New York Radical Women Feminist Collective: An Oral History PDF

New York Radical Women Feminist Collective: An Oral History 26/02/2018, 16)56
The Life and Death of a Radical Sisterhood

Fifty years ago, a group of women convened in
New York with one clear goal: Dismantle the
patriarchy. Their struggle feels all too
contemporary.
By Joy Press
Photograph By Bev Grant
11/15/2017 7:00 AM Share Tweet Pin It Comment
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In celebration of New York Magazine’s 50th anniversary,

this weekly series, which will continue through October
2018, tells the stories behind key moments that shaped the
city’s culture.
In the fall of 1967, a small gang of women began meeting

regularly in cramped apartments across the Lower East Side. At
the time, the Civil Rights Movement was shifting toward Black
Power, while resistance to the Vietnam War continued to
escalate. These women, mostly in their 20s, had caught the scent
of revolution in the air. Their group, New York Radical Women,
disintegrated within a few years, but during its short, fractious
life, it helped define the burgeoning women’s movement and
pioneered crucial elements of modern feminism. It arose out of a
savagely polarized political moment, much like our current one,
in which the frustrations and injustices of life as a woman
suddenly exploded into eloquent rage.
These radical women coined concepts and slogans like

consciousness-raising, “sisterhood is powerful,” and “the
personal is political.” They wrote formative essays and books
about sex and gender roles and misogyny that laid the foundation
for women’s studies: Anne Koedt’s “The Myth of the Vaginal
Orgasm,” Pat Mainardi’s “The Politics of Housework,” Shulamith
Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex, Carol Hanisch’s “The Personal Is
Political,” Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics, Susan Brownmiller’s
Against Our Will. (Some of these groundbreaking works debuted
in the group’s mimeographed spring 1968 pamphlet, Notes From
the First Year, and its sequel, Notes from the Second Year.)
NYRW also practiced a flamboyant brand of political theater,

most infamously with their 1968 protest of the Miss America
pageant, which inspired the myth of feminists as bra-burners.
Even if few of the pussy-hat-wearing protesters at January’s

Women’s March know their names, the influence of New York
Radical Women reverberates through the carnivalesque spirit of
contemporary feminist activism.
The group started out with a dozen or so women and grew

exponentially by word of mouth; no one kept a tally of the
fluctuating membership, but several hundred women were
showing up to meetings by the time NYRW disbanded. Some
members came from academia or journalism: Peggy Dobbins was
a sociologist, Carol Hanisch a journalist, Bev Grant an
alternative-press photographer. Some had been inspired by the
counterculture: Kathy Barrett belonged to guerrilla theater
troupe Pageant Players, while Robin Morgan ran with the
Yippies. Others, like Judith Duffett and Alix Kates Shulman, were
itching to break loose from their lot as housewives. NYRW
members went on to be major figures in second-wave feminism,
as writers, thinkers, and activists. Rosalyn Baxandall, for
instance, created the first feminist day-care center, Liberation
Nursery, and became a historian of women’s lives. Ellen Willis
was The New Yorker’s first pop-music critic and later co-founded
NYU’s Cultural Reporting and Criticism program.
Many had been radicalized by their involvement in the civil-

rights and anti-Vietnam struggles, while also feeling increasingly
alienated by condescending attitudes toward women within the
left (especially after Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
leader Stokely Carmichael’s infamous quip, “What is the position
of women in SNCC? The position of women in SNCC is prone.”)
Fifty years later, memories have eroded but the sting of ancient
friction remains. Bitter battles were waged over whether women
should work with men on the left or forge a separatist route; over
whether to focus on theory or action; over who should speak for
the movement. Members soon splintered off into vital subgroups

like W.I.T.C.H. (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy
from Hell) and Redstockings, and later some would regroup
under the name New York Radical Feminists. But many inspiring
figures and larger-than-life characters contributed to the
supernova that was New York Radical Women. Here they tell the
story of the group’s formation and impact.
Becoming ‘Radical’ Women
In cities across America, newly politicized women began

creating women’s caucuses within left-wing organizations and
comparing notes in casual get-togethers. In New Orleans,
sociology grad student Peggy Dobbins helped launch a group to
talk about women’s history and experiences. In Chicago, Jo
Freeman and a 22-year-old painter and burgeoning
revolutionary, Shulamith “Shulie” Firestone, instigated a
similar gathering. When Firestone moved to Manhattan, she
met Chude Pamela Allen, a foster-care worker, civil-rights
activist, and the wife of prominent black journalist Robert Allen.
They quickly called a meeting of about a dozen women at Allen’s
East 3rd Street apartment for November 1967, recruiting
“whoever was interested in starting an independent Women’s
Liberation Movement.” They would soon be joined by women
like stay-at-home mom Alix Kates Shulman and civil-rights
activist Kathie Sarachild.
Peggy Dobbins: We were sitting in the kitchen and Pam’s

husband was there. We said, “Oh, Bob, you can’t stay!” We cited
the fact that whites couldn’t stay in Black Power meetings so men
couldn’t stay in ours. This was just going to be women! I
remember at the first meeting Anne Koedt sharpened our focus
to: Were we radical women or women radicals? Were we women
who were engaged in radical causes, or were we radical about the
way women were treated?
Kathie Sarachild: Back then there were enormous struggles

over what words to use. I was afraid that the word radical would
frighten people away. I guess it was the spirit of the time that it
actually attracted them.
Alix Kates Shulman: I was home in Manhattan with my

children when I heard these women on the radio talking about
[NYRW and] this thing they called women’s liberation. I was a

perfect specimen of who they were trying to reach: a genuine
housewife. I’d had to leave my job as an encyclopedia editor
when I got pregnant, because back then there was no maternity
leave. The thing that was so shocking to me was that these
women were talking with authority about politics -— I’d only
heard men talk that way.
Judith Weston (then known as Judith Duffett): These women

had all come from the civil-rights movement and I hadn’t. I
hadn’t done anything political before. I thought they were
stunning — so strong and militant and certain. I remember
Shulie [Firestone] talking about how women won’t be liberated
until they can have babies outside the womb and I thought: That
is pretty radical. But it was all on the table and we discussed it
seriously.
The First Action
New York Radical Women announced their existence with a

disruptive appearance at a January 15, 1968, women’s anti–
Vietnam War march in Washington, D.C. Called the Jeannette
Rankin Brigade, the march’s name came from the first woman
ever elected to Congress, a pacifist. NYRW carried banners with
slogans like, “Don’t cry: Resist,” and invited attendees to join
them in burying passive female roles with a theatrical funeral
service, complete with a coffin and a blonde effigy meant to
represent traditional womanhood.
Sarachild: They were talking about a guerrilla theater action to

try to get anti-war women to start addressing actual women’s-
rights issues rather than being stereotypical “women for peace.” I
wasn’t crazy about the idea but I brought some ideas people
liked, so I was chosen to give the New York group’s speech [and
write a leaflet], which read:
TRADITIONAL WOMANHOOD IS DEAD.

TRADITIONAL WOMEN WERE BEAUTIFUL … BUT REALLY POWERLESS.
“UPPITY” WOMEN WERE EVEN MORE BEAUTIFUL … BUT STILL POWERLESS.
SISTERHOOD IS POWERFUL!
HUMANHOOD THE ULTIMATE!
Sarachild: “Sisterhood is powerful” was a combination of black

power and union organizing.
Carol Hanisch: I took that phrase off her leaflet and I started
signing all my letters “Sisterhood is powerful.” But it got turned
on its head along the way. Originally it meant that we needed to
unite in order to win things for women. Later it got to be that you
should be nice to all women. People would accuse others of being
unsisterly if they criticized anybody.
Shulamith Firestone (from “The Jeannette Rankin

Brigade: Woman Power?” in NYRW publication Notes
From the First Year): It is naive to believe that women
who are not politically seen, heard, or represented in this
Photo: country could change the course of a war by simply
Courtesy
of the
appealing to the better natures of congressmen … The
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ings
women at the Jeannette Rankin march were united only
Archives in their frustration … They were all keenly disappointed,
and fully aware of their impotence.
Hanisch: We met radical women from other cities at the

Jeannette Rankin protest. Although we weren’t all in agreement
about where we wanted to go or how to get there, we were
encouraged to find others ready to take our oppression seriously
and do something about it.
Sarachild: Gerda Lerner, a historian of an older generation, told

me she heard my speech with interest but she thought we were
making the same mistake as the early feminists of the 19th
century, which was to be too anti-man. Yeah, right.
What Should ‘Radical Women’ Do?
From the start, NYRW members saw the sharing of personal

experiences as a strategy to expose all the invisible ways women
as a group were oppressed — to unleash all their suppressed
shame and resentment, and to begin to articulate the social and
economic structures that kept them in their place in an era when
marital rape was legal, a woman could not apply for a credit
card on her own, and the term “sexual harassment” did not yet
exist.
Hanisch: We came back [to New York] from Jeannette Rankin

and continued to debate what to do. Would we do actions?
Would we have a study group? Would we talk about our lives, like
the idea of “tell it like it is” from the civil-rights movement, and
“speak bitterness” as they did in the Chinese Revolution?
Sarachild: One of the women in the group, Anne Forer, said, “I

think we have to do more about raising consciousness …. I’ve
been thinking that men don’t find the real selves of women
attractive. I’ve been thinking about all the false things we have to
do to make ourselves attractive, even going blind and not wearing
glasses.” It sounded like the kind of language we could reach
millions with — and it reached me too!
Chude Pamela Allen: The topic I remember being personally

profound was relationships to men. Somebody was commenting
about her boyfriend saying something to her and everybody in
the room went: “Oh, my god. That’s exactly what mine says to
me.” If women are all being accused of being too emotional, what
does that mean? If people who are powerless are trying to be
heard and respected, it can push you into being a little hysterical,
right?
Dobbins: By sharing personal experiences we were discovering

that we weren’t crazy. We began to evolve a structure in which we
went around the room and took turns speaking. Kathie Sarachild
introduced as a discipline that you weren’t supposed to
generalize unless you preceded it with a personal experience.
Sarachild: When women’s liberation started there was this

myth of the emancipated American woman. Supposedly we were
emancipated by the vote, so what did we have to complain about?
We had to show that there were all of these economic and social
pressures on us, causing us to falsify ourselves.
Robin Morgan: We were talking about sex one night. I

admitted that on occasion in my marriage I had faked an orgasm.
I was convinced that I was the only person in the world sick and
perverse enough to have done this. Every woman in the room
said, “Oh, you too?” It was an amazing moment.
Weston: My husband and I lived in this really small but

expensive apartment on East 30th Street. At meetings I would
say, “If anybody hears of an apartment let me know.” One day
Cynthia Funk said, “There’s a place next door to me, maybe it
would be good for you and Leonard — or just you.” She had
picked up on the negative things I’d said about him … I went to
see the apartment and then packed up my things. The whole
point of consciousness-raising was if you said something, it
changed everything.
Hanisch: A lot of left men didn’t like consciousness-raising
because they suspected we were talking about all the bad

things they did to women. Which was absolutely true.
Anne Koedt (from “The Myth of Vaginal Orgasm” essay

in Notes From the First Year): Frigidity has generally
been defined by men as the failure of women to have
Photo: vaginal orgasms. Actually, the vagina is not a highly
Courtesy
of the
sensitive area and is not physiologically constructed to
Redstock achieve orgasm … Women have thus been defined sexually
ings
Archives in terms of what pleases men; our own biology has not
been properly analyzed.
Weston: Anne presented “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” to

us and we all went, whoa! But some people thought however true
the essay might be, it was not a good organizing tool. It didn’t
address economic issues, it didn’t address domestic equality —
and it would certainly alienate men. There was a lot of discussion
of how to bring the men along too.
The Bra-Burning Heard Around the World
Consciousness-raising and study sessions were all very well, but

some NYRW members craved action. In the summer of 1968, the
group found something they all agreed was worth protesting:
the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. Women’s groups and
activists from all over the East Coast (including civil-rights
lawyer Flo Kennedy) converged to march, auction off a puppet
in chains, and crown a live sheep Miss America. But it was a
plan to set fire to feminine paraphernalia that drew New York
newspapers. And then it was the protest banner dropped inside
the pageant (which was broadcast live across the country) that
attracted national attention after it aired.
Hanisch: I came up with the idea one night when somebody

brought in this art film, Schmeerguntz. There were some clips in
it of Miss America contestants walking along the ramp in their
bathing suits being judged on their appearance. I thought: This is
such a big deal in so many women’s lives.
Morgan: I hadn’t grown up watching Miss America because I’d

had a weird childhood [as a child actor on the TV series Mama].
But I could understand the power it had over them, so I
immediately leapt into the fray.
Lindsy Van Gelder: I’d been on tryout at the New York Post a
few weeks when this press release from Robin Morgan comes
across the city desk saying that they’re going to have this
demonstration. I was sent out to meet Robin and the more she
talked, the more my mind was going click, click, click. At the
time, one story getting a lot of respect was guys burning their
draft cards. New York Radical Women had planned to have what
they called a “Freedom Trashcan” in Atlantic City, where they
were going to throw in Playboy magazines and girdles and other
articles of oppression. I’m a sucker for alliteration, so when I was
trying to figure out a way to link this with respectable civil-rights

protests, I came up with bra-burning.
“Lighting a match to a draft card or a ﬂag has been a standard gambit of

protest groups in recent years, but something new is due to go up in ﬂames on
Saturday. Would you believe a bra-burning?” Photo: Courtesy of the
Redstockings Archives
Van Gelder: They actually never burned anything — the fire

marshal didn’t want anything to ignite.
Morgan: We assembled in Union Square, where hundreds and

hundreds of women suddenly showed up, so we got more buses.
That was my first glimpse of holy crap! What are we doing here?
Bev Grant: We sang jingles that I wrote, like: “Ain’t she sweet,
making profit off her meat.” I had never written a song before but
it started my new career as a singer-songwriter.
Morgan: There were naysayers on the boardwalk yelling, You’re

not pretty enough to get a man! But then there would be women
who would come back and get a leaflet when their boyfriend
wasn’t looking.
Shulman: I offered to pay for tickets for protesters to get inside.

I had a joint checking account with my husband, and this was the
first time I wrote a check without clearing it with him, ’cause he
was the breadwinner.
Dobbins: When I was growing up my mother used to hold my

head down in the sink and pour on this stinking [Toni home
permanent] stuff to make my hair curl. So when we found out
that Toni home permanent was the sponsor of the Miss America
pageant we decided to sprinkle [permanent solution] along the
aisles.
Grant: We carried little atomizers filled with Toni home

permanent. It was kind of slapstick. Miriam took out her
atomizer and she squirted me accidentally, so we got out of there
in a hurry.
Dobbins: I got caught! I watched the end of the pageant in jail

with women who were arrested for prostitution and I wrote on
the wall of my little bunk, “Prostitutes of the world unite, we have
nothing to lose but our pimps!” We talked a lot about how being
a wife is a form of prostitution.
Hanisch: I was one of the four women that hung the “Women’s
Liberation” banner from the balcony, which was scary but
wonderful. I really hated interrupting the outgoing Miss America
as she gave her farewell speech. We didn’t really mean to be
criticizing the individuals — it was the whole idea of beauty
pageants that we were criticizing.
Ellen Willis (then a counterculture journalist, from a

September 1968 journal entry, later printed as “Up From
Radicalism” in US magazine): I read about the women’s
liberation protest against the Miss America contest. I’m
Photo: dubious — won’t people think they’re just ugly, jealous
Courtesy
of the
women? But I remember what it’s like to be examined and
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compared at a party. And I’m proud that women are in the
Archives papers for fighting.
Morgan: The pageant has been called the birth of the women’s
movement which is a) totally untrue, and b) deeply satisfying.
NOW was already toiling away, so it’s not fair. But this protest
caught the public imagination. The next week [NYRW] had our
meeting and 300 women showed up! People were forming
groups all across the country and it was out of hand.
‘Radical’ Goes Mainstream
NYRW had been regularly meeting at the offices of civil-rights

organization Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF)
where Carol Hanisch worked. But in the aftermath of the Miss
America protest, so many new women appeared that the SCEF
meetings grew cramped and chaotic. Among those new faces
were counterculture journalists Susan Brownmiller and Ellen
Willis.
Willis (from a November 1968 journal entry in US

magazine): [T]he movement is growing so fast … Already I feel
like a veteran. New women keep coming in, women who are just
discovering their oppression, asserting for the first time their
independence from husbands and lovers, overwhelmed that here
they are listened to, respected … I’m starting to … realize other
women are not the enemy.
Susan Brownmiller: After the Miss America protest, my friend

said, “Did you know there’s this group talking about women?”
Kathie was chairing my first meeting and she had some of her
favorite consciousness-raising questions like, when you have a
baby, do you want a boy or a girl? Peggy Dobbins said, “Kathie,
you know that I had a baby and I had to give him away because I
couldn’t find an abortion doctor.” That just blew things apart.
People started to go around the room talking about their
experiences. It came around to me and in my competitiveness, I
said, “I’ve had three abortions, the last one was six months ago in
Puerto Rico.” I thought I was in control but instead the tears
welled up in my eyes because I had never said this out loud
before.
Willis (from December 1968 journal entry in US magazine):

There can be no sexual revolution in a vacuum … The “liberated
woman,” like the “free world,” is a fiction that obscures real
power relations and defuses revolution. How can women,
subordinate in every other sphere, be free and equal in bed? Men

want us to be a little free — it’s more exciting that way.
Allen: Some of the struggles in the early period really were

around the tension of: Who’s going to be the leadership? We
were so anti-leader from having been in situations where the men
dominated that it was very hard to figure out.
Morgan: Certain women, and I was definitely one of them,

would dominate the talking. So we tried to correct this. Each of
us would get, say, ten chips, and we would sit in a circle and
every time you spoke you had to spend the chip. Some women
immediately spent all of their chips and then had to shut up for
the rest of the evening and other women hoarded chips and then
let loose with a lecture at the end. We were trying to reevaluate
everything.
Sarachild: Our meetings exploded. The debates got hard to

handle and we were swamped by mail. We fell apart because we
couldn’t handle our success.
Hanisch: By December, some people were clamoring to split the

group because it was too big. There was a vote on whether New
York Radical Women should be broken up into smaller groups.
Somebody suggested that we draw group assignment numbers,
which actually happened. But most women didn’t go to the group
they were supposed to and other groups formed out of it.
Morgan: We split [into smaller groups] but it was considered

that we were all part of New York Radical Women. There was
Redstockings. Ti-Grace Atkinson suddenly manifested and
formed The Feminists. And those of us who wanted to do more
actions became W.I.T.C.H.
The Rise of W.I.T.C.H. and Redstockings

The membership of these splinter groups remained in flux, with

women sometimes flitting between them. Founded by Shulamith
Firestone and Ellen Willis and conceived as an intellectual study
group, Redstockings included Anne Koedt, Irene Peslikis, Pat
Mainardi, Rosalyn Baxandall, and Kathie Sarachild. They
would establish their legacy with a fiery public abortion speak-
out that inspired many women, including Gloria Steinem. The
theatrical W.I.T.C.H. circle drew Peggy Dobbins, Judith Duffett,
Bev Grant, Florika Remetier, Cynthia Funk, Robin Morgan, and
Naomi Jaffe, who gathered to hex public targets like Wall
Street.
Dobbins: I had to go to trial in Atlantic City after the pageant.

On the ride back, I am sitting in the front seat, turned around, on
my knees, and telling Florika Remetier and Marcia Patrick about
all the ancient stuff I am reading about witches … and Marcia
says, “Well, if women’s liberation does become a household
word, there will be witch hunts and we will be the witches.” And I
said, “Let’s embrace that!” That came from [civil-rights leader]
H. Rap Brown saying: Embrace being called black.
Weston: Our first W.I.T.C.H. action was on Halloween, about

six weeks after Miss America. I remember our chant: “Wall
Street, Wall Street, mightiest wall of all street. Trick-or-treat,
corporate elite, up against the Wall Street!” We made ourselves
up in capes and feathers and things.
Morgan: We announced to the press that we were going to hex

Wall Street at 9 a.m., or whatever. And then quietly two or three
of us went at 4 a.m. and Krazy-Glued the doors of the Stock
Exchange, so when we came back and pretended to hex it, they
wouldn’t open. They had to take the damn doors off the hinges!
Weston: It wasn’t like Atlantic City where we saw nastiness on

people’s faces and jeering; on Wall Street, you saw them a little
bit afraid. That was a feeling of power.
Gloria Steinem (New York Magazine, April 7, 1969): A coven

of 13 members of W.I.T.C.H. (The Women’s International
Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, celebrating witches and gypsies
as the first women resistance fighters) demonstrates against that
bastion of white male supremacy: Wall Street. The next day, the
market falls five points. More witches and some black-veiled
brides invade the Bridal Fair at Madison Square Garden. They
carry signs (“Confront the Whore-makers,” “Here Comes the
Bribe”), sing, shout, release white mice in the audience of would-
be brides, and generally scare the living daylights out of
exhibitors …
Morgan: Releasing mice at the bridal fair — that was really

dumb. We went inside to release the mice and there were
screaming women standing on chairs. And someone did a song
with lyrics that said, “Here come the slaves / off to their graves.”
That kind of turned off the women. The point was to try to say,
we are here to support you — and don’t you know there is all this
commercialization, and if you are really in love you don’t need 16
kinds of cups and plates?
Shulman: I was going to my W.I.T.C.H. meeting on East 3rd

Street when I saw Kathie. She said, “Oh, don’t go there, you must
come to Redstockings!” — they were meeting across the street.
One was into having actions and one was into theory, but in fact,
they were both doing consciousness-raising. My first
Redstockings meeting was one of a series on sex. We talked about
getting a man, not wanting a man; having no sex, having bad sex.
I don’t think we talked much about lesbianism, though there
were a number of us who were lesbians, or bi. I spoke about how
I had a lover and I had a husband. Shulie said, when it came to

her turn, “You have two men and I have none! It’s not fair!”
Brownmiller: Shulie was a ball of fire. At Redstockings’

abortion speak-out at the Washington Square Methodist Church
in March 1969, she came out at the end and said, “We are going
to see a day when technology is so strong that women don’t have
to have babies from inside themselves.” These were very radical
ideas.
Firestone (speech on abortion printed in Notes From the First

Year): Those bodies belong to us. We don’t have to appear in
your courts proving our mental incompetence to you before we
can avoid forced childbearing! …. We will no longer submit to
your definitions of what we should or should not be or do to
become truly feminine in your eyes. For unless we have a part in
creating the laws which govern our fate, then we will refuse to
follow those dictates and laws.
From “Redstockings Manifesto” (July 1969): Our chief task

at present is to develop female class consciousness through
sharing experience and publicly exposing the sexist foundation of
all our institutions. Consciousness-raising is not “therapy,” which
implies the existence of individual solutions and falsely assumes
that the male-female relationship is purely personal … The first
requirement for raising class consciousness is honesty, in private
and in public, with ourselves and other women.
‘The Last Hurrah’
By 1969, mainstream media and publishing had latched on to

the women’s movement; Kate Millett, who had been an
occasional presence at NYRW meetings, made the cover of Time
magazine after her dissertation was transformed into the best-

selling book Sexual Politics. Shulamith Firestone’s Dialectic of
Sex soon followed, as did Sisterhood Is Powerful, an essay
anthology edited by Robin Morgan. Some women in the
movement headed back to Atlantic City again to protest the
pageant that had alerted the world to NYRW and also hastened
its demise.
Sarachild: The second Miss America protest in 1969 was the

last hurrah of New York Radical Women. We really didn’t meet
after that. But it was an important last hurrah because that was
when the fist in the women’s symbol was launched.
Morgan: I designed buttons and had buttons made of

that fist inside the women’s symbol. My then-husband
drew it because I can’t draw, but I came up with the idea
and directed the drawing. I have now seen it in refugee
Photo: camps in the Gaza Strip, I have seen it in favelas in Brazil.
Courtesy
of the
Despite all my books and organizing, it is probably my
Redstock
ings
biggest contribution to the women’s movement — and
Archives most people don’t even know I did it.
Brownmiller: There was a lot of personal anger from women

who thought other women were suddenly rising to the top. Kate
Millett suffered from those who resented her rise to fame
courtesy of Time magazine. I think of her as one of the
movement’s primary victims.
Weston: All of these things really did need to be discussed, like:

When people start writing about women’s liberation, should the
money go into a women’s liberation fund? But it wasn’t possible
to hash things out in a minute way after Miss America because it
all just took on a life of its own.
Morgan: I have been accused of stealing the phrase “sisterhood
is powerful.” Shulie was tortured in Redstockings when she

published anything. She had the strength of her own brilliance
and madness — though at great cost. Years later, when she had
become an Orthodox Jew and an astrologer, I reached out to her
and she wanted nothing to do with feminism.
Allen: The limitations in the early Women’s Liberation

Movement were that, for the most part, we were college-educated
and primarily white. This was the period of [racial] separatism,
when a lot of the black women that I knew weren’t interested in
joining.
Grant: I get why black women wouldn’t join us — their

experience was different. They were coming from a whole
exploited and oppressed people, whereas we were coming from
just trying to fight against the oppression of men. There are so
many more layers of oppression for women of color.
Weston: I want young people to feel proud of us, which doesn’t

mean we should sweep problems under the rug … but I want
them to feel proud of a tradition, so they carry it on.
Morgan: For a long while when young women would ask, what
do you have to teach us? I would say, only our mistakes. But we
didn’t only make mistakes. We did lay down a trail as much as
anybody can in a shifting society and a very violent time. There is
a glorification of the ’60s and how great it was. But don’t envy us
for having done it, do your own version of it.
Where Are They Now?

• Chude Pamela Allen is a member of the Bay Area Veterans of
the Civil Rights Movement and organizes speaking events for
schools and community groups.
• Susan Brownmiller, a journalist and author best known for

Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, recently published an
autobiographical book, My City Highrise Garden.
• Peggy Dobbins is a performance artist, retired sociologist, and

author of From Kin to Class: Speculations on the Origins and
Development of the Family, Class Society, and Female
Subordination.
• Shulamith Firestone, author of The Dialectic of Sex, died in

2012, after decades of struggle with mental illness.
• Bev Grant is a singer-songwriter in New York who recently

won the 2017 ASCAP Jay Gorney songwriter award.
• Carol Hanisch is a semi-retired graphic designer and editor;

she remains co-editor of the Meeting Ground Online Blog.
• Robin Morgan is the author of numerous books, former

editor-in-chief of Ms magazine, founder of the Sisterhood Is
Global Institute, and host of the weekly radio show Women’s
Media Center Live with Robin Morgan.
• Kathie Sarachild is an activist and writer; she advises the

Women’s Liberation Archives at redstockings.org.
• Alix Kates Shulman is the author of more than a dozen

books, and the co-editor (with Honor Moore) of a forthcoming
Library of America anthology of Second Wave feminist writing.
• Judith Weston lives in Los Angeles, where she coaches actors

and filmmakers such as Alejandro Iñárritu and Ava DuVernay,
and is author of the books Directing Actors and The Film
Director’s Intuition.
• Ellen Willis was a critic, author, and co-founder of NYU’s
Cultural Reporting and Criticism program before she passed away

in 2006; since then, her daughter Nona Willis Aronowitz has
published two collections of her work, Out of the Vinyl Deeps and
The Essential Ellen Willis.
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New York Radical Women Feminist Collective: An Oral History 26/02/2018, 16)56

The Life and Death of a Radical Sisterhood

11/15/2017 7:00 AM Share Tweet Pin It Comment

In celebration of New York Magazine’s 50th anniversary,

In the fall of 1967, a small gang of women began meeting

These radical women coined concepts and slogans like

NYRW also practiced a flamboyant brand of political theater,

Even if few of the pussy-hat-wearing protesters at January’s

The group started out with a dozen or so women and grew

Many had been radicalized by their involvement in the civil-

the movement. Members soon splintered off into vital subgroups

Becoming ‘Radical’ Women

In cities across America, newly politicized women began

Peggy Dobbins: We were sitting in the kitchen and Pam’s

Kathie Sarachild: Back then there were enormous struggles

Alix Kates Shulman: I was home in Manhattan with my

[NYRW and] this thing they called women’s liberation. I was a

Judith Weston (then known as Judith Duffett): These women

The First Action

New York Radical Women announced their existence with a

Sarachild: They were talking about a guerrilla theater action to

TRADITIONAL WOMANHOOD IS DEAD.

Sarachild: “Sisterhood is powerful” was a combination of black

Shulamith Firestone (from “The Jeannette Rankin

Hanisch: We met radical women from other cities at the

Sarachild: Gerda Lerner, a historian of an older generation, told

What Should ‘Radical Women’ Do?

From the start, NYRW members saw the sharing of personal

Hanisch: We came back [to New York] from Jeannette Rankin

Sarachild: One of the women in the group, Anne Forer, said, “I

Chude Pamela Allen: The topic I remember being personally

Dobbins: By sharing personal experiences we were discovering

Sarachild: When women’s liberation started there was this

Robin Morgan: We were talking about sex one night. I

Weston: My husband and I lived in this really small but

Hanisch: A lot of left men didn’t like consciousness-raising

because they suspected we were talking about all the bad

Anne Koedt (from “The Myth of Vaginal Orgasm” essay

Weston: Anne presented “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” to

The Bra-Burning Heard Around the World

Consciousness-raising and study sessions were all very well, but

Hanisch: I came up with the idea one night when somebody

Morgan: I hadn’t grown up watching Miss America because I’d

trying to figure out a way to link this with respectable civil-rights

“Lighting a match to a draft card or a ﬂag has been a standard gambit of

Van Gelder: They actually never burned anything — the fire

Morgan: We assembled in Union Square, where hundreds and

Morgan: There were naysayers on the boardwalk yelling, You’re

Shulman: I offered to pay for tickets for protesters to get inside.

Dobbins: When I was growing up my mother used to hold my

Grant: We carried little atomizers filled with Toni home

Dobbins: I got caught! I watched the end of the pageant in jail

Ellen Willis (then a counterculture journalist, from a

‘Radical’ Goes Mainstream

NYRW had been regularly meeting at the offices of civil-rights

Willis (from a November 1968 journal entry in US

Susan Brownmiller: After the Miss America protest, my friend

Willis (from December 1968 journal entry in US magazine):

subordinate in every other sphere, be free and equal in bed? Men

Allen: Some of the struggles in the early period really were

Morgan: Certain women, and I was definitely one of them,

Sarachild: Our meetings exploded. The debates got hard to

Hanisch: By December, some people were clamoring to split the