The World Split Open

by Ruth Rosen

  3. Jo Freeman, author of “The Tyranny of Structurelessness,” first wrote this article in 1970. It appeared without permission in “It Ain’t Me, Babe” and was reprinted in The Second Wave, 2:1 (1972), 20, again with no permission. It gained even wider publicity when published in Radical Feminism.

  4. Naomi Weisstein quotes these words by Chelsea Dreher in Naomi Weisstein, “Days of Celebration and Resistance: The Chicago Women’s Liberation Rock and Roll Band, 1970–1973,” 14.

  5. Author’s interview with Meredith Tax; Meredith Tax, “The Sound of One Hand Clapping: Women’s Liberation and the Left,” Dissent (1988): 457, 461.

  6. Author’s interview with Barbara Haber.

  7. Carol Lynn Withers, “The High Cost of Being a Woman,” Village Voice, March 24, 1987, 31; author’s interview with Carol Groneman; author’s interview with Robin Morgan, April 18, 1986, New York City.

  8. Author’s interview with Lucinda Cisler.

  9. Cisler interview.

  10. Author’s interview with Marilyn Webb.

  11. Phyllis Chesler, Letters to a Young Feminist, 54.

  12. Author’s interview with Barbara Haber.

  13. Naomi Weisstein self-interview for Peg Strobel, 26; author’s interview with Naomi Weisstein.

  14. Naomi Weisstein self-interview for Peg Strobel, 37, 41.

  15. Chesler, 56; author’s interview with Ann Snitow, April 16, 1986, New York City; Chesler, 57. All of the above stories are from author’s interview with Susan Brownmiller, April 14, 1986, New York City.

  16. Chesler, 56–57.

  17. Author’s interview with Robin Morgan.

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

  19. Erica Jong, “Men Are Not the Problem,” in Fear of Fifty (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 327.

  20. Jong, Fear, 328. Note that Jong points out that both Naomi Wolf and Katie Roiphe revealed their discomfort with women as victims, and women as passive sexual recipients.

  21. Thom, Inside Ms., 76.

  22. For a view from the perspective of Ms. magazine, see Thorn, 74–79; John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997). Direct quote from New York Times, February 21, 1967.

  23. Heilbrun, Education, 290.

  24. Heilbrun, 290.

  25. Friedan, It Changed My Life, 179.

  26. Carolyn Heilbrun tells the story of this accusation in her biography of Gloria Steinem, The Education of a Woman, 284–95. All quotes, unless otherwise noted, are from this work; Heilbrun, 294.

  27. Quoted from Counterintelligence Program Memo, “Concerning Disruption of the New Left” in Brian Glick, The War at Home (Boston: South End Press, 1989), 27, 80. FBI letter, August 25, 1970, excerpted in Glick, 77.

  28. Although the FBI exacerbated this division, there is not sufficient evidence, as of yet, that they worked to create a separatist women’s movement. I would not be surprised, however, to eventually discover that evidence. Still, a women’s movement would have emerged without FBI infiltration.

  29. FBI WLM Files, SL. Also reprinted in Pogrebin, 38.

  30. Paul Cowan, Nick Eglesson, and Nat Hentoff, State Secret: Police Surveillance in America (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974).

  31. Hearings Before the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate, 94th Congress, 1st sess., volume 6, November 18–19 and October 1, 3, 10, 11, 1975 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976), 100.

  32. Glick, 27.

  33. May 23, 1968, Document Exhibit from Church Committee hearings.

  34. Memo from S.F Office to Director, FBI, May 13, 1969. Charlotte Bunch Papers, Schlesinger Library; Letty Cottin Pogrebin, “The FBI Was Watching You,” Ms., June 1977, along with all the excerpts she included in this issue, 75; FBI WLM Files, SL.

  35. S.F. Agent to Director, FBI, May 1970, WLM FBI Files, SL.

  36. S.F. Field Office to Director, February 24, 1971, Charlotte Bunch Papers, SL; Letter from Bureau to Chicago Regional Office, May 11, 1970, FBI WLM Files, SL; Memo from S.F. Field Office, re: Women’s Liberation Movement, FBI Files, April 25, 1973, SL; Letty Pogrebin, “The FBI,” Ms., June 1977, 72.

  37. Memo from Director, FBI, to S.F. Field Office, June 5, 1969, FBI WLM Files, SL.

  38. Pogrebin, 38, 44.

  39. Summary of story in October 19, 1970, S.F. Examiner, entitled “S.F. Women’s Lib Support Angela Davis,” FBI WLM Files, S.F. Region, SL.

  40. Pogrebin, 44.

  41. Letty Pogrebin, “The FBI Was Watching You,” Ms., June 1977, excerpt, 39.

  42. FBI WLM Files, SL.

  43. FBI WLM Files, SL.

  44. “Who Joined Women’s Lib and Why,” Informant report, S.F. Section, FBI WLM Files, SL.

  45. Pogrebin, Ms., 75. For more information on these feminist groups that worked to improve the lives of working women, see, for example, “The Union Women’s Alliance to Gain Equality (WAGE) Organizing Statement,” 73; “The Bill of Rights for Women Office Workers,” Nine to Five, 73; Union WAGE, “Purpose and Goals,” 74; Al Lannon, ILGWU Local 6, “Antisexism at Work,” 75; Karen Nussbaum, “We Have the Power of Women,” 71, in Shapiro, The Women Say . . . ; WLM Berkeley FBI Files, 1970, SL.

  46. Pogrebin, 37.

  47. Memo from S.F. Office to Director, Re: Black Panther Party, Racial Matters, Women’s Liberation Movement, FBI WLM Files. “Stormy Scene for Women’s Liberation,” People’s World, July 26, 1969, Charlotte Bunch Papers, FBI clipping, SL; Grand juries assembled to ask women where the fugitives were. WLM Files, SL; Glick, War at Home, 27; Off Our Backs (April/May 1975): 1; also see article written by Jeanne Cordova, “FBI Hot on Underground Trail,” n.d., unpaginated, in Charlotte Bunch Papers, SL.

  48. Letter to Director, Domestic Intelligence Division, New York and Alexandria, from Washington Field Office on “Women’s National March on the Pentagon, April 20th, 1971.” Teletype, FBI Files, SL. Copy of letter with many deletions with the heading “Women’s National March on the Pentagon, April 10, 1971.” The letter to Madame Binh is dated March 25, 1971. Summary analysis of a variety of stories from the S.F. Chronicle. Titled “Anne Bitterfeld Scheer,” July 19, 1968, FBI WLM files, SL.

  49. Teletype from New York Office to Bureau, March 9, 1972. FBI WLM Files, SL.

  50. Glick, in The War at Home, makes a persuasive case that surveillance of domestic groups continued during the seventies and eighties under new FBI programs and includes evidence of this continued surveillance; letter from Letty Cottin Pogrebin, April 1977, to subscribers of Ms., FBI Files, SL.

  51. WLM Files, section on Berkeley Activities, SL.

  52. To protect the privacy of these activists, I have not used their actual names or any names. These files were obtained through the FOIA; FBI WLM Files, S.F. Bay Area Activities, SL.

  53. Margo St. James, “FBI Expose,” COYOTE HOWLS: The Intermittent Journal of a Loose Woman’s Organization (August 1977): 4.

  54. Robin Morgan, Going Too Far, 185.

  55. See, for example, Angus Mackenzie, Secrets. Betty Friedan, FBI WLM Files, SL, reprinted in Ms. under “Excerpts from the Files,” 42.

  56. Author’s interview with Betty Friedan, April 4, 1986, Santa Monica, California.

  57. Author’s interview with Marilyn Webb. Author’s interview with Irene Peslikis.

  58. Susan Sherman, The Color of the Heart: Writing from Struggle and Change, 1959–1990 (Willlamantic, Conn: Curbstone Press, 1990), 105.

  59. Author’s interview with Candace Falk, May 15, 1986, Berkeley, California.

  60. Author’s interviews with Candace Falk and Charlotte Bunch, April 13, 1987, New York City.

  61. Redstockings, “Press Release,” May 9, 1975, APA; author’s interview with Ti-Grace Atkinson, April 9, 1987, New York City, and Joan Peters, April 16, 1986, and September 26, 1997, New York City. For movement documents, see “Redstocking Challenge,” in Off Our Backs (July 1975): 10ff.
Much of the chronology, the charges, and the inquiries are in this issue.

  62. Author’s interview with Alix Kates Shulman.

  63. This information comes from the following documents, some of which Alix Kates Shulman and Joan Peters gave me, for which I thank them once again. “An Analysis of Sagaris, Inc. by the August 7th Survival Community”; “Statement of the August 7th Committee”; “The August 7th Survival Community Newsletter,” all in APA. Also see “Our New Community,” “Budget of Sagaris,” “Sagaris: Table of Contents, Description, Self Criticism,” all in Charlotte Bunch Papers, SL.

  64. Author’s interview with Joan Peters, September 16, 1997, New York City.

  65. Judith Coburn, “Sisterhood Is Not Magic,” Village Voice, April 1975. A few weeks later, Coburn published a longer and more detailed inquiry in The Real Paper, Boston, circa April, 1975. Author’s interview with Judy Coburn, September 29, 1997.

  66. Author’s interview with Alix Kates Shulman. Other information comes from Carolyn Heilbrun’s account of the Sagaris in her biography of Gloria Steinem, The Education.

  67. Author’s interview with Joan Peters.

  68. Pogrebin, 41.

  Chapter Eight: The Proliferation of Feminism

  1. Naomi Weisstein and Heather Booth, “Will the Women’s Movement Survive?” Position paper published by Sister, Wynn, 250 Howard Avenue, New Haven. Women’s Liberation Files, Tamiment Library, New York University.

  2. “What Has Gone Wrong with the Women’s Movement?” Harper’s Bazaar, February 1976, 59, 60.

  3. Both of these women prefer to retain their anonymity. The Jewish woman experienced this surprise at the Kehilla temple in Berkeley, California, in 1987. The Methodist woman found this change when she returned to Ohio in 1990.

  4. Barbara Ferraro, Patricia Hussey, with Jane O’Reilly, No Turning Back: Two Nuns’ Battle with the Vatican over Women’s Right to Choose (New York: Poseidon, 1990), 76.

  5. See the Bibliography.

  6. The best and most recent study of this academic revolution is Marilyn Boxer, When Women Asked the Questions: Creating Women’s Studies in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1999). Also see Ellen Dubois et al., eds., Feminist Scholarship: Kindling in the Groves of Academe (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985), especially part 3, “The Response from the Disciplines,” and Christie Farnham, The Impact of Feminist Research in the Academy (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1987), for a good idea of how far feminist scholarship altered the disciplines by the mid-eighties.

  7. Interview with Gerda Lerner by author, February 10, 1998, Berkeley, California.

  8. Kris Montgomery, “The Story of Women’s History Month: Reclaiming the Past, Rewriting the Future,” in Women Change America Gazette (Sonoma: National Women’s History Project, 1997), APA. Author’s telephone interview with Molly MacGregor, November 3, 1997. Personal letter from Gerda Lerner to Ruth Rosen, October 21, 1997, in which she describes the founding of the institute.

  9. Mary Kay Blakely, “Growing Girls and Grandmothers,” Ms., June 1987, 12.

  10. In Shapiro and Shapiro, The Women Say, see Denise D’Anne, “Working Women on Welfare,” 64; Lynn O’Connor, Fred Garner, and Par Mialocq, “Office Politics,” 45–51; Union WAGE, “Organizing Statement,” 73; Nine to Five, “The Bill of Rights for Women Office Workers,” 73; Union WAGE, “Purpose and Goals,” 74; Karen Nussbaum, “We Have the Power of Women!” 71; Jesusita Novarro, “I Am a Working Mother,” 72.

  11. The socialist feminists of Dayton received some support from NAM, the New American Movement, which tried to organize workers throughout the country.

  12. Judith Sealander and Dorothy Smith, “The Rise and Fall of Feminist Organizations in the 1970s: Dayton as a Case Study,” Feminist Studies 12:2 (Summer 1986), 221–339.

  13. Nancy Whittier’s study, Feminist Generations, of Columbus, Ohio, was extremely useful, as was Judy Ezekiel’s “Une contribution à l’histoire du mouvement feministe americain: l’etude du cas de Dayton, Ohio (1969–1980).” Unpublished dissertation, Paris, 1987, APA.

  14. Robin Morgan, “Rites of Passages,” Ms., September 1975, 76.

  15. Patricia Huckle, Tish Sommers, Activist and the Founding of the Older Women’s League (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 1991), 211.

  16. Letter from Ida G. Rosen to author, January 1976, APA.

  17. For a fuller discussion of the postsuffrage and postfeminist eras, see Rayna Rapp and Ellen Ross, “It Seems We’ve Stood and Talked Like This Before,” Ms., April 1983, 54–56.

  18. Geneva Overholser, “What ‘Post-Feminism’ Really Means,” New York Times, September 19, 1986, 30; for an analytic attempt to distinguish antifeminism from postfeminism, see Deborah Rosenfelt and Judith Stacey, “Second Thoughts on the Second Wave,” Feminist Studies 13 (Summer 1987): 341–61.

  19. A study conducted by Alexander W. Astin and Kenneth Green analyzed data involving almost six million students. Quoted in “College Freshmen Still Reveal Liberal Streak,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 31, 1986, 1, 9. Tim Schreiner, “Demographic Change Is Reshaping Workforce,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 28, 1986, 12.

  20. Susan Bolotin, “Voices from the Post-Feminist Generation,” New York Times Magazine, October 7, 1982, 28–31.

  21. Bolotin, 31, 30.

  22. Bolotin clearly touched a nerve. See letters she received in Susan Bolotin Collection, SL. In Women in College: Shaping New Feminine Identities (New York, 1985) 89–92, 225–300, Mirra Komarovsky showed that college women felt that finding one’s place in the world of work had become essential to one’s personal dignity in this generation, yet a career without marriage was the choice of only 2 percent of the sample. An intimate article by Abigail Pogrebin discloses her relationship to her mother’s feminism in “Bridges: Divided Loyalties,” Glamour, June 1996, 100.

  23. Naomi Wolf quoted by Diane Salvatore, “Young Feminists Speak for Themselves,” 89. Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake, eds. Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1997), 124. See Paula Kamen, Feminist Fatale: Voices from the “Twenty Something” Generation Explore the Future of the “Women’s Movement” (New York: Fine, 1991).

  24. Toni Cade, The Black Woman (New York: New American Library, 1970); Celestine Ware, Woman Power (New York: Tower 1970); Linda LaRue “The Black Movement and Women’s Liberation,” in The Black Scholar, 1:7 (May 1970); Gloria Hull, “My Life,” APA; Toni Morrison, “Interview with Claudia Tate,” Black Women Writers at Work, Claudia Tate, ed. (New York: Continuum, 1983), 117–31, quote from p. 122.

  25. See Linda La Rue, “The Black Movement and Women’s Liberation,” Black Scholar, 1 (1970), 42, from Third World Women’s Alliance, “Black Women’s Manifesto,” n.d.; Linda La Rue, “Black Liberation and Women’s Lib,” Transaction (November—December 1970); Toni Morrison, “What the Black Woman Thinks About Women’s Lib,” New York Times Magazine, August 22, 1971; Charlayne Hunter, “Many Blacks Wary of ‘Women’s Liberation Movement,’” New York Times, November 17, 1970, 60; Angela Davis, Angela Davis: An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1974); Lee Rainwater and William L. Yancey, The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1967); and the account given by Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: Bantam, 1984).

  26. Celestine Ware, Woman Power, 78, 91, 95, 99.

  27. See Rivka Polatnick, “Diversity in Women’s Liberation Ideology: How a Black and White Group of the 1960’s Views Motherhood,” Signs (Spring, 1996), as well as her dissertation, “Strategies for Women’s Liberation: A Study of Black and White Groups of the 1960s,” La-neeta Harris, “Black Women in Junior High Schools,” in Tanner, Voices, 216. “The Sisters Reply,” September 11, 1968, Mt. Vernon, New York, responding to “Birth Control Pill and Black Children,” a statement by the Black Unity Party in Peekskill, New York, n.d.; Patricia Robinson, “Poor Black Women,” n.d., all in Na
ncy Gray Osterud Collection, SL.

  28. La-neeta Harris, “Black Women in Junior High Schools,” in Tanner, Voices, 215–16.

  29. Mary Ann Weathers, “An Argument for Black Women’s Liberation As a Revolutionary Force,” No More Fun and Games (February 1969), APA. Also reprinted in Morgan, Sisterhood, 303–7.

  30. Frances Beale, “The Double Jeopardy of Black Women,” in “Documents from the Black Women’s Liberation Movement,” in Documents from the Women’s Liberation Movement, An On-Line Archival Collection, Special Collections Library, Duke University (DU).

  31. Pamela Newman, “Take a Good Look at Our Problems,” DU.

  32. Michelle Wallace, “On the National Black Feminist Organization,” June 1975, reprinted in Redstockings, Feminist Revolution, 174.

  33. The Combahee River Collective, The Combahee River Collective Statement: Black Feminist Organizing in the Seventies and Eighties (New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1985), pamphlet, APA.

  34. Michelle Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (London: Verso, 1990). See her new introduction in which she explores why and how her mind has changed on a number of issues she first discussed.

  35. Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds., All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, and Some of Us Are Brave (New York: Feminist Press, 1982). Extensive bibliographies on minority women’s history can be found in Ellen Carol DuBois and Vicki Ruiz, eds., Unequal Sisters: A Multi-cultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History (New York: Routledge, 1997).

  36. One of the best examples of this community work occurred in South Central Los Angeles, as well as in Oakland, California. The Women’s Economic Agenda Project (WEAL) in Oakland, California, turned women’s issues into economic struggles on behalf of minority women. For poll data, please see Epilogue.

  37. From the PBS Documentary Chicano! History of the Mexican American Fight for Civil Rights, 1997.

  38. Maria Varela, quoted in Morgan, Sisterhood, 424.

  39. Vicki Ruiz, Out of the Shadow: Mexican American Women in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford, 1998), in chapter 5, La Nueva Chicana, 68. Also see Alma M. Garcia, Chicana Feminist Thought: The Basic Historical Writings (New York: Routledge, 1997).