New York Radical Feminists
Encyclopedia
New York Radical Feminists (NYRF) was a radical feminist group founded by Shulamith Firestone
and Anne Koedt
in 1969, after they had left Redstockings
and The Feminists
, respectively. Firestone's and Koedt's desire to start this new group was aided by Vivian Gornick
's 1969 Village Voice article, "The Next Great Moment in History Is Theirs". The end of this essay announced the formation of the group and included a contact address and phone number, raising considerable national interest from prospective members.
Central to NYRF's philosophy was the idea that men consciously maintained power over women in order to strengthen their egos, but also held that women internalized their subordination by diminishing their egos. This analysis represented a rejection of the two other prevailing theories of women's subordination current at the time – Redstockings' "Pro-Woman Line", which emphasized men's subordination of women and women's often deliberate adaptations to that reality, and The Feminists' theory that emphasized women's subordination as being rooted in the unconscious playing out of internalized sex roles.
Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt left NYRF in 1970 over disagreements about organization and leadership with other factions of NYRF. Nonetheless, the group continued to be active through the mid-1970s. Its activities during that time included holding a monthly consciousness raising
meeting, publishing a regular newsletter, and maintaining a speaker's bureau. NYRF also organized a number of public conferences and speakouts through the early to mid-1970s on topics such as rape, sexual abuse, prostitution, marriage, lesbianism, motherhood, illegitimacy, class, and work. In 1982, NYRF was listed among the signatories to a leaflet produced by the "Coalition for a Feminist Sexuality and Against Sadomasochism", an ad-hoc coalition put together by Women Against Pornography
to protest the Barnard Conference
.
Shulamith Firestone
Shulamith Firestone , is a Jewish, Canadian-born feminist. She was a central figure in the early development of radical feminism, having been a founding member of the New York Radical Women, Redstockings, and New York Radical Feminists...
and Anne Koedt
Anne Koedt
Anne Koedt is a United States radical feminist and NY based author of The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm, 1970, the classic feminist work on women's sexuality...
in 1969, after they had left Redstockings
Redstockings
Redstockings, also known as Redstockings of the Women's Liberation Movement, is a radical feminist group that was founded in January of 1969...
and The Feminists
The Feminists
The Feminists, also known as Feminists—A Political Organization to Annihilate Sex Roles, was a radical feminist group active in New York City from 1968 to 1973....
, respectively. Firestone's and Koedt's desire to start this new group was aided by Vivian Gornick
Vivian Gornick
Vivian Gornick is an American critic, essayist, and memoirist. For many years she wrote for the Village Voice. She currently teaches writing at The New School. For the 2007-2008 academic year, she was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University...
's 1969 Village Voice article, "The Next Great Moment in History Is Theirs". The end of this essay announced the formation of the group and included a contact address and phone number, raising considerable national interest from prospective members.
Central to NYRF's philosophy was the idea that men consciously maintained power over women in order to strengthen their egos, but also held that women internalized their subordination by diminishing their egos. This analysis represented a rejection of the two other prevailing theories of women's subordination current at the time – Redstockings' "Pro-Woman Line", which emphasized men's subordination of women and women's often deliberate adaptations to that reality, and The Feminists' theory that emphasized women's subordination as being rooted in the unconscious playing out of internalized sex roles.
Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt left NYRF in 1970 over disagreements about organization and leadership with other factions of NYRF. Nonetheless, the group continued to be active through the mid-1970s. Its activities during that time included holding a monthly consciousness raising
Consciousness raising
Consciousness raising is a form of political activism, pioneered by United States feminists in the late 1960s...
meeting, publishing a regular newsletter, and maintaining a speaker's bureau. NYRF also organized a number of public conferences and speakouts through the early to mid-1970s on topics such as rape, sexual abuse, prostitution, marriage, lesbianism, motherhood, illegitimacy, class, and work. In 1982, NYRF was listed among the signatories to a leaflet produced by the "Coalition for a Feminist Sexuality and Against Sadomasochism", an ad-hoc coalition put together by Women Against Pornography
Women Against Pornography
Women Against Pornography was a radical feminist activist group based out of New York City and an influential force in the anti-pornography movement of the late 1970s and the 1980s....
to protest the Barnard Conference
Feminist Sex Wars
The Feminist Sex Wars and Lesbian Sex Wars, or simply the Sex Wars or Porn Wars, were the acrimonious debates within the feminist movement and lesbian community in the late 1970s through the 1980s around the issues of feminist strategies regarding sexuality, sexual representation, pornography,...
.
Further reading
- Brownmiller, SusanSusan BrownmillerSusan Brownmiller is an American feminist, journalist, author, and activist. She is best known for her pioneering work on the politics of rape in her 1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, Brownmiller argues that rape had been hitherto defined by men rather than women; and that men use,...
. (1999). In Our Time: A Memoir of a Revolution. The Dial Press. ISBN 0-385-31486-8. - Koedt, Anne, Ellen Levine, and Anita Rapone, eds. (1973). Radical Feminism. Times Books. ISBN 0812962206.
- Love, Barbara J. and Nancy F. Cott. (2006). Feminists Who Changed America, 1963–1975. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 025203189X.
- Firestone, Shulamith. (1970). The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. William Morrow and Company. ISBN 0-688-06454-X (Reprinted editions: Bantam, 1979, ISBN 0-553-12814-0; Farrar Straus Giroux, 2003, ISBN 0-374-52787-3.)
External links
- New York Radical Feminists literature archive
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- http://www.archive.org/details/RadicalFeminismNewYorkRadicalFeministsRevisedHistoryOverview a review of archived NYRF newsletters and other NYRF documents as well as news articles and book references about NYRFer activities after the early-mid 1970 period and locations of NYRF newsletter and document archives http://www.archive.org/details/FeministConsciousness-raisingGroupGuideTopics from 1976 http://www.archive.org/details/NewYorkRadicalFeministsNewYork1971LawProposals by the late Minda Bikman
-
- New York Radical Feminists "Manifesto of Shared Rape" by Mary Ann Manhart and Florence RushFlorence RushFlorence Rush was an American certified social worker , feminist theorist and organizer best known for introducing The Freudian Coverup in her presentation "The Sexual Abuse of Children: A Feminist Point of View" about childhood sexual abuse and incest at the April 1971 New York Radical Feminists...
, July, 1971. (Archived at American Civil Rights Review's Document Archive.)