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Radical Feminist Movement
Second-wave feminism was diverse in its causes and goals. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, parallel with the counterculture movements, women with more radical ideas about feminist goals began to organize. In her work, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975, historian Alice Echols gives a thorough description of the short-lived movement. The radical feminists were after not only the end of female oppression by men but, as Echols notes, “They also fought for safe, effective, accessible contraception; the repeal of all abortion laws; the creation of high-quality, community-controlled child-care centers; and an end to the media’s objectification of women. ”

Small protests and signs of a larger support for radical feminism became more cohesive during the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) June 1967 National Convention in Ann Arbor. The “Women’s Liberation Workshop” denounced sexual inequality and stated, “As we analyze the position of women in capitalist society and especially the United States we find that women are in a colonial relationship to men and we recognize ourselves as part of the Third World. ” Co-written by Jane Addams, one of the most prominent women in SDS, they argued that women’s place within SDS was subordinate and revolution could not succeed without women’s liberation.

While radical feminists agreed that a separate movement for them was needed, how that movement looked and its ultimate goals caused much divide. They questioned whether they should include men within their movement, whether they should focus on issues of war and race, and who or what it was they were exactly rallying against. There were also issues concerning African American women within the movement; while the radical feminists felt gender to be the greatest issue, African American women were also very much concerned with racism. Despite being inspired by the black power movement, radical feminists had difficulty figuring out a place for race within their gender-centric movement. They were also divided over the place of lesbianism in the movement.

Notable radical feminist groups included Redstockings, founded in 1969. The group focused on power dynamics in gender and promoted consciousness-raising and distributing movement literature for free. Cell 16, founded in 1968, was a much more militant group arguing that women were conditioned by their sex-roles. The Feminists, founded by Ti-Grace Atkinson in 1968, claimed women were complicit in their oppression and needed to shed conventional gender roles. New York Radical Feminists, founded in 1969, also found maleness to be the greater issue than power roles. They were interested in building a larger movement through mass numbers in New York City.

Echols describes the movement’s end; “Radical feminism remained the hegemonic tendency with the women’s liberation movement until 1973 when cultural feminism began to cohere and challenge its dominance. After 1975, a year of internecine conflicts between radical and cultural feminists, cultural feminism eclipsed radical feminism as the dominant tendency within the women’s liberation movement, and, as a consequence, liberal feminism became the recognized voice of the women’s movement. ” The end of the counterculture movements and the government’s observation of the movement also contributed to its end. The Radical Feminist movement demonstrated that Second Wave feminism was diverse in its goals, but also divided within itself. Echols notes, “To many women, liberal feminism’s considerably more modest goal of bringing women into the mainstream seemed more palatable, not to mention more realistic, than the radical feminist project of fundamentally reconstructing private and public life. ” She also states that despite the fact that younger generations don’t often see this movement as relevant, it is because feminism actually did make significant changes.