In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution by Susan Brownmiller Page A
Authors: Susan Brownmiller
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delivering it to outposts, to organize new groups. I’d get up in the morning, make a list, and think movement, movement, movement . It seemed endless.”
When Ti-Grace Atkinson had departed from NOW, she formed the October 17th Movement, which had died aborning. She revived it as THE FEMINISTS , with capital letters.Cofounder Anne Koedt recalls, “At first it was a very good little group, a place where you could hear yourself think without the din from the politicos.” But when Koedt returned from a short vacation in the summer, she was handed a new and rigid set of membership rules. She bowed out quickly.
In Koedt’s absence four women from the Class Workshop, Mehrhof, Cronan, Pam Kearon, and Linda Feldman, had switched their allegiance from Redstockings to Ti-Grace. Atkinson, raised in a wealthy, conservative Louisiana family, yearned for an army of disciples. Mehrhof, Cronan, and Kearon possessed inventive feminist minds and poorly developed egos. Linda Feldman, the only Jewish woman in the group, was equally insecure.
“Ti-Grace’s philosophy was that we were all supposed to be equal,” says Sheila Cronan. “We were supposed to share power and not have any hierarchy. She really believed in that philosophy, andprobably still does, but her personality made it difficult for her to follow through.”
THE FEMINISTS set up a mailing address on Liberty Street and met twice a week, usually at Cronan’s Upper West Side apartment. “That’s where we put the mimeo,” Barbara Mehrhof remembers. “Ti-Grace said every revolution needs a mimeo machine.”
In this self-styled vanguard of egalitarian activist-thinkers, missing a meeting became grounds for expulsion, and no more than 30 percent of the members could be married. Eventually THE FEMINISTS banned all women living with men from their ranks. As a vanguard collective, THE FEMINISTS was a curious experiment in churchlike discipline and ultra-democracy.One of their tasks was to figure out how to counter the domineering tendencies of Ti-Grace, a bundle of nerves in constant motion who talked nonstop at their meetings and snagged all the media attention because she was already a “movement star.” THE FEMINISTS devised a random lot system for their political work. Ti-Grace took her turn cutting stencils, running the mimeo, and stapling the group’s theoretical papers, the humdrum chores they labeled “shitwork,” while Linda, who was easily flustered, was sent out to do the Barry Gray radio program.Feldman’s performance, they had to admit, was poor.
Pam Kearon found a way for the timid ones to gain practice in public speaking. They scoured The Village Voice every week for notices of other people’s political meetings. “If we couldn’t find something to do with women,” Cronan relates, “we’d go anyway and stand up and make statements during the question period. I remember a meeting of the Gandhi Society where we stood up and denounced him. The people running these meetings must have been bewildered, but we found the exercise very helpful.”
Ti-Grace abandoned her philosophy studies at Columbia to earn her living on the lecture circuit. The other FEMINISTS conceded that they had no right to stop her—Atkinson’s love affair with the media brought in speaking engagements and fees. Barbara, Sheila, and Pam applied themselves to writing, which they loved. Separately and together, they composed position papers on marriage (a form of slavery), prostitution (it separated women into the bad and the good), Amazon women (true feminist heroines), and the biological originsof women’s oppression. Pam tried her hand at movie criticism. Ti-Grace worked up a broadside on the oppressive nature of love. All THE FEMINISTS ’ papers were sold through the mail for ten cents a copy, yet something was still out of balance. Even though each FEMINIST put her name on her own theoretical work, to the public the only FEMINIST was Ti-Grace.
“Sometimes she came up with
When Ti-Grace Atkinson had departed from NOW, she formed the October 17th Movement, which had died aborning. She revived it as THE FEMINISTS , with capital letters.Cofounder Anne Koedt recalls, “At first it was a very good little group, a place where you could hear yourself think without the din from the politicos.” But when Koedt returned from a short vacation in the summer, she was handed a new and rigid set of membership rules. She bowed out quickly.
In Koedt’s absence four women from the Class Workshop, Mehrhof, Cronan, Pam Kearon, and Linda Feldman, had switched their allegiance from Redstockings to Ti-Grace. Atkinson, raised in a wealthy, conservative Louisiana family, yearned for an army of disciples. Mehrhof, Cronan, and Kearon possessed inventive feminist minds and poorly developed egos. Linda Feldman, the only Jewish woman in the group, was equally insecure.
“Ti-Grace’s philosophy was that we were all supposed to be equal,” says Sheila Cronan. “We were supposed to share power and not have any hierarchy. She really believed in that philosophy, andprobably still does, but her personality made it difficult for her to follow through.”
THE FEMINISTS set up a mailing address on Liberty Street and met twice a week, usually at Cronan’s Upper West Side apartment. “That’s where we put the mimeo,” Barbara Mehrhof remembers. “Ti-Grace said every revolution needs a mimeo machine.”
In this self-styled vanguard of egalitarian activist-thinkers, missing a meeting became grounds for expulsion, and no more than 30 percent of the members could be married. Eventually THE FEMINISTS banned all women living with men from their ranks. As a vanguard collective, THE FEMINISTS was a curious experiment in churchlike discipline and ultra-democracy.One of their tasks was to figure out how to counter the domineering tendencies of Ti-Grace, a bundle of nerves in constant motion who talked nonstop at their meetings and snagged all the media attention because she was already a “movement star.” THE FEMINISTS devised a random lot system for their political work. Ti-Grace took her turn cutting stencils, running the mimeo, and stapling the group’s theoretical papers, the humdrum chores they labeled “shitwork,” while Linda, who was easily flustered, was sent out to do the Barry Gray radio program.Feldman’s performance, they had to admit, was poor.
Pam Kearon found a way for the timid ones to gain practice in public speaking. They scoured The Village Voice every week for notices of other people’s political meetings. “If we couldn’t find something to do with women,” Cronan relates, “we’d go anyway and stand up and make statements during the question period. I remember a meeting of the Gandhi Society where we stood up and denounced him. The people running these meetings must have been bewildered, but we found the exercise very helpful.”
Ti-Grace abandoned her philosophy studies at Columbia to earn her living on the lecture circuit. The other FEMINISTS conceded that they had no right to stop her—Atkinson’s love affair with the media brought in speaking engagements and fees. Barbara, Sheila, and Pam applied themselves to writing, which they loved. Separately and together, they composed position papers on marriage (a form of slavery), prostitution (it separated women into the bad and the good), Amazon women (true feminist heroines), and the biological originsof women’s oppression. Pam tried her hand at movie criticism. Ti-Grace worked up a broadside on the oppressive nature of love. All THE FEMINISTS ’ papers were sold through the mail for ten cents a copy, yet something was still out of balance. Even though each FEMINIST put her name on her own theoretical work, to the public the only FEMINIST was Ti-Grace.
“Sometimes she came up with
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