Femicide—the murder of a woman because she is a woman—is on the rise across the world, as are demonstrations against it. In this struggle can be seen some of the vision of the future implicit in this movement: a society in which women are comprehended as free human beings. Key is “the totality and depth of the necessary uprooting.”
Adele reviews a fascinating history of three interconnected projects of the radical feminist community in the Oakland, Calif., area over the past 40 years: an underground self-help abortion network, clinics run on feminist principles, and clinic defense organizations.
Takes up: In memoriam to Dale Spender, Australian radical feminist activist, author, and broadcaster; a report on U.S. maternal death rates by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and medicine’s #MeToo movement exposing the culture of sexual harassment and assaults by higher ranking male doctors.
Ohio citizens voted in a landslide to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution. Fanatics in power tried and failed to derail the vote and are now maneuvering to nullify it, destroying democracy in the process.
Takes up: International Safe Abortion Day; elections in Poland; ‘Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK, 1970–1990’, the first major art museum show covering the feminist art movement; and El Salvador’s anti-abortion laws.
Adele reviews ‘Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality: 1920 to 2020’ by Elizabeth Griffith, a history of the U.S. feminist movement from the years leading up to the achievement of women’s right to vote to 2020.
There’s a backlash against the progress of women. Social media allows men to get away with saying outrageous things. Let’s insist the voice of Reason coming from women, not only women’s passion.
Takes up: Mexico’s Supreme Court ruling state laws against abortion are unconstitutional; Britain’s first cohousing community exclusively for women over 50; and #SeAcabo, (It’s Over), the Spanish women athletes’ #MeToo movement.
Takes on: Lebanese woman-led media platform “Khateera”; a fine in Chihuahua, Mexico, for singing lyrics in live performances that sexually objectify or promote violence towards women, and the deaths of Dr. Susan Love and Sinéad O’Connor.
Worldwide domestic violence has intensified: The Strangulation Clinic was opened in Surrey, B.C. Canada, as this form of violence has increased since 2014; Iraqi women and allies demonstrated at the Supreme Judicial Council in Baghdad demanding a strict law to deal with increasing domestic violence and “honor killings”; and there has been an explosion of femicides in several countries, including Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan, and Sudan.
Review of: ‘Unsilenced: Our Refusal to Let Torturer-Traffickers Win,’ whose authors worked out therapy for victims of what they called Non-State Torture (NST) which goes beyond abuse. Perpetrators of NST employ the same “classic” torture techniques, especially rape, used by state representatives—police, military, or prison guards.
Catholicism, “traditional family life,” silencing of women, combine to make life a “living hell” for many and reveal how the normalizing of domestic violence wars against the Universal of Freedom.
Catholicism, “traditional family life,” silencing of women, combine to make life a “living hell” for many and reveal how the normalizing of domestic violence wars against the Universal of Freedom.
Review of ‘Sexy but Psycho’: Taylor is trying to change how institutions and the public view the effects of trauma. Drawing upon years as a feminist therapist in rape crisis, domestic violence, and child trafficking centers, she describes staff’s success calming distressed clients and helping them live their lives after abuse.
Taylor is trying to change how institutions and the public view the effects of trauma. Drawing upon years as a feminist therapist in rape crisis, domestic violence, and child trafficking centers, she describes staff’s success calming distressed clients and helping them live their lives after abuse.
A new federal law renders binding arbitration clauses in contracts void in cases of sexual assault and harassment. Women’s rights activists and national organizations worked for five years to get legislation introduced to stop the practice. This year it passed by a wide margin in February, and took effect March 3.
Ed Pavlić’s ‘Outward: Adrienne Rich’s Expanding Solitudes’ is the first critical book to appear after Rich’s Collected Poems (2016) and thus the first covering all of Rich’s poetry. The book is especially welcome because Pavlić attends to the latter half of Rich’s career, and acknowledges her Marxism, largely unexplored territory even now.
Adele reviews the book “They Didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties” by Lisa Levenstein.
Ed Pavlić’s ‘Outward: Adrienne Rich’s Expanding Solitudes’ is the first critical book to appear after Rich’s Collected Poems (2016) and thus the first covering all of Rich’s poetry. The book is especially welcome because Pavlić attends to the latter half of Rich’s career, and acknowledges her Marxism, largely unexplored territory even now.
Adele favorably reviews “Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All by Laura Bates. The book exposes the extreme damage caused to society by online misogynist communities, or the “manosphere.”
In her book, Ijeoma Oluo discusses the serious damage caused when we expect white men to have all the leadership roles in a society. The damage is not only to women and people of color whose voices are not heard, and to society, which loses their input, but to white men themselves.
The movement lost a powerful voice for workers’ liberty, self-development and freedom when Sarah White died of a heart attack on Oct. 5, 2020.
At four in the morning on Dec. 30, the Argentine Senate finally passed an abortion rights bill, making it legal to terminate a pregnancy in the first 14 weeks. The procedure will be free in government hospitals, crucially important for poor women.
Adele’s critical review of the book “Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family” by Sophie Lewis as “a disappointing attempt to find a radical path to a just society of new human relationships by way of commercial surrogacy.”
Participant report of women’s strike in Mexico City, March 9, 2020.
International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women in France; ecofeminists in Uganda; and protests against the gang-rape of a 19-year-old British girl in Cyprus.
Review of ‘Without Apology: The Abortion Struggle Now’, on the history of the women’s liberation movement’s struggle for full reproductive justice.
Women are deepening a global movement to combat violence against us, from violent rapes to domestic battering to outright femicide. Demonstrations have spread across the globe.
How can hearing the ideas of women’s liberation and the philosophy of human liberation enable the movement’s reorientation? How can the humanism that shone forth from the Women’s Marches help inspire the entire movement for liberation?
Women who demonstrated against the escalating gender violence in Mexico City are aiming for a society where being a woman would no longer mean being an object.
Readers’ Views on What is socialism?; Surviving the prison system; Women fight back; and Exploiting prisoners
In memoriam to Deborah Morris, writer, activist and powerful thinker in the women’s liberation movement and in her participation with News and Letters Committees.
A review of “Last Days at Hot Slit: The Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin,” edited by Johanna Fateman and Amy Scholder.
Feminists in Iran call on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to resign; huge demonstrations against police rapes in Mexico; removal of the “Girl of Peace Statue” in Japan; and the trial of Canan Kaftancioğlu, the Istanbul chief of the secularist Republican People’s Party.
In an era where women’s right to an abortion is endangered, feminist activist and writer Terry Moon delves into the question of what is socialism when it comes to women’s liberation, looking historically, politically, and philosophically.
The creative presence of women, youth, workers and national minorities in the Algerian freedom movement promises much for the future.
Feminist Adele reviews Phyllis Chesler’s book “A Politically Incorrect Feminist: Creating a Movement with Bitches, Lunatics, Dykes, Prodigies, Warriors, and Wonder Women,” seeing in it an important first-person history that can help today’s movement.
An account of #MeToo in China is documented in a new book by Leta Hong Fincher, “Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China.”
The Trump administration’s latest outrage is its attempt to erase Transgender people. Its tactic this time is to declare that Trans people do not exist, subverting the spirit of Title IX, enacted in 1972.
News and Letters Committees statement on Donald Trump’s latest attack on Trans people by trying to claim that the word “sex” in Title IX does not include them. Trump has chosen to dehumanize a group of people whose whole lives have often been fraught with brutal violence and discrimination, those who are Transgender.
The First International Gathering of Politics, Art, Sport, and Culture for Women in Struggle, organized by the Zapatista Indigenous women, took place in Chiapas from March 8-10. More than 5,000 women from all over the world shared their thoughts on feminism, art and work.
Racist and homophobic politicians have moved from the fringes to contend for state power in Brazil. Fabricio Alvarado in Costa Rica and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil represent a further step down an anti-human path.
Readers’ Views on Women’s Marches; Iran in Revolt; Around the Globe; Race and Freedom; Queer Oppression; Why Read N&L?
In celebration of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, we present excerpts from Dunayevskaya’s “Luxemburg as Feminist; Break with Jogiches.”
Women’s Marches took place around the U.S. and the world in 2017 AND 2018, once again showing that the opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump is alive, thriving, militant and exuberant.
Adele’s review of Orna Donath’s book “Regretting Motherhood: A Study” takes up Donath’s study of 27 Israeli women who regretted becoming mothers; some who had never wanted children and others who had, only to find the reality was not what they expected.
Report on the Oct. 27, 2017, Women’s Convention in Detroit, Michigan, one of the followups to the Jan. 21 Women’s March on Washington, D.C. .
Reader’s Views on Women vs. Reaction; Women and Philosophy; Syria and Humanity; Support Trans Children!; Animals and Us; Repression vs. Justice; Why Read “N&L”; Voices from Behind the Bars
Raya Dunayevskaya on the first and second women’s movements, the Black dimension, working women, and a total philosophy of liberation.
Adele’s review of Bonnie Morris’ “The Disappearing L,” which takes up why the Lesbian culture of the 1970s through the 1990s is disappearing and what was worthwhile in it.
