Well, I’m still sick, and at the moment my cough is more productive than I am, so instead of a full post let’s take another trip down memory lane with this important document from the early years of second wave feminism. In this 1972 pamphlet, the radical feminist collective known as the “Marvel Comics Group” spelled out their five-point program for feminist revolution.
As you can see, it consisted of:
- Smooching
- Accessorizing your protest ensemble with a kicky scarf
- Late-night typing
- Making young men jealous by dating older pilots, or policemen, or mailmen. (I’m not completely sure what job that guy’s got.)
- Making young women jealous by dating Carl Sagan
See the awesome blog Sequential Crush for more on this comic-book guide to the romantic side of Women’s Lib.
That was my favorite, too.
Serrana – all too true, and the man’s last comment is uber-creepy.
Oh look more woman controlling bullshit being marketed as protection for families.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/03/21/3417400/massachusetts-judge-sex/
With fewer job opportunities and schooling, even radfems sometimes did what their mothers did and that’s seek a husband for financial stability. When the system is geared that way, then yes women are going to do what they have to so as to survive.
And there wasn’t always encouragement, either. There was sexual harassment at work, and at times to keep women out of male dominated positions. Chauvinism was worse than what it is today, even more widely encouraged. This is what MRAs don’t understand. The world those women and feminists were living in required them to be more radical and outspoken because of the system and the sexism they were constantly surrounded by. For them to think feminism wasn’t ever needed, that things weren’t as bad as they think they were, is as narrow-sighted as you can get.
There constantly complaining of “You have your freedom now. What’s your problem?!”
Just because blacks won their freedom in the 1860s America didn’t mean everything was suddenly okay for them. Condescending attitudes towards them affected their employment and schooling status, among other things, even 100 years later.
Freedom, alone, wasn’t always enough. Women wanted to be accepted and treated as people, without discrimination and scoff. And this is an aspect of society that is more difficult to fix than laws. For one can make and fix a law over a week, but it can take centuries to change the attitudes of people surrounding it. And it’s bad attitudes towards women that can do more damage than a single bad law. For if attitudes are good, they can push to change a bad law. If attitudes remain foul, than bad laws remain longer.
Again, this is something anti-fems have a difficult time grasping.
I suspect a lot don’t know very much, even now. A long time ago a friend of mine went to a women’s conference and there were a couple of groups fromWomen Who Want to be Women style organisations. Everybody got on reasonably well and there was lots of casual conversation at tea breaks and so on. One group was discussing sex ed, and one of these women was dead set against it. That shouldn’t be discussed in schools she said indignantly, it’s a role for strictly within the family! One of the others laughed and said, “No way I’m ever going to talk to my kids about various sexual positions and activities. Let the professionals deal with it.”
At which point the first woman looked really confused and perplexed. “What do you mean – different positions?” Things went downhill from there.
There may be fewer people like that around nowadays, but I doubt they’ve disappeared entirely.
By which you mean things became one middle-aged woman’s belated but joyful journey of sexual discovery, right? Right?
…That would make a good movie premise.