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CounterPunch
February
22, 2003
The Ghost of Feminism
Inside
the Conservative Political Action Conference
by JO FREEMAN
Lurking in the background of the 30th annual Conservative
Political Action Conference [www.cpac,org],
which met in Arlington Virginia from January 30 to February 1,
was the ghost of the feminist movement. The issues raised by
feminism are no longer front and center, as they were when about
a hundred conservatives from four organizations first gathered
30 years ago, but they lingered like an ethereal presence, providing
foil and target for speeches and exhibits.
This year's conference celebrated the
20th anniversary of the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment
by honoring Phyllis Schlafly at the first evening's banquet.
Schlafly recounted her battle against the ERA, which failed to
be ratified by the June 1982 deadline, from her "kitchen
table" despite a bipartisan establishment who said she could
not win. She described the pro-ERA leadership as "a motley
collection of harridans, harpies, hags and disheveled lesbians."
Schlafly is an old war horse of conservatism,
whose personal priorities have always been foreign policy and
national defense. Schlafly first came to public prominence in
1964 by distributing three million copies of her self-published
booklet, A Choice Not an Echo, advocating Barry Goldwater's election.
Her reward was election as First Vice President of the National
Federation of Republican Women. When the anti-Goldwater forces
were retaking the Republican Party after his defeat, they blocked
her ascension to the presidency of the NFRW in 1967. She left
to build her own following through a newsletter and the Eagle
Forum, [www.eagleforum.org]
the entity she founded in 1972. After the ERA was sent to the
states in 1972, opposition to it gave her a national platform.
While making her reputation as an anti-feminist, Schlafly continued
to snip at the heels of the Republican Party, going to every
Republican national convention to help remove feminists and moderates
of all stripes from the slightest shred of position or influence.
One of her proteges was Elaine Donnelly,
a young woman from Michigan who helped Schlafly with STOP ERA
and accompanied her to most of the Republican conventions in
the last 25 years. In the 1980 Presidential campaign Schlafly
had Donnelly put on Reagan's National Women's Policy Advisory
Board, and eventually appointed to government advisory committees
on military women.. Donnelly subsequently set up her own organization,
the Center for Military Readiness (CMR), [www,cmrlink.org]
to "keep women from undermining the strength of the strongest
military in the world."
Donnelly was given a special award for
grass roots activism at last year's CPAC. This year she followed
Ollie North's screed at the French (for opposing a US War in
Iraq) with an equally vehement denunciation of Hillary Clinton.
Donnelly claimed that now that Clinton is on the Senate Armed
Services Committee she might insist that women be assigned to
combat units. Last year the CMR charged the Clinton administration
with "infiltrating" women into units being trained
in field surveillance that might encounter combat conditions.
Donnelly claimed credit for getting Bush to change the units
to "male-only" status. CMR also objects to any training,
even a few weeks of basic training, being co-ed.
The two poster girls of the conservative
movements are Katherine Harris and Ann Coulter, judging by the
audience response to their speeches and the numbers who lined
up to have books signed. Harris came to fame as Florida's Secretary
of State who made decisions favorable to the election of George
W. Bush in 2000. Now a Member of Congress, she provided a low-
key policy analysis. Coulter, a former lawyer who rode the anti-Bill
Clinton wave as a writer, gave a series of one liners, more resembling
political satire than political thought. She said 'The Democratic
party should rename itself the Adultery Party."
Most of the podium speakers were regulars
on the conservative conference circuit. Among the few new women
was Kimberly Schuld, who recently published a Guide to Feminist
Organizations while working for the Capital Research Center [www.capitalresearch.org].
Schuld told the CPAC audience that the "feminist movement
doesn't have the support of ordinary women. It feeds at the public
trough" by taking federal money and using it to lobby for
feminist goals. Her Guide describes 35 organizations, foundations
and interest groups aimed at women or women's issues "inside
the Beltway," though it misses a few and includes several
located in San Francisco, New York, and places far away from
Washington, D.C. In her Introduction Schuld says doners are her
target audience; they should be careful about funding organizations
whose views are "at odds with their own."
While claiming that the Guide is based
on "publicly available information" Schuld demonstrates
a vast ignorance about women's history in general and feminism
in particular. She says NOW "was created largely because
gender was not included in the 1964 Civil Rights Act" (it
was put in on Feb. 8, 1964 by a House teller vote of 168 to 133).
She also thinks that the slogan "The personal is the political"
originated in the Progressive era and means that "every
woman's personal struggle, every difficult situation or emotional
problem could be explained by defects in America's political
system." These and the many other misstatements of fact
undermine the veracity of her Guide.
While feminism (and Hillary Clinton)
are still favorite targets, abortion, a staple of a conservative
ideology which otherwise extols individual freedom and personal
choice, was barely mentioned. This year's "sex" talk
was given by Dr. Meg Meeker, a practicing physician in northern
Michigan concerned with the "epidemic" of venereal
disease. She said more women's lives are lost to cervical cancer
than to HIV/AIDS. Advocating abstinence among the unmarried,
she said sexual health is more important than sexual freedom.
None of the many explicitly pro-life
organizations were among the 74 official conference co-sponsors,
though some did buy space among the 90 + booths in the exhibit
hall. Opposition to personal choice on matters of sex has become
embedded in conservative ideology; it's not even discussed.
Sex aside, appeals to women are still
actively made by conservatives. Three of this year's co-sponsors
were groups specifically focused on women, all of whom had booths
in the exhibit hall. In addition, the Eagle Forum, Schlafly's
personal front group, was given exhibit space right outside the
entrance to the meeting hall. Missing was the Independent Women's
Forum, which is better known than the ones that were there.
Concerned Women for America (CWA) [cwfa.org] was founded in 1979
after Beverly LaHaye saw a TV interview given by Betty Friedan.
Saying "that woman doesn't represent me," she called
together seven female friends who put a notice in the newspaper
asking for help to fight the ERA. CWA believes that "organizations
like Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women
have resulted in a serious decline in the nation's moral structure."
CWA is a Christian organization, whose
purpose is "to translate biblical values into public policy."
LaHaye is the wife of Rev. Tim LaHaye, a nationally known evangelical
minister and author of Christian novels. From their home in San
Diego they have conducted Family Life Seminars teaching Biblical
principles for living. She has also written several books on
these topics. [http://denig.com/christian/lahaye.html]
CWA claims to be "the largest public
policy women's organization in the nation" with 500,000
members. It defines a member as anyone who has donated money,
signed a petition, or otherwise indicated an active interest
in the previous two years. Its action-alert e-mail is sent to
17,000 people. An undisclosed number are organized into prayer/action
chapters to work locally, co-ordinated by 38 appointed state
leaders. About ten percent of its "membership" are
men, and men hold half of the leadership positions in the national
organization, including vice president for government relations
and chief lobbyist. CWA works with other "pro-family"
organizations on judicial nominations, education, opposition
to acceptance of homosexuals, and national sovereignty issues.
Although formed to oppose feminist ideas,
the CWA has extended its reach to anything that "concerns
the family." These include opposition to stem cell research,
cloning, CEDAW (the United Nations Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) and sex education.
It has also published policy papers on "School Prayer and
Religious Liberty," and "Funding Faith-Based Organizations."
One policy paper attacks Margaret Sanger, an exponent of birth
control and founder of Planned Parenthood, for creating a "eugenic
plan for black Americans" which would "restrict--many
believe exterminate--the black population." Although its
Washington lobby works closely with the Eagle Forum, it has occasionally
called a truce with feminists. Last fall it co-signed a letter
with the National Organization for Women to CBS objecting to
its airing of the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show as selling women
rather than clothes.
New to CPAC is the Second Amendment Sisters
(SAS) [www.2asisters.org], formed in December of 1999 by women
who objected to the Million Mom March against guns that was planned
for Mother's Day 2000. Its five founders found each other and
kindred spirits through posts to freerepublic.net, a right-wing
web page. They brought 5,000 women to Washington for an Armed
Informed Mothers March and turned them into a national organization.
Although it admits men as associate members, SAS believes it
is important to "put a woman's face" on opposition
to gun control. Proclaiming that "Self Defense is a basic
human right" it organizes "ladies days" at gun
clubs and "shop and shoot weekends." "Come nervous,
leave proud," SAS says. Although its focus is on gun ownership
and use, it includes martial arts within the scope of self defense
skills women should have and is pointedly not affiliated with
the National Rifle Association (which has its own women's auxiliaries).
Perhaps the least informed of all the
women's groups at CPAC was the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute
[www.cblpolicyinstitute.org]. Founded in 1993, its priority is
giving young women "hands-on training in countering radical
feminism and fighting for conservative principles." Proclaiming
that "feminists are wrong on almost every issue they tackle,"
CBLPI objects to almost anything tinged by feminism: affirmative
action "because feminists were seeking to foster a pattern
of dependency based upon special preferences," women's centers
"that became places to plot the demise of traditional values,"
and "leftist" women's studies programs. Although no
one at its booth would agree to an interview, CBLPI's positions
are clear from its publications and web page. Its newsletter
hosts a regular page of "Feminist Follies" where it
quotes "Mrs." Steinem (Gloria's mother?) on things
it does not like.
While it shares policy positions with
the other conservative women's groups, more than any of the others
the CBLPI ignores facts and rewrites history. It extols "Mrs.
Luce ... [as] the most influential woman in both modern American
history and the American conservative movement" with little
knowledge of her life, her own views or her time. It also says
"she came under the same kind of attack from liberals and
feminists of her day that modern women encounter today when they
are successful without espousing feminist ideas." In CBL's
day, feminists and liberals were on opposite sides of the great
policy divide created by protective labor laws and the Equal
Rights Amendment. Luce was on the feminist side--an ERA supporter
who often looked to other women for support. Long after political
realignment put liberals and feminists on the same side, Luce
still supported the ERA. Her biographers note she was always
friendly toward the ERA. When Gloria Steinem had tea with her
in Hawaii in the late 1970s, she found Clare to be a feminist
on every issue except abortion.
Clare Booth Luce was a remarkable woman,
but not because "she personified the qualities that mainstream
women admire," as CBLPI leaflets declare. After an inauspicious
start in life, she became a magazine editor, a playwright, a
Member of Congress (R-CN, 1943-47), and Ambassador to Italy (1953-57).
Born in 1903, the second child of a young mother who lived with
her father for nine years but never married him, Clare was anything
but mainstream. Strikingly beautiful and intensely ambitious,
she married a millionaire twice her age and divorced him six
years later to become a full-time working mother. Her 1935 marriage
to TIME magazine founder and publisher Henry Luce freed her to
write and dabble in politics. CBL was also a feminist, as her
own mother had been. Alva Belmont personally recruited her into
the National Woman's Party; one of her tasks was to drop ERA
leaflets from an aeroplane at the NWP's 1923 conference in Seneca
Falls a month before her first marriage.
Clare's politics resembled those of many
well-off women of her day. She rejected the welfare state of
the New Deal and opposed US involvement in the European War.
She believed that women were politically important, and that
they deserved equality with men. Having won her seat in Congresss
partly by organizing the woman's vote, she began her speech before
the 1944 Republican convention by acknowledging that "Plainly
the honor of speaking to you... has come to me because I am a
woman." Writing in a syndicated column in the mid 1930s,
she said war would lose its romance if there were more "war-veteran
mothers." She asked, "What nation would plunge into
a war in which its men fought not for their wives and sweethearts,
but with their wives and sweethearts?" Although she became
steadily more conservative and fiercely anti- Communist as she
grew older, only on abortion did she differ with the feminist
movement. CBL had an illegal abortion when she was 18, but converted
to Catholicism after her only daughter was killed in 1944.
If CBLPI wants young conservative women
to emulate Clare Booth Luce, they should hope no one reads her
biography.
Conservative women are very shy, especially
young conservative women, so they may not find Luce to be a role
model they can follow. Or perhaps they are simply inoculated
by traditional female modesty. In three days at CPAC I saw fewer
women at the podium than at a typical Republican national convention
-- about 15 percent, including introducers and panel moderators.
Even the panel on "Real stories of real liberal bias on
real college campuses" featured five young men but no women.
When speakers asked for questions from the floor, only a dozen
women stood at one of the two microphones to ask a question in
three days; only one of these looked like she was under 30. After
Schuld spoke, the male moderator asked how many in the audience
were women. There were a few titters but only about a dozen women
raised their hands. In this audience of 4,000 about 40 percent
were women, but raising their hands to admit this was too much
for them to do. As long as conservative women prefer passivity
they are no threat to feminists.
The annual conference is not a place
for the grassroots to debate issues, except in so far as it happens
in private conversations. There are no workshops. When time permits,
questions were accepted from the audience, but when these became
short speeches the moderator cut the questioner short. The tight
schedule just didn't permit extensive exchanges.
Nonetheless, the Patriots Act and the
Total Information Awareness project received some sharp comments.
While a speech favoring profiling was cheered loudly, another
recommending that the military patrol our borders provoked grumbling
as the full implications sank in. Conservatives are seriously
conflicted between their love of individual freedom and their
desire for security. A questionnaire filled out by 621 participants
showed that only 21 percent were "prepared to give up some
freedom for increased security," while 46 percent thought
that "concerns about the threat to individual freedom are
justified." Everyone wanted to stop illegal immigration,
but the many children and grandchildren of immigrants were ambivalent
about reducing legal immigration. This "family values"
crowd wasn't warm to the idea that immigration policy should
no longer give relatives priority.
CPAC made a special effort to recruit
young people -- tomorrow's leaders they call them--- with reduced
fees and special scholarships. Of the 4082 people who registered
for this year's conference, 1726 paid the student fee.
Surveys of past CPAC conferences show
that most were attending for the first time. About 30 percent
of those responding were evangelical or fundamentalist Protestant;
30 percent were Catholic; 20 percent were mainline Protestant;
with the remaining distributed between Jewish, Atheist and Other.
Only two percent were Mormon, even though many people in this
denomination are conservative Republicans. One result of CPAC's
youth outreach is that 60 percent were under 25. Less than 40
percent were women.
Next to Virginia, Ohio sends more people
to the annual conference than any other state. When asked their
impression of various conservative politicians, Pat Buchanan
and John McCain receive the least favorable ratings. Not surprisingly,
President Bush and the Republican leadership have the most favorable
-- though Trent Lott's previously high ratings went down this
year.
Although those attending and exhibiting
at the CPAC range from the mainstream to the fringe right, attendees
at the 30th conference saw themselves as more mainstream than
fringe. They are happy with how far the conservative movement
has come and where it is going. This represents a mutual convergence
between the Republican party and the American right-wing. For
the last thirty years right-wing Republicans have waged a concerted
war on Republican moderates, driving them out of power and out
of the party. Now that conservatism has taken over the center
of the Republican Party it's softening its edges--becoming more
pragmatic and less ideological. The conservatives helped the
Republicans win elections, and now that Republicans rule, they
are eagerly turning the proposals of the right-wing think tanks
into Republican policy for the next decade.
Jo Freeman
is the author of A
ROOM AT A TIME: HOW WOMEN ENTERED PARTY POLITICS. Her
next book, AT BERKELEY IN THE SIXTIES, will be published by Indiana
University Press later this year. To contact her, go to: http://www.JoFreeman.com
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February 15
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