentrified neighborhoods close to places of employment? (you know, you'd think infrastructure could be a no-brainer issue for the feminist movement---lots of jobs for women, better housing, etc.)

In everyday life, I need a roof over my head. Out here in Illinois, working people live counties away from their work, not to live in some fashionable "exurb", but because they can't afford a $1500 house payment/rent check but can afford the $300 to live in a small town. Also, I have a real hard time getting all worked up about urban sprawl, because that urban sprawl is what makes it possible for me to live in the city. If the alternative for yuppies is buying up houses like mine, running a bulldozer over them to build a fancy new townhouse, and pricing the rest of us out of our own neighborhoods---fuck that. Why aren't mainstream feminists talking about the impact of gentrification on women? Why aren't mainstream feminist groups all about affordable housing?

In everyday life, I send my daughter to school. Public school. Remember public schools? The ones most of us who have children send our kids to? The ones most of us attended? Well, I attended public schools throughout my life and I'm a strong supporter of the public schools. I want to know why mainstream feminist groups aren't putting the disparity of resources available to public schools on the front burner. Why do the wealthy areas of town have nice facilities, and the school my daughter attends is a fixer-upper that never seems to get fixed? Why do they have new books? (She's attending summer school across town now to help her reading. She's noticed the difference). Why should the surrounding suburbs have elementary schools with librarians and libraries, while this district goes without? Why should the quality of my daughter's education, the opportunities for learning available to her, depend solely on the kind of mortgage or rent I can afford to pay? Where the fuck is feminism on all this?

Come to think of it, where is feminism on (drum roll please) the commons. The commons. Stuff like libraries, public parks and recreation, the streets, gathering places, that sort of thing. Young people in my neighborhood get hassled for hanging out. They can't go hang out anywhere where they don't have money---kids that aren't buying anything get told to move on. The park district has dismantled basketball courts in public parks, and schoolyards are locked up after school hours with "no trespassing" signs. Hell, even the local movie theater monopoly has a "no teenagers after 9PM without parent" policy. What the fuck, chuck? Don't mainstream feminists have teenagers?

And frankly, I'd like to know on what planet child care is a "middle-class issue". Lack of child care is a front-burner issue for working-class and poor women. It's the difference between whether or not we have or can keep a job (or get an education so we can get a job).

In everyday life, some people go to prison and have a permanent record while others go to Betty Ford and have no felony to keep them from employment. In everyday life, disabled women have a hard time getting a job. In everyday life, women are getting the double-crunch of caring for ill parents and young children at the same time, or triple crunch of being the main financial support as well. In everyday life, women are being separated from their children because their papers aren't in order. In everyday life, women are burying children killed by gang violence, asthma attacks, this fucking illegal war started by this piece-of-shit pResident, and other easily preventable causes that mainstream feminism gives lip service to. In everyday life, women whose only crime is not being able to afford to keep the electricity on in their homes are having their children taken from them and put into foster care. In everyday life, not every woman experiencing domestic violence is going to be helped by the police. In everyday life, people drive by women being beaten on the street, because "oh, that's probably her pimp" or "oh, it's none of my business" or "it's her fault for staying with him." In everyday life, working women worry about how the hell they're going to make it when they are too old or sick to work. In everyday life, women have their healthcare disappear when they lose their jobs; their pensions (if they are among the select few who have such a thing anymore) evaporate when their pension fund goes bankrupt. In everyday life, women get sick because of environmental racism and classism----the lack of money to move and thus insulate themselves from toxins directly related to that proverbial 77 cents on the dollar. Directly related to the last-hired, first-fired experience.

Everyday life. Everyday people.

I want a feminist movement that centers the same issues I see highlighted on Ask A Working Woman or Moms Rising, both of which for some unknown reason are never mentioned as feminist. I want a feminist movement that realizes that what ails the body politic tends to give women pnemonia. I want a feminist movement that fights for all women, not just those who can most neatly wedge our lives into the current male template. I want a feminist movement that recognizes the everyday sheroics of unsung, unacknowledged, unphotographed and unphotoshopped women. I want a feminist movement ready to STRIKE in support of Lilly Ledbetter. I want a feminist movement that believes in the eight-hour day, so women can enjoy the rest of our lives, too. I want a feminism that recognizes that sometimes the work day isn't nine-to-five, or behind a desk. I want a feminism that isn't afraid of counting sisters like this one amongst the rank and file.

Like Little Stevie Van Zandt sang awhile back on his album Voice of America: "I want Justice!"

But what do I get? I get Linda Hirschman tryin' to tell me that white middle-class women started feminism, neatly excising the herstory of the foremothers of organized labor, who were striking decades before Seneca Falls.

It's no accident that the most dynamic forward motion in what used to be called women's liberation isn't coming from within the nominal 'feminist movement', but from without in the labor movement, in anti-racist movement, and other social justice movements. And why? Because of the very thing that Linda Hirschman thinks is sending feminism to hell in a handbasket---intersectionality. A word that I didn't even know existed until a few years ago, but a name I've been searching for throughout my life---a name to attach to a concept on why the hell reality isn't fitting the mainstream just-so analysis.

Brownfemipower has a post on movement making that provides an answer for Hirschman and her allies on why feminism seems to have lost its focus. Feminism---the nominal, mainstream variety---isn't focusing on those who need it the most. Those who are thirsty for it, if they only knew those waters weren't just at the whites-only fountain, or the rich-only fountain, or pick your poisoned well.

Meanwhile, I'm still finding my feminism (and allies) where I've always found it---down at the union hall, at the trades' council, out on the front porches of my neighborhood. With the Everyday People. And when the nominal feminist movement decides to get back to the block, we'll still be here. Still loving, still fighting.

Pace