July/August 2000

Nonviolence & Feminism

Shelley Douglass, July - August 1975

During the 1970s Shelley Douglass and her husband Jim founded the Pacific Life Community in Vancouver, a binational pacifist community, and the Ground Zero Community for Nonviolent Action in Bremerton, Washington, along the tracks traveled by the White Trains that carried nuclear weapons to the Trident submarine base. In 1989 they moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where they founded a Catholic Worker house of hospitality.

During the late 1960s women began to share some of their private problems and their maladjustments to the system in which they lived. We realized that our feelings were not just personal problems; they were political, the results of a system that exploited us all. We were not unique; this oppressive mentality pervaded even the movement itself. Insofar as it was patriarchal, the movement was simply part of the system. When this realization hit home, it was an extremely difficult time for many people in the movement. Attempts to share insights with male companions were met (understandably) with fierce resistance. There was a slow groping toward trust among sisters and disillusion with a movement that fought for other people's freedom while standing upon our backs. There was the shuddering realization of our victimization, our status as sex objects. Even worse was the knowledge that we had believed the lie and the rage we felt at again being pushed aside for another, “more important” issue. There was the growing problem of how to deal with oppression within the movement for liberation. How do we resist the resister? For many of us, the answer was simply to break contact, to work only with women on peace or women's issues. For others (less angry? less independent? more hopeful?) there seemed a chance that the peace movement could become a real movement for peace in all its meanings. We have stayed on.

As women concerned with feminism, we still find hostility, lack of comprehension, even ridicule, within the ranks. We also find more understanding, more honesty, more willingness to face the issue. In ourselves, we find the experience of being women a good one, joyful and strong. We are reclaiming our history - remembering all those founding mothers, all those women who kept the movement going without credit for so long, all the contributions we women have made and undervalued. The experience of being a woman is still one of isolation, frustration, anger. It is also one of confidence, strength, support, and pride. We are; we are becoming. I think we often feel impatient with those who lag behind, who don't see the problems or the possibilities. Not rage, just impatience. Women are strong; women will move forward; women have a crucial insight and a life-giving contribution to make.

Having sounded an optimistic note on women's position and contribution to the movement, I would qualify it. With the end of the Vietnam war and the widespread acceptance of the principle of equality for women, both the peace movement and the women's movement face crucial decisions. The peace movement cannot survive or hope for revolution without joining the women's movement - partly because there is no peace and justice to be built upon the backs of any people, partly because the insights of the feminist movement are necessary to the formation of a new, organic worldview, a basis for thought and action which will be more complete and profound, because more inclusive, than any we've had before. Feminist insights into the nature of God, of humankind, of violence and nonviolence, oppression and resistance, and into a whole life are the life-giving gift of women.

The March 1983 and the October-November 1984 issues of Fellowship, pictured above, respectively, focused on women's issues and the relationship of feminism to nonviolence, peace, and spirituality.