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Daring to Be Bad

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Alice Echols reveals how current debates about race, transgender rights, queer theory, and sexuality echo issues that galvanized and divided feminists fifty years ago.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 22, 2024

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This video video provides a detailed narrative about the author's research into radical feminism during the early 1980s, exploring its historical context and evolution. As a graduate student, the author sought to write a dissertation on the 1960s, reflecting on their own peripheral involvement in activism, particularly in Washington D.C., around that time. Initially, there was a cultural prohibition against writing about the recent past, but this began to change as notable books on the 1960s and feminism emerged, highlighting gaps in historical understanding, particularly regarding radical feminism. The author emphasizes that radical feminism was often misrepresented and overshadowed by liberal feminism, which dominated discussions of women's rights. The focus of radical feminists on issues like bodily autonomy, reproductive rights, and a critique of traditional gender roles presented a more comprehensive and transformative vision for feminist politics. This video video radical perspective emerged from the New Left and the Civil Rights Movement, challenging not only the societal norms of the time but also the frameworks within which feminism itself was discussed. As the author conducted extensive interviews with women involved in the radical feminist movement, they recognized a tension within feminism: some sought to celebrate femininity while others aimed to reject traditional femininity altogether. The narrative captures the internal conflicts within the movement, particularly around issues like sexuality, race, and class, which led to significant debates, including the "sex wars" of the late 1970s to early 1990s. Overall, the text reveals how radical feminism, while often marginalized, laid the groundwork for significant feminist advances and sought to address the deeper societal structures underpinning women's oppression, ultimately pushing the feminist movement toward a more inclusive and holistic understanding of gender and societal power dynamics.

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Here are some key quotes extracted from the video:

1. **On the initial research motivation:**
- "I had always wanted to write about the 1960s, which I had been very peripherally involved in."

2. **On the challenges of writing about the recent past:**
- "There was this prohibition against writing about the recent past. I, I think that that's lessened somewhat... it wasn't considered kosher... to be writing about the recent past."

3. **On the influence of recent publications:**
- "Then these books about the sixties began to be published... if these people... are doing it and they're young."

4. **On the distortion of radical feminism:**
- "To the extent that it wasn't remembered... it was usually... a pretty distorted version of it. Radical feminists were man haters. That's about as far as it went."

5. **On the overlooked aspects of feminism:**
- "...liberal feminism... would get credited with feminism's successes... I felt lost in this... what were the most visionary parts of second wave feminism."

6. **On radical feminism's emergence:**
- "Radical feminism was... as I was writing... evolving in ways that seemed to me to be fundamentally at odds with some of the founding ideas of radical feminism."

7. **On the importance of personal experiences:**
- "Radical feminism took very seriously the sixties idea that the personal is political."

8. **On the differences between feminist movements:**
- "What was radical feminism? It insisted that the oppression of women was fundamental, maybe even the primary oppression from which all else followed."

9. **On the aspect of autonomy in radical feminism:**
- "Radical feminists... believed that it required the formation of an independent movement that would be autonomous from other sixties movements."

10. **On the dynamic nature of feminism:**
- "Social movements are always changing. They're dynamic... it was a very different animal from what it would become."

11. **On the tensions within radical feminism:**
- "Within radical feminism, there were those who wanted to celebrate women and femaleness, and those who wanted to rebel against the feminine."

12. **On the backlash within the feminist movement:**
- "When activists try to set down the law... it's almost bound to cause a backlash from people who don’t feel seen and don’t feel validated."

These quotes encapsulate some of the central themes of the speaker's research and perspective on radical feminism, its historical convideo, and its evolution over time.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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I began to research that book in the early 1980s,

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and I was a graduate student

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and PhD students have to do something,

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which is write a dissertation.

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So I was looking around

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and I had always wanted to write about the 1960s,

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which I had been very peripherally involved in.

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I graduated high school in 1969 in Washington DC which,

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you know, there was a fair amount of activism at that point,

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it's fair to say.

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But there was this prohibition

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against writing about the recent past.

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I, I think that that's lessened somewhat,

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but certainly when I was a graduate student, it,

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it wasn't considered kosher as, you know, you might say,

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to be writing about the recent past.

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But then these books about the sixties began

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to be published, and I'm thinking here

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of Claiborne Carson's in Struggle about the Student

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Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which was the most sort

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of militant, group of the Civil Rights movement.

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And then Sarah Evans wrote a book about the woman's

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liberation movement of the 1960s.

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And I began to think, wow, gosh, you know, if these people,

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they're professional historians,

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if they're doing it and they're young.

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And the other thing was Sarah Evans's personal politics

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effectively ended in 1968, which was just

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as radical feminism, which I'll get to in a minute,

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was beginning to grow.

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And I looked at the situation

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and I thought, aha, there is a lacuna here,

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there is an opportunity,

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there's a whole right history of graphical hole.

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So there was that. As a graduate student, I was also aware

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as somebody who had been, as I said, sort

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of tangentially involved in activism, that there was this

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sort of culture wide in America, this sort of forgetting

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of radical feminism.

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Um, and to the extent that it wasn't remembered

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that it was ever remembered, it was usually rem

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what was remembered was a pretty distorted version of it.

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Radical feminists were man haters.

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That's about as far as it went.

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And so,

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and I could also see in the, the sort

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of little thumbnail sketches

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that you would get in textbooks, college textbooks,

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that when feminism was mentioned, the only part of feminism

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that would get mentioned would be liberal feminism.

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And it was usually liberal feminism,

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and in particular, the National Organization for Women,

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or now that would get credited with feminism's successes.

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So I felt lost in this was what were the most, some

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of the most visionary parts of second wave feminism,

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which were put forward initially by radical feminists, such

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as the importance of women's bodily self-determination,

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which led them to attack restrictive abortion laws,

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biased rape laws, incest, domestic violence,

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and enforced heterosexuality.

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All of that really derived from feminism

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that was calling itself radical feminism.

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It was audacious, it was daring,

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thus, the title of the book.

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And it pushed liberal feminist groups

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and indeed other feminist groups across that pol

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that the political spectrum of feminism to change,

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to take more far reaching positions.

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So that was the other thing. The third thing was reaganism.

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As I was conceiving this book, and as I was researching it

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and writing it, it was during the Reagan years,

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and Central to Reaganism was a pushback against the sixties.

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It sometimes felt to me, as I've written

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before, as though the Reagan administration

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and the GOP was yanking the country

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into reverse gear back into the 1950s.

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This was the era in which the Equal Rights Amendment died,

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which it died finally in 1982.

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Um, it was the era in which abortion rights,

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school desegregation,

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affirmative action were all under attack.

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And finally, radical feminism was not lost on me.

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That radical feminism was as I was writing.

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And this had been true for a little while.

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It was evolving in ways that seemed to me

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to be fundamentally at odds with some of the founding ideas

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of radical feminism.

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First of all, you know, there wasn't a lot

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of secondary literature

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because, you know, the way I like to research is I like to

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read the secondary literature,

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or at least begin reading it, get a sense of

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what other people have have written about it.

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There was virtually nothing on feminism.

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There was, you know, Sarah Evans' book,

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which was very important.

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Um, and there was some material on the Black Freedom

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Movement, the Civil Rights Movement on the new left.

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Um, so I acquainted myself with all of

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that first wave of feminism.

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And then I was very lucky

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because I was a graduate student at the University

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of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

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And in Ann Arbor there was a collection called the Labate

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Collection, which is a collection of radical slash extremist

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literature, but it really tends to focus on the left,

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on left wing, progressive expressions of radicalism.

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And there I was able to systematically go

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through back issues of, all kinds of magazines

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and periodicals of both

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The new left SDS students for a Democratic society,

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in particular, the publications that were associated

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with SNC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,

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and all of the newspapers that grew up

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in the late sixties

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and early seventies that were related to

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the Woman's Liberation movement.

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But still, you know,

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I couldn't have written this book had I not created my own

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archive, which involved doing oral histories with 41 women.

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Um, and these were quite extensive undertakings,

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and it meant getting, having a, a kind of entree into

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the world of these, founders

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of radical feminism.

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I focused on New York City, which was where it kind

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of first really developed.

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Um, and it's, you know, I would say now

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that it is a weakest, a sort of weakness of the book,

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that it's so New York centric.

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Um, there were some in New York, I mean,

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there were some in Washington, there were some in Chicago

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and in various other places, Boston.

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But for the most part, I was focused on New York City,

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and it was those long interviews, sometimes two to three,

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to four to five, six hours long, you know, that

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really gave me the material that made it possible for me

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to write daring to be bad.

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First of all, I wanna say,

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because people, especially young people today,

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when they hear the word rad, the term radical feminism,

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they think, my God, it's transphobic.

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And it's true that there are people who have

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long identified as radical feminists whose views

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would be considered transphobic.

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That is true, but it's not the case that

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radical feminism was across the board in any way, shape,

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or form transphobic 50 years ago.

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Um, so I just wanted to make that clear.

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I'm talking about what it looked like in the book,

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what it looked like from really about 1967 through

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to the beginning of the eighties.

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So radical feminism occupied

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a very dynamic and heterodox corner of second wave feminism.

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It grew out of the New Left and the Black Freedom Movement.

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And it was in those movements that women,

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young women both learned a lot about political organizing,

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but also, and this was particularly true of white women

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for a complicated set of reasons,

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felt themselves stymied, felt

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as though they were second class citizens.

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Um, and we can talk about this later,

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because I think the experience

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of black women in the Civil rights movement

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was distinctly different.

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But for white, young white women who saw themselves

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as radicals and were involved in these

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movements, they experienced them

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As male dominated ones in which they learned a lot.

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But nonetheless, male dominated movements, radical feminism,

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and another kind of feminism,

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which called itself socialist feminism

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emerged from the new left

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and the Civil Rights Movement, the differences between them,

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however, are,

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and this is a way of answering your question,

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what is radical feminism?

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What was it was that radical feminism insisted

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that the oppression of women was fundamental, maybe even

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the primary oppression from which all else followed.

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And they also felt that it required the formation

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of an independent movement

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that would be autonomous from other sixties movements.

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And it has to be said, really, you know,

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that these other sixties movements, which were male dominant

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were fairly hostile to feminism.

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I mean, not fairly. They were hostile to fem.

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Many of them were, many of the men involved were hostile

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to feminism and some of the women too.

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Um, there was another big difference, I would say

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between radical feminists

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and socialist feminists, which was

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that radical feminists really wanted to start from scratch.

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Theoretically, they rejected all received orthodoxies.

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So while they were anti-capitalist,

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and quite explicitly so they also believed that Karl Marx

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and any, any other important left wing thinkers

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that you could think of, didn't know anything about women.

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And what they had, like engles, what they had advanced,

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was not of much use to them.

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So they wanted to start from scratch, and they wanted,

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and their idea of how best to do that was

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to practice something that was called consciousness raising,

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where women would talk amongst themselves in small groups

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about their experiences,

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and from those experiences would try to build theory.

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Now, this was something that

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in many ways, I wouldn't say

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that socialist feminists didn't practice C cr,

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but this was forged by radical feminists.

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Um, the other important difference is that

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they really did believe,

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and socialist feminists were more equivocal here,

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I would say they believed that people needed to organize

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around their own oppression, not the oppression

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of other people, as many

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of them had done in the Civil Rights Movement when they had

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been sort of the support troops

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for the Civil Rights Movement.

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Another key thing about radical feminism,

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more than socialist feminism,

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certainly more than liberal feminism, radical feminism,

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took very seriously the sixties idea

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that the personal is political.

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It showed more than any of the other movements

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that personal life really truly is embedded in larger

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circuitries of power.

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Who cooks the meals, who changes the baby's diapers,

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who makes the bed, who foregoes the orgasms

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and the interest of their boyfriends or husbands?

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That was political.

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It wasn't simply the way things are

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and the way that things have to be.

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It was political.

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So what others saw as kind of inevitable, timeless,

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you know, women get married, they don't work outside

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of the home, or if they do, they work only for pin money,

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that women are heterosexual, of course,

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unless they're deviant, that they must conform to kind

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of prevailing conventions of femininity.

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Those were things that radical feminists took on.

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Uh, Stein, at full throttle,

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they created rape crisis centers, battered women's shelters,

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women's bookstores, music festivals as for liberal feminism,

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the challenge that they pose to liberal

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feminists was that you see,

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liberal feminists were very much about trying to increase

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women's participation in the public arena on equal

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terms to those of men.

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That was now's remit national organization from that was,

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you know, it was about getting women in the public arena on

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equal, on an equal footing with men.

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And radical feminists said, Hey, the only way that

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that is gonna work if you is,

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if you do also address the iniquities

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in personal life, including in families.

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So you had the leading liberal feminist, Betty Friedan,

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the author of The Feminine Mystique,

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which had been very influential

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by the mid seventies, even earlier.

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She is attacking radical feminism

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for focusing on the personal.

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She talks about it as naval gazing,

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and she's very critical of it.

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But it's interesting

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because at the same time that Free Dan is doing that,

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the constituency within

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these now chapters is moving to the left

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and moving to some extent into the arms of radical feminism.

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And so there's, it's, it can be difficult by the time we get

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to the late seventies to really make meaningful distinctions

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between liberal, some liberal feminists

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and some radical feminists.

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Because very often by that point, there are some of them

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that are working together.

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And, you know, even now begins, now chapters begin

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to run their own consciousness raising groups,

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which is an interesting development.

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So they're really borrowing, I mean, see, radical feminism

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Is like the radical engine, you know,

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that gets everything going.

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Now it does cut out.

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But the beneficiary of all of that,

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I would say more than any other group, is liberal feminism.

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I spend a lot of time in the book,

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writing about the evolution of radical feminism.

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And I think one of the important things just to, to sort

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of create some context here is that of course, you know,

15:17.565 --> 15:19.485
social movements are always changing.

15:19.555 --> 15:21.805
They're dynamic. You know, if you were

15:21.805 --> 15:23.605
to look at the sixties movements, if you were

15:23.605 --> 15:26.085
to look at the new left, the, you know, the new left

15:27.345 --> 15:30.485
as it began to take shape in let's say 62

15:30.505 --> 15:34.525
and 63, it was a very different animal from

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what it would become just three to four years later.

15:38.105 --> 15:42.365
You know, initially a movement that sort of thought, well,

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you know, the working class is not the

15:46.005 --> 15:47.525
revolutionary agent of change.

15:47.825 --> 15:49.965
You know, we have to look to students and,

15:50.625 --> 15:51.925
and also black people

15:52.265 --> 15:56.405
and intellectuals, you know, we can't go back to Marx

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and Lennon and all of that.

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Well, by the time we get to 67, 68, 69, it's like,

16:02.505 --> 16:06.245
my god, you know, just one resurrection, a

16:06.265 --> 16:08.805
of another, of some left wing thinker, right?

16:09.905 --> 16:12.805
And so, you know, they completely change

16:13.465 --> 16:17.765
people in the, the radical wing of the civil rights movement

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who had understood non-violence

16:21.025 --> 16:24.885
and inter racialism as radical, you know,

16:25.185 --> 16:29.285
by 19 65, 66, they're questioning it.

16:29.285 --> 16:31.325
They've become increasingly skeptical

16:31.425 --> 16:32.605
and they move away from it.

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So these, so these movements are, movements are dynamic.

16:37.105 --> 16:39.285
And within feminism,

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and within radical feminism in particular, I think one

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of the things that's really important to understand,

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and, another scholar, who is no longer with us,

16:50.985 --> 16:54.725
an sau pointed to this, a number of years ago,

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she wrote a, a terrific article called a Gender Diary,

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in which, which she begins by saying, you know,

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she's talking about, the friendships

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that she had in an early consciousness racing group,

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and she was one of the founders

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of radical feminism in New York.

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And what she says is, you know, she, she began to,

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to discover several years

17:18.455 --> 17:22.965
after they were meeting that what for her had always been

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the sort of great joy

17:25.065 --> 17:27.565
and revelation of radical feminism was

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that you didn't have to be a woman.

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You know, you could break gender conventions,

17:33.265 --> 17:36.005
but for some of her very best friends,

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it was not that at all.

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Feminism enabled them to feel good about being a woman.

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So there were those from the very beginning.

17:45.925 --> 17:48.165
Within radical feminism, there were those

17:48.745 --> 17:51.845
Who wanted to celebrate women and femaleness,

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and those who wanted to rebel against the feminine.

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So there was always a tension,

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and it wasn't one that, you know, even some

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of the smartest people in the movement were even aware

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of at first, which is, which is interesting.

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Gradually, some radical feminists begin to argue

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that what feminism really needed

18:14.475 --> 18:17.035
to be focused on was creating a kind

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of female counterculture in which,

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what they called woman identified values,

18:23.255 --> 18:24.755
not male identified values,

18:24.775 --> 18:27.995
but women identified values would holds way.

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This is not unlike what happened a few years earlier

18:31.815 --> 18:33.955
in the Black Freedom Movement with the move

18:33.955 --> 18:35.075
to black consciousness

18:35.335 --> 18:39.355
and this need to try to felt, need to try

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to develop a uniquely black set of cultural

18:42.995 --> 18:44.035
practices and values.

18:45.055 --> 18:49.515
Um, in any case, the other piece of this,

18:49.665 --> 18:52.755
it's important to know in order to make sense of

18:52.755 --> 18:56.635
what happens in this, in this shift, is

18:56.635 --> 19:00.435
that second wave feminists had already been doing battle

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about they, you know,

19:03.055 --> 19:06.315
they'd been having these incredibly acrimonious battles

19:06.315 --> 19:07.355
around sex

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and in particular around lesbianism.

19:11.575 --> 19:16.235
And those began to take shape around 71, 72, 73, 74.

19:16.855 --> 19:21.405
Um, was lesbianism really the

19:21.405 --> 19:23.045
correct feminist position?

19:23.745 --> 19:28.205
Um, one famous feminist said, feminism is the theory

19:28.265 --> 19:29.885
and lesbianism is the practice.

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And some women thought that was right,

19:31.825 --> 19:34.525
and others thought that was complete, you know, BS

19:35.305 --> 19:37.445
And there were also a lot of fights about class

19:37.625 --> 19:38.725
and class privilege.

19:38.725 --> 19:40.565
There were a lot of fights about race

19:40.665 --> 19:42.485
and racial privilege,

19:42.715 --> 19:44.525
what was then called white skin privilege.

19:45.465 --> 19:49.365
And so this shift towards a kind of embrace

19:49.905 --> 19:51.125
of sisterhood

19:51.345 --> 19:55.305
and female, a set of female counter values,

19:56.125 --> 19:59.785
seemed to me an effort to put those kinds

20:00.025 --> 20:03.905
of acrimonious differences aside in order

20:04.005 --> 20:07.025
to proclaim a kind of great sisterhood of women

20:08.325 --> 20:10.185
and to build specifically women's

20:10.185 --> 20:12.065
institutions and communities.

20:12.925 --> 20:15.945
And so I think it was in some ways a kind

20:15.945 --> 20:18.345
of reaction against the turmoil

20:18.535 --> 20:21.465
that had engulfed feminism in conflict

20:22.525 --> 20:25.745
and in practice, though, as they tried to create this,

20:25.845 --> 20:30.105
you know, this sort of, these communities rooted in,

20:30.845 --> 20:32.105
female identified

20:32.105 --> 20:36.985
or woman identified values, it, it, it actually,

20:37.445 --> 20:38.825
had the opposite effect.

20:39.205 --> 20:42.425
Um, it meant drawing lines between women.

20:42.715 --> 20:46.825
There were women who assumed to, as part of this shift

20:46.885 --> 20:49.005
To what I call cultural feminism

20:49.005 --> 20:52.645
and other people had called it as well, there were women

20:52.745 --> 20:55.925
who were aligned with that shift who were saying that,

20:55.945 --> 20:58.165
you know, men and women are fundamentally different.

20:58.585 --> 21:00.285
And women, you know,

21:00.435 --> 21:02.605
when they would write about women in their sexuality,

21:02.755 --> 21:06.605
they would write about it in terms of their sensuality

21:06.825 --> 21:08.085
or their eroticism,

21:08.745 --> 21:12.565
and they would write about men as being highly

21:13.375 --> 21:16.005
sexualized, if not oversexualized.

21:16.905 --> 21:21.385
And so that kind of them

21:21.385 --> 21:24.275
and us, right men

21:24.355 --> 21:29.235
and women made some other radical feminists say,

21:29.935 --> 21:32.475
aren't we just reproducing the old

21:32.475 --> 21:34.155
assumptions about men and women?

21:35.155 --> 21:37.175
You know, is that what's happening here?

21:37.835 --> 21:42.615
And this would break out into a much bigger fight that

21:43.605 --> 21:47.935
many people have characterized as the sex wars that sort

21:47.935 --> 21:51.815
of debilitated feminism for a period of time,

21:51.815 --> 21:53.455
beginning in the late seventies

21:53.635 --> 21:57.175
and reaching through really until the early 1990s.

21:57.635 --> 21:59.895
And it was a fight about pornography

22:00.275 --> 22:03.815
and what to do about pornography, if anything,

22:04.075 --> 22:06.855
and about certain sexual styles and practices.

22:07.195 --> 22:11.255
And it, it ended up sort of getting resolved, I would say,

22:11.275 --> 22:12.375
by the early nineties.

22:12.395 --> 22:14.535
But I think it's still a kind of active issue.

22:14.635 --> 22:19.055
You know, how women, how we should think about,

22:19.385 --> 22:23.135
about sex and sexuality if there are particularly

22:23.655 --> 22:27.015
feminist man, you know, expressions or manifestations.

22:27.915 --> 22:31.695
Um, but it, it was a very, very rancorous period.

22:32.475 --> 22:35.255
And so I think it's, it's an irony and,

22:36.475 --> 22:38.375
and I don't think it's unique to feminism.

22:38.615 --> 22:42.655
I think when people try to, when activists try to

22:43.525 --> 22:47.015
sort of set down the law, you know, draw

22:47.695 --> 22:48.975
a line in the sand and,

22:49.155 --> 22:51.935
and say, well, this is what we're about

22:52.195 --> 22:54.615
and we're about, in this case women identified values,

22:55.765 --> 22:59.895
it's almost bound to cause a backlash

23:00.565 --> 23:03.135
from people who, who don't feel seen

23:03.555 --> 23:06.095
and don't feel, validated.

23:06.875 --> 23:10.135
And that is what happened in, in that period.

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