May God’s mercy preserve thee; His power protect; His goodness upholds thee; His wisdom direct; Fanny Minard; March the 6 1857; Domestic happiness oh thou gem; so often sought but seldom found
Looking over the 54 signed octagonal pieces on my friendship quilt yesterday morning, I was so delighted with the thought of all these women coming together perhaps 100 years ago that it connected, for me, with Phyllis Chesler’s inspiring memory of what it was like to be a leading feminist in the 1960’s and 1970’s when I, too, found my homeplace in the movement.
The power of that movement always was and always will be drawn from the friendship of women.
I don’t have a camera here—I’m visiting Kentucky—and so I can’t include a photograph of this quilt which I bought some years ago at a country antique shop. But I can include, as an example, the above piece with its much older writing and greater fading. My quilt, fortunately, is barely faded.
Who were these women—and one man—who came together to make my quilt? Probably each one of them provided the octagonal piece from a remnant in their sewing boxes, which meant that anyone could contribute; no expense was required but rather a good deal of time embroidering a signature.
The patterns of these pieces and the variety of styles in the signatures suggest many different personalities.
“Mrs. Robert Gibson—one of two pieces whose creator used her married name—embroidered a well-formed signature in red on a pastel background, blue with pink roses—altogether a conventional choice.
Magaline Tate, by contrast, embroidered her name in pale yellow on a white background with tiny, almost invisible pink dots—a statement of shyness.
But Zelma Hils is as bold as her name, black on white, the background an unusual print—is it birds?—on a red background.
Mrs.Willie Davis has faded almost to invisibility.
John Stewart signed—if he really did the embroidery himself—in red on a white background, bordered with pink and blue flowers.
Who organized these 54 sewers?
Who sent out the call, and using what means? There would only have been the telephone or perhaps a written note, a daunting task in itself.
After each person had finished her/his piece, did they get together for a long session of quilting, sewing the 54 pieces together and then stretching them, with backing, on a quilting frame?
I hope they did actually get together. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall to hear their conversation. Living close to each other in one of the small towns of that era, they would have known each other well, which meant that certain topics, such as marital discord, would have been mentioned only lightly if at all—as in the sentiment on the piece pictured here.
Were some pieces rejected as not up to the standard? Were some signatures contributed by expert sewers when that particular participant couldn’t sew or was absent?
Was the finished quilt then given to someone, or promised to someone, like the “Someday bridal quilt” I saw recently at a show in Santa Fe, made by a woman for her unmarried daughter?
These women are all gone and forgotten yet the quilt retains a faint perfume from their lives.
May we all be so well remembered.
I Wouldn’t Have Missed Our
Feminist Revolution for the World
Phyllis Chesler
We now face the total disappearance of womankind both linguistically and as a biological reality; sex based rights have been trumped by gender identity rights; radical feminists who question the transgender phenomenon are shamed, censored, and dis-invited. This just happened to me. Women-only spaces are disappearing. Radical feminist positions on male violence, pornography, prostitution, and surrogacy are viewed as retrogressive. In the late 1960s, we helped women obtain “illegal” abortions—and, unbelievably, we may have to do so again.
Given this reality, these profound losses, I am almost ashamed to describe the optimistic days of the Second Wave. But here goes.
Perhaps the most important thing to tell you is that it was not hard for us to “come out,” as feminists, we had an opening in history. Almost everything we said and did was considered newsworthy. While this was a new experience— it did not mean that we had real power. We sounded the alarm but we did not manage to abolish rape, incest, sexual harassment, woman-battering, or trafficking. We were unable to prevent women from losing custody of children.
We pioneers emerged between 1963 and 1973 and took ideas very seriously. We did not all think alike. We were champion hairsplitters and disagreed with each other with searing passion.
The Second Wave consisted of three mighty bodies of water: In 1966, we formed a civil rights organization for women: the National Organization for Women, which brought class-action lawsuits and demonstrated against women’s legal, reproductive, political, and economic inequality.
Then (in the late 1960s), we picketed, marched, protested, sat in, and famously took over offices and buildings; joined consciousness-raising groups; learned about orgasms; organized Speak-outs; founded crisis hotlines and shelters for battered women; and came out as lesbians.
Finally, (and this is usually underestimated), we implemented feminist ideas within our professions and so began a process of transformation that continues to this day.
These were the three mighty tributaries of the second wave. I swam in all three.
Without a feminist movement I would have had a career but not necessarily a calling; I still would have written my books, but they would have had much smaller audiences and far less impact.
It is crucial to understand that most of us knew nothing – absolutely nothing – about our feminist foremothers. In Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them (1982), the divine Australian scholar Dale Spender documented how the most remarkable feminist work had been systematically disappeared again and again. Their writings were brilliant and fiery – but unknown to each successive generation.
Within ten to fifteen years, books by the best minds of my feminist generation were out of print. Within fifteen to twenty years, university professors and their students were largely unfamiliar with most of our work. They took for granted, or regarded as hopelessly old-fashioned, the grueling lawsuits we had brought, our academic writings, popular writings, and our brave activism – if, indeed, they remembered what we had done at all.
In our own lifetimes we became our suffragist grandmothers and shared their dusty, forgotten fate. Each generation of feminists had to reinvent the wheel. Some neutralized, watered down, and disappeared our ideas—and wrote in incomprehensible, Mandarin language.
The Second Wave was the first time in my life that I had ever experienced female solidarity based on ideas – and it was wondrous.
And yet: I had such an idealized view of feminist women that when I began to encounter incomprehensibly “Mean Girl” behavior among us, I (we all were) stunned, blindsided.
And, when we were slandered, shunned by everyone we knew, our history revised – we had no name for what was happening.
Eventually, we called some of this “trashing,” (Anselma Dell’Olio and Jo Freeman did) and it drove away many a good feminist. It never stopped me – nothing ever did – but it took its toll.
This means that my greatest comfort and strength came from doing the work itself – and from knowing that the work touched, changed, and even saved women’s lives.
I’ve been a soldier at war all my life, I carry scars; all warriors do.
It is inspiring that many of our Second Wave Western feminist ideas and ideals have been adopted, refined, and surpassed, globally by women’s groups. Today, there are women on every continent battling to abolish marital rape, woman battering, femicide, “eve teasing,” forced face-veiling, honor-based violence, honor killing, child marriage, polygamy, FGM, etc. Look at the brave women in Iran—as I said in 1971, we’d need a feminist air force and a feminist continent in order to rescue such protestors.
Most recently, for more than a year, I was part of a group of global activists who helped evacuate Afghan women and who organized food and medicine drops for those who still remain trapped behind Taliban lines. Doing so is a continuation of Second Wave style activism.
Despite everything, despite anything, I wouldn’t have missed this revolution, not for love or money. I remain forever loyal to that moment in time, that collective awakening that set me free from my former life as a girl. Allow me to paraphrase the most memorable speech Shakespeare gave King Henry V:
[She] that outlives this day, and comes safe home . . .
Then will [she] strip [her] sleeve and show [her] scars.
And say “These wounds I had. . . .”
This story shall the good [woman] teach [her children] . . .
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of [sisters];
For [she] to-day that sheds [her] blood with me
Shall be my [sister]; be [she] ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle [her] condition:
And [gentlewomen everywhere] now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their [humanity] cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us. . . .
Three Rules:
- The measure of your success is the resistance you encounter. Embrace it.
- You can’t be a bystander without being complicit.
- We don’t need a room of our own. We need a very large continent of our own.
Originally published yesterday on 4W, a very special thank you to Phyllis Chesler for allowing me to reprint this talk in it’s entirety.
Sallie Bingham, of all the fine things you have understood in your own progress towards learning about feminist insights and developing as a feminist, and in your actions and writings, sharing Phyllis Chesler’s statement is the one I am most grateful for. I doubt I would have come across her statement had I not seen it in your blog. It touched me deeply today when I read it, for I was fortunate to have lucked into stumbling across feminism and before long ending up in the Bay Area, where I, too, experienced women in community there in the late 70’s and in the ’80’s. P. Chesler describes that movement and its life so well. I wish I could have known that resurgence of women-for-women activism, life, creativity before, in the 60’s and earlier 70’s, but the tail end of those years that I caught were wonderful, strong, warm. Life as it should be. Well, except for the warts of attitudes and behaviors we all carried from having been put through the meat grinder of the destructive male-dominating world structure we were/are all born into. I felt very much on the perimeter of the women who saw so much, so clearly, that I had not “seen” before. Women who acted with such clarity and wisdom and bravery to create what women everywhere so desperately needed. It felt wonderful.
P. Chesler writes so clearly about the tragedy of our feminist movement being largely defeated and the effect on coming generations of girls and young women, including those calling themselves feminists but with scant knowledge or understanding of what it is to live in community with women or of what their feminist mothers and grandmothers had done before them, unaware that their lack and loss is a tragedy. Women worldwide, including the U.S., are still not free. I’m so glad I knew that exciting, strong, warm time in the feminist community in the Bay Area for it heartens me when I see the splintered, watered-down version that younger feminists in recent years live, not knowing what they are missing. I do hope some of those who read your blog, who lived the experience Phyllis Chesler describes, will send comments in so I can enjoy reading them.