by Ruth Rosen
70. This argument is made by Anthony Rotundo in American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1993).
71. Unpublished research paper by author, 1972, on what had and had not changed in the advertising promoted by women’s magazines. I compared advertising in Godey’s Lady’s Book during the 1860s with McCall’s and Ladies’ Home Journal in the 1960s. APA.
72. A good example of radical feminists’ attack against fashion and the “capitalist” commodiflcation of bodies can be found in “Capitalists Discover Women’s Liberation,” Liberation News Service, undated, circa 1970, Media Protest Files, UWA; interview with Christopher Lasch, May 17, 1989, Berkeley, California.
Chapter Ten: Beyond Backlash
1. For more detailed discussions and different interpretations about why the ERA battle was lost and lasted until 1983, see Theodore S. Arrington and Patricia A. Kyle, “Equal Rights Amendment Activists in North Carolina,” Signs (Spring 1978): 666–80; for profiles of anti-ERA opponents, see David W. Brady and Kent Tedin, “Ladies in Pink: Religion and Political Ideology in the Anti-ERA Movement,” Social Science Quarterly 45 (March 1976): 564–75. Also see Jane De Hart Mathew and Donald Mathew, “The Cultural Politics of ERA’s Defeat,” Organization of American Historians Newsletter 10, 4 (November 1982): 13–15. See the Bibliography.
2. Midge Decter, The New Chastity: And Other Arguments against Women’s Liberation (New York: Berkeley, 1972); Phyllis Schlafly, The Power of the Positive Woman (New York: Jove/HBJ, 1977); Lisa Cronin Wohl, “Phyllis Schlafly: The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority,” Ms., March 1974, 63, and the longer biography by Carol Festenthal, The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority (New York: Doubleday, 1981).
3. Richard Viguerie, The New Right: We’re Ready to Lead (Falls Church, Va.: The Viguerie Company, 1980), 196.
4. See Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Second Shift (New York: Viking, 1989).
5. See, for example, Pamela Johnston Conover and Virginia Gray, Feminism and the New Right: Conflict over the American Family (New York: Praeger, 1983); Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women (New York: Perigee Books, 1983); Zillah Eisenstein, Feminism and Sexual Equality: Crisis in Liberal America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984). One of the best works that provides an historical context for the curricula battles is Lawrence Levine, The Opening of the American Mind (Boston: Beacon, 1996). Some of the best archival material on antifeminist sentiment can be found in a new collection called Antifeminism in America: A Collection of Readings from the Literature of the Opponents to U.S. Feminism, 1948 to the Present, edited with introductions by Angela Howard and Sasha Ranae Adams Tarrant (New York: Garland Press, 1997).
The literature on the cultural wars is vast. However, the majority of commentators have not recognized how deeply the gender wars have shaped the assumption of both sides in the cultural wars. See the Bibliography.
6. Those who might be included under such progressive views include Barbara Ehrenreich, Katha Pollitt, Ellen Goodman, Patricia Ireland, and Marian Wright Edelman. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s controversial book It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), as well as Judith Stacey’s In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), both acknowledge the atomization and fragmentation of postmodern society and try to find ways to sustain the nurture of children and families, even within these limits.
7. Christopher Lasch, The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984) and The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), as well as Robert C. Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), all set the terms of debate on the lost sense of a common good in American culture.
8. During the baby boom (technically, 1946 to 1964), each year produced more babies. Since women tend to marry men older than themselves, they found a “shortage” of men who were older than they. Since men tend to marry younger women, men of the baby boom generation always had more women available. This peculiar demographic profile changed with the emergence of the baby bust generation in 1964, in which men found fewer young women, and women found more older available men.
9. The Second Stage (New York: Summit, 1981) created quite a flurry and much debate. For a sample of reviews and news about the book, see Pamela Marsh, “Betty Friedan Calls for Less Abrasiveness, More Emphasis on the Family,” Christian Science Monitor, October 28, 1981, 17; Susan Lee, “Just What Does She Want?” Wall Street Journal, December 4, 1981, 24; Bella Abzug, “Forming a Real Women’s Bloc,” Nation, November 28, 1981, 576; Ellen Willis, “Betty Friedan’s ‘Second Stage’: A Step Backward,” Nation, November 1, 1981, 494; Herma Hill Kay, “Do We Suffer from a Feminist Mystique?” New York Times Book Review, November 22, 1981, 3; Catherine Stimpson, “From Feminine to Feminist Mystique,” Ms., December 1981, 16; and “The Second Stage,” National Review, February 5, 1982.
10. Carol Hanisch, “Paying the Piper: Did I Blow My Life?” Meeting Ground: A Project of the Women’s Liberation Project (July 1989), 1–2.
11. Jane O’Reilly, The Girl I Left Behind (New York: Macmillan, 1980).
12. Some prominent examples of feminist utopian novels include: Suzy McKee Charnas, Motherlines (New York: Berkeley Books, 1978); Ursula Le Guinn, The Left Hand of Darkness (New York: Ace, 1969); Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time (New York: Fawett Crest Books, 1976); Joanna Russ, The Female Male (New York: Bantam Books, 1975).
13. See Lenore J. Weitzman, The Marriage Contract, Lovers and the Law (New York: The Free Press, 1981). For a critique of Weitzman’s thesis, see Susan Faludi, Backlash, 19–25.
14. Arlie Hochschild quoted in Alison Cowan, “Poll Finds Women’s Gains Have Taken Personal Toll,” New York Times, August 21, 1989, 1. Also see Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift.
15. Maureen Dowd, “Many Women in Polls Equate Values of Job and Family Life,” New York Times, December 4, 1983, 1.
16. Linda Destafano and Dr. Diane Golasanto, “Most Americans Believe U.S. Men Have a Better Life,” Los Angeles Times Syndicate and Gallup Organization, February 5, 1990, B5.
17. “Most Americans,” 14, 36.
18. “Women Face the Nineties,” Time, December 4, 1989. All stories and data described in this issue come from this cover story.
19. For other views on the gender gap, see Martha Burke and Heidi Hartmann, “Beyond the Gender Gap: A Recovery Program for the Women’s Movement,” Nation, June 10, 1996, 18–21; “Women Made the Difference,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 7, 1996, A3; “Clinton Stresses the Concerns of Women,” New York Times, October 28, 1996, A1; Hanna Rosin, “Sister Sledgehammer,” New Republic, June 24, 1996, 6–49; Sidney Blumenthal, “A Doll’s House,” New Yorker, August 19, 1996, 30–33; and Pamela Guthrie O’Brian, “Women Voters: Fed Up and Furious: LHJ and the League of Women Voters Poll,” Ladies’ Home Journal, June 1996, 88ff. Also note how Bella Abzug regarded the Gender Gap (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984).
20. “Storm over Women’s Rights,” New York Times, 1980, 20.
21. New York Times, 1980, 20; “Not Just ‘Women’s Issues,’” New York Times, October 25, 1984, editorial page.
22. During the 1970s, the number of women elected to state and local government doubled. See Martin Gruberg, “From Nowhere to Where?” Women in State and Local Politics,” Social Science Journal 21 (January 1984): 5–11.
23. The gender gap had already shown up in 1980. Women preferred Reagan to Carter by only 47 to 45 percent and men supported Reagan by a margin of 55 percent to 36 percent. Adam Clymer, “Women’s Political Habits Show Sharp Change,” New York Times, June 30, 1982, A1.
24. See, for example, Ruth Sidel, On Her Own: Growing Up in the Shadow of the American Dream (New York: Viking, 1990); Ruth Sidel, Women and Children Last: The Plight of Poor Women in Affluent America (New York: V
iking, 1986); Mimi Abramovitz, Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: South End Press, 1988); and Rochelle Lefkowitz and Ann Withorn, eds., For Crying Out Loud: Women and Poverty in the United States (New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1986). “A Quiet Revolution: How Life in One Wisconsin City Has Changed Since the Beginning of the Women’s Movement,” Newsweek, December 28, 1997, 29.
25. Oct. 25, 1985, New York Times, in Around the World section, clipping, APA, n.d.
26. Diana Russell and Nicole Van de Ven, eds., The Proceedings of the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women (East Palo Alto: Frog in the Well, 1984). There are a number of publications and videos of the tribunal that reveal the masterful organization that preceded the conference and the impact of women’s testimonies on human rights activists. See the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, Demanding Accountability: The Global Campaign and Vienna Tribunal on Violation of Women’s Human Right, Charlotte Bunch and Niamh Reilly, eds., 1996.
27. The Grameen Bank was founded by Muhamed Yunus. It began as an experimental project in 1976 and was turned into a formal financial institution in Bangladesh with seventy-five branches in 1983.
28. Kim Murphy, “U.N. Conference Tried New Tack,” San Francisco Examiner, September 4, 1994, A5.
29. Some of the reference works that have since appeared, for example, presume the existence of global women’s movements. Some valuable sources, distributed by Gale in Detroit, include: Chronology of Women Worldwide; International Who’s Who of Women; Statistical Record of Women Worldwide; Women’s Information Directory; Encyclopedia of Women’s Associations Worldwide; Women’s Rights on Trial, all published between 1993 and 1995. One of the single best reference works that contains an accessible evaluation of the trends affecting women’s lives worldwide is The World’s Women: The Trends and Statistics 1970–1990 (New York: The United Nations, 1991), which covers economic life, population, health, childbearing, education, leadership and decision-making, and political involvement. Also see Birgitte Sorensen, Women and Post-Conflict Reconstruction (Geneva: The War Town Societies Project, 1998). Also see Bibliography.
30. Some of these debates took place, for example, at the Berkshire Conference on Women’s History at the University of North Carolina in 1995 and at two panels at the American Studies Association meetings in Washington, D.C., October 31–November 2, 1997. Women from nearly every continent discussed how their political culture had received or absorbed feminist ideas and how, in turn, feminist ideas were affecting their society and political culture.
31. Matilda Joslyn Gage, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 3 (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1881), 1.
32. Robin Morgan, Sisterhood Is Powerful (New York: Bantam, 1970), xxv—xxvi.
33. Abigail Scott Duniway, Path Breaking: An Autobiography of the Equal Suffrage Movement in Pacific Coast States (New York: Schocken Books, 1971. Reprinted from the James, Kerns & Abbott edition of 1914), 297.
34. Muriel Rukeyser, from “Kathe Kollwitz,” The Speed of Darkness (1968), xii.
Epilogue: Gender Matters in the New Century
1. Gloria Feldt, “Ban Those Pots and Keep This Movement Moving,” Women’s eNews, March 3, 2006, http://www.womensenews.org/.
2. Also see Jean Hardisty’s Mobilizing Resentment: Conservative Resurgence From the John Birch Society to the Promise Keepers (New York: Beacon, 2000) about right-wing women’s groups. Other important works on right-wing women’s groups include Elinor Burkett, The Right Women (New York: Scribner, 1998); Brenda Brasher’s Godly Women (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998); Sylvia Bashevkin’s Women on the Defensive (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Rebecca Klatch, Women of the New Right (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987) and Tanya Melich, The Republican War Against Women (New York: Bantam, 1996).
3. “Breaking the Silence: The Global Gag Rule’s Impact on Unsafe Abortion,” The Center for Reproductive Rights, October 22, 2003, http://www.crlp.org/pub_bo_ggr.html (accessed June 18, 2004).
4. Quoted in Ruth Rosen, “Abortion Rights, 30 Years Later,” editorial, San Francisco Chronicle, January 22, 2003.
5. Study by New York—based Center for Reproductive Rights quoted in Women’s eNews, December 31, 2005, http://www.womensenews.org/.
6. In a pamphlet published by the Heritage Foundation in 1980 titled “The Family, Feminism and the Therapeutic State,” Onalee McGraw noted that the issue of child care was the first shot across the bow in the cultural wars, even before abortion. Quoted in Carole Joffe, The Regulation of Sexuality: Experiences of Family Planning Workers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 42. Joffe also describes the spread of abortion to other areas of life in “Abortion as Moral Panic,” American Sexuality, Special Issue on “Sexual Rights and Moral Panics,” June–July 2005.
7. Quoted in Ruth Rosen, “When Politics Trumps Science,” editorial, San Francisco Chronicle, January 5, 2002.
8. “In search of Plan C: Pharmacists get caught in the debate over abortion,” The Economist, April 7, 2005.
9. See their report at http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/05/1/gr050107.html.
10. Waxman report: “Abstinence courses flawed,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26623 (accessed December 1, 2004).
11. Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, Or How Love Conquered Marriage (New York: Penguin, 2005) describes this decline and transformation of the American family.
12. All interviews, quotes, and observations by the author, who was then working as a columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle. From notes taken on February 17, 2004.
13. See Leslie Heywood, ed., The Women’s Movement Today, An Encyclopedia of Third Wave Feminism (Two Volumes) (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005).
14. Melissa Klein, “Duality and Redefinition: Young Feminism and the Alternative Music Community,” in Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake, eds., Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 215.
15. Griselda Pollack, “Tracing Figures of Presence, Naming Ciphers of Absence; Feminism, Imperialism and Postmodernity in the Work of Sutapa Biswas,” in Lisa Bloom, ed., With Other Eyes: Looking at Race and Gender in Visual Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 237.
16. This is described in Women’s Action Coalition, http://www.lib.umb.edu/archives/wac.html.
17. Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), http://www.3rdwwwave.com/(accessed Nov. 18, 2005).
18. See Astrid Henry, Not My Mother’s Sister: Generational Conflict and Third-Wave Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004) for a generational analysis.
19. “Feminism, Fashion Can Go Hand in Hand,” Chicago Tribune, April 20, 2005.
20. Hannah Seligson, “Campus Women Wear Feminism on Their Chests,” Women’s eNews, February 24, 2006, http://www.womensenews.org/. These shirts were sold by the Feminist Majority after 2003.
21. Deb Stoller of Bust magazine enthusiastically helped revive a third wave knitting mania and wrote three books on knitting, including Stitch and Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook (New York: Workman Publishing Company, 2004).
22. Michelle Karp, “Herstory: Girl on Girls,” in Karp and Stoller, The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order (New York: Penguin, 1999), 310.
23. Rebecca Walker, “Lusting For Freedom,” in Barbara Findlen, ed., Listen Up 2 Ed: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation (Seattle: Seal Press, 2001), which first appeared in Ms. magazine, January 1992. For other work not already cited, see Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth (New York: Anchor, 1992); Rebecca Walker, To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism (New York: Anchor, 1995); Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, The F Word: Feminism in Jeopardy: Women, Politics and the Future (Seattle: Seal Press, 2004); Paula Kamen, Her Way: Young Women Remake the Sexual Revolution (New York: New York University Press, 2000); Daisy Hernandez and Bushr
a Rehman, eds., Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism, (Seattle: Seal Press, 2002); Rory Dicker and Allison Peipmeier, eds., Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century, (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003); Vivien Labaton and Dawn Lundy Martin, eds., The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism (New York: Anchor, 2004); Ophira Edut, ed., Body Outlaws: Young Women Write About Body Image and Identity (Seattle: Seal Press, 2003); Jo Regal, Different Wavelengths: Studies of the Contemporary Women’s Movement (New York: Routledge, 2005). Important articles I’ve drawn upon include “Writing the Wave: A Dialogue on the Tools, Tactics and Tensions of Feminist Practices over Time and Place,” NWSA Journal 17:1 (March 2005); Catherine Orr, “Charting the Currents of the Third Wave,” Hypatia 12, no. 3 (1997); Kimberly Springer, “Third Wave Black Feminism?” Signs 27 (2002), 1059–82; Gayle Wald, “Just a Girl? Rock Music, Feminism, and the Cultural Construction of Female Youth,” Signs 23 (1998), 585–610; Kathleen Hanna, “Riot Grrrl Manifesto” (1991) in Jessica Rosenberg and Gitana Garofalo, “Riot Grrrl: Revolutions from Within,” Signs 23 (January 1998), 812–13; Susan Archer Mann and Douglas J. Huffman, “The Decentering of Second Wave Feminism and the Rise of the Third Wave” in Science and Society, Vol. 69, no. 1, Jan. 2005, 56–91.
24. E-mail from Lisa Jarvis to author, August 29, 2005.
25. Ricki Wilchins, “Women Rights are Human Rights,” in Joan Nestle, Riki Wilchins, Clare Howell, eds., Genderqueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary,” (Alyson Publications, 2002), 290.