Divide and Fail
Of all of the shocking revelations we have had to endure this summer (and we are only a few weeks in), Roe v. Wade being overturned as well as other seismic shifts to the American way of life initiated by a freshly minted, aggressively activist conservative-majority Supreme Court, plus the civic atrocities exposed by the House Select Committee investigating events surround the January 6th violent insurrection on our government, the one that really knocked the wind out of me was a lot less flashy, but something completely unexpected and devastating, something I know a lot of us missed.
In a New York Times op-ed by contributor Michelle Goldenberg entitled “The Future Is No Longer Female,” I read that, according to a recent poll of its citizens across all demographics and party lines, for Americans under 50 years old, weariness with feminism is becoming the norm and the core ethic among young Americans is all but dead. Emphasis is mine:
Predictably, most young Republicans agree with the statement, “Feminism has done more harm than good.” What was astonishing was how many young Democrats agreed as well. While only 4 percent of Democratic men over 50 thought feminism was harmful, 46 percent of Democratic men under 50 did. Nearly a quarter of Democratic women under 50 agreed, compared with only 10 percent of those 50 and older.
“In a poll of a lot of really shocking and disappointing findings, people’s responses to feminism and gender roles was the most shocking and disheartening,” said Miller. “I just didn’t expect to see those numbers.”
No, I didn’t expect this either, but neither am I completely surprised. And that’s what I want to talk about.
Let me preface this by saying that it’s never easy for a white, middle-aged man to write convincingly about civil rights, but that hasn’t stopped me as a music writer from finding a way to talk about injustice where I see it. As with American history, it’s impossible to tell the true story of rock music without eventually (or quickly) bumping up against the ugly realities of white privilege and glass ceilings. Those can be tricky waters to navigate properly but I’d rather tell the whole story than portray the timeline of rock music as merely the stories of great achievement by white males within a white and male-dominated world. You can read my recent takes on rock music and racism here and the triumphs of underdog female rockers here, and here (and please tell me how I did).
So, without trying to mansplain feminism, it is with great urgency that I rush into this particular minefield.
And that dynamic, the handling of allies, is in itself a big part of the recent decline of feminism today, I think, and moreover, liberalism in general. With the current Republican Party manifesting more and more power as an iteration of theocratic Fascism, and knowing that our cultural ethics and the way we communicate them are ultimately expressed at the ballot box, the stakes could not be higher right now in our beloved country, so it’s worth it to take a few personal risks and come off of the sidelines in order to participate in this very necessary conversation.
I understand and fully validate the annoyance and perils of mansplaining. I am deeply committed to equality and, while I do believe in service, subservience is bullshit and subjugation is a scourge in all of its forms. I know that even worse than a man talking about feminism is a man offering a critique of the movement, but I cannot stand idly by as an ally watching this light die out in our country and with it, liberalism too.
Fact is, we are getting down to it, the big face-off in America, and it’s all hands on deck. It’s a battle we must win; we cannot be removing people from the intellectual playing field because they’re the wrong sex or gender, any more than we can disqualify people for the color of their skin or their religion. If we are for equality, we are for the rights of all people, even the people of the dominant culture. I don’t think there is an intellectual way around this fact.
Besides, men’s involvement is essential to the survival of feminism, is it not? Not just their inclusion, but the contributions of male feminist voices to the debate and our work in the struggle should be not just welcomed, but invited. This is true not only because of the help we can provide to the cause, but also in the hope that our voices can possibly influence other men, which, if I’m not mistaken, is the primary target audience for the whole argument.
If equality for women were to perish as a widely held ethic, we would find ourselves living in a whole other America and we, not just as feminists, but as humanists simply cannot let that happen. Coupled with the recent rescinding of women’s corporal rights by this undaunted, retrograde Supreme Court, progressives in America are standing at a crossroads. We need to put our brains together to forge a way forward and I don’t see how a successful strategy can de facto exclude men from the discussion or any other ally, for that matter. Good people, this is no longer an exercise.
Which brings me back to my main point. I am afraid that indulging this desire we modern-day progressives have to educate, manage, and “handle” our potential allies is proving to be a grave disservice to our cause. Not only is it rarely effective, it’s doing serious damage to our brand as progressives. Instead of resonating as we should be, with a broad, humanistic message that could appeal across demographic lines of all kinds, we find the progressive brand resonating as a bunch of narrow-minded, petty scolds with no strong message other than, “thanks for the help, but you’re doing it wrong.” Not at all where we should be. In such an oppressive climate, we have the opportunity to bring millions of voters into our tent for the midterms and beyond.
From what I’ve studied, the successes of the civil rights movement, feminism, and every other human rights achievement in America came with getting to public opinion tipping points among the population at large, finding and fostering allies in unlikely places without making them meet any prescriptive criteria. That’s how you grow a movement, by broadening its appeal, and the message has to be one of universal love and respect, not denigrating and criticizing the very people you are trying to sway.
And perhaps even more crucial to our cause, we have to find a way to put an end to this incessant in-fighting among our own factions, which has been exacerbated to the nth degree by social media (often goosed by nefarious bots set loose by outsiders). “Divide et impera” is the Latin phrase attributed to Julius Caesar when he waged an unprovoked, self-serving war with Gaul. It was good politics then and “divide and conquer” has proven to be the best strategy to undermine the opposition that the American Right has ever come up with.
Now is the time for liberal-minded Americans of all stripes to come together if we can. And let’s be as inviting as we can to potential allies wherever we find them. We are going to need all the help we can get to beat back Fascism in America, at the ballot box, and in the hearts and minds of our citizenry. It is not too late to resuscitate our power if we are conscious of our message and how it is resonating with the people.
Politics can be a tedious, nasty business but it’s our only mode of self-governance. We need to get to work right now to increase our numbers, broaden our appeal, and humanize our message if we don’t want to wake up soon to find ourselves living in a minority-rule Fascist state. It’s crunch time. All hands on deck. Let’s accept help from all quarters and understand that we committed progressives cannot win these battles ahead of us alone. Abortion rights affect women in every corner of American life. Let’s use this opportunity to open eyes across geographic and party lines to see what is happening and to provide an alternative message of empowerment and human dignity that reverberates with love and respect for women, for people of color, for the downtrodden, for working people, as well as the more privileged sectors of our society. Ours is a timely message that works for everyone, that can bring people together — if we can figure out how to deliver it.