Redneck Feminism

Last night was a dream come true for a redneck feminist documentary freak like me. The evening started out with a movie about Gloria Steinem on HBO. All those clips of women marching and protesting during the early seventies brought back memories of my own budding feminism during my pre-school years. I was four or five when I first recall parroting back some of the slogans I heard on TV. My mom had gone into Houchens to pick up a few groceries and left me in the car with my dad and brother. I don’t remember what the conversation was about but when I piped up and said women could do anything men could do they just laughed and laughed. I think I may have even gotten patted on the head. Attitudes about a woman’s role in rural Kentucky circa 1971 were closer to 1961 attitudes in the more liberal areas of the country. That’s what made the next documentary so refreshing to see.

I don’t think the women in Harlan County USA considered themselves feminists but the actions they took during the miner’s strike that started in June of 1972 showed that they could more than hold their own with any man. When Lois Scott whips that gun out of her bra, you know she’s more than capable of using it. Yes, they were standing by their men, but it was a fight for their family’s very survival. That’s what’s so sad about the women’s movement from that era. Somehow they got the reputation of being a bunch of man-hating, anti-family lesbians and that scared away a lot of strong women who otherwise might have been sympathetic to the cause. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened during the seventies if more redneck women had been involved with the movement.

The final film of the night, The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, is heavy on the redneck but the feminism angle is a little more problematic. It focuses on the female members of the White clan, a violent, drug-using family who gained national renown for the mountain dancing prowess of patriarch D. Ray and his son Jesco. In some ways these women are the flip side of Harlan County USA. Instead of fighting the coal companies, they’ve taken the crazy check and dropped out of law-abiding society all together. When Kirk tells the story about the night she stabbed her boyfriend for sleeping with her cousin, it makes you realize that, contrary to all the rhetoric spouted early on about how women’s equality would make the world more peaceful, violence isn’t gender-specific. I'm not sure what this all says about the state of feminism today but I guess it does prove my point from 40 years ago. Women really can do anything men can, good or bad.