Just as the
Women's Suffrage movement grew out of the
Abolition Movement, the Women's Liberation Movement grew out of the struggle for civil rights. Though challenging patriarchy and the anti-patriarchal message of the Women's Liberation Movement was considered radical, it was not the only, nor the first, radical movement in the early period of
second-wave feminism. Rather than simply desiring legal equality, members believed that the moral and social climate in the United States needed to change. Though most groups operated independently—there was no national umbrella organization—there were unifying philosophies of women participating in the movement. Challenging patriarchy and the hierarchical organization of society which defined women as subordinate, participants in the movement believed that women should be free to define their own individual identity as part of human society. One of the reasons that women who supported the movement chose not to create a single approach to addressing the problem of women being treated as second-class citizens was that they did not want to foster an idea that anyone was an expert or that any one group or idea could address all of the societal problems women faced. They also wanted women, whose voices had been silenced to be able to express their own views on solutions. Among the issues were the objectification of women, reproductive rights, opportunities for women in the workplace, redefining familial roles. A dilemma faced by movement members was how they could challenge the definition of femininity without compromising the principals of feminism. The publication of
The Feminine Mystique by Friedan pointed to the dissatisfaction of many women in American society and was seen as a catalyst for the movement, though after she co-founded the
National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966, Friedan was seen by radicals as too mainstream. NOW's stated purpose was to work within established social and legal systems to gain equality, which clashed with radical feminists who believed that traditional power-structures had failed women and needed to be reformed. In 1964, an anonymous paper (later revealed to have been written by
Elaine Delott Baker,
Casey Hayden,
Mary King, and
Emmie Schrader), "The Position of Women in SNCC" (the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) was presented by
Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson at the Waveland conference. The paper discussed the
analogous relationship between sex and race discrimination within the context of the work environment and was seen as a critically important document for evaluating gender and women's issues. Stokely Carmichael's response to the paper, "The only position for women in SNCC is prone", has been taken by some to have been condescending, but
Carol Giardina argued in her work ''Freedom for Women: Forging the Women's Liberation Movement'' that the statement was made jokingly and that focus on the controversy about Carmichael's remark deflects the positive reinforcement and leadership opportunities that many women found within the SNCC. Between 1965 and 1966 meetings, at which papers and conversations about women's place in society were discussed, became more prevalent. An article published in
Random, a Canadian journal, advocated that women should participate in self-examination without male scrutiny or advice to embark on their own path of self-discovery. In the summer of 1967 at the
Students for a Democratic Society’s national conference, a manifesto drafted by the Women’s Liberation Workshop defined the relationship of women to men as one that a colonial power had toward its colonies. The document demanded that men take responsibility for their male chauvinism and that women demand full participation in all activities of the organization. Following the meeting, women's groups such as the Bread and Roses in Boston and Women's Liberation Group of Berkeley were founded. In Chicago, at a women's workshop held over Labor Day weekend that same year during the
National Conference of New Politics (NCNP),
Jo Freeman and
Shulamith Firestone presented demands from the woman's caucus to the plenary session. The moderator advised that the points of their resolution were insignificant and did not merit discussion on the floor. Over their protests and refusing to discuss the demands further, NCNP Director William F. Pepper moved the topic toward a discussion of Native Americans, but agreed to tack on their concerns to the end of the agenda. Dismissively, Pepper patted Firestone on the head and said, "Move on little girl; we have more important issues to talk about here than women's liberation", or possibly, "Cool down, little girl. We have more important things to talk about than women's problems." Soon after the meeting Freeman,
Heather Booth, and
Naomi Weisstein founded the
Women's Radical Action Project (WRAP), as a vehicle for
consciousness-raising. At these meetings, women met regularly to discuss personal dilemmas and to analyze how politics shaped and impacted women's lives. Consciousness-raising discussions were wide-ranging from intimate relationships to social justice issues, with participants stressing the importance of not only having choices but being free to make them. Their discussions recognized that legislation could not change many of the issues which confronted women, but that education and redefining societal roles would be required to change attitudes and mores. Within six months, the ''voice of women's liberation'' began publication by Freeman as the first radical newspaper of the movement. Firestone left the Chicago conference and returned to New York to found the
New York Radical Women (NYRW) with
Pamela Allen, among others. It was the "first women's liberation group in New York City", and followed a radical feminist ideology that declared that "the personal is political" and "sisterhood is powerful"—formulations that arose from these consciousness-raising sessions. Within the year, women's liberation groups sprang up all over America. In 1968, the first American national gathering of women's liberation activists was held in
Lake Villa, a suburb of
Chicago, Illinois. That same year, at the University of Washington, a Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organizer reflected on a meeting about white college men working with poor white men, and "noted that sometimes after analyzing societal ills, the men shared leisure time by 'balling a chick together.' He pointed out that such activities did much to enhance the political consciousness of poor white youth. A woman in the audience asked, 'And what did it do for the consciousness of the chick?'" After the meeting, a handful of women formed Seattle's first
women's liberation group. In June 1968,
Notes from the First Year, containing essays, speeches and transcripts of consciousness-raising sessions was distributed by the NYRW. The mimeographed booklet, which covered topics on sex, including abortion and orgasm, became the "most circulated source material on the New York women's liberation movement". Liberationists gained nationwide attention when they protested the
Miss America beauty pageant on 7 September 1968. Though cameramen were prohibited from showing the protesters on television, newspapers headlined the story the following day. Because the pageant promoted beauty as the ideal for measuring women's worth, NYRW activists targeted the iconic event. Gathering items they considered to be objects of female oppression, such as bras, curlers, typing textbooks and copies of ''
Ladies' Home Journal'', among other items, the activists intended to set fire to the trash cans containing them. They were prohibited from doing so, but the myth of
"bra-burning", led to liberationists being called "bra-burners". By 1969, NYRW had split into two factions—politicos and feminists, dividing over whether the oppressor of women was the political and economic system or whether it was patriarchy. Politicos, who were tired of being labeled as man-haters and who believed the
capitalist system was the root of the problem, formed the
Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (W.I.T.C.H), which focused on achieving equality through leftist politics. Feminists, who remained committed to fighting sexism, formed the
Redstockings. The split did not slow activity down. W.I.T.C.H. protested the 1969 Miss America pageant and the Redstockings demonstrated at a hearing of the New York State Joint Legislative Committee considering a reform of abortion law. Angered that of the 15 experts called, 14 were men, the group held their own "public hearings" at the
Washington Square Methodist Episcopal Church, allowing only women to "testify". By 1969, Women's Liberation was being featured in national magazines, like
Life,
Newsweek and
Time.
Vernita Gray, along with Michelle Brody,
E. Kitch Child, Margaret E. Sloan and other women formed a group called the Women's Caucus of the Chicago Gay Liberation in 1969. Within a year, the multi-racial group, renamed the
Chicago Lesbian Liberation (CLL), had established regular consciousness-raising events, known as "Monday Night Meetings". That same year, at a NOW meeting, Friedan, who feared feminists being associated with lesbians, referred to lesbian activists within the movement as the "
lavender menace". Subsequently,
Susan Brownmiller wrote an article for
The New York Times Magazine describing the perceived threat to the movement. Lesbian activists responded by embracing the term, staging a protest at the Second Congress to Unite Women held in 1970, in which they revealed lavender t-shirts emblazoned with the term. Groups such as Columbia Women's Liberation,
Daughters of Bilitis (which was a member of NOW) and RadicaLesbian pushed the drive for women to gain autonomy. 1969 was a pivotal year, in that it marked the beginning of mainstream incorporation of the liberationsists' focus on sexism.
Gloria Steinem, a member of NOW, wrote an article for
New York magazine, ''After Black Power, Women's Liberation'', which was recognized with the
Penney-Missouri Journalism Award as one of the first treatments of the women's movement. The
Female Liberation Newsletter, was founded that same year by
Julie Morse and
Rosina Richter in Minnesota, with the intent of centralizing publications on the varying views of the movement in the
Minneapolis–Saint Paul metro area. By 1970, they had formed the
Amazon Bookstore Cooperative, hoping to provide a physical space for women-centered dialogue. Influential texts written by liberationists and published in 1970 included
The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm by
Anne Koedt, ''The Political Economy of Women's Liberation
by Margaret Benston, The Politics of Housework
by Pat Mainardi, Sexual Politics by Kate Millett, and Sisterhood Is Powerful, An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement'' edited by
Robin Morgan By early 1970, "Women's Lib" was featured as a cover story in
Saturday Review written by
Lucy Komisar, vice president of NOW.
Atlantic Monthly and
Mademoiselle devoted sections to the subject, some of which were written by feminists. Brownmiller, a member of
New York Radical Feminists, wrote one of the articles in the February
Mademoiselle issue and followed it up with an article in March, published in the
New York Times Magazine. Network news followed print media in a rush to cover the "story of the year".
CBS was the first major network to cover women's liberation when it aired coverage on 15 January 1970 of the D.C. Women's Liberation group's disruption of Senate hearings on birth control as a small item in their broadcast. Within a week, the women's protests became leading stories on both CBS and
ABC. Early stories focused on behavior, rather than motivations, but
NBC broke with the tradition when it aired a story on 23 January evaluating the underlying causes of concern were that the side-effects of the pill had not disclosed safety hazards. In March, CBS televised a series, with all-male correspondents, focused on radicals in the feminist movement, highlighting liberationists' tactics, rather than their underlying issues and portraying sexism as an unsubstantiated claim, which should be treated with skepticism. It was followed by a 6-part series broadcast by NBC anchored by four women, who presented an analysis of the issues with sexual discrimination portrayed as a reality in women's lives. These various treatments, served to undermine the radical message, as on the one hand they were portrayed as extremists and on the other, their sexual politics were assimilated into the mainstream liberal feminist view to present a unified vision for women's equality. In May
Marlene Sanders, a member of NOW and one of the two women journalists working for ABC at the time, produced a documentary on the WLM for ABC. The timing of her report was calculated, to curtail the view of advocacy, as it had been approved in 1969, but it did not air until other media outlets had covered the topic, paving the way for an objective presentation. Sander's production attempted to add legitimacy to women's claims and shed a homogenized evaluation of the movement, "edging lesbians, women of color and the movement's most radical" elements out of the portrait. By redefining the movement, Sanders attempted to legitimize the need for social justice and present the demands of women as socially acceptable goals. The media coverage brought forth one of the problems of the WLM's loose organizational structure. Though thousands of organizations had formed in the 1960s and 1970s and there were chapters from coast to coast and throughout the Heartland, finding an organization to join was difficult for many. Unable to locate organizations in the phonebook, many felt that the movement was invisible, while still others embraced the ideals without actually joining formal institutions. There were few public spaces where unattended women could gather freely and urban settings with racially segregated spaces were ingrained in the culture. The problem of finding spaces to meet was compounded by the practice of denying women credit without men's consent, thus renting a visible meeting place for women to come together was complicated, forcing women to gather in unconventional settings. For example, the Chicago Lesbian Liberation solved their meeting problems by gathering on a "slow night" at a local bar known as King's Ransom, which welcomed their multi-racial composition. The proprietor was happy for the business and ladies night became a regular feature of the establishment. The
Women's Liberation Center rented an abandoned firehouse from New York City for $1 per month () but had to shovel coal in order to keep it warm. Women's centers began to be created all over the country as a place for women to meet outside the home. Most of them were run as collectives and spaces for consciousness-raising groups to meet in a non-competitive environment, where women could discuss the intersection of their personal lives, as well as politics and the economy. By 1972, the New York Radical Feminist had prepared a set of instructions for developing consciousness-raising groups. The analysis that went on in these sessions was not therapeutic, but instead an evaluation of how one's personal experience had been shaped by cultural norms. "Meetings were designed to turn the personal into the political", by making women aware that the personal experiences were not unique and had social constructs. It soon became apparent that small groups and loose cooperative organization was effective for building awareness, but to turn awareness into action more efficient structures were required. For example, the Crenshaw Women's Center in Los Angeles initially opened in 1970 with participants bringing their own pillows as seats. Eventually they collected second-hand furniture and developed a playground, assuming that their evening functions would be attended by women with children. Nine groups—“Haymarket Liberation, the New Adult Community of Women, NOW, Socialist Women’s Organizing Project, the Union of Women’s International Liberation, the Venice-Santa Monica Women’s Liberation, Women’s Liberation Front—UCLA, Women’s Liberation One and Working Women's Group”—came together to offer services to some 1500 women. They offered abortion and contraceptive counseling; personal and vocational consultations; ran a suicide hotline; published a monthly newsletter,
The Women’s Center News; maintained a library of feminist writings; provided lectures on legal rights; and taught courses on self-defense. Following their ideal that new structures were needed to build women-only spaces, the center was open to all women and their children. Within a year, NOW withdrew from the collective and established an almost identical center which was open only to their members and invited guests, which included men. By 1973, with the
oil crisis and in reaction to 1960s radicalism, the US environment became more politically conservative. Combined with economic
stagflation, radicalism lost favor. The fragile solidarity which had existed between various WLM groups began to fracture as the movement had developed no mechanism for political action other than direct confrontation. Though leftist, they did not adhere to any specific political alignment. The drive to create women-only spaces eliminated the need to confront sexism, as it allowed women to simply evade patriarchal organizations. Thus, rather than rendering gender irrelevant, for which liberationists argued, the cultural feminists, who evolved from them, created a counter-cultural movement to celebrate female difference. For example,
Ms. began publication in 1972 co-opting the radicals' ideas of women's oppression and personal introspection, but blamed systemic causes for the issues, rather than men, and promoted self-improvement as a means to change women's lives, rather than politicization. Other groups embracing the idea of a utopian society composed solely of women were inspired by
Jill Johnston's 1973 publication of
Lesbian Nation. Johnston promoted the idea of a complete break from men and patriarchal institutions arguing for women's separatism. Believing that lesbianism was a
political stance, she argued that regardless of who they slept with, whether they knew it or not, "all women were lesbians". In 1974, the
Combahee River Collective was founded in Boston by twins
Barbara and
Beverly Smith, and former
Black Panther activist
Demita Frazier. Formed as a consciousness-raising group for lesbian feminists, it soon attracted members including
Akasha Gloria Hull and
Audre Lorde and began hosting retreats across the Northeastern United States. At the retreats
intersectionality and overlapping identities were explored. The group continued meeting through 1980. By 1975, the Women's Liberation Movement had become simply the
women's movement with liberals, who were pursuing reformist cultural feminism prevailing as the dominant group. Radical groups became marginalized and those that did not support the reformist climate splintered. However, in the short history of the WLM the movement exploded into a world-wide awareness of sexism and pushed the liberal feminists far to the left of their original aims. == Mexico ==