1
(crowd shouting, chattering)
WOMAN: Women's health care is
being tossed around like a football.
The argument has been over
for a very long time...
to have the right to choose.
We should be mad. Are you mad?
(cheering)
WOMAN: You're not allowed to
retire from women's issues.
You still have to pay attention,
'cause somebody is gonna try to
yank the rug out from under you.
And that's what's happening now.
WOMAN: Don't mess with Texas women!
- (cheering)
- Don't mess with them!
(electric guitar)
WOMAN: Save me
Somebody save me
WOMAN #2: It's really hard
for people to understand now
what it was like before
the feminist movement.
The wedding was the big thing.
The marriage was success.
WOMAN #3: You couldn't
have career aspirations.
You couldn't decide not to have a child.
(continues)
WOMAN #4: The most beautiful woman
was never satisfied with how she looked.
You could look like Miss America
and you still thought something
was wrong with how you looked.
WOMAN #2: Let's not even talk
about birth control and abortion.
The horror, the fear of pregnancy
loomed over anything one did.
WOMAN #3: If you were raped,
people wouldn't believe you.
If you were battered,
no one would believe you.
WOMAN #4: It was feminists who brought
up these issues and put them on the table.
WOMAN #5: We had a sense of momentum.
You know, that was the sense of
momentum that came from the '60s.
WOMAN #6: It was like all this energy
had been pent up in these
women for all these years,
and it just exploded.
(continues)
Are you gonna save
Save me?
Yeah, boy
Save me
Whoo, ohh, save me
(fades)
(applause)
MODERATOR: The topic for
discussion this evening
is a dialogue on women's liberation.
- Mr. Mailer.
- (applause)
Let's really get hip about
this little matter and recognize
that the whole question of women's liberation
is the deepest question that faces us,
and we're going to go
right into the center of it.
Let me introduce first
Ms. Jacqueline Ceballos,
president of the New York Chapter of
NOW, the National Organization for Women.
- Ms. Ceballos.
- (applause)
I represent that large
middle-class group of women
who could have all the comforts
and conveniences of life.
In fact, I did.
But I opted out.
Instead, I decided to devote my time
to fight for equality of women.
CEBALLOS: I just had these feelings...
something's wrong, something's wrong.
Then a friend handed me The Feminine
Mystique, Betty Friedan's book.
I could cry even today.
It just hit me. It was where
it was. Absolutely. Absolutely.
I read it that night.
And I just knew, it wasn't him,
it wasn't me... it was society.
Well, The Feminine Mystique,
it defines women solely in terms
of her sexual relation to a man
as a man's sex object,
as wife, mother, homemaker,
and never in human terms,
as an individual person,
as a human being herself.
WOMAN: When Betty Friedan published
The Feminine Mystique,
everyone was buzzing about women
and their talents being neglected.
Every time we'd been told,
I'm sorry we don't hire women,
we thought, you know, isn't it too bad
there isn't an organization
that can fight against that?
In 1966, when they were founding NOW,
Betty Friedan asked me if I
would do the public relations,
and I said sure.
We knew we were making history.
We had no doubt that this
was a historic occasion.
We knew the world needed
a civil rights organization
for women's rights.
That's one reason it exploded
so really quickly and powerfully,
was because it was long overdue.
The mayor this afternoon met
the women's liberation movement
in a way that he had not before.
As soon as NOW existed, and I
heard about it, I was in NOW.
I became president of the
Chicago chapter of NOW.
And against the women of this
nation, and we intend to react.
Some of the earliest
letters that we got was,
"Where are you? I can't find you."
You know, there was no Internet.
There was mimeograph and
stamps. That's what we had.
Um, these were people's
memberships coming in.
Here's a woman... And this is so typical
of the women joining NOW at the time.
"Recruited by myself!" With
a big exclamation point.
Let's see.
I've collected buttons all my life, so...
This one's one of my
favorites... "Uppity Women Unite."
We certainly did, didn't we?
FOX: The most important motivation
for all of us in founding NOW
was jobs, employment discrimination.
CEBALLOS: We all know that women
are underpaid and overworked
and there is no chance
for advancement anywhere.
We in NOW teach women how to fight
discrimination against their own companies,
how to sue their companies.
(applause)
The want ads were "help wanted
male," "help wanted female,"
and all the good jobs, the
career jobs were for the males.
In fact, there was one ad
that said, "Just got your BA?
Want a job to be secretary
of a good-looking, uh, executive?
You might end up as his wife."
I swear to you!
WOMEN (chanting): Male
chauvinism up against the wall.
Male chauvinism up against the wall!
What do we want? Equal rights!
When do we want it? Now!
FOX: I remember we had picketers
outside The New York Times
and the man would have
a sandwich board, said,
"I got my job through
The New York Times"
and the woman's sandwich
board said, "I didn't."
(upbeat theme)
Good morning and thank you very, very much.
I remember going on television shows
when I was the chapter president,
and people would seriously ask you
whether you thought women
should get equal pay.
"Well, do you think women should get
equal pay?" I mean, people would say that.
You had to say, this wasn't
just handed down from Moses.
This was discrimination.
(siren wailing)
(protesters singing)
What is the point of your march?
There are hundreds of women that
want peace, and we want peace now.
COLLINS: I became aware of what was
called the younger branch of the movement.
Now, I was 30. But anyway...
They identified themselves
as women's liberation,
and this was people coming
out of the antiwar movement
and the college movement and
the civil rights movement.
WOMAN: In the Southern
civil rights movement,
the most important role that anybody
could play was the role of an organizer.
(singing)
You know, you met with people and you
helped them find the courage to stand up...
that it was their voice and their desires
for change that gave a movement its power.
We shall overcome
WOMAN: I worked in Alabama,
going door-to-door, canvassing,
getting people to go register to vote.
All the women I encountered
who were working in the
civil rights movement...
It was an impressive bunch of women.
What I saw was a different image
of what it meant to be a
woman, a different model.
And we do realize
with every step forwards,
and with every effort and sincere prayer,
that we will overcome.
- Yes!
- All right!
FREEMAN: Although I didn't
fully realize it at the time,
I was, in fact, getting the
groundwork for being a feminist.
And to feel that you can
have the power in a group
to do something you think needs to be done
that you could never do on your own...
I think it's what I was
looking for my whole life.
All these other social change movements
that were going on at that time
led to the women's movement.
They gave rise to women's consciousness
of a need to operate on an equal basis.
(pop)
I was a part of the civil rights movement.
I was a big part of the antiwar movement
while I was a graduate student at Berkeley.
And women in the new left started
talking about what we were feeling.
WOMAN: The women were very
much discriminated against.
The guys, their names went on
things, they became the spokespeople.
We were used to lick the envelopes.
We did the grunt work. We
did the real work, actually.
We often did the real work of organizing.
I had been at an SDS
meeting and was talking,
and I was a leader in the organization,
and one of guys in the group said,
"Aw, sit down and shut up" to me.
WOMAN: And we started talking
about our role as women within SDS.
Why weren't we in the leadership positions?
From that it just kind of sparked
in everybody a sense of recognition.
Aha! This is like a shared thing.
It's just not me feeling insecure.
So, at an antiwar demonstration
to protest the election of Nixon,
we decided we would come together
as women for the first time
and announce we had a movement.
WOMAN: And Marilyn Webb
gets up on the stage
in front of this huge
audience of new left men
and she starts trying to talk.
Well, the moment I started, there
was... this crowd went crazy.
(shouting, jeering)
WILLIS: And the men start
whistling and catcalling
and saying things like, "Take
her off the stage and fuck her."
And people were yelling,
"Fuck her down a dark alley!"
It was just... It was insane.
We were like all looking
at each other, like, what?
WEBB: I didn't expect movement
men to behave like that,
and I was shocked.
People were organizing blacks
and people were organizing welfare mothers,
and then we were organizing women,
and that everybody would see this
as another leg of the whole movement.
But we weren't respected.
WOMEN: The revolution has come
Off the pigs!
Black is beautiful
Free Huey!
BEAL: The black liberation
movement had come into its fore,
and we were talking about
liberation and freedom
half the night on the racial side.
And then all of the sudden
men are going to turn around
and start talking about
putting you in your place?
If you don't want any trouble...
BEAL: That was the contradiction in terms
that we were no longer prepared to put up with.
So, 1968, we founded the SNCC
Black Women's Liberation Committee
to take up some of these issues.
A number of women felt that
we needed to go off on our own
and focus on what we needed to
do in our fight for liberation.
ROSEN: I was a graduate
student at Berkeley.
And one day I saw a little
3-by-5 card in the student union,
and it said a women's group was forming.
And these consciousness-raising
groups spontaneously grew up
in many areas of the country.
When I first heard about the
women's liberation movement,
I had two little kids under five.
My connection with the
world was, I felt, finished.
During one of my crises of
feeling that my life was over,
I heard some young women talking
about meetings they were having,
and they were talking
about women's liberation,
and they gave the address of a meeting.
So I went to this meeting,
and there were these women
talking about their lives
as I had never imagined people could.
Well, you need to be specially
trained to be a housewife.
You get married, there are
a whole new set of rules.
We still have to look a certain
way and be a certain way,
but there's a whole lot more...
ROSEN: We went around the room, and
people asked a very simple question.
How would your life have been
different if you had been a boy?
Why do you think being a woman
might limit you as a human
being, your possibilities?
(woman continues, indistinct)
BEAL: We challenged
concepts of masculinity.
We challenged concepts of femininity.
We talked about skin color,
how young black women would put cream on
in order to make theirself light-skinned.
SHULMAN: Suddenly, everything
was up for questioning.
Women did all of the family
and housework and cooking,
and the men got to make the living
and get all of the attention in the world.
Why was that?
We don't even realize what goes on
until we sit and compare with other women.
GRIFFIN: And we heard each other.
We heard each other into speech.
You could sense it. You could feel it.
You could cut it with a knife, as they say.
The room was electric
with whatever was gonna be shared.
So I said, (sighs)
I've had three abortions,
and the last one was within the last year.
And I started to cry,
because I suddenly understood
that I wasn't alone,
that what I had considered
personal embarrassment
was something that was part of
this whole larger experience.
The big insight of the women's
movement was the personal is political.
Problems that you felt
were happening to you alone
probably were your fault.
But if it's happening to other people,
then it's a social problem and
not just a personal problem.
Once you stop blaming
yourself for all this,
it was like somebody had
lifted a rock off of you.
Then here were women around you who were ready
to go out there and do something about it.
(chanting)
You're out on the streets
Lookin' good
- (continues)
- WOMAN: In Washington, DC,
we were like,
"Have Demonstration, Will Travel."
(continues)
WOLFSON: We demonstrated
in the halls of Congress.
We demonstrated outside of Congress.
There was a group called
Women's International Terrorist
Conspiracy from Hell... WITCH...
that was the action arm.
People had folding witch
hats and capes in their bag.
And we thought if we
could dress up like witches
and then give a hex to people.
We wanted to challenge the white men's
canon at the University of Chicago.
And so part of the hex went, "Knowledge
is power through which you control
our mind, our spirit,
our bodies, our soul."
- Hex!
- Yeah
What you see here is the
beginning of a movement
that women are human beings
and that we have equal rights.
We intend to go to school, we intend to
have child care so that we can go to school.
We want the university to provide us with
classes that teach us about our history.
ROSEN: I was in the history department
and I knew zip, nada,
zero about women's history.
And we realized we didn't know very much
about women's literature or women's art.
In fact, we realized that we had gotten
degrees and we knew nothing about women.
Well, a group of us
decided to call the press.
We took our advanced degrees...
some were PhDs, some
were Masters degrees...
and we burned them in public.
That was a very hard thing to do
because we were very
proud of those degrees.
I need you to come
on, come on
ROSEN: I felt so duped, like I
had been fooled my whole life.
(orchestra)
Oh, there she is
Miss America
SHULMAN: Miss America seemed like
the perfect place to demonstrate
the way women were just
judged as sex objects,
just judged by their looks.
There were no such standards for men.
We also recognized how racist
those beauty standards were.
We weren't going to have any of it.
There'll be no Miss America
It was, all women are
beautiful. That was one of our slogans.
All women are beautiful.
There'll be no Miss America
We had a freedom trash can.
Guys were burning their draft cards.
We would burn our bras and other
instruments of female torture.
No more girdles, no more pain. No
more trying to hold in fat in vain!
CEBALLOS: Even though I was in
NOW, I was always with the radicals.
If they're going to demonstrate for
Miss America, I'm going to be there.
Women, use your brains, not your bodies!
It was a blast. What can I
say? It was very exciting.
It was something NOW wouldn't do.
FOX: They did things that were outrageous,
and some of us thought that
these would be made fun of.
And they were.
But they attracted media attention
and, of course, they got results.
(singing)
But the best part came when,
right at the moment when they
were about to crown Miss America,
the women who had snuck up into the balcony
unfurled this huge banner over the edge of
the balcony that said "Women's Liberation."
SHULMAN: And the world
got to see those words
for the first time on a national scale.
It was a great success.
(women singing, indistinct)
The feminists here tonight do not believe
a women's place is in the home, right?
As feminists, what we
believe in is very simple,
and that is the social, economic
and political equality of the sexes.
Because the relationship between the sexes
is, in fact, a political relationship.
We are an oppressed group and
we have been through history.
If you do something as remarkable
as changing the relationship
between the sexes,
everything is at risk, every possible idea.
And many people don't like it.
Especially men don't like it.
They're very threatened by it.
Women's Lib really is a
lot of insignificant people
that are really trying to
gain their own interests
and boost their own ego,
be it by making brash statements
or being on television or what have you.
You're so oversensitive.
Why are you so sensitive?
We don't like being so
sensitive. It's not pleasant.
We don't like having to always be catching
things. We'd rather they didn't exist.
But as long as people are going
to be insensitive to our position,
we're going to have to
keep correcting them,
because there's no other way
to change the consciousness.
Women, given their educational status,
can earn 60% of what men
of the same education can.
What that really means is that a woman
with college education... BA...
earns what a man does who has
three years of high school.
This is economic
discrimination and exploitation.
Women, as well as men,
told me I was wrong over and over again.
Women are not oppressed.
Or what does it matter?
Who cares? You have a lot of influence.
You were working against cultural norms.
You were working against institutions.
MAN: How do you feel
about women's liberation?
Woman's place is more at home
than to advance herself too much.
I know the girls in my
office feel the way I do.
We're all right the way we are.
There's nothing wrong with this.
I'm totally against it.
I feel I don't know what
they're being liberated from.
WILLIS: Many women protested
that they liked cooking and
housework and catering to men.
But I would argue with some woman
who was being extremely
defensive about the movement,
and then six months later would
run into her at a demonstration.
Power
Power to the women
It's the women's power
It's the women's power
The status quo is being challenged
by the women's liberation movement.
Today it's still a man's world.
SANDERS: I started getting word from
people I knew in the movement by then,
and as I heard about these things
I was able to go out and shoot them.
SANDERS: They startled Wall Street one day
by an exhibition in
which roles were reversed.
Oh, they're so beautiful, all of them. Ah!
Those men, those sex objects.
WOMAN: It was reported in the newspaper
that there was a woman who
worked in the Wall Street area.
She was very well endowed
and men would wait for her
outside the Wall Street train station.
And they would pinch her,
- make sucking noises at her.
- (men chattering, cheering)
And I thought, this is pretty disgusting.
Oh, wow. Look at the legs on that one!
So I organized what I rather grandly
called the First National Ogle-In.
Those pants, they just bring out your best.
- WOMAN: Hey, how do you like that hat over there?
- Oh, what a chapeau!
All the very clever events
helped the women's movement a lot.
Keep your best leg
forward, sweetie! (kisses)
SANDERS: Now, it isn't my taste to do the kind
of demonstrations and things some of them did.
But I was always sort of
gleeful about it underneath
and I thought, you know, go for it.
- Look at that long hair!
- Oh, it's a hippie on Wall Street.
Oh, I'm so turned on.
We're trying to point out what
it feels like to be whistled at,
put down constantly, sexually,
every time we walk down the street.
And we don't want to be
sexual objects anymore.
- Is love out? Is sex out?
- Unless men change, it's going to be very soon.
Unlike NOW, we didn't
want a piece of the pie.
We wanted to change the pie.
WOLFSON: We were talking about changing
the whole paradigm of the
way men and women interact.
SANDERS: What about marriage?
WOMAN: Marriage is, uh, unpaid labor.
It's a free household slave for each man.
It will take a major social revolution
for women to be truly liberated.
GIARDINA: We began to
reinterpret the whole world.
It seemed that male supremacy and
male chauvinism was everywhere.
And it was.
What's your general feeling about
the National Organization
of Women's complaints?
(chuckles)
To become a member of the Press Club,
you have to be 21 years
of age and be a male.
Leave, or police action will be
taken. We will make an arrest.
Now please leave.
I have no intentions of taking
the sign down or changing the sign.
If you can get a court
order to take it down, fine.
So you have no intention of changing
your policy of segregated facilities.
Is that correct, sir?
There's a sign out there
now. Come on. Let's go.
- Do you discriminate by sex?
- MAN: Come on. Let's get out of here.
Come on, toots.
WOMAN: He has repeatedly
used his law classroom
to espouse that women do
not make good attorneys,
that they're too emotional,
they're vindictive.
WOLFSON: We were angry.
Maybe the anger is what carried
us through and made us fearless.
- Start the revolution
- (vocalizing)
WOLFSON: In Washington, DC,
we had a very, very active
women's liberation movement.
I think we met every single
day for something or other.
WEBB: We had this organizational structure
with all the different groups.
We didn't want it to be hierarchical,
so we decided on the name Magic Quilt.
(chattering)
In Washington, populated
by working-class women,
they were getting a fraction of the
salaries they felt they should be getting.
They weren't able to
support their children.
So we talked to government
workers, clerical workers.
People talked to nurses.
And all these women
responded so incredibly.
It was like, "Yeah! Yeah!"
SHULMAN: Pretty soon there were
these meetings going on in New York
where there weren't
just half a dozen women,
but there were 50, 60,
80, even a hundred of them.
On one side of the block there
would be a Redstockings meeting.
On the other side of the block
there would be a WITCH meeting.
ROSEN: There were conferences.
People drove all night, all
day to get to these conferences.
GIARDINA: I got up to Sandy Springs,
and here were this bunch of women
talking about how we would
overthrow male supremacy
with this movement.
So we went back to Gainesville right away
and started a women's liberation group.
Somebody else would write a
position paper in another city,
they would send it, we would read it.
ROSEN: Every time there was a meeting,
we'd see all these pamphlets
that just raced across the country.
Why do women not get paid properly?
Why do women not have child care?
They were consciousness-raising too.
All of these writings were
very precious to all of us
'cause they were the vanguard.
"There are a vast number of women
who are beginning to
wake out of the long sleep
that is known as cooperation of one's
own oppression and self-denigration,
and they are banding together
to make the beginnings
of a new and massive women's
movement in America and in the world,
to establish true
equality between the sexes,
to break the old machine of sexual politics
and to replace it with a more human
and civilized world for both sexes,
and to end the present system's
oppression of men as well as of women."
We had a lot to say. (laughing)
GRIFFIN: "In answer to a man's question,
'What can I do about women's liberation?'
Wear a dress.
Wear a dress that you made yourself
or bought in a dress store.
Wear a dress, and underneath the dress
wear elastic around your hips
and underneath your nipples.
Wear a dress, and underneath
the dress wear a sanitary napkin.
Wear a dress and wear sling-back
shoes, high-heeled shoes.
Wear a dress with elastic and
a sanitary napkin underneath
and sling-back shoes on your feet
and walk down Telegraph Avenue."
ROSEN: In the Bay Area,
poetry was a very big part
of our cultural life.
I think on the West Coast we
were accustomed to thinking
that skits and songs and poems
were all part of a movement.
GRIFFIN: We had the wonderful
precedent of the Beat movement.
Sometimes a thousand people would
show up for a poetry reading.
It was a fantastic experience,
both to be part of the
audience and also to read.
Alta is gonna read first.
"I never saw a man in a negligee.
Two times I wore special fucky gowns.
You know the type... one look and
he turns off the football game.
But they never do.
I was so busy being dainty and
smelling fresh I couldn't hump,
couldn't wiggle, couldn't
sweat, couldn't scream.
You know damn well I couldn't come."
ALTA: I started writing poetry,
and then I decided I
would start my own press.
I called the press Shameless Hussy
because my mother used that term
for women she didn't approve of,
and no one approved of what I was doing.
In 1969, when I started the press,
only six percent of the books
in America were by women.
This is one of the famous
poets that I published.
This is Ntozake Shange.
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered
Suicide/ When The Rainbow Is Enuf
became a very big deal on Broadway,
and we got famous
because of her
and because of George Sand.
George Sand had been unpublished
in America for about 80 years.
One of the earliest poets that
I published was Susan Griffin.
"This is a poem for a woman doing dishes.
This is a poem for a woman doing dishes.
It must be repeated.
It must be repeated again
and again, again and again.
Because the woman doing dishes,
because the woman doing dishes,
has trouble hearing, has trouble hearing."
Sue and Ruth Rosen and I
were all in a women's group.
We decided that a newspaper
was really essential
for what we were doing.
WOMAN: I saw the first issue
of It Ain't Me Babe,
and I immediately phoned
them up and I said,
"Hi. I'm an artist. I
want to work with you."
It was so exciting.
So I got into the second issue
of the first women's liberation
newspaper in the country.
Here's one where I drew the women's liberation
movement as the Bride of Frankenstein,
and you see how terrified all
the various hippie types are.
The peace movement guy and the
hippie guy and the black power guy
are really afraid of this
woman who has just emerged.
And she's making the power sign.
This was something so new and so exciting.
And people read us. People read us.
(rock)
WOMAN: Don't go out in
the street, little girl
And don't go out into town
Now, you don't know who
you'll meet, little girl
There are bad men around
WILLIS: We were always being
subjected to a double message.
Sex was supposed to be okay now, but
if we were pregnant it was our problem.
There was this idea that
even when abortion was illegal,
middle class women could always get it.
I mean, this was not true at all.
WALTER CRONKITE: Thousands
of women in the United States
are hospitalized each year
because of post-abortion complications.
5,000 of these women die.
I had a very good friend in high school
who went away to college
and she subsequently
had an illegal abortion and died.
So within three or four
months of going off to college,
she was dead.
GIARDINA: People tried to self-abort.
My best friend took pills,
and she had the miscarriage
in the dorm shower with the...
Turned on really hard,
hoping the noise would
muffle her cries of pain.
BROWNMILLER: Some were
able to find an abortionist.
Some had to have the child
that they didn't want.
All those kinds of experiences
we discovered were universal.
(shouting, chanting)
And abortion became
our big, unifying issue.
Free abortion on demand!
Sisterhood is powerful!
Women have a fundamental right
to control their own bodies
and to control their own lives.
- (cheering)
- Yeah!
Our bodies, our lives! Our right to decide!
Not since the suffragettes
fought for the right to vote
has an issue been more
critical to women than abortion.
Separate the church and state!
WOMAN: Somewhere around 1970
I went to an abortion rights
rally in San Francisco,
and it was a sea of white women...
very few women of color.
And someone grabbed a bullhorn
and asked for the African-American
women who were there
to gather under a tree.
WOMAN (on loudspeaker): A society
that cares about all people.
BURNHAM: And we decided that we would
form a group called Black Sisters United.
I was very glad that, you know,
somebody called African-American
women together and said,
"You know, maybe we have
something to talk about
that might be a tiny bit different
from what's coming from the stage."
And indeed we did.
BEAL: I was invited up to Harlem
to speak at an event around abortion.
Remember, in the black liberation movement,
the big debate is, abortion is genocide.
Women should have babies
for the revolution.
And I remember going up those stairs
and my knees were literally knocking.
'Cause this was a bunch of
nationalists, and I was really scared.
I concentrated a lot
about the death of black women
as a result of illegal abortion
and how we should be able to choose
when we want to have children.
So I managed to survive
some of the attacks.
And on my way out... twice it happened...
one woman said to me...
whispered to me,
"Thank God you speak up.
Thank God you're speaking up."
And another, as I was
approaching the door, said,
"Right on. Right on."
"Dear Brothers,
Poor black women decide for themselves
whether to have a baby or not have a baby.
Black women are being asked
by militant black brothers
not to practice birth control
because it's a form of whiteys
committing genocide on black people.
Well, true enough.
But black women in the United States
have to fight back out of our
own experience of oppression.
And having too many babies stops
us from teaching them the truth,
from supporting our children,
and from stopping the
'brainwashing, ' as you say,
and fighting black men who still
want to use and exploit us."
It was very difficult for
middle-class white women
to have any conception about what
was going on in communities of color.
And those differences could have been
in conversation with each other,
but if there isn't even an
acknowledgement that there's differences
in experience and perspective
and the voice of one is used as the
voice of all, then you have a problem.
That was during a period when black women
did not particularly identify
with the women's movement.
Mrs. Norton, why are you, a black
woman, involved in women's liberation?
I'm involved in the
struggle for women's rights
because I believe women
are disadvantaged...
black women no less than white women.
Indeed, black women far
more than white women.
Women who have spent their lives
working in other women's kitchens
have a different kind of handicap
than women who have been
oppressed for their sex
in other ways.
BEAL: We were grappling with that idea
of how do you integrate
race, class and gender.
That's the reason why we had some
reservations about the term "feminism."
Because "feminism" just
seemed to be dealing
with the female aspect of your being.
NORTON: It's important to keep in
mind that black women are organized
in their own organizations,
in their own version of
black women's liberation.
BURNHAM: Black Sisters United
was essentially a
consciousness-raising group
and it was in that group the very
first conversations I'd ever had
about differences in sexual orientation.
It was the first group I was in
in which there were lesbian women.
And so it was
just a deep learning experience.
MAN: There may be some here today
that will be homosexual in the future.
There are a lot of kids here,
and maybe some girls that'll turn lesbian.
We don't know.
They can be anywhere.
They can be judges, lawyers.
We ought to know. We've
arrested all of them.
I told no one I went to college
with that I was a lesbian.
I never told anyone.
When I got to Barnard,
one of the first stories I heard
was that there were two women in
the dorm room who were making out
and a guy at Columbia with binoculars
saw them and they were expelled.
The message of that story was certainly
that one could not be
an open lesbian at Barnard.
What the '60s were like for many of us...
We grew up in silence
and isolation and shame,
and that's why consciousness-raising
was so appealing,
because so much of our
lives we could not speak of.
The women's movement had coined the motto,
"The Personal is Political."
But when you were a lesbian and you
wanted to talk about lesbian relationships
as opposed to heterosexual relationships,
they didn't want to hear about it.
And here I have to give a lot
of credit to Rita Mae Brown.
One thing you were not going
to tell Rita was to shut up.
I knew that I was as good as they were,
and I knew I am not who I sleep with.
I was in NOW.
And as NOW went on
I called them on the carpet
about class, about race,
and then I called them on
the carpet about lesbianism.
I said, you are treating women the way men
treat you, and those women are lesbians.
Well, my God, you would have thought I
unleashed an elephant in the middle of the room.
CEBALLOS: A lot of women were gay,
but they didn't talk about being gay.
They used to say that the NOW meetings
was the best cruising place in town.
So Betty Friedan was freaking out.
She was saying you can't bring
this up now. This is divisive.
This is what men call us anyway.
Any woman that stands up
for herself is called a dyke.
And she said this is like the
lavender menace. We can't have it.
The fact that we were beginning to be
recognized and treated decently was something.
And all of a sudden, the gay issue?
Betty was really, really concerned
that it was going to destroy it.
But Betty wasn't the only one
concerned. A lot of us were concerned.
I was concerned too.
It's too soon. That's
what we thought. Too soon.
They couldn't bustle me out of
that organization fast enough.
I was thrown out.
I thought, you know, we really need to
talk about what is happening to lesbians.
Why are we reviled by what
should be our own people?
So it was a group of
lesbians from Redstockings
and lesbians from the Gay Liberation Front
who started meeting together.
And out of that we decided to write
a lesbian feminist position paper,
which was the first of its kind.
BROWN: We each tried to
write a piece of this thing.
We put it all together and it became
The Woman-Identified Woman.
In essence, give your
energies to other women.
SHUMSKY: I don't even know who came
up with such a wonderful opening line.
"A lesbian is the rage of all women
condensed to the point of explosion."
Towards May 1970, there was
the 2nd Congress to Unite Women.
But there was not going
to be a single panel
that dealt with homophobia or lesbianism.
And we decided we were
going to do an action.
We had been labeled the Lavender Menace.
So on the day of the congress we came in
looking like we were part of the crowd.
And we had a buddy back behind the
curtains who knew how to run the lights.
So the lights went out. (gasps)
And when the lights went out, like
Superman, we removed our blouses
and exposed our Lavender Menace T-shirts.
(all shouting)
JAY: The audience was completely
surrounded by lesbians.
I was a plant in the audience.
I pulled off my blouse. I had a
Lavender Menace T-shirt underneath.
I said, "I'm tired of being in
the closet in this movement."
BROWN: Well, nobody knew...
Excuse the Southern expression.
They didn't know whether to shit, run or
go blind. They did not know what to do.
JAY: And finally we took over the stage
and we demanded that issues of
lesbianism be put on the agenda.
And they were.
BROWN: It really did awaken people.
It was like, "Oh, you
know, you're kinda right."
It was a lot of fun.
Free
Free
WILLIS: When feminism first erupted,
it was, for me, an extremely erotic moment,
'cause I think for the first time
I saw the possibility of what I was
really being beautiful.
WOMAN: I'll be your mirror
WILLIS: I had kind of been
the nerdy intellectual.
I felt that I couldn't be
myself and be attractive to guys.
So the idea that wearing what you felt like
and letting your hair go
wherever it wanted to be
was actually considered attractive
was very exciting.
Radical feminists were
really the first to argue
that women's emotional and sexual needs
should be equally important to men's.
When we started talking about sex,
it turned out that very few of us
had ever even had an orgasm.
Not only that, but we
were faking those orgasms.
And I don't know exactly
how we knew how to fake them.
Because if we'd never had one,
how did we know how to fake it?
(continues)
The dissatisfaction of this
new generation of young women
who were having more sex
than women ever had before,
but not enjoying it particularly.
SHULMAN: And once we started going on it,
we didn't stop until we were able to demand
a decent sexual experience from our lovers.
I'll be your mirror
Part of what distinguished
the women's liberation branch
from the more middle-aged,
middle-class group
was the interest in sexuality
and personal liberation.
The sexuality stuff was
a little daunting to me.
You know, even at the
NOW conferences later on,
I mean, women, they brought speculums
and they examined each
other's vaginas and stuff.
I was, like... I was not
into that. That was not me.
I was not doing that.
WOMAN: This is the group's first picture.
This is Wendy, Paula, Esther,
Joan, Me... Vilunya...
Jane, Norma, Pamela,
Ruth, Miriam and Judy.
We look impossibly young.
Why does a women's hormonal system
have to be fucked around with all the time
when it's very complicated and very
necessary to procreate the species,
when, in fact, it makes much more
sense to have a pill for a male
whose hormonal system
is not as complicated?
People were very fired
up about birth control.
People were having a terrible time,
particularly 'cause it was Massachusetts
and birth control was illegal.
The thing that struck me the most
was that everyone had a doctor story
that they wanted to share,
and some of it was about
getting the information,
but some of it was just
about being patronized.
There was just this sense of,
"Oh, don't worry your pretty
little head about that."
And it was an attitude also.
When I gave birth to my daughter,
she was born around 4:00 in the morning,
and he came in a few
hours later and he said,
"Well, how did you like the job I did?"
- (laughing)
- I go...
Exactly. Exactly.
We then made a list of subjects
that we want information about.
You know, only people in their
20s would have the chutzpah
to make a list from birth to death.
Okay, we need to know about anatomy.
We need to know about birth control.
We need to know about
pregnancy, postpartum, nutrition.
We need to know about exercise. We
need to know about menopause, death.
You know, the whole gambit.
I went to the doctor. I
had an abnormal pap test.
I went home, I wrote about it.
So there was a constant
flow between what you lived,
what you learned, what you give out.
MIRIAM: So at the point
at which we were ready,
we said, "Well, we're gonna do a course."
We had this material
that we wanted to share.
The first course was on masturbation.
Nobody had ever said that
word out loud at MIT in a room,
and you could hear a pin drop.
Written on the board!
I remember her standing up,
this tall, beautiful woman,
and she's writing about masturbation.
Everybody's like, "Oh, my God." (laughs)
And she had this drawing of a vagina
with all the anatomical parts.
And she started talking about
what our genitals look like.
Whoa, you know.
Never heard or thought about any of this
before, so this was quite compelling.
I remember that after the first session,
everybody said, "Well, we want
to have all the information.
What are those pieces
of paper that you had?"
Everybody wanted copies of each
of the topics of the course.
Then we said, "This is
going to become a book."
We each took the subject that
most involved us personally
and started to learn more about it
so we would have a larger chapter.
VILUNYA: The first version,
the newsprint version,
sold 240,000 copies.
JOAN: Suddenly we have this
book, and it's a best seller,
and it was something
no one ever anticipated.
WENDY: We felt like any money
this book was going to make
came out of women's lives
'cause women needed it,
and so we would use the money
to fund women's health stuff.
PAMELA: We made our chapters
of these letters that came in
with these personal experiences.
JOAN: Any anecdote became
material for the book.
What we were saying is we
were a living lab, you know.
That no one knows that
much about women's lives.
I said, "We're gonna
sell a million copies,"
and people laughed.
I thought, no, because
every woman has a body.
It doesn't matter what
class or color you are.
We all have the same anatomy.
Holy cow!
Try not to drool on it, okay?
If Kim finds out I have
this, she'll kill me.
(knocking)
ROXANNE: My background
was very, very different
from many of the people I
met on the left in general.
My family were sharecroppers from Oklahoma,
and we were very, very poor.
For me, anything negative that
ever happened had to do with class.
I was being put down... even
when men were misogynist,
it was because of class.
I didn't internalize it as because
that's the way they treat women.
So it wasn't until I was at UCLA
I started seeing how stacked
the deck was against a woman.
I got a professor, a young professor.
The first day he met with me he says,
"If I can't fuck you,
I'm going to fuck you."
So I quit.
I quit graduate school.
I burned all my bridges, yeah.
And that's when I flew out
to start a women's revolution.
"I am a revolutionary. I am a feminist.
There is no possibility
for me to be liberated
except that all women be liberated,
and that means power and control
on a political, economic level.
Having had nothing,
I will not settle for crumbs."
Rebel girl, rebel girl
ROXANNE: We formed a group called Cell 16.
We had a motto that we were gonna
change the world forever and totally.
We didn't tone it down at all.
There were murders that summer in Boston,
and it was headlines... more slain girls.
We started street patrols for
the factories down by the river.
Very dark when the women got off,
and they were constantly being
mugged and assaulted and raped.
The first time something
did happen on a patrol,
these guys yelled at
us, "Bunch of lezzies!"
Fuck you!
I went up and punched him.
And Abby did an upper block.
The guy ran.
He was the most terrified
man in Boston that night.
(shouts)
This convinced us all we really
needed to make self-defense a priority.
(body thuds)
So we started recruiting
women for an all-women's class,
and we went from just our
group to about 100 people.
It was important to all of
us that we owned the streets.
One evening in my Tuesday night
consciousness-raising group,
West Village-1,
of New York radical feminists,
Diane Crothers walked in with a newspaper,
It Ain't Me Babe from San Francisco,
and said, "There's an article
here we all have to read."
And it was a story about
a woman in Marin County
who'd been raped during a hitchhike.
We read the article, and
we went around the room,
and it turned out one
woman, Sarah, had been raped.
And the police said to her,
"Who'd want to rape you?"
A friend of mine was raped at knife-point
in her bed in off-campus housing.
I went with her to the
student health service,
and she was given a
lecture on her promiscuity.
It was very common in a courtroom
to blame the woman for the rape.
And rape was looked at
as a crime that occurred
because a man had strong sexual urges
that he couldn't satisfy any other way.
No!
And it was only with the feminist movement
that it came out that rape
is not a crime of passion.
It's a crime that expresses
the urge to dominate.
BROWNMILLER: People were
not used to thinking of rape
as a political crime against women.
That was our slogan.
"Rape is a political crime against women."
Well, Papa, I ain't
your friend no more
- I ain't gonna make your bed
- Yeah, yeah, yeah
Papa, I ain't your friend no more
- Better get a dog instead
- Right on!
Well, "Back Street
Girl," "Under My Thumb"
Start looking out
where you're coming from
WOMAN: The Chicago Women's
Liberation Rock Band was huge.
And, Papa, don't
lay that shit on me
The fun and games are gone
In those days, you had to have
balls to be a rock musician.
Well, guess what. No.
Seeing women being smarter and tougher,
and the Rock Band was a
fabulous example of that,
'cause of being loud on
top of everything else.
- Go down to the corner
- Get yourself fixed
Whoo! Can't stop
doing what you do to me
You're just gonna drive me wild
Chicago was a hotbed
of feminist organizing.
There were a lot of people
doing a lot of things.
ROTHSTEIN: And there was
no communication amongst us.
There was no structure
to bring us together.
And at the same time, there
were a lot of new people
who were interested in
the women's movement,
women who were reaching out.
And so we decided to form the
Chicago Women's Liberation Union
as a way to network us all together.
There was the Chicago
Women's Graphics Collective,
the Action Committee for Decent Child Care.
We built a Speaker's Bureau,
the Liberation School for Women.
And we would have an
open orientation session,
and we would put about 30 chairs out,
and we would get over 100 women.
We didn't know who these women were.
We didn't know how they learned about us.
But they kept coming and they kept coming.
ARCANA: They had classes
on stuff women need to know.
Automobile repair, women's history,
the facts of women's lives.
Why have a school? Because these things
are not being taught in the schools.
I taught women's sexuality,
contraception, abortion.
Abortion was a very important
issue to both groups at that time,
with NOW doing more of the legal work
and the Women's Union doing
more of the direct service work.
In 1964, a friend mentioned
that his sister was
pregnant and nearly suicidal.
Could I do anything about it?
And I was referred, through a
series of connections, to a doctor.
Asked him if he would perform
an abortion. He said yes.
And a few weeks later, someone else called
and said they also were
looking for an abortion.
The word had spread.
At that point, I decided
to set up a bit of a system.
I was living in a dormitory at the time.
So I told people to ask for Jane.
(line ringing)
I could tell within the first
minute what they were calling about,
because there was a pause, there
was a hesitance, there was a tension.
Many were frightened.
Because three people discussing
an abortion in those days
was a conspiracy to commit felony murder.
COLLINS: Jane was this service
that was established in Chicago
that provided abortions
when abortion was illegal.
- (ringing)
- We would have women call us
who were in need of the abortion service.
And of course, having Jane available,
without having to refer them to the mob,
was a godsend.
BOOTH: The group would take in the
calls, and we would do counseling.
Then women would be
brought to specific houses
on a rotating basis
where the procedures would be done.
The service moved every day from
somebody's home to somebody's home,
which is quite amazing.
ARCANA: I joined the abortion service
because I knew that women
are sometimes desperate,
and they are going to hurt themselves
in order to end their pregnancies.
When I began Jane work,
a few dozen women a
week were coming through.
After about six months, there were
at least 100 women coming through.
Ultimately, one really good abortionist
taught Janes how to do abortions
with skill and care,
and then those Janes taught other Janes.
All of us were always aware
that what we were doing was illegal,
that we could go to jail.
You might have to throw everything in
your bag and run down the back stairs
at any moment.
But we understood that
it was important work,
useful work, necessary work.
(people chattering)
MALE REPORTER: What is the
relationship of the movement
to the whole question of motherhood
and the affection of mothers
for children and so forth?
It's about being able to
have children if you want them
and being able not to have
children if you don't want them,
and if you want to have your
kids at day care centers.
If you want to work,
then you can do that too.
In the women's movement, the
myth was that we hated men,
that we hated marriage, we hated children.
That's not right.
The group I was in, we
talked mostly about child care
being the absolute precondition
for women's emancipation.
FOX: One of the earliest
battles was for child care.
It's in NOW's statement of purpose.
We knew that women could
not hold jobs and be promoted
until society recognized its obligation
to help take care of our children.
And I remember at some of
the early demonstrations,
those who had kids, we
would bring the kids.
People would say things like,
"We can't talk with
you nursing the babies."
We would say, "Show us the day care center.
We'll be happy to bring the
kids to the day care center."
Feminists are accused of
wanting woman out of the home
and leaving children, come what may.
We proclaim that when we
talk about 24-hour child care,
we mean to have it now!
Twenty-four-hour child
care centers today, now,
beginning this school year!
NORTON: After a great deal of work,
where feminists were in the leadership,
we got close to having
a real child care system.
ROSEN: In 1971,
amazingly enough, the women's movement,
the Congress, the Senate,
passed a comprehensive child care act.
Most historians don't even remember
that, forget about the rest of society.
And President Nixon vetoed it.
He said, "We don't want to make
our women like Soviet women.
We want women to take care
of their own children."
That was a tragic moment in history.
And we've been paying for it ever since.
It's one thing for women to pay the price.
It's another thing for generations
of children to pay the price as well.
I can think of, frankly,
of no more important issue
that early feminists raised
than educational child care.
Poor people, black women, women on welfare,
are often sterilized against their will.
I mean, that's been known to happen.
The same hospital that wants
to sterilize the black women
will not let a middle class
white woman be sterilized.
If she says, "I don't want
to have any more children,"
they say, "You have to be crazy.
You have to have a medical
reason. You have to be sick.
There has to be something wrong with you."
Those things are two ends
of the same dimension.
It's still the issue of
control over one's body,
whether it's the right to have children
if you want them, or the right not to.
(shouting)
In Puerto Rico,
over one-third of the women on the island
have been sterilized.
That means over one-third of the women
are never going to be able
to hold a baby in their arms.
Women in Puerto Rico
were used as guinea pigs,
as a way of controlling the population.
And with that sterilization program
being brought to New York City,
we actively organized,
raising the consciousness about this.
(chanting in foreign language)
The Young Lords Party
was dedicated to issues
effecting Puerto Ricans
in the United States.
We were the first ones to
begin to articulate an idea
of reproductive justice.
It's just as important for
women in our communities
to be able to have children,
raise children that don't go hungry,
have day care,
as well as have access to birth control
and the right to a safe abortion.
VELEZ: The kind of developing
feminism that we had in the Young Lords
was make very clear decision
not to separate,
to wage struggle internally
with our brothers.
The men had written this program.
One of the points dealt
with revolutionary machismo.
What an oxymoron.
We weren't having it,
so we formed a women's caucus
and made demands on the
men in the organization.
It was ultimately changed to:
"We want equality for women.
Down with machismo and male chauvinism."
It was important that it's not
just women making that statement.
It should be men saying, "Yo, brother.
That's really a macho attitude you're
taking. You need to check your shit."
And that's what happened.
MAN: What does women's lib mean to you?
MAN #2: I think they have a lot of
good points. Extremely fine points.
The abortion laws are ridiculous.
The fact that, uh, unequal
pay... that's ridiculous.
- They're not after your job?
- No, I don't think so.
I don't think they can do my job.
I think the no-bra thing is ridiculous.
I'm not so sure about the day centers.
The girls I think of got it over the guys.
They get everything paid
for and everything else.
I don't see what they're
really arguing about.
Men treated them like ladies as
long as they acted like ladies,
and I'm afraid we're
losing that femininity.
By that time, we were so angry
that it wasn't so far,
such a reach to say,
"Why are you sleeping with men?
Aren't you sleeping with the enemy?"
There were a lot of women
very open to the idea
that they should be gay.
The Furies had come to Washington DC.
The Furies was a collective of all women,
most of whom were gay.
My God, what a trip that was.
I'm glad I did it, I really am.
But you know, all these women in one house,
it was like PMS in concert.
We were talking about
what really is a lesbian,
and how should a lesbian live
and we should withdraw all of our
energies from men, all this kind of stuff.
Could we live together in this way
and prove that it could be done?
And I think in many ways it worked,
but in other ways, it didn't.
It became too ideological...
of which I was guilty, you know.
WOLFSON: I remember
being pregnant with Eric
and sitting there in the
women's liberation office
when the Furies' announcement came
that male infants were the enemy,
that women could not come into
the office with a male child.
That stopped me short. This was
even before I had my own kid.
This is wrong.
Women's liberation had the danger,
where you begin to tell
each other what to do.
You begin to tell each other how to think.
You begin to pressure people...
"You need to leave him."
And there were some women afterwards
that were sorry that that's what they did.
We were inventing things,
and that is a very
interesting edge to be on.
We were still figuring out what
it meant to create a movement
that could help to change the
whole world's perception of women,
challenge patriarchy.
You don't have much help,
and you don't have many
clues about how to proceed.
We were figuring it out,
and it wasn't always easy, and
we didn't always do it right.
Part of the reaction
of first new left women,
and then it spread to other women,
to male-dominated authority,
was not only to view structure
as bad but leaders as bad.
What women were trying to
do was to not have leadership
that was a hierarchy,
but to have leadership that is collective.
I mean, in a certain way it
was modeled on utopian ideas,
but there invariably became some people
who were more listened
to than others, I guess,
is the only way you can say.
And I was one of those people.
Part of this exuberance of women
finding a movement that was gonna
help them find their own voice,
there was also a competition
for leadership at the same time.
'Cause this was, for
many of us, our one shot
to be progressive leaders
and be recognized
and be able to get our ideas heard.
The first core concept of sexist thought
is that men do the
important work in the world
and that the work done by men...
FREEMAN: Doing the kinds of things that were
normally associated as male activities...
being interviewed, getting
your name in the press,
making speeches, giving lectures.
Those kinds of things...
those were condemned.
The only people I had seen
in leadership roles were men,
so to be fair, maybe I was
mimicking a male-style leadership.
So they kicked me out of Magic Quilt.
It was devastating to have
all these people sit in a room
that you had organized in
a group to say, "Get out."
People had read about me, so
I was like this mini celebrity.
In Cell 16 they said that
I was oppressing them.
The most incredible thing
anyone ever said to me, I think,
is that, "I feel oppressed just
by the fact that you exist."
Okay. (chuckling)
You want me to stop existing?
Listen, I dropped out of the
women's movement three times...
'69, '79 and '89.
(laughs)
The women's movement brought about
a social revolution in this country.
And while it was painful to be
part of that social revolution,
it had to be done.
WOLFSON: Everybody had
taken the birth control pill.
Back then it was a huge amount of estrogen.
Nobody had informed us that
there could be side effects.
My side effect was my
hair started to fall out.
And we got word of hearings on the Hill
about the birth control pill.
WEBB: All the people listed to testify were
male doctors and drug company executives.
Males, all.
Not one patient, not one woman, nothing.
I have seen women with thrombophlebitis,
weight gain, nausea, irritable bowel,
cancer of the breast, rheumatoid
arthritis-like syndrome.
WOLFSON: Serious reactions.
The blood clots, the
heart attacks, the strokes.
They knew about it when they gave it to us,
when they dispensed it like candy.
I want to know how many
side effects we have to hear
before somebody does
something about these pills.
We are not going to sit quietly any longer.
You are murdering us for
your profit and convenience.
If you ladies would sit down...
- Our lives have been interrupted by taking this pill.
- We're conducting...
Don't think the hearings are any
more important than our lives!
MAN: Now will everyone please leave
the room... press and everyone else.
That's a fine way to run...
WOLFSON: We stopped the hearings,
- and they tried to bargain with us...
- (gavel rapping)
'cause we were demonstrating
every time they reconvened them.
Yes, we are objecting to the fact
that there are no women testifying
and that there are no women on the panel.
We are tired of men controlling
our lives and our bodies.
And one of our absolute bottom lines was
there had to be information given to women.
And we did get the first
patient package insert
which is informed consent.
We were bringing DC to its knees
around women's issues.
MALE NEWS REPORTER: The director
of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover,
found a new and, to his mind,
potentially dangerous group...
the women's liberation movement.
Hoover sent the following
directive, quote...
"It is absolutely essential that
we conduct sufficient investigation
of the women's liberation movement
to determine any possible
threat they may represent
to the security of
the United States."
End quote.
ROSEN: J. Edgar Hoover said
women couldn't be agents.
So the FBI got women who were informants.
These informants were sitting in on
women's consciousness-raising groups,
writing stories back
to their agents saying,
"You know, they're just
talking about the fact
their men aren't doing child care,
they're not washing the
dishes, they're leaving a mess.
They expect us to do everything.
I don't see why I should
sit in it on anymore."
They would forward that to J. Edgar Hoover,
who would write back and
say, "Continue surveillance.
These women represent a
national security threat."
The irony is, for the most part,
women did not do anything
dangerous or violent.
The really dangerous thing was talk.
Because telling the truth and
talking is very revolutionary.
We're into a very hypocritical
thing about the education of women.
We pretend there's a lot
of opportunity out there.
"So study hard, girls, and go forward."
And there isn't any opportunity out
there, and everyone's kidding them.
WOMAN: I've been out walking
Racism and anti-feminism
are two of the prime
traditions of this country.
I no longer accept society's judgment
that my group is second class.
If women are to be married,
women should receive pensions.
(applause)
All women are lesbians, except
those who don't know it, naturally.
They are, but don't know it yet.
I am a woman, and therefore a lesbian.
We talk in different tones.
We don't all agree.
We have the right to
define our own differences.
MAN: Now I would like
to ask Germaine Greer...
I really don't know what
women are asking for.
- Now, suppose I wanted to give it to them.
- (women laughing)
Listen, you may as well relax, because
whatever it is they're asking for, honey,
it's not for you.
(loud laughter)
And I had a lover
In the name of the mother, the daughter
and the holy granddaughter,
"a-women."
The women in this country
are gonna see to it
that the insane directions
of this country get changed,
that we stop the business of
having wars and military programs,
start the business of having some money
for health and housing and child care,
and we're gonna see to it there's a liberation
not only of women, but men and women...
It's just that
I've been losing
So long
I've been very interested to
see the amount of publicity
that has gone to the women's liberation
movement in just the last two or three months.
We couldn't get coverage anywhere
except in a very joking fashion in 1966.
Everybody thought it was a colossal joke.
I think people aren't laughing anymore.
They recognize the seriousness of it.
COLLINS: At the NOW
national convention for 1970,
Betty Friedan gets up and gives her speech.
And much to our shock,
she announced that there
would be a women's strike
on August 26, 1970,
the 50th anniversary of
women's right to vote.
When we take to the street
in Boston, and in New York,
and in Chicago, and in Atlanta,
and in Florida, and in California...
Everyone was like, "Oh,
my God. Now what do we do?"
CEBALLOS: So Betty Friedan tells the press
50,000 women would march in New York City.
Every week we would have a notice
in the Village Voice.
These younger women,
they would pour into NOW,
and we would plan this march and strike.
"Don't iron while the strike is hot"
was the slogan.
And we took this poster and
distributed it all over town.
CEBALLOS: I said, "How are we
going to get 50,000 to march?"
And Pat said, "We'll take
over the Statue of Liberty."
And I said, "How can you do that?
The Puerto Ricans did last
year, and they're in jail."
So they got two huge banners 40 feet long.
- (ship horn blows)
- They had the banners rolled up in their jeans,
and they were walking
like they were crippled.
(horn blows)
We got to the island. So we had a group
that was going to start demonstrating.
Out of the house and into the world!
Out of the house and into the world!
CEBALLOS: I was gonna go
up those winding stairs.
At the top one where we were
putting, "Women of the World Unite,"
I just remember the wind was so strong.
And the next thing we
knew, the guys caught on.
By this time there were helicopters.
Then Mayor Lindsay called and he said,
"Let the women be. Let them alone."
Glory, glory hallelujah
CEBALLOS: It was a sensation!
It went around the world.
Time magazine picked it
up, the Italians, the French.
It was fabulous. Can you imagine?
"Women of the World Unite."
All that publicity helped.
WOMEN: Glory, hallelujah
It's liberation time
Tomorrow, 50 years after
we gave them the vote,
the women are going to strike to
support their liberation demands.
Thankfully, Cedar Rapids women's
liberation movement is pretty much dormant.
If I knew what they were going out
on strike for, I'd be able to answer.
No, I don't believe I will.
I don't think that's necessary at all.
I don't think too much of it.
A woman's place is in the home.
So remember, men... if
you come to work tomorrow,
and your secretary
refuses to do the filing,
and then go home and find that your
wife has refused to do the cooking,
don't blame them.
Remember, you gave them
the vote 50 years ago.
This is Mike Scott, male chauvinist,
TV 9, Eyewitness News.
The press just thought this was so crazy.
And this kept working for us in some ways.
The Sun Times put out
a headline the day before...
"Will women strike?"
CEBALLOS: So the day of the march,
I was walking towards Fifth Avenue,
scared to death
that I was gonna see only 3,000.
And I will never, never forget.
You couldn't see the end of the line.
When you looked out at everybody,
I mean, there were women
as far as you could see.
Freedom now! Freedom now!
Sisterhood is powerful! Join us now!
Sisterhood is powerful! Join us now!
Join our ranks! Every
woman, join our ranks!
SHULMAN: People were cheering us.
They hung out of the
windows and out of balconies
and cheered us on and waved flags for us.
Freedom now!
(chanting)
I was recognizable in New York then,
so I put one of these
African turbans on my head,
wore some African garb to say,
"See, I'm in the women's
movement. What's wrong with you?"
- Whoo!
- Freedom!
There's something wrong when an
attractive girl can make more money
as a Playboy Bunny or a cover
girl than as anything else.
I'll never be more shocked than I was
when I walked up on the podium that day
and looked out and saw the
entire plaza was filled.
And feeling the support of these
thousands of people all at once,
it was an exhilarating feeling.
WOMAN: We didn't see serious programs
devoted to issues that concerned women.
Issues, not recipes. Day
care, not chocolate mousse.
I want the freedom not to have a husband.
(cheering)
I want a society where men and
women cooperate, not compete.
Where women have to support their children
and men help to rear them.
(cheering)
HERNANDEZ: I think what men want
to do, too, is join with women
in making this a society
that cares about all people.
Equal pay for equal work!
When do we want it? Now!
And what I would love today
is the women and the men
putting their fingers up like this.
And we now know that we have
the power to unite together,
to work together, to make
the changes that are needed.
And that we have your attention, and
that we have the headlines in the media.
You didn't make us. We're
making you take us seriously.
MILLETT: It felt like we had triumphed.
It felt like we were changing the world.
Now we are a movement.
It's probably no accident
that we, in our time,
didn't know anything
about the suffrage struggle
and how long it took to
get the vote... 50 years.
You know, I'm one of
the few left who can say
their mother worked for suffrage.
I'm very proud of that.
My mother felt so strongly
about getting the vote,
and she was so thrilled to get it.
And I loved going with her
to vote when I was only five.
And they pulled that curtain,
and nobody... you could
only see people's feet.
I just found that kind of
mystical, and I still do.
And I later decided
that two emancipators of women
were the vote and birth control.
BROWNMILLER: We live in a country that
doesn't credit any of its radical movements.
They don't like to admit,
in the United States,
that change happens
because radicals force it.
To take away the history
of how change got made
helps to cuts down on activism
because people don't think
that I, an everyday person,
could make a big social change.
The Supreme Court gave
us Roe vs. Wade,
and I'm just a regular woman.
But that's who made abortion rights come...
just a student, and just a mother,
gathering together and protesting.
(crowd chattering)
This is Our Bodies,
Ourselves, ninth edition.
It just came out two weeks ago.
We are so happy.
It's like our baby.
It's amazing to think that we
have been around for 40 years.
And to me, the global
piece has been so amazing.
Our Bodies, Ourselves has given any
group of progressive women in any country
the text of the book to adapt
it to their own cultural context.
There have been these marvelous projects
that have started throughout the world,
and it's been going on
since the '70s really.
(crowd applauding)
WOMAN ANNOUNCING: Mama Asiah from Tanzania.
JUDY: For our 40th anniversary,
women came from Israel,
from Nepal, from Turkey, from
Armenia, from Nigeria, from Tanzania.
They have amazing stories to tell.
In India, when I was doing the work
with the Bangla version of OBOS,
young girls hadn't heard of
it, but they were jubilant
that something like
this was coming to them.
And they all said, "Oh, this is going
to take us to a very different place."
So thank you, all of you,
for giving us back our bodies
and the right to health.
Thank you so much.
ROSEN: I think there are great
achievements of the women's movement.
The women's health movement is one of them.
We named sexual harassment.
We named domestic violence,
the battering of wives.
We then made it illegal.
WEBB: Every aspect of life has changed.
Families are different.
My daughter is leading a completely different
life because of the women's movement.
They both take care of the children.
They both earn money. They both work.
There's still some sex segregation
in the workforce, for sure.
But there were whole fields that
were simply closed down to women,
and that's done with.
I don't think we're going back on that.
WILLIS: I think the most profound
thing that feminism did for me
was to make me feel that I
was capable of genuine freedom.
Before the women's
movement, I had my own work.
I knew I wasn't going to live
a traditional woman's life.
I felt that I probably
wasn't going to have children.
And ultimately, I did have my daughter.
And I think were it not for feminism,
I don't think I could have done that.
WOMAN: Right after I got out of college,
it was November 2006.
My mother passed away.
I got all of these letters and e-mails
from her friends and her colleagues,
all of the feminists that started
the women's liberation movement.
And I started to realize that even though
I was down with the word "feminism,"
I didn't really know what it
meant to me and to our generation.
I think the sexism that we experience
is a little more insidious and
it's harder to point out and say,
"See. See. That's sexism."
But I know a lot of young
kick-ass feminists out there.
They're blogging, they're out in
the streets, they're organizing.
What do you do when you're under
attack? Stand up, fight back!
What do you do when you're under
attack? Stand up, fight back!
WOMAN: The problem is rapists,
and we need to address the problem!
And let me give you a
hint. It's not our clothes.
- It's not.
- (cheering)
NONA WILLIS: There's this
new movement called slut walk
that has now swept 70 different cities.
And it was started by a young woman who
heard a cop say about a woman who was raped,
"Well, she was asking for it.
She was dressed like a slut."
Believe it or not, people are
assaulted regardless of what they wear.
Some people who get raped are in burkas.
NYPD, rape is a felony!
We created a revolution that we
are still debating in our society.
We're still arguing over many issues
that women raised 40 years ago,
like abortion, like child care.
We still don't have any child care.
ARCANA: In terms of reproductive
health, reproductive justice,
we've gone backward in a big way.
WOMEN (chanting): We
must decide their fate!
Not the church, not the state!
Women must decide their fate!
Not the church, not the state!
Women must decide their fate!
If we can have order in the chamber,
so that the members can
properly cast their vote...
Not the church, not the state!
The bitter lesson is that
no victories are permanent.
All our rights are like that.
They're only as good as we maintain them.
This fight is not over.
This fight is not over.
I'm seriously disheartened
by the current situation,
but at the same time, I'm angry.
And one of the things
I learned decades ago...
When we're that angry
about something that bad,
we take action against it.
COLLINS: I want people to
know that if they organize,
they can actually make
really profound change.
So that all women may be free!
You can't convince me that you can't
change the world, because I saw it happen.
Freedom!
SHULMAN: But this is a moving target.
Freedom is something
that is over the horizon,
and you can't stop sailing toward it
just because you don't reach it.
You just keep going,
and every generation has another
opportunity to take it further.
We're black, we're proud! We're
feminists! We will be loud!
Show me what a feminist looks like!
This is what a feminist looks like!
This is what a feminist looks like!
Show me what a feminist looks like!
This is what a feminist looks like!
This is what a feminist looks like!
This is what a feminist looks like!
WOMEN: Hurricane
Hurricane
Hurricane
She's a hurricane
Oh
She comes down
to ride around
Hide your mother
when she's in town
She comes down
to ride around
And blow you away
She comes down
to ride around
Hide your mother
when she's in town
She comes down to ride
around and blow you away
But you come running back
You come running back
You come running for more
You come running back
You come running back
You come running for more
Hurricane
Hurricane
Hurricane
Hurricane
Oh
She comes down
to ride around
Hide your mother
when she's in town
She comes down to ride
around and blow you away
She comes down
to ride around
Hide your mother
when she's in town
She comes down to ride
around and blow you away
But you come running back
You come running back
You come running for more
You come running back
You come running back
You come running for more
You come running back
You come running back
You come running for more
You come running back
You come running for more
More
More
More