“[The Pill] transformed our lives like nothing before or since… Nothing else in this century—perhaps not even winning the right to vote—made such an immediate difference in women’s lives…And it sparked the feminist and pro-choice movements. Once women felt they were in charge of their own bodies, they began to question the authority of their husbands, their fathers, their bosses, their doctors and their churches...women were ready to explode into personhood’”
                                                                                                                                                     --Ladies’ Home Journal, 1990 (cited in Asbell)

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Women's Liberation

New York protest, 1971 (Click to Enlarge)

The surge of independent women facilitaed by the Pill sparked the rebirth of feminism. Second wave feminists battled against sexism in law and in American culture. The movement encouraged women to control their lives, including reproduction. In turn, the Pill empowered women economically so they may fight for these rights.

“…the introduction of the birth control pill blew apart forever the Old World order, helping prompt the explosion of the women’s movement in the late 60s-early 70s.”
                      -Ann Taylor Fleming (news reporter for PBS)

“A woman’s sexual empowerment is central to all other civil rights issues”
                                                                     -Coates, feminist

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National Organization FOR Women (NOW)

New York, 1917 (Click to Enlarge)

The National Organization of Women (NOW) formed in 1966 marked the rise of new feminism. NOW campaigned for equality in education, employment and politics, reproductive rights, and government supported childcare and paid maternity leaves. They lobbied legislations such as Executive Order 11246, Title IX of Higher Education Act of 1972 and the Equal Rights Amendment.
       
(CLICK HERE TO SEE THE LEGISLATIONS) 

“taking action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men”. 
                - Excerpt of NOW Statement of Purpose

(CLICK HERE TO SEE FULL TEXT)

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Grassroots Movement

"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle"
-Gloria Steinem (leading feminist spokes person)

Grassroots radical feminists focused on interpersonal relations and elimination of cultural and economical factors that supported male supremacy. New York Radical Women pioneered consciousness raising to spread universal feminism on the basis: "personal is political". The session helped women understand their place in society, encouraging them to share personal accounts of sexism and violence:

“[a] deep personal connections of women… [which] often ignore barriers of age, economics, worldly experience, race, culture—all barriers that, in male or mixed society, had seemed difficult to cross.” 
                                                    -Gloria Steinem, Ms. Magazine, 1972 
                                                                       (on consciousness raising)

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A consciousness raising session

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Symbol of Women's Liberation Movement

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Notes from the first year of New York Radical Women

CLICK HERE for a series of cartoon about SISTERHOOD

In 1968, the New York Radical Feminists (NYRF) protested against "degrading-mindless-boob-girlie symbol" behind Miss America Pageants. Protesters threw sex objects into "freedom trashcans" such as fashion magazines, bras, and makeup.
                                              
                                                 “No more Miss American”,
                                                            “If you want meat, go to a butcher”
                                                                       “Can makeup cover the wounds of our oppression?”
                                                                                  “[these women are] judged like animals at a country fair”
                                                                                                  -NYRF protest to Miss America Pageant, 1968

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Miss America Protest, Atlantic City, New Jersey (1968)

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Freedom Trashcan

Extreme Radicalism

Leftist organizations of feminists such as Redstockings, Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (WITCH) and Society for Cutting Up Men (SCUM), promoted female separatism and death to males.

“Male supremacy is the oldest and most basic form of domination…the model for all other forms of oppression… including racism and capitalism…thus the tapeworm must be eliminated”
                                              -Redstocking (radical feminist group)

“Many of the new feminists are surprisingly violent in mood…Hundreds of young girls are learning karate...distributing threatening handouts (‘Watch out! You may meet a real castrating female!’), and even citing... the late revolutionary Frantz Fanon: An oppressed individual cannot feel liberated until he kills one of the oppressors” 
                                                                                         -Time, 1969

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Dumbfounded male watches women's liberation march, 1970
“What I want to cut off is the power men exercise over women.
And if a man associates that power with his genitalia, that’s his problem” 
                                                                         -Anne Koedt, New York Radical Feminist

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"The Pill did more for the equality of women than any other single factor...certainly in the twentieth century"
Loretta McLaughlin, Silvia Clark