Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 20:31:21 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Is Yoshie pissing on women?


Bob,


What I am saying is that women have been *always* in struggles in
support of men. It's a *statement of a fact*. To say that the Liverpool
dockers' wives' participation represents *something new* is to "piss on
women" who have done so before.


Support across the gender line is important. What I would like to see,
however, is men supporting women *as willingly + energetically as*
women have and still do.


Yoshie


>>>>

<excerpt>Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 00:30:38 -0500

From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki)

Subject: M-TH: Is Yoshie pissing on women?


In reply to Hugh Yoshie writes!


>Hugh wrote:

>>2) The Women of the Waterfront  were very successful on their own
terms,

>>they were fighting for *their own immediate interests* given the
social

>>structures capitalist Britain forced on them. The oppression they
felt and

>>fought against was class oppression rather than gender oppression.
They

>>expressed their particular gender identity in this struggle through
a

>>gender-specific organization of working-class women to
counter-attack

>>against the bosses and government and bureaucratic oppression. This
is a

>>new development -- the women weren't this well-organized during the
miners'

>>strike, for instance.

>

>Why do you call this a new development? Have you ever seen the
documentary

>_With Babies and Banners_? Women have been always in supporting roles
in

>their male partners' struggles.


Hugh is absolutely right on this!


This reply is a sneer from Yoshie "the feminist" declaring that
Liverpool 

women were just fighting a supporting role to the men on the docks. It
is a 

cynical "piss on women" and declare them idiots statement because it
does 

not fit into Yoshie's idea of a modern women perhaps. Well, I disagree
that 

women were fighting a partial struggle and in fact were deeply engaged
in a 

fight that involved their familes and children and against the bosses
on the 

docks. Just as women in Russia once started a revolution in there 

demonstrations on bread and freedom.. You spit on these women because
they 

do not fit in where I would uphold that it was not just their mens jobs
that 

were at stake but the key question of their survival with things like
food 

on the table, clothes for the kids and all the rest. 


Hugh

>>3) Support is important. Heroic support is not to be sneered at.
"Old" is

>>irrelevant. As women come to the fore in struggle, men will be seen
at

>>their side supporting them.


Yoshie..

>This is not going to be an automatic development.

>

>Yoshie


No it will take a communist women's movement which integrates the
women's 

question into all aspects of class struggle to do the job..And we will
not 

over come a thousand years of the holy family and women's oppression 

overnight. It will take women's sections of a future Communist
International 

to overcome women's  oppression.


Your feminist piss on women married to dockworkers as being a partial
struggle

is not wrong because it really is a parial struggle but in and entirely


different context then you present to this list..


Warm regards

Bob Malecki

</excerpt><<<<<<<<





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