“Tapestries of Life” Discussion Post

I found the discussion of women’s consciousness to be extremely important to the chapter as well as personally thought-provoking. The idea that Aptheker describes in her chapter “Conditions for Work” explaining how women are connected with each other reminded me of how our class brought up the idea of solidarity in relation to intersectionality of histories. I very much agree with Aptheker’s idea of women’s consciousness, I just never had termed it in my daily musings and thoughts. I really enjoyed reading about how she defined it. I also found the point on making women and our history visible particularly powerful. We as women need to recognize our histories as wholly connected, and separate from other social concepts.

“A Movement to End Sexist Oppression” Discussion Post

On page 23, Hooks quotes Jeanne Gross’s “Feminist Ethics from a Marxist Perspective,” which uses the example of capitalism to display  the appropriation of feminism. Gross explains how through feminism some women have divorced, resulting in them being forced into the labor market which is not a healthy environment for women. I am a bit confused on what I  should take from Hooks use of this example. Is she arguing that capitalism is part of the problem for feminists and the system needs to be replaced by something else entirely? 

“Polyrhythms and Improvization” Discussion Post

A key point made by Brown in this article is the idea that scholars of history have been disregarding the relational aspect of groups’  histories. Instead of solely looking linearly at histories, academics should also embrace and study the connections between them.   One history, or way of life, can effect another’s history. Brown uses the example of middle class and working class women, “…middle-class women live the lives they do precisely because working-class women live the lives they do.” Relating it back to the broad metaphor of the article, history should be studied as polyrhythmic, looking at the complexities and interlinking of different individual histories.