FEMINIST THEORY
from margin
to center
bell hooks
south end press
Copyright © 1984 by bell hooks
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Feminist theory from margin to center.
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For us sisters-Angela, Gwenda, Valeria,
Theresa, Sarah
For all we have shared
for all we have come through together
for continuing closeness
table of contents
Acknowledgments
vii
Preface
ix
Chapter 1
Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory
1
Chapter 2
Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression
2
Chapter 3
The Significance of Feminist Movement
Chapter 4
Sisterhood: Political Solidarity Between Women
33
43
Chapter 5
Men: Comrades in Struggle
67
Chapter 6
Changing Perspectives on Power
83
Chapter 7
Rethinking the Nature of Work
95
Chapter 8
Educating Women: A Feminist Agenda
107
Chapter 9
Feminist Movement to End Violence
117
Chapter 10
Revolutionary Parenting
133
Chapter 11
Ending Female Sexual Oppression
147
Chapter 12
Revolution: Development Through Struggle
157
Notes
164
Bibliography
171
acknowledgments
Not all women, in fact, very few have had the good
fortune to live and work among women and men actively
involved in feminist movement. Many of us live in circum
stances and environments where we must engage in femi
nist struggle alone with only occasional support and affir
mation. During much of the writing of Ain't I A Woman:
black women and feminism I worked in isolation. It was my
hope that the publication of this work would draw me closer
to feminist activists, especially black women. Ironically,
some of the most outspoken black women active in feminist
movement responded by trashing both it and me. While I
expected serious rigorous evaluation of my work I was
totally unprepared for the hostility and contempt shown me
by women whom I did not and do not see as enemies. Despite
their responses I share with them an ongoing commitment
to feminist struggle. To me this does not mean that we must
approach feminism from the same perspective. It does mean
we have a basis for communication, that our political com
mitments should lead us to talk and struggle together.
Unfortunately it is often easier to ignore, dismiss, reject, and
even hurt one another rather than engage in constructive
confrontation.
Were it not for the overwhelmingly positive responses to
the book from black women who felt it compelled them to
either re-think or think for the first time about the impact of
sexism on our lives and the importance of feminist move
ment, I might have become terribly disheartened and dis
illusioned. Thanks to them and many other women and men
this book was not written in isolation. I am especially grate
ful for the care and affirmation given me by Valeria and
Gwenda, my younger sisters; Beverly, my friend and com
rade; Nate, my companion; and the South End Press collec
tive. Such encouragement renews my commitment to femi
nist politics and strengthens my conviction that the value of
feminist writing must be determined not only by the way a
work is received among feminist activists but by the extent
to which it draws women and men who are outside feminist
struggle inside.
preface
To be in the margin is to be part of the whole but outside the
main body. As black Americans living in a small Kentucky
town, the railroad tracks were a daily reminder of our margin
ality. Across those tracks were paved streets, stores we could
not enter, restaurants we could not eat in, and people we could
not look directly in the face. Across those tracks was a world we
could work in as maids, as janitors, as prostitutes, as long
as it was in a service capacity. We could enter that world but we
could not live there. We had always to return to the margin, to
cross the tracks, to shacks and abandoned houses on the edge
of town.
There were laws to ensure our return. To not return was to
risk being punished. Living as we did-on the edge-we deve
loped a particular way of seeing reality. We looked both from
the outside in and and from the inside out. We focused our
attention on the center as well as on the margin. We understood
both. This mode of seeing reminded us of the existence of a
whole universe, a main body made up of both margin and
center. Our survival depended on an ongoing public awareness
of the separation between margin and center and an ongoing
private acknowledgment that we were a necessary, vital part
of that whole.
This sense of wholeness, impressed upon our conscious
ness by the structure of our daily lives, provided us an opposi
tional world view-a mode of seeing unknown to most of our
oppressors, that sustained us, aided us in our struggle to trans
cend poverty and despair, strengthened our sense of self and
our solidarity.
The willingness to explore all possibilities has character
ized my perspective in writing Feminist Theory from margin to
center. Much feminist theory emerges from privileged women
who live at the center, whose perspectives on reality rarely
include knowledge and awareness of the lives of women and
men who live in the margin. As a consequence, feminist theory
lacks wholeness, lacks the broad analysis that could encom
pass a variety of human experiences. Although feminist theor
ists are aware of the need to develop ideas and analysis that
encompass a larger number of experiences, that serve to unify
rather than to polarize, such theory is complex and slow in
formation. At its most visionary, it will emerge from individu
als who have knowledge of both margin and center.
It was the dearth of material by and about black women
that led me to begin the research and writing of Ain't I A
Woman: black women and feminism. It is the absence of femi
nist theory that addresses margin and center that has led me to
write this book. In the pages ahead, I explore the limitations of
various aspects of feminist theory and practice, proposing new
directions. I try to avoid repeating ideas that are widely known
and discussed, concentrating instead on exploring different
issues or new perspectives on old issues. As a consequence,
some chapters are lengthy and others quite short; none are
intended as comprehensive analyses. Throughout the work my
thoughts have been shaped by the conviction that feminism
must become a mass based political movement if it is to have a
revolutionary, transformative impact on society.
1.
BLACK WOMEN:
SHAPING FEMINIST THEORY
Feminism in the United States has never emerged from the
women who are most victimized by sexist oppression; women
who are daily beaten down, mentally, physically, and spiritual
ly-women who are powerless to change their condition in life.
They are a silent majority. A mark of their victimization is that
they accept their lot in life without visible question, without
organized protest, without collective anger or rage. Betty Frie
dan's The Feminine Mystique is still heralded as having paved
the way for contemporary feminist movement-it was written
as if these women did not exist. Friedan's famous phrase, "the
problem that has no name," often quoted to describe the condi
tion of women in this society, actually referred to the plight of a
select group of college-educated, middle and upper class, mar
ried white women-housewives bored with leisure, with the
home, with children, with buying products, who wanted more
out of life. Friedan concludes her first chapter by stating: "We
can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: 'I
want something more than my husband and my children and
my house.'" That "more" she defined as careers. She did not
discuss who would be called in to take care of the children and
maintain the home if more women like herself were freed from
their house labor and given equal access with white men to the
professions. She did not speak of the needs of women without
1
2
Feminist Theory: from margin to center
men, without children, without homes. She ignored the exist
ence of all non-white women and poor white women. She did
not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a
babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute, than to be a
leisure class housewife.
She made her plight and the plight of white women like
herself synonymous with a condition affecting all American
women. In so doing, she deflected attention away from her
classism, her racism, her sexist attitudes towards the masses of
American women. In the context of her book, Friedan makes
clear that the women she saw as victimized by sexism were
college-educated, white women who were compelled by sexist
conditioning to remain in the home. She contends:
It is urgent to understand how the very condition of being a
housewife can create a sense of emptiness, non-existence,
nothingness in women. There are aspects of the housewife
role that make it almost impossible for a woman of adult
intelligence to retain a sense of human identity, the firm
core of self or "I" without which a human being, man or
woman, is not truly alive. For women of ability, in America
today, I am convinced that there is something about the
housewife state itself that is dangerous.
Specific problems and dilemmas of leisure class white house
wives were real concerns that merited consideration and
change but they were not the pressing political concerns of
masses of women. Masses of women were concerned about
economic survival, ethnic and racial discrimination, etc. When
Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, more than one third of
all women were in the work force. Although many women
longed to be housewives, only women with leisure time and
money could actually shape their identities on the model of the
feminine mystique. They were women who, in Friedan's words,
were "told by the most advanced thinkers of our time to go back
and live their lives as if they were Noras, restricted to the doll's
house by Victorian prejudices."*
From her early writing, it appears that Friedan never
wondered whether or not the plight of college-educated, white
housewives was an adequate reference point by which to gauge
the impact of sexism or sexist oppression on the lives of women
in American society. Nor did she move beyond her own life
experience to acquire an expanded perspective on the lives of
women in the United States. I say this not to discredit her work.
It remains a useful discussion of the impact of sexist discrimi-
Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory
3
nation on a select group of women. Examined from a different
perspective, it can also be seen as a case study of narcissism,
insensitivity, sentimentality, and self-indulgence which reach
es its peak when Friedan, in a chapter titled "Progressive
Dehumanization," makes a comparison between the psycho
logical effects of isolation on white housewives and the impact
of confinement on the self-concept of prisoners inNazi concen
tration camps.*
Friedan was a principal shaper of contemporary feminist
thought. Significantly, the one-dimensional perspective on
women's reality presented in her book became a marked fea
ture of the contemporary feminist movement. Like Friedan
before them, white women who dominate feminist discourse
today rarely question whether or not their perspective on
women's reality is true to the lived experiences of women as a
collective group.Nor are they aware of the extent to which their
perspectives reflect race and class biases, although there has
been a greater awareness of biases in recent years. Racism
abounds in the writings of white feminists, reinforcing white
supremacy and negating the possibility that women will bond
politically across ethnic and racial boundaries. Past feminist
refusal to draw attention to and attack racial hierarchies sup
pressed the link between race and class. Yet class structure in
American society has been shaped by the racial politic of white
supremacy; it is only by analyzing racism and its function in
capitalist society that a thorough understanding of class rela
tionships can emerge. Class struggle is inextricably bound to
the struggle to end racism. Urging women to explore the full
implication of class in an early essay, "The Last Straw," Rita
Mae Brown explained:
Class is much more than Marx's definition of relationship
to the means of production. Class involves your behavior,
your basic assumptions about life. Your experience (deter
mined by your class) validates those assumptions, how you
are taught to behave, what you expect from yourself and
from others, your concept of a future, how you understand
problems and solve them, how you think, feel, act. It is these
behavioral patterns that middle class women resist recog
nizing although they may be perfectly willing to accept
class in Marxist terms, a neat trick that helps them avoid
really dealing with class behavior and changing that
behavior in themselves. It is these behavioral patterns
which must be recognized, understood, and changed.
4
Feminist Theory: from margin to center
White women who dominate feminist discourse, who for the
most part make and articulate feminist theory, have little or no
understanding of white supremacy as a racial politic, of the
psychological impact of class, of their political status within a
racist, sexist, capitalist state.
It is this lack of awareness that, for example, leads Leah
Fritz to write in Dreamers and Dealers, a discussion of the
current women's movement published in 1979:
Women's suffering under sexist tyranny is a common bond
among all women, transcending the particulars of the dif
ferent forms that tyranny takes. Suffering cannot be mea
sured and compared quantitatively. Is the enforced idleness
and vacuity of a "rich" woman, which leads her to madness
and/ or suicide, greater or less than the suffering of a poor
woman who barely survives on welfare but retains some
how her spirit? There is no way to measure such difference,
but should these two women survey each other without the
screen of patriarchal class, they may find a commonality in
the fact that they are both oppressed, both miserable.
Fritz's statement is another example of wishful thinking, as
well as the conscious mystification of social divisions between
women, that has characterized much feminist expression.
While it is evident that many women suffer from sexist
tyranny, there is little indication that this forges "a common
bond among all women." There is much evidence substantiat
ing the reality that race and class identity creates differences
in quality of life, social status, and lifestyle that take prece
dence over the common experience women share-differences
which are rarely transcended. The motives of materially privi
leged, educated, white women with a variety of career and
lifestyle options available to them must be questioned when
they insist that "suffering cannot be measured." Fritz is by no
means the first white feminist to make this statement. It is a
statement that I have never heard a poor woman of any race
make. Although there is much I would take issue with in Ben
jamin Barber's critique of the women's movement, Liberating
Feminism, I agree with his assertion:
Suffering is not necessarily a fixed and universal expe
rience that can be measured by a single rod: it is related to
situations, needs, and aspirations. But there must be some
historical and political parameters for the use of the term so
that political priorities can be established and different
forms and degrees of suffering can be given the most atten
tion.
Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory
5
A central tenet of modern feminist thought has been the
assertion that "all women are oppressed." This assertion
implies that women share a common lot, that factors like class,
race, religion, sexual preference, etc. do not create a diversity of
experience that determines the extent to which sexism will be
an oppressive force in the lives of individual women. Sexism as
a system of domination is institutionalized but it has never
determined in an absolute way the fate of all women in this
society. Being oppressed means the absence of choices.It is the
primary point of contact between the oppressed and the
oppressor. Many women in this society do have choices, (as
inadequate as they are) therefore exploitation and discrimina
tion are words that more accurately describe the lot of women
collectively in the United States. Many women do not join
organized resistance against sexism precisely because sexism
has not meant an absolute lack of choices. They may know
they are discriminated against on the basis of sex, but they do
not equate this with oppression. Under capitalism, patriarchy
is structured so that sexism restricts women's behavior in some
realms even as freedom from limitations is allowed in other
spheres. The absence of extreme restrictions leads many
women to ignore the areas in which they are exploited or dis
criminated against; it may even lead them to imagine that no
women are oppressed.
There are oppressed women in the United States, and it is
both appropriate and necessary that we speak against such
oppression. French feminist Christine Delphy makes the point
in her essay, "For a Materialist Feminism," that the use of the
term oppression is important because it places feminist strug
gle in a radical political framework:
The rebirth of feminism coincided with the use of the term
"oppression." The ruling ideology, i.e. common sense, daily
speech, does not speak about oppression but about a "femi
nine condition." It refers back to a naturalist explanation:
to a constraint of nature, exterior reality out of reach and
not modifiable by human action. The term "oppression," on
the contrary, refers back to a choice, an explanation, a
situation that is political. "Oppression" and "social oppres
sion" are therefore synonyms or rather social oppression is
a redundance: the notion of a political origin, i.e. social, is
an integral part of the concept of oppression.
However, feminist emphasis on "common oppression" in the
United States was less a strategy for politicization than an
6
Feminist Theory: from margin to center
appropriation by conservative and liberal women of a radical
political vocabulary that masked the extent to which they
shaped the movement so that it addressed and promoted their
class interests.
Although the impulse towards unity and empathy that
informed the notion of common oppression was directed at
building solidarity, slogans like "organize around your own
oppression" provided the excuse many privileged women
needed to ignore the differences between their social status and
the status of masses of women. It was a mark of race and class
privilege, as well as the expression of freedom from the many
constraints sexism places on working class women, that mid
dle class white women were able to make their interests the
primary focus of feminist movement and employ a rhetoric of
commonality that made their condition synonymous with
"oppression." Who was there to demand a change in vocabu
lary? What other group of women in the United States had the
same access to universities, publishing houses, mass media,
money? Had middle class black women begun a movement in
which they had labeled themselves "oppressed," no one would
have taken them seriously. Had they established public forums
and given speeches about their "oppression," they would have
been criticized and attacked from all sides. This was not the
case with white bourgeois feminists for they could appeal to a
large audience of women, like themselves, who were eager to
change their lot in life. Their isolation from women of other
class and race groups provided no immediate comparative
base by which to test their assumptions of common oppression.
Initially, radical participants in women's movement de
manded that women penetrate that isolation and create a
space for contact. Anthologies like Liberation Now, Women's
Liberation: Blueprint for the Future, Class and Feminism,
Radical Feminism, and Sisterhood Is Powerful, all published
in the early 1970s, contain articles that attempted to address a
wide audience of women, an audience that was not exclusively
white, middle class, college-educated, and adult (many have
articles on teenagers). Sookie Stambler articulated this radical
spirit in her introduction to Women's Liberation: Blueprint for
the Future:
Movement women have always been turned off by the
media's necessity to create celebrities and superstars. This
goes against our basic philosophy. We cannot relate to
Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory
7
women in our ranks towering over us with prestige and
fame. We are not struggling for the benefit of the one
woman or for one group of women. We are dealing with
issues that concern all women.
These sentiments, shared by many feminists early in the
movem.ent, were not sustained. As more and more women
acquired prestige, fame, or money from feminist writings or
from gains from feminist movement for equality in the work
force, individual opportunism undermined appeals for collec
tive struggle. Women who were not opposed to patriarchy,
capitalism, classism, or racism labeled themselves "feminist."
Their expectations were varied. Privileged women wanted
social equality with men of their class; some women wanted
equal pay for equal work; others wanted an alternative lifes
tyle. Many of these legitimate concerns were easily co-opted by
the ruling capitalist patriarchy. French feminist Antoinette
Fouque states:
The actions proposed by the feminist groups are spectacu
lar, provoking. But provocation only brings to light a cer
tain number of social contradictions. It does not reveal
radical contradictions within society. The feminists claim
that they do not seek equality with men, but their practice
proves the contrary to be true. Feminists are a bourgeois
avant-garde that maintains, in an inverted form, the domi
nant values. Inversion does not facilitate the passage to
another kind of structure. Reformism suits everyone! Bour
geois order, capitalism, phallocentrism are ready to inte
grate as many feminists as will be necessary. Since these
women are becoming men, in the end it will only mean a few
more men. The difference between the sexes is not whether
one does or doesn't have a penis� it is whether or not one is
an integral part of a phallic masculine economy.
Feminists in the United States are aware of the contradic
tions. Carol Ehrlich makes the point in her essay, "The
Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Can It Be
Saved?," that "feminism seems more and more to have taken
on a blind, safe, nonrevolutionary outlook" as "feminist radi
calism loses ground to bourgeois feminism," stressing that "we
cannot let this continue":
Women need to know (and are increasingly prevented from
finding out) that feminism is not about dressing for success,
or becoming a corporate executive, or gaining elective
office; it is not being able to share a two career marriage and
take skiing vacations and spend huge amounts of time with
8
Feminist Theory: from margin to center
your husband and two lovely children because you have a
domestic worker who makes all this possible for you, but
who hasn't the time or money to do it for herself; it is not
opening a Women's Bank, or spending a weekend in an
expensive workshop that guarantees to teach you how to
become assertive (but not aggressive); it is most emphati
cally not about becoming a police detective or CIA agent or
marine corps general.
But if these distorted images of feminism have more
reality than ours do, it is partly our own fault. We have not
worked as hard as we should have at providing clear and
meaningful alternative analyses which relate to people's
lives, and at providing active, accessible groups in which to
work.
It is no accident that feminist struggle has been so easily
co-opted to serve the interests of conservative and liberal femi
nists since feminism in the United States has so far been a
bourgeois ideology. Zillah Eisenstein discusses the liberal
roots of North American feminism in The Radical Future of
Liberal Feminism, explaining in the introduction:
One of the major contributions to be found in this study is
the role of the ideology of liberal individualism in the con
struction of feminist theory. Today's feminists either do not
discuss a theory of individuality or they unself-consciously
adopt the competitive, atomistic ideology of liberal individ
ualism. There is much confusion on this issue in the femi
nist theory we discuss here. Until a conscious differentia
tion is made between a theory of individuality that re
cognizes the importance of the individual within the social
collectivity and the ideology of individualism that assumes
a competitive view of the individual, there will not be a full
accounting of what a feminist theory of liberation must look
like our Western society.
The ideology of "competitive, atomistic liberal individual
ism" has permeated feminist thought to such an extent that it
undermines the potential radicalism of feminist struggle. The
usurpation of feminism by bourgeois women to support their
class interests has been to a very grave extent justified by
feminist theory as it has so far been conceived. (For example,
the ideology of"common oppression.") Any movement to resist
the co-optation of feminist struggle must begin by introducing
a different feminist perspective-a new theory-one that is not
informed by the ideology of liberal individualism.
Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory
9
The exclusionary practices of women who dominate femi
nist discourse have made it practically impossible for new and
varied theories to emerge. Feminism has its party line and
women who feel a need for a different strategy, a different
foundation, often find themselves ostracized and silenced.
Criticisms of or alternatives to established feminist ideas are
not encouraged, e.g. recent controversies about expanding fem
inist discussions of sexuality. Yet groups of women who feel
excluded from feminist discourse and praxis can make a place
for themselves only if they first create, via critiques, an aware
ness of the factors that alienate them. Many individual white
women found in the women's movement a liberatory solution
to personal dilemmas. Having directly benefited from the
movement, they are less inclined to criticize it or to engage in
rigorous examination of its structure than those who feel it has
not had a revolutionary impact on their lives or the lives of
masses of women in our society. Non-white women who feel
affirmed within the current structure of feminist movement
(even though they may form autonomous groups) seem to also
feel that their definitions of the party line, whether on the issue
of black feminism or on other issues, is the only legitimate
discourse. Rather than encourage a diversity of voices, critical
dialogue, and controversy, they, like some white women, seek
to stifle dissent. As activists and writers whose work is widely
known, they act as if they are best able to judge whether other
women's voices should be heard. Susan Griffin warns against
this overall tendency towards dogmatism in her essay, "The
Way of All Ideology":
... when a theory is transformed into an ideology, it begins to
destroy the self and self-knowledge. Originally born of feel
ing, it pretends to float above and around feeling. Above
sensation. It organizes experience according to itself, with
out touching experience. By virtue of being itself, it is sup
posed to know. To invoke the name of this ideology is to
confer truthfulness. No one can tell it anything new. Expe
rience ceases to surprise it, inform it, transform it. It is
annoyed by any detail which does not fit into its world view.
Begun as a cry against the denial of truth, now it denies any
truth which does not fit into its scheme. Begun as a way to
restore one's sense of reality, now it attempts to discipline
real people, to remake natural beings after its own image.
All that it fails to explain it records as its enemy. Begun as a
theory of liberation, it is threatened by new theories of
liberation; it builds a prison for the mind.
10
Feminist Theory: from margin to center
We resist hegemonic dominance of feminist thought by
insisting that it is a theory in the making, that we must neces
sarily criticize, question, re-examine, and explore new possibil
ities. My persistent critique has been informed by my status as
a member of an oppressed group, experience of sexist exploita
tion and discrimination, and the sense that prevailing feminist
analysis has not been the force shaping my feminist con
sciousness. This is true for many women. There are white
women who had never considered resisting male dominance
until the feminist movement created an awareness that they
could and should. My awareness of feminist struggle was
stimulated by social circumstance. Growing up in a Southern,
black, father-dominated, working class household, I expe
rienced (as did my mother, my sisters, and my brother) varying
degrees of patriarchal tyranny and it made me angry-it made
us all angry. Anger led me to question the politics of male
dominance and enabled me to resist sexist socialization. Fre
quently, white feminists act as if black women did not know
sexist oppression existed until they voiced feminist sentiment.
They believe they are providing black women with "the" anal
ysis and "the" program for liberation. They do not understand,
cannot even imagine, that black women, as well as other
groups of women who live daily in oppressive situations, often
acquire an awareness of patriarchal politics from their lived
experience, just as they develop strategies of resistance (even
though they may not resist on a sustained or organized basis).
These black women observed white feminist focus on male
tyranny and women's oppression as if it were a "new" revela
tion and felt such a focus had little impact on their lives. To
them it was just another indication of the privileged living
conditions of middle and upper class white women that they
would need a theory to inform them that they were "oppressed."
The implication being that people who are truly oppressed
know it even though they may not be engaged in organized
resistance or are unable to articulate in written form the nature
of their oppression. These black women saw nothing liberatory
in party line analyses of women's oppression. Neither the fact
that black women have not organized collectively in huge
numbers around the issues of "feminism" (many of us do not
know or use the term) nor the fact that we have not had access
to the machinery of power that would allow us to share our
analyses or theories about gender with the American public
Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory
11
negate its presence in our lives or place us in a position of
dependency in relationship to those white and non-white femi
nists who address a larger audience.
The understanding I had by age thirteen of patriarchal
politics created in me expectations of the feminist movement
that were quite different from those of young, middle class,
white women. When I entered my first women's studies class at
Stanford University in the early 1970s, white women were
revelling in the joy of being together-to them it was an impor
tant, momentous occasion. I had not known a life where
women had not been together, where women had not helped,
protected, and loved one another deeply. I had not known white
women who were ignorant of the impact of race and class on
their social status and consciousness (Southern white women
often have a more realistic perspective on racism and classism
than white women in other areas of the United States.) I did not
feel sympathetic to white peers who maintained that I could
not expect them to have knowledge of or understand the life
experiences of black women. Despite my background (living in
racially segregated communities) I knew about the lives of
white women, and certainly no white women lived in our
neighborhood, attended our schools, or worked in our homes.
When I participated in feminist groups, I found that white
women adopted a condescending attitude towards me and
other non-white participants. The condescension they directed
at black women was one of the means they employed to remind
us that the women's movement was "theirs"-that we were
able to participate because they allowed it, even encouraged it;
after all, we were needed to legitimate the process. They did not
see us as eqauls. They did not treat us as equals. And though
they expected us to provide first hand accounts of black expe
rience, they felt it was their role to decide if these experiences
were authentic. Frequently, college-educated black women
(even those from poor and working class backgrounds) were
dismissed as mere imitators. Our presence in movement activi
ties did not count, as white women were convinced that "real"
blackness meant speaking the patois of poor black people,
being uneducated, streetwise, and a variety of other stereo
types. If we dared to criticize the movement or to assume
responsibility for reshaping feminist ideas and introducing
new ideas, our voices were tuned out, dismissed, silenced. We
12
Feminist Theory: from margin to center
could be heard only if our statements echoed the sentiments of
the dominant discourse.*
Attempts by white feminists to silence black women are
rarely written about. All too often they have taken place in
conference rooms, classrooms, or the privacy of cozy living
room settings, where one lone black woman faces the racist
hostility of a group of white women. From the time the women's
liberation movement began, individual black women went to
groups. Many never returned after a first meeting. Anita
Cornwall is correct in"Three for the Price of One: Notes from a
Gay Black Feminist," when she states,"... sadly enough, fear of
encountering racism seems to be one of the main reasons that
so many black womyn refuse to join the women's movement."*
Recent focus on the issue of racism has generated discourse but
has had little impact on the behavior of white feminists
towards black women. Often the white women who are busy
publishing papers and books on "unlearning racism" remain
patronizing and condescending when they relate to black
women. This is not surprising given that frequently their dis
course is aimed solely in the direction of a white audience and
the focus solely on changing attitudes rather than addressing
racism in a historical and political context. They make us the
"objects" of their privileged discourse on race. As"objects," we
remain unequals, inferiors. Even though they may be sincerely
concerned about racism, their methodology suggests they are
not yet free of the type of paternalism endemic to white
supremacist ideology. Some of these women place themselves
in the position of "authorities" who must mediate communica
tion between racist white women (naturally they see them
selves as having come to terms with their racism) and angry
black women whom they believe are incapable of rational dis
course. Of course, the system of racism, classism, and educa
tional elitism remain intact if they are to maintain their
authoritative positions.
In 1981, I enrolled in a graduate class on feminist theory
where we were given a course reading list that had writings by
white women and men, one black man, but no material by or
about black, Native American Indian, Hispanic, or Asian
women. When I criticized this oversight, white women directed
an anger and hostility at me that was so intense I found it
difficult to attend the class. When I suggested that the purpose
of this collective anger was to create an atmosphere in which it
Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory
13
would be psychologically unbearable for me to speak in class
discussions or even attend class, I was told that they were not
angry. I was the one who was angry. Weeks after class ended, I
received an open letter from one white female student acknowl
edging her anger and expressing regret for her attacks. She
wrote:
I didn't know you. You were black. In class after a while I
noticed myself, that I would always be the one to respond to
whatever you said. And usually it was to contradict. Not
that the argument was always about racism by any means.
But I think the hidden logic was that if I could prove you
wrong about one thing, then you might not be right about
anything at all.
And in another paragraph:
I said in class one day that there were some people less
entrapped than others by Plato's picture of the world. I said
I thought we, after fifteen years of education, courtesy of the
ruling class, might be more entrapped than others who had
not received a start in life so close to the heart of the mons
ter. My classmate, once a close friend, sister, colleague, has
not spoken to me since then. I think the possibility that we
were not the best spokespeople for all women made her fear
for her self-worth and for her Ph.D.
Often in situations where white feminists aggressively
attacked individual black women, they saw themselves as the
ones who were under attack, who were the victims. During a
heated discussion with another white female student in a
racially mixed women's group I had organized, I was told that
she had heard how I had "wiped out" people in the feminist
theory class, that she was afraid of being "wiped out" too. I
reminded her that I was one person speaking to a large group of
angry, aggressive people; I was hardly dominating the situa
tion. It was I who left the class in tears, not any of the people I
had supposedly "wiped out."
Racist stereotypes of the strong, superhuman black wo
man are operative myths in the minds of many white women,
allowing them to ignore the extent to which black women are
likely to be victimized in this society and the role white women
may play in the maintenance and perpetuation of that victimi
zation. In Lillian Hellman's autobiographical work Penti
mento, she writes, "All my life, beginning at birth, I have taken
orders from black women, wanting them and resenting them,
being superstitious the few times I disobeyed." The black
14
Feminist Theory: from margin to center
women Hellman describes worked in her household as family
servants and their status was never that of an equal. Even as a
child, she was always in the dominant position as they ques
tioned, advised, or guided her; they were free to exercise these
rights because she or another white authority figure allowed it.
Hellman places power in the hands of these black women
rather than acknowledge her own power over them; hence she
mystifies the true nature of their relationship. By projecting
onto black women a mythical power and strength, white
women both promote a false image of themselves as powerless,
passive victims and deflect attention away from their aggres
siveness, their power, (however limited in a white supremacist,
male-dominated state) their willingness to dominate and con
trol others. These unacknowledged aspects of the social status
of many white women prevent them from transcending racism
and limit the scope of their understanding of women's overall
social status in the United States.
Privileged feminists have largely been unable to speak to,
with, and for diverse groups of women because they either do
not understand fully the inter-relatedness of sex, race, and
class oppression or refuse to take this inter-relatedness serious
ly. Feminist analyses of woman's lot tend to focus exclusively
on gender and do not provide a solid foundation on which to
construct feminist theory. They reflect the dominant tendency
in Western patriarchal minds to mystify woman's reality by
insisting that gender is the sole determinant of woman's fate.
Certainly it has been easier for women who do not experience
race or class oppression to focus exclusively on gender. Al
though socialist feminists focus on class and gender, they tend
to dismiss race or they make a point of acknowledging that
race is important and then proceed to offer an analysis in
which race is not considered.
As a group, black women are in an unusual position in this
society, for not only are we collectively at the bottom of the
occupational ladder, but our overall social status is lower than
that of any other group. Occupying such a position, we bear the
brunt of sexist, racist, and classist oppression. At the same
time, we are the group that has not been socialized to assume
the role of exploiter/oppressor in that we are allowed no insti
tutionalized "other" that we can exploit or oppress. (Children
do not represent an institutionalized other even though they
may be oppressed by parents.) White women and black men
Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory
15
have it both ways. They can act as oppressor or be oppressed.
Black men may be victimized by racism, but sexism allows
them to act as exploiters and oppressors of women. White
women may be victimized by sexism, but racism enables them
to act as exploiters and oppressors of black people. Both groups
have led liberation movements that favor their interests and
support the continued oppression of other groups. Black male
sexism has undermined struggles to eradicate racism just as
white female racism undermines feminist struggle. As long as
these two groups or any group defines liberation as gaining
social equality with ruling class white men, they have a vested
interest in the continued exploitation and oppression of others.
Black women with no institutionalized "other" that we
may discriminate against, exploit, or oppress often have a
lived experience that directly challenges the prevailing class
ist, sexist, racist social structure and its concomitant ideology.
This lived experience may shape our consciousness in such a
way that our world view differs from those who have a degree
of privilege (however relative within the existing system). It is
essential for continued feminist struggle that black women
recognize the special vantage point our marginality gives us
and make use of this perspective to criticize the dominant
racist, classist, sexist hegemony as well as to envision and
create a counter-hegemony. I am suggesting that we have a
central role to play in the making of feminist theory and a
contribution to offer that is unique and valuable. The forma
tion of a liberatory feminist theory and praxis is a collective
responsibility, one that must be shared. Though I criticize
aspects of feminist movement as we have known it so far, a
critique which is sometimes harsh and unrelenting, I do so not
in an attempt to diminish feminist struggle but to enrich, to
share in the work of making a liberatory ideology and a libera
tory movement.
�
�.
FEMINISM: A MOVEMENT
TO END SEXIST OPPRESSION
A central problem within feminist discourse has been our
inability to either arrive at a consensus of opinion about what
feminism is or accept definition(s) that could serve as points of
unification. Without agreed upon definition(s), we lack a sound
foundation on which to construct theory or engage in overall
meaningful praxis. Expressing her frustrations with the ab
sence of clear definitions in a recent essay, "Towards A Revolu
tionary Ethics," Carmen Vasquez comments:
We can't even agree on what a "Feminist" is, never mind
what she would believe in and how she defines the princi
ples that constitute honor among us. In key with the Ameri
can capitalist obsession for individualism and anything
goes so long as it gets you what you want. Feminism in
American has come to mean anything you like, honey.
There are as many definitions of Feminism as there are
feminists, some of my sisters say, with a chuckle. I don't
think it's funny.
It is not funny. It indicates a growing disinterest in feminism
as a radical political movement. It is a despairing gesture
expressive of the belief that solidarity between women is not
possible. It is a sign that the political naivete which has tradi
tionally characterized woman's lot in male-dominated culture
abounds.
Most people in the United States think of feminism or the
more commonly used term "women's lib" as a movement that
17
18
Feminist Theory: from margin to center
aims to make women the social equals of men. This broad
definition, popularized by the media and mainstream seg
ments of the movement, raises problematic questions. Since
men are not equals in white supremacist, capitalist, patriar
chal class structure, which men do women want to be equal to?
Do women share a common vision of what equality means?
Implicit in this simplistic definition of women's liberation is a
dismissal of race and class as factors that, in conjunction with
sexism, determine the extent to which an individual will be
discriminated against, exploited, or oppressed. Bourgeois white
women interested in women's rights issues have been satisfied
with simple definitions for obvious reasons. Rhetorically plac
ing themselves in the same social category as oppressed
women, they were not anxious to call attention to race and
class privilege.
Women in lower class and poor groups, particularly those
who are non-white, would not have defined women's liberation
as women gaining social equality with men since they are
continually reminded in their everyday lives that all women do
not share a common social status. Concurrently, they know
that many males in their social groups are exploited and
oppressed. Knowing that men in their groups do not have
social, political, and economic power, they would not deem it
liberatory to share their social status. While they are aware
that sexism enables men in their respective groups to have
privileges denied them, they are more likely to see exaggerated
expressions of male chauvinism among their peers as stem
ming from the male's sense of himself as powerless and ineffec
tual in relation to ruling male groups, rather than an expres
sion of an overall privileged social status.* From the very onset
of the women's liberation movement, these women were suspi
cious of feminism precisely because they recognized the limita
tions inherent in its definition. They recognized the possibility
that feminism defined as social equality with men might easily
become a movement that would primarily affect the social
standing of white women in middle and upper class groups
while affecting only in a very marginal way the social status of
working class and poor women.
Not all the women who were at the forefront of organized
women's movement shaping definitions were content with
making women's liberation synonymous with women gaining
social equality with men. On the opening pages of Woman
Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression
19
Power: The Movement for Women's Liberation, Cellestine
Ware, a black woman active in the movement, wrote under the
heading "Goals":
Radical feminism is working for the eradication of domina
tion and elitism in all human relationships. This would
make self-determination the ultimate good and require the
downfall of society as we know it today.
Individual radical feminists like Charlotte Bunch based
their analyses on an informed understanding of the politics of
domination and a recognition of the inter-connections between
various systems of domination even as they focused primarily
on sexism. Their perspectives were not valued by those organ
izers and participants in women's movement who were more
interested in social reforms. The anonymous authors of a pam
phlet on feminist issues published in 1976, Women and the New
World, make the point that many women active in women's
liberation movement were far more comfortable with the
notion of feminism as a reform that would help women attain
social equality with men of their class than feminism defined
as a radical movement that would eradicate domination and
transform society:
Whatever the organization, the location or the ethnic com
position of the group, all the women's liberation organiza
tions had one thing in common: they all came together
based on a biological and sociological fact rather than on a
body of ideas. Women came together in the women's libera
tion movement on the basis that we were women and all
women are subject to male domination. We saw all women
as being our allies and all men as being the oppressor. We
never questioned the extent to which American women
accept the same materialistic and individualistic values as
American men. We did not stop to think that American
women are just as reluctant as American men to struggle
for a new society based on new values of mutual respect,
cooperation and social responsibility.
It is now evident that many women active in feminist
movement were interested in reform as an end in itself, not as a
stage in the progression towards revolutionary transforma
tion. Even though Zillah Eisenstein can optimistically point to
the potential radicalism of liberal women who work for social
reform in The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism, the process
by which this radicalism will surface is unclear. Eisenstein
offers as an example of the radical implications of liberal femi
nist programs the demands made at the government-sponsor-
20
Feminist Theory: from margin to center
ed Houston conference on women's rights issues which took
place in 1978:
The Houston report demands as a human right a full voice
and role for women in determining the destiny of our world,
our nation, our families, and our individual lives. It specifi
cally calls for (1) the elimination of violence in the home and
the development of shelters for battered women, (2) support
for women's business, (3) a solution to child abuse, (4) feder
ally funded nonsexist child care, (5) a policy of full employ
ment so that all women who wish and are able to work may
do so, (6) the protection of homemakers so that marriage is a
partnership, (7) an end to the sexist portrayal of women in
the media, (8) establishment of reproductive freedom and
the end to involuntary sterilization, (9) a remedy to the
double discrimination against minority women, (10) a revi
sion of criminal codes dealing with rape, (11) elimination of
discrimination on the basis of sexual preference, (12) the
establishment of nonsexist education, and (13) an examina
tion of all welfare reform proposals for their specific impact
on women.
The positive impact of liberal reforms on women's lives
should not lead to the assumption that they eradicate systems
of domination. Nowhere in these demands is there an empha
sis on eradicating the politic of domination, yet it would need to
be abolished if any of these demands were to be met. The lack of
any emphasis on domination is consistent with the liberal
feminist belief that women can achieve equality with men of
their class without challenging and changing the cultural
basis of group oppression. It is this belief that negates the
likelihood that the potential radicalism of liberal feminism will
ever be realized. Writing as early as 1967, Brazilian scholar
Heleith Saffioti emphasized that bourgeois feminism has
always been "fundamentally and unconsciously a feminism of
the ruling class," that:
Whatever revolutionary content there is in petty-bourgeois
feminist praxis, it has been put there by the efforts of the
middle strata, especially the less well off, to move up
socially. To do this, however, they sought merely to expand
the existing social structures, and never went so far as to
challenge the status quo. Thus, while petty-bourgeois femi
nism may always have aimed at establishing social equal
ity between the sexes, the consciousness it represented has
remained utopian in its desire for and struggle to bring
about a partial transformation of society; this it believed
could be done without disturbing the foundations on which
it rested .. .In this sense, petty-bourgeois feminism is not
Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression
21
feminism at all; indeed it has helped to consolidate class
society by giving camouflage to its internal contradic
tions...
Radical dimensions of liberal women's social protest will
continue to serve as an ideological support system providing
the necessary critical and analytical impetus for the mainte
nance of a liberalism that aims to grant women greater equal
ity of opportunity within the present white supremacist capi
talist, patriarchal state. Such liberal women's rights activism
in its essence diminishes feminist struggle. Philosopher Mihailo
Markovic discusses the limitations of liberalism in his essay,
"Women's Liberation and Human Emancipation":
Another basic characteristic of liberalism which consti
tutes a formidable obstacle to an oppressed social group's
emancipation is its conception of human nature. If selfish
ness, aggressiveness, the drive to conquer and dominate,
really are among defining human traits, as every liberal
philosopher since Locke tries to convince us, the oppression
in civil society-i.e. in the social sphere not regulated by the
state-is a fact of life and the basic civil relationship
between a man and a woman will always remain a battle
field. Woman, being less aggressive, is then either the less
human of the two and doomed to subjugation, or else she
must get more power-hungry herself and try to dominate
man. Liberation for both is not feasible.
Although liberal perspectives on feminism include reforms
that would have radical implications for society, these are the
reforms which will be resisted precisely because they would set
the stage for revolutionary transformation were they imple
mented. It is evident that society is more responsive to those
"feminist" demands that are not threatening, that may even
help maintain the status quo. Jeanne Gross gives an example
of this co-optation of feminist strategy in her essay "Feminist
Ethics from a Marxist Perspective," published in 1977:
If we as women want change in all aspects of our lives, we
must recognize that capitalism is uniquely capable of co
opting piecemeal change... Capitalism is capable of taking
our visionary changes and using them against us. For
example, many married women, recognizing their oppres
sion in the family, have divorced. They are thrown, with no
preparation of protection, into the labor market. For many
women this has meant taking their places at the row of
typewriters. Corporations are now recognizing the capacity
for exploitation in divorced women. The turnover in such
22
Feminist Theory: from margin to center
jobs is incredibly high. "If she complains, she can be
replaced."
Particularly as regards work, many liberal feminist reforms
simply reinforced capitalist, materialist values (illustrating
the flexibility of capitalism) without truly liberating women
economically.
Liberal women have not been alone in drawing upon the
dynamism of feminism to further their interests. The great
majority of women who have benefited in any way from
feminist-generated social reforms do not want to be seen as
advocates of feminism. Conferences on issues of relevance to
women, that would never have been organized or funded had
there not been a feminist movement, take place all over the
United States and the participants do not want to be seen as
advocates of feminism. They are either reluctant to make a
public commitment to feminist movement or sneer at the term.
Individual African-American, Native American Indian, Asian
American, and Hispanic American women find themselves
isolated if they support feminist movement. Even women who
may achieve fame and notoriety (as well as increased economic
income) in response to attention given their work by large
numbers of women who support feminism may deflect atten
tion away from their engagement with feminist movement.
They may even go so far as to create other terms that express
their concern with women's issues so as to avoid using the term
feminist. The creation of new terms that have no relationship
to organized political activity tend to provide women who may
already be reluctant to explore feminism with ready excuses to
explain their reluctance to participate. This illustrates an
uncritical acceptance of distorted definitions of feminism
rather than a demand for redefinition. They may support spe
cific issues while divorcing themselves from what they assume
is feminist movement.
In a recent article in a San Francisco newspaper, "Sisters
Under the Skin," columnist Bob Greene commented on the
aversion many women apparently have to the term feminism.
Greene finds it curious that many women "who obviously
believe in everything that proud feminists believe in dismiss
the term "feminist" as something unpleasant; something with
which they do not wish to be associated." Even though such
women often acknowledge that they have benefited from
feminist-generated reform measures which have improved the
Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression
23
social status of specific groups of women, they do not wish to be
seen as participants in feminist movement:
There is no getting around it. After all this time, the term
"feminist" makes many bright, ambitious, intelligent women
embarrassed and uncomfortable. They simply don't want
to be associated with it.
It's as if it has an unpleasant connotation that they
want no connection with. Chances are if you were to present
them with every mainstream feminist belief, they would go
along with the beliefs to the letter-and even if they con
sider themselves feminists, they hasten to say no.
Many women are reluctant to advocate feminism because they
are uncertain about the meaning of the term. Other women
from exploited and oppressed ethnic groups dismiss the term
because they do not wish to be perceived as supporting a racist
movement; feminism is often equated with white women's
rights effort. Large numbers of women see feminism as syn
onymous with lesbianism; their homophobia leads them to
reject association with any group identified as pro-lesbian.
Some women fear the word "feminism" because they shun
identification with any political movement, especially one per
ceived as radical. Of course there are women who do not wish to
be associated with women's rights movement in any form so
they reject and oppose feminist movement. Most women are
more familiar with negative perspectives on "women's lib"
than the positive significations of feminism. It is this term's
positive political significance and power that we must now
struggle to recover and maintain.
Currently feminism seems to be a term without any clear
significance. The "anything goes" approach to the definition
of the word has rendered it practically meaningless. What is
meant by "anything goes" is usually that any woman who
wants social equality with men regardless of her political pers
pective (she can be a conservative right-winger or a nationalist
communist) can label herself feminist. Most attempts at defin
ing feminism reflect the class nature of the movement. Defini
tions are usually liberal in origin and focus on the individual
woman's right to freedom and self-determination. In Barbara
Berg's The Remembered Gate: Origins of American Femi
nism, she defines feminism as a "broad movement embracing
numerous phases of woman's emancipation." However, her
emphasis is on women gaining greater individual freedom.
Expanding on the above definition, Berg adds:
24
Feminist Theory: from margin to center
It is the freedom to decide her own destiny; freedom from
sex-determined role; freedom from society's oppressive re
strictions; freedom to express her thoughts fully and to
convert them freely into action. Feminism demands the
acceptance of woman's right to individual conscience and
judgment. It postulates that woman's essential worth stems
from her common humanity and does not depend on the
other relationships of her life.
This definition of feminism is almost apolitical in tone; yet it is
the type of definition many liberal women find appealing. It
evokes a very romantic notion of personal freedom which is
more acceptable than a definition that emphasizes radical pol
itical action.
Many feminist radicals now know that neither a feminism
that focuses on woman as an autonomous human being
worthy of personal freedom nor one that focuses on the attain
ment of equality of opportunity with men can rid society of
sexism and male domination. Feminism is a struggle to end
sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to erad
icate the ideology of domination that permeates Western cul
ture on various levels as well as a commitment to reorganizing
society so that the self-development of people can take prece
dence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material
desires. Defined in this way, it is unlikely that women would
join feminist movement simply because we are biologically the
same. A commitment to feminism so defined would demand
that each individual participant acquire a critical political
consciousness based on ideas and beliefs.
All too often the slogan "the personal is political" (which
was first used to stress that woman's everyday reality is
informed and shaped by politics and is necessarily political)
became a means of encouraging women to think that the expe
rience of discrimination, exploitation, or oppression automati
cally corresponded with an understanding of the ideological
and institutional apparatus shaping one's social status. As a
consequence, many women who had not fully examined their
situation never developed a sophisticated understanding of
their political reality and its relationship to that of women as a
collective group. They were encouraged to focus on giving voice
to personal experience. Like revolutionaries working to change
the lot of colonized people globally, it is necessary for feminist
activists to stress that the ability to see and describe one's own
reality is a significant step in the long process of self-recovery;
Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression
25
but it is only a beginning. When women internalized the idea
that describing their own woe was synonymous with develop
ing a critical political consciousness, the progress of feminist
movement was stalled. Starting from such incomplete perspec
tives, it is not surprising that theories and strategies were
developed that were collectively inadequate and misguided. To
correct this inadequacy in past analysis, we must now encour
age women to develop a keen, comprehensive understanding of
women's political reality. Broader perspectives can only emerge
as we examine both the personal that is political, the politics of
society as a whole, and global revolutionary politics.
Feminism defined in political terms that stress collective
as well as individual experience challenges women to enter a
new domain-to leave behind the apolitical stance sexism
decrees is our lot and develop political consciousness. Women
know from our everyday lives that many of us rarely discuss
politics. Even when women talked about sexist politics in the
heyday of contemporary feminism, rather than allow this
engagement with serious political matters to lead to complex,
in-depth analysis of women's social status, we insisted that
men were "the enemy," the cause of all our problems. As a
consequence, we examined almost exclusively women's rela
tionship to male supremacy and the ideology of sexism. The
focus on "man as enemy" created, as Marlene Dixon emphas
izes in her essay, "The Rise and Demise of Women's Liberation:
A Class Analysis," a "politics of psychological oppression"
which evoked world views which "pit individual against indi
vidual and mystify the social basis of exploitation."* By repu
diating the popular notion that the focus of feminist movement
should be social equality of the sexes and emphasizing eradi
cating the cultural basis of group oppression, our own analysis
would require an exploration of all aspects of women's political
reality. This would mean that race and class oppression would
be recognized as feminist issues with as much relevance as
sexism.
When feminism is defined in such a way that it calls atten
tion to the diversity of women's social and political reality, it
centralizes the experiences of all women, especially the women
whose social conditions have been least written about, studied,
or changed by political movements. When we cease to focus on
the simplistic stance "men are the enemy," we are compelled to
examine systems of domination and our role in their mainte-
26
Feminist Theory: from margin to center
nance and perpetuation. Lack of adequate definition made it
easy for bourgeois women, whether liberal or radical in pers
pective, to maintain their dominance over the leadership of the
movement and its direction. This hegemony continues to exist
in most feminist organizations. Exploited and oppressed groups
of women are usually encouraged by those in power to feel that
their situation is hopeless, that they can do nothing to break
the pattern of domination. Given such socialization, these
women have often felt that our only response to white, bour
geois, hegemonic dominance of feminist movement is to trash,
reject, or dismiss feminism. This reaction is in no way threat
ening to the women who wish to maintain control over the
direction of feminist theory and praxis. They prefer us to be
silent, passively accepting their ideas. They prefer us speaking
against "them" rather than developing our own ideas about
feminist movement.
Feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. Its aim
is not to benefit solely any specific group of women, any parti
cular race or class of women. It does not privilege women over
men. It has the power to transform in a meaningful way all our
lives. Most importantly, feminism is neither a lifestyle nor a
ready-made identity or role one can step into. Diverting energy
from feminist movement that aims to change society, many
women concentrate on the development of a counter-culture, a
woman-centered world wherein participants have little contact
with men. Such attempts do not indicate a respect or concern
for the vast majority of women who are unable to integrate
their cultural expressions with the visions offered by alterna
tive woman-centered communities. In Beyond God the Father,
Mary Daly urged women to give up "the securities offered by
the patriarchal system" and create new space that would be
woman-centered. Responding to Daly, Jeanne Gross pointed to
the contradictions that arise when the focus of feminist move
ment is on the construction of new space:
Creating a "counterworld" places an incredible amount of
pressure on the women who attempt to embark on such a
project. The pressure comes from the belief that the only
true resources for such an endeavor are ourselves. The past
which is totally patriarchal is viewed as irredeemable ...
If we go about creating an alternative culture without
remaining in dialogue with others (and the historical cir
cumstances that give rise to their identity) we have no
reality check for our goals. We run the very real risk that the
Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression
27
dominant ideology of the culture is re-duplicated in the
feminist movement through cultural imperialism.
Equating feminist struggle with living in a counter
cultural, woman-centered world erected barriers that closed the
movement off from most women. Despite sexist discrimina
tion, exploitation, or oppression, many women feel their lives
as they live them are important and valuable. Naturally the
suggestion that these lives could be simply left or abandoned
for an alternative "feminist" lifestyle met with resistance.
Feeling their life experiences devalued, deemed solely negative
and worthless, many women responded by vehemently attack
ing feminism. By rejecting the notion of an alternative femi
nist "lifestyle" that can emerge only when women create a
subculture (whether it is living space or even space like
women's studies that at many campuses has become exclusive)
and insisting that feminist struggle can begin wherever an
individual woman is, we create a movement that focuses on our
collective experience, a movement that is continually mass
based.
Over the past six years, many separatist-oriented com
munities have been formed by women so that the focus has
shifted from the development of woman-centered space to
wards an emphasis on identity. Once woman-centered space
exists, it can be maintained only if women remain convinced
that it is the only place where they can be self-realized and free.
After assuming a "feminist" identity, women often seek to live
the "feminist" lifestyle. These women do not see that it under
mines feminist movement to project the assumption that "fem
inist" is but another pre-packaged role women can now select
as they search for identity. The willingness to see feminism as
a lifestyle choice rather than a political commitment reflects
the class nature of the movement. It is not surprising that the
vast majority of women who equate feminism with alternative
lifestyle are from middle class backgrounds, unmarried, college
educated, often students who are without many of the social
and economic responsibilities that working class and poor
women who are laborers, parents, homemakers, and wives
confront daily. Sometimes lesbians have sought to equate fem
inism with lifestyle but for significantly different reasons.
Given the prejudice and discrimination against lesbian women
in our society, alternative communities that are woman
centered are one means of creating positive, affirming envir-
28
Feminist Theory: from margin to center
onments. Despite positive reasons for developing woman
centered space, (which does not need to be equated with a
"feminist" lifestyle) like pleasure, support, and resource
sharing, emphasis on creating a counter-culture has alienated
women from feminist movement, for such space can be in
churches, kitchens, etc.
Longing for community, connection, a sense of shared
purpose, many women found support networks in feminist
organizations. Satisfied in a personal way by new relation
ships generated in what was called a "safe," "supportive"
context wherein discussion focused on feminist ideology, they
did not question whether masses of women shared the same
need for community. Certainly many black women as well as
women from other ethnic groups do not feel an absence of
community among women in their lives despite exploitation
and oppression. The focus on feminism as a way to develop
shared identity and community has little appeal to women who
experience community, who seek ways to end exploitation and
oppression in the context of their lives. While they may develop
an interest in a feminist politic that works to eradicate sexist
oppression, they will probably never feel as intense a need for a
"feminist" identity and lifestyle.
Often emphasis on identity and lifestyle is appealing
because it creates a false sense that one is engaged in praxis.
However, praxis within any political movement that aims to
have a radical transformative impact on society cannot be
solely focused on creating spaces wherein would-be-radicals
experience safety and support. Feminist movement to end sex
ist oppression actively engages participants in revolutionary
struggle. Struggle is rarely safe or pleasurable.
Focusing on feminism as political commitment, we resist
the emphasis on individual identity and lifestyle. (This should
not be confused with the very real need to unite theory and
practice.) Such resistance engages us in revolutionary praxis.
The ethics of Western society informed by imperialism and
capitalism are personal rather than social. They teach us that
the individual good is more important then the collective good
and consequently that individual change is of greater signifi
cance than collective change. This particular form of cultural
imperialism has been reproduced in feminist movement in the
form of individual women equating the fact that their lives
have been changed in a meaningful way by feminism "as is"
Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression
29
with a policy of no change need occur in the theory and praxis
even if it has little or no impact on society as a whole, or on
masses of women.
To emphasize that engagement with feminist struggle as
political commitment we could avoid using the phrase "I am a
feminist" (a linguistic structure designed to refer to some per
sonal aspect of identity and self-definition) and could state "I
advocate feminism." Because there has been undue emphasis
placed on feminism as an identity or lifestyle, people usually
resort to stereotyped perspectives on feminism. Deflecting
attention away from stereotypes is necessary if we are to revise
our strategy and direction. I have found that saying "I am a
feminist" usually means I am plugged into preconceived
notions of identity, role, or behavior. When I say "I advocate
feminism" the response is usually "what is feminism?" A
phrase like "I advocate" does not imply the kind of absolutism
that is suggested by "I am." It does not engage us in the
either/ or dualistic thinking that is the central ideological com
ponent of all systems of domination in Western society. It
implies that a choice has been made, that commitment to femi
nism is an act of will. It does not suggest that by committing
oneself to feminism, the possibility of supporting other politi
cal movements is negated.
As a black woman interested in feminist movement, I am
often asked whether being black is more important than being
a woman; whether feminist struggle to end sexist oppression is
more important than the struggle to end racism and vice-versa.
All such questions are rooted in competitive eitherIor thinking,
the belief that the self is formed in opposition to an other.
Therefore one is a feminist because you are not something else.
Most people are socialized to think in terms of opposition
rather than compatibility. Rather than see anti-racist work as
totally compatible with working to end sexist oppression, they
are often seen as two movements competing for first place.
When asked "Are you a feminist?" it appears that an affirma
tive answer is translated to mean that one is concerned with no
political issues other than feminism. When one is black, an
affirmative response is likely to be heard as a devaluation of
struggle to end racism. Given the fear of being misunderstood,
it has been difficult for black women and women in exploited
and oppressed ethnic groups to give expression to their interest
in feminist concerns. They have been wary of saying "I am a
30
Feminist Theory: from margin to center
feminist." The shift in expression from "I am a feminist" to "I
advocate feminism" could serve as a useful strategy for elimi
nating the focus on identity and lifestyle. It could serve as a
way women who are concerned about feminism as well as other
political movements could express their support while avoid
ing linguistic structures that give primacy to one particular
group. It would also encourage greater exploration in feminist
theory.
The shift in definition away from notions of social equality
towards an emphasis on ending sexist oppression leads to a
shift in attitudes in regard to the development of theory. Given
the class nature of feminist movement so far, as well as racial
hierarchies, developing theory (the guiding set of beliefs and
principles that become the basis for action) has been a task
particularly subject to the hegemonic dominance of white aca
demic women. This has led many women outside the privileged
race/class group to see the focus on developing theory, even the
very use of the term, as a concern that functions only to rein
force the power of the elite group. Such reactions reinforce the
sexist/racist/classist notion that developing theory is the
domain of the white intellectual. Privileged white women
active in feminist movement, whether liberal or radical in
perspective, encourage black women to contribute "experien
tial" work, personal life stories. Personal experiences are
important to feminist movement but they cannot take the place
of theory. Charlotte Bunch explains the special significance of
theory in her essay, "Feminism and Education: Not By
Degrees":
Theory enables us to see immediate needs in terms of long
range goals and an overall perspective on the world. It thus
gives us a framework for evaluating various strategies in
both the long and the short run and for seeing the types of
changes that they are likely to produce. Theory is not just a
body of facts or a set of personal opinions. It involves
explanations and hypotheses that are based on available
knowledge and experience. It is also dependent on conjec
ture and insight about how to interpret those facts and
experiences and their significance.
Since bourgeois white women had defined feminism in
such a way as to make it appear that it had no real signifi
cance for black women, they could then conclude that black
wo1nen need not contribute to developing theory. We were to
pro'Vide the colorful life stories to document and validate the
Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression
31
prevailing set of theoretical assumptions.* Focus on social
equality with men as a definition of feminism led to an empha
sis on discrimination, male attitudes, and legalistic reforms.
Feminism as a movement to end sexist oppression directs our
attention to systems of domination and the inter-relatedness of
sex, race, and class oppression. Therefore, it compels us to
centralize the experiences and the social predicaments of
women who bear the brunt of sexist oppression as a way to
understand the collective social status of women in the United
States. Defining feminism as a movement to end sexist oppres
sion is crucial for the development of theory because it is a
starting point indicating the direction of exploration and
analysis.
The foundation of future feminist struggle must be solidly
based on a recognition of the need to eradicate the underlying
cultural basis and causes of sexism and other forms of group
oppression. Without challenging and changing these philoso
phical structures, no feminist reforms will have a long range
impact. Consequently, it is now necessary for advocates of
feminism to collectively acknowledge that our struggle cannot
be defined as a movement to gain social equality 'vith men;
that terms like "liberal feminist" and "bourgeois feminist"
represent contradictions that must be resolved so that femi
nism will not be continually co-opted to serve the opportunistic
ends of special interest groups.
3.
THE SIGNIFICANCE
OF FEMINIST MOVEMENT
Contemporary feminist movement in the United States
called attention to the exploitation and oppression of women
globally. This was a major contribution to feminist struggle. In
their eagerness to highlight sexist injustice, women focused
almost exclusively on the ideology and practice of male domi
nation. Unfortunately, this made it appear that feminism was
more a declaration of war between the sexes than a political
struggle to end sexist oppression, a struggle that would imply
change on the part of women and men. Underlying much white
women's liberationist rhetoric was the implication that men
had nothing to gain by feminist movement, that its success
would make them losers. Militant white women were particu
larly eager to make feminist movement privilege women over
men. Their anger, hostility, and rage was so intense that they
were unable to resist turning the movement into a public forum
for their attacks. Although they sometimes considered them
selves "radical feminists," their responses were reactionary.
Fundamentally, they argued that all men are the enemies of all
women and proposed as solutions to this problem a utopian
woman nation, separatist communities, and even the subjuga
tion or extermination of all men. Their anger may have been a
catalyst for individual liberatory resistance and change. It
may have encouraged bonding with other women to raise con
sciousness. It did not strengthen public understanding of the
significance of authentic feminist movement.
33
34
Feminist Theory: from margin to center
Sexist discrimination, exploitation, and oppression have
created the war between the sexes. Traditionally the battle
ground has been the home. In recent years, the battle ensues in
any sphere, public or private, inhabited by women and men,
girls and boys. The significance of feminist movement (when it
is not co-opted by opportunistic, reactionary forces) is that it
offers a new ideological meeting ground for the sexes, a space
for criticism, struggle, and transformation. Feminist move
ment can end the war between the sexes. It can transform
relationships so that the alienation, competition, and dehu
manization that characterize human interaction can be re
placed with feelings of intimacy, mutuality, and camaraderie.
Ironically, these positive implications of feminist move
ment were often ignored by liberal organizers and partici
pants. Since vocal bourgeois white women were insisting that
women repudiate the role of servant to others, they were not
interested in convincing men or even other women that femi
nist movement was important for everyone. Narcissistically,
they focused solely on the primacy of feminism in their lives,
universalizing their own experiences. Building a mass-based
women's movement was never the central issue on their
agenda. After many organizations were established, leaders
expressed a desire for greater participant diversity; they
wanted women to join who were not white, materially privi
leged, middle class, or college-educated. It was never deemed
necessary for feminist activists to explain to masses of women
the significance of feminist movement. Believing their empha
sis on social equality was a universal concern, they assumed
the idea would carry its own appeal. Strategically the failure to
emphasize the necessity for mass-based movement, grassroots
organizing, and sharing with everyone the positive signifi
cance of feminist movement helped marginalize feminism by
making it appear relevant only to those women who joined
organizations.
Recent critiques of feminist movement highlight these
failures without stressing the need for revision in strategy and
focus. Although the theory and praxis of contemporary femi
nism with all its flaws and inadequacies has become well
established, even institutionalized, we must try and change its
direction if we are to build a feminist movement that is truly a
struggle to end sexist oppression. In the interest of such a
struggle we must, at the onset of our analysis, call attention to
The Significance of Feminist Movement
35
the positive, transformative impact the eradication of sexist
oppression could have on all our lives.
Many contemporary feminist activists argue that eradi
cating sexist oppression is important because it is the primary
contradiction, the basis of all other oppressions. Racism as
well as class structure is perceived as stemming from sexism.
Implicit in this line of analysis is the assumption that the
eradication of sexism, "the oldest oppression," "the primary
contradiction," is necessary before attention can be focused on
racism or classism. Suggesting a hierarchy of oppression
exists, with sexism in first place, evokes a sense of competing
concerns that is unnecessary. While we know that sex role
divisions existed in the earliest civilizations, not enough is
known about these societies to conclusively document the
assertion that women were exploited or oppressed. The earliest
civilizations discovered so far have been in archaic black
Africa where presumably there was no race problem and no
class society as we know it today. The sexism, racism, and
classism that exist in the West may resemble systems of domi
nation globally but they are forms of oppression which have
been primarily informed by Western philosophy. They can be
best understood within a Western context, not via an evolu
tionary model of human development. Within our society, all
forms of oppression are supported by traditional Western
thinking. The primary contradiction in Western cultural
thought is the belief that the superior should control the infe
rior. In The Cultural Basis of Racism and Group Oppression,
the authors argue that Western religious and philosophical
thought is the ideological basis of all forms of oppression in the
United States.
Sexist oppression is of primary importance not because it
is the basis of all other oppression, but because it is the practice
of domination most people experience, whether their role be
that of discriminator or discriminated against, exploiter or
exploited. It is the practice of domination most people are
socialized to accept before they even know that other forms of
group oppression exist. This does not mean that eradicating
sexist oppression would eliminate other forms of oppression.
Since all forms of oppression are linked in our society because
they are supported by similar institutional and social struc
tures, one system cannot be eradicated while the others remain
intact. Challenging sexist oppression is a crucial step in the
36
Feminist Theory: from margin to center
struggle to eliminate all forms of oppression.
Unlike other forms of oppression, most people witness
and/or experience the practice of sexist domination in family
settings. We tend to witness and/or experience racism or clas
sism as we encounter the larger society, the world outside the
home. In his essay, "Dualist Culture and Beyond," philosopher
John Hodge stresses that the family in our society, both tradi
tionally and legally, "reflects the Dualist values of hierarchy
and coercive authoritarian control" which are exemplified in
the parent-child, husband-wife relationships:
It is in this form of the family where most children first
learn the meaning and practice of hierarchical, authoritar
ian rule. Here is where they learn to accept group oppression
against themselves as non-adults, and where they learn to
accept male supremacy and the group oppression of women.
Here is where they learn that it is the male's role to work in
the community and control the economic life of the family
and to mete out the physical and financial punishments
and rewards, and the female's role to provide the emotional
warmth associated with motherhood while under the eco
nomic rule of the male. Here is where the relationship of
superordination-subordination, of superior-inferior, or
master-slave is first learned and accepted as "natural."
Even in families where no male is present, children may learn
to value dominating, authoritative rule via their relationship
to mothers and other adults, as well as strict adherence to
sexist-defined role patterns.
In most societies, family is an important kinship structure,
a common ground for people who are linked by blood ties,
heredity, or emotive bonds; an environment of care and affir
mation, especially for the very young and the very old who may
be unable to care for themselves; a space for communal sharing
of resources. In our society, sexist oppression perverts and
distorts the positive function of family. Family exists as a
space wherein we are socialized from birth to accept and sup
port forms of oppression. In his discussion of the cultural basis
of domination, John Hodge emphasizes the role of the family:
The traditional Western family, with its authoritarian male
rule and its authoritarian adult rule, is the major training
ground which initially conditions us to accept group oppres
sion as the natural order.
Even as we are loved and cared for in families, we are simul
taneously taught that this love is not as important as having
power to dominate others. Power struggles, coercive authorit-
The Significance of Feminist Movement
37
arian rule, and brutal assertion of domination shapes family
life so that it is often the setting of intense suffering and pain.
Naturally, individuals flee the family. Naturally, the family
disintegrates.
Contemporary feminist analyses of family often implied
that successful feminist movement would either begin with or
lead to the abolition of family. This suggestion was terribly
threatening to many women, especially non-white women.*
While there are white women activists who may experience
family primarily as an oppressive institution, (it may be the
social structure wherein they have experienced grave abuse
and exploitation) many black women find the family the least
oppressive institution. Despite sexism in the context of family,
we may experience dignity, self-worth, and a humanization
that is not experienced in the outside world wherein we con
front all forms of oppression. We know from our lived experien
ces that families are not just households composed of husband,
wife, and children or even blood relations; we also know that
destructive patterns generated by belief in sexism abound in
varied family structures. We wish to affirm the primacy of
family life because we know that family ties are the only sus
tained support system for exploited and oppressed peoples. We
wish to rid family life of the abusive dimensions created by
sexist oppression without devaluing it.
Devaluation of family life in feminist discussion often
reflects the class nature of the movement. Individuals from
privileged classes rely on a number of institutional and social
structures to affirm and protect their interests. The bourgeois
woman can repudiate family without believing that by so
doing she relinquishes the possibility of relationship, care,
protection. If all else fails, she can buy care. Since many bour
geois women active in feminist movement were raised in the
modern nuclear household, they were particularly subjected to
the perversion of family life created by sexist oppression; they
may have had material privilege and no experience of abiding
family love and care. Their devaluation of family life alienated
many women from feminist movement. Ironically, feminism is
the one radical political movement that focuses on transform
ing family relationships. Feminist movement to end sexist
oppression affirms family life by its insistence that the purpose
of family structure is not to reinforce patterns of domination in
the interest of the state. By challenging Western philosophical
38
Feminist Theory: from margin to center
beliefs that impress on our consciousness a concept of family
life that is essentially destructive, feminism would liberate
family so that it could be an affirming, positive kinship struc
ture with no oppressive dimensions based on sex differentia
tion, sexual preference, etc.
Politically, the white supremacist, patriarchal state relies
on the family to indoctrinate its members with values support
ive of hierarchical control and coercive authority. Therefore,
the state has a vested interest in projecting the notion that
feminist movement will destroy family life. Introducing a col
lection of essays, Re-thinking the Family: Some Feminist
Questions, sociologist Barrie Thorne makes the point that fem
inist critique of family life has been seized upon by New Right
groups in their political campaigns:
Of all the issues raised by feminists, those that bear on the
family-among them, demands for abortion rights, and for
legitimating an array of household and sexual arrange
ments, and challenges to men's authority, and women's
economic dependence and exclusive responsibility for nur
turing-have been the most controversial.
Feminist positions on the family that devalue its importance
have been easily co-opted to serve the interests of the state.
People are concerned that families are breaking down, that
positive dimensions of family life are overshadowed by the
aggression, humiliation, abuse, and violence that character
izes the interaction of family members. They must not be con
vinced that anti-feminism is the way to improve family life.
Feminist activists need to affirm the importance of family as a
kinship structure that can sustain and nourish people; to gra
phically address links between sexist oppression and family
disintegration; and to give examples, both actual and vision
ary, of the way family life is and can be when unjust authorit
arian rule is replaced with an ethic of communalism, shared
responsibility, and mutuality. The movement to end sexist
oppression is the only social change movement that will
strengthen and sustain family life in all households.
Within the present family structure, individuals learn to
accept sexist oppression as "natural" and are primed to sup
port other forms of oppression including heterosexist domina
tion. According to Hodge:
The domination usually present within the family-of child
ren by adults, and of female by male-are forms of group
The Significance of Feminist Movement
39
oppression which are easily translated into the "rightful"
group oppression of other people defined by "race" (racism),
by nationality (colonialism), by "religion," or by "other
means."
Significantly, struggle to end sexist oppression that focuses on
destroying the cultural basis for such domination strengthens
other liberation struggles. Individuals who fight for the eradi
cation of sexism without supporting struggles to end racism or
classism undermine their own efforts. Individuals who fight
for the eradication of racism or classism while supporting sex
ist oppression are helping to maintain the cultural basis of all
forms of group oppression. While they may initiate successful
reforms, their efforts will not lead to revolutionary change.
Their ambivalent relationship to oppression in general is a
contradiction that must be resolved or they will daily under
mine their own radical work.
Unfortunately, it is not merely the politically naive who
demonstrate a lack of awareness that forms of oppression are
inter-related. Often brilliant political thinkers have had such
blind spots. Men like Franz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Paulo
Freire, and Aime Cesaire, whose works teach us much about
the nature of colonization, racism, classism, and revolutionary
struggle often ignore issues of sexist oppression in their own
writing. They speak against oppression but then define libera
tion in terms that suggest it is only oppressed "men" who need
freedom. Franz Fanon's important work, Black Skins, White
Masks, draws a portrait of oppression in the first chapter that
equates the colonizer with white men and the colonized with
black men. Towards the end of the book, Fanon writes of the
struggle to overcome alienation:
The problem considered here is one of time. Those Negroes
and white men will be disalienated who refuse to let them
selves be sealed away in the materialized Tower of the Past.
For many other Negroes, in other ways, disalienation will
come into being through their refusal to accept the present
definitive.
I am a man, and what I have to recapture is the whole
past of the world. I am not responsible solely for the revolt in
Santo Domingo.
Every time a man has contributed to the victory of the
dignity of the spirit, every time a man has said no to an
attempt to subjugate his fellows, I have felt solidarity with
his act.
40
Feminist Theory: from margin to center
In Paulo Freire's book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a text
which has helped many of us to develop political conscious
ness, there is a tendency to speak of people's liberation as male
liberation:
Liberation is thus a childbirth, and a painful one. The man
who emerges is a new man, viable only as the oppressor
oppressed contradiction is superseded by the humanization
of all men. Or to put it another way, the solution of this
contradiction is borne in the labor which brings into the
world this new man: no longer oppressor, no longer oppress
ed, but man in the process of achieving freedom.
The sexist language in these translated texts does not prevent
feminist activists from identifying with or learning from the
message content. It diminishes without negating the value of
the works. It also does support and perpetuate sexist oppres
sion.
Support of sexist oppression in much political writing con
cerned with revolutionary struggle as well as in the actions of
men who advocate revolutionary politics undermines all liber
ation struggle. In many countries wherein people are engaged
in liberation struggle, subordination of women by men is
abandoned as the crisis situation compels men to accept and
acknowledge women as comrades in struggle, e.g. Cuba,
Angola, Nicaragua. Often when the crisis period has passed,
old sexist patterns emerge, antagonism develops, and political
solidarity is weakened. It would strengthen and affirm the
praxis of any liberation struggle if a commitment to eradicat
ing sexist oppression was a foundation principle shaping all
political work. Feminist movement should be of primary sig
nificance for all groups and individuals who desire an end to
oppression. Many women who would like to participate fully in
liberation struggles (the fight against imperialism, racism,
classism) are drained of their energies because they are contin
ually confronting and coping with sexist discrimination, ex
ploitation, and oppression. In the interest of continued strug
gle, solidarity, and sincere commitment to eradicating all
forms of domination, sexist oppression cannot continue to be
ignored and dismissed by radical political activists.
An important stage in the development of political con
sciousness is reached when individuals recognize the need to
struggle against all forms of oppression. The fight against
sexist oppression is of grave political significance-it is not for
The Significance of Feminist Movement
41
women only. Feminist movement is vital both in its power to
liberate us from the terrible bonds of sexist oppression and in
its potential to radicalize and renew other liberation struggles.
4.
SISTERHOOD: POLITICAL
SOLIDARITY BETWEEN WOMEN
Women are the group most victimized by sexist oppression.
As with other forms of group oppression, sexism is perpetuated
by institutional and social structures; by the individuals who
dominate, exploit, or oppress; and by the victims themselves
who are socialized to behave in ways that make them act in
complicity with the status quo. Male supremacist ideology
encourages women to believe we are valueless and obtain value
only by relating to or bonding with men. We are taught that
our relationships with one another diminish rather than
enrich our experience. We are taught that women are "natu
ral" enemies, that solidarity will never exist between us be
cause we ca...
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