What can the women's rights movement learn from the gay rights movement?

As the gay rights movement seems to be moving forward at lightning speed and women’s rights are slowly being stripped away in practically every statehouse, is there something organizers can learn? Steph Herold and Amanda Marcotte did readers the favor of writing about this issue, one I had been meaning to tackle for a very long time. (Read both of their posts, they’re worth it.) While a victory for one doesn’t mean a loss for the other – this is not a zero sum game or a who’s-more-discriminated-against contest, and in many areas, overlapping goals make a victory in one a victory for the other – there seems to be a difference in momentum. Why are women’s rights under such heavy attack and what have we done/not done to let that happen? Why are gay rights activists winning over the public and racking up wins? What does this say about the state of both movements?

The comparison arises out of real similarities between the gay rights and women's rights movements, which Herold and Marcotte both point out. “Both are fundamentally about sexuality, personal freedom, and (reproductive) autonomy. Both have been radically organizing for centuries or more, demanding equality, often acting as allies," writes Herold, and Marcotte concurs: “The two movements are functionally fighting for the same goal, an overturn of the patriarchy.” But I think it’s the differences that we need to pay attention to that can explain why the speed of change is roaring ahead on one side and feels like a gradual turn backward on the other.

The idea is that gay rights are gaining traction in public opinion because more and more people know someone who’s gay and have come to understand that they’re just like everyone else. By that very logic, shouldn’t people be even more willing to support women’s rights? But that’s exactly the problem – the “other” is too close by. As Marcotte alludes to, gay people securing rights that everyone else already has – particularly the right to marry – doesn’t subvert any power dynamics in heterosexual men’s lives. Giving women more autonomy and power, however, does. It’s hard to persuade men that they won’t be giving up some of their power if women have more of it. But no one loses power when a gay person is allowed to serve in the military or walk down the aisle or avoid being bullied in school (except maybe the bully). The structure of privilege can remain intact when the (current) demands of the gay rights movement are met; it can’t when women’s are. The fight for women's rights seeks not only to extend some of the privileges of participation, but also to upend deeply engrained power structures. Marcotte, acknowledging this, points out that gay marriage is easier for traditionalists to stomach because it’s a group yearning to take part in traditional roles, but a right like abortion can’t fit as neatly into that mold. “Abortion is still seen as a rejection of motherhood, because you’re not going to mother that potential baby,” she says. The same can be said for women pushing to work outside the home and to earn equal pay – fewer jobs and less money to go around for the boys and no one left to take care of the babies. If gay rights activists were to move on to try and upend the power dynamic after victories like marriage rights and the repeal of DADT, it's likely they’ll meet with a lot of the same resistance.

Not to fall victim to the Oppression Olympics, but there’s also an us versus them positioning that can help many activist movements mobilize. But when it comes to women, we live with the “enemy.” Many heterosexual women are even in love with the "other," i.e. men. In her book When Everything Changed, Gail Collins puts it this way: "[The women’s rights movement] was, as the sociologist Alice Rossi said, the only instance in which people being discriminated against lived in much more intimate association with the 'enemy' than with other members of their own group." Where gay people – and people of color, and transgendered people, and other marginalized groups – often tend to create their own communities, women much less frequently do, which can blur the lines of the fight.

The two movements are also different in the history that they have stacked up behind them. The current push for gay rights is a relatively new phenomenon. Women have made some serious achievements – Marcotte points out that a woman can legally get an abortion and cross state lines to do so, but the same doesn’t hold true for gay marriage. This creates a different sense of urgency among activists, and Marcotte notes it also means that gay rights organizers may come upon a backlash stage that women's rights experiences. We've made major gains, and are now working to hold ground; gay rights activists are still conquering new territory.

We also can’t underestimate the fact that gay rights activists have a few really concrete goals right now, and because they are somewhat new are relatively cohesive (although not entirely). Feminism used to be like that, and then after we got some wins we fractured along class, race, sexual orientation, and other lines. Different people within the movement wanted to work on different, equally important issues. I think some of this is a function of goals being met and then having a hard time figuring out where to go next. But it’s also because of sheer numbers. Women are half the world’s population. We’re literally everywhere. So discrimination against us pops up in a million and ten ways, and we could spend all of our energy fighting each instance of it. We’re also a group that is going to experience almost all other kinds of marginalization and our loyalty becomes as fractured as our goals. Many of us support and are involved in a lot of other causes. What are the key goals now? We understandably have a hard time figuring it out.

And then of course, there are those who think feminism is dead. Take The End of Men. Take Ross Douthat (and you can keep him, thanks). Whether or not you support rights for gay people, I think you’d be hard pressed to find many who think they enjoy full equality. They’re targeted by hate crimes, they (were!) forced to leave the military, they’re excluded from adoption, among a whole host of pretty easy to spot, discrimination 101 instances. People think that because women can wear pants and get jobs and have sex they’re are doing just fine. Look at Oprah and Hillary Clinton and even Sarah Palin!, they say. What gay rights activists in the United States are fighting is extremely visible – and in many cases, horrific.

Also don’t underestimate the frog in the pot metaphor. If the GOP heats the water up very slowly, many of us ladies won’t jump out. (Although the GOP has leaned heavily on the temperature dial lately and a lot more women are crying foul.) This is where I agree with Herold – the lesson to be learned is to be proud, loud, and relentless. Feminist activists are doing some of this work. They're waging Twitter campaigns that have been hugely successful because they are targeted, relentless and loud. See: #Mooreandme, #DearJohn, and campaigns to foster dialogue like #ihadanabortion and #thanksPPFA. Offline efforts are happening as well: the GOP’s war on women brought 6,000 women to the streets of New York City alone, while similar rallies took place elsewhere.

Just because we won basic rights, because we’re so far along in the movement, is no reason we can’t be more aggressive. “Why do we only mobilize when we’re desperate, when the situation is bleak?” Herold asks, pointing to yearly gay pride parades no matter the political climate. Fair question. I think the women’s rights movement can suffer from a lack of proactivity, although there are good instances of it that we can expand on. Take the push to repeal the Hyde amendment – rather than react to every president that re-signs it into law or those who want to make it worse, we can fight to get rid of it altogether. We're already doing a lot of the work, but we might just need to turn up the volume. -Bryce Covert

Bryce Covert is a journalist and blogger who writes on feminism, politics, and the energy industry. You can find her at www.brycecovert.com and www.twitter.com/brycecovert.