women histories, incest sexual abuse. institutionalized. But what if ...

ioned idea that fathers are breadwinners
and responsible for the upkeep of their
children." Socialist-feminist
groups like the
Campaign Against the
Child Support Agency
(CACSA) argue that all
children should be supported
by the state and
believe that government
should "pay all mothers to
nurture and rear its
future workers."
While Mitchell
and Goody support the
CSA, their essay tackles
several complex questions
that face the
agency's supporters. In
particular, they analyze
the position of men and
women in the contemporary
family, and look at
the impact of remarriage
on child support and
household structure. "It
is often second families
that are objecting to payments
to the first," they
write. "Our society has
been unprepared for the
serial coupling that has
overtaken it." Feminists
have been slow to recognize
this phenomenon
and have not yet been
able to formulate a
response that meets the
needs of working-class
and poor women and
children. Aside from
CACSA (formerly Wages
for Housework), the economic
needs of femaleheaded
households and the role of the
So who's afraid
of feminism? By
the looks of it,
just about
everyone,
including those
of us who call
ourselves
feminists. But as
this anthology
reiterates,
change is neither
linear nor
easy.
attention. As a result, "men's rights"
groups—the most vocal proponents of the
backlash—have managed
to garner the lion's share of
press attention.
For their part, the
media have ignored daily
feminist struggles while
conjuring up images of "chic
lesbians" and a post-feminist
generation. Yet perhaps
no change has been as
rapid—or as startling to the
status quo—as the personal
and political transformations
wrought by queer theory
and lesbian and gay culture.
Susan Heath's essay,
"Thoughts of a Latecomer:
On Being a Lesbian in the
Backlash," is the most personal
piece in the collection.
A "late bloomer" who came
out after 30 years of marriage
and the rearing of
four sons, Heath can easily
pass as a respectable
grandmother. Yet she chooses
not to. Instead, she sees
herself as an affront to
myths about queerness—a
personal challenge to unexamined
stereotypes about
lesbian life.
Other essays in the
anthology address the
backlash from a variety of
vantage points. Retired
academic and writer
Carolyn Heilbrun assails
the sexism she encountered
at Columbia
University and lambastes
the many left-wing men
who failed to take up feminism during
CSA in meeting them has received scant her tenure there. Ann Oakley presents an
historical overview of gender, and looks at
the conflation of sex and gender as a
manifestation of the backlash.
Psychologist Carol Gilligan offers a plea
for the inclusion of women—and the
recognition of their difference—in public
life. "If women's voices are no different
from men's, then leaving women out is no
problem. If women's voices are different
from men's, then listening to women will
change the voice which we hear and
name as human," she writes in "Getting
Civilized."
So who's afraid of feminism? By the
looks of it, just about everyone, including
those of us who call ourselves feminists.
But as this anthology reiterates, change is
neither linear nor easy. Undoing social
conditioning and impacting social organizations
is ongoing work, and the backlash
is but one indicator that feminism has
begun to shake things up. In fact, as long
as feminism, in all of its permutations, continues
to push at the boundaries of
female—and human—experience, we can
expect the backlash to continue, and to
become even more visible.
As Carol Gilligan writes, the
stakes are extremely high: "The world
will change as everyone 'gets it'—that
women are half the population in every
generation and that undoing men's disconnection
from women and women's disconnection
from themselves does mean
the end of patriarchy and the beginning
of something which we have barely
imagined—something that wholeheartedly
could be called Civilization."
•
Who's Afraid of Feminism? Seeing
Through the Backlash Edited by Ann
Oakley and Juliet Mitchell. New York:
The New Press. 292 pp. $15.95, paper.
Eleanor J. Bader is a writer and teacher
from Brooklyn, NY.
53 - on the issues