New York Radical Women

Not to be confused with New York Radical Feminists, another group co-founded by Shulamith Firestone; or Radical Women, a socialist feminist organization founded in 1967.

New York Radical Women was an early second-wave feminist group that existed from 1967–1969.

NYRW was founded in New York City in the fall of 1967, by Shulamith Firestone and Pam Allen. Early members included: Ros Baxandall, Carol Hanisch, Patricia Mainardi, Robin Morgan, Irene Peslikis, Kathie Sarachild, and Ellen Willis.^[1][2] New York Radical Women were a group of young friends in their twenties who were part of the New Left, who had grown tired of the male-dominated civil rights and antiwar movements, and men who they saw as still preferring their female counterparts to stay at home.^[3]

The first major protest NYRW attended was the Jeannette Rankin Brigade Protest in Washington, D.C., on January 15, 1968.^[4] Members of NYRW led an alternative protest event, a "burial of traditional womanhood", held in Arlington National Cemetery. NYRW also participated in the first major Women's Liberation Movement (WLM) demonstration, the Miss America Protest in Atlantic City, NJ, on September 7, 1968. The final national WLM event to occur while the NYRW group was still intact was the Counter-Inauguration in Washington DC, in January 1969. The protest was designed to be against women who supported the Vietnam War.^[4] Protestors were sent invitations telling them not to bring flowers or even to cry at the 'burial', but to be prepared to bury traditional female roles.^[4]

By 1969, the various ideological tendencies within the group had coalesced into a radical feminist faction and a socialist feminist (or "politico") faction. Tension between the two factions ended up splitting the group in January 1969; the socialist feminists, such as Robin Morgan, left to form Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (W.I.T.C.H.), while the radical feminists around Shulamith Firestone started Redstockings.^[1][2]

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Maren Lockwood Carden, The New Feminist Movement (1974, Russell Sage Foundation)
2. ^ ^{a b} Echols, Alice. Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America
3. ^ Maurice Isserman & Michael Kazin, America Divided, (New York, Oxford University press, 2000)
4. ^ ^{a b c} Shulamith Firestone, Jeanette Rankin Brigade, Women Power?: Notes from the first year: Documents on Women’s Liberation, (1968, New York, Duke University)

External links

• Notes From the First Year, New York Radical Women, 1968.