Lilith 16: 2007

Exploring Feminism’s Complex Relationship with Political Violence: An Analysis of the Weathermen, Radical Feminism and the New Left

Lindsey Churchill

We’re SDS women fighters and we’re part of a Revolutionary Army that’s gonna take this country away from the few and give it back to all the people including women. We need women fighting to win this battle, and we can’t let women remain slaves under capitalism. –- from SDS pamphlet ‘Women Rise Up’, 1969

While substantial research has been done into the general belief systems of radical left wing organisations in the US during the 1960s and 70s, little feminist scholarship has examined the ideologies and experiences of leftist women’s relationship with violence at this time. Indeed, there is a dearth of work on women who commit or support violence for political reasons in general. Explanations for why women commit political violence often do not take into account the socially constructed relationship between women and violence, and ignore the fact that violence is a gendered construct linked to societal norms of masculinity. Psychologically, women who have participated in violence have been considered ‘deficient in their socialization process’ and ‘more out of touch with reality than their male counterparts’.1 Many also assume that women are innately non-violent and commit political violence merely to mimic men or access the masculine realm of power. Because of these one-dimensional views, though nearly one-third of the arrests of violent political activists in the 1960s and 70s were women, little is known about their lives and revolutionary goals.2

Within the discourse of current feminist politics, the use of violence, even political, is often a source of contention. For instance, when liberal feminists advocate women’s full participation in the military, other feminists question the imperialist nature of the military and whether anyone, man or woman, should participate in such an institution.3 These tensions concerning women’s relationship to political violence date back to the second wave feminist movement in the US in particular, as many wrestled with questions of working within the system versus challenging it through violence. The civil rights movement and the antiwar movement encountered similar quandaries as they also wrestled with the concept of peaceful protest versus violent action. Thus, during the late 1960s and early 70s most organisations within the American Left were splintered as they debated what type of action would most successfully implement radical change.4

In this article I explore the belief systems of the New Left organisation the ‘Weathermen’, a splinter group from the organisation Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) that internally supported sexist hierarchies and exalted violence as the primary means of social change. The Weathermen’s advocacy of violence often encouraged women to embrace aggression and ‘me-too’ politics, which reinforced popular feminist critiques of masculine power and its association with violence. In order to understand the variety of feminist engagements with political violence, I discuss contemporary (primarily white and middle class) feminist essentialist and pacifist critiques of violence, as well as an analysis of feminists who, similar to the Weathermen, embraced political violence. For example, radical feminists like Jane Alpert and Robin Morgan criticised the Weathermen’s violent tactics while other feminists such as Ti-Grace Atkinson and Valerie Solanas advocated that women ‘pick up the gun’ in order to destroy patriarchal society. While these three primary belief systems concerning violence – pacifism, essentialism, and pro-violence – emerged within radical feminism in the US during the 1960s and 70s and have come to define feminist attitudes to violence since that period, this article argues that women who commit, advocate or condemn political violence are complex beings that cannot be easily categorised. Indeed, the myriad of belief systems within feminism concerning women and political violence reflect the broad range of ideas and tensions within American feminist discourse.

Although there is little scholarship about feminism’s relationship with political violence,5 the diversity of feminist thought has been explored in a number of key texts.6 Sara Evans’ significant text Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and The New Left traces the sexism of the New Left and how women resisted their assigned, oppressive roles in the movements of the 1960s and 70s. Robin Morgan’s edited collection of writings from the second wave feminist movement Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement also explores and critiques the sexist practices of the New Left. This article contributes to new scholarship by using the aforementioned texts as well as primary sources in order to investigate the complexity of belief systems within US second wave radical feminism. It uses the Weathermen as a framework to explore these belief systems because many feminists in the second wave articulated their views concerning violence in response to the Weathermen’s vociferous pro-violence ideologies.

In 1962, SDS began its foray into activism by releasing the ‘Port Huron Statement’, which claimed that many young people were ‘looking uncomfortably at the world they inherit’. To combat this discomfort, at its inception SDS organised sit-ins, marches and peacefully protested: predominantly against the university system, which members of SDS perceived as an oppressive institution. The organisation was calling for ‘participatory democracy’ university reform and a more conscientious capitalism, or democratic socialism. Meaning, the organisation wanted capitalism and US politics forever changed, but not replaced with completely new systems. They contended that capitalism should not be forced onto other societies by the US, especially those with ‘less authoritarian’ socialist governments. SDS also wanted to work against all forms of discrimination, particularly racial, and offer support for the struggles of Third World peoples. In order to inspire real change in America and the world, they planned to work ceaselessly within the ‘democratic’ system.7

Thus, in the early 1960s, even though it was rebelling against the ‘Old’ guard (classic Leninists, Trotskyists and Stalinists), the New Left still had a reputation for being theoretical and non-violent. It generally utilised pacifism to resist racial injustice, student repression and the war in Vietnam. However, by the late 1960s, the New Left and SDS had transformed into something very different from what it had been in earlier years. SDS was split between radical and more moderate factions: anti-Marxists against pro-Marxists, the pro-violence ‘action faction’ against the pacifists, and the women’s liberationists who were fighting against blatant misogyny within and outside the organisation.8 Despite this conflict, the aforementioned ‘action-faction’ members of SDS were gaining the most prestige in the organisation. This ‘action-faction’, frustrated by non-violent tactics that seemed to change nothing, called for more radical and violent methods to incite social change. They critiqued the Old Left, which they perceived as a bastion of arm-chair intellectual passivity, and were disgusted with the New Left’s ‘ineffective mass protest’.9

Many in the movement were exhausted with its previous mechanisms of protest and debate. Participants in the movement had attended hundreds of protests and sit-ins, only to be abused by police and not taken seriously by the American government or the majority of the population. The movement was floundering and did not know where to go.10 Protests against the invasion of Vietnam had changed nothing about the government’s policies. In fact, by the end of the 1960s, fighting in Vietnam had intensified and the draft remained in full force.

In addition, the movements and individuals that ‘action-faction’ New Leftists were suddenly looking to as heroes were often pro-violent and hostile to American society. Disillusioned that many movement leaders had been killed or were no longer radical enough to articulate their revolutionary goals, more and more, many New Leftists now derived their inspiration fromCuba, China, Vietnam, and the Third World guerilla movement leaders. Mao, Frantz Fanon, Che and Debray were ‘sufficiently furious’ to inspire American New Leftists who felt as if their methodologies were accomplishing nothing.11

Women’s oppression, however, was not something that most SDS members were ‘sufficiently furious’ about. From its inception, SDS was far from a beacon of hope for those committed to women’s liberation. In fact, many men in the New Left ridiculed, trivialised and mocked the Women’s Liberation Movement. Some were even downright hostile towards women activists, such as the Berkeley anti-war leader who commented on feminism by saying, ‘Let them eat cock’.12 Allegations of misogyny were not only limited to individuals in SDS. The movement itself was structurally exclusionary – almost all positions of leadership were given to men. Also, the ‘goals’ of the organisation repeatedly dehumanised women. At SDS meetings ’brothers’ reported their unique dreams for utopia which included, ‘Free grass, free food, free women and free clothes’.13 In addition to men’s reactions to allegations of sexism, it is also important to note that many women in SDS did not see women’s issues as pertinent to the mission of the New Left. In fact, many women in the movement seemed to have an inability to ‘identify with their own sex’.14 For example, at a 1967 women’s meeting about chauvinism in SDS, participants discussed forming committees to ’study possible sexism’. Such unenthusiastic solutions to the problem of sexism were ironic considering that the late 1960s were a time of ‘action-faction’ politics where suggested solutions to other forms of oppression included everything from destroying property to bombing specific targets.

The Weathermen, who would eventually ‘take over’ SDS at the 1969 convention, did not believe that there was any opportunity for reconciliation between socialism and feminism, except perhaps after the revolution. They gladly ignored the feminists who were supporting and fighting for both issues. The Weathermen could only view women as part and parcel of the larger revolution against imperialism.15 Furthermore, according to the Weathermen, students were also no longer integral to the anti-war movement. Instead, it was black people and the Third World guerilla movements who were implementing true insurrections against America. These insurrections would not occur through electoral processes or working within the American system. The goals of these insurrections were the destruction of US imperialism (supported by SDS members in the early years of the organisation) but also something else – ‘the achievement of a classless world’.16 The commitment to violence and communism as the only means to change American society was reaffirmed on May 21, 1970 when ‘Weatherwoman’ Bernadine Dohrn sent a ‘Declaration of a State of War’ to the US media which claimed:

All over the world, people fighting Amerikan imperialism look to Amerika’s youth to use our strategic position behind enemy lines to join forces in the destruction of the empire ... Revolutionary violence is the only way ... We will never live peaceably under this system. [We are developing] the classic guerilla strategy of the Vietcong and the urban guerilla strategy of the Tupamaros [in Uruguay] to our own situation here in the most technically advanced country in the world.17

The Weathermen also declared that within the next fourteen days they would attack ‘a symbol or institution of Amerikan justice’ that would celebrate ‘all black revolutionaries who inspired us by their fight behind enemy lines for the liberation of their people’. The admiration for black liberation movements had always been integral to the activism of SDS, many of whom equated African Americans in the US as an internal colony. Noel Ignatin’s 1969 article, ‘SDS: Which Side Are You On?’ which claims to put ‘U.S. history in perspective’ contends that the US is not one nation but two – a dominant white supremacist nation and an oppressed black colony within the US.18

The United States, seen as a place capable of change and changing by early SDS members who penned the ‘Port Huron Statement’, was now a ‘cultural wasteland of the white American middle class’. There was little hope for the white imperialist nation; mainstream white American society and culture were sick. Pat Conaway of the John Brown Party articulates the radical Left’s position on white middle class America, ‘But alas! Amidst all this lunacy, amidst the decadence, gazing through the façade, the prosperity, the automobiles, the color TV’s, the farce, are some black villagers who sense, who know what matters’.19 In the manifesto of the John Brown Party (1969) Conaway also refers to white middle class America as ‘fat ass, materialistic, selfish, and insensitive’. The manifesto contends that to align with the Black Panther party will enable white revolutionaries to access true ‘freedom’. In direct contrast to the judgmental rhetoric of groups like the Weathermen and the John Brown Party, there were many ways to be a feminist and a myriad of people who could be considered feminist during the 1960s and 70s. In fact, within a short time, large numbers of women were participating in political campaigns for reproductive freedom and economic equality. They were picketing, protesting, running consciousness raising groups, engaging in radical feminist debates on what it meant to be a woman, creating feminist performance art, engaging in lesbianism and sexual experimentation, and running women’s health collectives, book stores and domestic violence shelters.20

Unlike most feminist activists, the Weathermen did not believe in interacting with the majority of US citizens. In addition to its association with the Black Panther Party or the ‘other America’, the Weathermen believed that earning the respect of the Black Panther Party would legitimise white revolutionaries. Also, if the Weathermen could prove that they were not wimpy intellectuals, but rather street fighting warriors, perhaps they would appear to be working class and inspire the ‘true’ working class and people of color to join their struggles. Since the beginning of their organisation in 1968, the Weathermen had tried desperately to make themselves ‘tough’ like the working class people and the Black Panthers that they so often stereotyped. The Weathermen believed that if they were masculine and aggressive it would be easier to fight in the upcoming revolutions they planned to incite. There was plenty of posturing with guns and pictures taken of women and men learning hand to hand combat and defense. Women who postured with the men were deemed by the Weathermen to be ‘street fighting women’ and ‘women of steel’.21 But these women were not fighting for the goals of feminism, but rather for communist revolution.22

The Weathermen, seeming almost desperate at times to establish themselves with the Panthers, developed the slogan, ‘John Brown—live like him!’ Many in the Black Panther Party, however, were not receptive. The Panthers’ own male chauvinism inspired them to liken the Weathermen to sissies, girls and little boys.23 Hence, the discourse between the two organisations was embroiled in sexism; articulated in the Panther’s belief that the Weathermen were ‘sissies’ and not masculine or tough enough. However, because of the intense subterfuge by the US government, the validity of many of these attacks against the Weathermen and SDS are suspect. During the 1960s and 70s leftist groups such as the Black Panthers and SDS were infiltrated by FBI agents under the program COINTELPRO which aimed to ‘expose, disrupt and otherwise neutralize’ its target.24 These ‘subversive’ groups were watched and exploited by undercover FBI agents who helped to create turmoil within the organisations and also cause tension between groups such as the Black Panthers and SDS. An FBI file from August 20, 1969 has a letter from a supposed ‘angry black brother’ which says, ‘Since when do us blacks have to accept the dictates of the lilywhite SDS. We have had more than we can tolerate of white pig fascist control over our destiny’.25 Letters such as these, written by the FBI, were meant to cause tension between left wing groups, and often successfully initiated in fighting between the organisations.

Largely due to FBI interference, much to their chagrin, the Weathermen never did receive approval from the Panthers. In fact, after several harsh statements about the Weathermen’s low-grade masculinity from the Black Panthers (despite the pictures of them posturing with guns), the Weathermen figured they needed to seek out new allies, but had trouble finding them within the New or Old Left or within mainstream America. By late 1969 the Weathermen had lost all hope of reaching the ‘people’. The only thing they saw as productive was sabotaging the indifferent, corrupt white American system. The Weathermen viewed themselves and a small handful of other revolutionaries as the only viable citisens remaining in America. The group intensified its commitment to violence and ‘self defense’. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, fire arm defense guides were published generously to Leftists who wanted to know their ‘rights’ under the law, the technical aspects of owning a gun, and how to handle said weapons. The manual Firearms and Self Defense: A Handbook for Radicals, found in SDS papers, begins by chastising the American political system and its history of violence against the Third World and poor American blacks and whites. The manual also forebodes, rather dramatically, that ‘flower children can grow thorns’.26 Ironically, this warped political system is the same one that has ‘the law stacked very much in favor of self-defense’.27

The manual also features a chapter on gun laws, registration and what were considered ‘legal’ weapons. The page concerning ‘legal’ weapons has a picture of the Bill of Rights with a gun over it, indicating that the Bill of Rights enabled US citizens the right to ‘self defense’.28 The phallic imagery in the pro-violence pamphlet assured revolutionaries that violence was not only necessary, but also attractive and empowering. Thus, the American right for ordinary citizens to have guns with little restrictions is invoked in order to critique the American political system. For most of the duration of SDS and the radical Left, beyond the obvious (war, poverty, and racism), many had difficultly discerning what parts of the system must be allowed to remain and what should be changed. The manual reflects this complicated quandary as six pages after the picture of the Bill of Rights with a gun is a quote by Mao Tse-Tung, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’.29 This gun, of course, was one that the US legal system enabled citizens to freely purchase. The tension of whether to work within the system or outside of it, familiar in many movements in the 1960s and 70s, is illustrated through this very contradictory pamphlet.

This political power, supported by violence, indiscriminate or targeted, was no longer considered morally wrong as it had been in SDS before the Weathermen took over. The Weathermen truly believed (whether they enacted it or not) that violence and insularity would be the only way to make any change occur in American society. In Chicago, SDS leader Mike James told a crowd:

Non-violent marches have their place, but they won’t bring about the changes necessary for freedom. Capitalism won’t crumble because of moral protest ... They’ve got the guns, we’ve got the people ... The time will come when we’ll have to use guns. Don’t let that hang you up. Some of you say violence isn’t human. Well, taking oppression isn’t human; it’s stupid. You only live one time, so you better make it good and make it liberating. Violence, when directed at the oppressor is human as well as necessary.30

Violence was first enacted by the Weathermen in 1970, nineteen days after this declaration, when a bomb exploded in the NYPD headquarters. Over the next few years, the Weathermen would take credit for hundreds of additional bombings.

A majority of the New Left, including feminist organisations, did not support the Weathermen’s advocacy of violence. Many feminist and feminist organisations critiqued the sexism of the New Left and articulated their views concerning violence through their responses to the Weathermen. For example, in ‘Goodbye to All That’, published in 1970, radical feminist Robin Morgan wrote a scathing report on the sexism of the New Left and specifically the Weathermen. Likening the men in the Weathermen to Stanley Kowalski (the hyper-masculine, violent protagonist in Tennessee William’s play A Streetcar Named Desire) Morgan claimed that the women in the Weathermen were forced to reject radical feminism and embrace ‘gratuitous violence’.31 Because the Weathermen’s revolution did not place much importance on ending patriarchy, Morgan believed that the women in the Weathermen were merely puppets for the men in the organisation. Morgan contended that the Weathermen’s documented praise of Charles Manson and his female followers illustrated her point about women’s roles in the movement:

All the while, oh my sister, not meeting my eyes because the Weathermen chose Charles Manson as their – and your – hero. (Honest, at least, since Manson is only the logical extreme of the normal American male’s fantasy, whether he is Dick Nixon or Mark Rudd, master of a harem, women to do all the shitwork, from raising babies and cooking and hustling to killing people on command).32

Similar to Morgan’s critique, also in 1970, the feminist group Bread and Roses wrote an indictment of the pro-masculine rhetoric and action of the Weathermen. Though Bread and Roses had their own revolutionary tactics and beliefs, such as seizing an unoccupied building owned by Harvard University for ten days and offering free classes and daycare, they disapproved of the Weathermen’s idea of a ‘woman of steel’ or a ‘street fighting woman’. The group believed that such standards only reinforced the subjugation of women. They contended that ideas in the Weathermen’s document ‘Honky Tonk Women’ which claimed that women would not be liberated by feminism, but by being unafraid of blood or guns, was an insufficient plan for feminist revolution. According to the Weathermen, learning to be a ‘street fighting woman’ would earn women the respect of men and thus would end male chauvinism.33 Bread and Roses critiqued this notion that women should embrace machismo as the one true method of social change. The idea of the ‘street fighting woman’ reeked of ‘me- too’ politics. It promised women if they acted like the oppressor or impressed him enough, perhaps they could be included. Women needed to jump on the aggressive, authoritarian bandwagon if they wanted to be considered anywhere near ‘equal’ to men. Bread and Roses found the idea of women having to ‘earn’ their equality through macho behavior offensive and sexist.

Thus, the Weathermen were not the only radical group that politicised the idea of women, masculinity and violence. Radical feminists also wrestled with the idea of women and masculinity for some time. Not wanting to ‘choose’ masculinity or femininity, many had opted for androgyny, which purports to exalt the socially defined positive traits of both genders. However, after closer analysis of those traits which androgyny usually lauded, radical feminists found that their ‘feminine’ traits were still degraded.34 In contrast, masculine attributes were accepted and praised within their radical feminist circles and in the greater American culture.

In her book Feminist Thought, Rosemarie Tong explored the evolving classifications within feminism. Tong explained that after trying to be androgynous, many radical-cultural feminists believed that women should not try to ‘be like men’. On the contrary, women should celebrate ‘feminine’ attributes such as community, connection, absence of hierarchy, trust, etc. ‘Masculine’ values such as violence, domination and hierarchy should be avoided and critiqued. Thus women who enact and exalt ‘masculine’ traits are complicit within the patriarchal system.

An example of radical-cultural feminism’s rejection of ‘masculinity’ is apparent in former Weatherwoman Jane Alpert’s article, ‘Mother Right’, which was published in Ms. Magazine in 1971. ‘Mother Right’ is a scathing report of the male supremacist notions that were destroying the New Left, particularly the Weathermen. In the article, Alpert explained her specific disdain for the sexism of the Weathermen and articulates one particular position in radical feminism concerning women and violence – that of an ‘essential’ nature of less violent women. ‘Mother Right’ is, in fact, an open letter to all of Alpert’s ‘sister fugitives’ in the Weathermen. In her controversial article, similar to Morgan, Alpert made it very clear that she believed that all women in the Weathermen were experiencing intense oppression and sexism. Based on personal experience, Alpert’s opinion was that men in the Weathermen were merely chauvinists who thought of women as unintelligent and useful only for physical pleasure. Though Alpert only had extensive interaction with two of the male members of the Weathermen, this was enough to make her beg her ‘sister fugitives’ to leave the male dominated organisation forever.

Alpert also rebelled against Weathermen doctrine by proclaiming that women’s liberation would not be like the Cuban or Chinese revolution. The Cuban and Chinese revolutions had used violence and placed political and economic changes high above ‘human consciousness’. In contrast, Alpert predicted sweeping political, social and economic changes for women would occur only after changes in human consciousness took place. The Weathermen believed, of course, that the revolution would happen the other way around – human consciousness was the last item on their list of radical changes. Feminism, according to Alpert, would function like a ripple effect, each individual woman’s consciousness would change and influence others. The easiest way for this ripple effect to occur would be for women to create their own culture.

By referencing ancient matriarchal cultures, Alpert advocated the ability of all women to be ‘mothers’. She contended that women are mothers not by birthing children, but by possessing maternal qualities, a ‘potential which is imprinted in the genes of every woman’. This essential nature of women offered the only way that the many differences between women could be resolved. No matter what class, age, race or sexual orientation – there could be no real differences in this intrinsic motherhood. If women were violent then they were merely mimicking men and trying, like Alpert had done herself, to win male approval.35

Thus, radical-cultural feminists contended that any woman who embraced violence as a means of social change was going against her ‘true’ nature. By trying to be like men, she was betraying herself and feminism. Though Alpert was attempting to critique patriarchal dominance, her essentialist views merely reinforced stereotyped notions about the ‘innate’ non-violent nature of women. Ideas about women being peaceful and passive supported the mainstream belief that women were too sensitive to participate in a number of activities ranging from sports to police work to running for president. Pigeon-holing women as non- violent, ‘natural mothers’ merely reiterated the sexist discourse of patriarchal American society.

Essentialist views of women were not the only reason why feminists did not support violence. In nearly every movement within second wave feminism—radical feminism, Marxist-socialist feminism, and liberal feminism—there were inevitably feminist pacifists or women who did not support violence. This belief system concerning political violence was articulated by feminists who distinguished between traditionally feminine traits such as ‘passivism’, which means inactive suffering, and instead opted for ‘pacifism’, which is defined as peace making or agreement making.36 To them, pacifism did not mean tacit acceptance, but rather resistance that refused to use the tools of the oppressor: violence. Thus, pacifist feminists of the second wave understood, as expressed by African American feminist Audre Lorde years later, ‘The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’.37

Furthermore, pacifist second wave feminists contended that feminism offered the best ‘comprehensive analysis of America’s political, economic, social, and military systems’.38 Meaning, patriarchal dominance could be used as a model for other modes of oppression, particularly violent militarism, such as the situation in Vietnam. The feminist group, Women Against Daddy Warbucks, released a statement in 1969 articulating the connections between sexism, violence, the war, and American capital investment in the third world. The women asked:

Consider the interdependence between corporation profits and military ‘protection’ overseas. Consider the roles programmed for women by our society, accepted as insulation from social responsibility. Consider the real reasons why resources are wasted in the arms competition, while people are starving and hopeless.39

To pacifist feminists, feminism’s struggle for a more egalitarian society inevitably meant that women and men should denounce multifaceted institutional and individual violence in order to make the world a more livable place. Pacifist feminism also contended that militarism is a form of domination and thus feminism and peace movements share an important connection – both are committed to ending violent power/privilege systems. There are ‘empirical connections’ to war that also make pacifism a feminist issue. Military operations wreck havoc on women, children, people of color, the poor, and the environment.40 Resisting the subjugation of all of the above is integral to a pacifist and feminist stance. These multilayered systems of oppression create connections between pacifism and feminism; all of which have nothing to do with an ‘essential’ nature of women, but rather a commitment to non-violent resistance.

In direct contrast to pacifist feminism as well as radical-cultural feminists’ claims of a loving female culture, other feminists advocated violence as a means of radical change. This third group of radical feminists agreed with the Weathermen and did not want to alter its tactics or goals. In fact, these feminists also advocated that women use violence in order to stop male chauvinism, oppression and violence. However, for most feminists, violence, political or otherwise, was not merely something that could be thoughtlessly supported or viciously despised. For example, though few feminists advocated ‘random violence’, many supported ‘self defense’ training. This training was not just about preparing for the upcoming revolution or for confrontations with police officers as the Weathermen were doing. As Rebecca Moon, Leslie Tanner and Susan Pascale articulated in their essay ‘Karate as Self Defense for Women’, self defense was important because, ‘Women are attacked, beaten and raped! Every day. By men! Women are afraid to walk certain streets after dark and even afraid to walk into buildings where they live. It’s about time we as women get strong in order to defend ourselves’.41

Moon, Tanner and Pascale advocated that women take karate as a means of self defense and discuss the conflicting feelings they experienced while learning how to protect themselves. They wanted to look ‘tough’, but viewed their fists and punches as non-aggressive because they had been taught their entire lives to be passive. Thus, they did not know how to be ‘violent’. The essay promoted karate as positive, helpful training for women’s liberationists because it increased confidence (due to potential physical power).

Also, seeing as women had a long political fight ahead of them, the essay advocated that the only way to fight back against overwhelming patriarchal oppression was by force.42 Thus, a perceived ‘physically weak’ female would be ten times more effective if she learns the ‘lessons of violence’. These lessons may have been an emulation of ‘masculine’, aggressive training, but they were also a practical way for women to fight back against potential attacks. Therefore, second wave feminists who learned self defense were not merely trying to ‘be like men’ as some radical-cultural feminists claimed. Instead, they were reconditioning their bodies and discovering empowerment through ‘learning the lessons of violence’.

In contradistinction to fine-tuning the ‘lessons of violence’ through self-defense or karate, individual feminists such as Ti-Grace Atkinson admired the violent tactics of groups such as the Weathermen. Atkinson even co-authored a letter denouncing Jane Alpert’s ‘Mother Right’, along with Alpert’s cooperation with FBI investigators. In her letter, Atkinson claimed that Alpert was disloyal to the revolution and contended that the Weathermen represented, ‘the seeds of the future’.43

In 1971, during a speech on violence in the women’s movement, Atkinson praised the Weathermen and the Italian American Civil Rights League (an organisation formed by mafia leader Joseph Columbo). Atkinson also showed a picture of Columbo, who had recently been murdered, and deemed the Women’s Liberation Movement a haven for phonies who talked about violence instead of enacting it. She showed a picture of the murdered Columbo as an example of what she believed the feminists were not. According to Atkinson, Columbo was, like a true revolutionary, ‘hanging out in the streets with people who were fighting for their own asses’.44 She repeated the refrain from many in the Left – the Women’s Liberation Movement had radical pretensions, but no real revolutionary action. A remedy for this, Atkinson said in her speech as she was booed and jeered by sister feminists, was for women to ‘pick up the gun’. This was very similar to what the Weathermen were saying to the New Left. It was no coincidence that the Weathermen was the only other group Atkinson praised in her speech.

Furthermore, in her essay ‘Radical Feminism, Declaration of War’ Ti-Grace Atkinson critiqued the pop-culture notion of a ‘battle of the sexes’.45 Atkinson contended that because the word ‘battle’ implies some sort of power balance, women have never really been in battle with men. Rather, women have been the ones to suffer all the losses and have been massacred in the process. The only way for women to stop being massacred is to band together, recognise their collective and individual oppression and engage in all sorts of psychic and violent battles with men. By using military terminology, Atkinson also advocated that the women’s movement accept that ‘diplomacy’ with men does not work. Therefore an essentialist or pacifist position within feminism concerning violence was inept. It was only by seeing men as the enemy in battle could feminists forge the first step to political change.46

It was no coincidence that Atkinson believed that Valerie Solanas’ infamous SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto, written in 1968, was obligatory reading. Atkinson and a few other radical feminists claimed Solanas’ philosophy of violence was the ‘essence of feminism’.47 Atkinson even attended Solanas’ trial after she shot and critically injured famous pop artist Andy Warhol. Though Solanas was sent to an insane asylum where she later died of tuberculosis, Atkinson and other radical feminists read and praised her work in their small collectives.

Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto articulated the violent solutions she believed would emancipate women. SCUM planned to, ‘Overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex’.48 Solanas begins her misandric manifesto by declaring that life is an utter bore to which women do not and cannot relate, and which cannot give them any form of enjoyment or pleasure. Solanas, who was a psychology major before she became a street hustler and prostitute, believed that she had found the biological secret to men’s ‘inherent’ inferiority. Men, she claimed, are a biological accident, the Y gene merely an incomplete X. This genetic inadequacy was the cause of all male oppression and need to control women. Men had stolen female traits – independence, courage, intensity, forcefulness, dynamicism, etc. – and claimed them for themselves. Male traits such as weakness, triviality and vanity were projected onto women through brilliant marketing and manipulation. Therefore, Solanas claimed, ‘Women don’t have penis envy, men have pussy envy’.[49'(#endnotes) Because of this jealousy and hate, men have been responsible for all the world’s problems.

In her manifesto, Solanas listed over fifty elements of society that men have created in order to destroy women: war, politeness, money, marriage, suburbs, conformity, government, competition, ‘Great art’, sexuality, censorship, disease and death to name a few.50 In order to end the societal plague of men acting out against their inadequacy, Solanas outlined what she believes is an easy solution. The ideal first step in Solanas’ women’s revolution was to enlist all American females into the SCUM Army. After this, almost all women would drop out of the labor force and the American monetary system would be completely obliterated. If women would stop buying and loot for their possessions, even the US military couldn’t stop them.

However, Solanas did not have faith in all of her female comrades. In fact, women’s inability to participate was one of the biggest conflicts concerning SCUM’s goals. Solanas contended:

The conflict, therefore, is not between males and females, but between SCUM – dominant, secure, self-confident, nasty, violent, selfish, independent, proud, thrill-seeking, free-wheeling arrogant females, who consider themselves fit to rule the universe...and nice, passive, accepting, ‘cultivated’, polite, dignified, subdued, dependent, scared, mindless, insecure, approval seeking Daddy’s girls, who can’t cope with the unknown, who want to continue to wallow in the sewer that is, at least, familiar, who want to hang back with the apes, who feel secure only with Big Daddy standing by ... who are too cowardly to face up to what a man really is, what Daddy is, who have cast their lot with the swine, who have adapted themselves to animalism ... who have reduced their minds, thoughts and imagination to the male level, who lacking sense, wit and imagination can have value only in a male society, who can have a place in the sun or rather the slime only as soothers, ego boosters, relaxers and breeders.51

Thus, because many women were not willing to be revolutionary, just as the Weathermen had advocated, SCUM would take over the country with only a handful of women and systematically destroy property and men in power. SCUM workers would get jobs and destroy the capitalist system by not charging for merchandise and ruining equipment. SCUM also planned to ruin cars, store windows, ‘Great art’, etc. Solanas also wanted SCUM to bust up mixed (male/female) couples, even if violence was necessary to pry them apart.52

In addition, after the obliteration of the system was accomplished (in a very short time of course), SCUM planned to kill any men not in the Men’s Auxiliary Unit. Like the Weathermen, SCUM, ‘will not picket, demonstrate, march or strike to achieve its ends. Such tactics are for nice, gentle ladies who scrupulously take only such actions as is guaranteed to be ineffective’.53 By acting on a civil disobedience basis, Solanas believed that SCUM was only reinforcing the system, not working outside of it in order to destroy it. Unlike many movements of the 1960s and 70s, Solanas did not have a complex or contradictory relationship with the American system. She knew what she wanted: money and the US political system eliminated, thus ending any sway men had over ‘psychologically independent females’.54

Her plan was to have the few remaining men who hadn’t been killed by SCUM spend their last days on earth high on drugs, dressed up as women, to be used merely as breeders and spectators. If they refused to accept their fate Solanas gave them another solution, ‘They can go off to the nearest friendly neighborhood suicide center where they will be quietly, quickly and painlessly gassed to death’.55 While men gassed themselves to death, women would be solving the world’s few remaining problems. They would revamp education programs and redesign cities. Solanas feared that despite the wonderful changes that the absence of men would create, some women would continue to ‘dig men’. These women would eventually become so absorbed in their projects that in time they would come to see the ‘utter uselessness and banality of the male’.56

Solanas’ radical manifesto shocked many people in mainstream America as well as the New Left. Its unapologetic advocacy of violence was in direct contrast to those feminists who despised macho violence, even if it was for radical means. But Solanas had flipped the association of men with aggression and violence on its head. Solanas rejected women’s essential ‘motherhood’ and claimed that women were naturally independent and tough – men had merely stolen women’s character because of their ‘pussy envy’. Radical-cultural feminists could not apply ‘feminine’ traits such as compassion and a propensity towards non-violence to women. According to Solanas, women were not naturally maternal, compassionate or non- violent: such a skewed perception was merely part of a mass marketing campaign, a brilliant and insidious social construction. In that sense, Solanas also disrupted Alpert’s notion that females who committed violence always did so under male duress. Her unabashed desire to systematically murder men and create a female utopia rebelled against and upset many who participated in mainstream feminism.

Both on the fringes of the counterculture, SCUM and the Weathermen had similar objectives and means. Though no one in the Weathermen could imagine life without men (they controlled the group), both organisations wanted to destroy the American money system and develop a counter culture army. Both Solanas and the Weathermen believed that targeted, ‘discriminate’ violence would help overthrow the system and install what they felt would be a more just society. Neither group’s violent rhetoric sought to humanise its targets – whether they were the bourgeoisie or men.

After shooting Andy Warhol, Solanas claimed to have no remorse: another action that rebelled against certain feminist claims that women are more compassionate and less violent. Solanas’ unapologetic, aggressive rhetoric prompted a frightened jury to send her to an insane asylum where she stayed for three years. The jury’s rationale for not sending Solanas to prison reinforced the belief that no woman could be so unapologetically violent without being crazy. This reflects the simplistic, stereotyped view that society often applies to violent women. Thus, female political violence is a frightening subject in US society not only because it inspires fear about terrorism, but also because it disrupts ideas about femininity and passivity.

The debates within feminism concerning women, violence and gendered constructions are significant and have continued in many strands since the 1960s and 70s. In the 1980s, in her book In a Different Voice Carol Gilligan claimed that women speak a different, more ‘caring’ moral language than men do, who speak the language of ‘justice’. This, of course, has political implications, as does Sara Ruddick’s notion of ‘maternal thinking’. In her 1989 article ‘Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace’, Ruddick claimed that those who engage in maternal thinking (primarily women) view war and violence as destroying a unique human life that cannot be replaced. Non-maternal thinking, usually done by men, leads to social injustice, environmental disaster and war. These assessments are similar to radical-cultural feminist critiques of violence during the 1960s and 70s.

In contrast to the aforementioned assessments of women’s caring ethic and maternal thinking, since the 1970s there has been a surge in popularity of women’s self defense training. Rejecting the notion of women as passive, hundreds of thousands of US women have been taught combat in order to challenge patriarchal privilege and violence.57 More recently, feminist challenges to patriarchal privilege have focused on the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The war in Iraq has inspired the resurgence of feminist concern with the militarisation of the world and the debate over the complexity of political violence. Issues concerning violence in the Middle East, Muslim women’s activism (or the stereotyped notion that Muslim women are oppressed, always non-violent and need ‘help’ from Western women), as well as the most effective ways to protest the escalating war in Iraq are all important debates within feminist activism and theory today.

These discussions are rooted in the complex feminist debates of the 1960s and 70s, all of which offered multiple visions of how political change would occur in the United States and throughout the world. By using the Weathermen as a framework, I have illustrated the varying ways in which radical feminists during this period articulated their belief systems concerning women and political violence. Radical-cultural feminists such as Jane Alpert believed that women were essentially non-violent. Pacifist feminists desired for both men and women to reject violence, while pro-violent feminists advocated for a violent solution to the problems of patriarchy. These many diverging beliefs and debates reflect the broad range of ideologies concerning women and violence within feminist discourse.

Lindsey Churchill
Florida State Universtiy

Endnotes

1. Gilda Zwerman, ‘Participation in Underground Organizations: Conservative and Feminist Images of Women Associated with Armed, Clandestine Organizations in the United States’, in International Social Movement Research, Volume 4, ed. Donatella Della Porta (London: JAI Press, 1997), 136.
2. Ibid.
3. For more information on modern debates concerning feminism and violence see Living with Contradictions: Controversies in Feminist Ethics, ed. Allison Jaggar. (Boulder: Westview, 1994).
4. For an in-depth analysis on the splintering of the American left see Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (Toronto: Bantam, 1987).
5. See Robin Morgan’s The Demon Lover: On the Sexuality of Terrorism (New York: Norton and Company, 1989).
6. These include Rosemarie Tong’s Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998); Alice Echols Daring to be BAD: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989); and Judith Evans’ Feminist Theory Today: An Introduction to Second Wave Feminism. (London: Sage Publications, 1995).
7. Tom Hayden, ‘Port Huron Statement’, 1962. SDS Papers, 1958-1970. Microfilm. New Jersey: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1977.
   
8. Echols, 125.
9. Ibid.
10. Gitlin, 285.
11. Ibid.
12. Echols, 120.
13. Joan Cassell, Sisterhood and Symbolism in the Feminist Movement (New York: David McKay Company, 1977), 23.
14. Judith Brown and Beverly Jones. ‘Towards a Female Liberation Movement’ in Voices from Women’s Liberation, ed. Leslie B.Tanner (New York: Signet Press, 1971), 364.
15. ‘Honky Tonk Women’, Weather Underground, 1969. For more on the Weathermen see Ron Jacobs The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground (New York: Verso Press, 1997) and Jeremy Varon’s Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, The Red Army Faction and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (California: University of California Press, 2004).
16. G. Louis Heath (ed), Vandals in the Bomb Factory: The History and Literature of the Students for a Democratic Society (New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, 1976), 161.
17. Bernadine Dohrn, Weather Underground, ‘Declaration of a State of War’ May 21st, 1970.
18. Noel Ignatin, Which Side are You On? U.S. History in Perspective (Students for a Democratic Society, Chicago, 1969), 8.
19. Pat Conaway, Confessions of a White Revolutionary (1968), 4. In SDS Papers, 1958-1970. Microfilm. New Jersey: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1977.
    
20. Nancy Whittier, Feminist Generations (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 1.
21. Echols, 120.
22. For more on the debate about class and patriarchy see The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: A Debate on Class and Patriarchy, ed. Lydia Sargent, (London: Pluto Press, 1981).
23. Ibid., 22. David Cunningham, ‘The Patterning of Repression: FBI Counterintelligence and the New Left’ in Social Forces, vol. 81, no. 1 (September 2003): 212.
24. FBI Internal Documents. FBI File on the Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen Underground Organization. August 20, 1969. Microform. Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 1991.
25. International Liberation School, Firearms and Self-Defense: A Handbook for Radicals (Detroit: Radical Education Project, 1969), 2.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid, 34.
28. Ibid, 42.
29. K. Sale, SDS (New York: Random House, 1973), 631.
30. Robin Morgan, The Word of a Woman: Feminist Dispatches, 1968-1992 (New York: Norton, 1992), 59.
31. Ibid.
32. ‘Honky Tonk Women’.
33. Rosemarie Tong, 47.
34. Jane Alpert, ‘Mother Right: A New Feminist Theory’, Ms. (August 1973): 94.
35. Laura Duhan, ‘Feminism and Peace Theory: Women as Nurturers U.S. Women as Public Citizens’ in eds. Kenneth Kunkel and Joseph Klein, In the Interest of Peace.. (New Hampshire: Hollowbrook Publishing, 1990), 253.
36. Audre Lorde, ‘The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House’ in Sister Outsider (New York: The Crossing Press, 1984), 112.
37. Lois Duke, Women in Politics Outsiders or Insiders? (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1993), 243.
38. Women Against Daddy Warbucks, ‘Our Statement’ in Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement ed. Robin Morgan (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), 530.
39. Duane Cady and Karen Warren. ‘Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections’ in Hypatia, vol. 9, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 7.
40. Ibid.
41. Rebecca Moon, Susan Pascale and Leslie Tanner, ‘Karate as Self Defense for Women’ in Voices from Women’s Liberation, ed. Leslie B. Tanner (New York: Signet Press, 1971), 263.
42. Ibid.
43. Echols, 184.
44. Ibid.
45. Ti-Grace Atkinson, Women and Values: Readings in Recent Feminist Philosophy, ed. Marilyn Pearsall (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1986), 126.
46. Echols, 105.
47. Valerie Solanas, ‘S.C.U.M. Manifesto’ in Sisterhood is Powerful, 514.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. For more on women’s self defense training see Martha McCaughey’s article ‘The Fighting Spirit: Women’s Self-Defense Training and the Discourse of Sexed Embodiment’ in Gender and Society, vol.. 12, no. 3 (Jun, 1998): 277-300.