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To commemorate women's history month, this issue of NOW or Never will explore the history of the women's movement and the people, women and men alike, who gave us the freedoms which we enjoy today.
At the March chapter meeting, we will present a program remembering the dilemmas that women faced in the days of illegal abortions. Why not join us?
Third Wave Feminists, a student group at ODU, will be sponsoring a clothesline project in celebration of women's history month.
At the February meeting, Dr. Sujata Moorti of the ODU Women's Studies Department lead a discussion of "Women, Race, and Class." Many, many interesting and informative comments were contributed by NOW members. We all learned something while having a great time having our consciousnesses raised.
Especially note worthy were the comments of our newest member, journalist Lena Watts. Lena noted that blacks and women of all colors were the first to fight for civil rights. Yet, after only a little struggle, many other disadvantaged groups want the same benefits we strove for for so long. Sounds like an old, old story. Conservatives are the first to scream "freedom of speech" when we don't let them get in our faces about abortion, yet liberals are the ones who fought to make freedom of speech a reality.
Lena also noted that many white men create and run new companies. By giving their wives 51% ownership of their companies while retaining operating control, some male-dominated companies qualify as women-owned businesses for purposes of affirmative action. This outrageous abuse of the affirmative action program should be stopped.
But every one enjoyed our spirited discussion. All agreed that general consciousness-raising and a place where feminists can discuss issues with like-minded sisters without fear of reprisal are important activities of NOW.
We would like to thank Dr. Moorti for leading a very interesting discussion.
To celebrate the decision of the Hawaiian court and to affirm the right of all couples to marry regardless of gender, Tidewater NOW along with NOW chapters across the US sponsored a lesbian wedding on Valentine's Day, Feb 14, 1997. About 30 friends and supporters attended.
The wedding was held on the steps of city hall in Norfolk, Va. Reverend Carol Wier of the Metropolitan Community Church performed a beautiful ceremony. The happy couple - Rip and Margaret - exchanged vows and rings shortly after noon. M. S. played the organ while L. B. escorted the bride. All three network news stations covered the ground-breaking event.
Rip and Margaret made a memorably trip down Colley Avenue in a gaily decorated wedding van which sported balloons, streamers, and signs reading "Lesbian Rights Now" and "Equal Rights for Newt's Sister."
Wedding cake, Champaign, and gifts followed at the reception at C. H.'s house. Rip and Margaret signed the wedding certificate and lit the wedding candle together. To show their new unity, a wedding luncheon at Kelly's Restaurant completed the happy day.
Many thanks to the pastor, Rip, Margaret, and NOW friends for this memorable event. We wish Rip and Margaret well in their new life together.
contributed by M. F.
Our largest show-the-flag effort of the year, our booth at the Hampton Roads Woman's Show was a great success. Several hundred women stopped by our booth to learn about NOW and we got a few new members.
Thanks to all of the hard working people, especially S. B., who made this event possible.
Meridel Le Sueur, author, died on December 23, 1996. Meridel, born on February 22, 1900, wrote many poems, essays, stories, articles, and several books, chronicling the lives of people who lived from day-to-day on the edge of hunger, homelessness, unemployment, and violence. An activist in the labor movement and "Part American Indian" she spoke for African, Vietnamese, American Indian and other "international" women. Meridel loved women and listened to and spoke for women, but believed that women and men without wealth and power must work together for each other's empowerment. Some of her works, such as Salute to Spring and The Girl, have been reprinted by small presses but are not readily available.
Le Sueur, a radical who eschewed the title progressive, compiled North Star Country under the WPA writers project. Le Sueur proves that independent political thought and love of country are not mutually exclusive. Her biography of Nancy Hanks, Abraham Lincoln's mother, Wilderness Roads - can still be found in almost every elementary school library today.
contributed by M. F.
Liberal feminists work within the structures of mainstream society to integrate women into that structure. Liberal feminists seek to reform structures, not remake them. Harkening back to John Locke and the social contract theory of government instituted by the American Revolution, early American liberal feminists include Abigail Adams and Mary Wollstonecraft. By emphasizing women's treatment under the law and access to education, most 19th century feminists and most second-wave feminists were liberal feminists. Often liberal and radical feminists collude unknowingly in a good feminist-bad feminist routine which is like a good-cop, bad-cop routine. By appearing moderate and reasonable in comparison to radical feminists, liberal feminists often influence the system more than their radical sisters. But the liberal feminists couldn't make progress without the radicals.
Ginette Castro, American Feminism, A Contemporary History, Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Paris, 1990
Violence against women manifests itself in many ways. Violence against women in our role as reproductive beings includes controlling women's reproductive processes by withholding contraceptives and safe, legal abortions, through forced infanticide (a euphemism for murdering unwanted girl children) and forced abortion, and by stigmatizing single women as men-haters, women who are childless by choice as unnatural and selfish, and single mothers as immoral.
Being born in Baltimore, Md and educated in the public school system in the days of Jim Crow segregation was not a auspicious start to the career of this black civil rights worker, feminist foremother, lawyer, poet, teacher, and minister. Murray graduated from Hunter College in 1933 during the height of the Depression. After failing to break the color barrier of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill law school in 1938, Murray entered Howard University's law school and graduated from there in 1944 with an LL.B degree. After being denied admission to Harvard University's advanced law degree program because she was a woman, Murray did a year of advanced legal study at the University of California at Berkley and received her LL. M. degree in 1945. Not until 1965 did Murray become the first Black to be awarded a Doctor of Juridical Science Degree from Yale University where she later taught law.
According to Murray, she entered law school a confirmed civil rights activist, and left law school a committed feminist as well. An early spokeswoman for women's rights, in October, 1965 she claimed that women might have to march for their rights. A pioneer in anti-discrimination jurisprudence for women, Murray and Mary Eastwood co-authored the article "Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII" which appeared in the Dec 1965 George Washington Law Review.
During an historic phone conservation with Betty Friedan, Murray convinced Friedan that women needed an "NAACP for women." Less that a year later, Murray and Friedan became the driving forces behind the creation of NOW. Murray wrote the NOW Statement of Purpose, a very moving document.
At the age of 62, Murray entered the seminary. In 1977 she became the first Black female priest ordained by the Episcopal Church.
Black Women in America, An Historical Encyclopedia, Vol II, Darlene Clark Hine, Elsa Barkley Brown, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, Indiana University Press, 1993, p. 825-826
Feminist Chronicles 1953 - 1993, Toni Carabillo, Judith Meuli, and June Bundy Csida, Women's Graphics, 1993
Gary Bauer, head of the Washington-based Family Research Council (the political off-shoot of Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family "Christian ministry") told an audience at the Heritage Foundation on Nov 20 that he will form a PAC called the "Campaign for Working Families."
Despite its name, the PAC is expected to focus almost exclusively on opposing legal abortion, "the ultimate values issue." Attributing Dole's defeat to his reluctance to strongly condemn abortion, Bauer warned the GOP to "catch on now" or suffer the consequences, the formation of a religious conservative third party.
We wish Bauer well. All of the energy, time, and money invested in his PAC / political party will be siphoned off of more influential and dangerous radical-right projects (and inform even more voters about the religious extremists' ultimate agenda).
Support women's access to safe and legal birth control and abortion.
from Jan 1997 Church and State, a publication of Americans United for Separation of Church and State
Historically, women have always been subordinate to men. Yet, in every age and in every place, men, perhaps only a few men, have fought for women's equality.
Our history books are full of the names of men who fought wars, killed, murdered, raped, and pillaged. Too often, we forget the women and men who were forces for good, not evil. We need to let men know that those who stand with us in our fight for women's rights will be remembered throughout history. And today's youth need male, feminist role models. To that end, this newsletter will begin profiling feminist men.
This month, we acknowledge the contributions of Richard Graham. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law, President Johnson appointed a board of 5 Commissioners to oversee the EEOC. Graham, one of Johnson's first 5 appointees, fought strenuously for women's equality. Indeed, he fought so strenuously for women's rights that he was not reappointed when his term expired.
The Feminist Chronicles, 1953 - 1993, Toni Carabillo, Judith Meuli, and June Bundy Csida, Women's Graphics, 1993
Law, Gender, and Injustice, A Legal History of US Women, Joan Hoff, NY University Press, 1991
Myth: It is easy for battered women to leave their abuser.
from "Domestic Violence: The Facts" - A Handbook to STOP violence (courtesy of Peace At Home (formerly Battered Women Fighting Back), Boston), posted at the Cybergrrl Webstation website
Here are some basic steps you can take to assist someone who may be a target of domestic violence.
from "Domestic Violence: The Facts" - A Handbook to STOP violence (courtesy of Peace At Home (formerly Battered Women Fighting Back), Boston) as posted at the Cybergrrl Webstation website
We pick up the story as a bill prohibiting discrimination in education and employment due race, color, religion, national origin is about to be voted on by a House subcommittee and conservative southern Congressmen are determined to defeat the bill.
Attempting to make the bill so unpalatable that it would be defeated, Howard W. Smith (D-Va), chairman of the House Rules Committee, a Southern archconservative, sponsored the amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which added sex to the protected categories. His support guaranteed 100 or more votes of deep South Congressmen. And he reasoned that if the bill became law, at least (white) women would have the same rights as black (men).
Congresswomen Martha Griffith (D-Mi) and Katherine St. George (R-NY), strong women's rights advocates, decided to back an amendment adding sex to the bill but stepped aside to allow Smith to sponsor the amendment. Though Smith later denied he was insincere in introducing the amendment, Griffiths has said that it was Smith himself who told her he had proposed the amendment as a joke.
Fearing that they would endanger its chances of passage, President Johnson and other liberals reluctantly added the sex provision to the Civil Rights Act. As with the 14th Amendment of 1866 which enfranchised black men but excluded women, it was once again "the Negro's hour." Many conservatives were blind or indifferent to discrimination against women or believed that such discrimination was reasonable to protect women's traditional role.
But, as the ribaldry of the debate swelled among the male representatives, it betrayed, not a patriarchal gallantry, but a deep-rooted contempt for women. Every Congressman who spoke in favor of the sex discrimination amendment, except Rep. Ross Bass (D-Tn), voted against the bill.
By coalescing with the reactionary Southern strategists, and in the absence of a widespread national women's rights movement, a handful of feminists had succeeded in pulling off a major political coup.
But the battle for equal opportunity for women had only begun because no one had any intention of enforcing the sex discrimination clause of the new law. Women's organizations which could have fought for women's rights were afraid of being branded extremists and losing their insider positions. After three years of fruitless efforts to get the new EEOC to enforce the act, women realized that they needed an organization devoted to fighting for women's rights, an "NAACP for women." Under Pauli Murray and Betty Friedan, NOW was founded in 1966.
First Feminists, British Women Writers, 1578 - 1799, edited by Moria Ferguson. Indiana University Press, 1985, anthology of 28 writers, bibliography includes an additional 80 feminist women writers who she did not have room to anthologize
Feminist Chronicles, 1953 - 1993, Toni Carabillo, Judith Meuli, June Bundy Csida, Women's Graphics, Los Angeles, 1995
NOW LDEF (Legal Defense and Education Fund) became a separate organization (for tax purposes) from NOW in 1971. As its name implies, NOW LDEF litigates on behalf of women's rights and provides educational materials on a variety of topics. Write: NOW LDEF, 99 Hudson Street, 12th Floor, New York, NY, 10013, or visit their website at http://www.nowldef.org/
is now on-line at http://www.nmwa.org
sunshine@pinn.net
Sunshine for Women encourages you to support our feminist sisters by purchasing their books, reading them, disseminating the ideas they contain, but most especially, by making their book available to our sisters, our daughters, and the community at large by requesting your school library, your public library, and area bookstores to carry their books. Remember it is not enough to write literature, history, and theology, we must pass these works on to future generations. Help us to preserve these works for a new generation by putting them on library bookshelves.
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