Re: Sixties' Counterculture
PNFPNF@AOL.COM
Sun, 6 Jul 1997 16:30:57 -0400 (EDT)
Gerry Higgins is, I think, correct in saying "not having a 'safe male'
around" was not specific to the '60s (or its correlates) but common to all
cultures/societies, as is clear through even a quick glance through anything
from Adrienne Rich's "Of Woman Born" through whatsisname's "Kindness of
Strangers" through many other texts, feminist or anthropological or whatever.
What scares me is exactly the portrayal of the '60s as destroying "the
family" that is - along with the portrayal of non-"intact" families as the
root of every social evil - what the Right and even such so-called "center"
politicians as the Clintons have been pushing for at least ten years, and
which has led to such charmers as "welfare 'reform'" and the correlative push
for a "uniform adoption code" to streamline redistribution of babies upward,
to go along with redistribution upward of every other wealth, from income to
health care.
If we learned anything in the '60s, it is the value of developing our
self-love and general capacity for caring and love for others through
exploring new forms of family/social structure (including adoption, by the
way - my above comment is NOT an objection to reaching out to genuinely needy
children, or to love beyond one's biological relatives!!!) We also learned,
I hope, not to let concepts like "family" be co-opted from us. This, not
"divorce", was my original point in this thread, by the way.
We need to hold onto our gains, not let the rhetoric pull them away.
...well, venceremos,
Paula Friedman