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Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern societies are patriarchal—they prioritize the male point of view—and that women are treated unjustly in these societies. Efforts to change this include fighting against gender stereotypes and improving educational, professional, and interpersonal opportunities and outcomes for women.
Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical re-ordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts, while recognizing that women's experiences are also affected by other social divisions such as in race, class, and sexual orientation. The ideology and movement emerged in the 1960s.
The history of feminism comprises the narratives of the movements and ideologies which have aimed at equal rights for women. While feminists around the world have differed in causes, goals, and intentions depending on time, culture, and country, most Western feminist historians assert that all movements that work to obtain women's rights should be considered feminist movements, even when they did not apply the term to themselves. Some other historians limit the term "feminist" to the modern feminist movement and its progeny, and use the label "protofeminist" to describe earlier movements.
Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades, ending with the feminist sex wars in the early 1980s and being replaced by third-wave feminism in the early 1990s. It occurred throughout the Western world and aimed to increase women's equality by building on the feminist gains of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Marxist feminism is a philosophical variant of feminism that incorporates and extends Marxist theory. Marxist feminism analyzes the ways in which women are exploited through capitalism and the individual ownership of private property. According to Marxist feminists, women's liberation can only be achieved by dismantling the capitalist systems in which they contend much of women's labor is uncompensated. Marxist feminists extend traditional Marxist analysis by applying it to unpaid domestic labor and sex relations.
Socialist feminism rose in the 1960s and 1970s as an offshoot of the feminist movement and New Left that focuses upon the interconnectivity of the patriarchy and capitalism. However, the ways in which women's private, domestic, and public roles in society has been conceptualized, or thought about, can be traced back to Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and William Thompson's utopian socialist work in the 1800s. Ideas about overcoming the patriarchy by coming together in female groups to talk about personal problems stem from Carol Hanisch. This was done in an essay in 1969 which later coined the term 'the personal is political.' This was also the time that second wave feminism started to surface which is really when socialist feminism kicked off. Socialist feminists argue that liberation can only be achieved by working to end both the economic and cultural sources of women's oppression.
Shulamith Bath Shmuel Ben Ari Firestone was a Canadian-American radical feminist writer and activist. Firestone was a central figure in the early development of radical feminism and second-wave feminism and a founding member of three radical-feminist groups: New York Radical Women, Redstockings, and New York Radical Feminists. Within these radical movements, Firestone became known as "the firebrand" and "the fireball" for the fervor and passion she expressed towards the cause. Firestone participated in activism such as speaking out at The National Conference for New Politics in Chicago. Also while a member of various feminist groups she participated in actions including protesting a Miss America Contest, organizing a mock funeral for womanhood known as "The Burial of Traditional Womanhood", protesting sexual harassment at Madison Square Garden, organizing abortion speakouts, and disrupting abortion legislation meetings.
Consciousness raising is a form of activism popularized by United States feminists in the late 1960s. It often takes the form of a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group on some cause or condition. Common issues include diseases, conflicts, movements and political parties or politicians. Since informing the populace of a public concern is often regarded as the first step to changing how the institutions handle it, raising awareness is often the first activity in which any advocacy group engages.
W.I.T.C.H., originally the acronym for Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, was the name of several related but independent feminist groups active in the United States as part of the women's liberation movement during the late 1960s. The W.I.T.C.H. moniker was sometimes alternatively expanded as "Women Inspired to Tell their Collective History", or "Women Interested in Toppling Consumer Holidays", among other variations.
Grace Atkinson, better known as Ti-Grace Atkinson, is an American radical feminist activist, writer and philosopher. She was an early member of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and presided over the New York chapter in 1967-68, though she quickly grew disillusioned with the group. She left to form The Feminists, which she left a few years later due to internal disputes. Atkinson was a member of the Daughters of Bilitis and an advocate for political lesbianism. Atkinson has been largely inactive since the 1970s, but resurfaced in 2013 to co-author an open statement expressing radical feminists' concerns about what they perceived as the silencing of discussion around "the currently fashionable concept of gender."
Redstockings, also known as Redstockings of the Women's Liberation Movement, is a radical feminist nonprofit that was founded in January 1969 in New York City, whose goal is "To Defend and Advance the Women's Liberation Agenda". The group's name is derived from bluestocking, a term used to disparage feminist intellectuals of earlier centuries, and red, for its association with the revolutionary left.
New York Radical Feminists (NYRF) was a radical feminist group founded by Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt in 1969, after they had left Redstockings and The Feminists, respectively. Firestone's and Koedt's desire to start this new group was aided by Vivian Gornick's 1969 Village Voice article, “The Next Great Moment in History Is Theirs”. The end of this essay announced the formation of the group and included a contact address and phone number, raising considerable national interest from prospective members. NYRF was organized into small cells or "brigades" named after notable feminists of the past; Koedt and Firestone led the Stanton-Anthony Brigade.
New York Radical Women (NYRW) was an early second-wave radical feminist group that existed from 1967 to 1969. They drew nationwide media attention when they unfurled a banner inside the 1968 Miss America pageant displaying the words "Women's Liberation".
Vivian Gornick is an American radical feminist critic, journalist, essayist, and memoirist.
Anne Koedt is an American radical feminist activist and author of "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm", a 1970 classic feminist work on women's sexuality. She was connected to the group New York Radical Women and was a founding member of New York Radical Feminists.
The Miss America protest was a demonstration held at the Miss America 1969 contest on September 7, 1968, attended by about 200 feminists and civil rights advocates. The feminist protest was organized by New York Radical Women and included putting symbolic feminine products into a "Freedom Trash Can" on the Atlantic City boardwalk, including bras, hairspray, makeup, girdles, corsets, false eyelashes, mops, and other items. The protesters also unfurled a large banner emblazoned with "Women's Liberation" inside the contest hall, drawing worldwide media attention to the Women's Liberation Movement.
Kathie Sarachild is an American writer and radical feminist. In 1968, she took the last name "Sarachild" after her mother Sara. Kathie coined the phrase "Sisterhood is Powerful" in a flier she wrote for the keynote speech she gave for New York Radical Women's first public action at the convocation of the Jeannette Rankin Brigade. This was a slogan that would become synonymous with the radical feminist movement in the years which followed.
The personal is political, also termed The private is political, is a political argument used as a rallying slogan by student activist movements and second-wave feminism from the late 1960s. In the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, it was seen as a challenge to the nuclear family and family values. The phrase was popularized by the publication of feminist activist Carol Hanisch's 1969 essay, "The Personal Is Political." The phrase and idea have been repeatedly described as a defining characterization of second-wave feminism, radical feminism, women's studies, or feminism in general. It has also been used by some female artists as the underlying philosophy for their art practice.
The Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF) (1942–1981) was an organization that sought to promote social justice, civil rights, and electoral reform in the American South, particularly for African Americans. The organization began as the Education Fund of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW), before becoming an independent successor organization after the SCHW was disbanded in 1948.
Dorothy "Dottie" Miller Zellner is an American human rights activist, feminist, editor, lecturer, and writer. A veteran of the 1960s civil rights movement, she served as a recruiter for the Freedom Summer project and was co-editor of Student Voice, the student newsletter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She is active in the Palestinian solidarity movement.
References
- 1 2 Hanisch, Carol. "The Personal Is Political" (PDF). Retrieved March 8, 2024.
- ↑ Buchanan, Paul D. (2011). Radical Feminists: A Guide to an American Subculture. ABC-CLIO. p. 124ff. ISBN 9781598843576.
- 1 2 Brownmiller, Susan (1999). In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution. Dial Press, pp. 20-23.
- ↑ Meeting Ground online website "about page" with January 1977 statement of purpose. Accessed August 31, 2014.
- ↑ "Impact of the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the Women's Liberation Movement". Carolhanisch.org. Retrieved August 2, 2020.
- ↑ "William Hinton and the Women of Long Bow". Carolhanisch.org. Retrieved August 2, 2020.
- ↑ Lovell, Julia (2019). Maoism: A Global History. London: The Bodley Head. ISBN 978-1847922502.
- ↑ Forbidden Discourse: The Silencing of Feminist Criticism of 'Gender'", at Meeting Ground online, August 12, 2013, updated with more signatures September 20, 2013.
- ↑ Goldberg, Michelle (August 4, 2014). "What Is a Woman? The dispute between radical feminism and transgenderism", The New Yorker . Accessed March 12, 2024.
