Who-Stole-Feminism.-How-Women-Have-Betrayed-Women

84 WHO STOLE FEMINISM?"bourgeois white males of European descent") is then prosecuted underthe banners of "cultural pluralism," "inclusiveness," and "diversity." Feministleaders have eagerly embraced these causes partly to deflect attentionfrom the largely white, middle-class character of their own movement andpartly to camouflage the divisive misandrism that inspires them but is offputtingto others. The propitiatory strategy of placing their radical feminismunder the banner of "inclusiveness" has also been successful in aninternal respect: it has given many feminist activists the feeling that theyare part of a wider struggle for social justice. Finally, the call for "inclusiveness"usefully diverts attention from the uncomfortable but undeniablefact that the feminists are the ones getting most of the money, theprofessorships, and the well-paid (but vaguely defined) jobs inside theburgeoning new victim/bias industry.Takaki began by recognizing that no one seemed to know exactly whata transformed curriculum would look like. And he asked, "How do wedo it?" "How do we conceptualize it?" He advised the assembled genderfeminists to listen carefully to his lecture because he was going to showthem what a transformationist lecture actually looks like. "I will do it! Iwill practice it," he said.He told us about the misunderstood and alienated Chinese railroadworkers in California, and about the exploited and denigrated Irish factorygirls in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the nineteenth century, mixing hisfacts with remarks about British colonialism and the Opium War. He readus some telegrams sent by a young Chinese railroad worker to some malefriends urging them to help him in his plans to marry a young Chinesewoman. Takaki explained that he studied telegrams because the Chineseleft few documents for study. The telegrams—which Takaki called "texts"—revealed the powerlessness of the prospective Chinese bride. (It seemedto me they revealed much about Chinese immigrant attitudes towardwomen that reflected on the status of women in China, a point Takakineglected to make.) Takaki urged the audience to listen to the silences.The silence of the Irish factory workers, the silence of the Chinese immigrants.The silence of the bride. The silence of millions of aliens who area part of American history yet rarely, if ever, figure in the narrative."Blame the historians!" he cried. He singled out Oscar Handlin andArthur Schlesinger, Jr., both Pulitzer Prize historians, for special censure.Few in the crowd seemed to know much about Handlin's seminal writingson American history. More recognized Schlesinger, who is a liberalDemocrat but a critic of much of what passes under the banner of multiculturalism,and they hissed and booed at the mention of his name.Takaki attacked Handlin's The Uprooted and Schlesinger's The Age of Jack-