gazit@cs.duke.EDU (Hillel Gazit) (01/08/91)
In article <53343@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> (Elissa Feit) writes: >If the draft is reinstated, I will NOT waste my time trying to alter >it so that women are drafted, I will fight so that *no-one* is drafted... *Maybe* that's what you will do, but I want to remind what the feminist movement did in the last time that the draft was around: #As a matter of historical record, by the time The Winter Soldier #Investigation had been convened, the feminist movement and the antiwar #movement had gone their separate and distinct ways, each absorbed #with its own issues to the exclusion of the other, with no small #amount of bitterness among the movement troopers whose energies, #ideologies and sense of priority pulled them in one direction or #the other. As a woman totally committed to the feminist cause I #received several requests during the time to march, speak and "bring #out my sisters" to antiwar demonstrations "to show women's liberation #solidarity with the peace movement," and my response was that if the #peace movement cared to raise the issue of rape and prostitution #in Vietnam, I would certainly join in. This was met with stony #silence on the part of antiwar activists whose catch-words of the #day were "anti-imperialism" and "American aggression," and for whom #the slogan - it appeared on buttons - "Stop the Rape of Vietnam" #meant the defoliation of crops, not the abuse of women. Communication #between feminist groups and antiwar groups were tense as they sought #to raise our conscious and we sought to raise our own. I am sorry #that the peace movement did not consider the abuse of women in #Vietnam an issue important and distinctive enough to stand on its #own merits, and I am sorry that we in the women's movement, struggling #to find our independent voices, could not call attention to this #women's side of the war by ourselves. The time was not right. -- ("Against Our Will", Susan Brownmiller) >The draft is, I believe, one of the areas where men need liberation. Especially after the feminists will finish their struggle to find their "independent voices"; there are priorities... >Elissa Feit (feit@cs.buffalo.edu // {rutgers,uunet}!cs.buffalo.edu!feit) Hillel gazit@cs.duke.edu "When I do it to you it's sexism, when you do it to me it's feminism."