American Communism and the Rise of Feminism
I read this article on American communism and the rise of feminism, and I couldn’t work out whether it was serious or a tongue-in-cheek send-up. savethemales.ca – American Communism and the Rise of Feminism:
In a 2002 book, Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women’s Liberation, feminist historian Kate Weigand states: ‘ideas, activists and traditions that emanated from the Communist movement of the forties and fifties continued to shape the direction of the new women’s movement of the 1960s and later.'(154)
In fact, Weigand, a lecturer at Smith College, shows that modern feminism is a direct outgrowth of American Communism. There is nothing that feminists said or did in the 1960’s-1980’s that wasn’t prefigured in the CPUSA of the 1940’s and 1950’s. Many second-wave feminist leaders were ‘red diaper babies,’ the children of Communists.
Communists pioneered the political and cultural analysis of woman’s oppression. They originated ‘women’s studies,’ and advocated public daycare, birth control, abortion and even children’s rights. They forged key feminist concepts such as ‘the personal is the political’ and techniques such as ‘consciousness raising.’
Hat-tip to Ibid.
So what do you think it is?
Satire? A serious academic article? A loony rant? Or something else?
Notes from underground 