Monday, August 1, 2016

Although aims and methods were similar between the civil rights movement and the Feminist Movement, the civil rights movement was vastly more...

I don't think it's true at all. The feminist movement has been enormously successful, so much so that it boggles the mind. The civil rights movement has also been enormously successful, but not vastly more than the feminist movement.

Keep in mind, women could not even vote in the United States before 1920. That's less than 100 years ago. There are people still alive (most of them women, in fact; women tend to live longer than men) who were born before American women could vote.

Indeed, as recently as the 19th century, both women and racial minorities were essentially treated as property. While Black people were formally enslaved under law in many states until 1865, the oppression of women was less formalized; men could not literally buy women the way White people could literally buy Black people. But the oppression of women during that time was so severe that in practice there wasn't all that much difference. Women had no rights over their husbands and were frequently married off to men they'd never met, often as part of business deals or to serve the interests of their fathers. This was essentially rape, but it was not legally classed as such---indeed, until the 1970s the law was defined so that a husband could force his wife to have sex and it would not be considered rape. My parents were alive. In some states marital rape wasn't criminalized until 1993. I myself was alive, albeit only a child. And yet today it seems unthinkable to ever go back. That is how quickly feminism has achieved change. (Similar astonishingly rapid progress has been made by the LGBT rights movement, but this question asked about feminism and the civil rights movement so I'll focus on those.)

Of course, neither movement achieved all its goals---no social movement ever does. Women and racial minorities are still disadvantaged in many ways compared to White men. But it's important to understand how far we have come on both fronts.

Racism and sexism used to be openly held views. They were enshrined in law. It was considered completely normal and legal to actively and consciously discriminate against women and minorities.

Today, there is obviously still racism and sexism. But virtually none of it is actually written into law; formally, we are supposed to have equality, and if you can prove that you are being discriminated against you can use the law to punish the person doing the discrimination. Hardly anyone is openly racist or sexist, and even the accusation of such (especially when credible) can be severely damaging to one's reputation. Anyone who even suggested going back to buying and selling Black people or making it legal again to rape your wife would immediately become a social pariah. (And as well they should!)

There is obviously still a great deal of work to be done to achieve equality not just under the law but substantively in practice. It can be tremendously frustrating to fight for what seem like obvious principles of social justice and have millions of people push back against them, and tempting to give up and say we've accomplished nothing after all these years. But it's simply not true; we have accomplished an amazing amount, and will continue to accomplish more as long as we keep fighting.

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