Aackt 3: Cathy and American Feminist Backlash

This week, Jamie takes a look at it where Cathy falls in the history of American feminism — and take a look at how the feminist movement has progressed, regressed, and gatekept. Why are feminists frustrated with Cathy? 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Counthy guys. White gave the commencement speech at her alma
mater at the University of Michigan, talking about what she
talks about best, the insecurities of working American women. The
world expects so much of you right now. You'll be
expected to be a dynamic businessperson, financial wizard, nurturing homemaker, enlightened,

(00:22):
involved parent, environmental activist, physical fitness expert, as sexy and
alluring yet responsible partner, champion of human rights, independent thinker,
community activists. And if you're a woman a size five,
all at once. Today, when the message is that anyone

(00:44):
can do anything, it's going to be very hard for
you not to feel that everyone else is doing something
and that you personally are stuck in your same old ruts.
And just in case normal humans insecurity doesn't nail you,
you'll be bombarded by images that will try Look at
how women are bombarded. Look at the commercials. Look at

(01:07):
how they picture men and women in the commercials. Men
and commercials are always doing one thing. The women are
doing six things at once. Now the man in the
commercial will be mowing the lawn one job. The woman
in the commercial is giving herself a beauty treatment for
her hands while she does the dishes. The man in

(01:30):
the commercial is grilling a steak one job. The woman
in the commercial is simultaneously cleaning the oven, disinfecting the floor,
popping a five course meal in the microwave, and faxing
the office while explaining the miracle of feminine hygiene products
to her daughter. And if you think that doesn't translate

(01:53):
into real life expectations, head for Detroit during rush hour
some morning and look around you on the anyway, if
you've been listening to this show, you won't be surprised
to hear the creator of Cathy Comics talking about the
unreasonable expectations often pushed on women, the sorts of expectations
that make one say, act speaking hypothetically. Of course, Cathy

(02:16):
Comics certainly changed in tone and mission as the strip
went on, but it serves as a document of a
woman's insecurities and concerns for thirty four consecutive years between
nineteen ten, and the issues mentioned and not mentioned aligned
pretty closely with mainstream liberal views on women of this time.
There's also plenty to say about what this commentary does

(02:38):
not reference, a reflection of how American feminism has historically
either ignored or been actively hostile to the interests of
women of color, queer women, and working class women. So
in this episode, I'm gonna let Kathy lead us through
American feminist issues according to the funny pages, and I'll
fill in some blanks of what does not appear. So

(03:01):
she burst into the world in nineteen seventy six, she's
at what, she's out on dates, and she don't like politics.
From Mama and urban to with feminist friends. She's fighting
all the stands with chocolate and hand Kathy, she's fighting
back to stressed with success. Let's cut her some slack, oh,

(03:23):
Kathy Bkathyan Cather, She's gotta like go in all. So,

(03:46):
not to be patronizing, but Kathy Curtins did not invent feminism,
so we do require a little bit of set up here.
In order for all of the expectations that eventually stress
our heroine out during the second wave of feminism to
exist in the first place, a lot of social gains
had to be made beforehand. And quick disclaimer here, I

(04:08):
will be the first to say that this episode will
in no way be comprehensive, and so I want to
see at the top I don't have the purview to
give a full overview of the history of American feminism.
You could be in school for years on that topic.
But I will be including further resources in the show
notes to help bridge those gaps. So to begin, we
have to take a look at the first wave of

(04:28):
American feminism, which leads us to where Kathy alternatively thrives
and fails in the second wave. So let's go back
to the year eighteen forty eight. Okay, I can already
hear you grown, that's so long ago. Sit down and listen.

(04:48):
This is going somewhere, I repeat. Was popularly considered to
be the launch of the first wave of American feminism,
with the first formal women's rights convention in Seneca Falls,
New York. This wave, while containing many steps forward and
eventually steps backward, is considered to have continued through when

(05:09):
women got the vote in the US. Victories along the
way included increased educational opportunities, wives being granted custody of
their own children, women being able to own property in
their own name, and of course, the vote. In the
first wave of feminism and in every wave since, middle
class white women have been disproportionately centered in how the

(05:30):
activism is discussed and treated in pop culture. This was
well on display during this First wave. The majority of
commonly discussed women of this era in American feminism are white.
Your Susan B. Anthony's your Elizabeth, Katie Stanton's your Lucretia Motts,
You're Lucy Stones. While American feminists had certainly existed for

(05:50):
some time, it's in the mid eighteen hundreds that they
began to organize in large numbers. Much of this early
organization drew inspiration from prior experiences with the tem prints
and abolition movements. Here's what historian Manisha Sinha in The
Slaves Cause, A History of Abolition said of first wave
American feminism. If not all female abolitionists became women's rights activists,

(06:14):
pioneering feminists owed their public careers to abolition, while women
of color spoke not just about the oppression of their gender,
but of race and class. The white middle class figureheads
of the first wave often ignored or made their insights unwelcome.
There were divides among white feminists as well. Working class
women were concerned with factory conditions and labor exploitation, while

(06:36):
white women of the middle class and above were primarily
concerned with gaining rights as individuals outside of marriage, including
the ability to own property, have child custody, and vote.
Feminist scholar and general legend Angela Davis explains why upper
class white women gained an interest in seeking suffrage for
women around this time in her classic book Women, Race,

(06:59):
and Class. An ideological consequence of industrial capitalism was the
shaping of a more rigorous notion of female inferiority. It seemed,
in fact, that the more women's domestic duty shrank under
the impact of industrialization, the more ridge became the assertation
that women's place was in the home. They have been
productive workers within the home economy, and their labor have

(07:19):
been no less respected than their men's, and manufacturing moved
out of the home and into the factory. The ideology
of women who begin to raise the wife and mother
as ideal as workers, women had at least enjoyed the
economic quality, but as wives there were destined to become
appendagous to their men, servants to their husband's As mothers,
they would be defined as passive vehicles for the replenishment

(07:42):
of human life. The situation for that white housewife was
full of contradictions, and it bear as much repeating that
black feminists, many of them born into slavery prior to abolition,
were instrumental in this movement, although their contributions are frequently
an un fairly deemphasized by white feminists even today. So

(08:03):
Journal Truth was one of the most prominent black women
in the movement at this time, speaking about her experiences
intersectionally as both a formerly enslaved black person and as
a woman. Here's a quote from her famous speech Ain't
I a Woman? From an Akrons Woman Convention in eighteen
fifty one, read by Performer st for the Sojournal Truth Project.
In I I am a woman's rights. I have as

(08:30):
much muscle as any man, and I can do as
much work as any man. I have plot and reaped
and husked and chopped and mode, and can any man
do better than that? I have heard much about the

(08:51):
sexiest being equal. I can carry as much as any man,
and I can eat as much too, if I can
get it. I am as strong as any man. That is.
Today the poor man seemed to be all in confusion.
They don't know what to do. White children. If you

(09:13):
have woman's rights, give it to her and you will
feel better. You have your own rights, and they will
be so much trouble. While truth speech was a huge
hit in eighteen fifty one, Angela Davis explains that a
number of white women at the conference did not want
truth the only black woman at the convention to speak

(09:35):
at all. The racism displayed by white feminists of this
time is worthy of more discussion and has been chronicled
in seminal text like White Tears, Brown Scars by Ruby
hammad On, Intersectionality by Kimberly Crenshaw, and Davis's Women, Race
and Class, among many many others. I will link to
these books in the description of this episode. What needs
to be said is this white feminist leaders like Susan B.

(09:58):
Anthony and Elizabeth Katie stand In, who had supported the
abolition of slavery and even worked with Frederick Douglas to
win the vote quote for both women and African Americans unquote,
would later actively work against the black vote and the
interests of black women in particular, over and over in
an attempt to get white women the vote ahead of

(10:19):
black men. The message being sent by these leaders was clear,
the white woman's vote took precedence over all women's votes
for Anthony and Stanton following the dissolution of their alliance
with Douglas, who had previously stood up for the women's
vote at the Seneca Falls Convention in eighteen forty eight.
Stanton and Anthony created the National American Woman's Suffrage Association

(10:41):
in eighteen sixty nine, specifically to oppose the fifteenth Amendment,
which granted black men the vote. Anthony famously said she
would cut off her right arm before demanding voting rights
for black men instead of women. With the significant biases
of white leaders in mind, one of the strengths of
the first wave of feminism as its clear goal and focus,

(11:02):
which was suffrage, and after seventy years, that was achieved
in n In these years, even the most liberal wings
of the movement were met with vitriol from American patriarchy.
A best selling book in eighteen seventy three stated that
women could not last in careers and would suffer quote
exhaustion of the feminine nervous system unquote, and President Theodore

(11:22):
Roosevelt once said that a white woman who postponed childbirth
to do literally anything else was a race trader. So
in the years of this movement, steps were made in
the right direction. Women gained access to higher education to
keeping their wages, as well as early whisperings of widespread
birth control access. Following the success of the women Suffrage

(11:43):
movement in securing the vote, the nearly seventy five years
of consistent feminist activism began to slow down, in part
due to active antagonism from American patriarchal structures who blacklisted
feminists from publishing their work in major publications and labeled
many communists and a quote serious threat to the country.

(12:04):
This led to one of the most notable backlashes against
the gains of feminists in American history. But keep in
mind that even with this passing, black women's votes were
still not treated equally. Martha S. Jones, author of Vanguard,
How Black Women Broke barriers, won the vote and insisted
on equality for all told time in the following quote.

(12:26):
The nineteenth Amendment did not eliminate the state laws that
operated to keep Black Americans from the polls via poll
taxes and literacy tests, nor did the nineteenth Amendment address
violence or lynching. Some African American women will vote with
the Nineteenth Amendment unquote. This backlash is carefully documented by
writer Susan Faludi in her book Backlash, which documents both

(12:50):
the major American feminist movements and the near certainty that
periods of women's gains would be followed by a period
of severe backlash, backlash that extends to the political, to
the cultural, and within the feminist movement itself. Fluti describes
the first twentieth century backlash as happening in the nineteen twenties,

(13:11):
with a wave of anti feminist media, demonization of women
who wanted to get divorces or abortions, and an increased
emphasis on looks and consumptions, exemplified by the rise of
the Miss America pageant that started in ninety, the same
year that women got the vote. And the thing about
backlashes is they tend to erase a lot of progress.

(13:31):
According to Fluti, by nineteen thirty, there were fewer women
doctors than there had been in nineteen ten. Fast forward
a bit to the late thirties early forties, women surged
back into the workplace in America. During World War Two,
with men leaving the country to fight in the war,
five to six million women entered the workforce, two million
of which entered heavy industry jobs, the government began to

(13:53):
provide wild stuff like daycare assistants. Working class women fought
for unions, and young girls grew up wanting their own careers.
And keep in mind that this is the era that
Kathy guiss Wide's mother, as well as the comic character
of Mom, would have been growing up in. But when
the war ended, backlash again, where the Rosie the Riveter

(14:13):
messaging of women's roles in war efforts led some to
believe that their place in the workplace was here to stay.
In came the nineteen fifties. Those two million women in
heavy industry laid off and forced out of their job
to make room for veterans returning from war. As ever,
working class and women of color often remained in the workplace,

(14:33):
but not with the same status or pay as in
the wartime. Women were denied unemployment pay flat out, and
middle class white women were generally pushed into the Donna
Reeve nineteen fifties era cult of domesticity. Just ten years later,
the culture dictated that jobs and education were very unfeminine,
and calling yourself a feminist was once again and ama anathema,

(14:57):
And calling yourself a feminist was once again and an
athema never said that word out loud before. Good job,
Jamie Okay. Integral to this an all periods of backlash
is an emphasis on consumerism and on improving the individual.
The economy is flourishing in the nineties and fifties in
the US made women a larger consumer block than ever,

(15:19):
and defining oneself through consumption was a great way to
distract from, you know, being mad about not having rights.
Kathy Guys White, born in nineteen fifty spent her formative
years within a period of backlash that predated the second
wave feminist movement, which most people consider to have been
started in nineteen sixty eight, when a New York Times

(15:40):
magazine article by Martha Lear coining the term was released.
So where were women's rights by the sixties. The nineteen

(16:01):
sixty three President's Commission on the Status of Women Report,
which was initially commissioned by a preassassinated President Kennedy, Remember him?
People love that guy? But would they have if he
had We'll never know. This commission was led by Eleanor Roosevelt,
and while it was still very you better be a mommy,
eventually in its tone this report acknowledged a lot of

(16:22):
commonly recognized discriminations against women, using hard federal data to
back it up. These acknowledgements included recognition of the wage gap,
of employment inequality, of low support for working class women
and women of color, of a dearth of child care services,
and on and on. And just like with the first wave,
this feminist movement came on the heels of a major

(16:45):
racial reckoning in the United States via the Civil Rights Movement,
where again black women in leadership positions spoke on their
role in American society, intersectionally with leaders like Marianne Weathers,
Ella Baker, who founded the Student Non Violent coword Nating
Committee and more. During the Civil Rights Movement, black women
worked from the radical and liberal wings and were instrumental

(17:07):
in community organizing that led to wins like the Civil
Rights Act of nineteen sixty four and the Voting Rights
Act of nineteen sixty five, and by the late nineteen sixties,
a new wave of the women's movement had certainly been building.
Challenging American white patriarchal structures were moved along by both
the Civil Rights Movement and the energy from the protests
surrounding the Vietnam War as well as the growing number

(17:30):
of options in American feminist literature and organizations, which brings
me to Betty for Dan. Oh, you thought we weren't
going to get to Betty for Dan while buckle In,
she is best known as the author of nineteen sixty
three is the Feminine Mystique, a gospel for dissatisfied housewives
that bucked and rejected the idea that a woman naturally

(17:53):
derives purpose from marriage, children, and housework. We'll get to
its shortcomings in a bit, but this mystique was as
free Dan put it, quote the problem that has no
name unquote, and this clearly spoke to a young Kathy
Guy's white. She references the feminine mystique in her work constantly,
both through her character and through herself. Here she is

(18:13):
describing her teen in college years in a PPS News
Hour clip promoting her essay collection Fifty Things That Aren't
My Fault. My generation was right in between the two
Betties Betty Crocker and Betty for Dan, and I wanted
to be both of them, and a lot of women
did at that time. It was and I literally gained

(18:36):
forty pounds on one Betty's chocolate funge layer cake mix
while reading the other Betty's feminine mistaque and a lot
of women I think found themselves like the place I
was in. But she's not wrong. Betty for Dan is
a Betty of note for better and for worse. For
Dan was one of the figureheads of the liberal wing

(18:58):
of the Second Wave, going on to found the now
the National Organization for Women in nineteen sixty six with
forty eight others. Like Anthony and Stanton before them, The
organization was extremely polarizing throughout the second Wave due to
it say it with me over emphasis on the issues
of straight, middle class white women above everyone else. Also,

(19:20):
like the first movement, the liberal wing of the second
Wave came with a pretty clearly defined goal. It was
all about passing the e R, a equal Rights Amendment,
a proposed constitutional amendment that had been unsuccessful in making
progress since ninety three. The amendment sought to and get
ready for some controversial stuff, guarantee legal rights regardless of gender.

(19:42):
To this day, it's never been signed into law. Isn't
that nice. This area of the movement was popularly referred
to as women's liberation, and there was a part of
it women's libbers. The struggle to apply women's lab to
everyday life is thoroughly explored in the first few years
of the Happy Comics. But women of color, while again

(20:02):
being sidelined and actively disregarded by liberal, white centered organizations
such as the n OW, were extremely active during the
Second Wave years. Some organizations of note membership in the
Black Panther Party was over sixty percent women. Kathleen Cleaver,
who was a communication secretary with the Panthers, was once
asked what a woman's role in the revolution was, and

(20:23):
she replied, quote, no one ever asks what a man's
place in the revolution is unquote. The National Black Feminist Organization,
founded in nineteen seventy three, was one of the first
to include a lesbian agenda as a part of their
mission statement. Asian feminists were extremely active organizers as well,
with projects like Asian Sisters in l A drug Abuse
Center founded in nineteen seventy one, and the l A

(20:46):
Asian Women's Center was an organizing hub until it closed
in seventy six. In nineteen seventy four, Indigenous American women
formed the Women of All Red Nations or WARREN, based
on concepts of tribal women's traditions and with the key
distinction that patriarchy and colonialism were inseparable concepts, and because
of the hostility that these organizations were sometimes met with

(21:09):
by the white feminist mainstream, the label of feminists sometimes
be resisted. Here's Angela Davis speaking on this at talk
at the Center of Contemporary Culture in Barcelona. Everybody started
referring to me as a feminist, and my response was,
I'm not a feminist, you know, I'm a black revolutionary

(21:33):
because I didn't see how the two had anything to
do with each other. But I realized that I was
talking about a certain kind of feminism, a bourgeois feminism,
a feminism that is still white, white bourgeois feminism, which
is unfortunately the the most represented feminism today, and most

(21:57):
people think of that as feminism. But that ignores the
fact that huge numbers of organic and academic intellectuals who
are women of color have transform the very nature of feminism.
And the hallmark of feminism today is what we call intersectionality,

(22:20):
a recognition of the and not only not only the
inter relating um uh character of identities, but as I
frequently say, I think intersectionality is is most helpful when
we think about the intersectionality of social justice struggles. Queer

(22:43):
women experienced active hostility from the mainstream movement as well.
Activists Mercia Johnson and Sylvia Rivera organized for trans rights
with Star after Johnson had been a key figure at
the Stonewall Riots, and both worked with Degay Liberation Front
during these years. Betty free Dan was actively homophobic, referring

(23:04):
to lesbians as the quote unquote lavender menace in nineteen
sixty nine and did not welcome queer women into the Now,
and of course people were pissed. Rita May Brown, who
was a lesbian activist, broke off from the New York
branch of the Now and began radical lesbians who wore
t shirts that said lavender menace and staged an action

(23:25):
at the Second Congress to Unite Women in nineteen seventy,
an action that forced a discussion about homophobia and the
exclusion that lesbians experienced in society as well as within
the feminist movement. While some straight feminists with the liberal
mainstream movement, including Gloria Steinem, wanted to be more inclusive,
Betty fre Dan purged lesbians and lesbian sympathizers, as she

(23:50):
put it, from the now before in nineteen seventy one,
change was made to once again allow queer people into
the organization. So again, with the second wave of feminism,
there were radical and liberal wings with very different interests,
which created significant interior conflict. The Kathy comics are really
only engaging with this mainstream liberal movement, in no small

(24:12):
part because the strips author was a liberal white woman
in a majority middle class white area, writing to some
extent about her own experiences and opinions. Kathy strips do
not feature people of color or queer people, and it's
radicals like Andrea have politics that actually skewed pretty liberal.
This is exemplified in the consciousness raising sessions that Andrea

(24:35):
runs after work in the nineteen seventies, which Kathy originally
finds to be kind of naval, gazey and bizarre, although
she does give it a fair shake. Here's Andrea. Little
boys are always encouraged to boast about their achievement. Well,
little girls are scolded for boasting because it's unfeminine. But
with assertiveness training exercise number two, women can rediscover the

(24:57):
prad we have every right to express. Each one of
you will stand up and say out loud the one
thing you're most proud of yourself. I am very proud
of the fact that I have never boasted. Andrea goes
relatively hard in these early years. There's also a funny
storyline from the late seventies where she gets a job
as a mall Santa to challenge the patriarchal construct of Santa.

(25:24):
Actual radicalism at this time took a very different form
and often rejected consciousness raising groups on the same grounds
that Kathy did. And he thought they were two centered
on the self above the collective. Here's a quote I
love from the nineteen seventy anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful, from
radical feminist Robin Morgan. This is not a movement one joins.

(25:46):
There are no rigid structures or membership card. The women's
liberation movement exists where three or four friends or neighbors
decided to meet regularly over coffee and talk about their
personal lives. It also exists in the cells of women's jail,
the welfare lines, in the supermarket, the factory, the convent,
the farm, the maternity ward, the street corner, the old

(26:07):
Ladies home, the kitchen, the Steno pool, the bet. It
exists in your mind and in the political and personal
insights that you can contribute to change and shape and
help its growth. This interest in viewing consciousness raising as
a wider construct was not shared by all feminists, but
the emphasis that everyday lives of women should be up

(26:28):
for discussion definitely was. New York Radical Women member Carol
Hannish popularized the phrase the personal is political in the
nineteen sixty nine essay, That is to say that women
speaking about their problems in marriage and access to healthcare,
in labor issues in appearance was important and emphasizing in
these groups that it was counterproductive to say that not

(26:51):
living up to this expected image was a personal instead
of a systemic failure. Sidebar, Hannish was just very cool
in general. He was one of four radical feminists who
hung a women's liberation banner over the balcony at a
Miss America pageant in ninety eight. Good stuff. So the
Kathy character is at first resistant towards consciousness raising because

(27:13):
of it's in her perspective, unwillingness to accept gradual change.
While she is open and even wants to feel better
about her station in life, she isn't a full women's
liber in the sense that she wants romantic love with
a man and has a tendency to not assert herself
in the relationships she cares about, as well as in
the workplace. The example of her screaming at a consciousness

(27:37):
raising session when the leader suggests that men should be
removed from women's lives altogether is a perfect example of this,
and Kathy guys White has a vested interest in exploring
how men reacted to the women's liberation movement taking off
through characters like irving Mr. Pinkley and the Parade of
Losers that Kathy dates and rejects throughout the nineteen seventies.

(27:58):
Also referenced in these strips is the then new term miss,
brought into the mainstream by feminist Sheila Michaels and popularize
further by Glorious Dynham's magazine of the same name. The
whole idea behind it is that women in the workplace
and in general shouldn't be pressured to disclose their marital
status when introducing themselves, and Cathy is on board with this.

(28:19):
When the Kathy character asks to be called ms in
the late seventies, a male employee comments this Mrs Mss
or miss miss oh you're single, then no, I'm miss
women invented miss, So you wouldn't be able to label
us as single or married. Well that may be, but
the only woman I see you actually use mss are single. Miss. Miss.

(28:42):
You don't know that I'm a miss? Yes, I do.
If you were married, you wouldn't worry so much about
being labeled single. This is what I think Kathy strips
do really well. Take this step forward for the feminist movement,
like a simple demand to not be defined by marital status,
and reflects how the institutions that resist these changes reacted,

(29:03):
usually in a way that makes our heroine feel less than.
This is also reflected in Cathy's relationship with Irving, a
man who is clearly uncomfortable with the changing role of
women in the world, and unlike some popular criticism would
lead you to believe, Irving's behavior was criticized within the strip,
although some took rateful issue with the Kathy character herself

(29:23):
absorbing a lot of toxic and abusive qualities stemming from
his own insecurities, and people were rightfully critical of the
fact that she married him for some reason. I digress.
Here is a late nineteen seventies strip with Irving and Kathy.
You want me around until you read some women's article,
and then all you care about is your career. Then

(29:44):
you get disillusioned by your career and you search for
some big romance to give meaning to your life. You
do yo yo's. You beg me to come back. I
come back, I threaten your space, you throw me out.
You don't even know what you want. Kathy at last,
a man who really understands me. Something that's always really

(30:04):
fun is seeing Irving's character get torn to shreds whenever
he comes into contact with Andrea, who thinks that he
is not good enough for Kathy, all the way up
until the two marry in two thousand five. Here's a
seventies era interaction with the two of them, with Cathy
sitting silently beside Irving. Throughout history, women have been suppressed, repressed,

(30:25):
and oppressed. Irving, We've had miserable jobs, hideous pay, humiliating benefits,
and not one shred of respect as close to equal
human beings. What possible injustice is? Do you think men
have suffered that even come close? We never learned to cry.
You never had anything to cry about. While the Equal

(30:46):
Rights Amendment ultimately failed. The nineteen seventies proved to be
a very productive time for American feminists. According to Fluty,
millions more women entered the workplace, the wage gap closed
to about seventy for upwardly mobile white women in let's
be clear, access to birth control increased. Title nine pass
which welcomed women into high school and collegiate sports. The

(31:07):
Equal Credit Opportunity Act of nineteen seventy four was passed,
which banned discrimination in access to credit on the basis
of gender, marital status, race, religion, national origin, and age.
There was, of course, row View eight, the ninety three
Supreme Court decision that finally four now gave people with
uterus as the right to get an abortion for up

(31:29):
to three months. This movement absolutely lacked in intersectionality and
solidarity with women of color and with queer women, and
the Cathy character benefits from much of the progress of
this time. As a middle class white woman, she is
able to eventually buy her own home. As a single woman,
she ascends in the workplace. She struggles and fails to

(31:52):
get equal pay, but at least isn't legally barred from
pursuing it technically, and that is how the comic plays
out in the seventies, but by the end of the
nineteen seventies, the second wave feminist movement was considered to
have ended. And it's when we get into Kathy's strips
from the nineteen eighties that I think the strip really
hits its stride. While Kathy comics were never designed to

(32:13):
communicate or promote radical feminism, the semi autobiographical format was
well equipped to comment on the backlash to second wave
feminism that took place throughout the nineteen eighties. As a
general rule, Kathy was a reactor to trends, not a
creator of trends, sort of an ancestor to the hashtag
relatable content that haunts a million abandoned Instagram pages today.

(32:37):
In the nineteen eighties, as Reagan came into power, the
vast majority of American women saw the winds of the
nineteen seventies, and those who had advocated for them treated punitively.
Here's how Susan Faludi describes the concept of backlash in
a forward to a new edition of her book. The
backlash against Women's rights works in much the same way.

(33:00):
Its rhetoric charges feminists with all the crimes it perpetrates.
The backlash line blames the women's movement for the feminization
of poverty, while the backlash is own instigators in Washington
pushed through the budget cutch that helped impoverish millions of women,
thought pay equity proposals and undermine equal opportunity laws. The
backlash line claims the women's movement cares nothing for children's rights,

(33:23):
while its own representatives in the capital and state legislatures
have blocked one bill after another to improve childcare, slashed
billions of dollars in federal aid for children, and relax
state licensing standards for daycare centers. The backlash line accuses
of the women's movement of creating a generation of unhappy,
single and childless women, but its purveyors in the media

(33:45):
are the ones guilty of making single and childless women
feel like circus fruits. To blame feminism for women's blesser
lives is to miss entirely the point of feminism, which
is to win women a wide range of experience. Feminism
remains a pretty simple concept, despite repeated and enormously effective
efforts to dress it up in grease paint and turn

(34:07):
its proponents into gargoyles. Oh. This backlash of the nineteen
eighties manifested both in large, systemic and small, innocuous, everyday ways.
For as close as the Second Feminist had seemed to
passing the Equal Rights Amendment just years earlier, there was
significant pushback from the evangelical right and from former allies

(34:28):
of the feminist movement throughout the decade. Cathy's strips focus
on the more innocuous but still clear backlash, partially as
a privilege of her race and class, and personally because
nothing too depressing was really tolerated in the funny pages
at that time. One of the things she addresses is
a severe uptick and sexual harassment in the nineteen eighties workplace,

(34:49):
as demonstrated by Cathy's boss, Mr. Pinkley, harassing and pressuring
her to let him into her home. In two, Cathy,
being way cooler than anyone ever, gave her credit for
chi him in the face. He is not punished for this,
but Charlene and Cathy then begin a whisper network in
the workplace to protect others from it happening to them.
In the first episode, we touched on Andrea's reaction in

(35:11):
trying to motivate Cathy to advocate for herself in the aftermath.
Here's the slice of that strip. All right, then, what
are you going to do about Mr Pinkley. I'll show him.
I'll quit my job. That wrong, wrong, wrong. The hopelessness
of this situation is very Eighties Women who pursued justice

(35:34):
after being harassed at work were often met with well,
no job and further harassment. To this end, Andrea takes
center stage in the comic strips commentary on the struggle
of working mothers, specifically with maternity leave. Andrea began as
almost a parody of nineteen seventies women's livers, originally vowing
to focus on her career and ignore dating in children,

(35:56):
but she has a change of heart in the nineteen eighties.
She gets married and has her first child, Zenith. By
the end of the decade, the comic basic clear that
this isn't a betrayal of her values. Andrea's personality and
tireless advocacy for women continues, both in the way that
she ensures her marriage to husband Luke remains an equitable
one and with her attempts to retain her power in

(36:18):
the workplace while raising her daughter. After giving birth to Zenith.
Andrea returns to work to confirm her maternity leave, only
to discover there is no maternity leave. Here's a strip
from with Andrea talking to the secretary at her work.
What do I fill out to begin my maternity leave?
We have no maternity leave here? What no leave, no pay,

(36:42):
no job? When you come back, I think I'm going
to be sick. Better say it. You only have three
days of paid sick time coming. Andrea then goes to

(37:06):
her boss to confirm that she was never guaranteed maternity
leave and it's true. Personnel confirms that she can either quit,
be fired, go broke, hiring childcare, or collapse from exhaustion
doing it herself. She takes some time off without pay
and returns to work again, asking to build back up
to her normal workload while keeping Zenith at work to

(37:27):
avoid expensive childcare she can't afford. But this time she's
told her job has been given away altogether. In this trip,
she's holding baby Zenith in her arms, and as someone
trying to raise a young feminist herself, she's furious. Here
she is talking to the same secretary, How could you
give my job away? Companies aren't required to hold jobs

(37:49):
for women who take time off to have babies. Andrea, well,
that's ridiculous of the whole labor forces woman and of
us will have children. This is six. Let's just say
this company believes in old fashioned values. What they found
someone who would take your job for a nineteen fifty salary.

(38:11):
Andrea is using real statistics from six here. And she
goes to the matt fighting for parental leave in her workplace,
but ultimately loses in spite of the millions of mothers
in this same era that we're facing the same issue.
She tries to raise en in a gender neutral environment,
but she fails at this too. The toys of this
time are extremely binary, and she ends up giving up

(38:32):
due to lack of options and energy. Is that an
inspiring or motivational storyline. No, it's very bleak. And Andrea
goes on to work as a tempt for six fifty
an hour. But the thing is this was reflective of
a very real possibility for working women of this time.
Andrea comes into play again when campaigning from Michael Dukakis

(38:54):
in his presidential bid against George Bush, Sr. Enlisting Kathy
in the efforts as well. As I mentioned in episode one,
including an overt political endorsement, got the Kathy strip dropped
from some papers and moved to the editorial pages by
other papers. But Kathy guys White and her characters held
firm as fluty notes in Backlash, du Caccus with later

(39:16):
pretty severely backpedal on his promise to working women in
pearance by the end of his bid and a failed
attempt to gain wider support, and so a decade after
Andrea was dutifully raising consciousness in her community, she was
a married mother who had been all but banished from
the successful career she'd spent a decade building, and she
was understandably piste off about it. Unfortunately, she starts to

(39:37):
fade from the comics as the years go on, but
the storylines involving Andrea in the seventies and eighties are
truly some of my favorites. A lot of Kathy and
Andrea's friendship is built around the cost of cards. That is,
the woman who has it all, someone who is a
career woman, a domestic goddess, and a doting mother, all
without breaking a sweat. As the comic goes on, Guy's

(39:58):
Whites commentary is clear not only is this an unrealistic
expectation for anyone, but the powers that be in the workplace, government,
and often a woman's own home were sometimes actively working
against this being a possibility, and so in the nineteen
eighties we see a lot of Cappy feeling bad about
herself when asked by pop culture to compare herself to

(40:19):
other women. To put that in context, a huge component
of backlash against social causes is an increased focus on
consumerism and self improvement through things like observing fashion trends,
investing in self help books, and joining health clubs and
gyms versus collectively organizing helping run, listen to world, Get

(40:41):
you showing the world what you can do. Get in
shape her you love feeling. Get it in shape. It's
so feeling and run. Let's see what ju the wait
if you work out? Twisted to All comes at formatons
It's I'll be doing a whole episode on Kathy Guys

(41:04):
Whites commentary on food, fashion, and beauty later in this series.
But even outside of the advertising blitz that defined and
distracted so many in the nineties, it's interesting to watch
the Kathy character constantly feel that she isn't living up
to the standards that she's supposed to, standards that are
basically impossible to achieve. Here's a strip from the early eighties,

(41:25):
Kathy sitting on her armchair at home watching a TV
show that says this, Welcome to the Women's Hour, and
now here's your host, Mr Bob Black. Hello, we're talking
to Margie Miller, married, mother of two, founder and president
of a small manufacturing empire, and author of two best
selling novels and three plays. Margie at age nine, and

(41:46):
with all this going on, how in the world do
you have time to be on our show today? Margie says, Oh,
it's nothing, Bob. The little ones are at their Greek
literature workshop and the opera I have a small pardon
doesn't begin until seven o'clock. He replies, well, must have
a lot of help at home. As the show continues,
Kathy begins to sink down in her chair, Margie says, actually,

(42:07):
I find a well organized house rends itself. Of course,
it has to be a bit cluttered because of the
addition I'm building this week. The host says, my, my,
you don't do anything the traditional way, do you. Kathy
grabs her TV in anxiety. Margie says no, not unless
you count the two fifty sweater sets nit each year
for needy causes. The host says, Margie, thank you so

(42:30):
much for being with us today. And the last panel,
Kathy is sobbing in front of her TV as the
host says, it's women like you who are helping women
all over the world feel better about themselves. I love it.
This came from a very personal place for guys White,
who wrote on this, saying in Syrie, we all say

(42:51):
we've rejected the notion of being superwoman. In practice, I
don't know anyone who isn't still trying. Kathy, Guys White,
was you meekly suited to comment on this time? Here?
She is to the Detroit Free Press when asked about
her works views on feminism, Kathy puts feminism in a
light that's more acceptable to many women than the hardline

(43:13):
feminism that turns some women off. It's true Kathy is vulnerable.
She doesn't win all the time. She's always trying to
improve her life, and she often falls short of her goals.
Some may say that's a bad way to portray the
new woman. Well, I say it's realistic. I know no

(43:34):
woman who has it totally together, and I think that's okay.
I think you can be a feminist and still balance
your checkbook by changing banks every six months or so.
I think you can still be a feminist and eat
frozen donuts right out of the freezer and still say
yes when you mean no, or no when you mean yes.

(43:55):
My goal is to keep Kathy honest and close to
real life. But declaring yourself a feminist was not necessarily
a very cool thing to do in the eighties. It's
no secret that women are not a monolith, and many
have upheld their own oppression for power, profit, or just
fun over the years. Phillish Laughley emerged as the big

(44:17):
bat of the feminist movement in the nineteen seventies and
successfully campaigned against the Equal Rights Amendment so hard that
Kate Blanchett played her on a TV show and Women
Have No Rights Awesome. The eighties uplifted many women, mostly white,
who denounced the feminist gains of the seventies while visibly
benefiting from those same gains. That is to say, the

(44:38):
reason that many of these women, including Phillis Shlaughley, were
able to become such prominent anti feminists was because they
had child care and support to focus on their careers.
You know things feminists fought for. So while feminism wasn't
trendy in the nineteen eighties, to say the least, that
doesn't mean that feminists weren't doing an important work during

(45:01):
this time. In Bell Hooks published From Margin to Center,
which included a strong critique of the feminine mystique, saying
that it was solely concerned with the interests of upwardly
mobile white women. Hooks wrote this Free Dan's famous phrase,
the problem that has no name, often quoted to describe
the condition of women in the society, actually refers to

(45:22):
the plight of a select group of college educated, middle
and upper class married white women, housewives, wood with leisure,
with the home, with children, buying products when and more
out of life. Free Dance concludes her first chapter by stating,
but we can no longer ignore that voice within women
that says I want something more than my husband and

(45:45):
my children and my home. That more she defines as careers.
She did not discuss who would be called in to
take care of the children and maintain the home if
more women like herself were freed from their house labor
and given equal access with white men to the professions.
She did not ask of the needs of women without men,

(46:06):
without children, without alblems. She ignored the existence of all
non white women and poor white women. She did not
tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid,
a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or prostitute than
to be a leisure class housewife. The closest Kathy's trips
come to addressing these concerns are through Charlene. Charlene is

(46:29):
Cathy's best friend at work and eventually her maid of honor,
and was a stand in for a woman who was
relegated to jobs that many feminists referred to as pink
collar secretarial jobs, grossly underpaid and undervalued in spite of
their importance to the workplace. Charlene has a story in
the late eighties about her status as the lowest paid
employee in the Product Testing Incorporated office. She advocates for

(46:52):
herself her lack of pay, respect, and career mobility every
secretaries week, and it's a running joke in the comic
that her circumtan dance never changes. Even Cathy dismisses her
concerns in a very upper management I pretend I do
not see it kind of way. Here's a strip. When
I started here at ten thousand dollars a year, they

(47:12):
got me a three thousand dollar typewriter to type on.
The yearly could only give me a two hundred dollar raise,
they bought a two hundred thousand dollar phone system for
me to operate. The year I got e three hundred
dollar raise, they bought an eleven thousand dollar copy or
a four thousand dollar fax machine, and a one million,
five hundred thousand dollar computer system for me to use.

(47:36):
Why do I get the feeling I'd be more valuable
to this company if I came with a plug. Kathy
guys White is again addressing a very real nineteen eighties
trend here. While those who wanted feminist to shut up
about workplace harassment and the pay gap cited figures indicating
that women's presence in the workplace had increased, they tended
to not get specific about where they were in the workplace.

(47:58):
And it's not surprising why, but eighteen eighty six, a
higher rate of working women were receiving poverty wages than
in nineteen seventy three. In areas like the secretarial pool
were overwhelmed with women, and historically, gender segregation by profession
means that marginalized genders are making much less money for
equal work. Charlene remained the secretary throughout the comic and

(48:20):
is extremely good at her job, but never treated fairly,
and by the end of the Backlash eighties, Kathy's strips
were often focused around existing in the wreckage of the
feminist backlash and the dissonance that it created in women's lives.
Here's a strip with Kathy and Charlene from that hits
on this theme exactly. I'm going to read the captions.

(48:42):
While their friends got engaged, they got promoted. While their
friends took Lama's class and made dinner, they took meetings
and did lunch. Some call them the lost generation of women.
Others say their time has just now come after years
of devoting themselves to developing careers. The over thirties that
emerges this march like the first flowers of spring, brave, confident,

(49:04):
proud and ready for love. And then we see Charlene
and Cathy. Their outfits are a lot of They're holding
diet cookies. Cathy's wearing a shade shirt that says, I
heart lean cuisine. They're just decked out in eighties consumerism.
The comic concludes the debutante class of By the beginning
of the nineties, George Bush Senior was president, the third

(49:27):
wave of feminism was on the horizon, and Kathy guys
White used Andrea's waspy helicopter parenting to poke some fun
at how many upper class white feminists had taken to
raising their kids. Most feel the third wave of feminism
began around when Anita Hill spoke to an all white
Supreme Court about being harassed by Judge Clarence Thomas. Guyswhite

(49:49):
was extremely interested in commenting on how sexual harassment affected
the workplace, interestingly, not how it affected the women in
the workplace, who are all well aware that the happened
all the time, but she focuses instead on the men's
reaction to realizing that there could be consequences for their behavior.
You might remember that Cathy had been sexually assaulted by

(50:10):
her boss, Mr. Pinkley in her own house in two
when he forced a kiss on her, she punched his
lights out, But the Mr. Pinkley character remained this lovable
misogynist boss in the workplace throughout the comic. And Mr
Pinkley and Cathy's other male co workers could not handle
the fall out of the Anita Hill hearing. Here's a

(50:31):
strip from as you know, this office has always prided
itself on its progressive attitude toward women. While most companies
rushed into discussions about sexual harassment right after the Thomas
Hill incident, I felt we all needed a few weeks
for personal reflection. By waiting until today, I believe I've

(50:52):
once again demonstrated my profound sensitivity to the feelings of
the women in our workplace. And according to my wall calendar,
the majority of you are now safely past your p
MS days. Jeez. Later in this storyline, Pinkley uses what
I am assuming his company money to bring the men

(51:13):
at the company on a retreat to quote unquote reclaim
their manhood. By the time it's over, the men have
learned nothing, but they have taken a free vacation with
company money. And that might sound ridiculous, but it's based
in the real life bizarro work of Robert Bly, a
poet who became the founder of the New Age Masculinist community.

(51:35):
I want to turn men into men again. He would
do this by having men pay him three hundred dollars.
The grift is strong, meet him in the middle of
nowhere in Minnesota, and would then encourage them to find
the deep masculine through wearing wild animal costumes and walking
around on all fours. This was a real thing after

(51:56):
the Anita Hill hearings. Most of what Kathy guys White
discusses about women issues are related to beauty standards, diet culture,
changing fashion trends, and the commodification of radical movements like
Riot Girls by Fast Fashion, but there are solid moments
of workplace commentary as well. In guy's White's view, much
of the financial gain that women, mostly white women, had

(52:17):
made in middle management was squandered trying to achieve an
unrealistic beauty standard that was pretty rigidly imposed in the workplace.
Here's a strip from the late nineties to that effect,
from a collection called I Am Woman, Hear Me Snore.
In it, Kathy is attempting to write off these expenses
on her taxes any deductions this year for the extra

(52:38):
expenses women incur trying to dress appropriately for the twenty
different images were supposed to maintain any write offs for
the unpaid time women suspend, creating relationships, without which there'd
be no family values, because there'd be no families, any
allowances whatsoever. For the fact that our nation would screech
to a halt of it weren't for the underpaid, overworked
women cheerfully waiting through the mark. Forget Uncle Sam, what

(53:01):
this country needs is an aunt Samantha. Kathy would remain
in print for the remainder of the third wave of feminism,
which ended around two thousand ten, when the comic did
and she does comment on a fair amount of things
going on. Third wave feminism was more inclusive, while still
having a strong tendency to center white women. There were
many critiques from women of color and trans women in particular.

(53:23):
As gate keeping and the feminist movement continued, the riot
girl movement took off in the nineties, with bands like
Bikini Kill, Free Kitten, and Bratt Mobile using both their
music and their determination to remain d I y to
release politicized material and communicate their ideas even further using zines.
The Riot Girl Zine created in Washington, d C. Were

(53:46):
made and distributed by punk girls, for whom MS magazine
had long become stale. For Kathleen Hannah, the front woman
of Bikini Kill had become activated as a feminist after reading,
oddly enough, the feminine Mystique, and she became a major
advocate for including sex workers in the feminist movement as well,
which gatekeepers of the Second Wave had not been enthusiastic

(54:08):
about in the least. With this progressive surge also came
the intense commercialism of feminist ideals in the nineties. This
meant spice girls, gil Power, Disney princesses of the nineties
having discernible personality is sure, but also existing in very
rigid societal roles in heterosexual relationships still you aren't you

(54:32):
distress and a damsel? And in distress I can handle this.
These moves were often viewed as cynical, with male executives
still the primary people and beneficiaries of choices like these.
Watered Down feminist values often became more of a marketable
tagline than an actual consideration in moving things forward. This

(54:54):
still happens now. So while an attempt, I don't think
that gil how A feminism really accomplished that much, because
as it was happening, a slew of nineties tabloid stars
were dragged through the mud by the emerging twenty four
hour news cycle in a way that many are starting
to scrutinize today. I think you're Anita Hills, think you're
Tanya Harding's your Monica Lewinsky's your Amy Fisher's your Janet

(55:18):
Jackson's shout out to the year wrong About podcast You
probably listen already. Women of the second and third waves
of feminism were also very often at odds. Many Second
waivers felt that third wave feminists, who were the first
generation to grow up with the benefits that the movement
had made, did not appreciate the work and sacrifice that

(55:39):
the women of the sixties and seventies had made, and
third wave feminists wanted to move in a new direction,
rejecting the extent of gate keeping and lack of inclusivity
of liberal white feminist figureheads from the second wave. Writer
Rebecca Walker explains this conflict from a unique standpoint. Her
mother is author Alice Walker, who wrote The Color Purple,

(56:00):
and her godmother is Gloria Steinham. Walker says this there
is a definite gap among feminists who consider themselves to
be second wave and those who would label themselves as
third wave. Although the age criteria for second wave feminists
and third wave feminists as Murky. Younger feminists definitely have
a hard time proving themselves worthy as feminist scholars and activists.

(56:23):
And you know who else commented on this rift year
girl Kathy. Kathy's interactions with younger women is very interesting
to me, in part because they're pulled from a semi
autobiographical place. Kathy guys by It's daughter was growing up
in the third wave of feminism, and the Kathy character's
interaction with third wave women are very telling. Here's a
strip from where the Kathy character talks with a female

(56:46):
friend of her ten years younger Hattie boyfriend Alex. Of course,
it's women my age who really paved the way for
women your age, Shawnah, it must be incredible for you
to face a world with so many options, no kidding.
Now we women can use our college degrees to be
underpaid in one hundred different professions. Now we can work

(57:06):
and spend all the money on daycare, or not work
and be homeless. Now women can demand more for ourselves
and go bankrupt immediately, or charge it all and be
slowly strangled by eighteen interest. Alex says, how's it going
in there? Kathy, I've just been soaked by the fountain
of you. Another issue Cathy addressed was the anxiety around

(57:28):
fertility and age, yet another issue that was frequently misrepresented
in the media in order to viewed cynically discourage people
with uteruses for remaining in the workplace for too long
or aiming their goals too high for fear of the
almighty biological clock. Even in the comics Last Days After
Kathy gets married in two thousand five, another comment on

(57:49):
boomer women who delayed marriage and children to help develop
their careers and themselves, Kathy guys White explored the frustrations
and pressures that came with aging. Long after Andrea and
her children have disappeared from the comic, after Charlene has
gotten married and had two children, Kathy continues to pursue
the idea of being an optimized woman, and it's just

(58:09):
as impossible as it ever was. Third wave feminism sought
to address a lot issues like rape and domestic violence,
the fight to preserve reproductive rights. When conservative after conservative
tried to remove them and included race, class, and trans
rights in a more meaningful way in their platform, they
ultimately lacked a clear goal. I would argue that one

(58:31):
of the greatest accomplishments of third wave feminism was moving
organizational efforts across mediums. In the nineties, Riot Girls pioneered zines,
and by the two dozen tens the movement had been
brought online. Many say fourth wave feminism is what's happening
right now. I kind of reject the whole wave thing anyhow,
but it's a clean way to organize a podcast. Here's

(58:54):
my question. Why have feminists not embraced or even engaged
with Kathy at any point? It's very possible that there's
just a million bigger fish to fry, but different areas
of different movements have found the time and energy to
rally around other fictional women of different movements. Think you're
Mary Tyler, Moore's your Joe March is your Lisa Simpson's.

(59:16):
Come on, Stacy, have waited my whole life to hear
you speak. Don't you have anything relevant to say? Don't
ask me, I'm just a girl. In on Hating Kathy
essay in the Comics journal writer Juliette Cohn takes a guess,
but one of the feminists, why is there no defense
from them? How has Kathy managed to fail them so utterly.

(59:41):
She is, as they state, not a role model, and
though the need for female role models is real, so
too is the use of this argument towards patriarchal aims.
But beyond this, there is a certain reproach in the
tones of Cathy's female critics of frustration. Why couldn't you
do better? How could you fail so visibly? It is

(01:00:02):
an anger at her imperfection that reveals an implicit understanding
that Kathy's circumstances are not fair, that her stumbling weighs
more than a man's. It is a criticism born from
fear of censure. What might Cathy's weakness bring upon us?
Calm continues later in the same essay, womanhood is mundane,
is what it comes down to, and Kathy operates squarely

(01:00:25):
within what we understand womanhood to be. Women's work is diapers, typing, cooking,
and data entry. Kathy dwarfed by stacks of anonymous paperwork,
celebrated for her diligence but never innovation. Woman's play is frivolous, superficial, distracting,
and materialistic. Kathy enjoying a chick flick, acute stiletto, and

(01:00:46):
evening in with a friend and some ice cream. Women's
sorrow is only poetic if it can become a symbol
that means something to a man. Cathy cries most regularly
over her inability to become that symbol. Of frustrations at work,
including an episode of sexual harassment from her boss, could
never be considered powerful in the manner of the man

(01:01:07):
in the gray flannel suit or death of a salesman.
Her play is goofy, and the strip itself is, of
course an artifact of women's play. Her sorrow is to
be mocked. No one remarks, going on a decade since
the strips end, about the expressiveness of Guys White's line.
No one discusses the artfulness of the interplay between Cathy,

(01:01:28):
largely ambivalent to feminism with a capital F, and her
more openly political friend Andrea. The consciousness of this choice,
as Guys White once remarked, embodying the position of women.
Quote launched into adulthood with a foot in both worlds,
and quote will not be lauded. I really like watching
characters funk up and adjust and grow over time, even

(01:01:49):
if they don't grow as quickly as people would like.
And again, Kathy is commenting pretty much exclusively on feminism's
traditional beneficiaries. That's important to note, and I think it
made her work a kind of safe choice to feature
in the funny pages at first. The absence of black, brown,
queer Asian Native women from the pages of the newspapers

(01:02:10):
during this era is absolutely a failure, and I believe
primarily an editorial and systemic one. So no, Kathy is
not an ambassador of perfect feminism and certainly does not
speak for all women, and she never claimed to by Guys.
By its own admission, the Kathy character was created as
comfort food for those who felt slower to apply the

(01:02:31):
tenets of feminism to their daily lives, who were making
an active effort to unlearned behaviors and instincts they've grown
up with but maybe weren't quite there yet. If anything,
I think the Kathy character reflects some of the gains
made by American feminists between the seventies and the two thousand's,
as well as the frustrating stop and start nature of

(01:02:51):
progress and the exclusionary measures taken. When ending the comic
in two thousand ten, Kathy guys White said this, I
am not stopping the strip because I think anything has
been resolved. When I see my daughter and her generation,
I see that a lot of the games between men
and women fixation on fashion. I'll die if my hair

(01:03:11):
doesn't look right. And I really thought we could have
lost that in the last thirty years, but I guess
we haven't. She continues a bit later. I feel like
a lot of the time my strip made sort of
political comments about the state of women, their expectations, the
state of women in the office, being harassed, being held back,

(01:03:31):
being utterly confused by the mixed messages we get from
everything from what size to be, how to feel about ourselves,
how to look to me. That's all sort of political.
A lot of what I wrote about was the woman's
place in the world and the pressure were under to
be a certain way, to think certain things, to have

(01:03:51):
or not have certain opportunities. And that's where Kathy and
American feminism stands. Her work does not represent the experience
of all American women, because American women are not a monolith.
There are a lot of perspectives that we don't see
in her work. What we do see is how an
average woman received the gains and stepped back around feminism.

(01:04:13):
Whether you agree with her takes or not. I'm going
to close this episode with some words from Roxanne Gay
and her essay collection Bad Feminist. Gay says this, feminisms
failings do not mean we should eschew feminism entirely. People
do terrible things all the time, but we don't regularly
disown our humanity. We disavow the terrible things. We should

(01:04:34):
disavow the failures of feminism without disavowing its many successes
and how far we have come. American feminism has been
fractured and flawed as hell from the jump, and understanding
that history feels important in order to move forward, though
a small one. I think Cathy Strips are a part
of that, and as the only woman in the Funny
Pages at the beginning of her career, those contributions are significant.

(01:04:58):
And speaking of those fun pages, what was going on there?
Next week we take a look at the women who
came before Kathy in this medium, at the men she
was sharing the pages of, and how newspaper comics grew
and changed during her thirty four year tenure. There will
be boondocks, there will be Dilbert's, and with deepest regrets,

(01:05:19):
there might be even a family circus. Next week, on
ac Cast. Ac Cast is an I Heart radio production.
It is written, researched, and hosted by me Jamie Loftus,
Sophie Lichtaman is the World's Greatest producer, Isaac Taylor is
the world's greatest editor. Zoe Blade writes the world's greatest music,
and Brandon Dickard wrote the world greatest theme song for

(01:05:43):
this show. In today's episode, you heard the vocal talent
of Jackie, Michelle Johnson as Kathy, Melissa Lozada Oliva as Andrea,
Maggie Mayfish as Charlene, Miles Gray as Mr. Pinkley, and Irving,
with additional performances by the wonderful Joel Smith, Sure, Lonnie Unis,
Caitlin Dernte, Julia Claire, and Isaac Taylor. Oh Boy, see

(01:06:06):
you next week. M M M