Feminism Being a significant social movement in the US during 1960s and 70s, feminism is characterized with many contradictions. Although, this movement received a lot of attention in public, attitudes toward feminism vary greatly. Moreover, the majority of sources that disclose the essence of feminism and its main trends lacks objectivity and thus, cannot be reliable. One of those books which can provide a valuable judgement on feminism is Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975 by Alice Echols. The book examines the development of feminism, namely the fall of radical movement and rise of cultural feminism. Primarily radical movement has originated from Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
These organizations played a major role in formation and development of the New Left philosophy, a movement that played important role in feminism.
However, Echols claims that the New Left would be concerned only with supporting the struggles of blacks, the working class, or the Vietnamese, thereby ignoring issues of gender equality (Echols, 42).
To prove the statement the author criticizes the sexism of the New Left and the slogan: Girls Say Yes to Guys Who Say No! (Echols, 38) The hierarchy and chauvinism of the movement was the main reason for the breakdown, which Echols named The Great Divide: The Politico-Feminist Schism (Echols, 51).
The Essay on How Reform Movements In The 1800s Sought To Expand Democratic Ideals
America was expanding in the early 1800s, politically, economically, and socially. Many movements occurred during this time, particularly from 1825 to 1850, aimed to better laws, institutions, and society and to spread democracy overall. Although the religious, penal, education, and feminist reform movements in the United States sought to expand democratic ideals, the temperance and abolitionist ...
Th Politico-Feminist Schism was one of two major breaks in the movement. Different attitudes toward the gender inequality question surfaced two groups. The first group, known as politicos, identified capitalism as the major challenge for the womens movement. They claims that capitalism, not patriarchy, was the reason for female oppression, therefore, according to Echols this group was trying to remain connected and committed to the larger Movement (Echols, 52).
Feminists, the second group, had a different view on the situation: female oppression is a direct result of male dominance. This group denied patriarchy and demanded a break from the New Left. According to Echols this group has originated new movement known as radical feminists. Echols argues that the main objective of the radical feminist movement was to eliminate the sexclass system (Echols, 6).
In contrast to politicos, who applied conscious-raising techniques, this group used methods of action and confrontation. Daring to Be Bad focuses mainly on four radical feminist groups, namely the New York Radical Feminists (NYRF), the Redstockings, Cell 16, and the Feminists. These groups agreed that gender, not class or race, was the primary contradiction and that all other forms of social domination originated with male supremacy (Echols, 139).
However, Echols points out that these groups were not united in terms of uniformity of desired reforms.
For instance, Cell 16s and The Feminists attitude toward sex was that the latter was something that women needed to be liberated from (Echols, 174).
On the contrary, the Redstockings criticized the repression of female sexuality (Echols, 146).
Additionally there were disagreements regarding the application of conscious-raising activities. For example, the Redstockings believed that such activities were not effective and led to little effect, while NYRF widely employed conscious-raising activities and even made them a compulsory part of feminist training during six-month probation period. Radical feminist movement was undermined by its tendency to ignore class and race issues, which led to contradictions inside the movement. Echols points out that appearance of lesbians in the movement was a natural consequence of such trends. That was the second major break in the movement: lesbians began to separate themselves from the feminists, forming socialist-feminist and lesbian-feminist organizations like the Furies. According to Echols, the Furies was a truly radical feminist group. Echols points out that activity of the Furies was accompanied by the picking up the gun with coming out literally, of course (Echols, 133).
The Essay on Radical Feminism Inhibits The Liberty Of Women
Radical Feminism Inhibits the liberty of Women Since I was a really young child I was told that I could do anything that a boy could do. This chorus still rings loud in my ears today. This is the way many women are raised today. They are raised to be leaders and followers just like the other gender. The radical feminist, however, has one main mission in the world today to irradiate the male ...
However, lesbian-feminism was never to become an appropriate alternative to heterosexuality within the movement. Although lesbian-feminism has never been of much success, it gave a positive boost to a raise cultural feminism. Lesbian-feminism introduced an important point: lesbian women were different from heterosexual women, therefore the feature of similarity could not be accepted anymore. As a consequence, there were debates, which in addition to sexual emphasized differences of color and class. Echols indicates that by 1975 cultural feminism eclipsed radical feminism as the dominant tendency within the womens liberation movement, and, as a consequence, liberal feminism became the recognized voice of the womens movement (Echols, 243).
The cultural feminism offered a solid alternatives for women who were tired of constant attacks between feminist groups.
By that time, women looked to create their own culture by establishing alternative institutions within mainstream society. In fact, feminist institutions like rape crisis centers, health centers, presses, and bookstores were part of a larger strategy of building a womans culture guided by female values (Echols, 272).
According to Echols, there were several important differences between radical and cultural feminists. Radical movements primary goal was to abolish the notion of sexclass. However, in reality as Echols indicates the radicalism of the 60s was less concerned with reforming society than with developing forms that would prefigure the utopian community of the future (Echols, 109).
The Essay on Feminism: Women’s Suffrage and Early Twentieth Century
The feminist movement can be broken into 4 waves; first-wave which spans from the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, second-wave which spans from the early 1960’s through the late 1980’s, third-wave which started in the early 1990’s and extended into the twentieth century, and the fourth-wave which started in the early twentieth century to our present time. Each ...
Cultural feminists, on the contrary, were most concerned with creating a female counterculture where the female gender could be celebrated, which allowed for differences in color and class. Differences between radical and cultural feminist movements put the latter along with the liberal movement on a higher level with a further dominance over other various feminist flows. Echols affirms that one finds liberal and cultural feminists united by their common distaste for confrontational politics and their shared admiration of effectiveness and hierarchy (Echols, 279).
Although, cultural feminist movement was popular, there is not much evidence about organizations which represented this movement comparing with the information available about radical feminist group.
Echols give an explanation to this issue: But most politically active women, even if they criticized the movement for sexism, chose not to become involved in the feminist struggle (Echols, 37).
It does not mean that cultural feminism was inert; organizations of cultural movement had different goal, not oriented on political arena. Among many groups of this movement, two important can be distinguished: Mothers Alone Working (MAW) and The Mount Vernon/New Rochelle womens group. MAW a self-help group in San Francisco composed of 200 Black and white poor women, began in 1972 . MAW organized summer camps, daycare, and sports days, pairing university students and the children of single mothers for sports events. The group hosted speakers on womens organizing and talks on What Can You Deduct from Your Income Tax? as well as on preventive medical services, job training, and food stamps.
They developed a referral service for single working mothers, as their members were mainly self-supporting low-income women with dependent children. They also had a Granny Corps and, together with the Office of Economic Opportunity, trained thirty women over fifty-five to be emergency babysitters, thus allowing mothers to work when a child was sick or a baby-sitting arrangement fell through. It’s not dear how successful they were in their daycare campaign, but eleven churches expressed interest. Several children were apparently sent to free summer camps through MAWs intervention. MAW was a service organization, but it also lobbied the Board of Education for expanded daycare at reasonable rates for single parents. Baby-sitting as well as refreshments were provided at their meetings.
The Essay on Cultural group
When someone belongs to a particular group, whether it’s an ethnic or cultural group, if he or she believes in it or acts and behaves according to the group’s standards, this is a definition for Cultural identity. It’s not a problem to have a cultural identity; rather, it is great to have one. However, when that person gets confused about which culture he or she should belongs to then it’s a ...
Both MAW and the Mount Vernon/New Rochelle group were autonomous womens groups of mixed age and class that focused on mothers and children but were concerned as well about Black men, race oppression and genocide. From the critical point of view, feminism contributed a lot to social development in the US, it does not matter if it was made more by the efforts of radical feminists, politicos, or cultural movement. Every movement was valuable in terms of questions they helped to resolve. Every specialized in its own area, however the success was common. Among other groups, cultural feminist movement, being more organizing and less contradicting than others touched the most important issues in the lives of American women. References Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975, University of Minnesota Press, 1990.
