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Steinem had star power. At first a reluctant spokeswoman, she worked
hard, and graciously, to share the spotlight. Yet some who worked equally
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68 SISTERHOOD, INTERRUPTED
hard but were not as publicly recognized resented Steinem for stealing the
show. They were outraged by seeing the media turn hard-won, original in-
sights developed by others in anonymity into, as Susan Brownmiller put it,
Gloria Steinem pronouncements, Gloria Steinem ideas. 55
While the radicals antileader stance was both a conscious reaction
against the charismatic leadership of the civil rights and antiwar move-
ments and a principled attempt to practice egalitarianism and reject hier-
archy within their own movement, their antimedia stance grew out of their
general distrust of mainstream media. And Steinem, according to the rad-
icals, had hijacked their ideas. Of all the Redstockings accusations, per-
haps the most significant was the charge that Ms. was blocking knowledge
of the authentic activists and ideas of the original women s liberation
movement.56 The commercial success of Ms. and the rise of cultural femi-
nism had raised challenging and theoretical questions. But the battle over
blueprints had taken over, corroding the battle over meaning into a battle
for control.
It wasn t just about Steinem. As the press continued to cover cultural
feminism and some of its more esoteric and fringe practices with an air of
mockery and amused disdain, offhandedly lumping together feminism,
spiritualism, and gay liberation, the movement had a problem with image
control. Believing the very future of their movement at stake, a number of
radical sisters indulged in name calling and trashing, furthering already
fierce divides.
The lack of structure and the disavowal of leadership in many groups
contributed to their ultimate collapse.57 Some group members had been
purged from their consciousness-raising groups for attempting to assert
leadership; other cells disbanded over other personality conflicts and seri-
ous political disagreements. As groups fragmented, feminist solidarity be-
came increasingly elusive. Radicals recklessly blamed each other for things
that were often not fully under their own control.
To a young woman previously unacquainted with this history, the fact
that feminists ultimately attacked each other rather than the establish-
ment they were trying to change may seem disappointing, even surpris-
ing, a case of the sisters doing it to themselves. But powerful, intensive
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RADICALS AGAINST THEMSELVES 69
movements like this one are rarely cohesive or long lasting. By 1975, the
year historians identify as the end of the organized radical feminist
movement, this particularly explosive burst had burned itself out. Like
many visionaries with radical ideas, the early agitators lacked some of the
flexibility and practical skills needed to create a movement that would en-
dure. The radical feminist movement became known for its infights, but
its instigators were hardly alone in history. The early civil rights move-
ment was as divided as the women s movement. Soon after its formation,
the liberal coalition that had secured passage of the Civil Rights Act of
1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 began to fray. When understood
in this larger context, the breakdown of radical feminism was perhaps an
inevitable phase.
As the radical movement fell apart, its architects grew increasingly self-
reflexive about the reasons why. A number of key players had already of-
fered their own analysis of what went wrong. Carol William Payne blamed
the early creators (herself included). As she bemoaned in Consciousness
Raising: A Dead End? in 1973, We never resolved the question of what
a women s liberation group was supposed to do. The constant conflict be-
tween those who favored the strictly personal, psychological approach and
those who felt that the personal insights gained by participating in a small
group should be linked to collective political action was left unresolved.58
For others, the downfall was due to a loss of definitional control. Women s
liberation slogans were used to push ideas the slogans were never meant to
push. As Williams wrote in 1975, radical feminist phrases like conscious-
ness-raising and the personal is political were distorted beyond recogni-
tion, the original definitions and source papers forgotten or ignored.59 The
farther words and phrases traveled from their original meanings, the less
radical they became and the less they meant. Carol Hanisch agreed, re-
minding women that the personal is political had meant that experiences
previously thought of as individual were in fact the experience of women
as a class and resulted from men having power over them. Such experi-
ences had to be taken out of the realm of private problems with private so-
lutions. But the cultural feminists were arguing for a return to the private
realm once again.60
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Not everyone saw the general dispersion and internal dissent as bad. As
early as 1971, the editors of Notes from the Third Year had put a positive
spin on the movement s diffusion, interpreting the conflicting pleas of the
movement as natural, a case of both/and: The women s movement was not
only an organized political force but a state of mind as well. Rather than
signaling disorganization or failure, some argued, the explosion of ideas
was a sign of a tremendous grassroots success.61 But more often, radicals
felt that the dispersal of the movement s focus had led to its demise. For
Sarachild, for instance, to widen radical feminism was to spread it too thin,
lessening its original power.62 Whether the result of inexperience, internal
squabbles, a hostile media, or the growing opposition and defeats that the
movement was beginning, bit by bit, to encounter from the outside, this
thinning, according to Sarachild, went hand in hand with a historical for-
getting. And origins, she felt, mattered.
Sarachild was not alone in believing in the power and significance of the
source. In fact, in a different realm but at the very same time, a parallel bat-
tle over origins and ownership was heating up, spearheaded by one of the
movement s fiercest mainstreamers.
Her name was Betty Friedan.
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C H A P T E R 3
THE BATTLE
OF BETTY
[I]f you are serious about anything in America, to make it fashionable
helps.
Betty Friedan, It Changed My Life
One early fall day in 1968, Betty Friedan was slated to speak on televi-
sion about the nascent women s movement. Appearing along with her were
Roxanne Dunbar of Cell 16 and Rona Jaffe, a novelist affiliated with
NOW. Tensions in the green room were heavy that day as a result of recent
news events the feminist fiasco known as the Solanas affair.
Valerie Solanas, the disturbed artist who penned the S.C.U.M. Mani-
festo and shot and wounded Andy Warhol, blamed men for every evil
under the sun. Her manifesto had argued for men s collective annihilation.
Warhol in particular peeved her; he had refused to produce her play, titled
Up Your Ass, and she blamed him for her personal marginalization as an
artist. Her nonfatal shot hit him in the gut. According to witnesses, she had
aimed lower.
While most thought Solanas insane, a few prominent feminists had
turned her into a cause célèbre. Solanas s supporters argued that the shoot-
ing of a prominent male avant-garde figure was a bold political statement
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