The World Split Open

by Ruth Rosen

  105. For a good overview of twenty years of antirape activism, see Nancy A. Mathews, Confronting Rape: The Feminist Anti-Rape Movement and the State (New York: Routledge, 1994).

  106. See Laura Lederer, ed., Take Back the Night: Women on Pornography (New York: William Morrow, 1980); The Aggie, March 10, 1982, 1; “UCD Hits Frat’s Actions,” Daily Enterprise, March 31, 1982, 1; “Women’s March Saga Grows Angry,” Davis Enterprise, March 11, 1982, 1; “Fraternity-Feminist Dispute Stirs Davis,” San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle, B2; Letter from Vice Chancellor Thomas Dutton to Barry Boatman, presented to the Interdisciplinary Council, March 30, 1982, Women’s Resource and Research Center Archives, University of California, Davis. I thank Joy Fergoda, librarian par excellence, for helping me find all the materials related to this case.

  107. Rennie Simson, “The Afro-American Female: the Historical Context of the Construction of Sexual Identity” in Powers of Desire, 229–36.

  108. One of the most interesting treatments of the politics of such memories is Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (New York: Basic, 1992).

  109. Interview with Professor Isabel Marcus, who worked in Buffalo, New York, for two years with a court-mandated counseling project for men who battered, Buffalo, November 1992. Also see Isabel Marcus, “Reframing ‘Domestic Violence’: Terrorism in the House,” in M. Fineman and B. Mykitiuk, eds., The Public Nature of Private Violence: The Discovery of Domestic Abuse (New York: Routledge, 1994).

  110. Some of the earliest books that helped redefine wife beating were William Ryan, Blaming the Victim (New York: Pantheon, 1971); Del Martin, Battered Wives (San Francisco: Glide Publications, 1976). For a good overview of the battered women’s movement, an extensive bibliography on battered women and battered women’s syndrome, manuals and films and case studies of shelters, see Susan Schecter, Women and Male Violence (Boston: South End Press, 1982), and the Bibliography.

  111. Susan Schecter points out in Women and Male Violence how much these feminist-inspired shelters changed when they were funded by local government. This question, whether an institution is part of a movement or simply a service, is discussed in detail in Schecter’s work, 6.

  112. Author’s phone interview with Nadine Taub, September 8, 1997.

  113. Carol Vance, ed., Exploring Female Sexuality (New York: Routledge, 1984), explores whether the sexual revolution was exploitative or emancipatory. Also see the bibliography in Nancy Wolloch, Women and the American Experience, From 1860, 2d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997), 580.

  114. See my article on sexual harassment: Ruth Rosen, “Sex, Lies, and Vulnerability.” Tikkun 7:1 (January/February 1992), 22–25.

  115. “Big Trouble in Glen Ridge,” New Directions for Women (January/February 1993): 19. For a wide range of opinion and interpretation on the O. J. Simpson trial, see Toni Morrison and Claudia Brodsky Lacour, eds., Birth of a Nation’hood (New York: Random House, 1997). There is now a huge literature on this trial. For further articles and books, see Wolloch, Women and the American Experience, 580.

  116. Kate Millett, The Prostitution Papers (New York: Avon, 1973), reprinted from first edition in 1971, published by Basic Books. The chronicle of this conference is described by Millett on pp. 17–27.

  117. Author’s interview with Alix Kates Shulman, New York, April 13, 1987.

  118. Author’s interview with Flo Kennedy, New York, April 14, 1986.

  119. See Jan Fichtel et al., “Pussy Power Putdown,” Berkeley Tribe (February 6, 1970); Bobby Goldstone, “The Politics of Pornography: The Pornography of Politics,” Off Our Backs (December 14, 1970): 10; Women’s Militia, Berkeley Chapter, “Tits ‘n’ Ass,” Berkeley Tribe (August 1970): 14–21. For a broader overview of the underground paper world, see Abe Peck, Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press (New York: Pantheon, 1984), especially 206–20. Peck is the author of the phrase “dildo journalism.” Robin Morgan, “Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape,” Going Too Far, 163–70.

  120. For informal accounts of the women’s liberation protests against the film Snuff, see Beverly LaBelle, “Snuff: The Ultimate in Woman-Hating,” and Martha Gever and Marge Hall, “Fighting Pornography,” in Lederer, Take Back the Night, 272–85; Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1988; Women’s Action Alliance, Women’s Action Almanac: A Complete Resource Guide, Jane Williamson, Diane Winston, and Wanda Wooten, eds. (New York: William Morrow, 1979), 224–27. Lederer, Take Back the Night, 23–24; Dworkin, Letters, 312–14; Marcia Womon-gold, Pornography: A License to Kill (Somerville, Mass.: New England Free Press, 1979), 9–14.

  121. See Andrea Dworkin, Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women’s Equality, and Andrea Dworkin and Catharine A. MacKinnon, Organizing Against Pornography (Minneapolis, 1988); Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987); Catharine MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), and Only Words (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).

  122. Quoted by Sheila Jeffreys in Anticlimax, 255.

  123. See Gayle Rubin et al., “Talking Sex,” Feminist Review, 11 (June 1982): 40; Ellen Willis, “Feminism, Moralism and Pornography,” in Ann Snitow et al., eds., Desire: The Politics of Sexuality (London: Virago, 1984), 85; Ann Snitow, “Retrenchment versus Transformation: The Politics of the Antipornography Movement,” in Varda Burstyn, ed., Women Against Censorship (Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre, 1985), 111.

  124. Author’s interview with Susan Brownmiller, New York, April 14, 1986.

  125. The debate over sadomasochism played a large role in the politics of sex. Some women viewed the practice as imitative of men’s violence against women. But others felt that S&M was part of the range of appropriate sexual practices. See, for example, Robin Morgan, “Politics of Sado-Masochism,” in Going Too Far, 227–41; Bat-Ami Bar, “Feminism and Sadomasochism: Self Critical Notes,” in Against Sadomasochism: A Radical Feminist Analysis, Robin Ruth Linden and Darlene Pagano, eds.

  126. See, for example, Susan Griffin, Pornography and Silence (New York: Harper & Row, 1981), and Robin Morgan, “Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape,” in Take Back the Night, 125–32, who were also very influential in linking violence to pornography. Alice Echols, in Daring to Be Bad, views the antipornography movement as part of the decline into cultural feminism. But I think it became several thousand movements, which pushed feminism even deeper within American culture. The antipornography movement was simply one of the most sexy and therefore visible parts of that splintering.

  For those whose argued against porn, see Valerie Miner, “Fantasies and Nightmares: The Red-Blooded Media,” in Jump Cut, December 1981. For information on the group FACT, created in 1984, which struggled against statutes against pornography, see “New Fact Group Battles Censorship Law,” in New Directions for Women (January/February 1985): 1; Adrienne Rich, “We Don’t Have to Come Apart over Pornography,” Off Our Backs, July 1985.

  127. See the introduction in Powers of Desire, which provides an excellent historical overview of this ambivalence and the sexual wars that resulted.

  128. In 1985 and again in 1995, I did an anonymous survey of 250 undergraduate women at the University of California, Davis. Unlike former students, they were familiar with the concept of date rape and sexual harassment. But what had changed was that their overall view of sex was that it was dangerous. AIDS, of course, contributed to this view, but it wasn’t their only reason for this perspective. APA.

  Chapter Six: Passion and Politics

  1. APA. These were later reprinted in 1975 in Redstockings, Feminist Revolution (New York: Random House, 1975). Also see Kathy Mulherin, “Consciousness Raising,” Dock of the Bay, September 23, 1969, n.p., APA. Carol Hanisch, “The Personal Is Political,” published in 1969, reprinted in Feminist Revolution, and Kathie Sarachild, “Program for Fem
inist Consciousness-Raising (1968), in Notes from the First Year, APA.

  2. See Peggy White and Starr Goode, “Women’s Liberation” and “The Small Group,” in Women: A Journal of Liberation (Fall 1969): 56–57.

  3. Author’s interview with Laura X, September 5, 1997, Berkeley, California.

  4. Author’s interview with Naomi Weisstein, self-interview for Peg Strobel, 11; author’s interview with Karen Durbin, April 18, 1986, New York City.

  5. Author’s interview with Vivian Gornick, April 6, 1987, New York City; Vivian Gornick, “The Light of Liberation Is Blinding,” in Village Voice, December 10, 1970, 21.

  6. Gornick, 22.

  7. Author’s interview with Ellen Willis.

  8. Author’s interview with Susan Griffin.

  9. Author’s interview with Carol Groneman, June 11, 1984, New York City.

  10. Author’s interview with Flo Kennedy, April 14, 1986, New York City.

  11. Author’s interview with Irene Peslikis; Charlotte Bunch, Passionate Politics, intro., 8; author’s interview with Ann Snitow. Author’s interview with Pat Cody, July 29, 1986, Berkeley, California.

  12. For two different views, see Pam Allen, “Radical Women and the Rankin Brigade,” New York; and Marilyn Webb, “Call for a Spring Conference,” Washington, D.C., both in Voices of Women’s Liberation, 1:1 (1968).

  13. Shulamith Firestone, “The Jeanette Rankin Brigade: Woman Power?” New York Radical Women, Notes from the First Year, published pamphlet, New York, June 1968, 22.

  14. Kathy Amatniek, “Funeral Oration for the Burial of Traditional Womanhood,” reprinted in Notes from the First Year, 24.

  15. Author’s interviews with Gerda Lerner, Mickey Flacks, Pat Cody, and Amy Swerdlow between 1986 and 1996, University of North Carolina, Santa Barbara, Berkeley, Wisconsin.

  16. Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 140. All quotes from Swerdlow are from this source, 139–40.

  17. Ruth Rosen, “The Day They Buried Traditional Womanhood,” in The Legacy: Vietnam in the American Imagination, Peter Shafer, ed. (Boston: Beacon, 1990), 233–62.

  18. Renee Blakkan, “New York Women ‘Ogle’ Construction Workers,” Guardian (June 20, 1970): 3. Protest Files, Herstory, UWA.

  19. “Women Disrupt CBS Annual Meeting,” Liberation News Service Release, April 22, 1979, clipping, Protest Files, UWA.

  20. “Bridal Protest—Position Paper,” San Diego Women’s Liberation Front, n.d., Protest Files, UWA; “Forum Bridal Fair Unfair,” no date, no journal citation, signed by Columbus OSU Women’s Liberation, Protest Files, UWA; “Fair Head Bristles As Women Unveil Shuck,” Berkeley Barb, February 2, 1969, 3. Clipping from Protest Files, UWA.

  21. “W.I.T.C.H. Hexes Bridal Fair,” clipping, unidentified magazine, March 15, 1969, 26–27, Protest Files, UWA.

  22. Position Paper, Bread and Roses, March 8, circa 1970, against WBCN; Berkeley Women’s Liberation against KSAN in San Francisco. Clipping “ksan: hip/pg radio,” Berkeley Tribe, March 31, 1971. Media Protest Files, UWA; “Sexist Sell,” NOW Newsletter, Indianapolis, Indiana, December 20, 1972, Protest Files, UWA; clipping, Protest Files, UWA; clipping, Berkeley Barb, December 2, 1971, Protest Files, UWA.

  23. Leaflet, “Women, We’ve Been Burned,” Rally, June 2, 1971, Women’s caucus of CPE. Protest Files, UWA.

  24. FBI WLM Files. Letter dated August 11, 1969, SL.

  25. FBI WLM Files, SL.

  26. “Women Invade KPFA for Air Time,” Daily Californian, July 24, 1970, 11, Protest Files, UWA. Among the women involved that evening were Mary Waters, Alta, Susan Griffin, and myself.

  27. “Women Challenge Media Roles,” People’s World (June 20, 1970): 8, Media Protest Files, UWA; “Charge TV Movie Industries Discriminate Against Actresses,” Enquirer, August 19, 1973, n.p., Media Protest Files, UWA.

  28. “Women, It Is Insufferable,” NARAL leaflet, March 14, 1970, Protest Files, UWA. In San Francisco, “Count Marco,” “When Sex Is Too Much to Bear,” San Francisco Chronicle, n.d., clipping, Protest Files, UWA.

  29. Mary Felstiner, professor of history at San Francisco State University, from memoir in progress.

  30. Carolyn Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman, 170, 171.

  31. Gloria Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1983), 19.

  32. Heilbrun, 229.

  33. Mary Thom, Inside Ms.: 25 Years of the Magazine and the Feminist Movement (New York: Holt, 1997), 43.

  34. Thom, 43.

  35. Ms. Letters Collection, SL. These letters are an important archive of the original letters. Most are sealed for ten years after they are written. More available for the general reader is the book, Letters to Ms.: 1972–1987, Mary Thom, ed. (New York: Holt and Company, 1987).

  36. Ms. Letters Collection, Kathleen Phillips Satz, El Cerrito, California, November 1982 issue.

  37. Thom, 79, 81, 87, 98, 200, 12, 106.

  38. These articles appear in a section called “The Liberation Takeover of Women’s Liberation,” in Feminist Revolution.

  39. Socialist and radical feminists didn’t think the magazine dealt sufficiently with class. See the section “The Liberal Takeover of Women’s Liberation” in Redstockings, Feminist Revolution. My discussion of Ms. is based on reading ten years of the magazine when first published, and then again, for this book. Also see Amy Erdman Farrell, “Self-Help and Sisterhood: The Limits to Feminist Discourse in Ms. Magazine, 1972–1989,” paper delivered at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, June 12, 1993.

  40. Thorn, 106.

  41. See Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).

  42. Author’s interview with Susan Griffin.

  43. Susan Griffin, “An Answer to a Man’s Question, ‘What Can I Do About Women’s Liberation?’” in Let Them Be Said (Berkeley: Shameless Hussy Press, 1971), APA.

  44. Barry Shapiro, 214.

  45. Maya Angelou, “Are Feminists Humorless?” Playgirl, November, 1975, 16.

  46. Naomi Weisstein, “Why We Aren’t Laughing . . . Any More,” Ms., November 1973, 49.

  47. “The New York Times, August 27, 1970”—NOW parody of New York Times. UWA and APA.

  48. Judy Syfers, “I Want a Wife,” Ms., Spring 1972, 56. Note that in 1997, Judy Brady wrote a new introduction that appeared at the top of her article (see Documents from the Women’s Liberation Movement, Special Collections, Duke University On-Line Archives): “If you read this essay in 1972 in the first issue of ‘Ms,’ you thought it was written by Judy Syfers. Wrong: It was written by Judy Brady. The difference between now and then? Mr. Syfers went off to find a traditional wife, and Ms. Brady got herself back. Meanwhile, this Instant Classic has been reprinted over 200 times in at least 10 languages.” HTTP://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/5175/wife/html. August 26, 1998.

  49. Pat Mainardi, “The Politics of Housework,” pamphlet, APA.

  50. Gloria Steinem, “If Men Could Menstruate,” Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1983).

  51. There is a trove of songs in the Schlesinger Library archives in Folder 31, in the Women’s Liberation Collection. Many of these songs were written to other tunes, such as “Bella Ciao,” or the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”; Naomi Weisstein, “Days of Celebration and Resistance; the Chicago Women’s Liberation Rock Band, 1970–73,” APA, in Feminist Memoir Project; Naomi Weisstein and Virginia Blasedell, “No More Balls and Chains,” Ms., 1972.

  52. Naomi Weisstein self-interview for Peg Strobel, 35.

  53. See, for example, Framing Feminism: Art and the Women’s Movement 1970–1985, edited and introduced by Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock (London: Pandora Press, 1987).

  54. Women: A Journal of Liberation, Fall 1970. See also Sandra Roos, “Women’s Imagery/Women’s Art,” in Gayle Kimball, Women’s Culture (New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1981), 42–60; and Judy Chi
cago in the same volume, “A Female Form of Language,” 60–72; Linda Nochlin, Women, Art and Power (New York: Harper and Row, 1988); Linda Nochlin and Ann Harris, Women Artists: 1550–1950 (Los Angeles: L.A. County Museum of Art, 1976); Moira Roth, ed., The Amazing Decade: Women and Performance Art in America 1970–80 (Los Angeles: Astro Arts, 1983).

  55. Michael Rossman, a Berkeley activist and writer, collected about four hundred posters from the women’s movement. Michael Rossman, AOUON Archive (founded in 1977), 1741 Virginia Street, Berkeley, CA 94703. Collection, Berkeley, California. Michael Rossman, “Social Serigraphy in the Bay Area: 1966–1986,” tabloid-sized brochure from exhibit at de Saisset Museum Gallery, Santa Clara University, January 17 to March 15, 1987. APA.

  56. Author’s interview with Jane Norling, November 2, 1997, Berkeley, California.

  57. Ruth Rosen, “Posters of the Women’s Movements: Imagine My Surprise,” American Studies Association, New Orleans, 1988.

  Chapter Seven: The Politics of Paranoia

  1. Jean Curtis, “When Sisterhood Turns Sour,” New York Times Magazine, May 30, 1976, 15–16. But it wasn’t until 1987 that feminists began to acknowledge and explore their competition with each other—not for men, but for fame, leadership, and prestige. Valerie Miner and Helen Longino, eds., Competition: A Feminist Taboo? (New York: The Feminist Press, 1987).

  2. There were endless flyers and position papers filled with arguments about what kinds of structures would work and which would oppress. See “Steering Committees Are Death,” by Gina and Judy, in Social Protest Collection, Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley; “The Small Group in Women’s Liberation,” by Peggy White and Starr Goode, APA, circa 1968; Sheryl Kallaway, “Organization Structures of Retaliation within Women’s Liberation,” by the Thursday Night Co-op Group, circa 1970, Berkeley, APA; “Communication Structures from Berkeley Women’s Liberation,” by the Tuesday Night Co-op Group, APA; Becca, “Berkeley Women Organize,” Dock of the Bay, September 25, 1969, 9.