Gerda Lerner Quotes

As long as both men and women regard the subordination of half the human race to the other as "natural," it is impossible to envision a society in which differences do not connote either dominance or subordination. The feminist critique of the patriarchal edifice of knowledge is laying the groundwork for a correct analysis of reality, one which at the very least can distinguish the whole from a part. Women's History, the essential tool in creating feminist conscious­ness in women, is providing the body of experience against which new theory can be tested and the ground on which women of vision can stand. A feminist world-view will enable women and men to free their minds from patriarchal thought and practice and at last to build a world free of dominance and hierarchy, a world that is truly human.

I believe myself that appointing women with their history is the single most important thing we can do to raise feminist consciousness. And feminist consciousness means for women to understand that they have a grievance in this world. That the grievance is not individual, that to change their grievance, they need to ally with other women. They need to define for themselves what their goals are. They need then, to form alliances with men and women to attain their goals, and that when their goal is attained, we will have a better society for all of us. Men and women.

I came into the study of history through my work on a biography of Sarah and Angelina Grimké... I was fascinated with the lives and characters of these two women, who had not had a biography written about them since 1885... They spoke to me in a very personal way and I wanted to transmit what I received from these women of another century to readers of my day.

We are living at a very wonderful moment. A moment that I believe is more important than a renaissance, a moment that is more important than the reformation. It is the moment when half of the human race is reclaiming its ID as full human beings. We have regained our history. And by regaining our history and by transmitting it to the next generation, we will create a basis where women will no longer have to reinvent the wheel. We will be able to stand on the shoulders of the women before us, and I think this is a very wonderful and exciting endeavor.

What is left to a Jew who refuses the religious community? Antisemitism and history. In short order I experienced plenty of both.

Patriarchy has not only invented itself and usurped a central place, but it has usurped intellectually, a kind of legitimacy, that described anything that is not like it, as deviant. And men and women have gone into that for 4000 years. Not all women. There were always some women who resisted. And our great tragedy is, that because we were deprived of a history of women, generation after generation of women who wanted to resist patriarchy, had to do it on their own.

In order to survive in this interconnected global village we must learn and learn very quickly to respect others who are different from us and, ultimately, to grant to others the autonomy we demand for ourselves. In short, celebrate difference and banish hatred.

It should be noted that when we speak of relative improvements in the status of women in a given society, this frequently means only that we are seeing improvements in the degree in which their situation affords them opportunities to exert some leverage within the system of patriarchy. Where women have relatively more eco­nomic power, they are able to have somewhat more control over their lives than in societies where they have no economic power. Similarly, the existence of women's groups, associations, or eco­nomic networks serves to increase the ability of women to counter­ act the dictates of their particular patriarchal system. Some anthro­pologists and historians have called this relative improvement women's "freedom." Such a designation is illusory and unwarranted. Re­forms and legal changes, while ameliorating the condition of women and an essential part of the process of emancipating them, will not basically change patriarchy. Such reforms need to be integrated within a vast cultural revolution in order to transform patriarchy and thus abolish it.

The essay ("The Lady and the Mill Girl") was in part an outgrowth of my research in ante-bellum reform movements, in part a response to the a-historical analysis of women's place in society in a book like Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique and in some of the early pamphlet literature of the women's liberation movement.

Assimilated Jews did not wish to dwell on the actuality of European Jewish history. There were biblical times and there was the present. What was forgotten and silenced out of existence was the long, bitter, repetitive history of persecution. There was no good news in it. As a child I once heard a story of how in the Middle Ages the Jews of certain German cities had been forced onto leaky boats to float down the Rhine river and drown to the last man, woman and child. Such stories made me feel the shame of belonging to a group so thoroughly victimized. Victims internalize the guilt for their victimization; they become contemptible for being available to victimization. Did they never fight back? Did they go like sheep? Today, I know innumerable instances of Jewish heroism, resistance, fighting back in the series of medieval antisemitic disasters which led to the 15th-century holocaust which destroyed two-thirds of the Jewish communities of western Europe and ended with the expulsion of all Jews from Portugal and Spain. I never heard of this history, not at school, not at home, not in the synagogue, any more than I heard of the existence of a women's history.

There was a considerable time lag between the subordination of women in pa­triarchal society and the declassing of the goddesses. As we trace below changes in the position of male and female god figures in the pantheon of the gods in a period of over a thousand years, we should keep in mind that the power of the goddesses and their priestesses in daily life and in popular religion continued in force, even as the supreme goddesses were dethroned. It is remarkable that in societies which had subordinated women economically, educationally, and le­gally, the spiritual and metaphysical power of goddesses remained active and strong.

During the interview at Columbia, prior to my admission to the Ph.D. program, I was asked a standard question: Why did I take the study of history? Without hesitating I replied that I wanted to put women into history. No, I corrected myself, not put them up into history, because they are already in it, what I want to do is to make the study of women's history legitimate. I want, I said plainly, to complete the work begun by Mary Beard...In a very real sense I consider Mary Beard, whom I never met, my principal mentor as a historian.

Why did I spend years helping to develop the then nonexistent field of Black Women's History and never, until recently, study the history of Jewish women? As one who chose to be an American, I had to accept the problematic in my newly adopted home together with the good. Race was the crucial issue in America. The relative freedom of the American Jewish community compared with Jews in other countries, and its long existence under conditions of tolerance and open access to the resources of the society, is no doubt due to the existence of the American Constitution and its protections, but it is also due to the existence of racially defined minorities which are the primary target for discrimination, hatred and scapegoating.

Most significant of all the impediments toward developing group consciousness for women was the absence of a tradition which would reaffirm the independence and autonomy of women at any period in the past. There had never been any woman or group of women who had lived without male protection, as far as most women knew. There had never been any group of persons like them who had done anything significant for themselves. Women had no history—so they were told; so they believed. Thus, ultimately, it was men's hegemony over the symbol system which most decisively disadvantaged women.

Men have been writing the history of the world from their point of view, and according to their sets of values, for over 2000 years. In fact, 4000 years, if you want to be strict about it. Because when writing was invented, it was 4000 years ago and ever since then we have history.” I say, “Well, women have begun to reclaim their history about 150 years ago, and the modern women’s history movement is about 35 years old.” I say, “You give us 4000 years, and we’ll mainstream. I think we need to get a perspective that is larger than our time, larger than our memory, larger than our lifetime.