American
feminist writing is often not given its due alongside the writing of
other social justice movements - writing by Martin Luther King and
Rachel Carson, for example. I think it is important to look at feminist
writing not only within the context of its time but as part of a
movement no less grand and noble than the movements for other types of
social justice, such as racial equality and environmentalism. Therefore,
I have made this canon of American feminist writing, which I have taken
from my larger "feminist literary canon" series.
Judith Sargent Murray (1751–1820)
was an early American advocate for women's rights, an essayist,
playwright, poet, and letter writer. In her landmark essay "On the
Equality of the Sexes," published in the Massachusetts Magazine in
1790, she claimed that women’s seeming inferiority to men was due to
their lack of education, not any inherent defect. Alice Rossi's book The Feminist Papers starts with Murray's essay. The essay can be read in its entirety in English here: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/murray/equality/equality.html
Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli, commonly known as Margaret Fuller (1810 – 1850) was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century,
published in 1845, is considered the first major feminist work in the
United States.
Some scholars have suggested Woman in the Nineteenth
Century was the first major women's rights work since Mary
Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in
1792, beginning with a comparison between the two women made by Mary
Ann Evans (pen name George Eliot) in her 1855 essay "Margaret Fuller and
Mary Wollstonecraft.”
A shorter version of the Woman in the Nineteenth Century had been published in 1843 in serial form for the Transcendentalist magazine The Dial, which Fuller edited; it was then called "The Great Lawsuit: Man 'versus' Men, Woman 'versus' Women." The
book declared that marriage should be a union between two independent
and self-sufficient individuals, rather than having the woman dependent
on the man. Fuller thought that equality between men and women would
enable them to share a divine and transcendental love.
Woman in the Nineteenth Century can be read in its entirety in English here: http://transcendentalism.tamu.edu/authors/fuller/woman1.html
Woman in the Nineteenth Century can be read in its entirety in English here: http://transcendentalism.tamu.edu/authors/fuller/woman1.html
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815
–1902) was a leader of the women’s suffrage movement in America, as
well as an advocate for divorce reform, birth control, women's parental
and custody rights, women’s property rights, and women’s employment and
income rights. She was the main writer of the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, which was presented at the first American women's rights convention, held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York.
It
was based on the form of the Declaration of Independence, and caused
much controversy, particularly with its support of women’s suffrage,
which even many women’s rights supporters thought was too radical and
would damage other causes such as women’s property rights. Furthermore, her controversial publishing of The Woman's Bible in
1898 (a feminist criticism of the Bible, written by herself and a
“Revising Committee”) alienated many religious suffragists, although
criticism of sexism in the Bible would become more popular in the 1970s,
when much of Stanton’s writing was rediscovered. Stanton declared in The Woman's Bible that
the Bible "in its teachings degrades Women from Genesis to
Revelations." However she and the other contributors found some things
to admire in the Bible, particularly some of the women in the Old
Testament.
The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions can be read in its entirety in English here: http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=4932
The Woman's Bible can be read in its entirety in English here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/wmn/wb/index.htm
Kate Chopin,
born Katherine O'Flaherty (1850 –1904) was an American author of short
stories and novels. She is considered by many to be a forerunner of
feminist authors of the 20th century.
Her short story "The Story of An
Hour" (1894) is particularly remarkable in that it shows a woman made
happy by her husband’s death due to the oppression of her marriage, a
very daring statement for the time. The Awakening (1899)
is also a story of a woman made unhappy by her marriage, which features
frank (for its time) depictions of female sexual desire, even outside
of marriage. Reviews ranged from condemnation to praise, though the
public reaction was almost completely opposed.
She never published
another novel, and had difficulties even publishing short stories, but The Awakening is
now considered a landmark of feminist literature. Furthermore, Chopin
was recognized as one of the leading writers of her time within a decade
of her death. The Story of An Hour can be read in its entirety in English here: http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/hour/
The Awakening can be read in its entirety in English here: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/ChoAwak.html
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (July 3, 1860 – August 17, 1935) was a prominent American sociologist, writer, and lecturer for social reform. Her best remembered work today is her semi-autobiographical short story The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)
which she wrote after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis. It
concerns a woman who is confined to a room for three months for the sake
of her health, and who becomes insane as a result; Gilman herself had
endured the then-popular “rest cure” as a treatment for her post-partum
psychosis, and felt she had come near to losing her own sanity. She sent
Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, who had prescribed the rest cure for her, a copy
of the story. She claimed he had changed his methods as a result of
this, but in fact (possibly unknown to her) he had not.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote many other feminist works which have not been as popular as The Yellow Wallpaper. Her greatest work is often considered to be Women and Economics (1898), in which she described and opposed women’s financial dependence on men. In
order to end this, she was one of the first to support the
professionalization of housework, to be done by housekeepers and cooks
for money rather than by mothers for nothing. She also suggested
cooperative kitchens in city apartment buildings where cooking would be
shared rather than being the private chore of each family. However, she
still insisted that motherhood was “the common duty and the common glory
of womanhood,” and that women would choose “professions compatible with
motherhood.”
Women and Economics received
overwhelmingly positive reviews and caused Gilman to be considered the
leading intellectual of the women’s movement. It was even compared
favorably to The Subjection of Women.
However, Gilman did not call herself a feminist, as she was very
uncomfortable with the ideas of sexual liberation that had become an
important part of feminist thought. The Yellow Wallpaper can be read in its entirety in English here: http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/wallpaper.html
Women and Economics can be read in its entirety in English here: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/gilman/economics/economics.html
Valerie Saiving Goldstein (1921-1992) was a feminist theologian. She is best known for "The Human Situation: A Feminine View" (1960),
in which she criticized the Christian focus on pride as a sin, noting
that many women struggle much more with feelings of self-doubt.
She
noted that much of Christian theology was written by men and based on
male experience, and might not apply to women, and that women would have
to write out their own theology. Her essay had a strong influence on
other feminist theologians. Mary Daly for example, cited her in her own
book The Church and the Second Sex,
while Judith Plaskow, a Jewish feminist theologian, both published a
dissertation on Saiving's essay (entitled “Sex, Sin and Grace: Women’s
Experience and the Theologies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich”) and
reproduced the 1960 article in her own anthology Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion.
"The Human Situation: A Feminine View” can be read in its entirety in English here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:NT-adx9hHJwJ:hebe.sjsu.edu/upload/course/course_2055/Saiving_Article.pdf+"human+situation:+a+feminine+view"&h
Betty Friedan (February 4, 1921 - February 4, 2006) was a leading feminist activist. Her best-known book is The Feminine Mystique (1963), which is widely credited with sparking the beginning of the second-wave feminist movement in the United States. In
it she criticized the fact that women were encouraged to see
housewifery as a career, and declared that women needed a purpose in
life separate from their children and husbands. She also praised what we
would now consider the first wave of feminism, which won the vote for
women, and decried how popular culture had made feminism seem ridiculous
and cold-hearted, or alternately insisted that all battles for women
had been won.
The Feminine Mystique was
extremely influential in the feminist movement, although it was
criticized by later waves of feminism for its focus on upper-class
housewives to the exclusion of the problems of other women. Still, the
fact that most women were not fulfilled by full-time housework and
should not be ashamed of their career dreams was a true and important
point. The Feminine Mystique
is also criticized for its homophobia – Friedan believed that
homosexuality was at least in part caused by overbearing mothers – but
it should be noted that this was an entirely mainstream idea at the
time.
Friedan
is also noted for co-writing"The National Organization for Women's
Statement of Purpose" (1966) with feminist and civil rights activist
Pauli Murray (1910-1985). Murray and Friedan both helped found the
organization and Friedan was its first president. "The National
Organization for Women's Statement of Purpose" is notable for its
idealism; it declared that the goal of the National Organization for
Women was “to take action to bring women into full participation in the
mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and
responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men,” and
elaborated that women should have equal rights and responsibilities with
men in all fields.
Chapter 1 of The Feminine Mystique can be read in its entirety in English here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:GAOxcm1Sjx8J:www.athensacademy.net/teachers/rreid/apushistory/The%2520Feminine%2520Mystique.doc+feminine+mystique+chapter+1&hl=en
Chapter 2 of The Feminine Mystique can be read in its entirety in English here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:TB4J7gLWHwIJ:ls.poly.edu/~jbain/socphil/texts/05a.Friedan.pdf+feminine+mystique+chapter+2&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srci
The“National Organization for Women's Statement of Purpose” can be read in its entirety in English here: http://www.now.org/history/purpos66.html
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (1960-1970s) The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee emerged from a series of student meetings held by civil rights activist Ella Baker in 1960. The “Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Position Paper: Women in the Movement” (1964), was written and submitted anonymously at the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee meeting in Waveland, Mississippi. It denounced the sexism of the Committee and called for the civil rights movement to “start the slow process of changing values and ideas so that all of us gradually come to understand that this is no more a man's world than it is a white world.” The “Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Position Paper: Women in the Movement” can be read in its entirety in English here: http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Manifestos/SNCC_women.html
Chapter 1 of The Feminine Mystique can be read in its entirety in English here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:GAOxcm1Sjx8J:www.athensacademy.net/teachers/rreid/apushistory/The%2520Feminine%2520Mystique.doc+feminine+mystique+chapter+1&hl=en
Chapter 2 of The Feminine Mystique can be read in its entirety in English here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:TB4J7gLWHwIJ:ls.poly.edu/~jbain/socphil/texts/05a.Friedan.pdf+feminine+mystique+chapter+2&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srci
The“National Organization for Women's Statement of Purpose” can be read in its entirety in English here: http://www.now.org/history/purpos66.html
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (1960-1970s) The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee emerged from a series of student meetings held by civil rights activist Ella Baker in 1960. The “Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Position Paper: Women in the Movement” (1964), was written and submitted anonymously at the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee meeting in Waveland, Mississippi. It denounced the sexism of the Committee and called for the civil rights movement to “start the slow process of changing values and ideas so that all of us gradually come to understand that this is no more a man's world than it is a white world.” The “Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Position Paper: Women in the Movement” can be read in its entirety in English here: http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Manifestos/SNCC_women.html
Casey Hayden (born Sandra Cason) and Mary King (birthdate
unknown, both still alive) are left-wing activists. Their most noted
feminist writing is “Sex and Caste – A Kind of Memo” (1965) which was
based on their experiences as Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
volunteers. It is widely regarded as one of the first documents of the
emerging second-wave feminist movement. In it they described and
denounced the sexism of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
which was common in left-wing movements at the time, and woke many women
up to the fact that while they were ostensibly working for freedom and
justice, they themselves were being oppressed.
“Sex and Caste – A Kind of Memo” can be read in its entirety in English here: http://uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/CWLUArchive/memo.html
Gloria Steinem (born
1934) is an feminist, journalist, and political activist, and is widely
known as a spokesperson for feminism. In 1969 she published the
article, "After Black Power, Women's Liberation" which, along with her
early support of abortion rights, brought her to national fame as a
feminist leader. This article describes early feminist actions (such as
demonstrations in favor of coed dorms and against bridal fairs) and how
sexism in left wing movements led to second-wave feminism as a separate
and distinct movement, and sparked women thinking of themselves as a
minority group, just as African-Americans are. The article concludes,
however, with the assurance that "women's liberation will be men's
liberation too", perhaps an acknowledgement that if feminism could not
be made appealing to the men in charge it would not advance.
"After Black Power, Women's Liberation" can be read in its entirety in English here: http://nymag.com/news/politics/46802/
Naomi Weisstein (born 1939) is a psychology professor, and a co-founder of American Women in Psychology, now Division 35 of the American Psychological Association.
She
is probably best known for her pioneering essay, "Kinder, Küche, Kirche
as Scientific Law: Psychology Constructs the Female," which was first
published in 1968, and was read by activists throughout the feminist
movement, as well as psychologists. The
title is taken from the German slogan Kinder, Küche, Kürche (meaning
children, kitchen, church), describing what the Nazis believed was the
proper domain of a woman. The paper, which has been reprinted over 42
times in six different languages, is a seminal paper in feminist
psychology, criticizing psychologists for promoting stereotypes about
women, and buttressing its conclusions with unproven theories and
inapplicable biological research (shades of evolutionary psychology.) "
It further criticizes psychology in general for not taking into account
how much social context affects a person's feelings and actions.
"Kinder, Küche, Kirche as Scientific Law: Psychology Constructs the Female" can be read in its entirety in English here: http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/CWLUArchive/psych.html
Frances M. Beal (born 1940) is a political activist. She is perhaps best known for writing "Double Jeopardy: To Be Black & Female," first published in 1969. This paper criticizes the oppression of all black people by racism, but also criticizes the oppression of black women by sexism, even within the the civil rights movement, which often tried to build black men up by putting women down.
"Kinder, Küche, Kirche as Scientific Law: Psychology Constructs the Female" can be read in its entirety in English here: http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/CWLUArchive/psych.html
Frances M. Beal (born 1940) is a political activist. She is perhaps best known for writing "Double Jeopardy: To Be Black & Female," first published in 1969. This paper criticizes the oppression of all black people by racism, but also criticizes the oppression of black women by sexism, even within the the civil rights movement, which often tried to build black men up by putting women down.
Beal
declared that this was a "counter-revolutionary position" and that
blacks should be fighting for the end of all kinds of oppression, an
endeavor which she notes will require everyone's help, women as well as
men. She also blames capitalist exploitation for keeping black men in
menial jobs and encouraging black women to strive for the life of a
full-time housewife. She ends by declaring that revolutionaries against
racism and capitalism must treat each other as equals, and that all are
needed in the struggle.
"Double Jeopardy: To Be Black & Female" can be read in its entirety in English here: http://www.feministezine.com/feminist/modern/Double-Jeopardy-Black-and-Female.html
The National Organization for Women (founded 1966) adopted the "National Organization for Women (N.O.W.) Bill of Rights" at its national conference in 1967, and published it in 1968. It is a sweeping document that shows how ambitious the feminist movement had become, and advocates for many things (such as removing all laws limiting access to contraceptive information and devices and laws governing abortion, and establishing national child care facilities) that still have not become law.
"Double Jeopardy: To Be Black & Female" can be read in its entirety in English here: http://www.feministezine.com/feminist/modern/Double-Jeopardy-Black-and-Female.html
The National Organization for Women (founded 1966) adopted the "National Organization for Women (N.O.W.) Bill of Rights" at its national conference in 1967, and published it in 1968. It is a sweeping document that shows how ambitious the feminist movement had become, and advocates for many things (such as removing all laws limiting access to contraceptive information and devices and laws governing abortion, and establishing national child care facilities) that still have not become law.
An extended analysis of the "National
Organization for Women (N.O.W.) Bill of Rights", also written by me
(called "The National Organization for Women’s 1968 Bill of Rights – Where are we NOW?") can be read in its entirety in English at the Feministing community website here: http://community.feministing.com/2012/08/03/the-national-organization-for-womens-1968-bill-of-rights-where-are-we-now/
The "National Organization for Women (N.O.W.) Bill of Rights" can be read in its entirety in English here: http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/nowrights.html
The "National Organization for Women (N.O.W.) Bill of Rights" can be read in its entirety in English here: http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/nowrights.html
Carol Hanisch (birthdate
unknown) is best known for coming up with the idea to have a feminist
protest of the 1968 Miss America pageant (which first brought feminist
concerns to the attention of the mainstream media) and for writing The Personal Is Political, which
was published in 1969 and coined the phrase. In this paper she argues
that women and other oppressed people should stop blaming themselves for
their problems and realize that those problems are often caused by
oppression and have political solutions.
You can read The Personal Is Political in its entirety in English here: http://www.carolhanisch.org/CHwritings/PIP.html
Del Martin (1921-2008) is
best known as an LGBT rights activist, but she also fought for women’s
rights. She was active in the National Organization for Women, and
wrote Battered Wives, showing how institutionalized misogyny contributed to domestic violence. In 1970 she wrote If That’s All There Is, an indictment of the sexism in the LGBT rights movement.
Adrienne Rich (1929 –2012) was
an American poet, and essayist, called "one of the most widely read and
influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse.”
In her 1980 essay Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, Rich, herself a lesbian, posits that many women are forced into heterosexuality through women's
dependence on men for money and status, violence, denial of knowledge
about lesbianism, and so forth. She further declares that sexual
repression of women has also stifled women’s creativity and economic
advancement through rendering them dependent on men.
Whether one agrees with all this or not, this is an important document in the history of feminism, and its concept
has been accepted and embraced in many college classes and by human
rights activists. As one example of its scope, the International
Tribunal on Crimes Against Women, held in Brussels, March 4-8, 1976,
named compulsory heterosexuality (in the form of discrimination against
and persecution of lesbians) as a "crime against women."The essay can be read in its entirety in English here: http://www.terry.uga.edu/~dawndba/4500compulsoryhet.htm
Linda Nochlin (born 1931) Linda Nochlin is an art historian, professor and writer, best known for her 1971 essay Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?
In this essay, which has become very influential in the field of art history, she argues
that general social expectations against women seriously pursuing art,
restrictions on educating women at art academies, and "the entire
romantic, elitist, individual-glorifying, and monograph-producing
substructure upon which the profession of art history is based" have
worked against women becoming great artists.She also argues that
the idea of a lone great artist is somewhat exaggerated, as many have
been supported by the help of assistants, patrons, schooling, etc, and
have not simply created works of genius alone and unprovoked.
You can
read the essay in its entirety in
English
here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:RZfpIKWTTd0J:f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/512/files/2012/01/whynogreatwomenartists_4.pdf+"why+have+their+
Anne Koedt (born 1941 in Denmark, moved to America in her youth) is best known as the author of The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm, first published in 1970. In this essay, building on the work of Masters and Virginia Johnson’s Human Sexual Response Koedt
advocated new sexual techniques mutually conducive to orgasm and urged
women to insist on their own sexual satisfaction. She noted that
penis-in-vagina sex (as opposed to oral sex, etc) that does not involve
clitoris stimulation often results in women not having orgasms, and
encouraged women to consider sex without their pleasure to be as
unthinkable as sex without his penis being touched or him having an
orgasm, an idea which mainstream society still has not adopted.
The essay can be read in its entirety in English here: http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/CWLUArchive/vaginalmyth.html
Robin Morgan (born 1941) was a child actor and writer. She edited the 1970 anthology Sisterhood is Powerful,
which has been widely credited with helping to start the general
women's movement in the US, and was cited by the New York Public Library
as "One of the 100 most influential Books of the 20th Century.” It was
one of the first widely available anthologies of second-wave feminism.
Also in 1970, she wrote Goodbye to All That in reaction to the misogyny of the male-dominated left, in particular a magazine called Rat. The
essay gained notoriety in the press for naming sexist liberal men and
institutions. It can be read in its entirety in English here: http://blog.fair-use.org/2007/09/29/goodbye-to-all-that-by-robin-morgan-1970/
Rabbi Rachel Adler (born 1943) is a professor and theologian, ordained as a rabbi in May 2012.In 1971 she published The Jew Who Wasn’t There:Halacha and the Jewish Woman, in which she argued that halacha (Jewish religious law) ignored and oppressed women. This essay was considered by historian Paula Hyman as one of the founding influences of the Jewish feminist movement. It can be read in its entirety in English here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:_aHy1mQXk-wJ:jwa.org/feminism/_html/_pdf/JWA001c.pdf+jew+who+wasn't+there&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgKmt25OwE0fl_Yilu_Ayd2XrtUpxtH
Carol P. Christ (born 1944) is a teacher and author. Her speech Why Women Need the Goddess was
presented as the keynote address to an audience of over 500 at the
"Great Goddess Re-emerging" conference at the University of Santa Cruz
in the spring of 1978, and was first published later that year. It has
since been widely reprinted. In this speech she argues in favor of the concept of there having been an ancient religion of a supreme Goddess. The speech can be read in its entirety in English here: http://www.goddessariadne.org/whywomenneedthegoddess.htm
Alice Walker (born 1944) is an author and activist. In 1974 she wrote In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: The Creativity of Black Women in the South in
which she argued that black women’s artistic and literary gifts had
been suppressed, and that there was a hidden history of oppressed black
women artists. This essay can be read in its entirety in English here: http://www.msmagazine.com/spring2002/walker.asp
Her 1975 nonfiction article In Search of Zora Neale Hurston, published in Ms. magazine, helped revive interest in the work of Zora Neale Hurston (a feminist author best known for Their Eyes Were Watching God), who inspired some of Walker's writing and subject matter. In the article told of her journey
to central Florida, where Hurston lived, hoping to find anyone who knew
her and thus fill in the missing details of her life. When she arrived,
Walker realized that few had heard of Hurston or read her works, nor
had they properly honored her after she died. Posing as her niece,
Walker made her way to Hurston’s weed-covered grave and purchased a
headstone with the engraving: “A Genius of the South, 1901 – 1960.
Novelist, Folklorist, Anthropologist”. This article is widely available
in English but is not available online.
In 1982 she published The Color Purple,
which focuses on the life on black women in the 1930s in the United
States, and includes themes of lesbianism and feminism. It is widely
considered a feminist classic.
In this book Walker
portrays female friendships as a means for women to summon the courage
to tell stories which allow women to resist oppression and dominance.
Relationships among women form a refuge, providing reciprocal love in a
world filled with male violence. The novel also shows the limitations of
gender roles. In 1983 she published In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose,
a collection composed of thirty-six separate pieces. In this book she
coins the word "womanist", which she defines as, "A black feminist or
feminist of color. From the black folk expression of mother to female
children and also a woman who loves other women, sexually and/or
nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women's culture. Committed to
survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female." This has
become a popular and influential concept among feminist women of color.
The piece In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, about the hidden creativity of black American women, can be read in its entirety in English here: http://www.msmagazine.com/spring2002/walker.asp
Ezrat Nashim (founded 1971) was a Jewish feminist group. The name refers to the women’s section in a traditional synagogue, but also can mean "women's help." In 1972 they took
the issue of equality for women to the 1972 convention of Conservative
Judaism’s Rabbinical Assembly, presenting a document on 14 March that
was titled Jewish Women Call for a Change. The rabbis received the document in their convention packets, but Ezrat Nashim also
presented it during a meeting with the rabbis' wives.
The document
demanded that women be accepted as witnesses before Jewish law, be
considered as bound to perform all mitzvot (commandments),, be allowed
full participation in religious observances, have equal rights in
marriage and be allowed to initiate divorce, be counted in the minyan
(religious quorum), and be permitted to assume positions of leadership
in the synagogue and within the general Jewish community. Historian Paula Hyman, who was a member of Ezrat Nashim, wrote that: "We recognized that the subordinate status of women was linked to their exemption from positive time-bound mitzvot,
and we therefore accepted increased obligation as the corollary of
equality.”
Eleven years later, in October 1983, the Jewish Theological
Seminary, the main educational institution of the Conservative movement,
announced its decision to accept women into the Rabbinical School.
Hyman took part in the vote as a member of the JTS faculty. Today,
women are ordained as rabbis and cantors, and can read from the Torah
in front of the congregation and be counted in the minyan, have full
participation in religious observances, and be accepted as witnesses
before Jewish law, in all types of Judaism except Orthodox Judaism.
However, women are still not allowed to initiate divorce in Conservative
as well as Orthodox Judaism, and are not considered as bound to perform
all mitzvot by the Orthodox. But women have assumed positions of
leadership in the synagogue and within the general Jewish community
within all types of Judaism. Jewish Women Call for a Change can be read in its entirety in English here: http://books.google.com/books?id=vVETCrICwO8C&pg=PA116&dq=jewish+women+call+for+a+change&hl=en&sa=X&ei=T6ydUOjyMpGQ0QHQzYDgAQ&ved=0CDoQ6wEwA
The Combahee River Collective (founded 1974)was a black feminist lesbian group. Their name commemorated
an action at Combahee River planned and led by Harriet Tubman in 1863,
which freed more than 750 slaves and is the only military campaign in
American history planned and led by a woman. In 1977 they published A Black Feminist Statement, a
key document in the history of contemporary black feminism and the
development of the concepts of identity as used among political
organizers and social theorists.
It describes the importance of black feminism, the difficulties in
organizing black feminists, the realities of interlocking oppressions,
and racism in the mainstream women’s movement. The essay can be read in
its entirety in English here: http://circuitous.org/scraps/combahee.html
Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was a Caribbean-American lesbian writer, poet, librarian, and activist. Lorde
criticized feminists of the 1960s for focusing on the particular
experiences and values of white middle-class women.
Her writings are
based on the "theory of difference", the idea that the binary opposition
between men and women is overly simplistic: although feminists have
found it necessary to present the illusion of a solid, unified whole,
the category of women itself is full of subdivisions.
Among other works,
Lorde wrote The Cancer Journals (1980), in
which she describes her experience with cancer and calls on the reader
to relinquish silence and speak out. She focuses on the importance of
the love received from the women around her throughout her experience,
and the comfort from talking about it with other lesbian cancer
survivors. She also discusses coming to terms with the outcome of the
operation, which left her with one breast. She explains that although it
would be fine for women to resort to a prosthesis if they want to, she
chooses not to, thinking that it seems like a cover-up in a society
where women are solely judged on their looks. She also discusses the
possibilities of alternative medicine, arguing that women should look at
all the options.
Her book Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982) began a new genre known as biomythography, a term she coined which means the
weaving together of myth, history, and biography in epic narrative
form, a style of composition meant to represent all the ways in which we
perceive the world around us. In Zami, Lorde discusses her upbringing and early life. The
book describes the way lesbians lived in NYC, Connecticut, and Mexico.
It also discusses Lorde's difficult relationship with her mother, whom
she credits for imbuing her with a certain sense of strength; the book
ends with a homage to her. Zami is a Caribbean name for women who work
together as friends and lovers.
In one of Lorde's most famous essays, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House" from Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984), she
attacks the underlying racism of feminism, describing it as
unrecognized dependence on the patriarchy. She argues that, by denying
difference in the category of women, feminists merely passed on old
systems of oppression and that, in so doing, they were preventing any
real, lasting change. Her argument aligns white feminists with white
male slave-masters, describing both as "agents of oppression."
Gloria Anzaldúa (1942-2004) was an American scholar of Chicano cultural theory, queer theory, and feminist theory.
She is most famous for co-editing This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color (1981) with Cherrie Moraga.
This anthology explores
the feminist revolution from the perspective of women of color and
addresses the cultural, class, and sexual differences that impact them.
It includes Anzaldúa's
speech called "Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women
Writers" (1981), focusing on the shift towards an equal and just gender
representation in literature, but away from racial and cultural issues
due to the rise of female writers and theorists.
She
also stresses in her speech the power of writing to create a world
which would compensate for what the real world does not offer us.
Anzaldúa has introduced the term "mestizaje" to United States academic
audiences, meaning a state of being beyond binary (either-or)
understanding. In her theoretical works, Anzaldúa calls
for a "new mestiza," which she describes as an individual aware of her
conflicting and meshing identities and uses these "new angles of vision"
to challenge binary thinking. This "new mestiza" way of thinking is
part of postcolonial feminism. In "La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a
New Consciousness" (1987), a text often used in women's studies, Anzaldúa insists
that separatism for Chicanas and Chicanos is not furthering the cause,
but instead keeping the same racial division in place.
Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005) was an American author. During
the late 1970s and the 1980s, she gained national fame as a spokeswoman
for the feminist anti-pornography movement, and for her writing on
pornography and sexuality, particularly in Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981) and Intercourse (1987), which remain her two most widely known books.In Pornography: Men Possessing Women she argues
that pornography and erotic literature in patriarchal societies
consistently eroticize women's sexual subordination to men, and often
overt acts of exploitation or violence.
In Intercourse,
she went on to argue that that sort of sexual subordination is central
to men's and women's experiences of sexual intercourse in male
supremacist society, and reinforced throughout mainstream culture,
including not only pornography but also in classic works of male-centric
literature. Dworkin argues that the depictions of intercourse in
mainstream art and culture consistently emphasize heterosexual
intercourse as the only or the most genuine form of "real" sex; that
they portray intercourse in violent or invasive terms; that they portray
the violence or invasiveness as central to its eroticism; and that they
often unite it with male contempt for, revulsion towards, or even
murder of, the "carnal" woman.
bell hooks (aka
Gloria Jean Watkins, born 1952) is an American author and activist. She
took her pen name, which is intentionally uncapitalized, from her
grandmother Bell Blair Hooks. She chose this because
her grandmother "was known for her snappy and bold tongue, which I
greatly admired." She put the name in lowercase letters "to distinguish
myself from my grandmother." Her name's unconventional lowercasing
signifies what is most important in her works: the "substance of books,
not who I am."
Her first major work Ain't I a Woman?: Black women and feminism (1981) examines
the historical impact of sexism and racism on black women, devaluation
of black womanhood, media roles and portrayal, the education system, the
idea of a white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy, the marginalization
of black women, and the disregard for issues of race and class within
feminism.
In 1984 she published Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center,which confirmed
her importance as a leader in radical feminist thought. Throughout the
book, hooks uses the term white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy as a
lens through which to both critique various aspects of American culture
and to offer potential solutions to the problems she explores.
hooks
addresses topics including the goals of feminist movement, the role of
men in feminist struggle, the relevance of pacifism, solidarity among
women, and the nature of revolution. hooks can be identified in her
discussions of these topics as a radical feminist because of her
arguments that the system itself is corrupt and that achieving equality
in such a system is neither possible nor desirable. She promotes instead
a complete transformation of society and all of its institutions as a
result of protracted struggle, envisioning a life-affirming, peaceful
tomorrow. A second edition of this book, featuring a new preface,
"Seeing the Light: Visionary Feminism," was published in 2000. In the
preface to the first edition, hooks, talking about black Americans in
her hometown, discusses the meaning of her title From Margin to Center: "Living
as we did "on the edge" we developed a particular way of seeing
reality. We looked from both the outside in and the inside out. We
focused our attention on the center as well as the margin. We understood
both. This mode of seeing reminded us of the existence of a whole
universe, a main body made up of both margin and center."
Hillary Clinton (born
1947) is an American politician. In 1995 her speech at the 1995 UN
Conference on Women, called Women’s Rights are Human Rights (1995)
showed her “speaking
more forcefully on human rights than any American dignitary has on
Chinese soil” as the NY Times put it. It is often considered one of the landmark speeches in the global struggle for women’s rights, and condemns all abuses of women wherever they occur. It can be read in its entirety in English here: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/hillaryclintonbeijingspeech.htm
Eve Ensler (born May 25, 1953) is an American playwright, performer, feminist, activist and artist, best known for her play The Vagina Monologues. This
play is made up of various feminist monologues centering around women’s
experiences with their vaginas, based on interviews Ensler did with
various women.
However, it has come in for some criticism, mostly
due to the monologue "The Little Coochie Snorcher that Could", in which
an underage girl (thirteen in earlier performances, sixteen in the
revised version) recounts being given alcohol and then having sex with
an adult woman; the incident is recalled fondly by the grown girl, who
in the original version of the play calls it "a good rape." This
monologue is omitted from some versions.
In 1998, Ensler’s experience performing The Vagina Monologues inspired her to create V-Day, a global activist movement to stop violence against women and girls. V-Day raises funds and awareness through annual benefit productions of The Vagina Monologues, and has raised over $800,000,000 so far.
Susan Faludi (born April 18, 1959) is an American journalist and author. Faludi's 1991 book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women argues
that the 1980s saw a backlash against feminism in America, especially
due to the spread of negative stereotypes against career-focused women.
Faludi asserts that many who argue "a woman's place is in the home,
looking after the kids" are hypocrites, since they have wives who are
working mothers or, as women, they are themselves working mothers. This
work won her the National Book Critics Circle Award for general
nonfiction in 1991.
Naomi Wolf (born 1962) is an American author and former political consultant. She is most famous for the book The Beauty Myth (1991) which argues that as
women have gained increased social power and prominence, expected
adherence to standards of physical beauty has grown stronger for women.
that "beauty" as a normative value is entirely socially constructed, and
that the patriarchy determines the content of that construction with
the goal of reproducing its own hegemony.
Rebecca Walker (born November 17, 1969) is an American writer. She
co-founded the Third Wave Foundation, which aims to encourage young
women to get involved in activism and leadership roles. The organization
now provides grants to individuals and projects that support young
women. Walker is considered one of the founding leaders of third-wave feminism. She wrote an article for Ms. Magazine called Becoming the Third Wave (1991),
criticizing the confirmation of Clarence Thomas as a Supreme Court
justice after he was accused of sexually harassing his employee Anita
Hill. Using this example, Walker addresses the oppression of the female
voice and introduces the concept of third-wave feminism, a term her
article coined. Walker defines third wave feminism at the end of the
article by saying “To be a feminist is to integrate an ideology of
equality and female empowerment into the very fiber of life. It is to
search for personal clarity in the midst of systemic destruction, to
join in sisterhood with women when often we are divided, to understand
power structures with the intention of challenging them.”
Riot Grrrl was
an American underground feminist punk rock movement that originally
started in Washington, D.C.; Olympia, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and
the greater Pacific Northwest in the early to mid-1990s. The Riot Grrrl
Manifesto (1991) criticizes male-dominated culture and encourages girls
to build their own alternative. It can be read in its entirety in
English here: http://onewarart.org/riot_grrrl_manifesto.htm
Marilyn French (1929-2009) was an American writer. Her most significant work in later life was the four-volume From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women,
published in 2002 and built around the premise that exclusion from the
prevailing intellectual histories denied women their past, present and
future. Despite carefully chronicling a long history of oppression, the
last volume ends on an optimistic note.
Jennifer Baumgardner (born 1970) and Amy Richards (born circa 1971) are American writers and activists. They coauthored Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (2000) after writing for the feminist magazine Ms. This book is an analysis of U.S. feminism that claims that "girl culture," from women rock stars and athletes to female entrepreneurs and inventors, supports feminism and has become an integral part of the national psyche. At the same time, they caution young women not to stop and rest on the success of cultural feminism, but to develop political lives and awareness, and include appendixes to teach novices the nuts-and-bolts of community organizing. Jennifer is openly bisexual and has also written about the bisexual experience.
Jennifer Baumgardner (born 1970) and Amy Richards (born circa 1971) are American writers and activists. They coauthored Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (2000) after writing for the feminist magazine Ms. This book is an analysis of U.S. feminism that claims that "girl culture," from women rock stars and athletes to female entrepreneurs and inventors, supports feminism and has become an integral part of the national psyche. At the same time, they caution young women not to stop and rest on the success of cultural feminism, but to develop political lives and awareness, and include appendixes to teach novices the nuts-and-bolts of community organizing. Jennifer is openly bisexual and has also written about the bisexual experience.
