Breakfast All Day Podcast 9/12/19

Chisty,

Thanks for reviewing the Molly Ivins documenary. Sounds like I was raised and mentored by groups of women who were cut from much the same self-destructive cloth. A lot of them, like that who are passing away at younger age now, who would have been social activists and feminists of various blends, from way back in the seventies. Some of them professionals, other teachers, community leaders and entrepreneurs. Here is my point though.

What people consistently don’t get now, about the early generation feminists is the extent to which they couldn’t all be grouped underneath a single banner. Although frequently, the old camera footage and the archival photography now shows those pioneers doing precisely that. I do remember some hardened campaigners of many marches (yeah, with woodbine in the one hand and a glass of something in the other), had some fairly knock-down, drag out arguments amongst themselves (about stuff, that I don’t really understand). The kind where you just want to suddenly blend in, and become part of the furniture or interior decor or something. And I also suspect, that the presence of a very naive and much too impressionable mind, may also have been a trigger points that started ‘such debates’ (maybe I am still a bit traumatized or something?). I mean, we’re talking intellectual shrapnel here, Mel Gibson movies kind of stuff. Yeah. And I still have the intellectual battle wounds, from that cross fire to prove it.

People don’t get that nowadays.

Feminism was chaos. So the question then becomes about Molly Ivins, if a common viewpoint didn’t necessarily hold those groups together underneath those banners (that’s what people used before there were ‘hash’ things and all sorts, heavens me). What did hold such a diverse group together? What did produce this mythology now, that women of previous generations had walked together, underneath a common barrier? Because that really the great imponderable, because I remember I did ask that question in various ways down through the years, to feminists. But they couldn’t even articulate it themselves, and never have done. That’s what you can say about those pioneers. That’s what you can say about those women.

I will say this much though, whatever it was about, it was about this one thing. It did not follow common social class division. I know of women who were just as articulate in debates, and were debated by women of high social class standing, who never did anything throughout their lives except for cleaning floors and counter tops. That’s all. What the tobacco and the alcohol was about though, was about that. Because for that occasional time, when the female classes did mix and gather together at the house parties, and at the pubs in my experience. That’s when you might see real feminist activism planning, suddenly shift into a different gear, and the gloves would come off too. That’s the part of it all, that kind of shocked me.

Brian says:

September 14, 2019 at 12:32 pm

Chisty,

Thanks for reviewing the Molly Ivins documenary. Sounds like I was raised and mentored by groups of women who were cut from much the same self-destructive cloth. A lot of them, like that who are passing away at younger age now, who would have been social activists and feminists of various blends, from way back in the seventies. Some of them professionals, other teachers, community leaders and entrepreneurs. Here is my point though.

What people consistently don’t get now, about the early generation feminists is the extent to which they couldn’t all be grouped underneath a single banner. Although frequently, the old camera footage and the archival photography now shows those pioneers doing precisely that. I do remember some hardened campaigners of many marches (yeah, with woodbine in the one hand and a glass of something in the other), had some fairly knock-down, drag out arguments amongst themselves (about stuff, that I don’t really understand). The kind where you just want to suddenly blend in, and become part of the furniture or interior decor or something. And I also suspect, that the presence of a very naive and much too impressionable mind, may also have been a trigger points that started ‘such debates’ (maybe I am still a bit traumatized or something?). I mean, we’re talking intellectual shrapnel here, Mel Gibson movies kind of stuff. Yeah. And I still have the intellectual battle wounds, from that cross fire to prove it.

People don’t get that nowadays.

Feminism was chaos. So the question then becomes about Molly Ivins, if a common viewpoint didn’t necessarily hold those groups together underneath those banners (that’s what people used before there were ‘hash’ things and all sorts, heavens me). What did hold such a diverse group together? What did produce this mythology now, that women of previous generations had walked together, underneath a common barrier? Because that really the great imponderable, because I remember I did ask that question in various ways down through the years, to feminists. But they couldn’t even articulate it themselves, and never have done. That’s what you can say about those pioneers. That’s what you can say about those women.

I will say this much though, whatever it was about, it was about this one thing. It did not follow common social class division. I know of women who were just as articulate in debates, and were debated by women of high social class standing, who never did anything throughout their lives except for cleaning floors and counter tops. That’s all. What the tobacco and the alcohol was about though, was about that. Because for that occasional time, when the female classes did mix and gather together at the house parties, and at the pubs in my experience. That’s when you might see real feminist activism planning, suddenly shift into a different gear, and the gloves would come off too. That’s the part of it all, that kind of shocked me.

Breakfast All Day Podcast 9/12/19

Post a comment Cancel reply