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Nikki Craft | |
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| Born | 1949 (age 73–74) |
| Nationality | American |
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| Website | nikkicraft |
Nikki Craft (born 1949) is an American feminist activist and writer. [1]
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Nikki Craft | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1949 (age 73–74) |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupations |
|
| Website | nikkicraft |
Nikki Craft (born 1949) is an American feminist activist and writer. [1]
In 1975, Craft presented the Rockwell International board of directors with "...naked doll[s] splashed with blood-colored paint" to protest their B-1 bomber called "The Lancer". [2] The same year, Craft founded Women Armed for Self Protection (WASP), which advocated armed self-defense for women in the effort to keep violent men from assaulting them: "Women must perceive themselves as being worth defending. In a life threatening situation there must be no hesitation to pull the trigger", an activist group she was part of articulated. [3] She also recorded "The Rape Song" about Inez Garcia and Joan Little. [4]
In 1976, Craft co-founded the Kitty Genovese Women's Project (KGWP) when she and another activist posed as sociology students under the pretense of doing a "statistical study on violent crimes" and obtained the names of every indicted sex offender in Dallas County from 1959 to 1975. This was before such records were kept on computer; the activists worked for nine months writing all the names down on index cards. A year later, 25,000 copies of the KGWP newspaper were published. The paper listed all 2,100 sex offender indictments, 1,700 of which were multiple offenders, and was distributed throughout Dallas. On March 8, International Women's Day, the group read the names over local community radio KCHU for 13 hours. [5]
In 1979, Craft helped organize the first Myth California Anti-Pageant in Santa Cruz, California. In 1980 Craft joined other pageant protesters and over the next nine years conducted other actions, including throwing raw meat on the stage and pouring the blood of raped women across a pageant entryway. One year three men locked arms on stage, yelling "Men Resist Sexism! Men Resist Sexism!" preventing the crowning until they were dragged away. There were many arrests, and each year the crowds grew larger at the anti-pageant protests which later resulted in the Miss California pageant leaving Santa Cruz. The protests continued in San Diego and in 1988, after the pageant left Santa Cruz and moved to San Diego, the winner of a local pageant unveiled a banner from her bra at the state finals that read "Pageants Hurt All Women." A documentary called Miss... or Myth? examines these protests. [6]
In August 1984, Craft was arrested on Herring Cove Beach at Cape Cod National Seashore while protesting the park's public nudity regulations by sunbathing topless, refusing to put on a shirt when contacted by park rangers. [7] [8] After the U.S. Attorney's office declined to prosecute the case several months later, she returned to Cape Cod the following July and repeated the challenge, this time in the parking lot of the ranger station. [9] [10] [11] She later organized a class action suit funded by the Naturist Society against the federal government, which manages the Seashore. Later in the proceedings, she and others withdrew from the case because the Society's attorney had made concessions to the respondents related to clothing requirements for Seashore visitors that included gender distinctions, specifically, the covering of women's breasts.
In 1986, Craft was arrested in Rochester, New York with six other women who were topless or "shirtfree" in public. The case was dismissed on appeal six years later, thus weakening the New York "exposure of a person" state law when pertaining to woman's breasts. [12] [13] [14]
In 1990, Craft opened the Andrea Dworkin Online Library. In 1992, Diana E. H. Russell dedicated her book Femicide to Craft. In 1997 Dworkin dedicated her book Life and Death to Craft. In 2000, Craft and D.A. Clarke organized "Feminists for Nader" [15] and campaigned for the Ralph Nader presidential campaign, 2000.
In 1995, the feminist journal On the Issues published Craft's article entitled "Busting Mister Short-Eyes" about a naturist child rapist sentenced to 30 years in prison, partly as a result of Craft's advocacy. [16]
In 2001, she protested the War in Afghanistan and called upon other feminists to do the same. [17] In 2005, she created the "Hustling the Left" website, [18] criticizing leaders in leftist and progressive movements who published articles, interviews and expressed public cooperation with Larry Flynt and his magazine, Hustler . The website took its name from a June 2005 article by feminist activist Aura Bogado, [19] who protested the promotion of Flynt's support by the anti-war group Not in Our Name. Craft also runs the "No Status Quo" website. [20]
Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States Census, Provincetown has a summer population as high as 60,000. Often called "P-town" or "P'town", the locale is known for its beaches, harbor, artists, tourist industry, and as a popular vacation destination for the LGBT+ community.
Not in Our Name (NION) was a United States organization founded on March 23, 2002 to protest the U.S. government's course in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks; it disbanded on March 31, 2008.
Provincetown Harbor is a large natural harbor located in the town of Provincetown, Massachusetts. The harbor is mostly 30 to 90 feet deep and stretches roughly 1 mile (1.6 km) from northwest to southeast and 2 miles (3.2 km) from northeast to southwest – one large, deep basin with no dredged channel necessary for boats to enter and exit.
Catharine Alice MacKinnon is an American radical feminist legal scholar, activist, and author. She is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she has been tenured since 1990, and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. From 2008 to 2012, she was the special gender adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
Diana E. H. Russell was a feminist writer and activist. Born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, she moved to England in 1957, and then to the United States in 1961. For the past 45 years she was engaged in research on sexual violence against women and girls. She wrote numerous books and articles on rape, including marital rape, femicide, incest, misogynist murders of women, and pornography. For The Secret Trauma, she was co-recipient of the 1986 C. Wright Mills Award. She was also the recipient of the 2001 Humanist Heroine Award from the American Humanist Association. She was also an organizer of the First International Tribunal on Crimes against Women, in Brussels in March 1976.
D. A. Clarke is an American radical feminist essayist and activist, notable for her development of feminist theory, and for the anonymous poem privilege.
Lee Raymond Baxandall was an American writer, translator, editor, and activist. He was first known for his New Left engagement with cultural topics and then as a leader of the naturist movement.
Ann J. Simonton is an American writer, lecturer, media activist, and former fashion model. She founded and coordinates the non-profit group "Media Watch", which challenges what they see as racism, sexism, and violence in the media through education and action. Simonton has published two autobiographical chapters, I Never Told Anyone and Her Wits About Her. She has also written and produced two educational videos, one of which, Don't Be a TV: Television Victim, received a Silver Apple Award from the National Educational Video and Film Festival in 1995.
Nudity is sometimes used as a tactic during a protest to attract media and public attention to a cause, and sometimes promotion of public nudity is itself the objective of a nude protest. The use of the tactic goes back to well published photos of nude protests by svobodniki in Canada in 1903. The tactic has been used by other groups later in the century, especially after the 1960s. Like public nudity in general, the cultural and legal acceptance of nudity as a tactic in protest also varies around the world. Some opponents of any public nudity claim that it is indecent, especially when it can be viewed by children; while others argue that it is a legitimate form of expression covered by the right to free speech.
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.
Andrea Rita Dworkin was an American radical feminist writer and activist best known for her analysis of pornography. Her feminist writings, beginning in 1974, span 30 years. They are found in a dozen solo works: nine books of non-fiction, two novels, and a collection of short stories. Another three volumes were co-written or co-edited with US Constitutional law professor and feminist activist, Catharine A. MacKinnon.
Melissa Farley is an American clinical psychologist, researcher and radical feminist anti-pornography and anti-prostitution activist. Farley is best known for her studies of the effects of prostitution, trafficking and sexual violence. She is the founder and director of the San Francisco-based organization, Prostitution Research and Education.
Femen is a Ukrainian radical feminist activist group whose goal is to protect women's rights. The organization became internationally known for organizing controversial topless protests against sex tourism, religious institutions, sexism, homophobia, and other social, national, and international topics. Founded in Ukraine, the group is now based in France. Femen describes its ideology as being "sextremism, atheism and feminism".
Anna Hutsol is a Ukrainian activist and one of the founders of the radical feminist activist group FEMEN.
In Canada, topfreedom has primarily been an attempt to combat the interpretation of indecency laws that considered a woman's breasts to be indecent, and therefore their exhibition in public an offence. In British Columbia, it is a historical issue dating back to the 1930s and the public protests against the materialistic lifestyle held by the radical religious sect of the Freedomites, whose pacifist beliefs led to their exodus from Russia to Canada at the end of the 19th century. The Svobodniki became famous for their public nudity: primarily for their nude marches in public and the acts of arson committed also in the nude.
Magaly Quintana Pereyra was a Nicaraguan feminist historian and activist. She was director of Catholic Women for the Right to Choose, advocating for the right to therapeutic abortion following its ban in Nicaragua in 2006. She also led advocacy opposing violence against women, raising awareness of femicide in the country. In 2018, she joined the anti-government protests.
Lucinda Collette Evans is a South African women's rights activist and feminist. She is known for having led nationwide marches and was one of the speakers at the #AmINext protest outside South Africa's parliament calling for government action against gender-based violence and femicide.
In the United States, states have primary jurisdiction in matters of public morality. The topfreedom movement has claimed success in a few instances in persuading some state and federal courts to overturn some state laws on the basis of sex discrimination or equal protection, arguing that a woman should be free to expose her chest in any context in which a man can expose his. Other successful cases have been on the basis of freedom of expression in protest, or simply that exposure of breasts is not indecent.
Josephine Del Deo, born Josephine Alice Couch, was an American artist, writer, and activist in preserving the Cape Cod National Seashore and the town of Provincetown, Massachusetts.
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