Dec. 11--It's not Beyonce in front of blazing lights, but "Feminism Unfinished" (Liveright Publishing) should grab our attention.
The new book, subtitled "A Short, Surprising History of American Women's Movements," is co-authored by three academics -- Rutgers University professor Dorothy Sue Cobble, New York University professor Linda Gordon and Grinnell College professor Astrid Henry.
The authors argue that the feminist movement, despite what we're often told, is not making a comeback. It never actually left.
"Feminism keeps being declared dead," Henry told me by phone last week. "Then it's reborn, then it dies out, then it's the year of feminism and it's chic again."
Not so.
"In our view, there was no period in the last century when women were not campaigning for greater equality and freedom," the authors write. "Feminism has been not a series of disconnected upsurges but a continuous flow. Of course the movement was larger at some times, smaller at others, but in every period women were coming together to press collectively for more respect, more freedom and less discrimination."
And they haven't been alone.
"There were men at the Seneca Falls convention," Henry said, referring to the United States' first women's rights convention, organized by abolitionists Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1848. "There were men at the foundation of the National Organization for Women in 1966."
A significant portion of the book is devoted to debunking the image of feminism as a cause fueled by and intended for middle- to upper-class white ladies.
"Women of color and men have always been an important part of the movement," Henry said. "History tends to focus on singular, clear narratives, which have an easier time latching on."
They also make it easier to take sides. It's hard to pit "us" against "them" when you're not sure who's with "us" and who's with "them."
Activists from the NAACP, the National Council of Negro Women, the National Urban League and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference have been crucial to the feminist movement, the authors point out.
"Mexican-American and other minority women created a parallel yet overlapping civil rights movement to combat discriminatory practices," they write. "Feminists in church, peace, internationalist and consumer groups as well as in welfare rights and other poor people's movements also agitated for women's rights and social reform."
Feminism's diversity has been its strength, Henry says. And it's only getting stronger.
"The most defining feature of this generation of feminists is its inability to be defined by any single political goal, ideological perspective or way of being feminist," Henry writes in her portion of the book.
They're celebrities, they're men, they're young, they're old, they're straight, they're not straight. They look a thousand different ways and believe a thousand different things.
Wouldn't it be great if we stopped trying to shove any group into narrow boxes, defined by a single goal, a single perspective, a single way of being? I think about the critically important, deeply painful conversations we're having right now as a city and a nation -- over race, sexual assault, domestic violence -- and I wonder how much further we'd get if we made more room for ambiguity.
If we didn't take whole cultures, whole professions, whole genders and pretend to know how they think, what they value, why they're "them" and we're "us."
"As with all progressive social movements, solidarity and a sense of responsibility toward others have been fundamental to feminism," the authors write.
It's a good model.
hstevens@tribpub.com
Twitter @heidistevens13
