Andrea Dworkin is making a comeback. Her work never really went away, but she died in 2005, still writing furiously, but with the lively feminist movement that had created her readership mired in either academic theory or celebrations of female political and corporate firsts. Yet after many years of being disparaged and maligned, often by … More The Return of Andrea Dworkin
This essay was previously published in 2018 at the archives site, Beyond Citation, created by Eileen Clancy and Steven Brier, CUNY Graduate Center. Before we delve into the LGBTQ digital resources of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and of the Sophia … More LGBTQ Archives at the Schlesinger and the Sophia Smith
Those of you who follow this page haven’t seen much in a while: I’ve been busy writing a book, editing Public Seminar, and getting some cyborg tuning done. But I’m back. You’ll notice I’ve cleaned up the site: that urge I had to have everything available has dissipated. Also I am ditching pictures: too much work, … More A Hankering to Blog Again
Back in the 1970s, when I was leaving for college, my mother gave me a piece of advice: “Don’t sign anything.” Her skepticism was forged in the 1950s, when petitions that public figures had signed as students, and organizations they had belonged to, had sometimes destroyed their lives. In college, however, I discovered the thrill … More Why Taking a Stand on the Internet Can Turn a Problem Into a Catastrophe
When did coalitional organizing between feminists and conservative women become impossible? I’m not sure, but as a feminist there is one place and time that I remember vividly: Indianapolis in the spring of 1984. There, led by Mayor William Hudnut, III Republican politician Beulah Coughenour and local movement conservatives, that city became one of the … More Why Can’t Women Bridge the Left-Right Divide?
The mass hiring of women into higher education, beginning in the 1970s, is one of the great affirmative-action success stories. Although universities have simultaneously done a remarkably poor job of cultivating, hiring, and promoting scholars of color, and although the natural sciences, economics, and philosophy remain defiantly male, the status of women in higher education … More What Affirmative Action Didn’t Change
I had heard the rumors that Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon planned to primary New York’s Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo, but I didn’t believe them. It made so little sense to me that I ignored it until yesterday, when Nixon actually declared her candidacy. According to the Siena College poll of registered Democratic Party voters and … More Is (Cynthia) Nixon the One?
The International Women’s Strike (IWS), which coincided with International Women’s Day, associates itself with every progressive cause there is, making Betty Friedan’s actual dream for feminism—not that it would be a radical movement for women, but that it would be a liberal equality movement for all people—a reality. But do we make a mistake when … More Is Women’s Solidarity Possible?
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