A Feminist's Teachable Moment with Womanism

I AM SO EXCITED!!! I JUST BEGAN MY BUSINESS WITH MARY KAY!!!

Tonight I attended my first Mary Kay speaker meeting with National Sales Director from Dallas, Sabrina Goodwin Monday. It was just as energetic and enthusiasm-filled as I had expected. And "I am so excited to be starting my business with Mary Kay!" I am also thankful for Sabrina Goodwin Monday's reminders about how to be successful in sales and how to be just an over-all empowered person.

Her tips include these valuable lessons: 1.) "Fall in love with the faces. Fall in love with the process." 2.) "SWSWSW" - Some Will. Some Won't. So What. 3.) "Be Hungry. Be Hungry. Be Hungry." 4.) "Stay away from the dream stealers and dream killers." 4.) Follow up. 5.) "Become a great closer." 6.) "Ask lots of questions. The answer is in the question." 7.) "Be bold." 8.) "Start your sentences with 'I am so excited!'" 9.) "Have a funny bone and a wish bone." 10.) "Be faithful not fearful."

But there was something she said that concerned me as a Feminist. At one point Sabrina Goodwin Monday, an African American woman, mentioned that her "god-given mission is to get every woman home where she belongs...with a big fat check." "Every woman deserves to be a stay at home mom," she intoned and immediately the otherwise upbeat song Goodwin Monday (who had noteably kept her maiden name combined with her husband's surname) was singing hit a disharmonic chord for me. Like a good Feminist my muscles tensed and nostrils flared at the phrase: "every woman at home where she belongs".

And then my parent's diligence at playing devil's advocate to their eldest daughter's every utterance triggered the immediate consideration of the alternate perspective. I recalled my Gender Studies education of the battle between the Feminists and the Womanists of old (1960's). Wasn't it the divinely brilliant Audre Lorde who countered Betty Friedan's "Feminist Mystique" assertion that women were emprisoned by their traditional roles in the home and longed to be useful in the workplace? According to Lorde and the Womanists, Black women had been working hard outside the home for years and redemption for their general demographic meant the option, neigh, the privilege of staying home. Womanists looked at the concept of Private vs. Public spheres of women's influence from a different angle and found another layer of oppression.

I thought to myself: This is the angle we in NOW need desperately to grasp. How are we still not getting this?! No wonder there is such a stark disconnect within our organization. We still use the word Feminist. I've rarely heard a NOW member refer to herself as a Womanist. In all of the Anti-Racism trainings I've attended, 3-4, I've never heard this difference discussed. And yet another miserable failure of my beloved intrepid NOW dawned on me. We have been so determined to go unswervingly into that good night with only our six main principles to guide us that we have missed some golden opportunities for coalition building.

Now, I have only been a NOW member for 6 years or so, and our history is such a nebulous and highly subjective thing that it may well be that we have addressed this in the past. But when and what became of it? My suspicion, knowing as I do the bullying and dirty politics that seem rampant within the rank and file, is that the bulk of Womanists were squeezed out long ago. Where did they go? What are they doing now? What is their modern day equivalent doing?