After famed authors and feminist activists Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt left Redstockings and The Feminists, (also known as Feminists—A Political Organization to Annihilate Sex Roles, who were big advocators for cellibacy, which is probably why they were very small) in 1969, another famed author, Vivian Gornick wrote an article for the Village Voice entitled "The Next Great Moment in History Is Theirs," announcing the emergence of a new New York feminist group. She writes, “But there’s one great thing about these chicks: if five feminists fall out with six groups, within half an hour they’ll all find each other (probably somewhere on Bleecker Street), within 48 hours a new splinter faction will have announced its existence, and within two weeks the manifesto is being mailed out. It’s the mark of a true movement. Two extremely intelligent and winning feminists who are about to “emerge” as part of a new group are Shulamith Firestone, an ex-Redstocking, and Anne Koedt, an ex-Feminist, and both members of the original radical group, New York Radical Women. They feel that none of the groups now going has the capacity to build a broad mass movement among the women of this country and they intend to start one that will. Both are dedicated to social revolution and agree with many of the ideas of many of the other radical groups. Each one, in her own words, comes equipped with “impeccable revolutionary credentials.” They come out of the Chicago SDS and the New York civil rights movement. Interestingly enough, like many of the radical women in this movement, they were converted to feminism because in their participation in the New Left they met with intolerable female discrimination. (“Yeah, baby, comes the revolution.… Meanwhile, you make the coffee and later I’ll tell you where to hand out the leaflets.” And when they raised the issue of women’s rights with their radical young men, they were greeted with furious denunciations of introducing divisive issues! (Excuse me, but haven’t we been here before?)” She also included a contact address and phone number. As a result, the piece raised much public interest. The group was later revealed to be New York Radical Feminists. NYRF prided itself on the way it was organized. There was no authority; it was divided into small factions named after notable feminists of the past; Koedt and Firestone led the Stanton-Anthony Brigade. The group’s main philosophy was, and this still holds true for us today, that men deliberately keep force, power, authority and property over women to build up their egos, and that women are raised to be subservient and in turn internalize their subordination by diminishing their own egos. NYRF activities included holding a monthly consciousness raising meeting, publishing a regular newsletter, and maintaining a speaker's bureau. They also organized a number of public conferences and speakouts through the early to mid-1970s on topics such as rape, sexual abuse, prostitution, marriage, lesbianism, motherhood, illegitimacy, class, and work. Notable social worker, Florence Rush introduced The Freudian Coverup in her presentation "The Sexual Abuse of Children: A Feminist Point of View," about childhood sexual abuse and incest, at the April 1971 NYRF Rape Conference. Rush's paper at the time was the first challenge to Freudian theories of children as the seducers of adults rather than the victims of adults' sexual/power exploitation. Firestone participated in many actions throughout her life such as picketing a Miss America Contest, organizing a funeral for womanhood known as "The Burial of Traditional Womanhood", protesting sexual harassment at Madison Square Garden, organizing abortion speak outs, and disrupting abortion legislation meetings.
I personally would love to see events like this happening again today. Where are OUR Shulamith Firestones and Anne Koedts? It starts with ourselves. I realize we’re met with force and harsh punishment, but we must risk all to gain all. A radical feminist meeting here in my city and your city is long overdue. The whole trans agenda is meant to dismantle feminism and it seems to be working. Porn industry, human trafficking, female genitalia mutilation, transing of children, transwomen and transmen dying, but also women and children being assaulted by transwomen and men in general, everything we talk about ever can be made into chants and picket signs to be publicly displayed. Let's not forget Desmond is Amazing. We can openly call out Michael Alig for grooming him and all those poor souls back in the 90s who never even had a chance before the time of cellphones. James St. James admitted Alig did it in his book Party Monster originally entitled Disco Bloodbath (maybe it’s been edited out since, but I remember reading the pages and I know what I saw with my own eyes) about his precious scene and how they turned teen boys into drag queens who inevitably ended up homeless and drug addicted and raped. A protest that digs a little bit deeper is what NYC needs. The only protests I see are anti-Trump and that’s all it’s about. They don’t address the human trafficking issue, they don’t address the sex industry, they flaunt it. We could bring everything we constantly write articles about that just go on getting deleted to Central Park. We could bring all the subreddits that just got banned and have disappeared forever to Fifth Avenue. Let’s bring J.K. Rowling to town, and just get all the things we still talk about....out in the streets. These streets where these radical women set foot on. There are so many issues we can meet up with. Let’s take social media to the streets. when Occupy Wall Street happened, nobody gave a shit about what side anyone was on. People just gathered and talked politics. Central Park, Union Square, The Battery, Bryant Park, St. Nicolas Park, Marcus Garvey Park, etc Trump Towers, we can be anywhere. New Yorkers, like everyone else, have the right to peacefully protest on public sidewalks, parks, plaza and streets. I’m sick of catering to men and handmaiden’s feelings. We just want male free space! We will have our boundaries and our spaces. There is a US constitutional article guaranteeing the right of free association!
About a year ago, I tried to track down more information about NYRF as well as other groups including Radicalesbians (originally called Lavender Menace and are responsible for writing “The Woman-Identified Woman”) and Lesbian Feminist Liberation (originally part of Gay Activists Alliance, but split off from men to be with women, i.e. feminists, responsible for picketing outside the American Museum of Natural History with a big purple dinosaur), but I could only get a bit from one of the original NYRF members. I wish to leave her anonymous. Here’s what she told me in an email, “Pardon my delay getting back to you. I’m beginning to reach out to other NYRF’s. Some are thinking about it. Since no one in NYRF had any defined roles, no one is really “authorized” to tell the history and everyone has a different take. My memories are ambivalent towards NYRF, but still protective because there seems to be a concerted effort to re-write its history. Eleanor Cooper, who was one of the founders of LFL, has died. She was my good friend. I could ask around for the other founders, but I can’t remember their names. You know, it only really lasted three or four years. After it was no longer separatist, it sort of stopped meeting or doing anything. I know nothing about Radicalesbians. New York Radical Women were not feminists, whom they thought were empty-headed, bourgeois idiots. They were on the left. New York Radical Feminists tended to be antagonistic towards leftists and if any showed up and spoke at a meeting, they were often challenged or ignored. No leftist woman ever came back to suffer another series of insults. I was sympathetic to the left, but kept my mouth closed because I didn’t want to be excluded. NYRF definitely raised the issue of rape and incest, it did not arise from any left group. On the other hand, some of the fight for legal abortion was done by women of the left and their contribution is often not acknowledged.“
Today, within our radical feminist circles, we see similar behavior. We as women have to try to be more supportive of one another, but there seems to be animosity toward the left today as well. I see some of the same patterns. Today this is due to the neo-liberal gender identity madness that unabashedly and consistently silences women of other opinions. Have you noticed articles about transwomen when it's them as victims, it'll say transwoman, but when it's them as criminals and aggressors it'll say WOMAN? Just another reason to protest here in New York, and every major city and just all corners of the world. Despite all our flaws, we must press on and carry the torch from sisters of the past, because even in our current year, the NYRF guide to consciousness raising is still used and is considered a favorite and classic. Like NYRF, Backbone is a small group without anyone at the head. Everyone assumes responsibility and pitches in. Our zine gets better with every edition!
Some women and I want to organize a rally, a gathering of some kind, or potentially a protest in New York City. Contact me if you’d like to be a part of it.
Instagram: theviolentfembot
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