DOWN WITH SOCIAL GERMAN FEMINISTS SHELTER POLITICS

The following article was originally published in June 1982 in Courage (Bleibstreustr. 48, 1000 Berlin 12, Germany). It was translated for the November 1982 issue of Off Our
Backs (1841 Columbia Rd., NW, Room 212, Washington DC 20009 USA. Subscriptions: US$11 per year) by Elisabeth Daeumer and Tricia Lootens.

Our group is part of the Shelter Initiative Bochum, which has disbanded after approximately five years of existence.

We believe that the disbanding of the Initiative is not the result of any frustrations, but the product of in-depth discussion of the relative political value of women's shelter work. Unfortunately, we have not succeeded in achieving a collective assessment by the group as a whole. The following theses and considerations have led us to the decision not to continue the Shelter Initiative.

I. Our starting point is that the unpaid labor women perform for men considerably decreases the cost [to capitalists] of reproducing the ware of labor.* It thus notably decreases the [capitalists'] costs in producing new labor, hence decreasing the market value of such labor, since women's work is not considered in the determination of this value. In addition, this division of labor allows for a relatively problemless functioning of the male labor force, since many of the conflicts created by the workplace are absorbed in the reproductive unit, the "family".

II. Social work, as reproductive work institutionalized by the state, steps in where the "family" can no longer meet the demands of capital, or where the institution of the "family" is in danger.

The historical development of social work as a female profession arises on the one hand from the need for public reproduction caused by changes in the conditions of production, and on the other hand from the sex-specific division of labor in society.

III. Work for other women has at basis a protective impulse. While in the beginning the demand for changes in the private sphere stood in the foreground as an attack on the division of roles and labor, and it fought for their removal, in the last few years there has been a noticeable trend which, while it may put the private in the foreground, no longer establishes the political connection between the private and the social levels.

IV. The struggle for women's shelters, the corresponding actions in public, and the work in the shelters themselves have certainly led to greater public awareness of the whole set of problems (Problematik), of violence against women in marriage and in similar relationships.

This, however, was not their stated goal; the goal was to develop the struggle against oppression, both qualitatively and quantitatively through starting with the most threatening form of oppression. The women's shelter movement, however, has not brought us any further in this direction!

V. In the hope of winning more women over to the ideas and goals of the women's movement, feminists tried to establish a common direct experience through projects on a social/political level.

These deliberations are based on the same conceptions as the "strategy of border groups", which assumes that those who are hit most strongly by oppression will become the driving force of social change.

With this, demands were placed on the women concerned which corresponded to neither their situation nor their needs — but rather, those of the Shelter Initiative women.

WORK CRITICIZE

VI. The attempt to win more women over to the goals and shared work of the women's movement, which came to pubUc attention primarily through women's shelters, was more likely to lead to "movement" women forgetting their own direct experience and emphasizing help for others.

This distinguishes a development in which the forces of the women's movement were expended more and more strongly for social work activities, and the original goals of the movement were scarely called to mind any more.

does not lend itself to the politicization of women. Women who have been abused and who seek out women's shelters expect to find protection and help there; this they do indeed receive. The work of recognizing commonahties, which was also intended to lead to common political action, did not succeed, because on the one hand there are women in the shelter who are helped, and on the other, women who help.

VIII. The state has an interest in integrating political (social/political) work which aims at the contradictions in society. This process of integration succeeds,
among other things, by creating financial dependences. On the one hand, this involves the financing of those who work within the shelter. This is no argument for unpaid shelter work, since the same work, performed without pay, entails essentially the same contradictions that are named in the preceding theses

work, is the independent creation of "alternative" workplaces. The linking of political work to the assurance of one's own means of existence — which is maintained even more pleasantly in projects which are self-controlled - necessarily leads to one's either allowing oneself to be corrupted (see the note on dependence on the state,
above) and reverse the political content of one's work; or to draw conclusions and to separate the following: "What are our pohtical goals, and how do we achieve them?" and "How do 1 pay my expenses?"

If we want to attack and overturn the system, we cannot work in it and with its representatives.

X. We are of the opinion that the demand for women's shelters — and thus for the creation of protective space — is a defensive approach to the problem of violence against women and is typical of female sex-role behavior.

The discussion and practice of offense behaviors would possibly have led more quickly to reflection on one's own direct experience and to the transformation of one's own sex-role behavior. True, we cannot precisely estimate what results offense behaviors would have had — but in any case we would not have been the "feminist" division of the social state.

XI. The question cannot be whether "progressive" or traditional social work is to be performed in the women's movement, but whether the movement is to perform social work — that is to say reproductive work — at all. Social work can provide no perspective for the Uberation of women, since it has always corresponded to their role and
continues to determine the "performance ability" of women in the work of maintaining relationships!

With the preceding evaluations as a starting point, we are continuing our discussion in the group and with women who have the same or similar evaluations, starting points, strategies, and perspectives, in order to develop forms of resistance which attack the roots of oppression and in order not to sink into the swamp of integrative [coopting]
reforms and stances of protest.

Bochum Women

* As we read this argument, women perform a special kind of "reproductive" work in bearing children and in creating and maintaining the support needed to reproduce the
strength and efficiency necessary for the workplace. Capitalists benefit from this: without women, they would have to find some other means of keeping men going. As
it is, the men are forced to sell their labor in the marketplace as a ware — and the buyers can conveniently ignore the work women have already put into the men's work ability when they are deciding how much the men's work is "worth". The more free "reproductive" work women do, the less the bosses have to pay for getting it done. - e.d . & t.l.

AT ISIS

Below is a transcript of part of a conversation between two ISIS women, discussing the article.

You said you had some problems with this article?
Yes, I don't agree with their premise that the purpose of women's shelters is to win women over to feminism. I think they raise some valid points about social work, but there is a role women can and should play in refuges.

I do think that refuges provide opportunities for women to make connections between the violence in their own lives and their oppression as women, and I do think more steps need to be taken in the direction of offensive action, but I'm not sure —

— What would you say is offensive action?

Well, say a group of 20 or so women stage demonstrations at the office of a man — to publicly call him a wife beater, to try and shame him —

— like they do in India today for dowry crimes. Even drawing neighbors in to participate in the demonstration!. . . But I see it as a parallel thing — we have to do both: have
shelters and do public actions. It's here I would criticise the women writing this; if no action came out of the women at the shelter, something was wrong in the shelter because it didn't play an educational role in the community.

And didn't provide a network for women who leave the shelter. Women at the shelter — being in crisis — can hardly be expected to take a leadership role in public actions.

Of course. I also disagree with what they say about state funding. There are ways to maintain autonomy while receiving state funds.

It goes back to public education. The way to maintain autonomy is to raise pubhc hell if the state tries to interfer get the state to be responsible. It is for women to be responsible with the article. The authors are so uncomfortable with women doing "social work" for one another. But I don't understand how we can be supportive of one another and not give those kinds of "services.

It's not a matter of whether to attend to women's needs, it's how. But I don't agree that feminist work is defensive. How is it defensive?

 If we're only dealing with results, not attacking causes, that — for me - is defensive. 

 To me, work in shelters is the first step toward offensive action. What bothers me is that they don't define what kind of offensive action they're talking about, what they would have liked to have seen happen.

It sounds too like they're not analysing how shelter work might be handled so it does lead to offensive action.