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I'm not avoiding anything: I have no idea what you think "the issue" is, but it is clear from the language you use that the issue is not feminism. I gather it is about whether Margaret Thatcher was in fact a woman in power and did in fact exercise it and was in fact very sure of herself. If that is the issue, then yes, of course. If the issue is feminism, that does not touch it because the same can be said of the women who were powerful queens and abbesses in the Middle Ages and of Queen Victoria. And that says nothing either about feminism. If you want to insist on the fact that Queens were hereditary, abbesses were not. Hildegarde von Bingen was a very powerful abbess of a double monastery, and she got that by her visions and brilliance. And she was also very committed to educating her nuns and to some ideas that one could call focussed on women. But she was not a feminist and there was no feminist society to help her on. There were always women who refused to accept the strictures of their culture, and in that sense, they did what feminism would affirm. That is not the same as having a feminist political, philosophical, and cultural view of the world. As I said, I have no idea what issue you think I am avoiding. Nancy Date sent: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 21:02:29 -0800 Send reply to: "T. S. Eliot Discussion forum." <[log in to unmask]> From: Peter Montgomery <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Thatcher, feminism, etc. To: [log in to unmask] So you continue to avoid the issue. Dr. Peter C. Montgomery Dept. of English Camosun College 3100 Foul Bay Rd. Victoria, BC CANADA V8P 5J2 [log in to unmask] www.camosun.bc.ca/~peterm -----Original Message----- From: Nancy Gish [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2002 8:48 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Thatcher, feminism, etc. I am sorry to say this, but if you think the issue is pickiness and you think the issue is whether Thatcher is "liberated," you also need to read about 30 years of feminist theory. Hildegarde von Bingen was a very assertive, powerful, and liberated woman, but it had nothing to do with "feminism" as such and it had nothing to do with the position of women in the middle ages. Elizabeth I of England had far more power than Thatcher, but she was not a feminist. Nancy Date sent: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 20:30:22 -0800 Send reply to: "T. S. Eliot Discussion forum." <[log in to unmask]> From: Peter Montgomery <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Thatcher, feminism, etc. To: [log in to unmask] Alright, lets avoid muddying the waters with academicism. Was Margaret Thatcher, or was she not, a liberated woman? Without all of the efforts of women which preceded her, of which feminism was merely the bow on the rose, would Auntie Maggie have been able to get to her high office or not? In other words, let's not avoid the issue with pickiness? Peter Dr. Peter C. Montgomery Dept. of English Camosun College 3100 Foul Bay Rd. Victoria, BC CANADA V8P 5J2 [log in to unmask] www.camosun.bc.ca/~peterm -----Original Message----- From: Nancy Gish [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2002 8:26 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Thatcher, feminism, etc. Dear Marcia, Of course many women did and do things that fit the ideas of feminism. But that is not the same thing as being a feminist. Many people who are not liberals are accepting of difference and personally generous. Many people who are not Christians behave in ways that far more fit the images and words of Jesus than those of professed believers. (In fact, much of what many so-called "Christians" today claim would certainly have appalled Jesus.) But feminism is not simply isolated actions; it is a way of seeing the world that is complex, as you know, and makes connections among structures that are or were assumed to be either "natural" or essential or true and were none of those things. "The personal is political" was started by radical feminists and was not simply a way to include all behavior that asserted a woman's individual self, however it may have facilitated that. Hrosvitha or Marjorie Kemp did things that were clearly assertive and were what one might call "pre-feminist," but feminism was a developing and developed vision of the way the world was constructed. Best, Nancy Date sent: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 00:17:09 -0500 Send reply to: "T. S. Eliot Discussion forum." <[log in to unmask]> From: Marcia Karp <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Marianne Moore poem in WWII To: [log in to unmask] Nancy Gish wrote: > As I agreed with Carrol, I want to clarify why. He said that feminism > was a political position. "The personal is political" was just that. > Thatcher did not have a political position that addressed what the line > meant at all; she did not have a politics that took any account of the > lives of women as such. I don't think your point and his are at odds. I think none of us is much at odds. But "the personal is political" did not necessitate a conscious political position. While the stalwarts and writers formed them, they granted that other women who did not, were taking de facto political positions when they behaved in certain ways. These ways, of course, were never well defined. But, in the context of the times, the woman who stopped doing all the housework was taking a political stand whether she "knew" it or accepted it. Don't forget all those arguments about whose movement this was and the warnings that the academics and polemicists didn't own it. Not all women had the luxury or interest or ability to take positions that they called political. "The personal is political" can be seen as a concession that welcomed a variety of women. Perhaps it's come to be a requirement that one take a stand about the slogan; I don't know. But it wasn't always that; the two states are in rhetorical apposition. Marcia