Naming the Elephant Disrupting the Revival of US Feminism
US feminists discuss challenges to reviving the movement - while ignoring the elephant in the room: radical right influence on feminist politics.
The latest issue of the Radical Notion, a feminist quarterly journal founded by Jane Clare Jones, features an intriguing discussion, The Crisis for Grassroots Radical Feminism in the US, among three American feminists.1 The women include Elizabeth Miller, founder and organizer of the Chicago Feminist Salon, and contributing editor of the radical feminist anthology Spinning and Weaving; an anonymous graduate student using the pseudonym Erica Orson; Kasey Craig, a writer and activist; and Esmée Streachailt (pseudonym) facilitating the discussion. (Disclosure: I know Elizabeth Miller and occasionally participated in the Chicago Salon when I lived in Wisconsin.)
Asked: What’s in between American women and a revived feminist movement? the women cited a number of issues, including but not limited to, geographical size of the US, diversity of issues for women of different social classes, gun culture, and institutional capture by the trans lobby of liberal feminist organizations such as National Organization for Women (NOW) and National Center for Lesbian Rights.
Elizabeth begins by describing the logistical challenges:
In England, they can have all those meetings very easily. Maybe someone has to drive for like two hours or take a train for two or four hours. Here, if I want to meet with someone in California, that’s an enormous commitment. It’s a three-day drive to get there from Chicago. It’s three days if you fly: two days travel and one having the meeting (p92).
Erica and Esmée observe that geographical and social distances among women create different priorities and concerns:
Erica:
[T]he sexist hurdles faced by women in a poor corner of Mississippi are going to be completely different from a girl who grew up in upstate New York and is going to NYU (p92).
Esmée:
[T]he regional variation you’re talking about is huge, even between parts of states. I grew up in Illinois, and Chicago is not downstate. They’re just not the same world. More regional organizations, smaller groups that are connected to each other might be the way to build…” (p93).
Young women, just getting started in their careers, are fearful of foreclosing opportunities before they can get established. “We are figuring out where career paths are taking us,” Erica said, “and are scared that if we stand up for women and girls, then any career prospects will just dissolve” (p97).
Esmée and Elizabeth identify physical safety as another serious concern, given our increasingly violent culture awash in guns. As I think back to an early meeting in the UK, where trans activists pounded on windows of the meeting room throughout the event, I can only imagine how much more terrifying the experience would have been were guns involved.
Esmée:
[F]or the last four or five years now, we have been witness to spectacular displays of men being threatening in public without consequences. The Proud boys and Antifa fighting each other in the streets last summer. The 6 January insurrection… A lot of people are armed in this country. And that changes the mood and the calculus.
Elizabeth:
That absolutely does. Any time somebody is a total jerk in public, I think, “Okay, how much risk do I want to take in responding to this person?” Because they might very well have a gun (p96).
These are all certainly significant factors, but, with the exception of gun culture, they are not really unique to the US. While the US geographically dwarfs the UK, it is not the only large country in the world. Western European countries, including the UK are becoming increasingly diverse, and the threat from trans activists to employment and safety for women speaking out against gender identity policy and law exists around the world. Institutional capture of feminist, LGB, and other organizations by the trans lobby has also occurred in many other countries.
What is striking in this discussion is the glaring omission of newer feminist groups, such as Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), Women’s Declaration International USA (WDI USA), (formerly Women’s Human Rights Campaign USA (WHRC USA), and Feminists in Struggle (FIST), all of which were active on a number of fronts this past year.2 FIST and WDI USA wrote alternatives to the Equality Act, a piece of civil rights legislation President Biden had promised to pass, that collapses biological sex with gender identity, thereby infringing on women’s rights, safety and privacy. WDI USA also submitted written testimony on the bill, as did FIST as part of the Coalition for the Feminist Amendments, that also included LGB Alliance and the Georgia Green Party. In addition, FIST, WDI USA and WoLF all organized letter writing campaigns to legislators.
WDI USA also worked with the Title IX coalition, a collection of organizations including WoLF, Concerned Women for America (CWA), Save Women’s Sports, Heritage Foundation, and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) to testify for and against dozens of gender identity bills in state legislatures. WDI USA also wrote a number of letters to federal agencies in response to President Biden’s Executive Order 13988. Intended to prevent discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity, the EO, like the Equality Act, collapses sex and gender identity, thereby infringing women’s rights and protections. Volunteers with WDI USA also initiated a grass roots project to submit FOIA requests to the states to find out how many prisoners had been transferred to institutions based on their gender identity rather than their sex.
WoLF campaigned against SB132, a California law that allows persons claiming trans identity to transfer to prisons designated for the opposite sex, and published letters from female inmates describing their experiences and concerns about trans-identified males housed with them.
While WoLF and WDI USA engaged in considerable feminist advocacy during the prior year, they focused almost exclusively on gender identity policy and legislation, and they collaborated with right wing Christian organizations such as ADF, CWA, and Heritage Foundation. So although WoLF and WDI USA weren’t named, the discussion appeared to inch closer to the elephant in the room when the point was raised that other feminist issues merit serious attention:
Elizabeth:
[Gender identity policy and legislation is] the emergency we’re facing, but we have to remember that not everything has to be about transgenderism… [A]bortion was just outlawed in Texas!... There’s a bill in front of Congress right now, the Women’s Health Protection Act, that would prevent states from doing what Texas just did…. Lobby for that (p98, emphasis in original).3
Erica:
I don’t know how we rank on poverty, [but] this city is probably one of the top five. These women are working crazy shifts because scheduling in those jobs is brutal and unpredictable. They don’t know or they just don’t care about the whole trans thing. They’re caring about how to feed their children, how to give them an education… A lot of it comes down to how we advertise ourselves to everybody, and how we organize the work to make room for the conditions in these women’s lives (p98).
Kasey came closest to naming the agent when she noted that exclusive focus on the gender identity issue signals a right wing agenda in the minds of many:
Maybe just focusing on other parts of feminist movement will be what brings other women in. I mean, the abortion issue in Texas, I think a lot of people who don’t really understand gender-critical or radical feminism would be surprised these days by us showing up for that. Because they see anybody who opposes trans ideology as, like, super conservative. Working on things like childcare and a social safety net is valuable and it’s a less controversial way to start a conversation with other women. And when people see clearly that the same women are organizing local social safety nets, and trying to keep prisons single sex, and supporting abortion rights, then people will start to see, “Okay, this is not a being-mean-to-transpeople thing. This is a women thing (p98, emphasis in original).
As the Democrats remain stubbornly obtuse to women’s concerns about the trans agenda, they hand the Republicans a gift in the culture wars. When groups such as WoLF and WDI USA focus solely on gender identity, and do so while making common cause with powerful and well-funded anti-feminist, pro Christian nationalist organizations, they reinforce the idea that opposition to gender identity policy is a right-wing position. Is it any wonder that some potential feminist activists feel stymied, wondering where they can ethically and usefully work to create a better world for women?
Since I began publishing blog posts expressing my concerns about, and objections to, self-avowed radical feminist groups working with Council for National Policy organizations such as CWA and Heritage Foundation,4 both formed expressly to roll back the gains of second wave feminism, a number of women have reached out to me to express similar concerns - and relief that someone was talking about this. Several women reported they had raised concerns about working with right wing organizations in the secret WDI Facebook group - and had been banned for their trouble. Several others told me they refrain from voicing their concerns in that group, lest they, too, get banned. (This is deeply depressing, considering that Article Four of the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights, the founding document of WDI, reaffirms “women’s rights to freedom of opinion and freedom of expression.”)
I also learned that FIST lost a significant number of active members over this issue. Some of these women were looking for an alternative to WoLF; others had previously volunteered with WoLF, and left that group after learning of WoLF’s acceptance of a grant from ADF, a right wing Christian legal organization. FIST was organized as a feminist group that explicitly “reject[s] any alliances or collaboration with the Religious Right or the white supremacist, anti-immigrant Right.”
Eventually it became apparent that not all FIST women were on the same page. Some members viewed FIST's role as actively fighting against right-wing influence in the movement, while others, (some of whom were also members of WoLF), limited their anti-right wing position to direct alliances with openly right-wing groups. Differences came to a head when it was decided that FIST would send a letter to the Seattle Public library in support of a WoLF event.5 Realizing that FIST would publicly promote WoLF, instead of exposing them, a significant number of founding members left.
It is difficult to know from anecdotal stories the extent to which feminist groups working with the radical right impedes the development of a revived movement in the US. But I’m beginning to suspect that it is much greater than I initially realized. Feminists do not exist in a bubble separate from the larger, deeply polarized, political culture and many understand that working with the radical right is not a trivial act.
Over the past four decades, the Coalition for National Policy (CNP) network, which includes organizations with whom both WoLF and WDI USA have worked (e.g. Heritage Foundation, Concerned Women for American, and Alliance Defending Freedom), has pursued an agenda of connecting “the manpower and media of the Christian right with the finances of Western plutocrats and the strategy of right-wing Republican political operatives” to establish what Anne Nelson calls a “pluto-theocracy.”6 As we witness their success in packing the Supreme Court with right-wing ideologues, their probable success in advancing voter suppression laws, and learn more about their role in “organized efforts to challenge the validity of the [2020 presidential] election, conspir[ing] to overturn its results, and tr[ying] to derail the orderly transfer of power,” the case against feminists working with CNP organizations becomes insurmountable. Feminists who care about preserving what democracy we enjoy in the US, and promoting the resurgence of feminism here, must not be afraid talk about these issues openly and honestly.
Issue Five focuses on feminism in the US and is well worth a read. I especially recommend the debate between Elizabeth Hungerford and Amy Sousa, Working with the Religious Right: What’s the Harm? and Jayne Egerton’s meticulously researched and compelling analysis of the political implications of feminist organizations working with the Christian right, Women and the Religious Right.
I reached out to Elizabeth Miller for comment, but she has yet to respond.
The Supreme Court had not yet heard oral arguments for Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that might overturn Roe v Wade, at the time of this discussion.
See my earlier articles on this blog, especially Blinded by the Right: Feminist Advocacy and Working with the Pluto-Theocracy.
Updated to change “cosponsor” the WoLF event to “send a letter to the Seattle Public library in support of a WoLF event,” based on input from FIST leader Ann Menasche.
Nelson, Anne. 2019. Shadow Network: Media, Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right. Bloombury Publishing, PLC.