Sisterhood Is Forever

Off Our Backs, Nov/Dec 2003 by Douglas, Carol Anne

Sisterhood Is Forever Edited by Robin Morgan Simon & Schuster, 2003, $18. Robin Morgan has done it again. The first anthology she edited, Sisterhood Is Powerful, was a feminist classic (and the second feminist book I ever read, right after Kate Millett's Sexual Politics). Sisterhood Is Global was a powerful statement of international feminism (and still is-it's still in print). The new Sisterhood Is Forever is an excellent anthology showing where the U.S. feminist movement has been and where it is now.

Morgan's introduction emphasizes that this is an American book-American in the oldest sense, American in the broadest sense, American in the deepest sense. I don't know whether her publisher suggested that in the wake of 9/11 she should play up the American angle, or whether she felt she had to justify editing an all-U.S. women anthology after having done an international anthology. Such an anthology doesn't need a justification. It's just as appropriate as an anthology of Australian, Swedish, or Pakistani feminists. I wasn't crazy about that first page of the introduction, but the other 579 pages of the book were much better.

Morgan deplores U.S. militarism, and she feels that it is up to U.S. feminists, because we live in the superpower, to change this bastion of male dominance and thus change the world. She says that the U.S. feminist movement is the most inclusive social movement in history. Well, it is diverse, but that may be claiming a little much. I suspect that communist and socialist movements may have been at least as diverse, perhaps more so.

She says that feminism is the politics of the 21st century. I hope she's right. It should be.

Morgan has compiled a wide array of essays by mostly well-known feminists. Virtually all of them really engaged me. They told me things that I didn't know, and even when they told me what I already knew, they said it in a new way. They are very, very readable, suitable for both the long-time feminist and the woman who is just investigating feminism to see what it's all about-an astounding combination.

The essays come from a great variety of women-old women, teenage women, women in every decade of their lives, women with disabilities, and African American women (and not just writing about race). There are essays by a Latina feminist and an Asian American feminist.

After the introduction, the book starts off with a sprightly essay by science writer Natalie Angier, who makes fun of psycho-biology writers who claim that men are polygamous and women are monogamous by nature. She seems to be opposed to the idea of biologically inherent sex differences, but I wasn't entirely sure that she rejected the idea of an inherent biological drive to bear children and perpetuate one's genes.

Psychologist Carol Gilligan contributed an interesting piece, "Sisterhood Can Be Pleasurable," which says that tests on women's brains have shown that choosing to cooperate stimulates the same pleasure response as sex or chocolate. (Then why don't we always cooperate?) Imagine being a coopaholic. She believes that tests on men might show the same thing. She suggests that we all may be hardwired to cooperate. A great idea, but, again, why do we often resist cooperation?

Long-time lesbian writer and activist Karla Jay contributes the book's one essay on lesbian feminism. (Gee, I thought we had contributed enough to the movement to be worth at least two.) Like Angier, Jay criticizes biological determinism, in her case the idea that one is born lesbian or gay, or that one is born in the wrong body. These aren't accurate and don't challenge patriarchy, she says. Jay starts the essay by writing about how she felt when she and her lover went to register as domestic partners. She sees this as rather a cop-out, and argues that we should be trying to get health care for all rather than partner benefits, that she fears she is deserting her single lesbian friends, that she worries that lesbians will settle for a house in the suburbs-but she does it anyway.

Andrea Dworkin writes a powerful essay-when has she ever written anything that wasn't powerful?-on violence against women.

Patricia Schroeder urges women to get involved in electoral politics, and tells the story of how she happened to run for Congress. She and her husband were active in anti-Vietnam War work, and he went to a meeting while she stayed home to take care of her children, ages two and six. He came home and said, we couldn't find anyone to run for Congress, so everybody said, how about your wife? She thought the idea was ridiculous, but he said, don't worry, it's only until the fall. Nobody imagined that she could win. Neither the Democratic National Committee nor the unions would give her financial support because they thought she had no chance to win. But she did. And she was true to her liberal politics in Congress. She said the secret is not to care whether you get reelected. I wish more politicians had her attitude.

Feminist theorist and attorney Catharine A. MacKinnon writes that the law is a powerful tool. If a woman wins a court case, the court accepts her account of what happened. She is validated. We should not give up this powerful tool, leaving it to those who are in power already, MacKinnon says.