Friends Describe Feminist Icon Bella Abzug as Violent, Aggressive
“‘I couldn’t stand the screaming,’ historian Amy Swerdlow remembers about Bella Abzug. ‘She was just so aggressive — assertive doesn’t do it — aggressive and carrying on.’ That from Gloria Steinem. Journalist Doug Ireland recalls ‘those volcanic eruptions of Abzugian temper.’ ‘She got so angry that she punched me,’ colleague Ronnie Eldridge reports…This is how the feminist congresswoman’s friends, the ones who stayed loyal to her all her life, remember her….
“She served, flamboyantly, for three terms, focused mainly on women’s issues and world peace. (Although how you fight for peace while punching and yelling remains an interesting question)…Bella Abzug screamed and yelled and hit people. She was appalled when both her daughters grew up to be lesbians.”
In the book review below, feminist Carolyn See reviews a biography of late feminist icon Bella Abzug. Turns out that Abzug had something of a violent streak. Imagine that.
Woman’s Work
By Carolyn See,
Washington Post
December 7, 2007
BELLA ABZUG
An Oral History
By Suzanne Braun Levine and Mary Thom
Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 320 pp. $25
“I couldn’t stand the screaming,” historian Amy Swerdlow remembers about Bella Abzug. “She was just so aggressive — assertive doesn’t do it — aggressive and carrying on.” That from Gloria Steinem. Journalist Doug Ireland recalls “those volcanic eruptions of Abzugian temper.” “She got so angry that she punched me,” colleague Ronnie Eldridge reports, “on Fifth Avenue in front of De Pina’s. That was the only time she ever really hit me.” This is how the feminist congresswoman’s friends, the ones who stayed loyal to her all her life, remember her.
Abzug was born in the Bronx of Russian Jewish immigrants who told Bella and her sister they could do anything they wanted when they grew up, and Bella took this seriously. She raised money for the Zionist state-to-be when she was just a little kid, trolling the subways with a Mason jar. When her father died, she went to the synagogue every day for a year to sing kaddish, the Hebrew prayer for the dead. Except that only guys are supposed to do that, and she was a girl, and only 12. She went on to Hunter College, where she excelled, and then to Columbia Law School — one of the first women to be admitted there, and she was Jewish to boot.
From the very beginning of her adult life, she had trouble working for anybody and soon set up her own office. She experienced insults about her appearance (she was chunky, and put on more weight as she got older), about her abrasive voice and her abusive personality, but it seemed to roll right off her most of the time. “I’m Bella’s oldest friend,” Mim Kelber, her speechwriter, remembers. “She liked herself too much, but I think you need that. She was very self-confident.” Except that later on, when she was a successful member of the House of Representatives, she broke down in tears at a political “roast,” when a man dressed up like her with a fat, padded fanny, and another man, impersonating her long-suffering husband, came out in a frilly apron.
She began her career working as a lawyer for progressive causes that often were doomed to fail. She represented a black man who was accused of raping a white woman in Mississippi. (He said they were having a consensual affair.) The jury deliberated for a full 2 1/2 minutes and, of course, he was eventually executed. After a few disheartening events like this, Abzug got a clue. She wanted to change the world and thought she could. She ran for the House from a section of Manhattan. She served, flamboyantly, for three terms, focused mainly on women’s issues and world peace. (Although how you fight for peace while punching and yelling remains an interesting question.) Then she decided — despite good advice — to run for the Democratic senatorial nomination against Daniel Patrick Moynihan. She made some wiseass, ill-considered remarks and lost the primary to him. She also lost a mayoral primary election and then another House election. It looked like a disastrous losing streak, but maybe it wasn’t. She just kept going higher and wider, operating as a celebrity-feminist-organizer, always sporting her trademark hat, traveling all over the world addressing women’s conventions, addressing the United Nations. She was ubiquitous.
It’s become a tiresome platitude now that women of a certain age repeat: Their daughters and their granddaughters have not the faintest notion of what it was like before the feminist movement began in the early ’60s — how women couldn’t get credit to buy anything, couldn’t teach at colleges or universities, couldn’t get abortions unless they had the money to leave the country or the courage to put their lives in the hands of back-street butchers. (And please, no e-mails on this. I’m against abortion on principle, but I’m not a woman of childbearing years.) Young girls in those days were advised repeatedly in women’s magazines to become “good listeners,” i.e., to keep their mouths shut and, of course, their legs crossed. But if they kept them crossed too determinedly, then they were labeled as “man haters,” and that was bad, too. (more…)
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Stumble It!
January 16th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
The long-overdue work of deconstructing feminism apparently has begun.
Non-feminists for years have been villified and ignored.
Well, girls it ’s about time that the truth about “Red Betty”, Gloria and the rest of the feminist gang was dragged out into the glaring light of rationality and truth.
January 16th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
The andecdote to the on-going cultural influence and damage to society from Bella AssBug and her younger recruits is hper-masculist insanity.
hehehehehehehehehe
HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
January 16th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Adolph Hitler still has apologists who point out his small faults, like ranting and slapping people. He got the trains running and has autobahns built.
Despite her obvious failings and stupidity, women still fell under the Abzug spell and followed her like sheep, even it seems, when she was violent to them. Now, what does this tell us about feminists?
January 17th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Shocking!!! Who would’ve guessed???
January 17th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
MRAs have something to learn from feminists like Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan. Sure they were disgusting harridans, but they were effective disgusting harridans.
The gentlemanly approach used by people like Glenn Sacks is admirable and effective to some degree but, in my opinion, the MRM needs some individuals with dark charisma that will get in the face of the enemies of true equality and not shut up until they get what they want.
January 17th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
If a man tried this he would be perceived as dangerously misogynistic. The “harridan” approach works for women because women are perceived as being inherently less responsible for their behaviors than are men. Try this tactic in family court and see how far you get.
This may seem like cognizant dissonance since men in this society are held in relatively low esteem, but men need to come to terms with the fact that — for good or ill — we are held to a higher level of social responsibility than the “weaker” sex. This is universal across all human cultures and no amount of politicking will change the basic dynamic.
January 19th, 2008 at 9:52 am
True Mike. I would not apply the in-your-face approach in Family Court. It’s an unfair fight before a man walks through the door. Men have no choice but to pick their fights wisely.
Take a look at our rap culture. Many young males-white & black-have taken on a rap group cultural mentality. Women in their eyes are “hoes” and “biatches”. On an on. Either “leaders” in the MRM show balls and aggressiveness or they will not lead change. Instead all these teenage boys, who become troublemakers, and some who go on to college, and elsewhere, will by default create a cultural shift that will end up “being the change”. Women in this country are well on the way to be destined for a much more violent and sexist country DIRECTED AT THEM. Boys and men are pissed. Big time.
America is politically divided. This cuts across the culture as a whole and affects values, beliefs, priorities. Both sides hold their positions strongly. Any amount of reaching out for political civility on one side will be taken as a sign of weakness on the other side. Case in point: Bush wanted to bring civility to Washington DC after the Clinton years. No Child Left Behind with Ted Kennedy, the massive drug benefit that Bush got through with the Democrats. There are other examples. You get my point. Bush showed a willingness to work with thee Democrats and where did that get him? He got no political capital from the Democrats. Instead, he has been attacked relentlessly by Democrats the entire time he has been in office. Bush also weakened his own poition in the process with his own constituents. They then abandoned him. Ronald Reagon would have gone on the attack against the Democrats.
The in-your-face approach, IMO, does not only apply to Bella AssBug and other aggressively militant (and obviously notn-feminine) feminist women but applies ESPECIALLY to the male chivalrist, manginas, and evey other male feminist enabler.
January 19th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Last point:
The Courts were created by the Founding Fathers for the purpose of acting as the pressure relief valve for conflict as well as for interpreting the laws from the legislative branch.
Today, the courts, and especially Family Court, is not a pressure relief valve for addressing conflict. It is the enforcer of tyranny and promotes conflict. The problem is broad and deep. Too broad and too deep for Congress to fix in a meaningful way. And since the courts have no mechaism for self-correction that means there is little that men can do to change a court system that discriminates against them.
Such factors produce men like Darren Mack.
There will be more like him I believe.