Media Won’t Acknowledge Hate Crimes Against Women & Girls
August 7, 2009
by Nancy Kallitechnis
|The New Agenda welcomes this new contributor, whose views are her own, not necessarily those of the organization.
The media’s sexist reporting of the Bridgeville, PA murder rampage is another example proving they won’t acknowledge hate crimes against women. A male blogger who wrote for months about his inability to relate to women then walked into an all-female dance class and shot twelve women, yet none of the articles I read mention the words hate crime, bigot, sexist and the reporters didn’t call feminist groups for a quote.
The media reports the details of hate crimes against women and girls when they are very gruesome and horrible because that will increase readership. But they avoid reporting the violence is a hate crime because the media is extremely male dominated, thus they promote male domination which is threatened when the public is informed about the enormous damage sexism causes. So they’ll write things like: “…Sodini wrote rambling messages about his hatred of women and how he was tired of being rejected by them” without actually stating he was sexist.
They’ll write, “a gunman walked into a fitness center near Pittsburgh, firing up to 52 shots only at women” without actually using the term hate crime.
Earlier this year Marilyn Ferdinand wrote an article for Feministing criticizing the media for generally ignoring the fact that the German school shooter targeted women and girls (Gender “disappeared” in Albertville school shooting).
When a man went to an Amish schoolhouse, separated the boys from the girls, bound the girls and shot them the media avoided calling it a hate crime. I read many articles about the shooting but none of them stated the man was sexist, and they apparently never contacted feminist groups for a quote and they framed the story as a revenge crime for something that allegedly happened to the shooter 20 years earlier but all the victims were age 13 or younger.
Complaining to the media will help motivate them to stop being prejudiced against half the population of the world. If the new hate crime bill gets passed that will also help to increase awareness of hate crimes against women and girls because it would protect victims of violence based on hatred of a person’s gender as well as other demographics. Currently the law only protects people who are victims of violence motivated by hatred of a race, color, national origin or religion.
A fair press is essential to democracy so citizens have the knowledge necessary to rule. If a gunman had targeted blacks then this would be reported as a racist incident and black leaders would be constantly on the news talking about racism in America. But when there’s a hate crime against women and girls the media does everything in their power to block out the feminist community from speaking out in support of our own.
I also love the headlines. The AP went with “Gunman at Pa. health club was bitter over women?.”
Uhhh. Was the Holocaust Museum shooter “bitter over Jews?”
Of course not. He was a racist and anti-Semite with “ties to white supremacist groups.” Sodini was a fervent follower of Don “How to Date Young Women” Steele, but is he described as having “ties to male supremacist groups”?
I remember thinking, during the last couple misogynist mass shootings, “What does a killer have to do, create a website declaring ‘I hate women’ before the media will admit that the motive was hatred of women? Apparently, it isn’t sufficient.
Thank you for writing this. It seems that sexism is so pervasive that it is the norm and therefore accepted by the population. To use the phrase that the Conservative movement was using a few years ago: “Where is the outrage?”
the 15th, regarding alleged male supremacism of the book “How To Date Young Women” I don’t believe it is male supremacist. Based on what I read it doesn’t advocate a system of male supremacy, it just has sexist views of women such as that we don’t like nice men, thus promoting the belief that men should treat women badly.
I believe feminist protest about the media’s reporting of hate crimes against women is having an effect. Yesterday The Independent published this accurate title: “Gym killer was driven by his hatred of women.” The article refers to the shooter as a “misogynist” quotes hims describing women as “little hoes” and describes his low opinion of women and his attempt to justify that it’s okay for men to kill women:
“Why do this? To young girls?” Sodini writes. “Just read below.”
Here is the link to the Independent article:
http://www.independent.co.uk/n.....67924.html
Look at his picture. This is the face of men who believe they are Nice Guys. Most men think they fit into this category. Women are people, not something to be treated in any particular manner but regarded as a human being.
A guy who decides to go shoot up a place because he is rightfully rejected by others, is not a nice guy.
And then I love the double standard from men and their fellow Nice Guys. We should reject jerks and not marry men who will beat us, because of our abilities to predict the future, but we should never reject men, because they might come kill us.
LIkely the media is ignoring Feminist response because they are desperately seeking for a way to blame Feminism.
I do believe that it is men’s fault he blew up the place but I am somewhat happy that he was rejected because this just shows that women now can and do reject the jerks. Likely I would have told htis guy he was creepy and to F-Off. The ability of women to reject jerks like Sodini and his stupid pick up artist techniques is a symbol of Feminist progression, but his retaliation ideas, view of women as objects, and entitlement (to women) issues are still largely Patriarchal.
I love the Hate Crime bill. I’ll be making some phone calls/writing letters.
Kiuku, I agree that Sodini killed women because he believed he was entitled to have women date him and when they refused he felt they deserved to be punished with death. Sodini believed women don’t have a right to choose who they like to date, but that he should choose for them. It’s a patriarchal belief that men are superior to women and know what’s best for us better than we do.
I like your article, Nancy. I believe feminist groups should have been contacted about this incident for a news story. It is so ridiculous and banal that this guy went on a woman-shooting rampage just because he could not get a date, and it is also an obvious sign of egotism.
Karen, this is not just about egotism because a lot of people have an ego but are nonviolent. This is about a person harming other people in a violent way. This is about hatred-hatred against women.
Thank you for this post. It reminds me of the 2008 election when both Sarah Palin and Barack Obama were hung in effigy in different locations in the country. Investigators’ of the Palin effigy ruled it was nothing more than a halloween prank; whereas, the perpetrators of the Obama effigy – a couple of college students – were immediately charged with a hate crime.
the reason the male controlled media and THE ENTIRE PLANET does not treat this as a hate crime is because it would make very male alive feel like a criminal. Period.
They hear about this and they think, to themselves, deep in the crevices of their dank little brains, “Well, what normal, red-blooded guy hasn’t wanted to shoot and murder a few chicks now and again?” *chuckle chuckle crotch grab*
I’m serious, and I am not backing down from this. If we made rape — and murder of women specifically — a hate crime, most men would be criminals. I’m not up for that pollyanna “not my Nigel” garbage anymore, either. If your Nigel rolls his eye and goes, “Yeah, but” when you bring this up, your Nigel is one of these guys.
Janis, I don’t believe every male has wanted to kill women just because they’re women. However, I suspect that a lot of men have a general hatred of women that they enjoy expressing through violence against women and girls and if they want to avoid jail they get pleasure from watching violence against women on TV, at the movies and violent pornography.
I absolutely think this letter SHOULD express the views of The New Agenda.
I’d love to see a letter like this from a women’s organization in a major newspaper like the Times.
NIce Work Nancy! I took you off our blog roll as you seemed to have disappeared! Glad to see you’ve resurfaced!!!!!!!
Wasn’t your blog, Journal of Feminist Insight ??
It was excellent! TNA is great! Good station! Keep up the good work!
Edit staff
FemiSex.com
Thanks for this article it does point out how sexist the media is. If black men or gay men were specifically targeted and massacred we would be hearing about this for months, but hardly a mention when the victims of violence and hate are women. Of course they had already had the rescue of female hostages from N Korea and the Obamaite women’s story of the day, Michelle being on the best dressed list, so if they ran with the woman massacre story they would have risked women’s stories crowding the regular men’s news off the air.
I don’t blame them for not asking “feminist groups” for a comment. Who are they going to ask, NOW? New Agenda is not a household name yet and NOW only has opinions on gay issues and racial issues.
Feminist groups should not have to be contacted for their opinion on this matter. They should be ramming their opinion down the sputter throats of Corporate media before they are asked.
I appreciate the kudos from the editorial staff of FemiSex.com. I had done a lot less blogging after the 2008 election, but now I’m blogging more mostly about feminist topics. The sexist media is one of my major concerns, especially after the extreme hatred of women they expressed during last year’s election.
Actually this story has been top news for many days. The issue that I have is not that it was ignored but the manner in which it was reported, specifically the media ignoring that the massacre was a hate crime.
There are thousands of feminist organizations. It doesn’t matter so much whether they choose a large national organization or a small local feminist group, just as long as they include the voice of feminism. The reporters got a lot of quotes from townsfolk. They could easily have called a feminist group that they could find on the Internet. As to your opinion that NOW focuses only/mostly on gay and race issues that isn’t true. If you go to their web site at http://www.now.org/ you’ll see the front page is mostly feminist issues. Though I disagree with some of their policies, I’m certain a NOW spokeswoman’s quote in the media stories would have helped readers frame the issue in it’s correct context as a hate crime against women and girls.
Nancy, Thanks so much for your summary of these cases. The criminals were blatant misogynists which means “hatred of women”. Yet the media and our society in general refuse to call misogyny even in so obvious cases. It is truly depressing that obvious hate crimes such as these cannot be prosecuted as such. Do you know if there is anything we can do to help get the hate crime legislation passed? Maybe the media would be willing to use the correct wording if the laws were on the books.
Thanks for the reply Nancy but any “feminist” org who waits to be asked their opinion by corporate media is useless to women. Real feminists would be demanding that the truth be heard and actually they would have done that loudly long ago.
Regarding NOW, I went to their website the day Sotomayor was nominated and their lead story involved protesting Prop 8. Their website is not interactive at all as if they are trying to avoid having to interact with people who don’t think like them or as if talking at people is enough for a national women’s org. It is true I have nothing but contempt for them although I gave them money for years. By the way women were an after thought on the hate crime legislation. The minority groups that “womens groups” spend their time worrying about did not even include women in the original legislation.
Sodini was nothing more than a maliginant narcissist, as well as a bigot. It has always been open season on women because we are not considered fully human by society.
Let me say, I find these statements incorrect and offensive:
” If a gunman had targeted blacks then this would be reported as a racist incident and black leaders would be constantly on the news talking about racism in America. But when there’s a hate crime against women and girls the media does everything in their power to block out the feminist community from speaking out in support of our own.”
“If black men or gay men were specifically targeted and massacred we would be hearing about this for months, but hardly a mention when the victims of violence and hate are women.”
Please … Please … Stop juxtaposing sexism and racism. They are both wrong .. both prevalent.
You’re assuming that feminists have not contacted the media. The media blocked out feminists from the stories. The writers and editors decide what gets published. No matter how often feminists contact the media we will never have our quotes printed if the media doesn’t allow it.
I recall many times during the 2008 election when feminists protested the sexist media treatment of women candidates and kept writing to tell them the truth but they ignored us. I don’t think you should blame the victim. It’s the media’s fault that they refuse to include feminists’ quotes.
Yes, I believe it will help motivate the media to call hate crimes against women hate crimes if there was legislation that made that a crime. You can track the hate crimes bill at this site: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h1913/show
So far the bill has been approved by the House and is awaiting approval in the Senate. You can contact your local senators at http://www.senate.gov/general/.....rs_cfm.cfm
LVL, you’re wrong that those statements are incorrect. The media routinely labels violence against blacks by non-blacks as racist and routinely refuses to describe violence against women by men as sexist even when it is blatantly obvious. For example, when James Byrd, and African-American, was dragged to death the media reported it as a hate crime and quoted black leaders. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.....the_murder
Even when a non-black person inflicts nonviolent pain against a black person it is often referred to as a racist incident. For example, when a white Cambridge, MA police officer (James Crowley) embarrassed a black professor (Henry Gates) by arresting him for disorderly conduct the news frequently reported it as a racist incident. Yet when an obvious and extremely violent hate crime is inflicted on women the media almost unanimously refuses to label it as a hate crime such as when a man who wrote sexist blog posts targets an all-female dance group in a coed gym and shoots them which is what happened at in Bridgewater, PA.
Also, I don’t understand the meaning of your last statement. You say sexism and racism is wrong and I agree with that and nothing in my posts say otherwise. You say that racism and sexism is prevalent and I agree with that and again nothing in my posts says otherwise. Yet you don’t say why you think it’s wrong to juxtapose sexism and racism. I thought it was very obvious why I juxtaposed the two: to show that the media selectively chooses to ignore oppression against women. Juxtaposing the reporting of sexist and racist hate crimes lets the reader know that the media is aware that hate crimes exist, as shown by their acknowledgement of racist violence, therefore the media’s refusal to report sexist violence is due to the fact that they’re sexist not that they don’t know about hate crimes or feel it’s wrong to refer to violence against an oppressed group as a prejudiced act.
Nancy,
I believe it is inappropriate to juxtapose sexism and racism in the manner it is done here because it pits minority women against majority women because it overstates the degree racism is actually identified, acknowledged and remedied in this country. Minority women are on the last rungs of American society and many times, it is majority women – not men – who allow, or push them down, to that last rung.
For me, at least, when the juxtaposing is used, it trivializes the pain of racism and prejudice I feel many days in this country. The media covers so little of the discrimination that minorities face but your comments almost make it seem like the media covers it too much, or just enough, because you believe they cover sexism less.
Two things will divide TNA, the “lefty” / “right” talk and the juxtaposing of “sexism” and “racism” in the manner it is done in these comments.
Just my opinion, I respect yours.
FYI: Bob Herbert, of all people, in the NYT has an opinion piece worth reading. This is Main Stream Media and he actually acknowledges sexism as a valid issue in its own right.
John,
This article:
Women at Risk
By BOB HERBERT
Published: August 8, 2009
We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected.
Thank you. Looks interesting. Now, I need to registered!
LVL, I would appreciate a definition of two terms you used: “minority women” and “majority women.” Specifically, which women are in each category. There is a great diversity of women including religious, racial, ethnic and sexual orientation groups and, in my opinion, they cannot be clearly defined in only two groups.
I disagree that mentioning that the media is conscientious about reporting hate crimes against blacks “overstates the degree racism is actually identified, acknowledged and remedied in this country.” There are a lot of people and groups that identify, acknowledge and remedy racism and the media is just one group and hate crimes reporting is a tiny segment of total journalistic reporting. My original post is about media sexism. The post accuses the media in general of being sexist regarding a specific type of article: hate crimes. The only way to prove their hate crime reporting is sexist is to compare the way they report about hate crimes against women and girls and hate crimes against other groups. Because if the media refused to acknowledge hate crimes against all oppressed groups then my theory that their hate crimes reporting is sexist would be wrong. The only way to prove I’m telling the truth is to show that they often correctly identify hate crimes against another group, in this case blacks, and contrast that to their overwhelming refusal to identify hate crimes against women and girls.
Therefore, I had to provide an example of good hate crime reporting (about black victims) versus bad hate crime reporting (about female victims). I had no choice. The media should stop being sexist in the way the report hate crimes against women and girls and in order to get them to stop it is necessary to point out that they are sexist by comparing the bad way they write about sexist hate crimes versus the good way they write about hate crimes against other groups. The first step towards ending a problem is to recognize it exists. Again, there is no other way to stop the sexism without pointing to the correct way the media should report sexist hate crimes-the way they report hate crimes against blacks. It’s like teaching someone to solve a math problem by showing them the correct way to solve it.
Minority women are on the last rungs of American society and many times, it is majority women – not men – who allow, or push them down, to that last rung.
You have a right to that opinion, but I don’t see how that has anything to do with my article which seeks justice for all women and girls.
The media covers so little of the discrimination that minorities face but your comments almost make it seem like the media covers it too much, or just enough, because you believe they cover sexism less.
I never said or implied the media covers discrimination against women and girls less than discrimination against minorities. Hate crimes are only one type of discrimination. My article is only about media reporting of this single type of crime.
Two things will divide TNA, the “lefty” / “right” talk and the juxtaposing of “sexism” and “racism” in the manner it is done in these comments.
Readers who feel juxtaposing the way women are treated versus the way races are treated is harmful need to learn that it is helpful. If a race is treated better than women and girls in one way then it is feminists’ responsibility to ask that we be treated just as well. If we don’t do that society will never achieve gender equality. A primary goal of this blog is to promote gender equality.
A hate crime? You bet! And more. . . .
The Independent reported re:one of the victims, Ms Overmeir:
“Ms Overmier was a single mother who worked at a theme park.”
The shooter whined in his journal about his father, and shoots a single mother? What irony! How could anyone doubt that what he did was a hate crime? Women are the better part of our society. Shoot a woman, and the shooter may be killing a caregiver, a teacher, a journalist, a mother, a person who gives and contributes, someone needed by the people around her.
Thank you addressing the point that it is unfair to juxtapose racism and sexism, Nancy. This is a tired meme that continues to be the device that does the actual dividing of majority/minority women. This is a major area that led to the fracture of the second. Race is always the fracture in any wave, ftr.
I don’t believe for a minute that white women are the perpetrators of racist culture. Can a white woman be prejudiced and bigoted? Yes. But women are as much a victim of patriarchy as people of color are, and when everyone but one group is being held down, no other group can be held accountable for choices that allow them to survive in that unfair culture. It is the misguided belief that white women are to blame for their plight that has led feminists of color to attack wave leaders, which in turn led to a major fracturing. Same thing happened in the first wave with the 14th Amendment.
The truth is that women got a lot more rights for women of all colors when they unified and thought of themselves as a cohesive group, and a return to that is our only hope.
Re: hate crimes–
“on the topic of the Holocaust Museum murder, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen first quotes the bill: “A prominent characteristic of a violent crime motivated by bias is that it devastates not just the actual victim . . . but frequently savages the community sharing the traits that caused the victim to be selected.” ”
If crimes against women are to be included in a Hate Crimes Bill, perhaps we would stand a better chance if we wrote/believed women to be a “Community”. Women share more traits than differences, and it is not necessary for all members to be in complete agreement to be a community. We can cite differences until the cows come home, but women ARE a community and we can only achieve goals that benefit us if we accept differences and move forward with our commonalities.
majority/minority women.
I’m curious how you define majority women and minority women. There are a lot of group affiliations that decrease a woman’s status including religion, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. So a rich, straight, Christian black woman has more status than a white, Jewish, transgender, prostituted drug addict homeless woman based on my observation.
In my opinion, it seems that there are different degrees of harm society inflicts overall on groups of people based on different types of color. For example, Condoleeza Rice and Sonya Sotomyor are both referred to as women of color but it may be that Rice’s racial group (African-American) experiences more prejudice than Sotomyor’s group (Hispanic). Also, from my own observation it seems that women in general (world view) are more oppressed than men of any color. http://journaloffeministinsigh.....essed.html
Personally, I believe people should be held accountable for their decision about which group to prefer. Prejudice against different groups causes varying degrees of harm to society. When you end prejudice against one group you end a certain amount of pain that was caused by that prejudice. If you add up all the pain that sexism causes, it’s not the same amount of pain that other forms of prejudice cause toward other groups.
I’m not sure if you mean people think white women are to blame for the oppression of minority women, the oppression of white women or the oppression of all women.
Cohesiveness is vital to achieving gender equality, however, total unity is not possible and not necessary to achieve gender equality. For example, most women didn’t support the right to vote in the U.S. when feminists won it; many women didn’t vote for Margaret Thatcher but she broke the glass ceiling even without their support; and some women believe a woman’s place is in the home but that didn’t stop millions of women from getting jobs and getting closer to financial equality.
As an African American female, I appear to be alone in my belief that juxtaposing racism as less prevalent and more tolerated than sexism is a splitting path for TNA – so be it. I will not raise this issue again.
Some history:
* For a time, Sojourner Truth worked with Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), the most prominent leaders in the suffrage movement, but broke away from them when Stanton stated that she refused to support black suffrage unless women were guaranteed the right to vote first [a position I can respect]. While numerous black women supported the women’s suffrage movement, they were allowed only minimal participation in suffrage organizations. In most cases, their names have not been recorded for history.
- The juxtaposition of sexism and racism split women during suffrage
* Majority, white, women have been the principle beneficiaries of affirmative action. Today, when you look at the level of African American women at executive, or senior levels in American’s corporations, it is 1.7% versus 24% for White women http://www.eeoc.gov/stats/jobp.....ional.html
- For African American women, racism is very real; its prevalence should not be understated.
Since I cannot be White, Hispanic, Asian-American or another of another racial, or ethnic heritage except Black, I cannot truly know and appreciate the unique perspective of these women. But I respect that I may have a limited perspective with respect to their views. So I try to trend lightly in believing I hold the truth to their reality.
I hope others will view my opinions with the same objectivity.
Nancy, you can’t play that sum total game, because I can argue it using different numbers. Okay, so racism against blacks is worse than sexism, but such racism affects a scant 13% of the population while sexism affects 51%. See how numbers are misleading?
How about we stop with the race to the victim line and try to work together to achieve equality for all folks?
I did read your comment LVN, and appreciate that you left it. I don’t agree with much, and your understanding of the history of the first wave fracture is not my understanding. I’m not into retroactively accusing 19th century white women of racism, especially when the white women you mentioned only wanted equality for all, and knew that white men were using the 14th amendment to deliberately and constitutionally (for the first time) disenfranchise all women.
I’m not sure what that means. Perhaps you meant that you think racism is less prevalent and more tolerated than sexism-less prevalent because there are far fewer blacks than women and girls in the U.S. and more tolerated based on your experience?
Personally, I would rather that you did raise the issue until the reality is found through logical argument. Though you have every right to not speak about it if you wish.
I would like a reference to your statement that black women were mostly barred from the women’s rights movement. Stanton is only one feminist out of many. Lucy Stone was a major feminist during the time Stanton lived and at least as popular as Stanton. She watched the government give black men the right to vote while they denied it to women who had protested alongside blacks for voting rights. Women, mostly white, worked hard to gain a combination women/black vote yet black men got it and women got nothing. They had to do another 50 years of hard work to get the vote.
The black rights movement has a history of oppressing women. Lucy Stone had been an anti-slavery protester before she became a feminist protester. After she saw a statue of a slave women called “The Greek Slave” she started talking about women’s rights during her anti-slavery speeches but the American Anti-Slavery Society in Boston told her she wasn’t allowed to talk about women’s rights and black rights in the same speech.
Women were an important part of the anti-slavery movement often doing the same work as the men. However, during the first World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London the male anti-slavery participants denied women the right to speak at the convention and made them sit in a separate area away from the men with a curtain blocking their view of the speakers.
In addition to oppressing white women, the black rights movement has oppressed black women. For example, when Shirley Chisholm ran for president and became the first black person to run for a major party nomination, the largest black political organizations refused to endorse her but she got the endorsement of the mainstream women’s movement (Movement Activists and Partisan Insurgents: Collaboration or Conflict? By Bruce Miroff, SUNY). Chisholm often said that during 20 years in local politics, “I had met far more discrimination because I am a woman than because I am black.” http://www.jofreeman.com/polhistory/chisholm.htm
So there’s a long history of white women helping blacks gain rights. In comparison, the black movement has done little to support the women’s movement. Women are half of the black population, therefore the black rights movement should dramatically increase their assistance to feminist groups and help women within the black community gain equality with men.
Affirmative action is not just about top executive jobs; it includes blue and pink collar jobs like police officer and administrative assistant as well as middle management jobs and the professions. White women only earn a few thousand dollars more per year than black women. Also, affirmative action was for blacks of both genders. Black men earn more than white women. So affirmative action seems to have benefited black men more than white women economically. And recall the non-stop vicious and brutal attacks against the women candidates and their supporters of 2008 versus the kid gloves treatment given to the black male candidate and his supporters. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.....ity_US.png
But the same is true of sexism. For women sexism is sadly real and it’s prevalence should not be understated which is why I object to the media’s refusal to report the truth about hate crimes against women and girls.
[...] leaders. Upset that a man can kill a group of women simply “because” they are women and the media seems to ignore it. Upset because the vicious and violent words against women and girls are used in every day movies [...]
Excellent analysis of gender/race movements in the 19th century, Nancy. I would only add that Stanton is an important figure who started her activist career at that slavery convention in London you referenced, as an abolitionist. Her record of fighting for racial equality is impeccable, though many have tried to tarnish her name by calling her a racist. She was decidedly not a racist and should always be defended when the implication or accusation is made.
Stanton may be only one, but she is one of the most important ones since she led the effort on Seneca Falls, wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, and got the whole ball rolling with regard to women’s rights in America.
I want to also thank you for articulating the argument overall with regard to this topic of racism and sexism. You were exceptionally eloquent in the last comment. I hope your approach opens hearts and minds.
LVL, I was reading about Elizabeth Cady Stanton on Wikipedia and it appears you might be wrong in regards to some of the things you said in the above quote. You stated that Stanton believed women should get the vote before blacks, but Wikipedia says she thought that blacks and women should get the vote at the same time. She believed in an “all or nothing” approach to voting rights, that blacks and women should get the vote together or neither group gets the vote.
The National Woman’s Suffrage Association (NWSA) was founded in May 1869 by Anthony and Stanton…The NWSA opposed passage of the Fifteenth Amendment [black men’s vote] without changes to include female suffrage… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.....s_movement
Also, Wikipedia says Sojourner Truth sided with Stanton, not against her. Wikipedia: “Believing that men should not be given the right to vote without women also being granted the franchise, Sojourner Truth, a former slave and feminist, affiliated herself with Stanton and Anthony’s organization.
Nancy, in response to your response to me, I think I just misunderstood what you were saying. I thought you were saying that racism is worse than sexism because it is more overt. I was disagreeing with that. If I’m reading that comment to me correctly, we are in agreement. Focusing on sexism provides the greatest relief to the greatest number of people, and also positively affects other areas of oppression.
Apologies for not reading carefully enough.
Nancy,
I appreciate the time you have taken. We will agree to disagree on the historical analysis because I am using a different reference source than you.
I will attempt to explain my points:
* Sexism and racism are equally bad
* Most African Americans women would tell you that, for them, it is hard to distinguish which one is worse in their lives. We are impacted by a double whammy – sexism and racism
* White women feel the sting of sexism and I – may be just I – believe it sometimes means they underestimate the prevalence of racism impacting African American women.
* In the corporate world, the advancement of White women – who very, very often, lead human resource departments, has not led to the advancement of African American women. In fact, many times, just as now, White women downplay or dismiss the extent racism is affecting and impeding their advancement.
* Thus, while men cannot sometimes envision, believe or give credence to the overwhelming evidence of sexism in the lives of women, White women, sometimes, cannot envision, believe or give credence to the overwhelming evidence of racism in the lives of African American women
* So for me, and may be just only me on TNA, many comments are leaving the impression that sexism is greater in American than racism. I simply disagree. And I think the continual expression of sexism as greater than racism is a fruitless and counter-productive strategy to attract African American women to TNA
LVL, I would like to know your reference source, if you wouldn’t mind sharing it.
I recall reading in the Times that when educational backgrounds were the same, black women out-earned white women.
That same article said that black men out-earned both white and black women with the same educational backgrounds.
I have not independently verified these stats.
I would like to know what that reference is.
Both are bad, but in practice sexism is doing a lot more bad than racism when you consider the entire world. For example, black men can go to a lot of countries where they have equal or greater status as the other races, but there is no country women can go to where they have equal status as men. Every nation treats women as inferior. Also, I did a brief study comparing women and African-Americans in the U.S. and it appears women are treated worse: http://journaloffeministinsigh.....girls.html
I would like to read actual statistics about whether black women experienced more sexism or racism. Also, it’s important to note that a black woman might feel uncomfortable in a group where most people are non-black. For example, being the only black person at a party where everyone else is white and Asian, or attending a college where 4% of the students are black. Because blacks are a small percentage of the U.S. population, black women often find themselves in situations where almost everyone else is non-black. So when determining whether the negative experiences of being female or black are worse, it is necessary to focus only on actual discrimination.
In my experience, being discriminated against has made me feel more sympathy towards other oppressed groups. Therefore, I believe that since white women experience sexism constantly, it makes them more sympathetic to victims of racism.
I would like to know if the change of the gender ratio increasing the percentage of white women and decreasing the percentage of white men has helped black women advance. It could be that if there were more men, black women would have had an even harder time advancing and their numbers would be lower. In the end, it is the hiring manager who decides who gets the job. An HR rep might send 30 candidates of different races to be interviewed and it is the hiring managers who make the decision. Also, there are big differences in education between whites, blacks and Hispanics and that might have a much bigger effect than racism in deciding who is hired. Furthermore, as I’ve said before a lot of U.S. jobs are not in corporations and also there’s the military. In some jobs black men have had an easier time being hired than women.
I have not downplayed the extent that racism impedes black people’s advancement in corporations or anywhere else. If you read every word I said, I never downplayed the harm of racism. What I have done is state that sexism causes more harm than racism. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems the core of this argument is that you think that believing that sexism does greater damage than racism prevents people from seeing the impact of racism. That’s not true. Recognizing something is larger than another thing does not stop people from knowing the accurate size of the smaller thing. For example, if one box is 10 feet and another box is 4 feet then just because I recognize that the 10 foot box is bigger doesn’t prevent me from accurately knowing the size of the smaller box.
Many times while blogging people have condemned me for mentioning that sexism does more damage than racism and yet I have never once read anyone being condemned for saying racism is worse than sexism. I believe this is because the political blogosphere is overwhelmingly male-dominated. Despite the facts that show that women and girls are oppressed much worse than people of color, a lot of men don’t want to admit it because that would make them feel worse about being sexist and giving preference to black males over women of all colors. As for blacks refuting the evidence that women are treated worse then men of color, I believe it often has to do with fear of losing limited resources. People have time constraints that limit the amount of time they can work on social causes and individuals and governments have limited funds to dole out to end oppression. Therefore, some blacks may believe that if everyone knew that women are more oppressed than blacks, then people would contribute less to black liberation and more to women’s and girls’ liberation. I believe oppressed groups should get assistance in proportion to their degree of damage the oppression causes because that’s justice.
TNA should promote truth. It is the responsibility of The New Agenda to provide accurate information about the oppression of women to help us end the oppression. It helps feminists to know how many women and girls are raped, beaten and murdered, how much our gender earns, whether the media treats us as inferior, etc. How will we know if we have made progress if we don’t measure it?
As I said before, I had to compare the media’s gender hate crime reporting with their hate crime reporting of another group that is treated fairly in that regard in order to show that the media was sexist in the way they report gender hate crimes. Because there were media examples of correct hate crime reporting of race hate crimes, I chose to compare race hate crime reporting with gender hate crime reporting in order to prove the media is sexist in the way they report about gender hate crime. As I said before there was no other way I could prove my point without making a comparison with an example of correct hate crime reporting. Thus, sometimes in order to prove sexism exists it’s necessary to compare how women and girls are treated with how other groups are treated.
Since these comparisons have to be made in order to discover sexism, therefore, a feminist should make those comparisons because it’s a feminist’s job to discover, protest and end sexism. And since TNA is a feminist group, they should publish those comparisons when the comparisons are necessary to discover sexism. If they don’t, then that would block our knowledge of sexism thus making it harder for us to combat it.
When facts show that sexism causes more damage than racism in a certain aspect of life black TNA members should accept it because it is a fact. The only other option is for TNA to lie in order to keep black members who don’t want to know the truth, but that is a bad option because TNA should be about truth, justice and the feminist way. It would be shameful if they lied to increase membership.
I don’t think TNA should be forced to make the choice between lying and losing black support. And I believe it’s wrong for anyone to force them to make that choice.
Finally, feminism helps black women and feminism helps the black community because half of the black community is women. Therefore, black feminists should never censor comparisons between women and blacks when it is necessary to discover sexism, because the discovery of sexism is the first step in ending sexism and ending sexism, in addition to helping all women and girls, benefits the black community tremendously.
Some of the victims of the LA gym massacre may have been black. If so they were not shot because they were black, they were shot because they were women. Black women, like non-black women, suffer from a lot of sexist motivated violence. Feminism increases safety, education, wealth, etc. for women in the black community that they pass on to their children, male and female, thus strengthening the black community; so it would be a tragedy for black women to stop being feminists or to try to stifle the free flow of information necessary to achieve the prime feminist goal of gender equality.
Anna Belle and Nancy,
Below was my original source: http://www.amazon.com/American.....amp;sr=8-1
And I looked up the bio of one of the authors – Judy Galens http://www.jacketflap.com/pers.....rson=82342
She appeared very credible so I then searched on the book, her name and Black women to get a quick summary and found this:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What.....ween_women’s_suffrage_and_African-American_issues
This led me to see if I could find more information on the conflict between White and Black women in the Suffrage Movement and I located this http://community.pinkmagazine......-done.aspx. The author appeared to have done extensive research and Pink Magazine has been in business for quite a while, so I considered the information credible, including the following bullet points:
* NAWSA also upheld the racist ideology of the era as it excluded black women from membership, it garnered significant support from southern women by asserting that the white woman’s vote would maintain white supremacy in the South.
* While suffrage did not produce the immediate results hoped for by its supporters nor did it include minority women, it did lay the groundwork for future women to seek out a life of independence and public activity.
* (1870)The Fifteenth Amendment enfranchises black men. NWSA refuses to work for its ratification, arguing, instead, that it be “scrapped” in favor of a Sixteenth Amendment providing universal suffrage.
* Due to being excluded from NAWSA, black women, such as Mary Church Terrell, formed their own organization to further suffrage in 1896, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW).
* Racist policies often kept African-American women out of the suffragist movement. The headquarters of Colored Women Voters, located in Georgia, was one of many early 20th-century organizations that fought for African-American suffrage.
Nancy,
You have obviously taken a lot of time and thought to respond to me. I will read your response today and offer feedback if I have any.
The third link does not appear to be working. Here it is again
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What.....ween_women’s_suffrage_and_African-American_issues
Anna Belle and Nancy,
My longer post regarding my sourcing is awaiting moderation.
LVL, I pointed out that you might be wrong about two things you had stated:
1) Sojourner Truth, who is a black woman, left Stanton’s group because she disagreed with Stanton’s all or nothing policy of voting rights-that blacks and women should get the vote at the same time or neither get the vote.
2) Stanton wanted women to get the vote before blacks
This is a copy of my previous post:
James, Edward T., editor. Notable American Women a Biographical Dictionary (1607–1950), pp 345–47 & 389; Palmer, pp xxvii; Sklar pp 72–75
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.....s_movement
I appreciate your looking up information about conflict between the women’s movement and the African-American movement but you did not address the two points I mentioned at the beginning of this post.
NAWSA didn’t have an official policy to either ban or accept black members. NAWSA leadership overall was much more sympathetic to blacks than the general population, however, they realized that it would be easier to get the vote for white and black women if they didn’t publicly announce that they accepted black members:
“…NAWSA leaders believed there were serious drawbacks to accepting black suffragists into the association, either as individual members of existing clubs or as segregated auxiliaries. If the national organization openly announced that it would admit blacks, many white Americans in every region of the country would strenuously object. Antisuffragists would raise the race issue to discredit the suffragists with the unconverted public. Moreover, the careful efforts to recruit prominent women and gain respectability that had begun in the late nineteenth century and would intensify in the twentieth, would prove futile. Leaders also worried that individual suffrage societies, so carefully organized and nurtured, would be torn apart over the issue of whether or not to admit blacks.
From the viewpoint of the NAWSA leadership, the inclusion of black women would cost the organization members, money, internal harmony, and a positive public image. …”
“Woman suffrage and the new democracy” by Sara Hunter Graham, page 24-25
http://books.google.com/books?.....mp;f=false
According to this quote from a suffragette, there were probably black NAWSA members and certainly black affiliate groups of the organization:
“Carrie Chapman Catt responded to a Texas coworker’s question about racial membership rules in 1918:
The question of auxiliaryship within the state is one for the state to decide itself. I presume that no colored women’s leagues are members in southern states, although I do not know positively that this is true. There are great many [black]clubs in different northern states and they have been members for many years. I think in some northern states individual colored women are direct members.”
Catt advised her correspondent to write the black suffragist and “tell her that you will be able to get the vote for women more easily if they do not embarrass you by asking for membership and that you are getting it for colored women as well as for white women.”
“Woman suffrage and the new democracy”
So NAWSA who, from the beginning always advocated equal voting rights for black and white women, was forced to often block blacks from membership in order to more quickly get the vote for black and white women. So the article from PINK magazine seems to be wrong in their assumption that NAWSA discouraged black membership because of racist reasons; the evidence indicates that they did it out of necessity in order to better help black women.
Also, when slavery ended and the government wanted to give black men the vote but not women and the NY branch of feminists asked black leaders to stand with the feminists in solidarity and refuse the vote unless women got it too, black leaders abandoned the feminists who had fought side by side with them to end slavery and decided to help themselves to the vote and forget about the women who had helped them. The black leaders abandoned women to get the vote faster.
This is somewhat similar to feminist leaders discouraging black women from membership in NAWSA to get the vote faster. But the difference was that white feminists excluded black women to help them, whereas black men excluded women to help themselves.
Nancy,
I am assuming your statement “I appreciate your looking up information about conflict between the women’s movement and the African-American movement but you did not address the two points I mentioned at the beginning of this post” relates to:
1) Sojourner Truth, who is a black woman, left Stanton’s group because she disagreed with Stanton’s all or nothing policy of voting rights-that blacks and women should get the vote at the same time or neither get the vote.
2) Stanton wanted women to get the vote before blacks.
And as I statement, those two statements where taken from http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What.....ween_women’s_suffrage_and_African-American_issues. You have to go through the links and there is a passage with these quotes”
“For a time, Truth worked with Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), the most prominent leaders in the suffrage movement, but broke away from them when Stanton stated that she refused to support black suffrage unless women were guaranteed the right to vote first.”
As I said earlier, we obviously have using different sources and I was really surprised that the women who researched this http://community.pinkmagazine&.....-done.aspx was making point that also reflected some of my thoughts.
If you feel Judy Galens, the Pink Magazine blogger and I are wrong, then that is something I understand and I guess we agree to disagree.
Also, you have stated some beliefs I respect and believe they may be as true, or not as true, as the statements I am making about how African American feel.
Nancy,
Please excuse the horrible grammar in the previous posts. I was rushing. I appreciate your passion for the subject matter.
LVL
Janis, when I brought up the extreme lack of attention this hate crime has received my Nigel suggested creating stickers to post on STOP signs: Hate Crimes Against Women. He completely agrees that this horror must be addressed.
***
Nancy, excellent article. I’m heartened to see this subject addressed as aggressively and eloquently as you have here.
***
As for the detour into racism vs. sexism, the truth is that women are, historically and globally, an extremely oppressed group regardless of race, ethnicity or religion. The very real pain that people endure because of racist, ethnic or religious bigotry does not trump the very real pain that women endure because of gender hate. And crime motivated by gender should be recognized as the hate crime it is. Right alongside all the other hate crimes. Calling attention to this lack of recognition is anything but inappropriate. It is appropriate, it is right and it is about damn time.
Gxm17,
I am totally in agreement with this statement: “crime motivated by gender should be recognized as the hate crime it is. Right alongside all the other hate crimes.”
I am not sure, given the genocide completed in countless countries as a result religious, ethnic and cultural bigotry, that this statement is accurate: “the truth is that women are, historically and globally, an extremely oppressed group regardless of race, ethnicity or religion. The very real pain that people endure because of racist, ethnic or religious bigotry does not trump the very real pain that women endure because of gender hate.”
LVL, nothing came up when I clicked on the link. It just brings me to the WikiAnswers page but there is no information about anything we’re talking about. Could you tell me the question you asked so that I can ask it myself and maybe I will get the same answer? Also, what is the reference for the quote? Is it anonymous, does it provide a name, and/or does it come from a scholarly source? [If anyone else reading this post can view the link please post the reference. Thanks!]
I provided links to references that provide the opposite information of what you said. Here they are again:
You said that Stanton wanted women to get the vote before blacks, but Wikipedia says that’s not true. Wikipedia says Stanton wanted blacks and women to get the vote together. The link is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.....s_movement
I could not find a specific link to a scholarly source for this on Wikipedia though because the section about this has several links to scholarly sources I assume it was gotten from one of them. Here’s evidence, from “The concise history of woman suffrage “ that indicates Stanton believed women and blacks should have equal rights and work together:
And here is proof that Stanton wanted women and blacks to get the vote at the same time:
It’s important to note that the 14th Amendment giving black men rights was the first time in history that the Constitution used the term “male” (216). Because gender was vague in previous Constitutional passages women were able to get some rights like voting in several states. This was the first time hard legal terms were used to block women’s rights leaving no leeway for exceptions or gender-equal interpretations as had been done before.
Stanton reasoned that if black men got the vote without women also getting it, that would increase male domination in government which she believed was wrong. The following quotes show that Stanton’s major objection to giving only black men the vote was that it would increase male domination:
The concise history of woman suffrage By Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle
http://books.google.com/books?.....mp;f=false
So I have proved that Stanton wanted women to have the vote at the same time as black men-not before. Now I will provide evidence that Sojourner Truth sided with Stanton in the belief that black men should not have the vote unless women get it at the same time. In a previous post I quoted Wikipedia:
“Believing that men should not be given the right to vote without women also being granted the franchise, Sojourner Truth, a former slave and feminist, affiliated herself with Stanton and Anthony’s organization.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.....s_movement
The scholarly reference for that is:
James, Edward T., editor. Notable American Women a Biographical Dictionary (1607–1950), pp 345–47 & 389; Palmer, pp xxvii; Sklar pp 72–75
Also, “The concise history of woman suffrage” includes a speech by Sojourner Truth before black men got the vote and the issue of adding the women to the vote was being discussed:
Note that Sojourner explicitly states that in order to end slavery, women must have the vote. She clearly states that she does not want black men to have the vote without black women getting it at the same time because, like Stanton, she believes it will increase male domination.
Some people thought women should shut up and not cause a disturbance in the proceedings to give black men the right to vote by demanding to add women to the legislation also. Note how Truth says it’s a good thing to stir things up by demanding women’s equal voting rights as black men:
Truth is crystal clear that she believes men treat women like slaves:
Sojourner Truth, Address to the First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights Association, New York City, May 9, 1867 (three years before black men got the right to vote and women were denied it)
I agree with Gxm17. There are a lot of ways of oppressing a group other than genocide. Also, note that there is no religious, ethnic, or cultural group that is as large as women and has been oppressed for as long as women have in the degree that women have being mostly stripped of almost all our rights and frequently raped, beaten, mutilated and murdered just because we’re female. This has been perpetrated on half the population of the world for thousands of years. There are three billion of us. And recall the women’s holocaust in Europe (witch hunts). Men have much more power than women in almost every social realm such as the arts, sports, religion, education, media and law. Women are 50% of the earth’s population but own only 1% of the world’s wealth: http://www.un.org/Conferences/...../women.htm. The UN reported that women own only 1% of the worlds wealth.
No religious, ethnic or cultural group has every been oppressed anywhere near as badly as women and girls have been in terms of numbers and degree of harm.
The source for what?
Nancy,
I basically had two sources for my comments regarding the Women’s Suffrage movement:
“For a time, Truth worked with Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), the most prominent leaders in the suffrage movement, but broke away from them when Stanton stated that she refused to support black suffrage unless women were guaranteed the right to vote first.”
They were
1, http://www.amazon.com/American.....amp;sr=8-1 and the quote above from the book appeared in wiki. answers http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What.....ween_women’s_suffrage_and_African-American_issues and
2. Pink Magazine and this blog
http://community.pinkmagazine......-done.aspx
So, essentially, Judy Galens, the author, and Catrice Jackson, a Blogger at Pink Magazine, were my sources regarding the split among White and Black women during the suffrage movement and “double Jeopardy,” or double whammy African American feel with respect to sexism and racism.
I know your intent is to be thorough, and I respect that, but the impact of your passion for your beliefs on me is a feeling of pain that you want me to deny my own life experiences and the experiences of many other African American women visa via White men and White women as described in books like http://www.businessweek.com/ca.....22_112.htm and by research completed by Catalyst http://www.catalyst.org/public.....ed-to-know and the Executive Leadership Council http://www.elcinfo.com/downloa.....elease.pdf
Racism has had a more negative impact on my personal and professional life than sexism. However, I am committed to work with women – all women – to combat sexism that is rampant in America. But, please be sensitive that what you think is “the truth,” could be more your truth than mine, or that of others African American women. Finally, while it may not be your intent, please appreciate, that your words have the impact of saying sexism is worse or more prevalent than racism and that this impression – although it may not be your intent – will push African American women away from TNA because you are denying or understating their reality.
My primary goal as a feminist is to end pain. When discussing feminism with another person I seek the truth, and sometimes that requires a lot of research and logical thought. The reason I seek the truth is to end the pain of sexism (such as the LA gym massacre), and although I understand you don’t agree with me about this, I believe sexism causes much more pain than racism in the world. I sympathize with your pain of confronting the issue that sexism causes more damage than racism, but women and girls suffering pain due to sexism need my help, and I am not going to back down and throw them under the bus because you feel uncomfortable with the facts I’m presenting, so perhaps you would feel better not to read my posts in the future.
Nancy, I am glad that you are not backing down on this. One of the reasons that women and girls are the most oppressed class in the world is because they have been guilt-tripped again and again into putting their concerns *as women* last in order to address whatever affects groups that include men first.
Nancy,
While inspiring, your “truth” blinds you.
My pain comes not from “confronting the issue that sexism causes more damage than racism,” it is that you are denying my reality, and the reality of other African American women by not accepting that racism is stronger and more damaging in my, and others, personal and professional life than sexism.
You are so committed to proving your general rule that you cannot even accept that their may be an exception to your rule.
I’m not sure how much support NAWSA got from southern women, but unfortunately for two decades [circa 1885-1906] they did support a racist and elitist southern strategy of giving the vote to educated men and women which excluded poor whites and blacks.
-“New women of the new South” by Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, Marjorie Julian Spruill
http://books.google.com/books?.....mp;f=false
It was the idea of a northern man and former abolitionist, Henry Blackwell. He thought southern politicians would never give women the vote so he promoted giving it to educated women:
Having worked to free blacks from slavery, he didn’t believe in white supremacy but he figured this was the only way southern male politicians would accept any women voters. Blackwell said he…
Politicians constantly told southern suffragettes they would give them the vote if only the suffragettes would figure out a way to prevent black women from voting.
So southern suffragettes figured by having an educational requirement for voting that would block almost all black women because few black women were educated. But that would also block almost all black men from voting. The general consensus among southern suffragettes who are all from the upper classes was that if there was a choice between voting rights for elite educated white women and uneducated black men then the educated women had more right to vote, so that’s how they justified the southern strategy.
<blockquote.Among the white leaders of the suffrage movement in the South, the prevailing view was that whatever blacks might become, they were not presently capable of governing themselves [due to a general extreme lack of education] (page 108)
The southern suffragettes seemed to be more concerned about class than race, advocating barring poor uneducated people, white and black from voting:
Southern suffragettes generally proposed temporary white supremacy until blacks and whites became educated, and they were all strongly opposed to violent white supremacist groups. For example, even a suffragette who frequently made racist comments, Kate Gordon, was opposed to the terrorist Ku Klux Klan:
Evidence indicates that southern women’s primary purpose was to end male domination. They figured they could achieve that by having an elite electorate-rich educated people who were about half female.
This was a bad policy that NAWSA leadership unfortunately went along with for two decades. They prevented black women advocating suffrage in the south because they thought it would lessen the chance of women getting the vote in that region:
African-American suffragists, including Adella Hunt Logan, who was as articulate as and more educated than any of these white suffrage leaders, were deliberately excluded from the Southern Suffrage movement; though Logan was a life member of the NAWSA and published articles on woman suffrage in the Woman’s Journal as well as in the Crisis, she was not allowed to attend suffrage conventions in the South.
The southern strategy was a total failure.
When NAWSA abandoned the racist southern strategy southern suffragettes still tried to keep it going asking for an endorsement in 1906. NAWSA leader Dr. Shaw replied…
Having rid itself of the racist southern strategy, NAWSA created a new strategy of winning the women’s vote out west:
But it wasn’t NAWSA, it was a radical group called the National Woman’s Party that finally broke the glass ceiling and got women the federal right to vote.
LVL, you were wrong in stating that NAWSA got “significant support from southern women by asserting that the white woman’s vote would maintain white supremacy in the South.” It was a total failure from beginning to end; they got very little support and were nearly bankrupt at the end of the southern strategy. Also it was morally flawed. The fact that they stayed with the southern strategy for two decades [1885-1906] shows a leadership problem during those years. There have been many feminist groups for hundreds of years in recent history that have greatly helped women. Before accusing the feminist movement as anti-black consider what the feminists have given black women: they helped end slavery; they gave black women the right to vote and female Civil Rights protecting black women from discrimination such as sexual harassment and giving black girls access to sports through Title IV; they endorsed the first black candidate of a major party (Shirley Chisholm) who was abandoned by the leaders of the black movement; they have provided countless hours and funding for black causes; and they have provided rape shelters and domestic violence shelters; they have prosecuted child molesters who pray on black girls; they have been your mothers, your daughters and your sisters.
Nancy,
Two points:
- I am not wrong for “stating that NAWSA got “significant support from southern women by asserting that the white woman’s vote would maintain white supremacy in the South.” You are saying Judy Galens and, or Catrice Jackson are wrong. You are saying I have taken my information from an incorrect source. I will check in with Ms. Galens and Ms. Jackson and may be they will contact TNA.
- You are personally attacking me for citing an Almanac that researched the Women’s Suffrage’s movement and denying my current life experiences. My pain comes not from “confronting the issue that sexism causes more damage than racism,” it is that you are denying my reality, and the reality of other African American women by not accepting that racism is stronger and more damaging in my, and others, personal and professional life than sexism. You are so committed to proving your general rule that you cannot even accept that their may be an exception to your rule.
So this is the treatment African American women can expect from TNA supporters – I hope not.
That was Jackson’s statement from her PINK article and yes I am stating she is wrong about that. There is no doubt the southern strategy was a catastrophic failure and got very little support in the south. There’s a ton of evidence proving it failed, and I provided a scholarly sources (with a link) and several quotes to prove my point. And Jackson’s article provided no references.
Yes, I agree. For example, mainstream feminists have no problem accusing white men of abusing women and girls, yet men of all races do that and when faced with a sexist act by a man of color they almost always ignore it which of course makes people lose respect for them because the whole point of being a feminist is to advocate for women and girls.
And it’s not just feminists but people in general who prefer to protect a minority, ethnic or cultural community rather than women and girls. Robert Woodson wrote an excellent article about this subject showing how the public would rather protect the black community from bad press by ignoring black pimps’ abuse of young girls:
Though racism is bad, it is important to note that there are other problems as well. I like how Woodson showed how society is so much more concerned with racism than sexism that they willingly ignore when black men subjugate young girls because to complain about that would be seen as racist. Thus, knowing this is the landscape of our world, feminists must be very brave to bring up the fact that sometimes women and girls are more oppressed than people of color. That’s what I did in my original article. I simply mentioned the truth that the media treats hate crimes against blacks with more respect than they do toward hate crimes against women. And just for mentioning that truth I endured an onslaught of criticism. Hate crimes against women and girls happen every day and kill and maim and terrorize us and we need to have accurate reporting about it.
Nancy, I agree. I have heard similar arguments made to women fighting against rape. The argument is that these women are acting against the interests of black men because the white male dominated legal system selectively targets black men for incarceration. So women should stop seeking legal and social remedies against rape because white men discriminate against black men? Interestingly, this argument is not made about murder or burglary because those are crimes that affect men equally.
Good point. The same thing is happening in Norway. There is a dramatic increase in rapes in Oslo and the majority of the rapes are by immigrant men (mostly Muslim). Rather than blame the rapists, a local professor decided to blame the victims-Western women:
Unni Wikan, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, in 2001 said that “Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes” because Muslim men found their manner of dress provocative. The professor’s conclusion was not that Muslim men living in the West needed to adjust to Western norms, but the exact opposite: “Norwegian women must realize that we live in a Multicultural society and adapt themselves to it.”
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1754
And the newspapers are ignoring the cause of the rise in rapes. The Norwegian society prefers to protect the Muslim community’s reputation rather than protect women and girls from a horrific crime that often destroys lives. This is another example of race/ethnicity being treated as far more important than women and girls.
Nancy,
Thank you for your condescension: “This is my advice for you and you can take it or leave it: when posting on a political blog it’s best to speak in a friendly, open-minded way focusing on solid evidence rather than emotion because that creates a more pleasant conversation, which in turn helps bloggers discover truth which will help them be better citizens.”
I believe my tone was always respectful.
Good luck TNA. I don’t expect you will attack many African American women to your cause. You have lost this one.
There is hypocrisy in making a sarcastic remark to me (Thank you for your condescension) and then right afterward saying you are always respectful. Also, you falsely accused me of condescension. Perhaps I was too preachy; I have often been accuse of being schoolteacherish, but my intention in giving you advice was sincere.
Also, you were not respectful. You insult feminists by making false accusations against us which I proved wrong with hard evidence. And you made several false accusation against me such as by telling me “you want me to deny my own life experiences and the experiences of many other African American women” That’s a very negative statement and falsely implies racism. As I said before I never denied your personal experiences or the experiences any other individual African American women. If you read every word I wrote you will not find any such denials.
Another false accusation you made is “You are personally attacking me for citing an Almanac.” I never personally attacked for citing an almanac. Again, read every word and you will not find such an attack. All I did was ask for references for specific statements you made and then I reviewed your references, compared them to mine and sometimes stated that I preferred my sources and stated the reason why. And yet you turned a logical analysis into an illusion of an attack and personally blamed me.
So no it is not respectful to make false accusations against a blogger or to be hypocritical towards or sarcastic against a blogger which you have don to me.
My personal wish is that you would stay here and accept that some people have different opinions than you regarding the extent of harm sexism causes to society. And also, this is my first article for TNA so I don’t know why you are leaving TNA because of the opinions of a blogger who you can easily ignore in the future and whose opinions are not backed by TNA as it says in the disclaimer at the beginning of every article. You keep saying my belief that sexism causes greater damage than racism does will cause black women to leave feminism, but that is a huge insult against black women that they will abandon their own gender (sisters, mothers, daughters); and that is what you are doing if you leave feminism because it is we and only we that will advocate for you as a woman or girl. When a person from another group such as the black, Jewish, or gay community advocates for women they are acting in a feminist way. It would be a tragedy to abandon an entire gender and I hope that you stand firm by feminism.
Nancy, I think LVL had every intention of leaving us from the start, honestly. I had asked her twice to name black female politicians so that I could write about them, but to my knowledge, she never listed any names. Halane Hughes was generous enough to give me a list.
Karen, I agree.
Race can trump gender for individuals but neither race nor gender trump each other. I think class trumps both race and gender.
Sexism is more pervasive over time and geography. For instance, 70% of the world is POC. Something like 60% of the world’s population is Asian. Can one reallly say there is as much racism as sexism and misogyny amongst Chinese people? There is colorism and regional prejudices is China but it does not compare to sexism amongst individuals in China. If you include imperialism/white supremacy amongst Chinese it is still not as pervasive as sexism within China.
There were “ethnic cleansings” and wars fought over religion, the War on Terror, for instance, but sexism and misogyny were constant over millennia.
The Guardian:
Violence against women by men causes more casualties than wars do today. The War Against Women kills more people than wars so it should it get more media attention than wars.
This is my first time talking to LVL as I can recall so I didn’t know her very well. I’m glad you got a list of black women politicians. Here is a web page that includes a list of women leaders including many black women leaders elected or appointed heads of state:
http://www.guide2womenleaders......eaders.htm
Neither racism or sexism are worse than the other. One can be worse than the other individually. For example, gender trumps race for me. But sexism is more pervasive over time and geography and it is more acceptable. Class/capitalism trump both. For example, the prison industrial complex and NAFTA cause problems for minorities but the cause of both is capitalism. Just want to be clear.
Interesting point. I guess deciding which is worse depends on the criteria used to judge worse. For me, I look at the total damage.
For example, I will use the metaphor of likening people to flowers. If a goat ate one daisy and pulled it from it’s roots. That flower is completely destroyed. Then a stampede of bulls crossed a lily field and cut up 1000 lilies. some are dead but most are severely damaged and a few escaped damage. Then a rabbit chewed the tops off of 20 daffodils in another field. So, the lilies are the most oppressed flowers because the combined damage done to the lilies is greater than the damage done to the daisy or daffodils. That’s why I say women are the most oppressed group, because the combined damage that sexism does is worse than the combined damage of racism or class snobbery. Also, I’m referring to prejudice like sexism, racism, agism, etc.
It depends on what country you’re talking about too. Racism is very bad in the US, historically and currently. Sexism is also. Domestic violence cases number in the hundred thousands but they are “private matters” while police brutality/shootings/violence are more public and condemnable. In POC-dominant countries, racism is obviously less prevalent than sexism. I still think the cause of both are capitalism/labor/resource allocation. Slavery began when white servants rioted with black servants so slave owners paid white servants a small fee and made black servants slaves. Sexism started out as a division of labor based on physical strength.
Donna, I don’t know what a POC-dominant country is. Your belief that capitalism causes racism and sexism has some merit. In pre-Columbian America there were a lot of gender-equal societies like the Iroquois and the Navaho, but there were also some sexist societies like the Plains Indians. The general rule appears to be that when women control a lot of the economy there’s equality, but when men control it there’s patriarchy. So capitalism, being an economic model, definitely has something to do with sexism. However, I believe in a capitalist society, if women control the majority of the economy, patriarchy will vanish. However, I’m not advocating that women should own more than 50% of the economy, only that if they do that is one way to end patriarchy while still giving men 50% of the power as they can dominate in other non-economic realms.
Long before the Euro-American slave trade began slavery was common in Africa:
>>> “As in most of the world, slavery, or involuntary human servitude, was practiced across Africa from prehistoric times to the modern era.”
Apparently most African slaves were women:
>>> “Women constituted the majority of early African slaves. In addition to agricultural work, female slaves carried out other economic functions, such as trading and cotton spinning and dyeing. They also performed domestic chores, such as preparing food, washing clothes, and cleaning. Powerful African men kept female slaves as wives or concubines, and in many societies these women stood as symbols of male wealth. Male slaves typically farmed and herded animals. Those who belonged to wealthy families and especially of ruling lineages of states also worked as porters and rowers, and learned crafts such as weaving, construction, and metalwork. New slaves were sometimes given menial tasks while experienced slaves did the more difficult and dangerous work, such as mining and quarrying.”
At first, European traders went to Africa to trade objects, but when they saw Africans trading people that’s what gave them the idea to do the same.
>>> “The Atlantic slave trade developed after Europeans began exploring and establishing trading posts on the Atlantic (west) coast of Africa in the mid-15th century.”
Europeans started importing slaves from African merchants because it was cheaper than Euro or Native American labor:
>>> “West and west central African states, already involved in slave trading, supplied the Europeans with African slaves for export across the Atlantic. Africans tended to live longer on the tropical plantations of the New World than did European laborers (who were susceptible to tropical diseases) and Native Americans (who were extremely susceptible to “Old World” diseases brought by the Europeans from Europe, Asia, and Africa). Also, enslaved men and women from Africa were inexpensive by European standards. Therefore, Africans became the major source, and eventually the only source, of New World plantation labor.”
It’s important to note that Africans themselves were the main group that captured, enslaved and sold Africans to Europeans:
>>> “The Africans who facilitated and benefited from the Atlantic slave trade were political or commercial elites–generally members of the ruling apparatus of African states or members of large trading families or institutions. African sellers captured slaves and brought them to markets on the coast. At these markets European and American buyers paid for the slaves with commodities–including cloth, iron, firearms, liquor, and decorative items–that were useful to the sellers. Slave sellers were mostly male, and they used their increased wealth to enhance their prestige and connect themselves, through marriage, to other wealthy families in their realms.”
Slavery became a major part of the economy of many African states:
>>> “As African states began providing slaves for export by Arabs or Europeans, slavery became much more central to the economies and politics of those states and more of a threat to Africans in general.”
http://autocww.colorado.edu/~b.....frica.html
Obviously, European and American slavery did much more damage than slavery in Africa. As far as we know.
Most nations are majority POC and POC-lead. For instance, China’s population is 99% Chinese and its leaders are Chinese. If the world were a village of 100 people, 82 would be non-white so it’s similar in many other countries.
Class includes labor division, resource allocation and capitalism. Racism and sexism are means to allocate resources upward towards rich, white men. I agree if women owned half the wealth in the world, we’d be on our way to eradicating sexism. We can also see how capitalism commodifies women’s bodies and makes women second class citizens.
I’m not sure what you mean by “European and American slavery.” Slavery of Europeans by Europeans was common in ancient Europe. Also, some Native American tribes practiced slavery. However, I believe you’re referring to the Atlantic Slave trade which was when Africans were sent to Europe and America to be slaves.
I can’t believe that the Atlantic Slave trade did more damage than slavery in Africa unless I have evidence. I’d appreciate it if you provided evidence to back up your claim. It seems African slavery was worse because most African slaves were women, while most slaves sent to America/Europe were men, and since women are much more often raped, then presumably the African slaves in Africa were treated worse by being raped more often.
Most of the slaves transported in the Atlantic slave trade were adult men. About twice as many African men as women crossed the Atlantic, and only one in ten slaves traded to a European was under age ten. Africans tended to retain women slaves, whom they valued as agricultural workers and bearers of offspring. Children were less economical to trade: They cost as much to enslave and transport, yet brought lower prices. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclo.....trade.html
I had told you earlier that I don’t know what POC-dominant means. I had looked up POC on the Internet but couldn’t find a definition that matched they way you were using it to describe people. I’m taking a wild guess that perhaps POC means People of Color?
Capitalism includes class, but class does not necessarily include capitalism. Non-capitalist countries have hierarchies of classes. For example, in communist countries the rulers are higher class than the workers. Every society has high ranking members and lower ranking members.
I agree that racism and sexism are used in the U.S. to allocate resources to rich, white men. Although presumably racism and sexism could be used to allocate resources to rich black women if they had the most power in a capitalist society. And you’re correct that capitalism does commodify women’s bodies, but also men’s bodies to a lesser extent.
I’m assuming being kidnapped and taken to another country to be slaves is much worse than Europe enslaving Europeans or Africa enslaving African women. And then being treated as a second or third class citizen centuries afterwards makes it even worse.
That’s true class doesn’t necessarily involve capitalism. I use the class rubric to encompass class hierarches involving divisions of labor, allocations of resources and capitalism (the owner/serf relationships). Capitalism is the most damaging of these three i.e. global capitalism, globalization, trafficking, the sex trade, miliary industrial complex, prison industrial complex, free trade agreements, violations of environmental and worker rights, capitalism here in the States, the medical industrial complex, the commodification of women’s bodies…
African slaves were kidnapped as well as slaves sent to Europe/America. Also, many slaves were criminals or prisoners of war. The method of getting slaves was the same whether they were sent to an African location or a Euro/American location, however slaves more often died on their trip to a new location if they were on the Atlantic Slave trade because of the Pacific boat trip. To determine which did more damage-African slavery or the Atlantic Slave trade-consider the length of time slavery existed, the number of slaves, living conditions of the slaves and quality of life of the descendants of slaves.
The Atlantic Slave trade lasted about 400 years (16th to 19th century), whereas African slavery is believed to have existed for thousands of years. So there were a lot more slaves in Africa.
As I said before, I believe the living conditions of African slaves was worse because they were mostly women, thus presumably raped much more often then Euro/American slaves.
I’m not sure about the quality of life of slavery’s descendants. In Africa and America, children of slaves were sometimes sold, and sometimes that was outlawed. In Africa sometimes-not always-a slave’s descendants were able to become free after a few generations and sometimes an individual slave could get freedom by becoming a member of the slave owner’s family. Likewise, in the U.S. some owners freed their slaves.
>>> “Kinship (connection to a family by blood or marriage) has always been extremely important in Africa as an essential component of a person’s identity and ability to survive in society. Traditionally, those without kin were essentially lost–not considered real persons by society. Slaves, taken in battle or in slave raids, were cut off from their kin. In some societies, however, slaves were viewed as dependents, and could, over time, become identified as members of their owners’ extended families. Many African societies decreed that children of slave owners by their slaves could not be sold or killed. Also, after three or four generations, descendants of slaves could often shed their slave status. Thus slavery, on one hand, cut people off from their kin but, on the other hand, provided them with the possibility of becoming attached to other families and, after several generations, reintegrated into the web of kinship.”
Also, in America we have the pick-up-yourself-by-the-bootstraps culture so an ex-slave or slave’s descendant could get respect by themselves because of their accomplishments, even if it was just in the black community. In contrast, in Africa most societies are built on kinship and life is very hard for ex-slaves and descendants who have been separated from their kin because of slavery.
Furthermore, the standard of living in the U.S/Europe is much higher than in Africa in general. So, even though U.S. slave descendants earn less money generally compared to non-slave descendants, still they do very well in comparison to most Africans. For example, U.S. black men earn more money than white women: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.....ity_US.png
So, overall the quality of life of American slave descendants is higher than the quality of life of African slave descendants. And when you consider that there were a lot more slaves in Africa and slavery was a greater burden there due to presumably many more rapes, then the evidence indicates that African slavery did more damage than Euro-American slavery.
I think you are saying when one compares class hierarchies, allocation of resources and capitalism that capitalism is the worst? Perhaps by “allocation of resources” you mean communism? My opinion is that it’s much worse living under communism than capitalism. The standard of living is higher in capitalist countries for the general population. When comparing the quality of life in monarchies, communist countries, dictatorships and capitalist countries considering human rights, opportunities and wealth it appears that capitalist countries have the best quality of life.
Also, in describing capitalism you mentioned that you think it is the most damaging because of “global capitalism, globalization, trafficking, the sex trade, miliary industrial complex, prison industrial complex, free trade agreements, violations of environmental and worker rights, capitalism here in the States, the medical industrial complex, the commodification of women’s bodies…” However, many of those things occur in non-capitalist countries. For example, communist China suffers from a severe trafficking problem. And monarchies and dictatorships have violated environmental and worker rights. Also, commodification of women’s bodies happens in every patriarchal society, no matter what the form of government.
Based on my research, patriarchy is the worst social system because it has caused far more damage than any other social system. Hence, why I believe we should end it as quickly as humanly possible. That’s why I blog on feminist sites against sexism like the gym shooting hate crime I wrote about on the original post.
The 2005 Census link compares incomes of those with equal educational attainment. In the aggregate, Asian and white women make more than black and Hispanic men.
Racism and sexism are systems of oppression that create labor divisions and allocate resources upward towards rich, white men.
Patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism… Sexism has been the most constant over millennia and in every nation. Racism has been less a constant in all nations. You can compare advanced capitalist states with communist dictatorships but as a system in its current advanced state, I think it’s more damaging that patriarchy. We can each pick the one we think is most damaging.
No, it doesn’t. The caption for the graph I linked to says:
“2005 Census Statistics show males 25 and older had higher yearly income than females 25 and older among all races”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.....in_the_USA
There is no mention that it is only for black men with the same education.
There is a tiny difference but that has nothing to do with your argument that the Atlantic slave trade was worse than African slavery. The reason I mentioned the statistics was to compare the quality of life of descendants of the Atlantic slave trade is much better than the quality of life of descendants of African slavery. So if you want to argue the point you would need to compare the wages and cost of living of African men versus African-American men. It is generally known that standard of living for Americans is much better than Africans overall. For example, the following web site has a graph (on the right) comparing purchasing power of U.S. citizens and African citizens: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.....inequality
The graph shows the average U.S. person is much richer than the average African citizen.
As I said before, it’s not the system that causes racism against blacks or sexism against women, it’s who has the power. Blacks can rule a capitalist system. Women can rule as capitalist system. So the system itself does not cause racism or sexism.
Perhaps that is true. But people have been living on earth over 100,000 years and we don’t know much about most of human history. Wikipedia says:
>>> “Capitalism typically refers to an economic and social system in which the means of production (also known as capital) are privately controlled; labor, goods and capital are traded in a market; profits are distributed to owners or invested in new technologies and industries; and wages are paid to labor.”
I assume a lot of early societies, such as hunter-gatherer societies, were capitalist. It may be that capitalism is older than patriarchy.
The reason I’m talking to you about this is because I don’t think it’s just a matter of opinion which is worse-capitalism or patriarchy. As I said capitalism generally offers a better quality of life in terms of human rights and wealth than dictatorships. Looking back at the purchasing power graph you can see that in regions where capitalism is concentrated and deeply rooted, people have the most money: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.....inequality
And those are also the regions with the best human rights. So deeply rooted capitalism really does offer the best quality of life according to documented evidence. Therefore, we know that capitalism does the least damage of all the major types of governments. Thus, it is a beneficial, not a damaging form of government, comparatively speaking. In contrast, patriarchy is a damaging system because it causes the brutalization, mutilation, rape and murder of half the people of this world for no other reason other than that they were born female.
And patriarchy, lessens the wealth and human rights of half the population-3 billion people. And this is the half of the population that gives birth to everybody and does most of the childcare, thus, the damage to mothers translates to every person on earth. For example, when patriarchy prevents girls from going to school when those girls grow up they tend to die more often during labor leaving orphans, provide less education to their children, less healthcare for their families, and earn less money to feed their children. So it’s a domino effect causing massive damage to society. Notice how the quality of life tends to be best in societies where women have the most rights? Patriarchy is the worst social evil.
Your first link stated the chart was based on this table showing education as the control
Educational Attainment–People 25 Years Old and Over, by Total Money Earnings in 2005, Work Experience in 2005, Age, Race, Hispanic Origin and Sex
I came to the same conclusion based on the 2006 Census. on my blog. In the aggregate, Asian and white women make more than black and Hispanic men. With the same level of education, all men make more than all women
Aggregate
Asian men
White men
Asian women
White women
–Racial segregation–
Black men
Black women
Latino men
Latina women
Same level of education
White men
Asian men
Latino men
Black men
–Gender segregation–
Asian women
White women
Black women
Latina women
It’s hard to know what slaves and descendants of slaves in the US, Africa and Europe felt was worse.
We were measuring damage caused by capitalism not quality of life. Neoliberalism and global capitalism hurt people elsewhere while improving life here but it increasingly damages life here too. As stated earlier, capitalism encompasses global capitalism, globalization, neoliberalism, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, the medical industrial complex, free trade agreements, environmental and workers rights violations, capitalism in the States, trafficking, the sex trade and the commodification of women’s bodies.
I checked the entire page of my first link to the earnings chart and there was no indication of education:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.....ity_US.png
However, the page links to another page where the data was taken from: http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro.....03_000.htm
So now I see what you mean when you say age was a factor in the chart. Here is data from 2003: http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2004/nov/wk5/art01.txt
Median usual weekly earnings of full-time
wage and salary workers by race and Hispanic
or Latino ethnicity, 2003 annual averages
MEN
White: $715
Black: $555
Asian: $772
Hispanic: $464
WOMEN
White: $567
Black: $491
Asian: $598
Hispanic: $410
That does not include education, it’s just basically how much full-time workers earn. White women earn about $12 more per week than black men, so it’s about the same. Notice that despite slavery, blacks earn significantly more than Hispanics who did not endure slavery in the U.S. And it’s important to note Asians are people of color, and they earn the most.
But what really needs to be compared is the standard of living of the descendants of African and Euro-American slaves and as I said earlier, people’s earnings are much higher in Euro-America.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.....inequality
I measured quality of life using two important factors: wealth and human rights. Having enough to eat and having shelter are basic needs and blacks in the U.S. are much more likely to have those things than in Africa, and usually U.S. blacks have much more than the basics. The second criteria is human rights, Euro-America has much better human rights than most African countries. Therefore, although there are other factors that make people happy, wealth and basic human rights are very important and I believe strongly indicate that the quality of life of Euro-American slave descendants is higher than African slave descendants. I would be interested in knowing what other criteria you prefer to measure quality of life, but I would need statistics to be convinced.
I don’t know a lot about Neoliberalism. However, you have a good point that global capitalism is sometimes like a parasite, harming other countries while benefiting the mother country (often the U.S) due to exploitation of workers in other countries. And I see how that can harm the mother country by taking away jobs that go to foreign workers. But I need facts and statistics to see the extent of that damage.
However, using common sense it’s easy to see the massive damage patriarchy causes- it is measurable in infant mortality, the much higher death rate of women and girls, the fact that we’re 50% of the earth’s population but own 1% of the wealth: http://www.un.org/Conferences/...../women.htm
And it’s measurable by laws that give us less rights than men. So the damage patriarchy causes is massive. Whereas, since capitalist countries tend to be much safer and wealthier than non-capitalist countries, the facts strongly indicate the patriarchy causes a lot more damage than capitalism.
I said earlier that many of those things on the list happen in non-capitalist countries, so I’m not sure why you’re repeating this. But to make myself clear I will analyze each item on your list:
global capitalism
I don’t see how that’s bad…it seems beneficial that businesses should be able to trade with other countries..and for thousands of years non-capitalist countries have done the same
globalization
-for millenia, non-capitalist countries have traded with other countries which is a form of globalization, plus non-capitalist countries use the Internet and other globalization technology
neoliberalism
-Princeton says that’s “a political orientation originating in the 1960s; blends liberal political views with an emphasis on economic growth” http://wordnetweb.princeton.ed.....liberalism
That’s not necessarily capitalist.
the military industrial complex
-non-capitalist countries also have military industries, though they’re smaller than the one in the U.S.
the prison industrial complex
-non-capitalist countries have a prison industrial complex
the medical industrial complex
-non-capitalist countries have a medical industrial complex
free trade agreements
-non-capitalist countries are involved in free trade agreements
environmental and workers rights violations
-non-capitalist countries violate environmental and workers’ rights
capitalism in the States
-a lot of countries practice capitalism about the same as we do and remember capitalism existed in ancient times. People bought and sold things and hired labor thousands of years on every continent, so capitalism is very old and I don’t see why you’re singling out the United States
trafficking, the sex trade and the commodification of women’s bodies
-trafficking occurs frequently in non-capitalist countries such as China
So everything you mention, except possibly neoliberalism, happens in non-capitalist countries. Therefore you can’t blame capitalism for those things. You haven’t provided any evidence that capitalism is more harmful than other forms of government. In order to prove that you need facts comparing and contrasting capitalism and dictatorships, communism and monarchies. The facts are clear that people tend to be richer and safer in capitalist countries. And based on that people are better off living in capitalist countries.
And again, regarding whether the Atlantic Slave trade or African slavery was worse you need to provide facts to prove your point that the Atlantic Slave trade was worse. I believe African slaver was worse because there were more slaves, the slaves lives were harder because they were mostly women therefore more likely to be raped, and their descendants have a lower quality of life from a human rights and wealth perspective. It’s a waste of my time to argue this point with you unless you provide facts to prove your points. Not one or two small facts but enough to definitively prove your point as I have done regarding the slavery issue, the capitalism issue and the issue of patriarchy causing more damage than racism or capitalism.
Hispanics, Asians and blacks come from very different circumstances so it’s hard to compare them. Many Asians were self-selected. Most Asian Americans are immigrants and the 1965 Immigration Act required that they had certain professional skills and family connections before entering the country.
My main concern is capitalism’s damaging effect on other countries although it’s very harmful here too e.g. military industrial complex, prison industrial complex, free trade agreements effects on Latin countries, free trade agreements effects on immigrants in this country, medical industrial complex, sex trafficking from other countries in the US (prevalent in wealth countries like the US, Australia and Japan), we’ll next see the privatization of Social Security and education/charter schools.
I agree that different racial/ethnic groups arrived in the U.S. with different advantages and disadvantages. And the culture they came from and how they came here affect how well they integrate into mainstream U.S. culture.
I’m not sure what you mean by that. Capitalist government apparently has helped a lot of countries because people tend to have more wealth and better human rights in capitalist countries. Perhaps you mean negative effects the capitalist superpower United States has had on other countries. In that case, I doubt it’s capitalism that is responsible for those negative effects, rather it’s simply that the U.S. is a superpower. Throughout history, superpowers have tended to exploit other smaller countries-i.e. the Greek and Roman Empires. Although superpowers have helped smaller nations as well.
At The New Agenda, we talk a lot about the mass media industrial complex’s effect on women and girls. Five private media comglomerates own all other media companies and this made it very hard for individuals to fight the sexism last year against Clinton, Palin and Clinton supporters.
The private health insurance industry costs causes 60% of US bankruptcies, costs Americans $6000 a year, more than any other country because of unnecessary administrative costs. The private health insurance industry kills 22,000 Americans a year. Private health insurance and pharmaceutical company lobbyists spend more money on Capitol Hill than any other lobbyists and they have bought our politicians.
Neoliberal, capitalist policies help other wealthy nations but exploit the resources, labor and environment of poorer countries.
Our military industrial complex destroys other countries.
Capitalist excess destroys life here and abroad.
Donna, It’s true a few media companies control most of the U.S. news, movies, TV shows, etc. but other countries have their own media. Nevertheless, the U.S. being a superpower has extensive power over media foreigners view in their own countries. And I agree private healthcare wastes money due to too many administrative costs but so do public healthcare programs. I guess our main difference of opinion on this issue is that I see this exploitation as the usual result of superpowers whereas you seem to see it as something only capitalist systems do.
Sorry I wasn’t clear about that. Five conglomerates own all media companies in the US which made it hard to have our voices heard last year (or any year) against the sexist media.
Medicare only spends 3% a year on administrative costs. Private insurance spends 30% on administrative costs. Medicare for All would save 400 billion a year. Imagine how many lives would be saved with that money.
Yes, the male-dominated media deliberately skewed the election coverage to prevent women from breaking the glass ceiling and they’re still continuing the sexism, but now we know and our complaints are having an effect. However, I believe there are more than just five big media corporations. This is a list I found:
Disney (market value: $72.8 billion)
AOL-Time Warner (market value: $90.7 billion)
Viacom (market value: $53.9 billion)
General Electric (owner of NBC, market value: $390.6 billion)
News Corporation (market value: $56.7 billion)
Yahoo! (market value: $40.1 billion)
Microsoft (market value: $306.8 billion)
Google (market value: $154.6 billion)
http://www.globalissues.org/ar.....-ownership
Some healthcare systems spend less on administration and that’s a good thing.
Having thought about this issue in light of your condemnation of capitalism. It occurred to me that you seem to imply that if private (read capitalist) healthcare is bad then capitalism is bad. Recall, that there are a lot of problems with lifelong government healthcare systems. For example, quality often suffers, they’re very expensive for taxpayers, and rationing and waiting are common. I’d appreciate some statistics for the information you stated about healthcare, especially your statement that private healthcare cause 60% of U.S. bankruptcies. The U.S. is among the countries that offer the best quality care (for those who can pay), that’s why people from other countries often travel to the U.S. to receive the best treatment at the excellent hospitals.
Also, I believe that food and shelter are more important priorities than healthcare and that first we should make sure every citizen has a home and food before we attempt to give everybody healthcare. And regarding the capitalism issue, citizens from countries with deep-rooted capitalism are much richer than communist citizens in general. I’m not against government providing some services, but it’s necessary to know that a system were government provides a lot of services (communism) generally is a society lacking in basic human rights and suffering from mass poverty.
I’m not arguing for communism but for democratic socialism, a hybrid of capitalism and socialism. The highest quality of life and happiness are reported in democratic socialist countries. Plenty of research shows 60% or more of bankruptcies are caused by medical expenses. Try PNHP.org or google. It’s been reported by major news outlets.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH.....cal.bills/
They concluded that 62.1 percent of the bankruptcies were medically related because the individuals either had more than $5,000 in medical bills, mortgaged their home to pay for medical bills, or lost significant income due to an illness. On average, medically bankrupt families had $17,943 in out-of-pocket expenses, including $26,971 for those who lacked insurance and $17,749 who had insurance at some point.
Overall, three-quarters of the people with a medically-related bankruptcy had health insurance, they say.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/.....BCI5B1.DTL
The problem seems to be largely a middle-class phenomenon. Typical medical bankruptcy filers are in their early 40s and have children. Most have at least some college education and own their homes.
Even if people have health insurance to begin with, many lose coverage because they are unable to keep their jobs because of medical problems
http://www.consumeraffairs.com.....study.html
Most of the medical bankruptcy filers were middle class; 56 percent owned a home and the same number had attended college. In many cases, illness forced breadwinners to take time off from work — losing income and job-based health insurance precisely when families needed it most.
Families in bankruptcy suffered many privations — 30 percent had a utility cut off and 61 percent went without needed medical care.
First time poster here. I actually came to the web site looking for what TNA’s position was on the recent Health Care debate in a manner that best benefits women. I couldn’t find such a discussion, so I am placing my question here because the debate seemed lively.
I am just wondering what elements of Health Care Reform (or not) should I be supporting because they benefit women? Also, from browsing the web site TNA basically is about getting women in public office and fighting sexism in the media. Is that about right?
GPat
The healthcare debate is not an exact feminist issue, imo. It is more of a political/economic issue over what a government’s place should be in the people’s lives. Some people believe free healthcare is a right; other people believe we need medical choices rather than just one option. The healthcare debate is furthermore, a strictly partisan issue, imo. TNA does not take partisan stances, so as far as I know, there is no stance on healthcare.
I see. Well, I don’t have a lot of knowledge of government systems so I can’t verify that. But I do know that many European countries have been rated as having a higher quality of life than the U.S. and European countries tend to be socialist. Here is a quality of life index for 111 countries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q.....ex.2C_2005
Ireland is at the top and they have a Socialist Party but are not a socialist country based on what I’ve read. However, citizens have public and private health care options.
I’ve read that most people become bankrupt because of health problems. But I wouldn’t necessarily blame the healthcare system for that. It could be that people with health problems become bankrupt because they can’t work due to poor health.
I’m not an expert about this issue, but since women have less money than men I guess a cheap system is best for us, particularly if it provides full coverage of women’s medical conditions and children’s health because women make the vast majority of medical decisions for children.
Nancy and Karen,
Appreciated your feedback. I am going through the following material to form an opinion. You might find it useful:
http://www.nationalpartnership.....rm_landing
http://www.workingmother.com/w.....&sp=94
http://www.bc.edu/centers/cwf/research.html
http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/doc.....tices.html
Not quite sure yet whether I can agree that Healthcare Reform is not an exact feminist issue (isn’t feminism the promotion of clear actions that provide women with respect, fairness, equity and equality in society) and strictly a partisan one, or that simply the cheapest system is best for women, if one expects the full coverage of women’s medical conditions and children’s health because women make the vast majority of medical decisions for children.
I think sexism begins as a state of mind that is then translated into deliberate actions by men and women (sometimes consciously and other times unconsciously) that limit a woman’s options in life (e.g., portrayals of women stereotypes in television programs, sexist media coverage, governmental legislation, corporate policies and practices). What makes sexism so tough to beat is that it is systemic; it has tentacles everywhere and is supported structurally in society. It is for this reason that more women politicians and business leaders are needed, to break down these structures.
Healthcare is on the front burner now and can either be reformed to limit or benefit women. If left up only to men to decide, without pressure from groups like TNA, I am sure we will get a system that limits women.
Just my thoughts. I am definitely no expert, I am looking for answers.
I’m not an administrator of TNA, only a blogger, but I have read this site often and from what I understand, TNA focuses on ending gender inequality first and foremost. A key goal is to increase women in leadership roles and in order to do that it is necessary to be tolerant of different views women have on the issues and to focus mostly on increasing women’s leadership to the point where we have an equal amount as men. An example of this is that TNA defended and supported Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Sarah Palin even though they are on opposite sides of the left/right spectrum.
We can argue what is a feminist issue forever. However, what is clear is that we live in a patriarchy which Webster’s describes as “control by men of a disproportionately large share of power.” A purpose of feminism is to end the patriarchy, so as I see it feminism is more about female power in relation to male power than any specific issue. What this means in practical terms is that feminism is more about women getting equal power as men than it is about promoting a specific issue.
Focusing on partisan issues at the expense of promoting women in leadership causes division and weakens feminism. That is why unity is important because it strengthens feminism. You will find that The New Agenda is different from mainstream “feminism” in that respect because mainstream “feminism” alienates a lot of people who aren’t left-wing, but here all are welcome who respect women as equal to men and work to create gender equality.
Of course, and that’s why feminism promotes women leaders so that it’s not just men who decide how to reform healthcare. Women should have as much decision-making power as men. Women’s life experiences inform their decisions about what the best healthcare program would be.
Nancy,
Thank you for the clarification. As I mentioned in my first post, it sounds like “TNA basically is about getting women in public office and fighting sexism in the media.” Those are obviously valid and admirable objectives.
I will look elsewhere for a discussion on how governmental and corporate policies should be changed to advance women in politics and business, may be one of the organizations I identified or NOW, Catalyst, the Center for the Advancement of Women, NAWBO, etc.
Thank you,
GPat
GPat, we do discuss getting more women into the government and corporate fields. In fact, that is what TNA is all about and is also what Nancy stated our mission is. However, we will not discuss healthcare because that is a partisan issue.
Karen,
What if certain health care policies help women get into and advance within the government and corporate fields? For example, better, or expanded, child care or dependent care benefits since women tend to have two jobs – managing their professional life and home. Also, isn’t a women, partly leading the discussion on health care reform? If Kathleen Sebelius does right by the country and women with respect to health care reform wouldn’t she be an ideal candidate for VP in 2012 or President in 2016? I am not advocating for her and it would be great if a women also ran against her but it seems like Ms. Sebelius is at the leadership fulcrum on this issue.
Is affirmative action, ensuring that companies take proactive steps to advance women within their company, or EEOC enforcement, partisan issues? Is making domestic violence against women a hate crime, a partisan issue?
If TNA has a “parking lot” of issues that do not get discussed (e.g., abortion, healthcare, etc.) because they are perceived to be partisan, how do you determine what goes on the list and who decides what goes on the list? I am not quite sure how you are picking and choosing what issues are partisan?
I get TNA advocating women voting for women and stopping sexism in the media. It is a simple and tight mission. With this mission, you find, recognize and support talented women of all parties as they pursue public office and you identify, shame and may be even boycott individuals, companies and organizations that promote sexist images of women. This purpose is operational.
GPat, your questions above were for Karen but since you mentioned hate crimes which is the subject of my article, I will address this issue. As I previously said, I’m not a TNA administrator but I’m a regular reader. The hate crimes article was my first article for TNA. All articles have a disclaimer stating that the content of the articles does not necessarily reflect the opinions of TNA. Sexist hate crimes is an issue that is specifically about hatred of women and my article is about the media’s sexist reporting of that crime, unlike healthcare which is not solely a women’s issue.
You’re correct that there are certain aspects of healthcare that affect women, but the issue itself is primarily about funding for healthcare of people in general and the way it is debated is almost always as a partisan issue between the liberal and conservative ideas about the extent that government should fund health care.
Nancy,
In some ways you are supporting my point regarding TNA’s mission. As I have reviewed the web site, there are many articles focused on sexism in media reporting. As I said, I believe stopping sexism in the media is a valid purpose and mission. It is clear and actionable. TNA followers know what to do: find and make noise about sexist portrayals of women in the media.
There are also a lot of articles highlighting and supporting women in public and corporate leadership. This second goal is also actionable: regardless of party affiliation, vote (or support) female candidate (and women business leaders) because more women in office (and in the corporate executive suites) likely means legislation and corporate policies that benefit women.
From the various articles, it appears TNA also wants to pick and choose the issues that are partisan but has not laid out a clear criterion for that determination. This is confusing. My background is strategic planning and finance. An organization’s mission should be actionable which means that members can clearly state the organization’s reason for being and their role within that organization.
For example, I could envision, the actionable TNA mission being:
“The New Agenda is a 501(c)(4) organization dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls by bringing about systemic change in the media, at the workplace, at school and at home by supporting women who run for public office, or aspire to leadership roles in corporate America and by identifying and boycotting individuals and organizations that foster sexism in the media. TNA is non-partisan and does not take stands on governmental issues but relies on women in office and within leadership positions to develop and implement policies that foster female equity, equality and advancement.”
Now this statement is longer but I know what I am getting into with TNA:
1. You want people to support women running for public office and within leadership roles
2. You want people to fight sexism in the media and
3. You want people to be non-partisan (i.e., leave the policy debates to women the organization helps get elected).
What I don’t understand is how you choose what is partisan and what is not? In some sense, all issues can be debated in a partisan manner, and usually are. So the third goal could be changed to “analyzing partisan issues and determining the pros and cons of both sides in support of women.” I think an all, or nothing decision has to be made: either you take positions on policy issues or you do not. At a minimum, you must lay out the criterion for partisanship.
GPat, I recommend you write TNA directly and tell them your ideas.
When I said feminism should prioritize increasing women in leadership jobs to represent our proportion in the population, I didn’t necessarily mean that that would solve inequality solely because of more decisions by women. What happens is that once women have equality, it changes they dynamic of overall leadership. For example, a group of 59 men and 1 woman would have a dramatically different dynamic than 30 men and 30 women. Men often make different decisions when in the presence of women, especially when women are a large part of the group. For example, Peggy Reeves Sanday studied dozens of gender equal societies and found that rape was virtually nonexistent in societies where women had equal power as men:
http://journaloffeministinsigh.....-rape.html
Nancy,
Good ideas and suggestion. I am assuming TNA reads its own blogs so I will leave it at that. Given your thoughts, I would change the mission statement to read:
“The New Agenda is a 501(c)(4) organization dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls by bringing about systemic change in the media, at the workplace, at school and at home by supporting women who run for public office, or aspire to leadership roles in corporate America and by identifying and boycotting individuals and organizations that foster sexism in the media. TNA is non-partisan and does not take stands on governmental issues but relies on the dynamics of having more women in office and within leadership positions to foster policies that promote female equity, equality and advancement.”
Well, while I know you do not represent TNA, the statement above is a clear and actionable mission statement. It specifically tells the reader what you will and will not do such that they can support TNA.
Although this mission is not quite what I am looking for right now (I am looking for an organization that rolls-up it sleeves and breaks through partisan policy disagreements and makes policy recommendations that benefit women), it is very admirable.
I was curious and now I have a better idea.
Good fortunes TNA!
Again, I’m not a TNA member but as I understand TNA rolls up its sleeves and breaks through partisan disagreements on sex discrimination issues. I guess you’re searching for feminist non-partisan work on other issues as well. If you find an organization that does that I’d appreciate it if you’d post their name here.
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