The politics of confrontation, however, provided fertile ground for interpretations of black power that saw black male chauvinism ferment, sprout and in some cases blossom within the party. While women who joined the BPP from the beginning were armed and taught to shoot, in the early years of the party it was often under the proviso that they were subordinate to the men. Many of the men coming into the organization (men who almost always had no previous exposure to organized politics), saw armed self-defense more as affirmation of black masculinity in the face of the dehumanizing structures of The White Man rather than affirmation of a universal black dignity that crossed gender boundaries. This is to say gender politics and anti-sexism, initially, was not a central tenant of the BPP.
It would be a mistake to view this as a problem of ‘ignorant’ rank and file members. Eldridge Cleaver, a convicted rapist who sat on the BPP central committee, was known for his extreme disregard for women in the party. He was violent towards his partner Kathleen Cleaver, allegedly threatened to murder leading party member Elaine Brown and regularly referred to female cadre as having ‘pussy power’. In her auto-biography A Taste of Power, Elaine Brown claims that Bobby Seale, co-founder and the initial chairman of the BPP, was involved in advocating the idea that women should “give it up” to revolutionary men in struggle and learn to “shoot as well as cook”. When Elaine was beaten up by underground BPP leader Steve (who replaced Bunchy Carter, after his murder) most members, including leading members like Raymond Hewitt and Huey Newton, argued that it wasn’t the party’s business and was a “personal” matter. Some even argued that because of Elaine’s assertiveness as a woman Panther she “had it coming”. https://sheisrevolutionarilysuicidal.wordpress.com/2014/12/24/shoot-as-well-as-cook-sexism-in-struggle/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
