The path people decide to take in life greatly determines how much they will enjoy their freedom. Most people have been compelled the public path because they believe that there is something they can speak to the people that would make appear as a public figure. However, what most people do not realize is that this path is for the selected few. There are individuals who are strong enough to take the heat that comes along with criticism; there are those who are rich enough to employ strategists and handlers to advise them on their next move but then there is the person who lets her naivety take over. The women who have decided to take on this path with the aim of voicing their opinions have ended up suffering from unexpected criticism from their colleagues. This paper examines how this trend was prominent in movements within the twentieth century concerning Ruth Rosen’s “The Politics of Paranoia.”
Women’s movements are supposed to grant them a public forum on which to express their impression or disgust on certain political matters. However, the same movements have been known to divide the same women that founded them due to political or personal reasons. In most cases, the personal reason has been known to dominate the political reason because according to Jean Curtis, some women experience joy when another woman is unhappy maybe due to criticism or failure. According to Rosen, women were quick to announce their sisterhood but beneath the surface picture, they were injuring one another. In movement circles, this behavior has been dubbed trashing. Jo Freeman was one of the first activists to expose this reality because according to him, he could see how the sisters were not willing to elect officials and left the task to journalists and writers. What the sisters did not realize is that their behavior created a vacuum for any of them to promote themselves to leadership. Hence, all of them became accountable only to themselves.
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This situation ended up in most of them displaying flashy public appearances to dictate their power. With time, feminists used character assassination on women who were too concerned with their achievements. Despite the public being marveled by the revelations these women presented about each other, what many people did not understand is that the critics were simply jealous of their colleagues’ achievements. The punishment involved lots of criticism and ostracism, but most women were too jealous to let such women walk away without tearing apart their credibility. This was the first and most common way of ostracizing successful and admired women in the movement. When questioned about challenging moments while in the movement, such victims could not control their emotions. They had been wounded deeply and their talents ignored. Class baiting was the other form of ostracizing other women. Since many members had earned their middle-class status, they felt free to trash any woman who grew up in a privileged family. Others trashed their fellow women for committing themselves to intellectual lives.
Most trashing events have as a matter of fact been attributed to the intellectual level of some members. Weisstein, for example, had aided the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union in creating a bureau. Due to her charismatic and intelligent approaches, the union’s members were forced to ask her not to speak to often which she assented to. With time, however, she realized that she was no longer voicing her concerns and opinions, yet the union had given her the opportunity. When she decided to approach her colleagues with the proposal, their answer was no. Brownmiller was another such woman who had to go through the wrath of her fellow movement members before she decided to quit. Despite the fact that theirs was a black movement, she did not face any reduced trashing. According to them, she was receiving too much media coverage that she did not deserve. They even accused her of sleeping with newspaper editors. It was not until 1975 that the world witnessed the highest level of character assassination. In this year, Gloria Steinem suffered the increased public trashing than any sister before her.
Sarachild was one such mastermind of Steinem’s trashing. She once accused her of being a secret CIA employee and that she was, in fact, a government spy who was hell bent on redirecting the movement towards capitulation. The truth was a little bit more complicated than that, and she was not sure how to respond to these accusations. She was recruited by a government agency after school which she did not realize was funded by the CIA. In response to these accusations, she chose the government’s responsibility to protect as an answer. Nevertheless, even after most writers promised not to write more about the story; Friedan and the Redstockings revived her story after she wrote a letter saying that she had exposed her past before joining the movement which sparked the attention of Friedman, who went ahead to trash her even after people had forgotten her story. Steinem’s case forced exaggerated stories about the government’s involvement such that the movement ended fighting legal battles with the FBI.
This behavior cannot be blamed on human development or intellectual advancement. It was still very much present even in the days of Kings and Emperors. Women still schemed against each other and only the strong survived. People simply have to learn their place and make use of their resources to live a good life.
