A quote from the essay: "This is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, during the heyday of Left activism in the 1960’s, many of the men who ran the movement maintained blatantly misogynist postures and mistreated women."
I saw some of this in real time when I was in college in the late 60's & early 70's. I was the manager of a bar that was popular with grad students and leftists. People from SDS, women's liberation, gay activists, and other liberal causes often came to have a few beers and talk after their constant meetings. A prominent member of the SDS was married and he often came to the bar with his wife where his girlfriend was waiting at the big table they always formed in the middle of the room. I remember how sad the man's wife seemed to be sitting at that table. He was not the only leftwing male activist who used women in this way. One who cooked and did the chores and a side piece or two to make life more interesting - for him.
> When feminist goals come into conflict with other parts of the Left coalition, it’s always the feminists who get the shaft.
You've made a strong case, but I don't think "always" is accurate, and it may even be the case that they win and lose precisely proportional to their size in the coalition. The key is clearly distinguishing "Feminists" from "women", further delineating various feminist positions from one another, and finally, thinking about the sociology of feminism on the left.
Maybe that's all too abstract. I'm really just saying that the examples you listed are extremely varied; different levels of salience, impact, popularity among feminists, *and* popularity on the left. For example, the conflict between trans activists and feminists is really a conflict with a _subset_ of feminists. You might argue that "gender critical" feminists are the real feminists, and I'd be inclined to agree, but it does mean that we're talking about a smaller number of coalition members than the broadest construction of "feminist" implies. More importantly, the conflict isn't settled! I strongly suspect most leftists would prefer that trans activists moderated their rhetoric and demands.
Alternately, take the pornography question. Whatever you think about pornography, Dworkin and McKinnon are marginal figures with very little influence on the left in 2024. Meghan Murphy notwithstanding, they have very few visible champions today, much less influential ones.
Do feminists ever win? All of my quibbles are irrelevant if feminists never win intra-coalitional conflicts. But feminists have a cluster of decisive wins where they are most numerous and strongest: in universities and professional-managerial environments, particularly relating to procedures related to sexual harassment and abuse. This is not to say that feminists have gotten everything)they want or that their victories have even made their lives better, just that those cases frequently create intra-coalitional crises - and feminists prevail more often than not. Even when they don't lose in the specific instance, their principles carry the day.
So there's a version of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle here, which is that the "position of feminists" is affected by the coalitional demands placed on them. The trans issue is really controversial (and really has been within feminism for 50 years) so I will use a more obvious example-- surrogacy. At the time of the Baby M case, feminists were pretty strongly united in support of Mary Beth Whitehead's desire to break her surrogacy contract. There was a lot of stuff about womb-rental and the commodification of reproduction, and I don't think there was much pushback.
Nowadays, a lot of feminists support surrogacy or don't comment on it. But is that because of the changing of minds, or is it because the coalitional demands of gay and lesbian allies required them to change their position. My sense is it is clearly the latter- the feminist theory on womb-rental didn't change, after all. There wasn't this wave of feminists publishing papers and putting out theories about how the feminist position in the Baby M case was wrong. For the most part feminists just stopped commenting on it. (Indeed, when I said that on Twitter, none other than the great Katha Pollitt, who has spent her life fighting feminist battles, responded and said "well, I for one have NEVER changed my position opposing surrogacy".)
Given that it is obvious that this happened with respect to surrogacy, it's reasonable to extrapolate that it happened on other issues. I will grant that not every feminist was complaining about pornography in the 1980's, but it wasn't some fringe movement either-- they got laws passed in Indianapolis, Minneapolis, and Canada! And of course there was a lot of theory behind that position (about who owns women's bodies and the detrimental effect of the "male gaze") that was even more widely held than the position itself.
Trans issues is probably the weakest link in my theory. From the beginning, there were feminists who were trans-inclusive. Robin Morgan and Janice Raymond faced significant pushback for their positions. At the same time, even there, the direction of feminist THEORY was a lot less unclear than where feminists' political positions were. There were literally hundreds of feminist publications in the 1970's arguing for the importance of female-only and female-dominated spaces and against male infiltration of them. Robert Bly and Warren Farrell were always VERY controversial and distrusted. The gender crits/TERF's simply applied that theory faithfully to the trans issue, while others recognized competing interests.
So I think I have a complete picture here. Feminists fight intra-coalitional battles, and when they come into conflict with other powerful parts of the coalition, they are often forced to back down, and you don't perceive it because the way the back-down happens is simply by feminists not talking about the issue anymore or not carrying their theories to their logical conclusion.
The victories over sexual harassment were not intra-coalitional-- there was no group within the Democratic coalition who was pushing for lax sexual harassment rules. I would note, though, that there's one group in the coalition that in practice ran a closed world that tolerated a lot of sexual harassment: the entertainment industry. And despite #metoo , that world is still full of sexual harassment and the males who contribute heavily to Democratic-aligned causes and who run the show there generally do not care very much about what feminists think on that issue, although feminists have not backed down in their criticism.
That's a good point about how social and political pressures can influence which positions are most prominent, but I think you're over-indexing on the surrogacy debate and reading more widespread support into some of these positions than they deserve (especially on the left). For example, maybe we disagree about the definition of "marginal" or "fringe", but Dworkin and McKinnon's anti-pornography campaign was only successful (and barely so) because they allied with the religious right.
I think a lot of your argument depends on juggling multiple definitions of "feminist" that obscures the actual significance of each group to the left coalition. Katha Politt, for example, was certainly prominent and influential in certain circles, but has always represented a tiny constituency. I'd summarize my hypothesis as "'feminists' is actually an umbrella term for a diverse group of sometimes contradictory positions and win intra-coalitional conflicts exactly as often as one would expect given the level of support for the specific position."
Lastly, I do want to say that, if OJ Simpson and the slur "Karen" are evidence of the "feminists always lose" thesis, then there are indeed intra-coalitional conflicts over sexual harassment and assault: I recall reading that, at universities and colleges, minority men are disproportionately accused of sex-related offenses. They pay the price of the degraded due process protections and their importance in the coalition doesn't seem to help. Or take the case of (gay) Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse, whose campaign was derailed by accusations of sexual impropriety. He was defeated on the basis of rigid standards favored and promoted by feminists. (https://www.masslive.com/news/2020/08/umass-amherst-announces-review-of-allegations-against-holyoke-mayor-alex-morse-says-it-has-no-plans-to-hire-him-back-as-lecturer.html)
I think the best way to view #metoo in relation to my thesis is that it didn't really bring feminists in conflict with any other parts of the Left coalition. In those situations, feminists can still win victories.
A quote from the essay: "This is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, during the heyday of Left activism in the 1960’s, many of the men who ran the movement maintained blatantly misogynist postures and mistreated women."
I saw some of this in real time when I was in college in the late 60's & early 70's. I was the manager of a bar that was popular with grad students and leftists. People from SDS, women's liberation, gay activists, and other liberal causes often came to have a few beers and talk after their constant meetings. A prominent member of the SDS was married and he often came to the bar with his wife where his girlfriend was waiting at the big table they always formed in the middle of the room. I remember how sad the man's wife seemed to be sitting at that table. He was not the only leftwing male activist who used women in this way. One who cooked and did the chores and a side piece or two to make life more interesting - for him.
Really interesting!
> When feminist goals come into conflict with other parts of the Left coalition, it’s always the feminists who get the shaft.
You've made a strong case, but I don't think "always" is accurate, and it may even be the case that they win and lose precisely proportional to their size in the coalition. The key is clearly distinguishing "Feminists" from "women", further delineating various feminist positions from one another, and finally, thinking about the sociology of feminism on the left.
Maybe that's all too abstract. I'm really just saying that the examples you listed are extremely varied; different levels of salience, impact, popularity among feminists, *and* popularity on the left. For example, the conflict between trans activists and feminists is really a conflict with a _subset_ of feminists. You might argue that "gender critical" feminists are the real feminists, and I'd be inclined to agree, but it does mean that we're talking about a smaller number of coalition members than the broadest construction of "feminist" implies. More importantly, the conflict isn't settled! I strongly suspect most leftists would prefer that trans activists moderated their rhetoric and demands.
Alternately, take the pornography question. Whatever you think about pornography, Dworkin and McKinnon are marginal figures with very little influence on the left in 2024. Meghan Murphy notwithstanding, they have very few visible champions today, much less influential ones.
Do feminists ever win? All of my quibbles are irrelevant if feminists never win intra-coalitional conflicts. But feminists have a cluster of decisive wins where they are most numerous and strongest: in universities and professional-managerial environments, particularly relating to procedures related to sexual harassment and abuse. This is not to say that feminists have gotten everything)they want or that their victories have even made their lives better, just that those cases frequently create intra-coalitional crises - and feminists prevail more often than not. Even when they don't lose in the specific instance, their principles carry the day.
So there's a version of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle here, which is that the "position of feminists" is affected by the coalitional demands placed on them. The trans issue is really controversial (and really has been within feminism for 50 years) so I will use a more obvious example-- surrogacy. At the time of the Baby M case, feminists were pretty strongly united in support of Mary Beth Whitehead's desire to break her surrogacy contract. There was a lot of stuff about womb-rental and the commodification of reproduction, and I don't think there was much pushback.
Nowadays, a lot of feminists support surrogacy or don't comment on it. But is that because of the changing of minds, or is it because the coalitional demands of gay and lesbian allies required them to change their position. My sense is it is clearly the latter- the feminist theory on womb-rental didn't change, after all. There wasn't this wave of feminists publishing papers and putting out theories about how the feminist position in the Baby M case was wrong. For the most part feminists just stopped commenting on it. (Indeed, when I said that on Twitter, none other than the great Katha Pollitt, who has spent her life fighting feminist battles, responded and said "well, I for one have NEVER changed my position opposing surrogacy".)
Given that it is obvious that this happened with respect to surrogacy, it's reasonable to extrapolate that it happened on other issues. I will grant that not every feminist was complaining about pornography in the 1980's, but it wasn't some fringe movement either-- they got laws passed in Indianapolis, Minneapolis, and Canada! And of course there was a lot of theory behind that position (about who owns women's bodies and the detrimental effect of the "male gaze") that was even more widely held than the position itself.
Trans issues is probably the weakest link in my theory. From the beginning, there were feminists who were trans-inclusive. Robin Morgan and Janice Raymond faced significant pushback for their positions. At the same time, even there, the direction of feminist THEORY was a lot less unclear than where feminists' political positions were. There were literally hundreds of feminist publications in the 1970's arguing for the importance of female-only and female-dominated spaces and against male infiltration of them. Robert Bly and Warren Farrell were always VERY controversial and distrusted. The gender crits/TERF's simply applied that theory faithfully to the trans issue, while others recognized competing interests.
So I think I have a complete picture here. Feminists fight intra-coalitional battles, and when they come into conflict with other powerful parts of the coalition, they are often forced to back down, and you don't perceive it because the way the back-down happens is simply by feminists not talking about the issue anymore or not carrying their theories to their logical conclusion.
The victories over sexual harassment were not intra-coalitional-- there was no group within the Democratic coalition who was pushing for lax sexual harassment rules. I would note, though, that there's one group in the coalition that in practice ran a closed world that tolerated a lot of sexual harassment: the entertainment industry. And despite #metoo , that world is still full of sexual harassment and the males who contribute heavily to Democratic-aligned causes and who run the show there generally do not care very much about what feminists think on that issue, although feminists have not backed down in their criticism.
That's a good point about how social and political pressures can influence which positions are most prominent, but I think you're over-indexing on the surrogacy debate and reading more widespread support into some of these positions than they deserve (especially on the left). For example, maybe we disagree about the definition of "marginal" or "fringe", but Dworkin and McKinnon's anti-pornography campaign was only successful (and barely so) because they allied with the religious right.
I think a lot of your argument depends on juggling multiple definitions of "feminist" that obscures the actual significance of each group to the left coalition. Katha Politt, for example, was certainly prominent and influential in certain circles, but has always represented a tiny constituency. I'd summarize my hypothesis as "'feminists' is actually an umbrella term for a diverse group of sometimes contradictory positions and win intra-coalitional conflicts exactly as often as one would expect given the level of support for the specific position."
Lastly, I do want to say that, if OJ Simpson and the slur "Karen" are evidence of the "feminists always lose" thesis, then there are indeed intra-coalitional conflicts over sexual harassment and assault: I recall reading that, at universities and colleges, minority men are disproportionately accused of sex-related offenses. They pay the price of the degraded due process protections and their importance in the coalition doesn't seem to help. Or take the case of (gay) Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse, whose campaign was derailed by accusations of sexual impropriety. He was defeated on the basis of rigid standards favored and promoted by feminists. (https://www.masslive.com/news/2020/08/umass-amherst-announces-review-of-allegations-against-holyoke-mayor-alex-morse-says-it-has-no-plans-to-hire-him-back-as-lecturer.html)
How would you think about #metoo in this framework, seems to fall more on the feminists winning side?
I think the best way to view #metoo in relation to my thesis is that it didn't really bring feminists in conflict with any other parts of the Left coalition. In those situations, feminists can still win victories.
There was, for a while, a very real danger that consenting adults would be in charge of their own sexualities.
Fortunately, we have innovated new ways to control others' sexualities while still remaining, ourselves, good people. But it was a close call!
Feminists got Abortion and...well that's it. Granted Feminism is not a monolith.