Redstockings

Redstockings, also known as Redstockings of the Women's Liberation Movement, is a radical feminist nonprofit that was founded in January 1969 in New York City, whose goal is "To Defend and Advance the Women's Liberation Agenda". The group's name is derived from bluestocking, a term used to disparage feminist intellectuals of earlier centuries, and red, for its association with the revolutionary left.

History

The group was started by Ellen Willis and Shulamith Firestone in January 1969, after the breakup of New York Radical Women. Other early members included Kathie Sarachild, Patricia Mainardi, Barbara Leon, Corrine Grad Coleman, Lucinda Cisler, Irene Peslikis, and Alix Kates Shulman. Firestone soon split with the group to form New York Radical Feminists, along with Anne Koedt. Rita Mae Brown was also briefly a member during 1970. The group was mainly active in New York City, where most of the group's members resided, and later also in Gainesville, Florida. A group called Redstockings West was started in San Francisco in 1969, but was independent of the East Coast group. Redstockings went through several phases of activity and inactivity; they first split up in 1970 and were formally refounded in 1973 by Sarachild, Carol Hanisch, Mainardi, and Leon. (Willis was involved only peripherally with the re-formed group.)

One of the group's earliest actions was on February 13, 1969, when members stormed a hearing of the New York State Joint Legislative Committee on Public Health, which was considering abortion law reform. They objected to the hearing, asking: "Why are 14 men and only one woman on your list of speakers—and she's a nun?" The committee chairman countered that these were the experts on the subject, which further enraged the Redstockings women, whose position was that there were no better experts on abortion than women, and that abortion law needed to be repealed rather than reformed.

About a month later, Redstockings soon held its own "hearing", an open meeting in the Washington Square Methodist Church, where twelve women testified about their experiences with illegal abortion. The March "speakout" was Redstockings' opportunity to hear testimony of those they felt were the experts: "We are the true experts, the only experts, we who have had abortions," one of the twelve said. One of the women in attendance was Gloria Steinem, who would years later identify the meeting as a milestone in her feminist activism.

In the early 1970s, Redstockings were noted for their "speakouts" and Zap (action) and street theater on the issue of abortion rights. (This style of protest was emulated by an early-1980s pro-choice group, No More Nice Girls, one of the founders of which was Redstockings veteran, Ellen Willis.)

On March 3, 1989, Redstockings met again at the Washington Square Methodist Church to commemorate the 20th anniversary of their 1969 meeting, at a speakout called "Abortion: Women Tell it Like it Is, Was, and Ought to Be...1969-1989."

More recently, the group leads a project to make available, through the Women's Liberation Archives for Action, radical feminist papers and original source organizing material building on their concept "History for Activist Use"; the project also puts out new theory on women's oppression and what to do about it. In 2001, they released a book called Confronting the Myth of America: Women's Liberation and National Health Care. As of 2006, the group is active and operates a website, though Sarachild is the only original member still active with the group.

External Links

• A Voice for Men

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