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Jewish Contribution to Radical Feminism and Leftism

This list covers (many, not all) women who contributed to radical women’s movements or women who contributed to radical leftist movements. There are a variety of perspectives and there is much to learn from all of their work.

Betty Friedan (1921-2006)

A leading figure in the women’s movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the second wave of American feminism in the 20th century. In 1966, Friedan co-founded and was elected the first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), which aimed to bring women “into the mainstream of American society now [in] fully equal partnership with men.”

Notable Writing: Author of The Feminine Mystique (1963)

Selected Quote: “The feminist revolution had to be fought because women quite simply were stopped at a state of evolution far short of their human capacity.” -The Feminine Mystique

Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005)

Dworkin considered the pornography industry to be based on turning women into objects for abuse by men. Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon developed a legislative approach based on civil rights rather than obscenity to outlaw pornography and allow lawsuits against pornographers for damages, but their efforts were largely unsuccessful. She testified at a federal commission against pornography, leading some stores to withdraw certain magazines from sale, but a court ruled the government’s efforts unconstitutional.Her book Intercourse, which addresses the role of sexual intercourse in society, has been interpreted as opposing all heterosexual intercourse, but Dworkin said it does not and that what she was against was male domination by intercourse.

Notable Writing: Pornography: Men Possessing Women, Right-Wing Women, Intercourse, Woman Hating, Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women’s Liberation, and more.

Selected Quote: “Men come to me or to other feminists and say: “What you’re saying about men isn’t true. It isn’t true of me. I don’t feel that way. I’m opposed to all of this.” And I say: don’t tell me. Tell the pornographers. Tell the pimps. Tell the warmakers. Tell the rape apologists and the rape celebrationists and the pro-rape ideologues. Tell the novelists who think that rape is wonderful. Tell Larry Flynt. Tell Hugh Hefner. There’s no point in telling me. I’m only a woman. There’s nothing I can do about it. These men presume to speak for you. They are in the public arena saying that they represent you. If they don’t, then you had better let them know.” -from the speech “I Want A Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape” (1983)

Shulamith Firestone (1945-2012)

Firestone was a Canadian-American radical feminist, writer and activist. A central figure in the early development of radical feminism and second-wave feminism, Firestone was a founding member of three radical-feminist groups: New York Radical Women, Redstockings, and New York Radical Feminists.

She was known for her idea that live birth was oppressive and that as technology developed, parthenogenesis would free women and children.

She also struggled with schizophrenia and wrote a book of short stories based on her experiences in a mental health hospital called Airless Spaces (1980)

Notable Writing: The Dialectic of Sex: The Case For Feminist Revolution (1970)

Selected Quotes:

“The end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between ‘human beings would no longer matter culturally.” -The Dialectic of Sex

“Artificial reproduction is not inherently dehumanizing. At very least, development of an option should make possible an honest reexamination of the ancient value of motherhood.” -The Dialectic of Sex

Ellen Willis (1941-2006)

Willis as a member of New York Radical Women and subsequently co-founder in early 1969 with Shulamith Firestone of the radical feminist group Redstockings. Starting in 1979, Willis wrote a number of essays that were highly critical of anti-pornography feminism, criticizing it for what she saw as its sexual puritanism and moral authoritarianism, as well as its threat to free speech. These essays were among the earliest expressions of feminist opposition to the anti-pornography movement in what became known as the feminist sex wars. A self-described anti-authoritarian democratic socialist, she was very critical of what she viewed as social conservatism and authoritarianism on both the political right and left. She was a strong supporter of women’s abortion rights, and in the mid-1970s was a founding member of the pro-choicestreet theater and protest group No More Nice Girls.

Ellen Willis is featured in the feminist history film She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry.

Noteable Writing: Lust Horizons: Is the Women’s Movement Pro-Sex? (1981)

Selected Quote: “The goal of the right is not to stop abortion but to demonize it, punish it and make it as difficult and traumatic as possible. All this it has accomplished fairly well, even without overturning Roe v. Wade.” -“Escape from Freedom,” Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination, Vol 1, No 2 (2006)

Susan Brownmiller (1935- )

Brownmiller argues in Against Our Will that rape “is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear. In order to write the book, after having helped to organize the New York Radical Feminists Speak-Out on Rape on January 24, 1971, and the New York Radical Feminists Conference on Rape on April 17, 1971, she spent four years investigating rape. Against Our Will was a highly controversial book. Brownmiller’s basic premise was contested by some sections of the left wing, who considered it untrue that “all men benefit” from the culture of rape, and who believed rather that it was possible to organize both women and men together to oppose sexual violence. The book also received criticism from Angela Davis, who thought Brownmiller disregarded the part that black women played in the anti-lynching movement and that Brownmiller’s discussion of rape and race became an “unthinking partnership which borders on racism”.[13]In 1995, the New York Public Library selected Against Our Will as one of 100 most important books of the 20th century.

Notable Writing: Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (1975), Femininity (1984)

Selected Quote: “That some men rape provides a sufficient threat to keep all women in a constant state of intimidation.” -Against Our Will

Gloria Steinem (1934- )

Steinem was a columnist for New York magazine, and a co-founder of Ms.magazine. In 1969, Steinem published an article, “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation”, which brought her to national fame as a feminist leader. Although most frequently considered a liberal feminist, Steinem has repeatedly characterized herself as a radical feminist. More importantly, she has repudiated categorization within feminism as “nonconstructive to specific problems,” saying: “I’ve turned up in every category. So it makes it harder for me to take the divisions with great seriousness.”

Notable Writing: Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983) is a compilation of 20 years of Steinem’s writing.

Selected Quotes:

‪"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.“‬

“Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.“‪

“Men should think twice before making widowhood women’s only path to power.“‬‬

Gerda Lerner (1920-2013)

Austrian-born American historian and feminist author. In addition to her numerous scholarly publications, she wrote poetry, fiction, theater pieces, screenplays, and an autobiography.

Notable Writing: Women and History, Vol. I The Creation of Patriarchy (1986), Vol. II The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to 1870 (1993)

Selected Quote: “Women have been kept from contributing to History-making, that is, the ordering and interpretation of the past of humankind. Since this process of meaning-giving is essential to the creation and perpetuation of civilization, we can see at once that women’s marginality in this endeavor places us in a unique and segregate position. Women are the majority, yet we are structured into social institutions as though we were a minority.” -The Creation of Patriarchy

Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

Rich was called “one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century”, and was credited with bringing “the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse. According to her, she prefers to use the term “women’s liberation” rather than feminism. For her, the latter term is more likely to induce resistance from women of the next generation. Also, she fears that the term would amount to nothing more than a label if it is used extensively.

Notable Writing: Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (1986)

Selected Quote: “The failure to examine heterosexuality as an institution is like failing to admit that the economic system called capitalism or the caste system of racism is maintained by a variety of forces, including both physical violence and false consciousness.” -Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence

Joanna Russ (1937-2011)

Russ was an American writer, academic and radical feminist. She is the author of a number of works of science fiction, fantasy and feminist literary criticism.

Notable Writing: How to Suppress Women’s Writing

Selected Quote:

Men succeed. Women get married.

Men fail. Women get married.

Men enter monasteries. Women get married.

Men start wars. Women get married.

Men stop them. Women get married.

Dull, dull.

Joanna Russ, The Female Man, 1975, p. 126.

Gail Dines (1958- )

Dines specializes in the study of pornography. Described in 2010 as the world’s leading anti-pornography campaigner, she is a founding member of Stop Porn Culture and founder of Culture Reframed, created to address pornography as a public-health crisis.

Notable Writing: Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality (2010)

Selected Quote: “Women are still being held captive by images that ultimately tell lies about women. The biggest lie is that conforming to this hypersexualized image will give women real power in the world, since in a porn culture, our power rests, we are told, not in our ability to shape the institutions that determine our life chances but in having a hot body that men desire and women envy.” -Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality

Emma Goldman (1869-1940)

During her life, Goldman was lionized as a freethinking “rebel woman” by admirers, and denounced by detractors as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution. Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. After decades of obscurity, Goldman gained iconic status in the 1970s by a revival of interest in her life, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest.

Although hostile to first-wave feminism and its suffragist goals, Emma Goldman advocated passionately for the rights of women and is today heralded as a founder of anarcha-feminism. In 1897, she wrote: “I demand the independence of woman, her right to support herself; to live for herself; to love whomever she pleases, or as many as she pleases. I demand freedom for both sexes, freedom of action, freedom in love and freedom in motherhood”.In 1906, Goldman wrote a piece entitled “The Tragedy of Woman’s Emancipation" in which she argued that traditional suffragists and first-wave feminists were achieving only a superficial good for women by pursuing the vote and a movement from the home sphere.

Notable Writing: Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), Marriage And Love (1911)

Selected Quote: “If, however, woman is free and big enough to learn the mystery of sex without the sanction of State or Church, she will stand condemned as utterly unfit to become the wife of a ‘good’ man, his goodness consisting of an empty head and plenty of money. Can there be anything more outrageous than the idea that a healthy, grown woman, full of life and passion, must deny nature’s demand, must subdue her most intense craving, undermine her health and break her spirit, must stunt her vision, abstain from the depth and glory of sex experience until a ‘good’ man comes along to take her unto himself as a wife? That is precisely what marriage means. How can such an arrangement end except in failure? This is one, though not the least important, factor of marriage, which differentiates it from love.” -Marriage and Love

Susan Griffin (1943- )

Susan Griffin is a radical feminist philosopher, essayist and playwright particularly known for her innovative, hybrid-form ecofeminist works. Griffin has written 21 books, including works of nonfiction, poetry, anthologies, plays, and a screenplay. Her work has been translated into over 12 languages. Griffin describes her work as “draw[ing] connections between the destruction of nature, the diminishment of women and racism, and trac[ing] the causes of war to denial in both private and public life." Griffin articulated her anti-pornography feminism in "Pornography and Silence: Culture’s Revenge Against Nature”. In this work she makes the case that although the pursuit of “political freedom”, especially freedom of speech, could lead to a position against the censorship of pornography, in the case of pornography the freedom to create pornography leads to a compromise of “human liberation” when this term includes liberation for all of humankind including the emancipation of women. She argues against the collapse of pornography and eros, arguing that they are separate and opposing ideas. Her work Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her is believed to have launched ecofeminism in the United States.

Susan Griffin is featured in the feminist history film She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry.

Notable Writing: Pornography and Silence: Culture’s Revenge Against Nature (1981), Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (1978), Rape: The Politics of Consciousness (1986), A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War (1992)

Selected Quote: “He says that woman speaks with nature. That she hears voices from under the earth. That wind blows in her ears and trees whisper to her. That the dead sing through her mouth and the cries of infants are clear to her. But for him this dialogue is over. He says he is not part of this world, that he was set on this world as a stranger. He sets himself apart from woman and nature. And so it is Goldilocks who goes to the home of the three bears, Little Red Riding Hood who converses with the wolf, Dorothy who befriends a lion, Snow White who talks to the birds, Cinderella with mice as her allies, the Mermaid who is half fish, Thumbelina courted by a mole. (And when we hear in the Navaho chant of the mountain that a grown man sits and smokes with bears and follows directions given to him by squirrels, we are surprised. We had thought only little girls spoke with animals.) We are the bird’s eggs. Bird’s eggs, flowers, butterflies, rabbits, cows, sheep; we are caterpillars; we are leaves of ivy and sprigs of wallflower. We are women. We rise from the wave. We are gazelle and doe, elephant and whale, lilies and roses and peach, we are air, we are flame, we are oyster and pearl, we are girls. We are woman and nature. And he says he cannot hear us speak. But we hear.”

- Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her

Sandra Lee Bartky (1935-2016)

Sandra Lee Bartky was a professor of philosophy and gender studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her main research areas were feminism and phenomenology. In 1977, Bartky became an associate of the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP). WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media.

Professor Bartky was a founder of the Gender and Women’s Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a founding member of the Society for Women in Philosophy in 1971.

She argued that women were subconsciously submitting to men by accepting an unnatural cultural standard for the ideal female body — what she called the “tyranny of slenderness”. (x)

Notable Writing: "The Phenomenology of Feminist Consciousness” (1979) “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power” (1979), “Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance”, Femininity and Domination (1990)

Selected Quote: “The disciplinary project of femininity is a ‘set-up’: it requires such radical and extensive measures of bodily transformation that virtually every woman who gives herself to it is destined in some degree to fail.”

-Bartky, “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power”