#second-wave feminist

[arakkne]

I wasn't on radfem Tumblr back in March so sorry if this was posted already but:

Happy 50th anniversary to our right to own a credit card!!

[womenshistory]

Women's Walk Against Rape, 1976.

[hairtusk]

Marilyn French, The Women's Room (1977)

[theangryfeministwriter]

Growing up, you learn that in 1919 women could vote and wear short dresses and then they could get jobs and everything was fine.

As an adult, you realize that your grandmother became a teacher because she couldn’t afford to be a nurse and those were her only two career options. Or that my grandmother’s grandmother actually died in a mental asylum for women before they were identifying psychiatric conditions in women- she had depression. Or that my grandmother married my grandfather because she wanted to be able to buy a house, which she couldn’t legally do alone.

You learn that our grandmothers were the quiet victims of the patriarchy- the ones who may have been beaten by their husbands, or had to perform a back alley abortion, or were coerced into a marriage in order to have any property or economic rights.

Women’s rights as we know them today are a lot younger than we realize

[haggishlyhagging]

Radical feminism remained the hegemonic tendency within the women's liberation movement until 1973 when cultural feminism began to cohere and challenge its dominance. After 1975, a year of internecine conflicts between radical and cultural feminists, cultural feminism eclipsed radical feminism as the dominant tendency within the women's liberation movement, and, as a consequence, liberal feminism became the recognized voice of the women's movement.

As the preceding chapters have shown, there were prefigurings of cultural feminism within radical feminism, especially by 1970. This nascent cultural feminism, which was sometimes termed ‘female cultural nationalism’ by its critics, was assailed by radical and left feminists alike. For instance, in the December 1970 issue of Everywoman, Ann Fury warned feminists against "retreating into a female culture":

“Like other oppressed [sic], we have our customs and language. But this culture, designed to create the illusion of autonomy, merely indicates fear. Withdraw into it and we take our slavery with us. . . . Furthermore when we retreat into our culture we cover our political tracks with moralism. We say our culture is somehow "better" than male culture. And we trace this supposed superiority to our innate nature, for if we attributed it to our powerlessness, we would have to agree to its dissolution the moment we seize control. . . . When we obtain power, we will take on the characteristics of the powerful. . . . We are not the Chosen people.”

Similarly, in a May 1970 article on the women's liberation movement in Britain, Juliet Mitchell and Rosalind Delmar contended:

“Re-valuations of feminine attributes accept the results of an exploitative situation by endorsing its concepts. The effects of oppression do not become the manifestations of liberation by changing values, or, for that matter, by changing oneself—but only by challenging the social structure that gives rise to those values in the first place.”

And in April 1970, the Bay Area paper It Ain't Me, Babe carried an editorial urging feminists to create a culture which would foster resistance rather than serve as a sanctuary from patriarchy:

“It is extremely oppressive for us to function in a culture where ideas are male oriented and definitions are male controlled. . . .Yet the creation of a woman's culture must in no way be separated from the political struggles of women for liberation. . . . Our culture cannot be the carving of an enclave in which we can bear the status quo more easily—rather it must crystallize the dreams that will strengthen our rebellion.”

But these warnings had little effect as the movement seemed to drift almost ineluctably toward cultural feminism. Cultural feminism seemed a solution to the movement's impasse—both its schisms and its lack of direction. Whereas parts of the radical feminist movement had become paralyzed by political purism, or what Robin Morgan called "failure vanguardism," cultural feminists promised that constructive changes could be achieved. To cultural feminists, alternative women's institutions represented, in Morgan's words, "concrete moves towards self determination and power" for women. Equally important, cultural feminism with its insistence upon women's essential sameness to each other and their fundamental difference from men seemed to many a way to unify a movement that by 1973 was highly schismatic. In fact, cultural feminism succeeded in large measure because it promised an end to the gay-straight split. Cultural feminism modified lesbian-feminism so that male values rather than men were vilified and female bonding rather than lesbianism was valorized, thus making it acceptable to heterosexual feminists.

Of course, by 1973 the women's movement was also facing a formidable backlash—one which may have been orchestrated by the male-dominated New Right, but was hardly lacking in female support. It is probably not coincidental that cultural feminism emerged at a time of backlash. Even if women's political, economic, and social gains were reversed, cultural feminism held out the possibility that women could build a culture, a space, uncontaminated by patriarchy. Morgan described women's art and spirituality as "the lifeblood for our survival" and maintained that “resilient cultures have kept oppressed groups alive even when economic analyses and revolutionary strategy fizzled.” There may even have been the hope that by invoking commonly held assumptions about women and men, anti-feminist women might experience a change of heart and join their ranks. The shift toward cultural feminism also suggests that feminists themselves were not immune to the growing conservatism of the period. Certainly, cultural feminism's demonization of the left seemed largely rooted in a rejection of the '60s radicalism out of which radical feminism evolved.

-Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America: 1967-75

[spiderfreedom]

historical revisionism of second-wave feminism

I'm wondering where this idea that "second-wave feminism" didn't bring up race came from. It seems to be conflating liberal feminism, starting with Betty Friedan's "The Feminist Mystique", for the entire movement. But "second-wave feminism" refers to an entire era of feminist organizing, including lesbian feminism, socialist feminism, radical feminist, and numerous Black feminist works with multiple intersections. Why should Friedan and NOW's 'liberal feminism' be the representative of an entire era of feminist writing? What do we have to gain from pretending that there were no Black feminist writers during the second wave?

The US women's movement has always had ties to anti-racist movements like abolitionism and the civil rights movement, as well as the New Left and socialist/anti-war movements. White feminists tried to include racial analysis in their books - to mixed effect, e.g. Susan Brownmiller's book "Against Our Will" proved to be contentious for its treatment of interracial rape of Black men against white women (example).

It feels like there's been a wave of historical revisionism to make the second-wave seem more limited and single-issue focused than it really was, in order to make "third-wave" feminism seem novel, exciting, and necessary. It's resulted in a whole generation of feminist writers and cultural critics who don't read or quote or engage with the feminist works of the second wave. They are dismissed out of hand as irrelevant or limited. It feels like another way to say "stop paying attention to women's history, just believe me when I say the first and second waves were irrevocably damaged and that the third wave is the only way to go."

I think this article does a good job of capturing one of the reasons why an interracial feminism failed to form, which is that white women assumed Black women also wanted an interracial feminism, when many Black women, especially at the start of the movement, were not interested in solidarity with white women. The fantasy of a racially integrated society was often much more important to white organizers than to Black organizers, who may have instead wanted Black self-determination. I disagree with some of the points of the article (can elaborate if anyone is interested) but I recommend reading it anyway for a retrospective on why white attempts to reach out to Black women failed - white feminists did attempt to reach out, but failed to focus on issues that were relevant to Black women, failed or were offensive in their racial analysis, and failed to understand the importance of racial solidarity for Black women.

Correcting the record on the racism and failures of white feminists in the second-wave is necessary work to building a strong movement. But there's a difference between correcting the record and pretending that white feminists didn't try to talk about race at all. They did! They were participants of anti-racist movements! But they failed to understand their own racism. They failed to understand the complex dynamics between white men, white women, Black men, and Black women. They failed to focus on issues that resonated with Black women. They were failures of bad attempts, not that no attempt was ever made... and that's the part I find weird.

The idea that there was no racial analysis made during the second wave, by white women or Black women, flattens a complex history. Like fun fact - the Combahee River Collective Statement which is the foundation of intersectional feminism and third wave identity politics? Is a second wave text! It was published in 1977, in the late era of second wave activism in the US!

I have more to say later, but for the moment, I'd like to present you with some examples of second-wave feminist texts written by Black women. Read them, and avail yourself of another myth - that there is One Black Feminism. Black Feminists have always had internal disagreements, which frightens white feminists, because white feminists want to know The Correct Answer On Race. I highly recommend reading these (and modern Black feminist texts too!) to understand the situation Black feminists faced in the 60s and 70s. All of these texts were published between 1960 and 1980. They are all essays or excerpts - links provided where possible.

Black Women’s Liberation group of Mt. Vernon, New York - Statement on Birth Control

Mary Ann Weathers - An argument for Black Women’s Liberation as Revolutionary Force (https://caringlabor.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/mary-ann-weathers-an-argument-for-black-womens-liberation-as-a-revolutionary-force/)

Frances M. Beal - Double Jeopardy: to be Black and Female

Doris Wright - Angry Notes from a Black Feminist (https://yu.instructure.com/courses/49421/files/1918241/download?wrap=1)

Margaret Sloan: Black and Blacklesbian

Alice Walker - In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens

Angela Davis: Joan Little: The Dialectics of Rape (https://overthrowpalacehome.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/ms.-magazine-from-the-archives.pdf)

Michele Wallace: A Black Feminist’s Search for Sisterhood (https://www.amistadresource.org/documents/document_09_03_010_wallace.pdf)

The Combahee River Collective (https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/combahee-river-collective-statement-1977/)

Barbara Smith - Racism and Women’s Studies (https://hamtramckfreeschool.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/smith-barbara-racism-and-womens-studies.pdf)

[feministdragon]

Let’s talk motherhood for a second. 

In modern mainstream feminism, the goal is understood to be ‘equality’ with men, in which is meant several things:  equal treatment as human beings, equal social role to men in society, and economic parity with men.   They are looking to be treated as equal economic actors, who take on equal roles for caring for the home and interchangable parenting roles. 

Our experience in the past thirty to forty years has shown that this is impossible, and not because of women’s inability to fulfill these roles (women have proven themselves equal to or superior to men in every field of work they have entered), but because of men’s refusal to participate in this great levelling of humanity into equality and reciprocity. 

Men don’t want women to have equal pay, or it would have happened by now.  Men don’t want to participate equally in home care, or it would have happened by now.  Men want equal parenting roles when it comes to the fun stuff or having the power over children, but rarely want to squat in the trenches with the cleanup, the nitty-gritty of child care, the day-to-day work.  They want this to be optional, so there ends up being a female full-time parent and a male part time one, even when the majority income earner is the woman. 

In trying to take on the same social role as men, women are trying to reduce the impact of motherhood on their lives, using money and other womens’ labor to reduce their workload, so they can continue attempting the social role of men.   They are dealing with the extreme of their body’s hard labor to create a new human being, while trying to pretend that it wasn’t that much work and hadn’t impacted their social value (which rests in creating an appearance of well-being and sexual availability through other extreme means).   

But motherhood is such an extreme change in a woman’s life, that trying to go on as before, or trying to go on mimicking male economic status, is a near-impossible task.  You have gone through incredible psychological and physiological changes, and yet you are expected, and expect of yourself, to go on as if nothing much has changed, pursuing male economic status while still projecting the ideals of femininity (effortless, sexy, beautiful, only surface level, uncomplicated emotions that place no burden on anyone).   Women are minimizing the beauty and joy, ugliness and pain, awfulness and wonder of motherhood by trying to make it conform to the ideas marketed to us through the male eyes of what motherhood should look like.

In the face of this impossible burden, women are forced to outsource the care labor of a child because a single woman at home with a baby for 20 out of 24 hours in the day is not a healthy situation for either the mother or the child.   Human beings evolved in caretaking groups for a reason, and that’s because people are supposed to care for each other, and also be cared for.   The mother is taking care of the child, yes, but who is taking care of the mother?   Only the mother, and maybe sometimes the father, but most often the father expects to continue to be cared for by the mother/wife as he had before the baby was born.  

How do you take care of yourself and also a child and a household and a man, while recovering from intense trauma to your body and intense changes to your life and the amount of work expected of you, while being nearly completely isolated from contact with other people, and also maintain your humanity?   Men point out that we now have labor-saving machines, but this is hardly the point, as labor-saving machines neither interact with the children nor provide companionship and care for the mother.  This situation is untenable for women, and so of course they must look for other solutions, such as external childcare in the form of nannies, babysitters, daycare centers, or shipping the child off to grandparents. 

But in this way the beautful connections between people are strained, and further alienated from each other by strict accountings of value and price now that our economy has evolved to selling our time and mental energy as well as our labor.  Instead of childcare being a communal project, where everyone’s contribution is a gift to each other and the community, we must constantly protect our self interest and strictly account for the value of everyone’s time, in order to make sure that everyone’s economic interest is covered, because no one can afford to be taken advantage of.  Literally, in today’s economy, if you do not make sure you are paid for every moment of your working time, it’s quite difficult to keep a roof over your head and food on your plate.

This situation of extreme burden to women, has been forced onto us by the rules of the market economy, an economic system invented by men and for men, under which society has been subsumed for the last 250 years.   The market economy wants all the economic actors to operate as independent, self-interested units that compete with each other for resources and whose contributions supposedly miraculously balance out.

The market economy was built around the previous econonmic epoch’s concept of autarchy, where each male was the head of an economic unit—the household—comprised of reproductive slaves, household slaves, the next generation of males (future heads of household), and the next generation of both reproductive and household slaves.  The men each represented an individual political and econonmic unit in society, and the household behind each man was subsumed into his representational unit.  The women, children and slaves were only economically counted in terms of the patriarch they were attached to. 

With the partial economic emancipation of women through the work of the second wave feminists in the 1970s, women were released into the economy, which disrupted this paradigm of men as sole earners and political units that everyone else was dependent upon.   At first the men were upset to have the competition, but capitalism as a system quickly realised the benefit of this new group of lower-wage workers, as they could be both marketed to and drawn from in the labor market, and more cheaply.  For this and other structural reasons, wages were lowered in real terms, and it again became common for two incomes to be necessary in many if not most households, but the cultural framework did not evolve, meaning women who entered into reproductive partnership with men were still doing the major part of work of the household, housework and childcare, while also doing their part to earn money for the household.  

[dykeulous]

A CRITIQUE OF SECOND WAVE FEMINISM

neoliberalism is, to put in simple words, late-stage capitalism. the highest stage of capitalism is imperialism, so we can see how neoliberalism isn’t as good as many would like. it is an illustration of today’s bourgeois democracy. it is implemented in contemporary “democratic” countries, and was first established by a fascist chilean leader: augusto pinochet.

the insane neoliberalization of feminism is important to understand. it is a process of removing & unlearning the radical goal from feminism & shaping it down so it no longer threatens male dominance & capitalism. the second wave of feminism concentrated majority of its critiques of women’s oppression, attempting to tear down capitalism, basing it mostly around the life in a keynesian society. books & feminist literature during this period mostly spoke about the reality of women experiencing hostile coercion to lead a life of a wife, and therefore a housewife; and being directly & indirectly controlled by men due to the patriarchal values enforced by capitalism. just as this wave of feminism was emerging, neoliberalism performed. neoliberalism formulated itself as the “solution” to massive issues that feminists were coming to world about. the reason to it is because it allowed variants of individual rights. second wave feminists began believing in reforming capitalism, rather than outright tearing it down. some might say they were trying to practice female separatism by “removing” themselves from capitalism. regardless of their intentions, this wave of feminism, while achieving a great deal, still presented itself as a neoliberal movement. women of color & lower-class women were the women who oftentimes disagreed with this, but they were silenced by white rich women. second wave feminism ended up letting neoliberalism make a large impact on the women’s liberationist movement. white rich women ended up being the “icons” of the movement.

we must understand the good things the second wave of feminism achieved, while also critiquing it. mass-highlighting of this “individual success”, careerism & personal choices will lead to the final deradicalization of feminism. the second wave of feminism encouraged radical feminism to grow & develop, but many of its followers went on to be performative activists, and shaped the branch of feminism that we today know as liberal feminism.

[menalez]

i genuinely think its insane that theres so many women on radblr so uninformed on what radical feminism is that theres people arguing the suffragettes were radfems. like they literally dont know the very basics of what a radfem is so they think every feminist in the past is a radfem

[digitalconcept-fl]

Hello, I’ve made some more mock pins and buttons. Anyone is free to use them, so long as they are not involved in any hate speech.

I chose the theme of cats, due the historic symbolism between cats and women, as well as social prejudice cats experience due to that connection. Cats have long since been persecuted along side women, but they cannot round us all up, they cannot kick us and expect us not to land on our feet. We will fight with claws and fangs to no longer be under the foot of the social construct that tells us from childhood that we should live a life of shame and that our lives are not valuable. We have proven we can be leaders, writers, scientists, construction workers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, planners, artists, philosophers, DESPITE the patriarchal systems ACTIVELY FIGHTING us every second of every day.

We must believe in ourselves as all the women who fought for us before in history. We have to, because regardless of country of origin, age, race, income class, profession, education, martial status, ALL WOMEN suffer under the patriarchal rule.

[womenshistory]

Feminist Factions United and Filled the Streets for This Historic March

In 1970, on the 50th anniversary of suffrage, the Women’s Strike for Equality brought together a diverse group of protesters.

Photographed by John Olson. August 26, 1970.

[hairtusk]

Andrea Dworkin, 'Pornography', from Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981)

[theangryfeministwriter]

special thanks to that ballerina farms article because in an effort to understand her I’m reading the Feminine Mystique

[sowhatnotcreative]

I think we as radical feminists need to be mindful of the fact that many of the women we discuss were still a part of the second wave of feminism, and there are some parts that we should be and are rejecting/evolving away from/getting educated about.

Specifically, I believe we need to be more serious about not pairing up with men and not centering men in our lives. A lot of women and feminist thinkers have shown what that leads to, not only by texts but by living examples. Marrying a man is a choice left to the individual (of course, be reasonable people who are offended by this point), but it can never ever be a feminist or even safe choice for you or even your children. Stop marrying men!

Another important point is we need to be better at calling out and standing against homophobia and specifically lesbophobia. "Political lesbianism" is a homophobic name for something that is a core idea. Not dating/marrying/living with men is not and never will be lesbianism. Political celibacy, political non marriage, feministic single living, I'm not the greatest at naming, but the "political lesbianism" name needs to go. We have progressed too far to entertain homophobia in feminist spaces.

This is far from everything, I'm sure, just things I had on my mind. Please add if there are some other points you feel are vastly different and important between literature and theory that we use, and the radical feminism we try to grow and evolve "

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

thinking about fallout 4 against my will

[wintersangelic]

⋆ ˚｡ ⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡ ⋆ The Disappearance of Shere Hite (2023) (1/2)⋆ ˚｡ ⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡ ⋆

(part two)