Ellen Willis 1941-2006

I just read the sad news that Ellen Willis has died. She was that one feminist who relished putting class, rock, and porn into her discursive ammo clip, and fired away. Now she's dead: sixtysomething, sure; Olde Left, yeah, but with great taste in skin & tunes; irrelevant, not by a long shot. It's a loss that ranks up there with Wellstone if you ask me.

Willis began her gadfly career as a rock critic and Redstocking, then settled in as the coolest pro-sex (not to mention anti-anti-porn) feminist on the block. Unfortunately she also held some... whatchacall'em... geopolitical views which were truly perverse, but those are easy to sort out from her insights on class, sexuality, culture, and political engagement. For example, here's an excerpt from her 1998 essay describing the process in America by which radical-left ideas get adopted as mainstream legislation:

American left politics generally works this way: As radical ideas gain currency beyond their original advocates, they mutate into multiple forms. Groups representing different class, racial, ethnic, political and cultural constituencies respond to the new movement with varying degrees of support or criticism and end up adapting its ideas to their own agendas. With these modifications the movement's popularity spreads, putting pressure on existing power relations; liberal reformers then mediate the process of dilution, containment and "co-optation" whereby radical ideas that won't go away are incorporated into the system through new laws, policies and court decisions. The essential dynamic here is a good cop/bad cop routine in which the liberals dismiss the radicals as impractical sectarian extremists, promote their own "responsible" proposals as an alternative and take the credit for whatever change results.

The good news is that this process does bring about significant change. The bad news is that by denying the legitimacy of radicalism it misleads people about how change takes place, rewrites history and obliterates memory. It also leaves people sadly unprepared for the inevitable backlash. Once the radicals who were a real threat to the existing order have been marginalized, the right sees its opportunity to fight back. Conservatives in their turn become the insurgent minority, winning support by appealing to the still-potent influence of the old "reality," decrying the tensions and disruptions that accompany social change and promoting their own vision of prosperity and social order. Instead of seriously contesting their ideas, liberals try to placate them and cut deals, which only incites them to push further. Desperate to avoid isolation, the liberal left keeps retreating, moving its goal post toward the center, where "ordinary people" supposedly reside; but as yesterday's center becomes today's left, the entire debate shifts to the right. And in the end, despite all their efforts to stay "relevant," the liberals are themselves hopelessly marginalized. This is the sorry situation we are in right now.

And so it remains. Goodbye Ellen: it's an emptier Left without you.