Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 21:13:02 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: M-TH: With Babies and Banners (was Feral revolutionism)


_With Babies and Banners_ is an excellent labor documentary film that
explores the role of women--wives, sisters, female workers, etc.--in
the 1937 GM Sit-Down Strike in Flint, Michigan, USA. When you see this
film or others like it (such as _Union Maids_) or study working-class
women's history, you'll know that "the level of organization and the
independence of their activities" of the women supporters of the
Liverpool dockers was *not* new.


In _With Babies and Banners_, you see women forming the Emergency
Brigade to protect male workers in the factories from the police and
the national guard, organizing the children's picket line to capture
the national media's attention, cooking in the strike kitchen and
bringing food, clothes, etc. to men, and so on. These women were very
well organized.


But what is to be remembered is that these women faced considerable
oppositions from male workers and union organizers in their efforts to
participate in the strike. First of all, there were female workers in
the GM factories at the time when the Sit-Down strike began; but soon
the media began to use the prevailing sexual morality to attack the
strikers, basically by saying that in the factories there was an
"immoral sexual mingling" going on. Male workers and union organizers
capitulated to this sex-baiting by the media, and they asked female
sit-downers to go home.


Secondly, when female workers, family members of male workers, women in
the community, etc. expressed their eagerness to help the strikers,
they were urged to help only in "womanly jobs"--cooking, cleaning, etc.
for men. Women had to battle male oppositions to take part in picket
line duties, organize the Emergency Brigade, or play other public
roles.


Thirdly, women had to weather unfavorable comments and snickers from
male workers either for looking "too feminine" or "too masculine." Even
in the middle of the militant strike, men couldn't just let women be
"working-class"; they wanted to remind women of their "proper gender
roles" and comments/snickers about women's appearance were meant to
keep them in their place.


Fourthly, the women interviewed in the film talk about how women's
intellect was perceived as threat to masculinity.


Lastly, as soon as the strike ended, women were asked to return to
their domestic roles. Their support and militancy were forgotten by men
after immediate objectives of the strike were achieved.


Hugh, one of the organizational issues I am concerned with is this:
what sorts of organizing does it take to make support across the gender
line *mutual and reciprocal*, not the one-way street of women
supporting men?


Yoshie


>>>>

<excerpt>21 Mar 1998 10:09:05 +0100 (MET)

Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 09:32:15 +0100

From: Hugh Rodwell <<m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>

Subject: M-TH: Re: Feral revolutionism


I 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.


and Yoshie wrote:


>Why do you call this a new development?


Because of the level of organization and the independence of their
activities.


>Have you ever seen the documentary _With Babies and Banners_?


No. Tell us about it.


>Women have been always in supporting roles in their male partners'
>struggles.


So? Yoshie almost makes it sound bad. What better alternatives can she

provide *in a situation of struggle*? And she forgets that the
bourgeoisie

always attempts to drive a wedge between the men and their women to try
and

get the women to pressure the men to capitulate -- that "always" of
hers

isn't self-evident.


>>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.

>

>This is not going to be an automatic development.


Who said it was? I didn't say *all* men. I'm confident that enough men
will

be around who express active solidarity with their partners for a

difference to be made. Maybe Yoshie isn't. We'll see what happens.


Cheers,


Hugh





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