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ACTioN Staff: Alex Chis, Paul Colvin, Gerry Foley, Joni Jacobs, MayMay Gong, Malik Miah, Hayden Perry, Barbara Putnam, Carole Seligman, Kwame M.A. Somburu, Socialist Action (ISSN 0747-4237) is published monthly for $8 per year by Socialist Action Publishing Association, 3425 Army St., San Prancisco, CA 94110.

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Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of Socialist Action. These are 2 SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 1992 Gloria Steinem has taken a lot of heat lately for her new book, "The Revolution Within."

Steinem has always considered herself to be a "radical" feminist because she wanted to get to the root cause of female oppression. She was far too radical to be more than tertiarily involved with the "reformists" (as she called them) of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Instead, Steinem gravitated to the National Womens Political Caucus (NWPC). Their strategy is to liberate women by putting a Democrat in the White House. Really radical stuff.

These days, Steinem says that the cutting edge of feminism involves the self-esteem of women.

Her theory is thai because society doesn't value children, they grow up with all kinds of psychological hangups which they act out politically. She speculates that George Bush's aggressive foreign policy is a result of his being raised by a strict father who beat his children if they weren't By perfect. Ergo, Operation Desert Storm wasn't about securing American capitalism's domination of world markets-Bush was just working out his "issues" with his father.

Steinem says that the women's movement hasn't focused enough on making women feel good about themselves. In order for women to make political change, she says, we first have to change our attitudes about ourselves. What's necessary is for the women's movement to revive the consciousness raising circles of the 1970s so women can come together and discuss their oppression.

It's true that women need to develop the strength to reject all the crap society puts out about womenthat we're not beautiful if our measurements aren't 36-2436, that we need men to be happy, that we're not as smart as men, etc., etc., ad nauseum.

But proposing that raising women's self-esteem is the answer to sexism is sort of like blaming the victims. It substiON MARCH 1 tutes mysticism and pop pyschology for a materialist approach to women's oppression. Instead of challenging oppression, just change your emotional response to it.

Surely women lack self-esteem. Who wouldn't when the Supreme Court is telling us we can't be trusted to make decisions about abortion without government interference? Who can exude self-confidence when she faces a one-in-four chance of being raped in her lifetime? How can a young woman grow up with self-esteem when schools still discriminate between boys and girls when they teach math and science?

I can understand why, at age 57, Steinem is pushing an individualistic solution to the systematic oppression of women. She's spent her whole adult life in a movement and has seen so little concrete change result. It's very depressing to see the pay gap between men and women actually widen after 25 years of feminism.

But Steinem's approach to politics has always been to elect the lesser of two evils among capitalist politicians. She's never relied on the power of a massive, autonomous, politically-independent movement of women. Instead, she's placed the fate of women's liberation in the hands of one politician after another who's either sold out women's rights or been ineffective in making change.

Steinem's rhetoric may be hitting a response among feminist activists who've been around awhile, but I hope younger feminists will reject it for the pessimistic, liquidationist psycho-babble that it is.

Recently, I was discussing Steinem's ideas with some activists at a clinic defense. An activist named Victoria had heard Steinem's lecture. While she agreed with much of what Steinem said, she was disturbed by the focus on consciousnessraising. "I'm not interested in a movement that sits around talking and doing nothing," she said. "I want to take action."

As we talked, we agreed that what really raised our self-esteem was defending the clinic. We knew that we were taking direct action to stop Operation Rescue-if only for a day-and it Editors: MICHAEL SCHREIBER, JOSEPH RYAN Business Manager: BARRY SHEPPARD Second-class postage is paid at San Francisco, Calif.

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expressed in editorials. made us feel really good about ourselves. Everytime Operation Rescue threatened to close down our clinic, we outnumbered them and scared them away to another jurisdiction where, unfortunately, the police looked more favorably on their campaign of antiwomen terrorism.

Defending the clinic teaches young activists that they can control their own destiny, that they-not politicians-can and will make social change. You can't get that kind of empowerment from a consciousness-raising circle.

When Steinem feels down about feminism, she should attend a clinic defense. She could learn a lot about self-esteem from activists like Victoria.

Closing date:

March 3, 1992

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