But their acronym wasn't very catchy

80 years ago or so:

Ms. Blee, 48, first became interested in hate groups nearly 20 years ago, when she discovered a Klan pamphlet from the 1920's advocating women's suffrage. She also found pamphlets advocating eight-hour days for mothers and the use of maiden names by married women. "I thought, This violates all my sense of historical categories," Ms. Blee said. "The role of women in the Klan has been overlooked. They were not incidental, but the glue that held it together."

So she decided to write a book focusing on Indiana, where she grew up and where nearly a quarter-million Klan women lived during the 1920's. In old age homes, she found survivors. They hadn't changed their views. Interviewing them was "hateful," she said, adding, "They assumed because I was white I would agree."

Some Klan women were suffragettes, Ms. Blee discovered, because they believed that the women's vote would counteract votes of African-American men. Some joined because of the temperance movement. "They would say: 'Drink is ruining the family. Who is to blame for that? Catholics,' " said Ms. Blee, who was raised in a Roman Catholic family in Fort Wayne. Catholics as well as blacks, she noted, were targets of the early Klan. (Ms. Blee asked that no other details of her personal life be published because of the dangers of her work.)

Although women did not participate in lynchings, they spread rumors against Jewish store owners and Catholic teachers to drive them from communities. Women also sustained the rituals necessary to cement membership, Klan weddings, christenings, cookbooks, parallel Little Leagues...

more:

"Thanks to Kathleen M. Blee's superb scholarship in Women of the Klan I must now live with the fact that the Klan contained 'all the better people': businessmen, physicians, judges, social workers—even Quakers, political reformers and (this is the truly discomforting part) feminists. . . . Women of the Klan stands before us as carefully garnered, irrefutable evidence that women are capable of asserting their gender rights in the most noisome settings."—Barbara Ehrenreich, Los Angeles Times

...Description
Ignorant. Brutal. Male. One of these stereotypes of the Ku Klux Klan offer a misleading picture. In Women of the Klan, sociologist Kathleen Blee unveils an accurate portrait of a racist movement that appealed to ordinary people throughout the country. In so doing, she dismantles the popular notion that politically involved women are always inspired by pacifism, equality, and justice.

"All the better people," a former Klanswoman assures us, were in the Klan. During the 1920s, perhaps half a million white native-born Protestant women joined the Women's Ku Klux Klan (WKKK). Like their male counterparts, Klanswomen held reactionary views on race, nationality, and religion. But their perspectives on gender roles were often progressive. The Klan publicly asserted that a women's order could safeguard women's suffrage and expand their other legal rights. Privately the WKKK was working to preserve white Protestant supremacy.

Blee draws from extensive archival research and interviews with former Klan members and victims to underscore the complexity of extremist right-wing political movements. Issues of women's rights, she argues, do not fit comfortably into the standard dichotomies of "progressive" and "reactionary." These need to be replaced by a more complete understanding of how gender politics are related to the politics of race, religion, and class.

note

In the 1920s, as many as half a million women joined the ladies' auxiliary of the KKK (the WKKK). Were they just aping their husbands or were there specific motivations that brought women to an organization notorious for rough-neck violence? Well, sexual fears may indeed have played a role. The fraudulent portrayal of ex-slaves assaulting white women in the vile racist movie, Birth of a Nation, is credited with stimulating the resurgence of the Klan. Women had received the vote nationally only in 1918, on a wave of optimism that their votes would naturally fall on the side of justice, decency, and pacifism. ..

Of course, also too, there are always those who are deeply, hilariously unclear on the concept:

In the [Men's Nads Daily] article, [“Feminism, the WKKK, and the Gender-Lynching of Michael Jackson”], David Usher claims that “Feminism as we know it is the direct ideological and political descendant of the Women’s Ku Klux Klan (WKKK).” When I read this, I didn’t know whether I should burst out in laughter or throw my laptop across the room. He continues with a long list of “connections” between the WKKK and the feminist movement, and claims that feminists left the KKK, simply omitted the word “black” from its ideology and replaced it with “men.”

Usher also manages to insist that, “The greatest problem faced by blacks is not racism itself. Sexism and discrimination against the black male, both in family and society, is the greatest single factor keeping blacks a desperate underclass.” Wow.

To back this up, he then throws Michael Jackson’s trial into the mix, and how the feminist “lynch mob” is actually responsible for the charges against him:

“So the new WKKK set out to perform a lawyerly lynching of Michael Jackson. Every mob motive is present. He is a male. He is very rich, eccentric, and black too. It was an irresistible invitation to misuse false allegations of sexual improprieties, for profit and political gain.”...

Seriously, though, Martian Rights Advocates aside, it's not that surprising. Ever read "Gone With the Wind?" I mean the movie's a subject in itself, but the book is...interesting. On the one hand, Margaret Mitchell writes about Scarlett O'Hara in this way...I don't have the book in front of me, but it's full of authorial asides like, "No one was there to tell her that her own personality, frighteningly vital as it was, was more attractive than the artifice..." something like that. You know, she was a strong woman chafing under the hidebound rules of an extremely sexist and rigid society who didn't let (white, duh) women be full humans; this is actually the point of the whole damn book, or one of them.

The other of course, being, goddam Yankees fucking up a perfectly good system, sending good families to ruin and privation and giving THEM ideas. And yes, there's a bit where one of the husbands rides out with the Klan; this is considered a good thing; because, see, while Scarlett was just mostly going along to get along, black people acted the way they did because, well, that was just TRUE about their inherent nature, see...

"They were like children," I believe O'Hara muses in a fury at the ignorant Yankee woman who was mean about one of her beloved former (and of course loyal) servants, and would prefer a "good Irish girl" to nanny her children because, you know, she doesn't KNOW -them- like Scarlett (and Mitchell, obviously) does...

The Revolution Will Not Be Crocheted, Preserved, or Canned. Or, Hey, Maybe It Will, But If So...

some of us may be shit out of luck.

Basically, Kim of Bastante Already! has this piece ruminating about her lack of affinity for the traditional womanly arts.

Amid her notes that she hates gardening and cooking and simply doesn't have the wherewithal for making a beautiful "nest" right now, she asks,

In damn near every feminist periodical (Bitch, Bust) and on many feminist blogs, there's this big, trendy push to get all Knitty and Crafty and Womanly Arts with our bad selves.
What is up with that?

Well, a few different things are up with that.

The most immediate answer to that particular question, at the Bitch, Bust, popcultetc. level, I think it's just the same thing that's been true of any number of other "trends:" stuff like knitting groups and gardening clubs become popular for more or less the same reason that stuff like sex toy parties or pole dancing classes becomes popular. Because, well, they involve activities that a lot of people find--dreaded word--"fun." And yeah, one could file preferences for such things into "patriarchal conditioning" (as opposed to, say, a womens' auto-mechanic club, I guess); truth is, I think it's more, "we maybe eschewed these things because we were concerned about what it all Means, or it wasn't available in our neck of the woods, or it simply never occured to us before; when we let that go some of us realized, hey, I kind of like this, it's not what I thought it would be, and actually there are various benefits to this (mentally and physically engaging, develops various skills, social, relaxing, possibly good ol' fashioned small-business venture capitalism in some cases). Personally, I think: hey, and if men want to enjoy these "traditional womanly arts" too, more power to 'em.

None of this is probably "radical" in any sense of the word (not that there's anything wrong with that); for a start, here we are probably mostly talking about how you say, "hobbies," which in itself comes with a lot of assumptions about the hobbiest's resources, spare time, general position in the grand scheme of things. More to the point, it's probably not going to fundamentally overhaul one's total way of life and being, much less the greater society; it's not meant to do so.

What's more overarching is the vision of, well for one, cultural feminism

Many cultural feminists support their arguments by examining the behavior of women in both the distant past and the present. Bachoffen's groundbreaking work on early matriarchal societies is often used as evidence that women were the earliest and most important members of society. [3] In societies led by women, or "matriarchies," there are vastly different rules governing sexuality and marriage, property inheritance, and the distribution of power than those rules operative in societies led by men, or "patriarchies." When women have greater social control than men, less stringent social sanctions are imposed on female sexual activities and choice of partners. Illegitimacy is absent, and inheritance and descent are organized through female ancestors. Matriarchal societies are generally nonmilitaristic, with the dramatic exception of Amazons. Religion, arts, and crafts are organized around female symbols of fertility and anatomy. Engels took the archaeological evidence developed by Bachofen and Morgan and extended their analyses to include changing economic conditions as a cause for the transition from matriarchal societies to patriarchal ones. [4] Succinctly, Engels' argument is that as men accumulated capital, because of technological and social inventions, they altered the norms controlling sexuality, the family, and government. Women became a commodity of exchange who supplied men with both status and heirs. Recent anthropological evidence largely supports the existence of early societies where women had significantly greater power than they do today.

In short, what it boils down to, roughly, is a belief that matriarchy is the once and future Way to Go. It also is the basic premise behind such things as the "back to the land" movement within feminism(s) (there are and have been many "back to the land" movements, of course. We'll get to that).

And you know, in theory, I have to say, I always had a soft spot for this, the basic idea. There's a fair strain of it within neo-paganism, for instance, in which stream I paddle and occasionally do a few laps, although I lean more Phyllis Curott than Z. Budapest. I've been moved byJudy Grahn. I dig Riane Eisler. I dunno how literally to take the herstory/prehistory, but at a certain level, I think, provided one is -not- a fundamentalist, it doesn't much matter: the importance of myth is not that it's literally true, it's. Point being: if one both believes that one is living in an overarching System, i.e. the Patriarchy, and that further this system is inimical and cannot be salvaged, well, what's the alternative? Well--Matriarchy, I suppose, for one. Which could mean any number of things; in my fondly vague imaginings, I had always pictured something more like the bonobos than, say, a beehive.

On the other hand..

Well, to bring us back to the whole, "traditional womanly arts" thing.

See, if you are adamant that these traditional womanly arts are "traditionally womens'" and should STAY such, on account of men and women are different and that's really really important,

to me, it kind of doesn't matter so much that, in this particular framing, those neglected "womanly" values--hearth, home, gentleness, peace was a big one--are in fact superior, which sets this worldview apart from the more right-wing movements that put such emphasis on men and women are really different, 'twas ever thus, shall always be. Because, once you have that essential...essentialism, well...sooner or later, inevitably, it's going to mean that someone ends up in a (yes, this IS was "gender" means) gendered box that sie doesn't feel comfortable in. Also it keeps this sort of endless binary war-of-the-sexes going, which personally I've always found sort of tedious.

But also, all of which, to me, kind of goes against the whole, "liberty, equality...fraternity." Sorority, even. It's one thing to buy (I do) that certain values and behaviors that have been coded as "female" or "feminine" or "yin" or whatever you like are, by and large, looked down upon, in this culture, and that this is a problem. It's another to insist that those values, behaviors, etc. are the -sole property- of female-chromosomed/genital'd/even identified persons.

Curiously enough, fundamentalist Christian women can sound some familiar notes amid the o-my-Lord-what-are-things-coming-to-why-does-no-one-respect-Godly-AUTHORITAH:

According to this plan, who was to teach the womanly arts? Who was to teach the young women how to love and be subject to their husbands, how to love their children, how to be sensible, how to be pure, how to be a worker at home, how to be kind within the home and to extend kindness from the home? It was the older women. The womanly arts were to be transmitted from the older women to the younger women.

Please note that no male was assigned this task...

... Beyond the obvious impropriety of male involvement one must question the value of male instruction in the womanly arts. The simple question is: What do men really know about the womanly arts anyway?

What man has ever birthed a baby? What man has ever nursed a child? What man has ever related as mother to a child for even one day, let alone twenty years? What man has ever or will ever fathom the intricate complexity of God's design in woman, and the urges and emotions, unique to us, which God has built into our very beings that we might naturally and easily and yet with a profound skill which defies textbook description or explanation, nurture the next generation for Him?

Is it not obvious that men do now know, and that they cannot know? Is it not clear that they are not even equipped biologically to know in any experiential way what they would pretend to teach as experts?

Apart from the "teach the young women to love and be subject to their husbands" riff, (and -maybe- the bit about "impropriety," there's nothing here that wouldn't fit comfortably into a cultural feminist narrative. She is, in fact, making a case for a "womens' culture,"* albeit a womens' culture that is framed very specifically within the precepts of her (Father(s)-headed) Church, yes.

What makes all the difference, according to some, is the presence or absence of that Father-headed System. Get rid of the Fathers, the husbands, the priests, the God, and we'll be free.

Which, well, perhaps. But besides the very real "so, what about the Men?" question that arises in that scenario (i mean, if we're peaceful-loving we can't just -kill- them all, fun as it sounds; and, well, they're still there, at best wondering what the hell to do with themselves now that they can't be Patriarchs anymore and all the women are off having Birthing parties and frolicking on the land and such)...well, I'm not so convinced that that WOULD be enough to bring about utopia, as opposed to, well, just another communitarian experiment, subject to human (which women, lest we forget, are) failing as much as any other.

So that's one thing.

The other consideration is, getting back to the more practical side...well, first of all, of course there are other reasons beside grand sweeping Visions of the End Goal to buy into a cultural/separatist/communitarian set-up, feminist or otherwise. There are a -lot- of back-to-the-land movements these days, have been ever since the advent of Industrialization, really; the ideology behind far left to far right, but one of the basic principles is self-sufficiency (as opposed to Owing your Soul to the Company Sto', or Big Brother, neither). An antidote to the alienation of modern life: get your hands dirty, Do It Yourself, and probably bond in loving fellowship with like-minded peoples.

Which all sounds great, you know, and I've been a guest, at least, at a couple of "intentional communities" which I might talk about at some point. I admire it all, again, in theory.

There's just one small problem:

I live in the city.

Well. I live in the city, and my idea of foraging in the wilderness is finding a decent takeout joint, AND, due to a combination of 'burb-based relative privilege, urban/cultural family background (my NYC-derived grandmother, once, sitting on her Sun City astroturf porch, shooing away the quail: "Yeah, cute, but those fucking birds crap all over the place. I don't like nature. I'd rather have an ice cream soda"), and general murky Fears of my own ineptitude/which I'm not going to get into right now, suffice it to say that I am a Compleat Klutz when it comes to -most- of this Traditional Womanly Arts shit.

And no, I am no good at the traditional "masculine" arts either (changing oil, fixing plumbing). I am the first to admit that I am a bougie genX slacker who thinks finally learning to tie her shoes at some advanced age (six? seven? twenty-two?) is "working with her hands."

Essentially, I'm fairly certain that when the Revolution comes, the people who've been canning and preserving and making sweaters out of sheep all this time will be doing great, and i'll be scavenging the subways and fallout-laden streets and eating roaches and grubs out of my fellow useless urbanites' hair, assuming we all just don't kill each other first in a blind panic.

"But I'm good company."

*Margaret Atwood nails this irony pretty astutely in "The Handmaid's Tale," at the end of the scene where Janine, one of the Handmaids, is giving birth in the company of her sisters and the Wives and the Marthas and the Aunts (no men allowed):

The womens' voices rise around me, a soft chant that is still too loud for me, after the days and days of silence. In the corner of the room there's a bloodstained sheet, bundled and tossed there, from where the waters broke...

The room smells too, the air is close, they should open a window. The smell is of our own flesh, an organic smell, sweat and a tinge of iron, from the blood on the sheet, and another smell, more animal, that's coming, it must be, from Janine: a smell of dens, of inhabited caves, the smell of the plaid blanket on the bed when the cat gave birth on it, once, before she was spayed. Smell of matrix.

"Breathe, breathe," we chant, as we have been taught. "Hold, hold. Expel, expel, expel." ...Janine, her eyes closed, tries to slow her breathing. Aunt Elizabeth feels for the contractions...

...She's grunting now, with the effort. "Push, push, push," we whisper....We're with her, we're the same as her, we're drunk. Aunt Elizabeth kneels, with an outspread towel to catch the baby, ...Oh praise.

We hold our breath as Aunt Elizabeth inspects it: a girl, poor thing, but at least there's nothing wrong with it...We are one smile, tears run down our cheeks, we are so happy.

...The Commander's Wife looks down at the baby as if it's a bouquet of flowers: something she won, a tribute.

The Wives are here to bear witness to the naming. It's the Wives who do the naming, around here.

"Angela," says the Commander's Wife.

"Angela, Angela," the Wives repeat, twittering. "What a sweet name! Oh, she's perfect! Oh, she's wonderful!..."

By now I'm wrung out, exhausted. My breasts are painful, they're leaking a little. Fake milk, it happens this way with some of us. We sit on our benches, facing one another...we might be bundles of red cloth. We ache. Each of us holds in her lap a phantom, a ghost baby. What confronts us, now the excitement's over, is our own failure. Mother, I think. Wherever you may be. Can you hear me? You wanted a women's culture. Well, now there is one. It isn't what you meant, but it exists. Be thankful for small mercies.

x-posted at feministe

Guns and butter

In the beginning, like camels, we lived on our past. We had been well nourished. The Bougey is famous for its food and we didn't feel hungry until some weeks after strict rationing had been enforced...We were really very well off. What was lacking was milk, butter and eggs. There was an infinitesimal amount of these on our ration cards, but by the time the Germans had collected their requisitioning there was nothing left to distribute to the inhabitants. The German soldiers were interested in butter. It appeared many of them had never tasted it. Had not Hitler asked them if they wanted butter or guns and had they not given the right answer? One day, marketing for whatever unrationed food might still be for sale, a German soldier came into the shop. He pointed to a huge mound of butter and said, One kilo. One kilo, the clerk exclaimed. The German nodded his head impatiently. The butter was weighed and wrapped up. Unwrapping one end of the package the German walked out of the shop. From the open door where I was standing I saw him bite off a piece of the butter. It evidently was not what he expected it to be for with a brusque movement he threw it violently over the garden wall of the house opposite. The story got about. People came to look at it. No one would touch it. There it stayed.

--The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook

Plus ça change

Via Black Amazon:

Smugglers toss hundreds of refugees to sharks

Knife-wielding smugglers forced 450 Somalis and Ethiopians overboard into stormy seas along a remote stretch of Yemen coastline at Ras-Alkalb in the Gulf of Aden last Thursday, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement.

The smugglers forced their passengers overboard so they could make a speedy departure after being spotted by Yemeni security forces, UNHCR spokeswoman Astrid van Genderen Stort said.

It was the latest case of smuggler brutality involving boats carrying people across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia. It brings the total number of dead and missing among people trying to reach Yemen so far this year to 262.

"We are horrified by this latest tragedy," said Erika Feller, the agency's assistant high commissioner for protection.

The victims are people "who are desperate to escape persecution, violence and poverty in the Horn of Africa," she said.

..."Several recovered bodies showed signs of severe mutilation," UNHCR said. "Survivors also reported that several Ethiopian women and at least one Somali were raped and abused by the smugglers during the voyage from Bosaso in Somalia's Puntland region. Survivors also alleged that some Yemeni security forces confiscated their money once they reached shore."

Since January 2006 at least 30,000 people have fled violence and hardship in Somalia and Ethiopia for Yemen, according to UNHCR. About 500 people have died and at least 300 are missing and believed dead.

Meanwhile, not very far away: a number of people had mentioned this one, actually:

Shaquanda Cotton

I am a 14-year-old black freshman who shoved a hall monitor at Paris High School in a dispute over entering the building before the school day had officially begun and was sentenced to 7 years in prison. I have no prior arrest record, and the hall monitor--a 58-year-old teacher's aide--was not seriously injured. I was tried in March 2006 in the town's juvenile court, convicted of "assault on a public servant" and sentenced by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville to prison for up to 7 years, until I turn 21. Just three months earlier, Superville sentenced a 14-year-old white girl, convicted of arson for burning down her family's house, to probation....

Blogher amplifies:

During her imprisonment, Cotton has tried to seriously hurt herself three times. She says she is depressed and afraid of the other girls, most of whom have prior criminal records and serious felony convictions. She told Chicago Sun-Times reporter Howard Witt:

"I get paranoid when I get around some of these girls," Shaquanda said. "Sometimes I feel like I just can't do this no more--that I can't survive this."

A guard at the prison where she is being held is accused of molesting four girls. The board responsible for overseeing the Texas juvenile justice system amid charges that they covered up sex abuse scandals in several of the facilities it oversees.

Cotton's supporters say that her case reflects a long-standing pattern of racist treatment in a town whose best-known landmark is the public fairgrounds where black men were routinely lynched as white spectators cheered. The court and prosecutors reportedly denied a Chicago Tribune reporter's request for comment.

Cotton's mother said her daughter was singled out because she accused the school district of racism on several occasions. In fact, 12 discrimination complaints have been filed against the school district in recent years. School district officials dispute the charges, but the US Department of Education, which is still investigating, has reportedly asked the US Department of Justice to investigate.

Calls to action at both sites.

Temple3, The Anti-Essentialist Conundrum, Vox ex Machina, Prometheus 6, Solar Souls, the Young Black Professionals Guide and My Private Casbah all have good coverage and/or commentary on this as well.

Finally, what i was reminded of when this story broke:

yesterday was the 96th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

Worthwhile history refresher: "Feminism's Black Origins"

Black feminism was, and is always fluid and diverse, focusing in various ways on the convergence of race, gender, sexuality class, spirituality and culture.

The primary expressions of black feminism in the US are marked by three distinct periods, or waves, that grew out of key movements in black American history:

-The abolitionist movement to end slavery, which culminated with the suffragist’s movement to enact the passage of the 19TH Amendment in 1920;
-The modern civil rights movement, and, black power movements, which peaked with the enforcement during the 1970s, of Title VII and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964;
-And the post-Civil Rights era that helped to usher in the professionalization and institutionalization of feminisms.

The roots of a distinctly black feminist conscience began during slavery and during the campaign of abolitionists to end slavery...


read the rest at The Primary Contradiction

"Deadly Innocence," continued

As promised, further delving into this book by Angela West, as first discussed here.

First, from the chapter "Alice in White Wonderland:"


When white feminism has looked for inspiration from the foresisters and mothers of the past, it was natural that they should come up with suffragists, women like the Grimké sisters who also opposed slavery. She shows how the opposition to slavery by such women was a result of their cultural re-shaping by Northern Enlightenment ideals, the same ideals which caused them to view their gender identity differently. But interestingly, the origins of the Grimké sisters had been in the South, where slavery took its classic form. Here indeed black and white women had a very intimate relationship--but it was not exactly one of common oppression. During the early period of slavery, the dominant Christian teaching was a form of Puritan theology. In this theology, the vast, wild expanse of the frontier was seen as a temptation to the bestial and barbarous in man, who needed to be brought firmly within the safe haven of a cultivated social state and the restraints of religion. Women's place in this particular theological configuration was a distinctive one. As Thistlethwaite says:

Fear of the uncharted possibilities of the wilderness aggravated misogynistic tendencies already resident in a Christianity that had declared sin and death to be the fault of women. Stringent regulation of women's chaotic sexual behavior was the misiterial prescription for the threat of the encroachment of the wilderness. Sex was a symbol of that which threatened man's rational control over his environment.

But the presence of women on the frontier was of two kinds--the black slaves and their white mistresses--and each had a different but intimately connected role.

What the black slave woman provided was a buffer against the hatred of all women built up on the American frontier. She could become the bearer of the stigma of the physical, the carnal and the excess of women's lust that threatened the rationality of Christian civilization.

White women were thus freed to play the role of 'angel in the home,' the symbol of soul and spirituality. Thus their stake in slavery was two-fold. Not only were they relieved of the burden of punishing domestic and agricultural labor by the slaves, but they avoided the sexual terrorism of their menfolk that was the underside of the "civilizing impulse." This instead was vented on the slave women, and the whole system was kept in place by the psychological and physical threat of rape and beatings. And white women, as was expected of them, did their bit to uphold the system. bell hooks quotes from a collection of slave narratives the case of a white mistress who returned home unexpectedly to find her husband raping a thirteen-year-old slave girl. The mistress' response was to beat the girl and lock her in a smoke house. The child was whipped daily for several weeks. Whipping--paticularly of naked slave women, including the pregnant and nursing mother--was frequently employed against black women. White mistresses would send their female slaves to be publicly stripped and flogged for the slightest offence, such as when the bread did not rise or the breakfast was slightly burned.

It is clear that the endurance and resistance of black women to this sort of persecution and oppression was something of a different order to the opposition of it from white women. This, when it came, The division of human experience into the rational and irrational, as in the previous Puritan theology, was retained--the difference being that [Enlightenment feminists such as Mary Wollstonecraft and the Grimké sisters] argued that women and men were moral and intellectual equals, and women should be treated as befits their equal status.

These two principles, the faith in human rationality and the assertion of the equality...of men and women are...two of the hallmarks of liberalism; the other two were the view of the human being as an isolated individual who seeks truth and whose dignity depends on the freedom to pursue this search. Closely related to this is the doctrine of natural rights, the view that each individual has certain inherent or natural rights. The latter, of course, is consummately represented in the American Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." And the pedigree of this can be traced back to the French Revolution, which...marks the origin of the modern notion of human rights.

Their belief in human rationality and in natural rights made it logical that [early white feminists] should support the abolitionist cause as well as campaign for women's rights. But...their faith in human rationality did not allow them to perceive the nature and function of the misogynist division of black and white women into body and soul [respectively]. What they saw was the scandal of a situation where a Christian father might sell his own daughter, or the brother his own sister. ..But the appeals for an end to this disgraceful situation were predicated on an assumption of the white woman's "enlightened mind" coupled with her moral purity, and they did not perceive the intimate dependence of this purity on the black woman's degradation. [emphasis mine].

[follows a discussion of the early history of the split between the suffragists like Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton after the end of the Civil War; black men got the vote, they didn't, and from then on out the suffragists declared they would never again "labour to second man's endeavors and exalt his sex before her own." and then comes post-War/Reconstruction overall racist backlash as well; and by 1895, the National Woman's Suffrage Association suggests that [[white]] womens' suffrage is "one solution to the Negro problem."]

It is thus not surprising in view of this history that black women remain skeptical of white feminists' declaration of sisterhood and solidarity between black and white women, the transcending of all differences in favour of a common bonding on the basis of a common experience...

If we look closely at the situation, it becomes clear that the liberal humanist assumptions of the nineteenth century have been revised and recycled in twentieth-century white feminist politics...The appeal to sisterhood and bonding appealed to white women who had been socialized to concern themselves with bonds--to avoid conflict, to foster dependence and the affective aspects of private life, creatins a haven of peace and harmony from the harsh realities of competition in a capitalistic society...

...Nor has the concern with purity disappeared, though it has been radically metamorphsed. [emphasis mine]. Mary Daly now offers us the journey of pure lust [there's our anti-pornstitution and so forth creeping back in], where women can break through the sphere of potted passions and virtues and get in touch with Natural Grace. For it is in the realm of purity that all differences dissolve. But the irony is that such a realm is likely to be racially segregated too--pure white, since most of the black women (and a good many white ones too) have no access to her mystical spheres because of their economic and social and racial location. Daly's creation is that of a pure enlightened mind, such as the nineteenth-century women aspired to. She reinstates this dream, and in so doing she also reinstate the politics and culture of abstraction that she castigates...

...And as we white stepsisters hug Alice* to our breast at the Great Feminist Writers' Ball, we are desperately hoping that she will be so breathless and startled by the fervor of our embrace that she won't think to bring up the subject of difference. For difference is dangerous; like a dropped stitch, it may cause that whole feminist-ideological pullover to unravel. We are terrified lest Alice and her sisters force us to remember what happened in the slaveowners' kitchen; and worse still, to make us realize that though things have changed, certain things have a way of keeping the same shape."




*bit of a mixed literary allusion there, but o well

Habeas corpus: a review.

Definition and brief history:

Known as the "Great Writ", the writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum is a legal proceeding in which an individual held in custody can challenge the propriety of that custody under the law. The prisoner, or some other person on his behalf (for example, where the prisoner is being held incommunicado), may petition the court or an individual judge for a writ of habeas corpus.

Although the form of the writ of habeas corpus implies that the prisoner is brought to the court in order for the legality of the imprisonment to be examined, modern practice is to have a hearing with both parties present on whether the writ should issue, rather than issuing the writ immediately and waiting for the return of the writ by the addressee before the legality of the detention is examined. The prisoner can then be released or *bailed* by order of the court without having to be produced before it.

The right of habeas corpus—or rather, the right to petition for the writ—has long been celebrated as the most efficient safeguard of the liberty of the subject. Dicey wrote that the Habeas Corpus Acts "declare no principle and define no rights, but they are for practical purposes worth a hundred constitutional articles guaranteeing individual liberty". In most countries, however, the procedure of habeas corpus can be suspended in time of national emergency.

...This procedure, part of English common law, was considered important enough to be specifically mentioned in the United States Constitution, which says, "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." (Article One, section nine).


Which, yes, that has happened in the U.S. before this administration. Specifically:

Habeas corpus was suspended on April 27, 1861, during the American Civil War by President Lincoln in Maryland and parts of midwestern states, including southern Indiana. He did so in response to riots, local militia actions and the threat that the Southern slave state of Maryland would secede from the Union leaving the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., in the south. He was also motivated by requests by generals to set up military courts to rein in "Copperheads" or Peace Democrats, and those in the Union who supported the Confederate cause. His action was challenged in court and overturned by the U.S. Circuit Court in Maryland (led by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney) in Ex Parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144 (C.C.D. Md. 1861). Lincoln ignored Taney's order. In the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis also suspended habeas corpus and imposed martial law. This was in part to maintain order and spur industrial growth in the South to compensate for the economic loss inflicted by its secession.

In 1864, Lambdin P. Milligan and four others were accused of planning to steal Union weapons and invade Union prisoner-of-war camps and were sentenced to hang by a military court. However, their execution was not set until May 1865, so they were able to argue the case after the Civil War. In Ex Parte Milligan 71 U.S. 2 1866 the Supreme Court of the United States decided that the suspension of the writ did not empower the President to try and convict citizens before military tribunals. The trial of civilians by military tribunals is allowed only if civilian courts are closed. This was one of the key Supreme Court Cases of the American Civil War that dealt with wartime civil liberties and martial law.

In the early 1870s, President Grant suspended habeas corpus in nine counties in South Carolina, as part of federal civil rights action against the Ku Klux Klan under the 1870 Force Act and 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act.

And after that particular very specific injunction back in the 1870's, we leap to:

The November 13, 2001 Presidential Military Order gives the President of the United States the power to detain certain non-citizens suspected of connection to terrorists or terrorism as enemy combatants. As such, that person can be held indefinitely, without charges being filed against him or her, without a court hearing, and without entitlement to a legal consultant.

Many legal and constitutional scholars contend that these provisions are in direct opposition to habeas corpus, and the United States Bill of Rights. Specifically, American citizens declared enemy combatants by the President may be denied their constitutional rights as set forth in Amendments 4, 5, 6 and 8. One recent example is the José Padilla case. In the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, argued before the United States Supreme Court in March 2006, Salim Ahmed Hamdan petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus, challenging the lawfulness of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's plan to try him for alleged war crimes before a military commission convened under special orders issued by the President of the United States, rather than before a court-martial convened under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. On June 29, 2006, in a 5-3 ruling the Supreme Court of the United States rejected Congress's attempts to strip the court of jurisdiction over habeas corpus appeals by detainees at Guantánamo Bay, although Congress had previously passed the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), which took effect on December 30, 2005:

"[N]o court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." §1005(e)(1), 119 Stat. 2742.

That was then. This is now: (as of this past Friday, to be precise):

After 800 years, habeas corpus is compromised.

But from the ballyhooed prisoner "compromise" negotiated with a few rebel Republican senators, the change is actually bigger than that: It's a different world since 1215. Not satisfied with cutting up the Constitution, the administration is now mangling the Magna Carta.

The compromise bill takes away from federal courts the right to hear habeas corpus suits from "unlawful enemy combatants" — such as the 400-plus now held at Guantanamo. In other words, although being held in U.S. custody on U.S. territory, prisoners would have no right to argue in court that there was no reason to hold them.
...


"And it is emblazoned in the Constitution specifically that it can be suspended only in time of insurrection or invasion — rebellion or invasion. And we don't have either of those present now."

...

The administration has a priority of limiting court oversight of its treatment of prisoners because it keeps embarrassingly losing cases. Most recently, the Hamdan case, filed by a Guantanamo prisoner, led to the Supreme Court striking down the proposed rules for military tribunals, on the grounds that the tribunals had no congressional authority and the administration was just making things up as it went along. Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, the Navy lawyer who represented Hamdan, explained, "The legislation introduced by the president will see to it that no one else will be able to do what I did."

There's a 1297 edition of the Magna Carta in the National Archives. There's even a replica, printed in gold, right in the middle of the Capitol. Senators could send an intern down to read it.

And the details get worse. The great triumph of the compromise is supposed to be a ban on the use of torture on prisoners — although the White House says that it will interpret just where the lines are. But without access to courts, it's not going to be easy to enforce that.

And according to Tuesday's Washington Post, the original compromise has now been further compromised, allowing for indefinite detention, without access to courts, of anyone who "has engaged in hostilities or has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States." Writes the Post's R. Jeffrey Smith, "The definition applies to foreigners living inside or outside the United States and does not rule out the possibility of designating a U.S. citizen as an unlawful combatant."

So, the new compromise not only excludes unlawful combatants from habeas corpus but considerably expands the people who could qualify as unlawful combatants — and be subject to imprisonment at the pleasure of the president.





Questions? Comments?

Happy Fucking Independence Day

For all its authors' flaws, for all its glaring omissions, for all that it's a product of its era, for all that it's been flagrantly misused and abused over the last two hundred and thirty years. It's still worth preserving. In letter, and especially, in spirit.

The Declaration of Independence

Stumbled across: a history refresher

Interesting and fairly in-depth chronicle of first-wave feminism, and its roots in Abolitionism; and of the initial rupture between black rights advocates (especially post-Civil War) and feminists. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony don't come off so well, you know. Also sheds some light on how the Republican party went from what it was under Lincoln to what it is today; or more so, really, how the Democratic party (originally the pro-slavery party) also went under a rather dramatic sea-change. And yet, and yet.

On a second (if still cursory) glance at the site, I'm personally finding somewhat of a disconnect between the history lesson and the conclusion the website authors seem to draw from it ("individualist feminism" is the philosophy, which to me, at least from the FAQ, sounds more in line with Cady Stanton's approach than not); still, the essay at least is worth a read.