Freedom Socialist • Vol. 29, No. 3 • June-July 2008

SOAPBOX

Antiwar déjà vu, round two: the ISO v. feminism

by Linda Averill

Linda Averill

In the last Freedom Socialist, I wrote about sectarianism and single-issueism killing the antiwar movement. I cited a struggle from more than 25 years ago in the Coalition Against Registration and the Draft (CARD), where socialists and other leftists displayed arrogance and movement-defeating behavior, because they would not acknowledge the different experiences and levels of oppression faced by women in society, including the U.S. military.

President Jimmy Carter was attempting to restore the draft and Congress was debating whether women were competent to be included. Congress, the right wing, and the U.S. Supreme Court all said that women were simply unfit for the trenches.

I and other female opponents of the draft said that the only argument for women’s exclusion was the sexism that is used to justify discrimination in other areas of life. For this, we were labeled divisive by many men in the coalition who wanted to ignore this front-page debate for fear it would “overshadow” the issue of the draft. International Socialist Organization (ISO) and others in the alphabet soup of the U.S. Left just didn’t get it that sexism, racism and homophobia are what divides the workingclass — and must be answered whenever they occur. By siding with the misogynists on women’s exclusion from the draft, these leftists were aiding the divide-and-conquer game.

In 25 years, ISO has not changed one iota. The group is still stuck in a sexist rut, arguing that feminism — the struggle for women’s equality — is bourgeois and separate from the struggle to end class exploitation.

All this is regurgitated in a very long “note” on the NW Students Antiwar Listserve by ISO member Steve Leigh in reply to my last column.

Here is a sample of ISO’s contorted logic: “We are Marxists and therefore Women’s Liberationists, but since we are not separatists, we are not ‘Feminists.’ ” Huh?
Leigh continues: “The goal should be to form integrated struggles for women’s liberation, not to glorify separatism.”

With the stroke of a computer key, Leigh airily paints the entire women’s movement with the broad brush of separatism. He ignores, or doesn’t care to learn about the ideological and class divisions that characterize this movement. Betty Friedan and Audre Lorde and Andrea Dworkin, Code Pink and Fund for the Feminist Majority and Radical Women. All are the same! Why would ISO show such disinterest and ignorance of a struggle that concerns the fate of at least half the workingclass? It is embarassing to read.

From ISO’s viewpoint, women are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Ask the antidraft movement to oppose sexist arguments for women’s exclusion and we are “Pentagon Feminists.” Or dividers and distractors from the “main” issue. What’s their main issue? Always something or someone ahead of the women in line.

Oh, and leftist women shouldn’t take their concerns outside the socialist movement, either! That’s divisive, they say. By silencing opposition to male chauvinism, this position holds back progress toward social change. It leads women to retreat to the conservative haven of separatism, the opposite of Radical Women’s position.

When I first ran into socialists in the antiwar movement, I was struck by the sexism of groups like ISO. But thank Karl Marx and Clara Zetkin for the socialist feminists I met who connected the oppression of women as wives, soldiers, mothers and sisters — to racism and class oppression, to capitalism and the wars it inevitably produces. Their explanations were so logical. They made sense of the reality I experienced, and offered a cohesive strategy to fight back. It transformed me into an unrepentant socialist — and feminist.  I wonder how many women the ISO has driven away from Marxism by mangling Marx’s ideas.

Whoever coined the profound South African proverb, “You strike a woman, you strike a rock,” understood that women are great fighters, organizers, resisters, leaders of the oppressed — and revolutionaries. Our second-class status propels us to identify and unite with other downtrodden groups. Our hidden herstory is replete with stories of valor in battle — fighting tyranny, demanding justice. So rather than deny our abilities as fighters, let’s unleash the strength of women as opponents of war and draft resisters!

Hope springs eternal. Maybe ISO and other leftists will listen up on the Woman Question and learn. But if 25 years haven’t done it, I ain’t gonna hold my breath.

You don’t have to either. Don’t suffer silently in the ranks of radical sexists. Socialist feminism lives. Women and men come one, come all!