Kyla Schuller

It is difficult to know where to begin in reviewing this book. It ranges over multiple topics, any one of which could be addressed in more than one book, yet the author ignores, other aspects of the areas she studies. It is undeniable that many white women abolitionists and suffragists shared in the racism of their times. To advocate freedom for blacks was not necessarily to believe that they were the social equals of whites or even that they had the potential to become so. This is clear from the writings of both male and female abolitionists, some of whom changed their positions when they had extended contact with such black leaders as Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman. Schuller appears however to feel that she is bringing forth new information that was somehow concealed from 2nd generation feminists. A major work of the era was _Century of Struggle_ by Eleanor Flexner (1959). I read it in 1971 and to the best of my recollection the work was clear that suffragist leaders, frustrated by the 15th Amendment extending the vote only to black men, used racist rhetoric to continue the struggle for the women's vote, arguing that educated _white_ women voters were more likely to improve the nation than black and immigrant men. The relationship between Margaret Sanger's push for access to birth control and the eugenics movement is also fairly well recognized. To act as though these opinions are somehow skeletons in the closet of feminism is false naiveté. Chapter Three deals with the push to Americanize Native American by sending the children to boarding school and privatizing reservation lands. By what stretch of the imagination is a policy constructed and administered by white men (remember that women could not vote for most of the time covered) in any way to be blamed on white feminists? It is true that many educated women found careers as teachers, missionaries, nurses and other service professionals in government and private agencies. But these women were always in the service of a male originated and controlled policy. They had been taught that the white race had a duty to uplift the" lesser races" and they embraced this "duty", often abandoning the comforts of the cities, personal health and safety and the possibility of families of their own to do so. Historical hindsight is often cruel.

Chapter Five addresses the more recent history of 2nd wave feminism, beginning with Betty Friedan's _The Feminine Mystique_. I actually agree with many of Schuller's criticism of a feminism that concentrated on pushing educated women into the professions and boardrooms. I think a major flaw of the movement was the disdain shown for traditional women's work--as anyone who has done it will tell you, there is much more to a well-managed household than the compounding of a pudding. However, an analysis of the role of capitalism in downgrading housework would have skated dangerously near issues of class--and in a nation still consumed by fear of socialism/communism we couldn't have that. There are also those who argue that resource constraints, such as the first oil crisis in the mid 70s, caused strains on the economy that were temporally eased by forcing many women into the workplace. For most working-class women this was not an improvement in their lives--long hours in a secretary pool, a factory assembly line or a retail job followed by the same amount of cooking, cleaning, budget planning, and childcare as before were resented rather than welcomed. And nagging men to do their share has been notably ineffective. The fact that this was happening at the same time that middle class women were celebrating the freedom to work as lawyers, doctors, professors of gender studies, bank managers, etc. led to working-class women blaming feminism for societal changes that they had not asked for. I would also note that Schuller neglects to mention the working-class women who were trying to improve working class jobs and trying to break down barriers that kept women out of higher paid blue-collar work such as building trades, technical work, first responder positions and the like. This is ironic, since restricting women's access to some better paying physical labor, such as coal mining, in the name of decency was part of the work of the earlier woman reformers who Schuller criticizes.

Chapter Six examines anti-transsexual attitudes in the women's movement. Schuller lumps all objections to the presence of transwomen in women's spaces together. Yet I feel that there are two separate issues. On one hand we have arguments such as that Schuller quotes by Janice Raymond. "'The transsexually constructed lesbian-feminist, having castrated himself, turns his whole body and behavior into a phallus that can rape in many ways, all the time.'" I don't even know how to argue with that. It seems like an adult version of "Boys have cooties." On the other hand, contemporary gender theory seems determined to ignore any actual differences between cis-women and transwomen. Trans supporters chant things like "Transwomen are women in every way that matters." Oh really? What a clever way to antagonize cis-women (even more than calling them cis-women against their wills already does). More seriously, the anti-TERF crowd object to any attempt to differentiate between transwomen who transition surgically and those who have not. Rapid changes in laws have made some establishments afraid to question individuals with male genitals who wish to use women's locker rooms and spas. Women's crisis shelters have been criticized and even attacked (as in Vancouver, B.C.) for separating transwomen from cis-women who may have been victims of sexual assault and physical abuse by men. The fact that a person is ingesting female hormones is no guarantee that that they are incapable of rape. Depending on the natural level of testosterone and the dosage of estrogen it is possible for some individuals to retain the ability to have an erection and ejaculate even while they are growing breasts and achieving more feminine skin texture. In Great Britain it is currently the case that the simple declaration of female identity may allow a person to be confined in a female prison--and there have been cases of such criminals sexually assaulting their fellow inmates. While it is true that some people, male and female, hate and fear the very existence of trans people, it is specious to conflate this emotion or religion based reaction with practical concerns about men pretending to be transwomen in order to access women's spaces.

In summation: there is much valuable information in this book, especially for 3rd wave feminists who may have missed earlier iterations of the history of the suffragist movement. However, I believe that attributing the direction that 2nd wave feminism took solely to the whiteness of most of its advocates without including an analysis of the class basis is a mistake. After all, European and British feminists were equally white, yet there was more critique of capitalism in their movements than in America. American feminism was a product of the political totality of the time and place, not merely of the whiteness of its leaders.… (altro)