Classic Second Wave Feminist Writings   Feminist Issues The Battle for Woman-Only Space Sex, Sexuality and Gender   Generations  Media's Reconstruction of the Public Sphere   Relationships   Global Feminism   Feminist Ethics   The War Against Women   Women's Speeches, Women's Stories   Feminist Leaders on U.S. Terrorist Attacks   Women's Spirituality   Feminist in Wartime: Feminists Write About War   The Women's Canon (according to me)   Suggest an Addition to the Women's Canon

It is common to say that something is good in theory but not in practice. I always want to say, then it is not such good theory, is it? ...The movement for the liberation of women ...is first practice, then theory...Feminism was a practice long before it was a theory...We know things with our lives, and live that knowledge beyond anything any theory has yet theorized...To write the theory of this practice is not to work through logical puzzles or entertaining conundra, not to fantasize utopias, not to moralize or tell people what to do. It is not to exercise authority; it does not lead practice. Its task is to engage life through developing mechanisms that identify and criticize rather than reproduce social practices of subordination and to make tools of women's consciousness and resistance that further a practical struggle to end inequality. This kind of theory requires humility and it requires practice. -- Catharine A. MacKinnon, from From Practice to Theory, or What Is a White Woman Anyway? The Theory Underneath the Theory This is a link to materials from a Cultural and Literary Theory class offered by Mary Klages of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Included is a list of recommended reading as well as an introduction and well-written summations of the theories "underneath" much of feminist theory, or which feminist theorists frequently reference, i.e., the theories of Claude Levi-Strauss, Jacques Derrida, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Michael Foucault, Helen Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Maria Lugones, Judith Butler, Queer Theory, Marxism, Structuralism/Poststructuralism, and Postmodernism. It's a helpful page for those unfamiliar with these theorists. Classic Second Wave Feminist Writings Sex and Caste: A Kind of Memo to a number of other women in the peace and freedom movements(1965)from Casey Hayden and Mary King A paper on women in the civil rights movement based on their experiences as Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee volunteers. It is widely regarded as one of the first documents of the emerging women's liberation movement. Sexual Politics by Kate Millett This 1968 essay circulated before the publication of Sexual Politics. The ideas within it were later incorporated into Chapter 2. Voices of the Women's Liberation Movement The first three issues of the first national women's liberation newsletter (1968) are available here. Black Women in Poverty by Various Authors(1968) Black activists discuss reproductive politics and the role of Black women in social transformation. What's that somebody said about the Second Wave not addressing issues of race and class? Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female by Francis Beal (1969) The Grand Coolie Damn by Marge Piercy (1969) Piercy's article about sexism in the Left. "The Movement is supposed to be for human liberation. How come the condition of women inside it is no better than outside? We have been trying to educate and agitate around women's liberation for several years. How come things are getting worse?" Lesbianism and Feminism by Anne Koedt Poor White Women by Roxanne Dunbar (Undated but probably written around 1970) TRASHING: The Dark Side of Sisterhood by Jo Freeman (originally writing as "Joreen" in 1976) Having a Baby My Way by Pat(1972) Written in defendse of a home birthing establishment which was ultimately closed by the male dominated medical establishment. This is from a 1972 issue of the publication "Womankind" Medical Crimes Against Women by Jenny Knauss, Janet M., Kathy M., Lauren C. & Sharon M. (circa 1974-1975) 1970s Lesbian Feminism In 1970, lesbian feminism emerged as a radical political project from within the U.S. left -- the anti-war, student, and civil rights movements; welfare activism; anarchism; second-wave feminism; and also from lesbian subcultures. The early 1970s lesbian feminists, and especially separatists, were mainly but not exclusively white, and came from a range of class and cultural backgrounds. Radical lesbians extended feminist theory even further, pointing out that (compulsory) heterosexuality is key to male dominated society (a.k.a. patriarchy). The logical strategy for feminists is to escape heterosexuality, and embrace lesbianism, in order to free themselves, overthrow the social order, and create a more just society. Note: Most of the links above are from the Chicago Women's Liberation Union website. This is the best site of its kind, in my opinion, featuring many, many original articles from the Second Wave, timelines, links, resources. Feminist Issues Points Against Postmodernism Catharine A. MacKinnon "Ironically, and how postmodernism loves an irony, just as women have begun to become human, even as we have begun to transform the human so it is something more worth having and might apply to us, we are told by high theory that the human is inherently authoritarian, not worth having, untransformable, and may not even exist -- and how hopelessly nineteenth century of us to want it...The reason postmodernism undermines a practice of human rights is not because it corrodes universality...The reason is, the reality of violation is the only ground the violated have to stand on to end it. Power and its pretenders think they can dispense with ground because they are in no danger of losing theirs or the power that goes with it. Postmodernism vitiates human rights to the extent it erects itself on its lack of relation to the realities of the subordinated because it is only in social reality that human violation takes place, can be known, and can be stopped. The Battle for Woman Only Space Mary Daly vs. Boston College by Michael Bronski, from Z Magazine This is the best article I have found so far about Mary Daly's fight with Boston College over her insistence on teaching womyn-only classes with a very good analysis, in particular, of how the story was reported by mainstream media. From the article: This irresponsible and biased reporting is deeply injurious to Daly’s career and ideas, but more important it is indicative of how the mainstream media has swung so rightward that the standards of "fairness" are completely off-balance. No matter how one feels about Daly’s "women only" classroom space it is important to see her fight with Boston College in the much broader context of attacks on feminism, gay liberation, gay rights, affirmative action, and civil rights that is now occurring. Men in Ewes' Clothing: The Stealth Politics of the Transgender Movement by Karla Mantilla originally published in Off Our Backs, April 2000 "I know these are strong statements, but the transgender movement has been taken so unquestioningly to heart by so many lesbians, feminists, and progressives, there is such dogma surrounding it, and there is such a taboo on challenging it, that I am unwilling to fudge even a little on how dangerous it is to feminism and women." Sex, Sexuality and Gender How Orgasm Politics Has Hijacked the Women's Movement: Why has the Big O seduced so many feminists -- even Ms. -- into a counterrevolution from within? by Sheila Jeffreys, from On the Issues "The ability of women to eroticize their own subordination and take "pleasure" from the degradation of themselves and other women to object status poses a serious obstacle. So long as women have a stake in the sexual system as it is -- so long as they get their kicks that way -- why will they want change?" Sex, Lies & Feminism by Char Croson from Off Our Backs "This essay grew out of the politics of a specific place and time: the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival over the last 8 years. My work at Festival during this time has been as a critic of both sado-masochistic sexual practice and Camp Trans. "The debate about sado-masochistic practice (S/M) at Festival has been a recurring issue. It has a new urgency in light of right wing attacks on Festival over the past year. These attacks are ostensibly aimed at sexual practices "harmful to children." S/M sex has been - and is - displayed as exhibit number one. In truth the attacks are aimed at all women: the tactic being to make all lesbian sexuality no different from S/M, drawing no distinction between S/M and lesbian sex in any non-hierarchical form. For the Festival community, the attacks have again brought into sharp focus fundamental questions about women's political and social community: who defines the interests of our community? Is it in our interests as women who love women to embrace, or at least leave unchallenged, S/M and Camp Trans/transgender politics? Independent of those attacks, what should we make of S/M and transgender politics: are they otherwise compatible with our community's interests?" The Politics of Sex and Gender: Benhabib and Butler Debate Subjectivity By Fiona Webster, fromHypatia, Volume 15, Number 1 "This paper responds to the sense of "crisis" or "trouble" that dominates contemporary feminist debate about the categories of sex and gender. It argues that this perception of crisis has emerged from a fundamental confusion of theoretical and political issues concerning the implications of the sex/gender debate for political representation and agency. It explores the sense in which this confusion is manifest in a debate between Seyla Benhabib and Judith Butler. A sense of crisis prevails in some contemporary Anglo-American feminist debates, a sense that the instability and indeterminacy of recent accounts of sex and gender are undermining the very foundations on which feminism is built. There is, as Judith Butler remarks, "a certain sense of trouble, as if the indeterminacy of gender might eventually culminate in the failure of feminism" (1990, vii). As a movement which has, historically, sought to represent the needs and concerns of the gendered identity category "women," feminism has appeared to rely upon a universal, stable, or "fixed" conception of that category in order to ground its theoretical and political claims. It has relied upon the idea that there is a subject of feminism ("woman") whose needs and concerns can be defined as subjects of political representation. "In recent years, however, feminism has been criticized for its assumption of authority over the experience of women and for its general presumption that, simply on the basis of a shared gendered identity, women have immediate access to and knowledge of the lives of other women. In this paper, I will argue that this perception of "trouble" or "crisis" for feminism has emerged from a fundamental confusion of theoretical and political issues concerning the implications of the sex/gender debate for political representation and agency. This confusion is manifest in a debate between two prominent contemporary feminist theorists, Seyla Benhabib and Judith Butler, in the collection of essays Feminist Contentions(Benhabib et al. 1995)." The Destiny of Biology An interview with Anne Fausto-Sterling by Michael Bronski, from Znet "Anne Fausto-Sterling is one of the leading theorists on science, sexuality, and gender. Trained as a molecular biologist, and a professor of Biology and Women’s Studies at Brown University, her research and writing covers a broad rage of topics: the science and politics of sex hormone research, theories of the etiology of sexual orientation, the use of animal models to "explain" human behavior, the sexual politics behind the medicalization of intersexuality (formally termed hermaphrodism). But through all of Fausto-Sterling’s writing her underlying concern is how social attitudes, biases, and prejudices—particularly about issues of sex, sexuality, and gender—inform and influence scientific research, theory, and practice: the social construction of science." Generations Waves of Feminism "A recent post asked if the common wisdom that there were two waves of feminism has ever been challenged. If it hasn't been, it should be." Letter to a Young Feminist By Phyllis Chesler from On the Issues "Here I sit, head bent, writing you an intimate letter. I sense your presence, even though I don't know your name. I envision you as a young woman, possibly a young man, somewhere between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, but you may also be a decade older -- or younger -- than that. You may not yet be born. Perhaps I am trying to speak to my own younger self. When I was coming of age -- a process which is still far from over -- no one ever spoke strong truths to me in a loving voice. When I was your age, I did not know what I needed to know in order to understand my life -- anybody's life. Perhaps, in writing to you, I wish to correct that, to make amends." Letter to an Older Feminist by Sandra Balaban A Response to Phyllis Chesler’s letter from On the Issues Media's Reconstruction of the Public Sphere Write What You Want as Long as It's About Sex by Shere Hite, from On the Issues ""Oh, do you paint freckles on your face? How do you do that?" After 22 years as a researcher, I've arrived at a key interview to present 400 pages of new research to the press and this was the first question. I am not the only woman to experience this by any means. The twentieth-century feminists Susan Faludi, Germaine Greer, Erica Jong, even Diana (of British royalty fame), or any woman who speaks out -- all of us are called "colorful," "dramatic." Details of our bodies and appearances are hashed and rehashed in the press, while we write and write, and speak and speak, hoping to be heard. Yet surely this trivialization, lamentable as it is, is not censorship. Censorship is political discrimination or punishment of those who have certain views unfavorable to the "establishment," those in power. But wait. This is not intentional censorship -- but it operates just as surely to stop ideas from reaching people. And this repression can be worse than official censorship because it is invisible. It is not glorified by the noble martyrdom attached to the word "censorship." Relationships, Family The Politics of Housework By Pat Mainardi of Redstockings Feminism, Medicine,and the Meaning of Childbirth by Paula A. Treichler The real is always linguistic, unsentimental, and political. Thus a definition is not, as conventional wisdom assumes, the set of necessary and sufficient conditions that constitute a known, fixed starting point for political, economic, and ideological struggles. Rather a definition represents the outcome of such struggles -- an unstable, negotiated, and often quite temporary cultural prescription. In turn, however, embodied in laws, policies, and everyday practices, definitions may have great power to determine material consequences. … Childbirth entails the existence of multiple meanings, ideological commitments, and material resources. The real revolution will involve forsaking the notion that gender binds women in a magical ineluctable unity and rejecting definitions that ground the reality of birth in what is presumed to be natural and maternal. Instead we need to strengthen feminist political aims: women's right to economic resources, information, self-determination, strategic alliances across race and class, access to appropriate resources, and participation in decision-making about the reproductive process. Can Fatherhood Be Optional? by Catharine MacKinnon in The New York TimesJune 17, 2001 "Not every sex distinction promotes sex inequality, but most do. The Supreme Court denigrated parents of both sexes last week when it upheld, by a bare 5-to-4 majority, a law that makes citizenship automatic for children born abroad out of wedlock if their mothers are American citizens but not if their fathers are. In this ruling, the court refused to recognize fathers' connections to their children when they are substantial, and it took mothers' connections for granted as a fact of nature. This distinction on biological grounds entrenches unequal social assumptions into equality law — promoting women's disadvantage even as it favors them." Global Feminism Monocultures, Monopolies, Myths And The Masculinisation Of Agriculture by Vandana Shiva, Director Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology - India "Monocultures and monopolies symbolise a masculinsation of agriculture. The war mentality underlying military-industrial agriculture is evident from the names given to herbicides which destroy the economic basis of the survival of the poorest women in the rural areas of the Third World. Monsanto's herbicides are called "Round up", "Machete", "Lasso" American Home Products which has merged with Monsanto calls its herbicides `Pentagon', `Prowl', `Scepter', `Squadron', `Cadre', `Lightening', `Assert', `Avenge'. This is the language of war, not sustainability. Sustainability is based on peace with the earth. The violence intrinsic to methods and metaphors used by the global agribusiness and biotechnology corporations is a violence against nature's biodiversity and women's expertise and productivity. The violence intrinsic to destruction of diversity through monocultures and the destruction of the freedom to save and exchange seeds through IPR monopolies is inconsistent with women's diverse non-violent ways of knowing nature and providing food security. This diversity of knowledge systems and production systems is the way forward for ensuring that Third World women continue to play a central role as knowers, producers and providers of food...We do not want a partnership in this violent usurpation of the creativity of creation and Third World women by global biotechnology corporations who call themselves the "Life Sciences Industry" even while they push millions of species and millions of small farmers to extinction." What Should White People Do? by Linda Martin Alcoff, from Hypatia, Volume 13, No. 3 "In this paper I explore white attempts to move toward a proactive position against racism that will amount to more than self-criticism in the following three ways: by assessing the debate within feminism over white women's relation to whiteness; by exploring "white awareness training" methods developed by Judith Katz and the "race traitor" politics developed by Ignatiev and Garvey, and; a case study of white revisionism being currently attempted at the University of Mississippi." Tools for a Cross-Cultural Feminist Ethics: Exploring Ethical Contexts and Contents in the Makah Whale Hunt by Greta Gaard, from Hypatia vol. 16, no. 1 (Winter 2001) "Antiracist white feminists and ecofeminists have the tools but lack the strategies for responding to issues of social and environmental justice cross-culturally, particularly in matters as complex as the Makah whale hunt. Distinguishing between ethical contexts and contents, I draw on feminist critiques of cultural essentialism, ecofeminist critiques of hunting and food consumption, and socialist feminist analyses of colonialism to develop antiracist feminist and ecofeminist strategies for cross-cultural communication and cross-cultural feminist ethics." Feminist Ethics Impairment and Disability: Constructing an Ethics of Care That Promotes Human Rights by Jenny Morris, from Hypatia Volume 16, Number 4 When I became disabled, 17 years ago, I had already experienced a decade of feminism. Throughout my 20s I had been able to articulate my personal experiences of oppression through the politics of the women’s movement. However, at the age of 33, when I was plummeted into a new experience of social exclusion, I soon realized that there had been little room for disabled women within either feminist ideas or the women’s movement. ..The quality of our lives, and our life chances, are not inevitably determined by what our bodies can’t do, or look like, or how our minds function. Like the women’s movement, we say that "anatomy is not destiny." We therefore need to separate out "impairment"—the characteristics of our bodies and minds—from the way other people and society generally react to impairment. Prejudice, discrimination, services which disempower and segregate us; a failure to use resources to create accessible environments, to use technology to aid communication, to provide personal assistance to aid daily living, and so on—these are the disabling barriers that we experience. People with physical, sensory, and cognitive impairments, and people with mental health difficulties, are therefore disabled by the society in which we live. We therefore use the term "disabled people" to describe what is done to us. This language politicizes our experiences and it takes the focus away from our impairments being the problem and puts the responsibility onto the society in which we live. Fatal Practices: A Feminist Analysis of Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia by Diana Raymond from Hypatia, Volume 13, Number 2 "In this essay, I examine the arguments against physician-assisted suicide (PAS) Susan Wolf offers in her essay, "Gender, Feminism, and Death: Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia." I argue that Wolf's analysis of PAS, while timely and instructive in many ways, does not require that feminists reject policy approaches that might permit PAS. The essay concludes with reflections on the relationship between feminism and questions of agency, especially women's agency." Sterilization and Informed Consent by Stephen Trombley This paper covers the history of coerced or forced sterilization focusing on genocide, forced sterilization of women of color. To Fear Jane Alpert is to Fear Ourselves - A Letter to Susan Sherman by Barbara Deming from the Barbara Deming Home Page This letter is a historic document of the women's movement, written in the 1960s, just after Jane Alpert renounced her ties to the Weather Underground and became a radical feminist, and was then denounced by her former compatriots on the Left, both male and female, as well as some radical feminist women who were leaders in the Women's Liberation Movement. She had publicly revealed that she had been physically and emotionally abused by her then-partner, Sam Melville, a Weatherman, who was later killed in prison riots at Attica. Deming's letter speaks to the issue of hierarchy and exclusion in the women's movement. "Several days ago a sister wrote to tell me that she was signing a statement denouncing Jane Alpert - and throwing her out of the women's movement. Now I have read the statement that you signed, denouncing her, too, and in effect throwing her out of the human race. "I think the only choice that will enable us to hold to our vision without being scared into wanting to retreat is one that abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition: naming behavior that is oppressive, naming abuse of power, that is held unfairly and must be destroyed, but naming no person or one whom we are willing to destroy. If we can destroy a man's power to tyrannize, there is no need, of course, to destroy the man himself. And if the same man who behaves in one sense as a tyrant is in another sense our comrade, there is no need to feel that we have lost our political minds (or souls) when we treat him as a person divided from us (and from himself) in just this way." Globalizing Feminist Ethics by Alison Jaggar, from Hypatia vol. 13, no. 2 The feminist conception of discourse offered below differs from classical discourse ethics. Arguing that inequalities of power are even more conspicuous in global than in local contexts, I note that a global discourse community seems to be emerging among feminists, and I explore the role played by small communities in feminism's attempts to reconcile a commitment to open discussion, on the one hand, with a recognition of the realities of power inequalities, on the other. The War Against Women Are Women Human? By Catharine MacKinnon Remedies for War Crimes at the National Level Catharine A. MacKinnon is Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. Professors Jose E. Alvarez and Katharine MacKinnon discussed solutions to prosecuting war crimes at the 1997 University of michigan Law Shool Reunion of International Alumni. These are papers that developed out of that discussion. Prostitution and Civil Rights by Catharine A. MacKinnon From the Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, 1993, Vol. 1 "The gap between the promise of civil rights and the real lives of prostitutes is an abyss which swallows up prostituted women. To speak of prostitution and civil rights in one breath moves the two into one world, at once exposing and narrowing the distance between them. Women's Speeches,Women's Stories Acorn Convention -- On the Fight for Justice for Working People by Linda Chavez-Thompson, Executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, Philadelphia, June 25, 2000 "With a union, a hotel cleaner can own a home... and a waitress can send her children to college... and an assembly-line worker can have health insurance and a vacation... because the union helps them to fight together for the wages, and health care, and training, and pensions they deserve. There's something else you can win through the union that's just as important -- dignity, respect, a real voice on the job. It makes all the difference in the world. When you're out there all by yourself demanding your rights, management won't even let you in the front door. ...But when you join together with your sisters and brothers in the union, you can demand a seat at the table -- and you get it. So why doesn't just about every working woman and man in America join a union." Equal Rights For Women by Shirley Chisholm, US House Representative Of New York Address To The United States House Of Representatives, Washington, DC: May 21, 1969 "As a black person, I am no stranger to race prejudice. But the truth is that in the political world I have been far oftener discriminated against because I am a woman than because I am black. Prejudice against blacks is becoming unacceptable although it will take years to eliminate it. But it is doomed because, slowly, white America is beginning to admit that it exists. Prejudice against women is still acceptable...." Nobel Lecture: The Chinese Novel by Pearl S. Buck, American Writer/Nobel Laureate December 12, 1938 at at Stockholm Concert Hall, Stockholm, Sweden Oral History Of Her Days As A Slave by Lucinda Davis, U.S. Citizen/Former Slave, Circa 1930 Oral History Of Her Days As A Slave by Tempe Herndon Durham, U.S. Citizen/Former slave Oral History Of Her Days As A Slave by Mary Reynolds, US Citizen/Former slave Spotty-Handed Villainesses: Problems Of Female Bad Behaviour In The Creation Of Literature by Margaret Atwood, Canadian Author Susan B. Anthony's Speech After Being Convicted Of Voting In The 1872 Presidential Election by Susan B. Anthony The Poet and the World by Wislawa Szymborska Polish Poet/Nobel Literature Prize 1996 Feminist Leaders Comment on Terrorist Attacks in the U.S. Statements of feminist leaders Leaders of international women's rights organizations have stressed that women's participation in all levels of public policy decisions minimizes violence and enhances the likelihood of peace. Comments by Eleanor Smeal, Charlotte Bunch, Catharine MacKinnon and others Feminist Spirituality Letters on the Equality of the Sexes Addressed to Mary S. Parker, President of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society by Sarah Grimké, 1837 When Women Were Priests--Women's Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity A summary of the book by Karen Jo Torjesen Feminist Judaism and the Repair of the World by Judith Plaskow After the Death of God the Father by Mary Daly Women's Liberation and the Transformation of Christian Consciousness Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza from Woman Spirit Rising Searching for Sophia By Ginny Hunt A formerly conservative Christian feminist eloquently describes her search for the feminine face of God Spiritual Abuse:Getting Better by Kathy Ward (On recovering from spiritual abuse and cultic thinking) margins home ©2001-2010 Gentle Spirit, Inc.