Native women and their supporters rallied at the U.S. Supreme Court on December 7, 2015, as the justices heard Dollar General Corporation v. Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. Photo by Indianz.Com
Steve Russell, a member of the Cherokee Nation, reflects on gender, sexism and feminism in American society:
Even after I had long defined myself as a feminist, in the eighties, I was still challenged by the question whether this or that happening involved sexism or something else. My wife at the time would have been a high-ranking second wave feminist if feminists believed in that sort of thing. She knew my heart was in the right place and she offered me a sorting method that served me well. Take the facts of the situation and skew them to make the distinction one of race rather than of sex or gender. If you would see racism, you probably ought to be seeing sexism, so you need to think hard about it. The first issue that male chauvinists who really mean no harm fold on is equal pay for equal work, and it's the first one I folded on...although some of my women friends had to beat me up with facts I could not deny. It amazes me that goal has been so hard to achieve in the real world, because organized opposition skulked away a long time ago. Yes, I have heard men claim with a straight face that paying women equally is bad policy because it's "anti-family." They are outliers. The Republicans standing up against equal pay now rely on a general hostility to federal laws about anything. That is, they do not defend paying women less on the merits.Get the Story:
Steve Russell: Stoning the Mistress (Indian Country Today 6/5)
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