Dear Sisters: Dispatches from the Women's Liberation Movement Synopsis This rich collection of original materials provides a lens through which to view women's liberation, the most influential social movement in the history of the United States. Today's women are so comfortable in their authority that they often forget to credit the women's liberation movement of the 1960s and '70s for paving the way, from the kitchen to the boardroom, from sexual harassment to self-defense, from cheerleading on the sidelines to playing center on the team. Distinguished scholars and active participants in the movement, Linda Gordon and Rosalyn Baxandall have collected a colorful array of documentssongs, leaflets, cartoons, position papers, that illustrate the range of people, places, organizations, and ideas that made up the movement. Dear Sisters chronicles historical change in such broad areas as health, work, and family, and captures the subtle humor, unceasing passion, and overwhelming diversity that defined the women's liberation movement. From: THE BOOK CLUB Katha Pollitt and Erik Tarloff The case for feminist radicals. <http://go.msn.com/newsletter3817/10325.asp> From: Katha Pollitt To: Erik Tarloff Subject: Hold on to Your Hat Posted: Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2000, Dear Eric, I think every movement that gets anywhere has both pragmatists and radicals in it. The Abolitionists and the Women's Suffrage movement, which now seem so staid, were full of firebrands and were regularly excoriated as mad revolutionaries out to destroy civilization. Usually, the pragmatists and radicals hate each otheras the leftist feminists represented in Dear Sisters hated Betty Friedan and the National Organization for Women, whom they regarded as liberal sell-outs interested only in changing a few discriminatory laws. (There was some truth to thatNOW originally refused to make reproductive rights one of its issues; Betty Friedan wanted lesbians banned from NOW because they would give credence to the canard that all feminists were gay.) But when we look back historically, it often seems as if they are working different sides of the same street. Would we be where we are now had the women's movement lacked its firebrands? I don't think so. One of the things radicals do is shift the paradigm. In the case of women, you could say that the old paradigm was this: Women are, and should be, subordinate to men; the "liberal" change proposed was "women are men's equals in the workplace but are still uniquely responsible for the home"; and the "radical" idea, which we've still only half-absorbed, is that women are equal, periodthe heroines of their own lives, not the support staff for the male half of humanity or the drudges and cheap labor that keeps the economy going. That's a huge conceptual shift, a dramatic break with old established ways of seeing. Take reproductive rights. The modest "abortion reform" movement that preceded the women's movementit advocated for permitting abortion under very narrow circumstances, like rape, insanity, and fetal deformityhad some success chipping away at state bans on abortion, but it took women's liberationists to pull the rug out from the whole idea that the state had the right to compel women to bear children against their will. And that ideaas we can see from the headlines any dayis still controversial. And were those old firebrands so man-hating as all that? A lot of them lived with men, loved men, had children with men, were married to men. Some of those women are still with those same men today! Others, though, suffered a lot when they found that their lovers and husbands were not interested in having a more equal relationship. I agree with you completely that feminism is good for men and children, toobut lots of men were and are tremendously threatened by it all the same. What I hear throughout Dear Sisters is frustration that just and reasonable claimsthat men should be involved with their kids, take responsibility for home life, respect women as their equals, be sexually faithful (an omnipresent theme in these pages!)--should meet with such resistance. We both agree that feminism has been a big success. As the book jacket says, it was "the 20th century's most influential movement." The paradigm shift took place, and although reality doesn't yet correspondwhat does it mean to have general support for the idea of equal pay if women don't in fact get that equal pay?--a great deal has changed, especially for the college-educated, professional, Slate-reading class. My editors, at The Nation and on my books, too, have all been women--(but as one of those editors explained to me, one reason for that is that the men who used to go into editorial jobs now go to Wall Street or dot.coms or other more lucrative fields). And of course, the struggle continues. Feminism is far from finishedin either sense of the word. As for the women represented in Dear Sisters, some of them became academics like Gordon and Baxandall themselves; writers (Ellen Willis, Marge Piercy, Laura Shapiro, Susan Brownmiller, Alice Kates Shulman); quite a few are still politically active, in women's health advocacy, for example. Others, though, having spent 10 or 12 years as political organizers outside the mainstream of society, found themselves burned-out and marginalized. They'd missed the moment to make a career, they'd counted too much for emotional support on activist-friendship networks that dispersed as the movement faded; they couldn't find their place in the go-go ^A'80s. (Readers who are curious about how some radical feminists went on with their lives and how they look back on the movement now might take a look at The Feminist Memoir Project, a fascinating collection of essays edited by Ann Snitow and Rachel Blau DuPlessis. Will we ever see that kind of radical activism again? If Bush becomes president and tries to roll back reproductive rights, anti-discrimination laws, and so on, we may soon find out! Hold on to your hat. Cheers, Katha
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