Pages 141 to 143 Introduction to Sequel PREVIOUS PAGE NEXT PAGE
INTRODUCTION TO SEQUEL
And today? I see women’s groups like these, whether reactionary, conservative or radical, continuing through time and covering the same or similar issues. In Getting Equal the history of Australian feminism Marilyn Lake noted of feminists:
In reviewing the long history of feminism in this country one is struck again and again by the creativity and energy of feminists of all generations, their gusto and stamina and ebullience and courage. And the pleasure they took in their politics. (Allen & Unwin 1999 p282)
They have never been monolithic. For example, some women march to protest at rape in war on ANZAC day. Others, such as Jocelynne Scutt, won’t. She describes her reasoning in The Sexual Gerrymander women and the economics of power. (Spinifex 1994 pp161-4)But whether we were in Women’s Liberation (WL) or the Save Our Sons Movement (SOS) in the 1970’s and 1980’s, through to the present we all agree that women in the WPA were our foremothers.
Similarly, I see women in the AWNL as the foremothers of Women’s Action Alliance (WAA) and the so-called ‘Moderate Feminists’ in the 1970’s and 1980’s through to the present. They were and are at least partly patriarchal in outlook. In Women’s Liberation newsletters such as Rouge, women argued that policies held by a group called ‘Moderate Feminists’ were neither moderate nor feminist. Rouge published a ‘Women’s Issues Report’ written by the WAA for the National Civic Council in 1978 and commented:
Rouge:
Women’s Action Alliance (WAA)/National Civic Council (NCC) has established "Moderate Feminist" groups in the Australian Union of Students (AUS), seeking to attack the Australian Union of Students Women's Department ...Women's Report to National Civic Council State Conference October 1978 University of Melbourne
Rouge:
The Women's Action Alliance (WAA) uses the (feminist) rape campaign to attack sexual "promiscuity" and deny the concepts of "any man can be a rapist/any woman can be raped."
It continued: Anne Black's letter (Age Oct 15 '79) in some respects won feminist sympathy because it apparently came out in favour of self-defence against rapists and against sexual exploitation of women.
However, this letter must be exposed. She (Anne Black) writes -
1. Women who do not fight back are not really raped because to women "rape is worse than murder" and "Surely, if we are raped, we will fight back."
2. "Sexual exploitation" is redefined ... Ms Black makes no difference between sexual intercourse and rape!
(She - Anne Black - said) "If women did not 'concede' to any sexual acts, then we wouldn't be raped" - we have no right to sexuality! WAA consistently opposes the political implications of rape, reducing it to a simple "if we didn't have pornography, we wouldn't have rape" type of argument. This ignores the power position of men and women; it makes rape the isolated acts of sexually frenzied men.
Response to the October 1978 WAA Women's Issues Report to the National Civic Council, Women's Liberation archives, University of Melbourne
Rouge continues quoting WAA/National Civic Council -
Women's Action Alliance Report to the National Civic Council:
The future of the child lies in the family. It is on this premise that we will be meeting our opponents - people that believe that the future of the child lies in: 24 hour child care centres; the hands of teachers to manipulate at will; the hands of so-called parents, living in lesbian or homosexual relationships. In fact in any hands other than what we know to be the family.
As with the AWNL so many decades earlier, WAA took it upon itself to define what a family is and who women are, leaving out so many real women and so many real families, and ignoring women’s own definitions and experiences of the world around them. This reactionary worldview continues today. In Man’s Dominion (Sheila Jeffreys, Man’s Dominion the rise of religion and the eclipse of women’s rights Routlage 2012 p.56) Sheila Jeffreys describes how ‘patriarchs of all three monotheistic persuasions began to organise in the 1990’s against the progress of the movement for women’s human rights through the United Nations’. At the moment I think the Women’s Forum is closest in picking up and passing on these values, ideas and policies. On the other hand feminist women who hold radical or conservative values today seem to work in small groups on specific issues and campaigns.
In a way they did this, too, in the past. The WPA would certainly be comfortable with Kathleen Maltzahn’s book Trafficked. Wouldn’t they also be comfortable with Women in Black? Geraldine
PREVIOUS PAGE NEXT PAGE