- Many of the early
radical feminist groups
folded in the early '70s
as feminism took hold
more generally and
activists turned to actions
designed to bring in more ordinary women.
Some of these approaches
now seem self-evident to us.
But remember that in 1970,
they still appeared disruptive
to many men and women who
supported traditional patterns.
Organizations like NOW, the
National Organization for Women,
and the Women's Education
and Action Alliance
promoted leaders like Gloria
Steinem, Germaine Greer,
Kate Millett and Shulamith Firestone
to challenge old systems of thought.
Florence Howe conceived the Feminist Press
to publish books that recalled the lives
of lost women and to promote
social justice for women.
Above all, she wanted to provide resources
for teachers at all levels
who wanted to expose their
students to earth-changing women.
Popular journals like Ms. Magazine and new
academic journals like Signs,
legitimized the study of
women's history and literature.
These drew attention to the
ways in which male power
infused the daily lives
and thoughts of everyone.
The early changes were simple.
I can still recall the first criticisms
of pink and blue baby clothes.
What was the point of
dressing girls in pink
and boys in blue?
Would it damage little boys to wear pink?
Psychologists pointed
to subtle differences
in parental behavior patterns,
noting that parents reacted differently
towards male and female babies.
They cuddled girl babies more,
and they played with boy
babies more actively,
tossing, throwing and ticking
them more aggressively.
And what about Jack
and Jill picture books,
where Jack always fell first,
while Jill came tumbling after?
The willing companion but not
the initiator of activity.
Childhood education, in their view,
was flawed from the beginning.
Girls got dolls, and boys received trucks.
Even as school progressed,
boys found their way
into woodworking classes,
while girls learned
sewing or cooking skills.
High school and college
girls wandered away
from the sciences and
math, often discouraged
by male professors who didn't think
they were worth the time.
They flourished in the humanities
and in the new women's studies programs
that began just then.
And when they entered the job market,
girls found role models among women
in only a narrow range of jobs.
Mostly these jobs didn't include
the STEM fields, science,
technology, engineering and math,
from which women had been discouraged.
Feminists objected to
the use of Miss and Mrs.,
which defined a woman
by her marital status.
They wanted something closer to Mister,
and settled on the more neutral Ms.
It took a decade for them to convince
the recalcitrant New York
Times to make the change.
Why assume that he, or man,
could represent both sexes?
Why not figure out a way to write
that would avoid the use of the
gendered pronoun altogether?
Cultural feminists promoted
the use of neutral pronouns
and experimented with the unpronounceable
S slash HE for he and she.
Better still, they
offered to avoid the use
of the gendered pronoun altogether,
substituting they instead.
New books and publications
raised questions
about what was natural about women's roles
and what was socially coerced.
Women began to consider whether so-called
universal values might not in fact
be those of men.
They asked whether gendered definitions
applied to freedom, self-satisfaction,
upward mobility and
political participation,
arguing that these words
simply applied to women
in different ways than
they applied to men.
These were hard questions.
Did democracy really include women?
Had it ever?
Did individual rights apply to a woman
in the same way they applied to men?
What about personal responsibility?
Asking these questions fostered
a new gendered imagination,
one that at its best
posed a more democratic,
more egalitarian, more inclusive
and broader worldview, a more nurturing
and fairer environment.
But asking these questions
could also promote strife
within families.
Who would mow the lawn,
take out the garbage,
stay home from work with a sick child?
Communities now divided
over what kinds of books
to use in classrooms.
The promotion of ethnic, racialized
and gender identities became
part of the political process.
