Roots of Radical Feminism
Roots of Radical Feminism
Roots of Radical Feminism
The era of the radical feminist is generally identied as the mid 1960s
to the mid 1970s. Yet the roots of female radical activism reach deep
into the nineteenth century and strike soil in the three traditional elds
of progressive thought: The abolition and civil rights movement,
womens suffrage movement, and the Far Left movement.
The work of the Grimke Sisters proved not only a seminal contribution to the abolition movement, but a critical inspiration for the
slowly burgeoning womens movement as well.
time, The Womans Bible shed light on how the Bible had been used for
centuries as an instrument to justify the oppression of the women. The
Womans Bible presented the common Bible as a text written by men in
ecclesiastical power, to keep women subordinate and ineffectual within
the scope of the church:
Others fear that they might compromise their evangelical faith
by afliating with those of more illiberal views, who do not regard
the Bible as the Word of God, but like any other book, to be judged
on its merits. If the Bible teaches the equality of Woman, why does
the church refuse to ordain women to preach the gospel, to ll the
ofces of deacons and elders, to administer the Sacraments, or to
admit them as delegates to the Synods, General Assemblies and Conferences of the different denominations?
. . . Why is it more ridiculous for women to protest against her
present status in the Old and New Testament, in the ordinances
and disciplines of the church, than in the statutes and constitutions
of the state? Why is it more ridiculous to arraign ecclesiastics for their
false teaching and acts of injustice to women, than members of
Congress and the House of Commons? (Stanton 1974, 910).
All the while, pioneering women tested the limits of their rights
and opportunities. Amelia Bloomer and Mary Walker dared to challenge the accepted mores of female fashion. Margaret Sanger
championed the availability of birth control information and devices.
Sarah Josepha Hale, Jennie June, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Frances Whitaker blazed opportunities in the media. And women continually pushed against the patriarchal societys conventional
denitions of womens work: women such as Elizabeth Blackwell
in medicine; Louise Blanchard Bethune in architecture; Frances E.
Willard and Sophia Smith in higher education; Charlotte Ray and
Belva Lockwood in law; Antoinette Blackwell and Mary Baker Eddy
in ministry.
Finally in June 191972 years after the Seneca Falls Convention
the Susan B. Anthony Amendment was passed by the United States
Senate by a vote of 66 to 30, sending the amendment on for ratication
by the states. The ratication process would end August 18, 1920,
as Tennessee became the 36th State to ratify the 19th Amendment
journal, Mother Earth. She found herself behind prison walls again in
1917, for conspiring to obstruct military conscription. After the Justice
Department raided the Mother Earth ofces, she was deported to Russia in 1919, in time to witness the repercussions of the Bolshevik Revolution. In 1936, she traveled to Spain to support the Spanish
Republics ght against fascist Francisco Franco. Never once did she
seem to sway from her anarchic ties or beliefs. And after she died of
a stroke in Toronto, Canada, in 1940, her tombstone read: Liberty
will not descend to the people, a people must raise themselves to Liberty.
The advent of World War I created a ssure between nationalism
and socialism. The war became linked to imperialism by socialists, and
in turn, many socialists and communists were persecuted. The Lyrical
Left became curtailed by the Red Scare and antisedition legislation
under Wilson, such as the Espionage Act of 1917, which, for example,
denied the Socialist Democratic Party postal privileges. With the close
of World War I, America seemed to withdraw to nurse its wounds
from the brutal global conict with salves of materialism, hedonism,
and celebration. The nation turned away from any leftist ideas of
restructuring American society, preferring to concentrate on the indulgences and frivolity of a nation recovering from a brutal war. The apathy of the 20s constricted idealistic thought of the Lyrical Left. But
the party atmosphere of the 1920s eventually gave way to the stark
realism of the great depression.
The movement which would become characterized as the Old
Left emerged in the 1930s in response to the failure of capitalism
during the Depression. Although efforts arose to resurrect the socialistic ideas of preWorld War I, the working class in America remained
largely conservative, essentially blaming itself for its predicament,
rather than the inequality of the class structure. The New Deal rose
above the interests of the ruling class, responding to the needs of organized labor and the majority of citizens. Meanwhile, the countryfaced
with the reported horrors of Joseph Stalins perverted Soviet version
of socialismcurtailed the emergence of the Left in the United States.
Although Stalin poisoned the socialist experiment, the United States
was already engaged in such socialist programs such as welfare, labor
relations, and mass education. The industrial push of World War II
saved the American economy, and quickly consumerism and
consumerism to buffer itself from the realities of the cold war. Opportunities for ethnic groups and women that had sprung up during the
war dried up as the servicemen returned to the United States, and
competition for employment intensied. Any anti-American demonstrations were quickly curtailed by the allegations of McCarthyism.
But during this period of apathy two issues inltrated the nations consciousness: racial discrimination and nuclear disarmament
Out of the cultural disillusion and alienation came a New Left
movement, not so much concerned about the working class or
proletariatas the Old or Lyrical Left wasbut about the disenfranchised. In 1959 Fidel Castros Communist Party came into power in
Cuba, and Castro was seen as a new breed of radical. The emerging
New Left rejected the idea of Cuba as communist conspiracy in the
Western Hemisphere but saw instead a lone revolution by a poor
country against the autocratic ruler Fulgencio Batista. Combined with
the 1960 election of John Fitzgerald Kennedy as President, Castro and
Kennedy became symbols of the potency and potential of a young generation, with fresh ideas and energy.
In the meantime, the civil rights movement had begun in the
South. Martin Luther King Jr. had organized the Montgomery Bus
Boycott in 1954, to protest the segregation of the citys public transit
lines. In February 1960, the rst sit-in at the Woolworth Counter in
Greensboro, North Carolina, was organized by the Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which also spearheaded
the Freedom Rides and black voter registration drives in the Deep
South. The SNCC became the shock troop of civil rights movement.
It recruited and sent eight hundred white students from the North to
help with voter registration in the South. It also became the rst civil
rights group to oppose the war in Vietnam.
The SNCC inuenced the 1964 Civil Rights Law, the 1965
Voting Rights Law, and the Johnson Administrations War on Poverty. It became a model for another prominent New Left organization,
the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), with its participatory
democracy and parallel structures. Organizations such as SDS did
not want to repair and reform the current society, but develop a new
society in which Marxist ideas of socialism replaced what was the
oppressive practices of capitalism. They were anti-anti-communists,
who tried to ignite an interracial movement of poor. It developed the
women traveled to the South to aid in the SNCC registration of African American voters, and to participate in the Freedom Rides of the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). They ocked to groups such
as SDS and the Radical Youth Movement, determined to work side
by side with men to overturn an oppressive and imperialistic regime,
and to campaign for the end of the war. Many women learned the
radical techniques developed under SNCC or SDS.
Yet as these women watched African Americans struggle to alleviate their own disenfranchisement, they grew painfully aware of the
discrimination and oppression they experienced as a gender. They
became tired of the white males of the New Left movement relegating
women to second-class status and responsibilities. But when women
criticized accepted sex roles, and advocated for societal changes beneting womensuch as communal child care, accessible abortions,
birth control information, sharing houseworkthey were belittled
and mufed by the elites in the movement. Many of these women
began to realize that the same oppressive societal structures which held
down the blacks in the form of racism also restricted the opportunities
for women in the form of sexism. Before long, the New Left movement would not only be split along ethic lines but along gender lines
as well. The lessons of the nineteenth century suffragists and abolitionists would have to be learned one more time.
The tenets of radical feminism began to emerge out of the early
stages of the New Left movement in America: The womens liberation movement was generated by women within SDS who rebelled
against male supremacy in that organization and in the New Left
movement as a whole (Diggins 1992, 233).
Although SDS and SNCC headed the list of New Left organizations, there were plenty of other causes to draw the disillusioned young
adult. The list included the RYM (Revolutionary Youth Movement I)
also known as the Weathermen. Taking their title from the lyrics of
Bob Dylans Subterranean Homesick Blues, the Weathermen
engaged in what they saw as heroic action designed to bring the system
to its knees. The Weathermen felt the blacks couldnt do it alone, and
so the whites should support black efforts to ght racism. But by 1970
the Weatherman had failed to gain the sympathies of most Americans.
It headed underground, and added to the violence of the movement
Works Cited
Birney, Catherine H., The Grimke Sisters: Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press Publishers, 1969, 140.
Clecak, Peter, Radical Paradoxes, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1973, 22.
Diggins, John Patrick, The Rise and Fall of the American Left, New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 1992, 233.
Firestone, Shulameth, The Womens Rights Movement in America, Notes from
the First Year, New York Radical Women, 1968, 7.
Linder, Douglas, Susan B. Anthony: A Biography, http://www.law.umkc.edu/
faculty/projects/ftrials/anthony/defargument.html.
Miller, Bradford, Returning to Seneca Falls, Hudson, NY: Lindsfarne Press, 1995, 19.
Shulman, Alix Kates, ed., Red Emma Speaks: Selected Writings and Speeches, New
York: Vintage, 1972, 142.
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Preface, The Womens Bible, Coalition Task Force on
Women and Religion, 1974, 910.