History of Feminism
Related: About this forumLast night, PBS aired MAKERS: How Women Made America,
(Here's a another POV, that sums up about how I felt about it)
Its difficult to distill 50 years of diverse, rapidly evolving, and (necessarily and often productively) contradictory feminist history, work and ideas into a documentary format at all, even if given an almost unprecedented amount of airtime to do it in. Its important to note, right off the bat, that MAKERS relied heavily on stories told by and about the women whose identities and concerns white, cisgender, documented, and able-bodied have and continue to be privileged by mainstream feminism. While the film featured noted women of color and queer identified activists, their role was mostly presented as challengers to racism and homophobia within the mainstream feminist movement, rather than as an integral part of building that movement, now and then, to serve more people better. And it is outright shameful that MAKERS eliminated trans* folks from the history of feminism, especially since the movement and some its leaders both borrowed from trans* womens organizing in their tactics while at the same time tearing down those women and their organizing.
But here is why I am grateful that MAKERS exists, not as the definitive version of feminist history but as a first step toward reappearing women into mainstream history: the film was, without a doubt, a more comprehensive and thoughtful look at the history of the womens liberation movement than most US students ever learn in school and now it exists as a resource to be used by educators whove either been unable to use existing resources (too radical or not approved) or simply did not know about them. There is a tremendous opportunity for the film to be paired with additional resources in classroom settings at all levels that expands upon the content in the film and introduces some of the work and leaders who were not featured on the screen.
http://abortiongang.org/2013/02/makers-and-beyond-the-history-and-future-of-feminism/
Arkansas Granny
(31,525 posts)they spotlighted, I was still surprised at how much has happened in the last 50 years and how much is taken for granted today. Women of my generation and older fought hard for the gains that have been made, but there is still work to be done in the area of women's rights or they are going to be gradually eroded and taken away from us.
ismnotwasm
(41,999 posts)boston bean
(36,223 posts)and saying how the energy was sucked out of the movement because of that.
I think overall it was a pretty good overview. And more than most people probably knew. It was over 4 hours long and still didn't touch all the issues, but it was more than I've ever seen on tv.
I've only read your snip due to time constraints, but plan on going to the link to read more when I can.