Historian Linda Hirshman: We need a "revived feminist movement" ready to fight "white innocence"

[marmar]

Historian Linda Hirshman: We need a "revived feminist movement" ready to fight "white innocence"
Bestselling author on the history lesson post-Roe feminism is about to learn: "White women are going to die"

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
PUBLISHED AUGUST 1, 2022 6:30AM


(Salon) Last month the right-wing justices on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision, taking away women's reproductive rights on a national scale. This decision was no surprise: It was the result of a decades-long campaign by the "conservative" movement and its Christian-fascist shock troops to return women to second-class citizenship.

Following the Supreme Court's decision, numerous Republican-dominated states have enacted or enabled laws that ban or restrict abortion, in some cases effectively mandating forced pregnancy and forced birth even in cases of rape and incest. Some of the most draconian actual or proposed laws may allow rapists to claim "parental rights," create a surveillance and bounty system for women who choose to terminate pregnancies and the medical professionals who assist them, and limit women's freedom of travel, speech, association and other supposedly inalienable rights.

The net result of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision may well be the deaths of thousands of women and girls in the United States. That is by design; the Republican-fascist movement is eager to turn the U.S. into a close approximation of Margaret Atwood's fictional Republic of Gilead.

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Many women, especially middle-class white women who have benefited from the privileges of race, class, sexual orientation, income, citizenship and so on, are now learning the truth of the adage that "the personal is political," which is more than a slogan from women's studies courses. For many Black and brown women, and women of other marginalized groups, this is hardly new information.

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Lawyer and cultural historian Linda Hirshman is the author of several bestselling books, including "Reckoning: The Epic Battle Against Sexual Abuse and Harassment," "Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World," and "Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution." Her most recent book is "The Color of Abolition: How a Printer, a Prophet, and a Contessa Moved a Nation." Her writing has also been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, Politico, Slate and the Daily Beast

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What is the role of white racial innocence in this crisis? The Republicans publicly announce what they are going to do, and then they do it. Yet there are so many voices, especially among white people, who continue to act surprised. It really is infantile behavior. White racial innocence has facilitated the horrors of the Age of Trump and these attacks on human and civil rights.

White innocence is very potent, especially when you're still a majority of the electorate. It's a huge problem. Things are going to happen now where white women are going to get sick and die because of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. They're going to die from ectopic pregnancy. They're going to die from being unable to be cleaned out after miscarriage and septic shock. There are going to be some deaths.

The question is now — and this draws from my study of the abolitionist movement — will we be able to make political street theater out of these deaths, the way that the Black Lives Matter movement was able to use the murder of George Floyd to raise awareness and generate action? One of the ways of undercutting and making headway against white racial innocence is to use street theater to show white women that they are not safe in this moment because of the end of Roe and the other things that the Republicans and the right are doing. ..............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/08/01/historian-linda-hirshman-we-need-a-revived-feminist-movement-ready-to-fight-white-innocence/

[Hortensis]

1. No, we're not heading for the fictional Republic of Gilead. It's not possible

to take seriously anything by someone who bases arguments on that ridiculous conspiracist fear-mongering.

How many have read the book? Anyone remember the enormous wall that encloses Gilead so completely that its people have absolutely no idea about the world outside?

How many have such a poor opinion of self and our culture that they can really see themselves -- along with over 300 million others -- reverted to serfdom in a generation or two, working obediently in abject 16th century poverty and illiterate ignorance?

That Americans could a quick flip from lives of passive slavery is really beyond insulting -- except to those who can imagine it for themselves. If it weren't for the salaciousness, how many here would be distracted from what that contemptible picture says about them? Put aside the fantasy of a few pretty women getting to escape grueling poverty by wearing red robes and spreading their legs for a fat man. Gileadeans spend their lives struggling for enough to survive the next winter.

As for "white innocence," let's call it what it really is in anyone of any race who indulges: feckless stupidity to a depraved degree. 40% of AA don't vote, similar to white Americans; I forget how many vote Republican, but ALL who do own their own "innocence" as it's being called. The even lower rate of Hispanic voting has been picking up, but more of them are voting Republican to screw themselves than otherwise. Anyone seen the latest appalling figures for young people?

[NullTuples]

2. I'm a bit wary of Linda Hirshman's idea of a, "revived feminist movement"

In her book analyzing gay rights legal victories, she misgenders trans people & refers to them as men in dresses and wigs. Her use of women instead of people here caught my attention, but when she said, "women and girls" but couldn't extend that to trans and nonbinary people, to me it signified that her views have not changed much.