The World Split Open

by Ruth Rosen

  CHAPTER TWO: FEMALE GENERATION GAP

  Barbara Berg, The Crisis of the Working Mother, Resolving the Conflict between Family and Work (New York: Summit, 1986), is a study of this generation’s attitudes toward domesticity, and Landon Y. Jones, Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation (New York: Ballantine, 1980), provides an overview of the baby boom and its influence on American society. For works on the specific experiences of young women, see Wini Breines, Young and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992); Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media (New York: Random House, 1994); and Joyce Johnson, Minor Characters (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983). On the influence of Simone de Beauvoir, see The Second Sex (New York: Harmondsworth, 1953); Judith Okeley, Simone de Beauvoir (New York: Pantheon, 1986); Alice Schwarzer, After the Second Sex: Conversations with Simone de Beauvoir (New York: Pantheon, 1984); and Deirdre Bair’s Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography (New York: Summit, 1990). A film titled Daughters of de Beauvoir, directed by Imogen Sutton, explores her influence on the women’s movement. An essay by Mary Felstiner early assessed feminism’s second-wave relationship to de Beauvoir: “Seeing the Second Sex through the Second Wave,” Feminist Studies 6 (Winter 1986): 247–76.

  On the roots of young people’s rebellion, see Richard Flacks, “The Liberated Generation: An Explanation of the Roots of Student Protest,” in Richard Flacks, ed., Conformity, Resistance and Self-Determination (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), and Kenneth Keniston, Young Radicals: Notes on Committed Youth (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968), especially the appendix. Robyn Rowland, Women Who Do and Women Who Don’t Join the Women’s Movement (London: Routledge, 1984), is one study of the differences between those who joined the women’s movement and those who did not.

  For the creation of a singles culture, see Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Single Girl (New York: Pocket Books, 1962), and Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs, Remaking Love (New York: Doubleday, 1986), which argues that it is women who made the sexual revolution during the twentieth century.

  CHAPTER THREE: LIMITS OF LIBERALISM

  The two best accounts of the women’s movement and U.S. liberal politics during this period are Cynthia Harrison, On Account of Sex: The Politics of Women’s Issues 1945–1968 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), and Ethel Klein, Gender Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984). Also see the U.S. President’s Commission on the Status of Women, American Women (Washington, D.C., 1963); Gerda Lerner, “Midwestern Leaders of the Modern Women’s Movement: An Oral History Project,” Wisconsin Academy Review (Winter 1994–95): 11–15; Nancy Gabin, Feminism in the Labor Movement: Women and the United Auto Workers, 1925–1975 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990); and Susan Lynn, Progressive Women in Conservative Times: Racial Justice, Peace and Feminism, 1945–1960’s (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992). Most of the articles collected for Not June Cleaver also point to the continuities between radical movements of the 1940s and 1950s and 1960s feminism.

  CHAPTER FOUR: LEAVING THE LEFT

  For valuable sources on the history of the New Left, see George Vickers, The Formation of the New Left (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1975); Maurice Isserman, If I Had a Hammer . . . The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left (New York: Basic Books, 1987); Paul Buhle, History and the New Left: Madison, Wisconsin, 1950–1970 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990); Todd Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), and The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam, 1986); Jim Miller, Democracy in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987); Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981); Richard Flacks, Making History: The American Left and the American Mind (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan, Who Spoke Up? American Protest against the War in Vietnam, 1963–1975 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975); David Caute, The Year of the Barricades: A Journey through 1968 (New York: Harper and Row, 1988); David Farber, Chicago 68 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Ronald Fraser et al., 1968: Student Generation in Revolt (New York: Pantheon, 1988); Dick Flacks, “What Happened to the New Left?” Socialist Review (January 1989): 91–110; and Wini Breines, Community and Organization in the New Left, 1962–68 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1982).

  The best sources on women in SNCC are Sara Evans, Personal Politics (New York: Knopf, 1979) and Belinda Robnett’s critique of the emphasis on white women in How Long? How Long? African-American Women and the Struggle for Freedom and Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). Different perspectives are offered by Mary Rothschild, A Case of Black and White: Northern Volunteers and the Southern Freedom Summers, 1964–1965 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982); Cynthia Washington, “We Started from Different Ends of the Spectrum,” Southern Exposure 4:4 (1977): 14; Michael Honey, “The Legacy of SNCC,” in OAH (Organization of American Historians) Newsletter (February 1989), and Joanne Grant, “Sexual Politics and Civil Rights,” New Directions for Women (January/February 1989): 4. For further reading on SNCC, see Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960’s (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981); Mary King, Freedom Song (New York: Morrow, 1987); Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); David J. Garrow, ed., The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987); Vicki Crawford, Jacqueline Rouse, and Barbara Woods, eds., Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941–1965 (New York: Carlson, 1990); Cheryl Greenberg, A Circle of Trust: Remembering SNNC (New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1998); and Deep in Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement, Constance Curry, Joan Browning, et al. (Athens, Georgia, University of Georgia Press, 2000). See especially Anne Standly’s essay in this collection, “The Role of Black Women in the Civil Rights Movement,” 183–203; Daisy Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock (New York: David McKay, 1962); Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (New York: Dial Press, 1968); Bernice Reagan, who credited her confidence to the civil rights movement, in Dick Cluster, ed., They Should Have Served That Cup of Coffee (Boston: South End Press, 1979), 22–23, 29; Casey Hayden, “Women’s Consciousness and the Nonviolent Movement Against Segregation, 1960–1965: A Personal History,” 1989, APA; and “A Nurturing Movement: Nonviolence, SNCC, and Feminism,” Southern Exposure, Summer 1988, p. 51.

  For public farewells to the Left, see Robin Morgan, “Goodbye to All That,” in Rat (January 19, 1969); “A Letter to the Editor of Ramparts Magazine,” Notes from the First Year: Women’s Liberation, June 1969; Rita Mae Brown, “Say It Isn’t So,” Rat (March 7–21); Marge Piercy, “The Grand Coolie Damn,” in Morgan, Sisterhood is Powerful.

  For black women’s struggle with black power advocates and nationalists, see Rivka Polonick’s “Diversity in Women’s Liberation Ideology: How a Black and a White Group of the 1960’s Viewed Motherhood,” Signs (Spring 1996): 679, and from Black Women’s Liberation Group, Mount Vernon, New York, Statement on Birth Control in Morgan, Sisterhood, 404. For a variety of views, see “Birth Control Pill and Black Children, A Statement by the Black Unity Party” (Peekskill, N.Y.); “A Response,” by black sisters, and “Poor Black Women,” by Patricia Robinson, in the pamphlet Poor Black Women (Boston: New England Free Press, c. 1968).

  CHAPTER FIVE: HIDDEN INJURIES OF SEX

  Early critiques of the sexual revolution came fast and furiously. The best single work on the history of sexuality is Estelle Freedman and John D’Emilio, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1988). Many young feminists argued that the sexual revolution had arrived on men’s terms. See Roxanne Dunbar, “Sexual Liberation: More of the Same Thing,” No More Fun and Games: A Journ
al of Female Liberation 31 (November 1969): 49–56; Ti-Grace Atkinson, “The Institution of Sexual Intercourse,” Notes from the Second Year, 42–48, APA; “Sex and Women’s Liberation in Redstockings,” Feminist Revolution; Nancy Hawley, “Dear Sisters,” Xeroxed handout, October 8, 1970, APA; “Women Are Kept Apart,” in Sooki Stambler, Women’s Liberation (New York: Ace, 1970); “Did You Come,” in Notes from the First Year (New York, 1968); “A Fat Woman’s Journal,” Country Women (October 1972): 7; Laura X, “Our Sexual Revolution,” Velvet Glove, circa 1969. Anne Koedt, “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm,” Notes from the First Year, and an expanded version in Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt, eds., Notes from the Second Year, 36–41, APA. For other critiques of the sexual revolution, see Dana Densmore, “Independence from the Sexual Revolution,” reprinted in Radical Feminism, 107–118; Barbara Seaman, “The Liberated Orgasm,” Ms., August 1972; and Anselma Dell’Olio, “The Sexual Revolution Wasn’t Our War,” Ms., Spring 1972; Dana Densmore, “On Celibacy,” in Tanner, Voices from Women’s Liberation, first published in the feminist journal No More Fun and Games, no. 1 (1969); Kate, “What Is There to Say About Celibacy?” Kansas City Women’s Liberation Newsletter 4:1 (1974): 10; Leila, “Voices,” Country Women (April 1975): 8–9. Celibacy was especially appealing when women needed a respite, felt confused after so much rapid change, and needed to sort things out. See Dana Densmore, “Freedom from Sex,” reprinted in Koedt, Radical Feminism; Abby Rockefeller, “Sex: The Basis of Sexism,” in No More Fun and Games: A Journal of Female Liberation (May 1973): 5–37; Ellen Willis, “Radical Feminism and Feminist Radicalism,” in Sonya Sayres, Stanley Aronowitz, and Ander Stephenson, eds., The 60’s Without Apology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1984); “Women Rap About Sex,” in Notes from the First Year: Women’s Liberation, June 1968, unpaginated; Brenda Starr, “Beyond Orgasm,” Everywoman (March 5, 1971): 12; Barbara Brenner Nizislek, “Liberating the Second Sex from the Heterosexual Norm,” Women: A Journal of Liberation 3:1 (1972): 60; “Sex: An Open Letter from a Sister,” It Ain’t Me Babe (March 15, 1970). Masturbation as the route to sexual independence is discussed in “Very Pleasurable Politics,” Rat (December 17, 1970): 12.

  Sources for further research that may not be as widely known are “The Myth of the Liberated Female,” Mary Ann Routledge, Dayton Women’s Liberation Newsletter (September 27, 1972): 1–2; Ann Markin, Letter to Women: A Journal of Liberation (Fall 1969): 47, in which she argues that the freedom of the sexual revolution is simply to be a sex object; Claudia Dreifus, “The Selling of the Feminist: Who Is the Enemy?” in It Ain’t Me Babe (February 1970).

  Both the first edition of Boston Women’s Health Collective’s “Women and Their Bodies,” printed by the New England Free Press in 1970, as well as the first commercial edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves (Simon and Schuster, 1973), included material on masturbation and described women’s shame about the practice, as well as how they learned to do it.

  Interpretative essays on the sexual revolution include: Diana Newell, “Sex in the ’70s: A Wrap-up of the Decadent Decade,” Play girl, December 1979; Shere Hite, The Hite Report (New York: Dell, 1976), 263; Deirdre English and Barbara Ehrenreich, “Sexual Liberation: The Shortest Revolution,” in Evelyn Shapiro and Barry Shapiro, eds., The Women Say, The Men Say: Women’s Liberation and Men’s Consciousness (New York: Delta, 1979), 120–27; Sheila Jeffreys, Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective of the Sexual Revolution (New York: NYU Press, 1990); Ellen Willis, “Toward a Feminist Sexual Revolution” in No More Nice Girls (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1992), 19–51; Lynn Segal, Straight Sex: Rethinking the Politics of Pleasure (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing up Female with the Mass Media (New York: Anchor Press, 1987); Naomi Wolf, Promiscuities (New York: Random House, 1997); and David Allyn, Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution, an Unfettered History (New York: Little Brown, 2000) offer different perspectives on the sexual revolution.

  Abortion. For historical background, see Leslie Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Cynthia Gorney, Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998); and Linda Gordon, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right (New York: Grossman, 1976). The search for the right “Jane Doe” can be found in Marian Faux, Roe v. Wade: The Untold Story of the Landmark Supreme Court Decision That Made Abortion Legal (New York: New American Library, 1988).

  The story of one illegal abortion underground service is in Laura Kaplan, The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); for feminist analysis and scholarship on abortion, also see Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Abortion and Women’s Choice (New York: Longman, 1984); Beverly Wildung Harrison, Our Right to Choose: Toward a New Ethics of Abortion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983); Kristin Luker, Abortion: The Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Carole Joffe, Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe v. Wade (Boston: Beacon, 1995) and The Regulation of Sexuality: Experiences of Family Planning Workers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986); Rickie Solinger, The Abortionist: A Woman Against the Law (New York: Free Press, 1994).

  Androgyny. In the mid-seventies, the topic of androgyny became increasingly trendy. Some feminists took the idea seriously. See Paul Rust, Bisexuality and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics: Sex, Loyalty and Revolution (New York: New York University Press, 1995). The most important book was Carolyn Heilbrun’s widely read book, Toward a Recognition of Androgyny (New York: Knopf, 1973), which was much debated.

  Beauty. Some of the earliest writings in the women’s movement addressed the artificial and narrow definition of beauty that the media promoted. See, for example, in Morgan, Sisterhood, Zoe Moss, “It Hurts to Be Alive and Obsolete: The Ageing Woman”; Alice Embree, “Media Images 1: Madison Avenue Brainwashing—The Facts”; Florika, “Media Images 2: Body Odor.” Lois Banner, American Beauty (New York: Knopf, 1983); Kim Chernin, The Obsession (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), and Marcia Millman, Such a Pretty Face (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1980), were important early works that analyzed the influence of beauty culture.

  Lesbian feminism. Two of the earliest pieces on lesbian feminism were Del Martin, “If That’s All There Is,” n.d., UWA, and Martha Shelley, “Notes of a Radical Lesbian,” in Morgan, Sisterhood, 343–48. For powerful stories written by women who were hidden and eventually came out, see Julia Penelope Stanley and Susan J. Wolfe, eds., The Coming Out Stories (Watertown, Mass: Persephone Press, 1980). Two of the most widely debated essays were Radicalesbians, “The Woman-Identified Woman,” APA, also reprinted in Koedt, Radical Feminism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), 240–46, and Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Signs 5:4 (Summer 1980): 631–60; Nancy Whittier, Feminist Generations: The Persistence of the Women’s Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), emphasizes the importance of lesbians’ role in sustaining the movement and its institutions. On the political limits and contradictions of the “woman-identified woman,” see Shane Phelan, Identity Politics: Lesbianism and the Limits of Community (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), chapter 3. There is an enormous literature on the origins, impact, and consequences of lesbian feminism and separatism. See Nancy Myron and Charlotte Bunch, eds., Lesbianism and the Women’s Movement (Baltimore: Diana Press, 1975); Dolores Klaich, Woman + Woman: Attitudes Toward Lesbianism (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1974); Alison M. Jagger, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983), 12; Lillian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men (New York: William Morrow, 1981); Toby Marotta, The Politics of Homosexuality (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981); and Charlotte Bunch, Passionate Politics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987). Carol, Natalie, Ellen, and Pat, eds., Lesbians Speak Out (San Francisco: Free Women’s Press, 1971), is an important essay collection. Come Out! Selections f
rom the Radical Gay Liberation Newspaper (New York: Times Change Press, 1970); Gay Women’s Liberation, Berkeley, “What It Means to Be a Lesbian,” December 1969, APA, reprinted in Lesbians Speak Out; Gay Women’s Liberation, “Lesbians As Women,” November 1969. Audre Lorde, in her book Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Trumansburg, N.Y: The Crossing Press, 1984) and in her article “An Open Letter to Mary Daly,” in Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua, eds., This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (New York: Kitchen Table Press, 1983), offers the best examples of her ability to describe triple oppression, while not casting herself as a victim.

  Women’s health movement. Sheryl Burt Ruzek, The Women’s Health Movement (New York: Praeger, 1978), offers a good overview of the health movement. Barbara Seaman, The Doctors’ Case Against the Pill (New York: P. H. Wyden, 1969), was a critique of the use of the Pill; Rose Kushner, Breast Cancer: A Personal History and Investigative Report (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), questioned radical mastectomies; Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness (New York: Doubleday, 1972), examined gendered views of mental illness. Some of the most valuable criticisms of the medical establishment came from Ellen Frankfort, Vaginal Politics (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1972); Helen Marieskind and Barbara Ehrenreich, “Toward Socialist Medicine: The Women’s Health Movement,” Social Policy (May/June 1975); Colette Price, “The First Self-Help Clinic,” Feminist Revolution (New York: Random House, 1978); “Off Our Backs,” Health Supplements (Summer 1971); Ruzek, “Medical Response to Women’s Health Activities: Conflict, Accommodation and Co-optation,” Research in the Sociology of Health Care (Greenwich: Jai Press Inc., 1980); Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York: Basic Books, 1982). Health Policy Advisory Center, “Health PAC Bulletin” (New York: 1970–72), offer different critiques of the medical profession’s attitude toward and treatment of women. I am greatly indebted to Wang Zheng, whose unpublished master’s thesis, “The Women’s Health Movement in the United States,” U.C. Davis, 1987, taught me a great deal. For critiques on how medicine abused women, see Lucinda Cisler, “Unfinished Business: Birth Control and Women’s Liberation,” in Morgan, Sisterhood, 274–320; Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Complaints and Disorders and For Her Own Good (New York: Anchor, 1979); Helen Marieskind, “The Women’s Health Movement,” International Journal of Health Service Research 5:2 (1975); Off Our Backs, Health Supplement (Summer 1971); Gena Corea, The Mother Machine (New York: Harper and Row, 1985).