#susan brownmiller

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

“It’s funny about man’s attitude toward rape in war. Unquestionably there shall be some raping. Unconscionable, but nevertheless inevitable. When men are men, slugging it out among themselves, conquering new land, subjugating new people, driving on toward victory, unquestionably there shall be some raping.

And so it has been.”

- Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, in the chapter on war rape

[haggishlyhagging]

“Although they are housed on her person, from the moment they begin to show, a female discovers that her breasts are claimed by others. Parents and relatives mark their appearance as a landmark event, schoolmates take notice, girlfriends compare, boys zero in; later a husband, a lover, a baby expect a proprietary share. No other part of the human anatomy has such semipublic, intensely private status, and no other part of the body has such vaguely defined custodial rights. One learns to be selectively generous with breasts—this is the girl child's lesson—and through the breast iconography she sees all around her, she comes to understand that breasts belong to everybody, but especially to men. It is they who invent and refine the myths, who discuss breasts publicly, who criticize their failings as they extoll their wonders, and who claim to have more need and intimate knowledge of them than a woman herself.”

-Susan Brownmiller, Femininity

[femsolid]

"The equation of maleness with bigness persists as a dearly loved concept. I’ve heard “Look at the big males” while viewing an elephant matriarch and her offspring in Kenya, and “Look at the big male” while sighting a female musk ox and her young in Alaska, and I’ve gnashed my teeth on both occasions. Authoritative women who correct false impressions are unfeminine and bossy but it is equally true that amateur observers of wildlife tend to assume that the largest animal in any grouping must be a male, and furthermore, that he must be in charge.

Contemplation of a big female mating with a smaller male is so at odds with our human perspective and the sort of anthropomorphizing that is found in books for children that many intelligent people are surprised to hear that in a majority of species, females do happen to be the larger sex. This is an evolutionary adaptation with probable reproductive advantage for the American bald eagle, the king crab, the snowy owl, the gypsy moth, the chinchilla, the garter snake, the python, the right whale, the humpback whale, the gray whale, the blue whale (thus the largest creature in the world is female), all families of rabbits and hares, the hawks and the falcons, toads, sharks, salmon, flounder, most hummingbirds and turtles, and other fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians and insects too numerous to mention.

Only a half-inch shorter than Prince Charles when she wore her flat heels, Lady Di was reduced in stature by a full head for the postage stamp that commemorated their royal wedding. “She looked up into his eyes” is more than a breathless phrase from a Gothic novel; it is an expression of the heterosexual relationship as we expect to find it. When a woman stands taller than a man she has broken a cardinal feminine rule, for her physical stature reminds him that he may be too short—inadequate, insufficient—for the competitive world of men. She has dealt a blow to his masculine image, undermined his footing as aggressor-protector. To show a man that he may not be needed is a terribly unfeminine stance."

- Femininity by Susan Brownmiller

[spiderfreedom]

Reading Susan Brownmiller’s “Femininity” was just nonstop me going “yes! You’re so right!” Like breaking through gaslighting and remembering your real feelings and observations and perceptions.

The pro femininity club (read: pro decorative fashion and pro pink) has spent so long talking about how oppressed femininity is that I lost faith in my own history. Maybe I was the bad person for not wanting to wear dresses, somehow. Maybe the girls who bullied me were right.

And then this book comes and BAM just reminded me of all the ways femininity makes you small, restricted, out of touch. Like a breath of fresh air.

Aesthetics communicate things and saying “I like this aesthetic but I don’t agree with the values it projects” only goes so far. The aesthetics of femininity is about vulnerability, being a decorative object, and sexuality. Why is it pushed on women specifically? Why do so many women accept the limitations on their bodies in favor of whimsical clothes? Brownmiller addresses these topics with care and as someone who also hears the siren song to just fall in line and be feminine.

[gorgonsagainstrape]

In the violent landscape inhabited by primitive woman and man, some woman somewhere had a prescient vision of her right to her own physical integrity, and in my mind's eye I can picture her fighting like hell to preserve it. After a thunderbolt of recognition that this particular incarnation of hairy, two-legged hominid was not the Homo sapiens with whom she would like to freely join parts, it might have been she, and not some man, who picked up the first stone and hurled it. How surprised he must have been, and what an unexpected battle must have taken place. Fleet of foot and spirited, she would have kicked, bitten, pushed and run, but she could not retaliate in kind. The dim perception that had entered prehistoric woman's consciousness must have had an equal but opposite reaction in the mind of her male assailant. For if the first rape was an unexpected battle founded on the first woman's refusal, the second rape was indubitably planned. Indeed, one of the earliest forms of male bonding must have been the gang rape of one woman by a band of marauding men. This accomplished, rape became not only a male prerogative, but man's basic weapon of force against woman, the principal agent of his will and her fear. His forcible entry into her body, despite her physical protestations and struggle, became the vehicle of his victorious conquest over her being, the ultimate test of his superior strength, the triumph of his manhood. Man's discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times, along with the use of fire and the first crude stone axe. From prehistoric times to the present, I believe, rape has played a critical function. It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.

Against our Will: Men, Women and Rape | Susan Brownmiller

[makingcontact]

Reproductive Justice: The Ongoing Struggle for Bodily Autonomy (Encore)

Today we share excerpts from “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry,” a documentary filled with stories that still resonate today as women face new challenges around reproductive rights and sexual violence.  The documentary tells the stories of the activists of the Women’s Liberation Movement that gained traction in the late 1960s and led to social and policy changes that set women on a path towards…

[honeyriot]

“Miss America was perfect for us lefty Women’s Liberationists,” Morgan explains. “Made to order. She touched capitalism, militarism, racism, and sexism, all in one fell swoop. Capitalism because they used her to sell the sponsors’ products, militarism because she went off to entertain the troops, racism because there had never been a black Miss America at that point, and clearly she was objectified as a woman.” Lindsy Van Gelder was a cub reporter at the New York Post when the city editor tossed Morgan’s “No More Miss America” press release on her desk. “It said ‘women reporters only,’ ” Van Gelder recalls. “The city desk thought this could be a funny story. I was writing a lot of funny stories as well as general news at the time. This is very difficult to explain to my daughters, and to younger women who are my friends, but in those days we didn’t have a context to think about Miss America. We weren’t even using the word ‘feminism’ yet. Miss America was a sacred cow, the kind of thing that women were supposed to aspire to. It made perfect sense that anybody who would be protesting Miss America had to be a kook. So I set off to interview Robin Morgan.” Midway through the interview, Van Gelder revised her assumptions. “The original press release was strident and rhetoric - filled, the way that many things were in that era, but Robin in person exuded an intelligence that was literary. She was very good at making links with other political movements, with the antiracist and antiwar struggles. I also recognized her from Mama , but I thought it wouldn’t be cool to bring that up till the end of our conversation. So I came back to the Post with what I thought was a serious political story about a serious new movement, but the city desk still wanted ‘funny.’ So I complied. This was how the term ‘bra burner’ got coined.” Robin had mused about a Freedom Bonfire, in which the oppressive paraphernalia of femininity — girdles, bras, eyelash curlers, and copies of Playboy and the Ladies’ Home Journal — would be consigned to flames on the famous old boardwalk. Brightening her first - paragraph lead, Van Gelder composed the fateful words “Lighting a match to a draft card has become a standard gambit of protest groups in recent years, but something new is due to go up in flames this Saturday. Would you believe a bra burning?” The Post story, “Bra Burners & Miss America,” ran the next day. “Robin was not listed in the phone book,” Van Gelder relates, “so there I was, sitting at the city desk, getting inundated with calls from all over the universe from people who wanted to talk to Robin Morgan.” “Lindsy thought she was doing us a favor,” Morgan explains. “What happened was that before we even hit the boardwalk, our permit was revoked. I had split my ass to get the damned permit. So I went back to the police and said, ‘We’re not going to have fires, we’re going to have a Freedom Trash Can. We’re going to throw bras into it. Nobody talked about a fire — where did this idea come from? We’re not burning anything.’ But that’s where it got started, before the demonstration.” “And in fact,” Van Gelder says, “they never burned their bras because of the fire laws in Atlantic City. But the term became history. I shudder to think that will be my epitaph — She invented bra burning."

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

“It has been argued that when killing is viewed as not only permissible but heroic behaviour sanctioned by one’s government or cause, the distinction between taking a human life and other forms of impermissible violence gets lost, and rape becomes an unfortunate but inevitable by-product of the necessary game called war. Women, by this reasoning, are simply regrettable victims - incidental, unavoidable casualties - like civilian victims of bombing, lumped together with children, homes, personal belongings, a church, a dike, a water buffalo or next year’s crop. But rape in war is qualitatively different from a bomb that misses its military target, different from impersonal looting and burning, different from deliberate ambush, mass murder or torture during interrogation, although it contains elements of all the above. Rape is more than a symptom of war or evidence of its violent excess. Rape in war is a familiar act with a familiar excuse.”

- Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, in the chapter on war rape



[haggishlyhagging]

An unadorned face became the honorable new look of feminism in the early 1970s, and no one was happier with the freedom not to wear makeup than I, yet it could hardly escape my attention that more women supported the Equal Rights Amendment and legal abortion than could walk out of the house without their eye shadow. Did I think of them as somewhat pitiable? Yes I did. Did they bitterly resent the righteous pressure put on them to look, in their terms, less attractive? Yes they did. A more complete breakdown and confusion of aims, goals and values could not have occurred, and of all the movement rifts I have witnessed, this one remains for me the most poignant and the most difficult to resolve.

If women's faces are supposed to benefit from cosmetics, the underside of the equation is that the wearer of makeup dislikes her face without it, believing she is wan, colorless, uninteresting, flat, an insignificant blob of blemished skin with eyes that are too small, a nose that is too broad, cheekbones that are nonexistent and a mouth that fails of its own accord to whisper of sexual desire. This is the central contradiction of makeup, and the one I find most appalling. Cosmetics have been seen historically as proof of feminine vanity, yet they are proof, if anything, of feminine insecurity, an abiding belief that the face underneath is insufficient unto itself.

As it happens, some women look good in makeup—in societal terms I will even say that they look better in makeup; I'll grant them that, for who among us has not been trained to discern beauty in women in terms of professional, expensive glamour—the actress, the model, the President's wife? When my cosmetically adept friends complete their conjurer's art of creating their faces, I marvel at the finished picture, the makeover, the transformation: an even, glowing skin, a widened eye, a richly defined and luscious mouth. In short, a face that has responded to the age-old injunction of man to woman: Smile. A made-up woman does not need to be inwardly happy to give the impression of ecstatic pleasure, nor does she require expressive, mobile features to project the illusion of vibrant, animated life.

-Susan Brownmiller, Femininity

[femsolid]

“Belief that the feminine nature could be coarsened by learning has been coupled in history with the idea that it is in woman’s nature to talk too much. Loquaciousness in the female sex has been remarked upon, not surprisingly, by the most voluble of men. Babblers, tattlers, gossips, chatterboxes, nags and scolds: the descriptions apply to one sex only and suggest a severe defect of character. It is said that women gush. We run on about insignificant matters, and when entrusted with something important, we can’t keep a secret. The din is infernal. What’s a man to do? A popular pub in London, The Silent Woman, named for the Ben Jonson farce, has as its tavern sign a headless female torso, the final resort. (It is worth noting that a woman with a gag in her mouth is a staple of present-day pornography.)

In mixed company there’s no question which sex has cornered the market on longwinded chatter. Men readily interrupt the speech of women, and women allow the interruption. In one systematic analysis of taped conversations between men and women, the men did 98 percent of the interrupting. There are many reasons why men interrupt the speech of women and get away with it. For one thing, more men have been trained to be verbally aggressive, but more to the point, boys grow up assuming they have valuable information to impart. By tradition girls were instructed by their mothers and advised by their teen magazines that the most appreciated quality in a young lady is her ability to listen, to play dumb on dates and to act impressed in male company. In all-female company, a church mouse can turn into a nightingale—I’ve seen it happen. Then there is the very real question of how well female voices carry. A deeper male voice can drown out a lighter female one, and a woman has to work extra hard—truly assert herself—to override an interruption.

Sociologist Pamela Fishman concluded that men are the talkers and women provide the support work that keeps a conversation going. In Fishman’s study of male-female conversations, when women tried to initiate new topics, it was mostly without success. They generously followed male-suggested topics, they asked nearly three times as many questions as the men to draw them out, and they interjected frequent little boosts like “Oh, really?” to keep things perking. (Women also employ more body language than men to indicate conversational interest. Head bobbing, a flurry of little nods to show support and agreement, provides a visual accompaniment to the feminine task of animated, empathic listening.)”

- Femininity by Susan Brownmiller

[malieck]

Von vorgeschichtlicher Zeit bis in die Gegenwart hatte Vergewaltigung eine entscheidende Funktion. Sie ist nicht mehr und nicht weniger als ein bewuswter Prozess der Einschüchterung, durch den alle Männer alle Frauen in einem Zustand der Furcht halten. – Susan Brownmiller

Vergewaltigung ist zur zentralen Metapher unserer Kultur geworden – die Vergewaltigung von Frauen, die Vergewaltigung von Minoritäten und die Vergewaltigung der Erde selbst. – Fritjof Capra

Senta Trömel-Plötz (Hg.): Gewalt durch Sprache. 1984, S. 9.

[catherine-montvoisin]

On the revolutionary concept of women in practical clothing

“Although there was more than a symbolic connection between the suffocating confinements of women’s long skirts and the suffocating restrictions that defined women’s roles, the dress-reform movement of the 1850s became an excruciating personal torment and a political mortification to the American heroines of women’s rights.

 Among the pioneers [of the “rational dress movement”] were Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, the Grimke sisters and the self-effacing Quaker organizer Susan B. Anthony, who later recalled this time in her life as “a mental crucifixion.”

[...] Elizabeth Smith Miller, the daughter of abolitionist Gerrit Smith, [created “the short dress”] which she had originally stitched up for working in the garden. [It] had a somewhat Turkish look. The lower part consisted of a pair of ankle-length pantaloons with an overskirt that came to the knees. To the knees! No trailing skirts to get caught underfoot, stepped on, ripped or soiled. No undulating petticoats to gather up and hold with dainty grace while turning a corner or sitting down, in order to avoid a mishap. On a visit to Seneca Falls, Lizzie Miller gave Lizzie Stanton a practical demonstration. She showed her cousin how confidently she could walk up a flight of stairs with a baby in her arm and an oil lamp balanced in her other hand, without fear of tripping. Mrs. Stanton, who already had four of her seven children, was instantly converted.

With the bounding enthusiasm for which she was famous, she applied the scissors and needle to her own long skirts and began to evangelize among her many friends in suffrage and abolition, offering to make a present of the short dress to Susan Anthony, a promising new ally from the temperance movement. [...] Stanton wrote to her cousin. “We can have no peace in travelling unless we cut off the great national petticoat … Stand firm.”

There were many exhortations from one feminist to another in the years 1851 and 1852 to stand firm. Wrote Ida Husted Harper, “… the press howled in derision, the pulpit hurled its anathemas and the rabble took up the refrain. On the streets of the larger cities the women were followed by mobs of men and boys, who jeered and yelled and did not hesitate to express their disapproval by throwing sticks and stones.” Many a votes-for-women rally turned into a circus when an unruly mob invaded the hall to gawk at the [short dress]. What began as a personal convenience had turned into a painful political principle, the right of a woman to wear comfortable clothes. In December 1852 while visiting with Mrs. Stanton, Susan B. took the plunge, shortening her skirts and cutting her hair to make a total statement. “Well, at last I am in short skirt and trousers!” she anxiously wrote to Lucy Stone. She was the last of the great suffragists to adopt the style. 

Within one year, she would be among the last to still wear it.”

- Susan Brownmiller, Femininity

This is the “short dress” that women, well-known activists and organisers who were at the front of a massive social revolution, had to withstand physical and verbal harassment and public humiliation to wear:

I don’t think men have become any less committed to enforcing decorous object status on women, what with stilettos and 2-inch long fake nails, and clothes that can’t be moved in without constant re-adjustment or restriction. 

The best I can say is they’ve lost some of the power they had to force their way. And for that, we thank these women.