I find it fascinating that the thing that universalized the character of the opposition to the Somoza was women’s extensive revolutionary activism or involvement. It’s funny how, in all the articles we read, people don’t think they need women or that women don’t belong in whatever it is their doing, but it always boils down to the women. And the fact that they are oppressed together and have to fight together to work, for example, is the unifying factor that makes the effort so strong. What I find interesting in the Molyneux article was that a disappearance of individual identity wasn’t really lost with women’s war efforts only those on the front-line guerrillas where a degree of masculinization and a blurring of gender distinction took place. In my mind this is a good thing. We are all just people at our core. Where we look for differences, we find them. In a battle setting it doesn’t matter what is between your legs and how you may think that determines your role in society.
Thinking about women’s determined roles and the part they must play even when they have a position of power—a platform upon which they can enact change for the better, like Eva Peron and another that comes to mind is Toni Morrison, I am intrigued by the manner in which they use their platform. Eva Peron was without question more popular than her husband but the stance they both took and showed the public was that Eva held an inferior role to her husband. She was his subordinate, yet this worked in her favor. She used this position to appeal to the public whose values were very traditional. A woman has a place and Eva Peron knew where hers was. I see it as very strategic and manipulative—I like it. The same goes for Toni Morrison. Everything she writes is inherently feminist, yet she never took on that label. Why is this? I believe she decided not to call herself a feminist so that she could reach a larger audience. And hopefully turn a few people.
RachelH 