Ch. 11 Documents

In The Letter to the Left by Ellen Willis, she draws parallels between the Feminist movement and the Black Power movement, and points out how fundamentally important it is for women to be in charge of the movement’s goals, just as how black people needed to be in charge of the black power movement’s goals. A man can support, participate, but still does not see the struggle in a full light because he does not know the struggle, and subconsciously perpetrates the exploitation and injustice unknowingly.

            Similarly, in the 1971 Statement of The Third World Women’s Alliance, it is stated that “in any society where men are not yet free, women are less free because we are further enslaved by our sex” (p. 723), once again drawing comparisons between slavery and the enslavement of women. However, the group goes on to claim that the men of the Black nationalism movement were the ones that defined the role of women as followers, supporters, and mothers—not actively responsible for causing any real change. In fact, there was blatant sexism present in some militant black groups—black men had to rebuild their egos that society had destroyed, therefore black women had to march behind their men. They attacked feminists as generally white, middle class women who were selling out and disregarding women of color and of lower class. The Third World’s Women’s Alliance maintained that they were more oppressed than the middle class women and therefore warranted more power as a political force.  While the divide among racial groups and movements is obvious, they still shared a common goal of generating recognition and respect, as well as change, for women’s rights.

            The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm by Anne Koedt was meant specifically for a workshop on sex at the first National women’s liberation conference in 1968. Women’s sexuality was always defined by men, just like how the Black nationalism movement had black men defining black women’s roles. “Women have thus been defined sexually I terms of what pleases men; our own biology has not been properly analyzed” (p. 732)A women’s sexuality, according to men, was purely a subjective opinion of the man. A man’s understanding of a women’s sexual pleasure was acquired by his own pleasure. If the woman expressed dissatisfaction, then the women was deemed “frigid”.

The Bread and Roses outreach leaflet that was distributed in 1970 was meant to draw sharp distinctions amongst the different philosophies and values of radical women’s groups. The group was a socialist movement that sought childcare assistance in the community setting, mainly to help give women an opportunity to achieve something outside of the domestic gender role.